life

13/8/2010

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle

Today, YM told me about the new ‘him’. His discovery that a beautiful society can be ugly has led him to abandon pursuit of a material existence for a spiritual one instead. It was an interesting thing to witness: both our lives have been dedicated to pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification. Somehow we’ve survived our 20s unscathed, driven by the awareness that no matter what we want to do, life has a funny way of reminding us that nothing worthwhile in life is procured without effort.. and that only made it so much more fun. But life has a funny way of also never being the same. We change, and some times in the winds of change do we only find our true direction. I do believe that at some stage in our lives we will literally ‘grow up’ – and by that I mean the realisation that all we ever wanted may not be all we ever wanted when we have all we thought we want.

I think the search for fulfillment is most commonly waylaid by the need to fit in and be accepted by our peers. First, we need to love ourselves. Growing up an only child has not been easy. I’ve always hated being one. When i was younger I felt like I have a lot to prove to myself, until one day I realised that it wasn’t really myself I was trying to prove my worth to – it was everyone else. People often have these preconceptions of what an only child is like – and the more I hear about them the more I felt like I needed to go against the grain. But what I didn’t know then that I know now is that I’ve always been exactly what I have been trying to be, and what a waste of time it was not being able to see that. I love myself now, and what can be so wrong with a little self-love? And when you’re there, a good way to move forward would focus your time and energy in helping the people you love achieve the same things.. a little goes a long way there. Cheesy, I know – but when you live positively everyone around you benefits.

Am I the only one excited that the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love will be released soon? I loved the book.

And while we’re on topic, here’s one of my favourite models, Agyness Deyn, in V Magazine September 2010, channeling Hare Krishna:

She has this childlike quality that I totally dig!

Friday link love!
A collection a day – a curation of one person’s obsession with collection
Things I have seen – a blog about beautiful interiors, objects and architecture
Vectro Ave – another great blog about creative things
Luke Copping – I just love his photography!
and lastly.. SS2 pisang goreng – I still haven’t gotten over the fact that a business run from a back of a van has a website, online order form and a Facebook fan page!

Have a great weekend! x

12/8/2010

Life’s too short not to make mistakes

There is something rather impermanent about life that makes it all the more beautiful. Someone I know from KL has been on front page news, not for reasons any one of us would like to be. The fact that this person is no longer alive, well, it still hasn’t truly sunk in just yet. This news has been met with some disbelief on my end – JC, despite being only an acquaintance, is not only one of the most lovely people I know, she is also one of the most beautiful.

I often think about mortality and our time on this earth. My good friend M, told me that he is taking this person’s death a lot harder than he thought he would because he has this idea that all of us will live forever. I guess I some times feel that way. Some days I feel almost invincible; I feel that nothing is impossible. And nothing is, if you really think about it.

Though the days we spend are numbered, we shouldn’t really be making excuses for not spending each day the way we want to – to make the best of every moment and to work on the relationships that mean something to us. And life’s too short not to make mistakes – it is the only way we can truly learn and appreciate what we have – so why are we so afraid to take chances? You never know what is behind the next door you open..

May you rest in peace, JC.

7/1/2010

Untitled 01

It’s funny how now my life seems to have compartmentalised itself into these boxes. When I am looking at one I am afraid to open the other ones for fear of what I know I would find inside. Things jump out at me often, like right now I am getting ready to leave for Sydney again and there is a great amount of resistance; “Why are you leaving, girl?” I am not sure. This box is an amazing one filled with great things and memories and people that I know whatever I have on the other side will never be able to replace. Fragments of last October, countless conversations with close friends, claw at my conscience. Whatever it is you need to prove has been proven; If you’re not happy then it’s not worth it; I know you love it there and I’m glad you are happy but I’m not; I don’t want you to go back to Australia with a heavy heart; I admire your ambition; and from EE: Your friends are here. But no, this is what I want, I insist, I cannot live otherwise.

On the other hand the other box is also an amazing one, centered around something that I can’t turn away from – the seduction of infinite possibilities. Of course it is as much a fear. It’s a game of trading one for the other and in the last year I’ve done it three times and each time I face the same nagging feeling I used to get reading game books: What if I made the wrong move? Will number 5 take me down the rabbit hole? Should I have rolled again? Fuck it’s time to turn the page.. I hold my breath until I get off the plane. Things always right themselves when I am immersed in what is familiar, then it doesn’t seem so bad after all. It’s all terribly emotionally draining. But time has this way of making you forget what it is you insist on holding on to. I’ve said goodbye to so many things that at this rate nothing material matters anymore. Everything is disposable and replaceable. I am cool with never seeing these photo albums again. Memories are up here, I would say. But even those decay and over time I am left with fuzzy recollection of the moments that shaped my life: Do you remember when we used to sit under this tree on top of this hill and talk about our futures? No. What did I say? Do you remember when you said one day you would go someplace really far away and I asked what you were running from and you said, I’m not running from anything I’m chasing a dream? No. Are you sure that was me? Hey I wasn’t that far off back then. But I don’t remember who it was that said those things, only what was said.

Last year, things somehow got a little complicated when TR made a reappearance. It started out a little strange: he had just been through relationship hell and needed a shoulder and I had one handy. I’d met someone and in return TR would listen to me gush. Over some time, and in retrospect I really should have seen it coming, TR made me revisit a past that was both happy and miserable. It has always been that way with us. There is never more of either, pleasure and pain come in equal parts. I was left feeling quite deflated because in the end I was wrong, there was only deception and lies, and everything that was once there only existed in some other universe that has been so far removed from reality that I wonder what made me think I could go there again. Maybe I am a sucker for punishment, but now it is over and done with and it takes a fair amount of will to not look back in anger. I told myself I couldn’t and I wasn’t. But I came back to KL angry, angry that something else I was holding on to was made to take a backseat just as I was getting into gear. Essentially I had to make a choice, and I had chosen the wrong one, and like the stubborn idiot that I am I told myself not to apologise for it and live with the consequences. And I did. Until I was back here and in this one moment where the other one was staring me back in my face I felt exactly how heart-wrenching it can be not to have trusted your instincts. Ouch. Have I not made that same mistake once before and why have I not seem to have learnt anything from it? Have my closest friends not warned me that there will be bloodshed, and most of it mine? Yet they were there in the aftermath, pulling me together because I couldn’t. It was 2006 redux, and realisation came in the form of giant, lazy tears.

But that was last year.

Thank God for last year. Last year was probably the best thing to happen to me last year. Hah. The trick is, I am told, not to make new year resolutions but to make year end conclusions. Mine is, evidently, that I should always, always trust my fucking gut.

Which brings me to right now, and what is tearing me apart – from the time I set foot in KL this has been building up to a point where I have to acknowledge it: Something is telling me I should stay. I tell myself I’ve done it a million times before but I don’t manage to convince myself. And that same something is filling me with dread that when I get off the next plane, my life will not realign itself, that I will find myself holding the wrong box filled with the wrong life and the wrong priorities and the wrong decisions to make. What then?

So for the first time ever, I find myself at crossroads, staring at this hastily-drawn haphazard map a younger me has sketched out and I’m not sure which end faces North. But either way the only move is forward.

To 3.0 :)

29/11/2009

Who do you love / When you come undone

I was once told that life is a series of short, intense experiences. The time we spend in between those such experiences, the daily grind, is because life can not be intense every day as it loses meaning – what an intriguing way to describe all those things we go through that do not occur daily: birthdays, deaths, heartbreaks, joy, loss, discovery etc.

So many things change in 24 hours.

People die, for one.

(I must admit that Daul’s suicide has had more bearing on me emotionally than I would care to admit. She was someone whose life was a constant string of such experiences with very little down time, and it got me pondering if that down time is in fact more important than we make it to be. What must it be like, to come to complete darkness with nothing left in sight? Her story is such a tragedy and I wish it did not end the way it has.)

On a brighter note my weekend has been one such short, intense experience. A positive one, rather, with someone whom there is no one I can imagine wanting to spend more time with. It was over in a blink.

And I guess like everyone else I live for the next short, intense experience.

10/11/2009