new // old // about // extras // layout // notes // email // diaryland

i will go down fighting.
written: 5:52 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005

I just got back from Jurong Junior where I borrowed Azrul's brilliant prac crit essays, talked to Mrs Razal about the Cambridge thing, and helped Elaine in her Lit Paper 4. Along the way I talked to Miss Lim (and it's her last year in Jurong Junior and I was like, "That's so weird! Imagine coming back to JJ and no Miss Lim!") and in the canteen the principal bought me ice-cream. He doesn't know my name, probably recognised my face from last year (he pointed at me and said in Chinese, "Are you from last year's batch?"), but I don't really care; I don't need a principal or a dean or a vice-dean to know who I am.

Talking about Lit Paper 4 again is just so wonderful. I can't even begin to describe it; it was nice, I knew what I was talking about, she even asked me what the passage-based I did for the A Levels was about and I remembered most of the shit I wrote, and also remembered how much fun I had doing that question (kudos to the passage for being strange and weird and thus, extremely gratifying).

And somewhere along the way, probably post-chatwithMissLim, I enjoyed a brief moment of epiphany during which the principle in "Invisible Monsters" suddenly seemed so clear and applicable. To errorneously apply a legal term, the ratio decidendi in the novel was basically this: Commit the biggest mistake you can ever think of so that you can start living. Obiter dictum: Destroy what you hate.

I'm erasing the 'start living' part and embracing the 'destroy what you hate' and modifying the 'commit the biggest mistake you can ever think of blah blah' to something that looks like this: Since you've already committed the biggest mistake you've ever made in all your 19 years of wasting resources on this planet, you might as well stuff everything and embrace your hatred for it and then annihilate it.

I think it would be so funny to excel in something that I hate with all my heart and soul, to get things that I can't particularly relate to, all in the name of beating the banality instead of letting it beat me, destroying my new-found enemy with ferocious fervour and blood-curling screams choked with Hate that deafen him, gorge his eyes out and let vultures feast of them so that he can never see again, tear off his skin and make it into a nice new coat, and I will stop before I think of any more preposterous and wannabe-gory pseudo-imagery.

Let's face it: I can't count on Cambrdige. I'd probably go into the written test and come out two hours later convinced that I'd never do well in Lit, and go into the interview room and make an utter fool of myself when the words coming out of my mouth try so hard to be English but fail terribly to be English anyway (in other words, Gibberish). And since I can't count on Cambridge I'm stuck in Singapore, and yes, I can continue beating myself up over this, keep asking WHY DIDN'T I FLY OFF WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE TO, yadayadayada stupid nonsense that doesn't change a single thing, but I won't because it doesn't change a single thing.

I'll get through the next three and a half years in hopefully better shape than mere one piece and see where it takes me from there.

For now, I'll derive perverse joy out of kicking ass at something I currently despise more than words can possibly describe.

Don't ask me why I hate it so much; I just do. But that's completely immaterial.

Anyway, I love Joyce Carol Oates and I love Man Crazy. OH MY GOD her style is tremendously beautiful such that it literally takes my breath away. My Contract tutor is unwell so we didn't have tutorial, and I split immediately after lecture ended and headed to Jurong Point where I ate at Swensen's by myself (I was the first and only customer there, and yes, it was weird) and I would've been lonely but I wasn't because Man Crazy is amazing company. Then I headed down to McCafe where I ordered that Himalayan tea frappe thing - I called it frappuccino how to spell though, 'cause I'm used to Starbucks - and sat down on a nice comfortable sofa with my book and my drink. The drink wasn't that great and I hate ice-blended drinks now as the ice made my muscles shiver in coldness, but the book, oh the book, it's so pretty and brilliant and wonderful.

"Like Time, too, is mixed. Separate channels of Time braided together and rushing past. You put out your hand to still it and it flows through your fingers like - water."

If I'd written that I would've written the last portion like this: "...and it flows through your fingers - like water." Which is really trite and contrived and unoriginal, and it doesn't have the same impact as the original. The sudden staccatoed pause before 'water' makes that word even more impactful, which drives home the whole point of the paragraph (that Time doesn't wait for you to catch up, that it is fluid and rushes by quickly, that it's over before you know it).

She writes in a very particular style, rambling sentences and ungrammatical usage of the comma, fragments of sentences that only relate to each other because of the comma that is inserted in between them before the full-stop.

What a wonderful book. I can't wait to finish it.

I have Jielun's Ye Qu in my head and did I ever mention that I love it? And pre-order is Friday! Sigh. I got my hopes up, only to have them dashed in such a cruel manner. Woe is me.

6.22 p.m.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010