I read this in Literature class today; this is part of "The Necessary Enemy" by Katherine Anne Porter. It disturbed me rather, but I like the writing, and also the fact that it disurbed me. I took out another book to read during class because I did not want to hear the discussion... still, I couldn't help drifting back to it, again and again.

"She is dismayed, horrified, full of guilt and forebodings because she is finding out little by little that she is capable of hating her husband, whom she loves faithfully. She can hate him at times as fiercely and mysteriously, indeed in terribly much the same way, as often she hated her parents, her brothers and sisters, whom she loves, when she was a child. Even then it had seemed to her a kind of black treacherousness in her, her private wickedness that, just the same, gave her her only private life. That was one thing her parents never knew about her, never seemed to suspect. For it was never given a name.
…
None of this really frightened her: the real fright came when she discovered that at times her father and mother hated each other; this was like standing on the doorsill of a familiar room and seeing in a lightning flash that the floor was gone, you were on the edge of a bottomless pit. … She thought she had outgrown all this, but here it was again, an element in her own nature she could not control, or feared she could not. She would have to hide from her husband, if she could, the same spot in her feelings she had hidden from her parents, and for the same no doubt disreputable, selfish reason: she wants to keep his love.
…
Love. We are early taught to say it. I love you. We are trained to the thought of it as if there were nothing else, or nothing else worth having without it, or nothing worth having which it could not bring with it. Love is taught, always by precept, sometimes by example. Then hate, which no one meant to teach us, comes of itself. It is true that if we say I love you, it may be received with doubt, for there are times when it is hard to believe. Say I hate you, and the one spoken to believes it instantly, once for all.
…
The refusal to acknowledge the evils in ourselves which therefore are implicit in any human situation is as extreme and unworkable a proposition as the doctrine of total depravity; but somewhere between them, or maybe beyond them, there does exist a possibility for reconciliation between our desires for impossible satisfactions and the simple unalterable fact that we also desire to be unhappy and that we create our own sufferings; and out of these sufferings we salvage our fragments of happiness."

All right. I am either this:


You represent... naivete.
So innocent and trusting... you can be very shy at times, but it's only because you're not sure how to act. You give off that "I need to be protected vibe." Remember that not all people are good. Being too trusting will get you easily hurt.

What feeling do you represent?
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Or this:


You represent... apathy.
You don't really show any emotion. You can be considered cruel and cold, but you just don't really care about anything. This is just the way you are... you're quite a challenge to get close to, and others may perceive you as boring.

What feeling do you represent?
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I don't quite agree with "Apathy" though.

Today's Miaka's birthday ^_______^. Say hi to Mia *waves*

I'm sitting at my computer right now, typing. Evening is arriving; I can feel it come without having to look at it. I have a CD on in the hi-fi behind me, and Miaka is sleeping on a rug at my feet, so that all what I see when I look down is a warm ginger-brown circle of cat. He seems to know intuitively when I most want company.

There's no good way for me persuade people I know out of suicide because I've been there myself, and I came back still looking for the answers. Been there, done that, wore the T-shirt, bought the CD, and sadly came back none the wiser. If only there was a solution - if only there was a magic formula - something I could say to touch people and make them feel better. If only I could stop the abrupt sense of disconnection that likes to spring on me, or on anyone else, just as I'm least expecting it. But there isn't.

Life has dealt with me fairly; I do admit that. No one can do anything to me that I cannot recover from - I know that too. I firmly believe that life is a series of lessons and we are here to learn; deal with it, or it comes back! All these I know, and all of you know, but we know on an intellectual level and that is the problem. None of these count when emotions are concerned. None of these count even when we know that there are people who care for us, people who would be hurt by us, let's just be selfish for a while and get out. Now.

...I don't know what the answer is.

I've been reading blogs. Lots and lots and lots of blogs. It's like we're all paying tribute to her memory in our own special way. There are so many people out there mourning her... so many memories of her, regardless of whether they'd known her personally or, like me, had only seen her once or twice. Its sounds stupid to post an observation here that people are all so very interlinked, but it's only now that I've felt this truth on such a large scale. There are ripples... spreading out everywhere.

Word of the Day for Friday July 25, 2003
surcease \SUR-sees; sur-SEES\, noun:
Cessation; stop; end.

A girl committed suicide the day before... I got to know about it yesterday. She wasn't anyone close to me but she was a friend's friend. I'd seen her in corridors, I'd waved to her before. The newspapers aren't reporting it just like they're covering up the suicide of another VJC girl who died just recently... but students have ways of knowing these things. I know we've talked about suicide a lot. Some of us have seriously contemplated it. But knowing someone who actually went ahead and did it...

I never spoke to her for more than ten minutes in my life but still. She was one of the cheerfullest-looking people I'd ever seen.

I hope she's happy where she is, but that is an awfully lame conclusion.

Death isn't any form of conclusion in itself.

Water Goddess. You like peace and serenity and are
usually content with life.


What element would you rein over? (For Girls)
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I've revamped my blog! *cheers* All thanks Blogskins.com. What I love is the dominantly white background, quiet and pristine, and the little coloured stars with swirls in them. It's cheery enough without getting in your face, which thus runs a lower risk of aggravating me when I'm in a especially foul mood. Honestly, it's hard to think of anything angsty or depressing to say with such a happy-looking blog staring back at you.

Of course, if this skin had been especially gaudy looking and determined to please, it would just have rubbed me entirely the wrong way. I would even have blogged more frequently with some sort of angry vengeance to contrast what I say with what it looks like. Appearance vs. Reality? I've been getting that a lot recently, and not just as a recurring Literature theme. But this background makes me feel good. It really suits me right now--I feel happy again for no reason at all, with lots of energy inside me (swirling stars! ^^) but at the same time I am equally determined to keep away from people. (White: the quiet side.) I can't quite explain why. I just know that leaving this white solitude would ruin everything.

I wish you could be happy too.

Symptom Recital
by Dorothy Parker

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the simplest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondom dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirits sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men...
I'm due to fall in love again.


Everything except the last bit. I do not know what any of this has got to do with men.

I found this on Facade.com; quite interesting, I think. The character Charis in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride did this very frequently. My reading was pretty accurate (the first passage, at least... I couldn't make sense of the rest) but you guys know better than to take online readings too seriously.

One of these days, I swear, I'm going to rip the telephone out of the wall and hurl the entire contraption out of the window.

I tend to get particularly irritated with the world and myself around 2 o'clock every Saturday afternoon. Maybe I should dig a cellar one of these days that I can lock myself in until the weekend is over. Not that weekends are especially upsetting or weekdays are particularly happy, but well, I don't really know what I'm griping about.

I was thinking about names yesterday while going home.

I have a name when I write and draw; a name when I'm at school (Ling); maybe I should get a name that suits my face, since quite a lot of people say I sure don't behave the way I look. So I thought I might as well get a name that corresponds to the times when I turn into a sweet, docile, inert-looking vegetable. It was then that I thought of the name Elizabeth. I like it sufficiently; it sounds sweet enough without going overboard; it doesn't sound too bad together with my surname; and it sure doesn't feel like me. Since my face doesn't either, I might as well be Elizabeth.

Weird huh.

I've been turning into Elizabeth more and more frequently, but only around certain individuals. I know they've noticed it. It takes too much effort, sometimes, to be Ling... I feel like I'm being an imitation of something I don't even know what it is. I don't want to think of funny things to say, or try hard to sound witty, or make fun of teachers or moan about lessons, which is pretty much of a routine that I find myself doing. I want to lie at the bottom like a limp seashell and let everything wash over me.

Frankly, I think I hate that name already.

Minying sent me some very amusing links today, one of which is called Tomato Nation. Check this out:

"I have also seen data to suggest that many office supplies suffer from depression. My Cross pen sets, for example. The average Cross pen set has dangerously low self-esteem, because it knows that it is kind of a lame gift and that it is the rare recent graduate indeed who will actually find use for a mechanical pencil. It is shiny and comes with a leather case, and yet it languishes unused, hating itself, and when its big moment finally arrives -- when I decide that, as a grown woman, the time has come to wean myself from pens with heads on them -- it won't write at all. Its ink has dried up. It has lost the ability to love.

Other pens deal with their depression via passive-aggressive behavior. The fountain pen is a perfect example. It pretends that the cartridges I bought will fit, and then they don't. I exchange the cartridges for the correct size, and then the fountain pen refuses to let me unscrew it. Then the cartridge breaks and stains my shirt, I get upset, the fountain pen starts crying…it's just not a constructive way to deal with problems, and yet I try to work it out with the fountain pen periodically, because I bought the damn thing, and I bought the cartridges (…twice), and I bought the clever little chamois blotting rag, and dammit, a fountain pen is sophisticated, right? Well, sophisticated, yes. Mature? In touch with its anger in a positive way? No."

Heh.

Perfect Day

from the "Legally Blonde" soundtrack

Perfect day,
Nothing's standing in my way

On this perfect day,
Nothing can go wrong

It's the perfect day,
Tomorrow's gonna come too soon
I could stay, forever as I am
On this perfect day

I was in the shower this morning when an idea popped into my head. To be precise, it was something my aunt had said with regards to BGR, something which made me think of guys as a "market" where you can pick 'em and choose 'em for yourself. This was reinforced by something my sec. sch Principal had said that had amused me terribly at the time: that when we get to University, there will be a larger "catchment area" for us. Suddenly the idea of guys took on the form of not just vegetables but fish.

So I thought, if guys were to be considered as a market, what kind of market structure would that be? (I'm sorry, I've been taking Econs tution classes, and that's what we discussed recently) I turned it around in my head before finally deciding on Monopolistic Competition. The guys are differentiated products, that's what we're going after; there's definitely non-price competition; there are many players in the market; and in the long run we make normal profit, which are the gains necessary to keep us from turning to our next best alternative.

I know this sounds a little... ... but it amuses me very much anyway. ^_^ I know, blame it all on the common tests.

In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betray'd by what is false within.

~George Meredith, "Love's Grave"

I got that off a Margaret Atwood interview where she quoted it herself, in relation to her latest book "Oryx and Crake" I believe. That quote in relation to "Othello" (which is what it reminds me of) would make for rather interesting discussion, I think.

"If you love something, set it free. If it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it."
~Something Tabby read in a book, "Kissing Frogs"

Am working hard now on my Margaret Atwood presentation even though I have no idea what it's supposed be like - a bad way to start - but I'm thankful that whatever I have to do, this is at least the subject I know best and love best, so Zettai Daijoubu Daiyo, as Sakura likes to say. Everything will be all right. I like her themes - they always start out with the protagonist, most frequently a woman, losing control of her life and identity and unaware of it, then going through a period of growth and discovery... emerging at the end as someone much wiser and independent, though not necessarily happier. The journey to self-discovery, you might say.

There's lots of gender relationships stuff in there too. It makes me seriously frightened of marriage. It's a bit like a trap you fall into without knowing it, being subjected to becoming a package. Something neat, and tidy, for someone else to handle... like in The Edible Woman. An "us" instead of "I"; the process of being assimilated, like food. And I don't even want to think about having children. They'll hate me, and I expect it, and I expect to be afraid of them too.

I used to find it perfectly natural that I'd just grow up, get married and have some kids - happiness not being an issue here - but now with Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood, I'm reconsidering. The function of women, I think. What is our function now, please? Things were a lot more clear-cut before women's lib. and stuff, though it doesn't make sense to talk of people as having functions as though they were biological machines. (The function of men: Creating more women. That was an idea in The Handmaid's Tale that I read with considerable glee.)

Of course, I know I still will probably get married and (although I think, "Heaven forbid") have children. I know I will do these things, an attempt at normality, with a sort of detached scientific interest coolly observing everything from the back of my head. And whatever goes wrong, I'll be giving "that invisible nod, like something [I've] always suspected has come true after all" (Cat's Eye).

I wonder what I will do when things go wrong. It must feel like being caught up in a whirlwind.

I wonder what the rage will feel like; what I will do to him with it.

I'm looking through my poetry book right now and feeling pretty amused. I must've been in a really morbid mood, as I recall.

I wrote this one as a sort of prediction of something that was happening. While I was writing I thought it childish; until I got to the last three lines, which scared me. Well, more the feeling than the words, that is.


Steel Strings

The young Queen
Sits in a darkened room and weaves,
Steel strings that bind, steel strings of mine.
She knows what she can and will achieve,
Steel strings that wind, steel strings that fly.
As they shoot through the air to capture Her prey,
Steel strings that twine, steel strings that find
And the bloods go so well with her red-and-black mind,
Steel strings of mine, steel strings that bind.

Steel strings that fly, steel strings that wind
Steel strings that find steel strings that twine

And the Strings turn upon their queen and strike from behind
Steel strings that lie, steel strings that blind
And they close around her head like so many vines
Steel strings that know no sense of time
And the Strings have triumphed, they are not to be kind
(The queen that quivers and the queen that cries)
As they stab through her heart and tangle up
Making a blood-soaked cocoon, dripping, dripping
Make a black blood-soaked cocoon so strong and fine.

(c) Ling 2002 (at the time)

Just finished downloading Gackt's "Illness Illusion" and am playing it on repeat mode. Boy, Tabby was so /not/ kidding when she said it might sound awful first time. But I have to admit, it grows on you... it's Gothic, or so she said. This is the fourth Gackt song she's recommended me, and I was all on with "Vanilla" and blasting it away until she told me "Go check out the translation" and like a fool I did...

Let's just say "Vanilla" is a pretty descriptive song.

And it's about sex.

"Daijoubu" (by Maeda Aki) from the "Boys Be" soundtrack is great too... they were playing it on TV mobile in the morning, so I kinda got hooked. Right now I'm also checking out artwork by Keibun Ota. I liked him since I was a kid, when I saw his pictures on bookmarks, all looking ever-so-sweet and a little watery. He uses colour pencil and watercolour, I think.

Just finished my bout of common tests. *Grin* Bought myself chocolate chip cookies to celebrate. And then I'll head off to Prelims-mugging.

^_^'

This song is from the Card Captor Sakura soundtrack... one of my favourite songs. It pulled me through a rough time in the past (not that there were many), I used to sing it to myself and it would give me strength. It's a Japanese song, actually, but I checked up the translation back then so that I knew what I was singing.

Now I'd like to share this with you.


Tooi Kono Machi de
(In This Distant Town)
Naomi Kaiya

I loved that song, on this old tape
small scratches and a faded title.
Dawn comes and the day begins, bringing the summer breeze with it.
I can’t get used to this sudden loneliness I feel in my usual life.
Even wherever I go on my bike,
I never forget how fast the wind goes by.

La la la la - Let’s look up to the sky and sing
La la la la - It’s my life I’ll keep walking it
With my own strength, I make my way in this endless town.

Even though I always get lost at countless intersections
I’m living in the present, but the moving crowd gets ahead of me sometimes.
Things that I bump into, things that I recognize,
I never forget them even when I’ve become an adult.

La la la la - Let’s look up to the sky and sing
La la la la - It’s my life I’ll keep walking it
Because it belongs to me alone, I should be confident.

I’ve had this dream in my hometown
I think of it when I’m discouraged.
Just like what the song told me, what I can do now
is to take just a small step forward.

La la la la - Let’s look up to the sky and sing!
La la la la - It’s my life I’ll keep walking it
La la la la - Let’s look up to the sky and sing!
La la la la - It’s my life I’ll keep walking it

With my own strength...
I make my way in this endless town.