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INFORMATION
Someone speaks softly through the horror and pain:
'Love has gone, but it could come again.'
Spring arrives quietly, warming her skin
Her heart, now red, is beating again
- Hannah Fury, 'Someone Speaks Softly'
Not a writer but a professional student. Instead I can be the jaded passer-by that caught a glimpse of a fling
or a fatal mistake, a murder in the back alley, and I keep it all to myself so I don't lose any of it during the spilling from heart to paper on an unimaginary dark night. I write opinions, facts, emotions and other satisfied sentences that are the offspring of my imagination and external influences. And I do not need your validation to live, for the record.
CONTACT
FS/augustkills
FP/thepapercult
LJ/snipethedoctor
WP/electricsleeves
CREDITS
Icon: DW/tablesaw
Layout: tuesdaynight
Inspiration: DayBefore!Misery
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To Talk, To Speak, To Type
Written on: Friday, January 8, 2010
Time: 8:32 PM
His name comes up on MSN, and we talk. It has been a long time.
He's a thousand miles away from the boiling furnace I'm in, and probably further away than I think. He says hi, and 'how are you doing?' and 'sorry I couldn't get to ya earlier: my laptop crashed'. I tell him it's okay, and it's nice to hear from him again.
Through the mirror says:
Hello. How's the weather?
He types that too and it appears onscreen. We both send 'fine' simultaneously. I laugh softly. There isn’t anything remotely funny in coincidence, but if I giggle in my room no one hears me. I think I can see him grinning. In my mind he hasn't done that for three weeks now. I tell him about exams. I type slowly, one delicate word after another, an amateur ballerina showing off to her instructor, excited but nervous.
Through the mirror says:
The exams are here again. But thank goodness it's nearly over. You?
My hands are watchful of the Enter key: press it once and I could be getting it wrong. I see the reply in my head like a floating cloud. I think it too austere and emotionless. Come on, aren't we friends?
I think of two people connected by a thin piece of copper wire: the Internet. I pray my computer doesn't crash. I press 'backspace' till the textbox blanks. He tells me I have to keep trying. ‘Don’t give up, Remember what you said about Cambridge?’ Pep talk. I did say something about Cambridge University, how I wished so badly I would study there under the prestigious namesake: all for wearing a varsity sweater. I told him that only because he told me he lived in England before he came here. So, yes, I still remember that. I tell him instead of the books I've read, come across on the shelves of Borders, and any title that pops into my head as I go along. I've never read half of them.
Through the mirror says:
Want a list?
Him: Hell yeah. Spill it.
So I do. Death of A Writer, Poppy Shakespeare, The Chemistry of Death...the list goes on. I consult the library receipts clipped on the calendar for titles. I want this conversation to go on. He doesn't comment on how many of them concern the escalating process that extinguishes life. That's exactly what I like about this conversation: nothing that has been said has ever been said again. I think back; I remember telling him how normal this obsession of mine is. As normal as yours. He's treating it like an ordinary hobby, or so I think.
He asks what Death of a Writer is about. Sounds just the thing for a Saturday morning coffee accompaniment, he says. I don't know if he's making a joke, or being serious. I can't see if he's smiling or otherwise. My mind has started to churn because at this moment I figure: oh crap, I haven't read it yet. On the contrary, I still yearn to say something about it. It has become a habit so hard to shake off: gushing about books, films, and music, and the revoked memories of late-night SMS-critiques just spill out of the jar.
Through the mirror says:
I'm not sure yet. Haven't read it through. You interested?
Him: Might be. Depends on you. (I'm reading that he's saying if I like it, he might, too.)
Him: Anyway, how are you?
I pause my fingers on the keys. I look up at the ceiling: it's still the same peeling, green paint that hasn't been painted over for years. Keeping the memories has never been so crazy. Early Sunsets Over Monroeville is playing again and I turn up the volume until the point where I get comfortable with the music and the neighbours don't hear enough to complain. Heck, they aren't even home.
I think I could be fine. Looking around , I decide that my normal society standards, I actually possess a relatively blessed life. My room doesn't flood every monsoon. That's fortunate. I know we both expect something more than 'fine'. Instead I tell him I'm a contented nonentity. It is a while later that he replies. I want to ask him something about himself, to take the camera away from me so I don't seem to awkward in this chair, my brain running a million miles and calculating the odds of this conversation being the most boring since three weeks ago. (I haven't even had the time to wave goodbye at the airport.) Something about being a flavorless friend hits me hard. I’d rather not think about it. I reply fast and steer us both away.
Through the mirror says:
Well let's just say I've been as usual, library fan.
Enough about me. How's your life.
I forget the question mark.
He has spindly fingers, like mine. But I told him that already, so it wouldn’t be true if I had repeated myself. Still, that’s where the resemblance ends. His were made to fold paper cranes (creaseless), insert a thread into the eye of a needle, and cradle a book such that it was an art of concentration and liberation in a carefree pose of the educated. Mine were meant for dropping things. Well I wouldn’t see them today.
Mindless Self Indulgence’s Molly is playing. He says he is settling in just fine. A little culture shock, after being away for two years, but it’s coming along all right.
‘She was a good girl and it felt great to be a liar.’
Through the mirror says:
Culture shock? You? Yeah, right
You even know what the indigenous people of the Amazon eat.
Him: Strange stuff, huh? Never expected it from myself. Things just are different, sometimes. Guess life made us that way.
It is strange, how everyone changes bit by bit. Like paint flaking off my ceiling surface. If this happens, everyone would be unrecognizable.
Through the mirror says:
Me neither. Crap, you’ve morphed into someone I don’t recognize. Where’s that exuding confidence??
Him: Haha. Will be back, eventually. My books have been shipped back here. The room’s cramped and a mess.
Through the mirror says:
You’ll be used to it in no time. It’s been three weeks and you haven’t unpacked?
Now we end up about his room. He complains slightly about the lack of leg-room at the desk, how he’s putting off all the cleaning till ‘tomorrow’. I ask if he kept the posters. Obviously he has but I have nothing else that would come out of me. We’re like two strangers who’ve just met, and probably had talked on the bus for a few hours, before we get off at the station. Distance is making this friendship wonky, or maybe it’s just me with the technical errors. I’m guessing it’s the latter. I announce rather proudly I’ve kept mine too.
We both have. Like the band t-shirt phenomenon we had caught on. The walls are plastered with different posters and printed photographs from various gigs, most of which I never had the chance to attend. It sounds silly, but I’ve learnt they tend to forgive you when you’re not yet twenty.
Through the mirror says:
Band shirt?
Him: Iron Maiden. Yours?
I wonder if he still does drums. Really, it wouldn’t be strange to ask, but at this moment there are things people fail to explain: how people curse train schedules yet the timetables have a pious following, jostling for space at the platform; how horrid I find being in bed nude with your other half (the next morning it’s the same person who embraces you from behind and you have to ask him if he wants honey on the waffles). They shouldn’t go together. It’s something everyone knows yet they don’t speak it. Like Voldemort, to draw an example.
Through the mirror says:
It’s more fun when you guess.
Him: A Rite of Passage is running through my head. Lemme think.
Him: Good Lord, this band can really play. Hmm, BFMV?
Through the mirror says:
Heck, tell me about it. And no, try again.
I want to ask him if he still does drums. Even better, I would blurt out to him that finally I’ve taken his advice to learn how to play an electric guitar properly. I stand up and head for the kitchen for a glass of water to clear my thoughts, still thinking. It’s puzzling how it’s difficult conversing with someone so close. I wish we stood side by side once more. Funnily enough that didn’t seem so hard. When his words didn’t make my world spin and the bottom of it fall out.
I wonder if he were to appear at my doorstep, would I still greet him with the same off-handed geniality. Or would I be the tongue-tied one he never had a glimpse of? The awkward girl: who never said anything she meant but wished she had meant everything she said.
Chick-lit is silly, I murmur to myself, underlining my conviction. I miss the cup and spill water. I curse under my breath. It isn’t as if anyone will hear me. I curse aloud.
I settle back in my seat.
Him: Damn, I have to go. TTYL. 5pm?
Through the mirror says:
Sure. Might still be on.
Him: Ciao.
I stare hard at the ‘Offline’ notice, running a hand through my sweat-soaked hair.
Ciao, and I love you, I think.Labels: * prose, prose:fics, writings
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To Talk, To Speak, To Type
Written on: Friday, January 8, 2010
Time: 8:32 PM
His name comes up on MSN, and we talk. It has been a long time.
He's a thousand miles away from the boiling furnace I'm in, and probably further away than I think. He says hi, and 'how are you doing?' and 'sorry I couldn't get to ya earlier: my laptop crashed'. I tell him it's okay, and it's nice to hear from him again.
Through the mirror says:
Hello. How's the weather?
He types that too and it appears onscreen. We both send 'fine' simultaneously. I laugh softly. There isn’t anything remotely funny in coincidence, but if I giggle in my room no one hears me. I think I can see him grinning. In my mind he hasn't done that for three weeks now. I tell him about exams. I type slowly, one delicate word after another, an amateur ballerina showing off to her instructor, excited but nervous.
Through the mirror says:
The exams are here again. But thank goodness it's nearly over. You?
My hands are watchful of the Enter key: press it once and I could be getting it wrong. I see the reply in my head like a floating cloud. I think it too austere and emotionless. Come on, aren't we friends?
I think of two people connected by a thin piece of copper wire: the Internet. I pray my computer doesn't crash. I press 'backspace' till the textbox blanks. He tells me I have to keep trying. ‘Don’t give up, Remember what you said about Cambridge?’ Pep talk. I did say something about Cambridge University, how I wished so badly I would study there under the prestigious namesake: all for wearing a varsity sweater. I told him that only because he told me he lived in England before he came here. So, yes, I still remember that. I tell him instead of the books I've read, come across on the shelves of Borders, and any title that pops into my head as I go along. I've never read half of them.
Through the mirror says:
Want a list?
Him: Hell yeah. Spill it.
So I do. Death of A Writer, Poppy Shakespeare, The Chemistry of Death...the list goes on. I consult the library receipts clipped on the calendar for titles. I want this conversation to go on. He doesn't comment on how many of them concern the escalating process that extinguishes life. That's exactly what I like about this conversation: nothing that has been said has ever been said again. I think back; I remember telling him how normal this obsession of mine is. As normal as yours. He's treating it like an ordinary hobby, or so I think.
He asks what Death of a Writer is about. Sounds just the thing for a Saturday morning coffee accompaniment, he says. I don't know if he's making a joke, or being serious. I can't see if he's smiling or otherwise. My mind has started to churn because at this moment I figure: oh crap, I haven't read it yet. On the contrary, I still yearn to say something about it. It has become a habit so hard to shake off: gushing about books, films, and music, and the revoked memories of late-night SMS-critiques just spill out of the jar.
Through the mirror says:
I'm not sure yet. Haven't read it through. You interested?
Him: Might be. Depends on you. (I'm reading that he's saying if I like it, he might, too.)
Him: Anyway, how are you?
I pause my fingers on the keys. I look up at the ceiling: it's still the same peeling, green paint that hasn't been painted over for years. Keeping the memories has never been so crazy. Early Sunsets Over Monroeville is playing again and I turn up the volume until the point where I get comfortable with the music and the neighbours don't hear enough to complain. Heck, they aren't even home.
I think I could be fine. Looking around , I decide that my normal society standards, I actually possess a relatively blessed life. My room doesn't flood every monsoon. That's fortunate. I know we both expect something more than 'fine'. Instead I tell him I'm a contented nonentity. It is a while later that he replies. I want to ask him something about himself, to take the camera away from me so I don't seem to awkward in this chair, my brain running a million miles and calculating the odds of this conversation being the most boring since three weeks ago. (I haven't even had the time to wave goodbye at the airport.) Something about being a flavorless friend hits me hard. I’d rather not think about it. I reply fast and steer us both away.
Through the mirror says:
Well let's just say I've been as usual, library fan.
Enough about me. How's your life.
I forget the question mark.
He has spindly fingers, like mine. But I told him that already, so it wouldn’t be true if I had repeated myself. Still, that’s where the resemblance ends. His were made to fold paper cranes (creaseless), insert a thread into the eye of a needle, and cradle a book such that it was an art of concentration and liberation in a carefree pose of the educated. Mine were meant for dropping things. Well I wouldn’t see them today.
Mindless Self Indulgence’s Molly is playing. He says he is settling in just fine. A little culture shock, after being away for two years, but it’s coming along all right.
‘She was a good girl and it felt great to be a liar.’
Through the mirror says:
Culture shock? You? Yeah, right
You even know what the indigenous people of the Amazon eat.
Him: Strange stuff, huh? Never expected it from myself. Things just are different, sometimes. Guess life made us that way.
It is strange, how everyone changes bit by bit. Like paint flaking off my ceiling surface. If this happens, everyone would be unrecognizable.
Through the mirror says:
Me neither. Crap, you’ve morphed into someone I don’t recognize. Where’s that exuding confidence??
Him: Haha. Will be back, eventually. My books have been shipped back here. The room’s cramped and a mess.
Through the mirror says:
You’ll be used to it in no time. It’s been three weeks and you haven’t unpacked?
Now we end up about his room. He complains slightly about the lack of leg-room at the desk, how he’s putting off all the cleaning till ‘tomorrow’. I ask if he kept the posters. Obviously he has but I have nothing else that would come out of me. We’re like two strangers who’ve just met, and probably had talked on the bus for a few hours, before we get off at the station. Distance is making this friendship wonky, or maybe it’s just me with the technical errors. I’m guessing it’s the latter. I announce rather proudly I’ve kept mine too.
We both have. Like the band t-shirt phenomenon we had caught on. The walls are plastered with different posters and printed photographs from various gigs, most of which I never had the chance to attend. It sounds silly, but I’ve learnt they tend to forgive you when you’re not yet twenty.
Through the mirror says:
Band shirt?
Him: Iron Maiden. Yours?
I wonder if he still does drums. Really, it wouldn’t be strange to ask, but at this moment there are things people fail to explain: how people curse train schedules yet the timetables have a pious following, jostling for space at the platform; how horrid I find being in bed nude with your other half (the next morning it’s the same person who embraces you from behind and you have to ask him if he wants honey on the waffles). They shouldn’t go together. It’s something everyone knows yet they don’t speak it. Like Voldemort, to draw an example.
Through the mirror says:
It’s more fun when you guess.
Him: A Rite of Passage is running through my head. Lemme think.
Him: Good Lord, this band can really play. Hmm, BFMV?
Through the mirror says:
Heck, tell me about it. And no, try again.
I want to ask him if he still does drums. Even better, I would blurt out to him that finally I’ve taken his advice to learn how to play an electric guitar properly. I stand up and head for the kitchen for a glass of water to clear my thoughts, still thinking. It’s puzzling how it’s difficult conversing with someone so close. I wish we stood side by side once more. Funnily enough that didn’t seem so hard. When his words didn’t make my world spin and the bottom of it fall out.
I wonder if he were to appear at my doorstep, would I still greet him with the same off-handed geniality. Or would I be the tongue-tied one he never had a glimpse of? The awkward girl: who never said anything she meant but wished she had meant everything she said.
Chick-lit is silly, I murmur to myself, underlining my conviction. I miss the cup and spill water. I curse under my breath. It isn’t as if anyone will hear me. I curse aloud.
I settle back in my seat.
Him: Damn, I have to go. TTYL. 5pm?
Through the mirror says:
Sure. Might still be on.
Him: Ciao.
I stare hard at the ‘Offline’ notice, running a hand through my sweat-soaked hair.
Ciao, and I love you, I think.Labels: * prose, prose:fics, writings
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ABOUT ME
Charmaine/Emmy: FCPS, RSS, ___. Satire buff. Anglophile, pedagogue, nefarious grammarian-in-training and hedonistic pedant. Dreams of a pathologist office smelling of soap, disinfectant and disease. (Who forgets autopsies?) I'm a student and satisfied with it, and I'm not eligible to be a writer. Writers are sensitive, creative and they think out of the box but I'm more of a structured person. Then again everyone writes so writers are an exclusive category for published geniuses that do not include me. I like the glories of academia, medicine, reading books, dreaming and writing. I'm that sort of person who would rather party than study, whom one would make happier giving a medical journal/national geographic mag issue than, say, a fashion magazine. (I do read fashion mags when they come to me, but they aren't a necessity.) I'm boring/intriguing like that.
I am a step to University at the moment and I'm treading carefully in case I slip. I'm uncertain if I'll ever find a husband but that doesn't bother me much. This blog collects all my satisfactory writings.
Notes on writings
I don't usually curse, if at all, but at times for a piece of writing to be plausible certain undesirable elements have to be inserted to add reality to it. We all have seen our share of crude characters and for this, it would just be me writing about one. It's a little like writing about lust; written about, divulged, but never encouraged. To put this plainly: if it carries to reality, it is wrong. But since it isn't
technically reality, in my perspective it isn't.
I support pairings and I understand the norm do not. However I see no necessity to apologise for my head.
'You can't cut my heart into sections'
More books, more shelves.
Christianity, which in my perspective hinges less on modern-day hocus-pocus than the immutable truth.
My Chemical Romance.
Pathology.
German tank models.
Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson.
Vienna Teng.
Heath Ledger.
The Third Reich.
Bubble Tea.
Wishlist:
National/Victoria JC
Cambridge University
MCR album (2010)
A spiral-bound, shorthand notebook
Grimm's Last Fairytale (Haydn Middleton)
The Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls (Emilie Autumn)
Young Adolf (Beryl Bainbridge)
Suspended Animation: Six Essays on the Preservation of Bodily Parts (F. Gonzalez-Crussi)
A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years As A Medical Student (Perri Klass)
Fry and Laurie 4 (Stephen Fry)
Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler)
Emilie Autumn's The Opheliac Companion CD
Hannah Fury's The Thing That Feels CD
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NETWORK
I'm not too fond of alphebetical ordering.
Watson's Woes
Huddy Daily
SCHOOL:
Pearly
Ming Xuan
Cherie
RS choir
Marilyn
Mdm Haslinda
Keen Hoe
Arini
Sherilyn
Peishwen
Jasmine
Cheryl
Si Ying
Wei Loke
Liting
Sarah
Shi Mei
Michelle
Rui Xian
sadlydotcom
Derrick
Joey
Cynthia
June
James
Wendy
Vinus
Shi Yun
Yi Hui
COMRADES:
Jacy
JCOC:
Victoria
Canida
Sean
Medalene
Kareen
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ARCHIVE
January 2010
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