Yung & Easily Freudened

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

And thus I present a photoessay of my loco un poco brother, Avinash:

all the things you do, the person you’ll become. love you la minimat.

When defying your body clock and generally screwing up your sleep cycles, it is important to note that YOU WILL BE ALONE IN THIS. Besides having the occasional cockroach for company, of course. It’s weird how now they give me the shivers and incite great rage that involves STOMPING, WINCING, and my brother’s RUBBER SLIPPERS, but things were way different when I was 11 and had talked myself out of being scared of them almost completely. I used to let them run over my arms and legs when they came running out after the rain at recess, and when the bell rang I’d nestle them in my palm as we lined up for prayers. Hail Mary, –tickle tickle- Mother of God, –tickle tickle-… Time makes strangers of old friends.

I’ve changed, but it’s weird to try and quantify how. Am I less defined by SA? Less fired by rigour and rhetoric? Losing the little injustices I used to fight for, the mindless work, milling constant friends, my weekly battles against the overlords who shall not be named? And one and a half years on, we are weary and impatient, tired and unfulfilled, waiting until we can sit somewhere and rest safely. Kafka y la cuccaracha.

I am a sick man. I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.

-Dostoyevsky’s Notes From The Underground, tellin’ a hangover like it is.

Am happy! I get to go back to the NUS library with its quaint charm and smell of peat, its grilled sandwich machines and yawning aisles of PROPER books! I will sneak around and test out my old slr and curl up on long bus rides :D Who wants to come?

Am SUCH a youtube junkie! Sorry la. I need to learn how to torrent.

Btw, it finally rained today, and it looked like this:

being indian

looking through others’ eyes of wonderment

and sorting through my own ignorance

that claws slowly at the same places

these stories half-translated, this superstition unexplained,

those rice patterns maligned like bad fate babies;

my lack of culture is like a cyst,

itching on my back, down, to the right, oh,

that I cannot reach.

I have plans. And people. Lately I have become more inept at expressing how I feel. Maybe because I’m out of practice. Or perhaps in order to distance yourself from something you have to describe it. Or is it the other way around? Oh Atwood.

Lil incident in psych class the other day:

Chaplain the Psych Lecturer: (just to be controversial) So we all know women are very emotional, bon, alors–

Breda: NO! How can you say that?! Women are like, SO not emotional okay, it’s just wrong for you to- to- say anything like that..

Classmate 1: Breda, calm down…

…Way to fight for the cause, lady.

Scooter, snorkel, bargain, roam, swim, photograph, pray, meet, go wild, cook, love, watch, dance, fight, chill.

Brill. And for those of you with available technology:

Woo-HOOO!

wingless angelas hanging, sore in their throats

singing since prawns at dawn yawned and said bite me;

morning is the light behind their freed minds and feet

turning south, southwest, west, southwest.

I lie in bed and feel like the word shatter.

Yeah, well, Labour Day weeekend has been celebrated with some pomp and fanfare. I’m annoyed with how much I drink (there have been some choice comments from people close to me, or birds that suddenly appear everytime I am near).

“I’m not drunk, I’m just conducting social experiments with alcohol!” Ugh, le stupide stupide stupide. I hate the look people give you once they realise they’re talking to you when you’ve had a little too much. And the lethargy for days after. Fight the lethargy, says Metric, so I’ll try!

Since the majority of me| Philip Larkin

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days
For our majorities to rent
With unshared friends and unwalked ways,
But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities
That, unopposed at last, return
Each night with cancelled promises
They want renewed. They never learn.

Is a brill place for french makan. GO THERE. End of story. Reminiscent of Creperie Armen! (Oh, Frannie, your service. And the salmon pate + praline that I get nowhere else.)

but you are, my love, the astronaut
flying in the face of science
i will gladly stay an afterthought
just bring back some nice reminders

Oh hell. Cosy weekends & indulgences! (dear martin luther, these i will gladly peddle on the streets of vienna, keep your thesis in your pants, kthx)

pour toi, daa. dont you just love his jizz face.

All I can think about now is french, oh pretentious french. I hope the performance shines. Pig squeals, kev 8D ange and i were talking about accents earlier.  L can be a complete ASS about my french accent—sez it’s fake to the point where the criticism debilitated me and I could barely read when asked to in class. Ugh. You cannot deny that there is a standard way of pronouncing the words, particular probably to the teacher’s accent and the region she’s from. Of course it’s going to be fake! It’s affected, it’s trained. I listen to the way our teacher speaks english, and even that is disciplined. You’ve got your rounded vowels, your trained intonation, how much more put-on can you get?

Toast of the week after an extended weekend of drinks:

BOOYAKASHAAAA. Hear me now, bo, selecta, swallow back, holler, big up ya self, everything that I in, coming at ya like Cleopatra, come in a couple of bars, recognize, represent, keep it real, you gotta check ya self before ya wreck ya self, swallow back…oh yeah, and hello.

O YA. I forgot you exist. Life sucks you up and bruises, so sometimes you barely have time for your day planner, let alone journal or blog. First, some atmosphere!

PAINTBALL: Goddayumn, one check on the list of things to do before I die. Holding a …not gun, but a marker, shooting the crap outta people, running a la headless chicken on the field, getting shot dowwwwn. ADRENALINE, plskthx. Plus hitting Boon in the ass. Hahahahah, revenge is an orange ball and a hickey the size of your palm.

FRIDAY NIGHTS: (with the balaclava yuppies) are always tinged with strangeness and manic laughter. Cheers to rediscovering people and epiphanies with an old best friend <3

MOTHER: Came and went, with Ribena jokes and frankness, with family politics rehashed and Zen moments, releasing issues and lovely clothes free of hangers and hang-ups.

BINARY GENDER ROLES: are a myth perpetuated by pop culture and violence, sez Andrea Dworkin. Continuous leapfrog power play is so absolutely unnecessary if women stopped wanting to be the “woman” in their relationships. STOP IT!!! I usually advocate diversity rather than homogeneity, but honest to god, I am so sick of the side-effects. Plus, on sex:

Dworkin argued that depictions of intercourse in mainstream art and culture consistently emphasized heterosexual intercourse as the only kind of "real" sex, portrayed intercourse in violent or invasive terms, portrayed the violence or invasiveness as central to its eroticism, and often united it with male contempt for, revulsion towards, or even murder of, the "carnal" woman.

…

Sex-positive feminist critics criticized her legal activism as censorious, and argued that her work on pornography and sexuality promoted an essentialist, conservative, or repressive view of sexuality, which they often characterized as "anti-sex" or "sex-negative." Her criticisms of common heterosexual sexual expression, pornography, prostitution, and sexual sadism were frequently claimed to disregard women’s own agency in sex or to deny women’s sexual choices. Dworkin countered that her critics often misrepresented her views, and that under the heading of "choice" and "sex-positivity" her feminist critics were failing to question the often violent political structures that confined women’s choices and shaped the meaning of sex acts. Feminist journalist and writer Cathy Young criticized what she called Dworkin’s "destructive legacy" and described Dworkin as a "sad ghost" that feminism needs to exorcise.”

This is eating me up. I’m going to fall asleep dreaming of Gilman and s&m, I swear. Feminism is NOT healthy.

Also, some of the brilliance of Ginsberg’s Howl:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- ery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull…”

Pictures up soon! <3.142

i ate civilization. it poisoned me; i was defiled. and then, i ate my own wickedness.

…wish me luck!