drained

I'm not sure why; maybe I did too much at the same time. Or maybe it's just a matter of too little sleep. I...really hope it is.

I feel hollow. I can't feel for my writing anymore. I can't feel happy, except superficially. I feel nothing for things that used to make me ecstatic, that made my heart race.

Maybe it's because I'm deliberately stopping myself from doing the one thing I feel like doing right now: writing Umbrella Story. Mainly because I need to dedicate that time to OTDOTS, because people are waiting for it, and I hate to keep them waiting, and I know this is my last chance to write before hell begins...

I just can't feel anything. I need to recharge somewhere. I'm totally wasting myself.

it's been a decade

And after ten years of living in this house upon Springwood Height, we're finally having dinner at Pasir Panjang Food Centre. And to think, the first time I visited it was just last week. For goodness' sake, it's been right across the road for the entire decade we were here!

I will enjoy this meal every much.

unbound

Last week, I came home via plane, alone, for the first time in my life.

Alone in that airport, walking through customs. Alone at the gate. Alone occupying myself for that hour on-flight. I was listening to a huge, rowdy family making a ruckus on the plane. That's how we look like to the rest, I can see now.

I came home to an empty house; no one but my grandmother was waiting for me. For five days I lived without any parental or sisterly interference.

I absolutely enjoyed it.

Being able to move about, set my budget, find my own food and distribute my time without anyone caging me in with rules and schedules felt amazing.

I'll probably enjoy life alone. Or life in the future. Only issue is, I hope I don't spend as much time watching anime as I did during the time they were gone.

among others

Sometimes we don't like to be in the company of talented people, because you feel like so much less in comparison. It devalues you, in a sense--who are you among them? You have nothing to show, nothing that could place you as equals with them. And they will be talking to each other about things you don't understand. The troubles of talent and fame.

Doesn't everyone hate the feeling of being left out in a conversation? They just go on and on, and you want to join, but you can't, because you have nothing to say; you have no opportunity to jump in. Their conversation bores you. And you don't want to interrupt because why should you tilt the conversation in your favour?

It only makes you feel worse for not having knowledge in the same area. You feel almost ostracised. It's literally ostracism, except that no one can tell they're making you feel alien--and bad for it.

I know how some people handle it. They interrupt. They turn the conversation to a topic that they know they hold the most expertise in. Annoying. Why not let the rest continue with natural conversation?

But it makes sense, doesn't it. It's the only solution in that situation. But ultimately you're just as left out as before.

highlights

5 cm/s

Nothing is more heart-wrenching, than the distance between two people who once loved each other, but will never see each other again.

Strange, how something so real can also be so tragic. Thousands of people will learn of this pain every month, every year. Maybe someday I'll be one of them.


5 Centimeters Per Second isn't a fantasy. It is a story of reality where fantasy still dares to exists, and struggles to survive.

To submit to reality is tragic, isn't it? Here we are in the fantastical years of adolescence, so fiery and ready to stand in the face of the world. Reality will not take us by force. We will fight, for our fight defines us. We are golden; while there is a way, while we are still young and crazy and our blood is still of fire, we will not be stopped. The world doesn't matter for the individual's sake. The individual is all. The world is about what we can make of it.

But there is a cold sad thing that we will perhaps come to know someday. Reality does not take us, does not wrench us away, kicking and screaming.

Reality creeps in, trickles like rain, drop by drop. We slowly let it take us--like death by the cold. We no longer fight, and we no longer hurt to know we will never have what we want. To lose the desire to hold on: that is tragedy.

The movie is about that slow movement into acceptance--that slow movement, away from all the possibilities, all that could be, in those early days, as they vanish one by one like candles by the wind--that slow movement into a steady path that will take us on only one way.

5 centimeters per second: that is the speed of the cherry blossoms as they fall to the ground. So we fall--fall in love, that distance we can only cross once. The cherry blossoms bloom early in spring when the snow isn't all gone; everyone comes to watch--in Japan, an entire celebration is dedicated to this yearly happening. When the petals fall, they turn the pavements and roads a shade of pink that speaks of innocence and fresh--brief--love. It's strangely glorious, for a single living species to incite such wonder.

The cherry blossoms die before the spring is over. They fade into the roads, as if they never existed, and leave them bare. So is love, when it does not actualise itself. Almost nothing eventually, only the bittersweet regret of happiness that was once in full bloom, and is now but a wasted shadow.

There is an irony in the way the story is presented. The backdrops, the scripting, the characters' dispositions--are so much like the way an idealist would tell it, with those fearless declarations, those bold pictures of sunlit roads and classrooms in summertime, the indulgent contrast of light and shadow and colour and emptiness--redder than red, bluer than blue. The way the main characters tell each other of their hopes and their fears, the way they voice out the truth of their fates apart, yet with all the unshattering faith in the world: it's plain heartbreaking.

As the story moves through its three episodes, it grows more and more vibrant, violent, in its telling. Cherry Blossom is gentle enough. The story of Takaki and Akari's childhood is told in a time when the two have already parted ways. As Akari speaks of the scenery in her new residence far away from him, the story of how they met, grew close and separated connects the images: the quote that forms the title of the movie, the friendship that blossomed, their quiet love through the years of their youth. But the viewers know it's inevitably going to end, the taste of imminence is strong.

The dream of watching the cherry blossoms fall together, for one last time, is like the sound of departure almost. This is where the distance is first painted for how unfathomable it really is: Takaki is about to fly to a different city, a place where he can never see Akari again, for good. And for her he weathers the greyness, the cold, of what we see now as the unrelenting hold of reality and future, that which does not want their love to be fulfilled. Reality.

And he wins this battle, but ultimately he cannot win the war. He finds her, deep in the night, their faith in each other strong enough to keep them waiting. In the warmth of a simple fire, they share a last night--and while it lasts, while they are there, it might as well be an eternity. We watch, knowing this is where it ends. We know, there is no possibility of happiness this way again. They know it too. But still it happens, and they smile as they live this night together--live for the moment, the future be what it may, in the whirling cold snows of the dark. (The cherry tree is bare, because of the snow. The spring didn't come in time. But they make do, make do--the snow is beautiful in its own way, and Akari whispers that the snowflakes are a little like petals. They share their last kiss there. And it is, heartwrenchingly, also their first.)

The trains moves out of the station. The morning is beautiful, the most beautiful one yet. The spring seems ready to arrive. But here in the station, this is their very last sight of each other, for the rest of time.

They never gave each other their letters, farewell letters that must have spoken worlds. All those thoughts, still waiting to be said--never said, must vanish now. For the rest of time.

Here comes the episode Cosmonaut. It has been a comparable while since--not long, not a short period either.

Because another lesson of life comes, and really only sets the scene for the last: Love is never reserved for one alone. Many will love one, but only one's love will ultimately be returned. Sometimes, you lose yourself, misplace your feelings--and suddenly you find yourself placing your heart in the hands of someone you never knew would never see you.

Kanae is the subject of this; she is the one who hopelessly falls for one who she can never amount to anything for. Another reality. She swore that on the day she learnt to ride the waves, she would confess. Because to learn to ride the waves was something she had never been able to do, for so many years--the insurmountable challenge of her life. She swore, if she defeated this inability, she could be anyone, do anything.

But sometimes, however passionately you feel, however you swear the happiness of these days is enough to grant you the right to that love, however certain this crazy emotion--akin to drunkenness--makes you feel, it is, in the end, mere delusion. Then you realise, you were always overlooked; Kanae, always like the sea, the blue sea, vast and wild and grand, so passionate and powerful and brilliant--she was nothing, really, beside the sky, and the cosmos beyond, towards which he was gazing, all the while.

Sometimes, you are looking so far that you fail to see the things that were so close by, things within your reach. You aim forward, into a distance that you're unsure you will ever reach--but endeavour nevertheless, because without hope and without that dash of recklessness, there is never the possibility. Takaki continues to dream of Akari; he is the spaceship whose destination is indeterminate. Somewhere out there, somewhere in that unreachable, impassible distance, lies a dream of a life he still believes he can live.

But in that belief there is crippling fear. He writes her messages on his phone--but never sends them. The unspoken words haunt him, and he continues to feel shadows of that desire, to tell her the things he never did.

Perhaps he is as much a victim of that passionate blindness as Kanae is; he believes and dreams, long and tireless--the money is spent, the work is done, the spaceship is launched into the darkness beyond the sky. From here on earth, we see only points of lights--distant stars, nearer planets, the moon and its brilliant face looming so close to us. Where is it headed? Somewhere amongst those beautiful lights lies its destination, a place that it might never reach, but travels towards nonetheless. Because no hope is worth living if the dreamer does not first endeavour--desperately, recklessly, hopelessly--for it.

Episode three, 5 Centimeters Per Second.

Often, you are told to let go and move on, because moving on is the only way you can survive thereafter. But sometimes, letting go is only impossible. Because someday, sometime, long ago, you left a piece of your heart behind, with someone--and she left a piece of her heart with you. And you will never meet again. Never lay eyes on each other again.

They come so tantalisingly close. Is it a dream--as the train passes, and erases that possibility, absolutely, from memory? He turns, but only in time to watch a train--that very thing that first took him away from her, those years ago, in the train station--eradicate that last chance.

The train, which means departure, goodbye, the windows flashing with the sun, taking its passengers to some far-off place. Just like the passengers as they travel away from the ones they love, his dream--everything he still carries as a burden from his past--is taken away, to an unreachable place.

Everyone knows the lesson. Things change. People change. Allegiances shift. Time moves on. Life must as well.

Takaki finds himself a job, the ultimate aim of his education as a child--the education that he had, with Akari, with Kanae, and on his own. He finds himself a girlfriend at the workplace, a marriage of convenience, and contents himself to believe that he has forgotten his past.

But it continues to return--sometimes, when he sees beyond the ceiling and remembers a desire he once had, an aching deep in him, that led him to ride halfway across the country. just to spend a night with a person he once, distantly, loved so.

That love, he realises then, is something absolutely irreplaceable, something--as he looks at his new lover, perhaps a desperate replacement, and feels his heart not moving--she cannot be, however much she tries. Some things are just that way; there is no reason to them, and nothing a person can do to change them. But Akari, too, has moved on, beyond his reach. She has another man, a new home, a new happiness. The rocket never finds its destination; it travels still.

He remembers everything now, though the memories have been distilled to simple scenes, images. He remembers, in the comforting warm of spring--a day in frigid winter when he dreamt of seeing the cherry blossoms fall. He remembers, a cold night, a long journey--a few hours sleeping in the warmth of a small dinner and a love he didn't want to lose. He remembers a barren tree, so dead in appearance.

So many things one must pass by in life; so many things one must shed, in order to welcome the new and move forward into what the world has planned--be it grey or cold or dreary--so many things must be destroyed, without hope for revival. Like it or not, we will lose and forget our childhood someday. Individual events become a blur in the vivid picture of the past; where things once mattered, they are only sweet, fading impressions. The joy and that optimism of youth is a faint remembrance now.

He remembers, still. It is spring now, and at last, the cherry blossoms are falling--the same as every year, the same as every year before that. Those same wondrous flowers, dressing the roads in the a glorious pink, the colour of life and love--that will soon melt away, to be lost and forgotten, long before the week has come to an end. He remembers their first kiss; he remembers the train that took him away.

And somewhere far off, lost as she is in her own different future--she is trying to remember the fading fragments of that very same day, somewhere deep in her buried childhood.

come back

I hate asking only to have you give that same reason. It is not your fault; it is only obligation, and once again it isn't my right in any way to be discontent, or angry, or hateful, about your success, or your brilliance.

But you care more about work than me. That's how I feel, at least. And I don't want to be with someone like that.

It might be alright now, bearable because there is an end in sight. But when we are older, if you are still here--will everyday merely be a wait, for you to finish and return, from the work that you spend more time with than you would with me?

><

"you call that _______? that's a sorry excuse for _______. I can't believe I've been demoted to the same level as that. Stop blowing up his/her ego, seriously; he/she doesn't deserve it."

Sorry, I'm feeling particularly nettled today, about those same things. And most of all, I'm annoyed I can't seem to do anything to prove the opinions in that above sentence.

(not taking it wrongly, of course...I'm leaving blanks to make sure no one knows for sure what I'm referring to.)

grr.

I really hate when someone gets praise he/she doesn't deserve (because I think I deserve it more, but never seem to get it)--sometimes merely token praise--and then acts as if he/she is really wonderful because of it. One of the things that irks me the most in the world.

Just thought I'd say it. The anger attacks me rather violently.

is it enough to say I'm surprised?

I got onto the Dean's list for both Literature and Biology (though I can't help the thought I was at exactly the 95th percentile; my score was barely above the A cut-off).

*glances at chart below*

Now I know that my estimated Lit and Bio scores were totally, completely off. At least my chart predicted correctly my two best subjects. xP

That is all.

howdy!

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memories made this year

Songs that engulf me in a wave of remembrance.


1. Taio Cruz - Dynamite
will always remember being completely swept up by the camaraderie, jumping about like some insane freak when this song played in the hall during RJC batch '12 orientation.


2. Lia - Tori no Uta
I was lost, because I never expected it to be like this, impossible to ignore. I was confused, because I didn't know how to read the signs. This song reminds me of how it began.


3. Taylor Swift - Enchanted
those nights of lying awake, wondering about things that will only kill you with time. Indescribable.

aviary

A scene out of Umbrella Story; it used to be on Facebook but I decided it was too long.

But some thought another way: birds are free while we are not, but are we not greater creatures than they? Teachings spoke of humanity’s superiority over all other creatures, of their predetermined position as the monarchs of the animals. Cults of passionate believers had then formed: they captured birds so they could not fly, locked them into little birdcages that left them almost no room to raise their wings—kept away from the sky. 

They sang beautifully nevertheless, perhaps out of a tragic longing for freedom. Their songs kept them even longer behind the bars, ensured that they were never set free. For as long as they breathed, until they starved themselves to death, for sorrow. 

Ruthenia had read, some birds were born with migratory instincts. They held clocks and compasses within their minds, natural instruments that called each one to a faraway place, every year at the turn of spring—the whisper in every swallow’s heart that led it south in the winter of Astra. 

Sometimes at night, keepers spoke of birds that threw themselves at the bars of their cages, seeking out the direction of the land that called from somewhere they couldn’t see but knew existed, deep in their iron blood. Those that were kept indoors lost hope quickly, but those that had a view of the stars continued relentlessly to hope, to pound at the bars and the gates in the direction of south—even though a thousand times later, the bars had not moved. They knew they had to go somewhere. Their Destination.

bleh

Uhhhh. Now looking at any picture of Nagisa from Clannad makes me SO ANGRY. Bleh, I used to like her somewhat, but guess what, I got compared to her one day, and now I HATE HER WITH A VENGEANCE GRAH. You think I care about "getting together with the guy"? No, I hate people thinking I'm a weak girl who NEEDS A GUY, and with no opinions and more importantly no power to push those opinions. I do NOT cry often; I only cry out loud when I need to, and people notice when I do, and somehow I have stuck as "the crybaby" yeah whatever.

/unreasonable Clannad watcher

(overdue) post mortem

As the title says, or rather phrasing out the implications of that title, promos are over, results are back. Yadda. Final grade tally: AABBCS. Guess, once again, where the S came from.

I'm the sort who likes to synthesise new things from old, so I'm going to do something weird this time.

Click to enlarge:

Chinese

CT grade: U

Promo grade: S

Final grade: S

Well, heck with my grade; if I can pass my A level Chinese, then this score doesn't matter. I also discovered that for the CTs, since there's 222 people taking Chinese and I was at the 0.5th percentile, I actually scored the lowest in the level.

GP

CT grade: D

Promo grade: B

Final grade: B

Thank goodness I saved it. I'd never have been able to live with myself if I had scored a D overall. I don't know what happened in Term 3.

Literature in English

CT grade: B

Promo grade: B

Final grade: B

At least I'm topping the level in H1 Lit. I think.

Biology

CT grade: A

Promo grade: A

Final grade: A

There's only one thing I can say: I love Biology.

Chemistry

CT grade: D

Promo grade: A

Final grade: B

Nothing but regret for my complacency. When I look at my mistakes, I can only think one thing: I could have done better, so much better.

Mathematics

CT grade: B

Promo grade: C

Final grade: C

I shouldn't beat myself up over this. I was already outperforming myself from the rest of my life at the start of the year. I'm bad at Math; time to eat that up and move on.

a year back

Time flies. Funny how, though the people change, it's always the same events, over and over. Another year, another graduation. But that's life--the old depart, so that the new may rise. Circle closes, or the circle opens into a spiral; the torch changes hands.

Coincidentally or not, we received our yearbooks from 2010 on the very same day the batch below us graduated. It was an arrangement that brought upon me, suddenly, those recollections that I had been suppressing--whether willingly or not, wittingly or not--throughout the year.

I can't say I miss RGS dearly. Most of what I loved about it were the people, and almost all of them came along with me.

But I suppose it is the movement away--like departing from a place that I can never return to--that breaks my heart most: to know that I will never be that person, in that place, in that time, again. Sharing those same horrors over what are mere trivialities now. Making jokes I don't even laugh at anymore. Being naive.

Goodbye. I don't think I ever said it, properly, because I took for granted that the physical place would still and always be there, took for granted that the people who made it special came along with me to JC, and would always remain the same people, our ties remain the same, our smiles still shared.

But with our graduation, both changed--the place has grown so different, populated by thousands of psyches that would never perfectly echo our own. As for the people--time and movement and shifting circumstance have transformed them. Have I, too, transformed?

Everything has changed.

A few days ago, I watched my juniors' grand finale. Is that who we were, a year ago? Who I was, on that stage that has been redecorated over and over? Did it rain last year?

I look back on the things I wrote on my blog, at the height of graduation euphoria last year.
It did rain last year.
I had a strange sort of foresight. I knew things would change.
But I didn't expect enough, as a result did not do enough to hold it tight, and I regret that direly.

But goodbye anyway, even though it's far too late; goodbye to whatever little still remains of what was. I was ungrateful, and flippant, and apathetic; that self disgusts me now. Maybe in a year's time, some of my juniors will have the same reflections as I now do.

I need therapy for genophobia. Fast. I foresee it ruining my life shortly.