Day 05 -A picture of somewhere i've been to

India was amazing, as were the friends who made the memories so much more dear to me.

Day 04 - A habit i wish i didnt have

ok, so i have this really disturbing habit of talking to myself. i ramble on and on like an absentminded 40 year-old, i scold myself for the stupid things i do, i rant at imaginary people. sometimes it's because my thoughts grow so loud that my head cant contain them anymore, and i just need to verbalise them to give myself space to breathe. sometimes i have running conversations with ppl i know, saying everything that i never have the guts to say in real life. sometimes it's because the silence gets so quiet that i could do with a little company, even if it's just me.

i think it comes from being an only child, but yes, i do wish i didn't talk to myself that much. (it must not be very normal.)

Neither words nor time healed anyone. only living healed, if it healed at all, living as you were meant to live, as best as you could with your learned habits and confused intentions, living through time and finally beyond time, where neither therapists nor surgeons were any longer needed to smooth away the pain or cut it out.

breathless, dean koontz

but she longed also to have what for now she only dared to call mystery. she wanted mystery in her life, things unknowable yet not imagined, things her mind could touch that her hands could never feel, mystery that could fill her half-empty heart with wonder.

echo.

"life isnt easy, but having friends makes all the difference. thank you, and know that i love each and every one of you dearly. we're all fighting our own battles, but have faith, be strong, we'll be ok in the end."


Somehow.


19 July 2008
"

lists

to-read:
1. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

2. The Truth about these Strange times by Adam Fould

3. "Van Gogh" The man suicided by society by Antonin Artaud

4. Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson

5. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

6. Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell

to-watch:
1. when harry met sally
2. breakfast at tiffany's 
3. beautiful women
4. jerry mcguire
5. love and other drugs
6. rent
7. moulin rouge
8. butterfly effect
9. hercules
10. love story
11. nine
12. the reader

where every kiss may be the last

 

How come they dont make trailers like this anymore?

"Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best then mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived."

Rhett Butler; Gone With the Wind

i should add this to my reading list. 

if you put my seashells of words to your ear,
can you hear the ocean, my love?

in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife

it's been an exceptionally tiring week.

all the war making has left pieces of me strewn across the floor

and as i slowly gather the fragments of my heart,

i wonder if one year from now, all this will be nothing more than a distant memory.

once again, time moves in strange ways. days have slithered past like a snake on oil, and i find recent moments turning into vague impressions. it scares me that i am unable to call up the thoughts, images and sentiments of experiences mere days old. 

then again, perhaps we all try to hold on to memories because we fear that that's all we'll have when we stand at the edge of life with nothing before us but the end. 

memories are nebulous things. at strange times, things you thought you've put away and forgotten surfaces in ways you cannot ignore. the attic of your mind may be full of childhood trinkets, but the skeletons in the closet are the ones that bring nightmares on lonely nights.

in the battle of your mind, doubt whispers to the parts of yourself you hide away. it speaks to the scared child whose youth had absorbed the prints of its less-than-gentle handlers. it speaks to the insecure teenager who was never sure if there was a place for him in this overpopulated universe. and as we grow older, we learn to build a world in our minds. we collect personalities and tell ourselves who we should be. We erect walls of self-justification and build a treacherous maze around who we really are.

Everyday, we put together bits and pieces of ourselves as we fall apart. and it is in this process of evolving, searching, fighting and finally accepting that we learn who we are.

this has been hard, but the lessons learnt many. i've learnt that there are more ways to love than one. i've learnt that i built my world around the people i've chosen. i've learnt that i cannot be everything people need all the time. i've learnt that i cannot hold on to things and people, on my own. and i've learnt that there is merit in keeping my heart whole, and close. 

and as life goes on, and if it ever gets lost in the midst of the catalogue of memories. at least i know that if it surfaces again, i have made peace with the parts of myself i've come to know and have grown that much more through it.

Words are flying out like 
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass 
They slip away across the universe 
Pools of sorrow waves of joy 
are drifting thorough my open mind 
Possessing and caressing me 


Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes 
That call me on and on across the universe 
Thoughts meander like a 
restless wind inside a letter box 
they tumble blindly as 
they make their way across the universe

do you know?

hey there lil girl, do you know what you would grow up to be someday?

do you know that you will grow up to give love and receive it back?
do you know that you'll travel across the ocean
to tour the distant lands?
do you know you'll feel pain and anguish,
but come out stronger from that?

Do you know you'll meet amazing creatures,
who share your thoughts and speak your words
and as you grow to call them friends,
do you know you'll give parts of your heart away?

do you know you'll find magic in the stars at night
and learn to cast wishes upon them
do you know that the only dreams worth having,
are the ones worth fighting for?

do you know that you'll grow up to measure love in loss
to burn with a touch, and go cold with a look

then as 5 year old sam goes "uh, what u mean?"
I smile mysteriously and say
my dear girl, soon enough you'll understand
the world awaits you yet.

the Chrismas gift

I want:

lights and stars and a sparkling nightsky
i want to travel and go new places and buy flowers off the streets
i wanna sing with a thousand people who know the words
to the song of the moon,
who having seen one life and twenty,
knows life isnt in the planning, isnt in the details
no, it is in the adventure of fields untrodden
of roads untravelled.
with none but the one you love by your side.

does that answer your question?

let me take you on that journey,
one that you often seek but have never found.

just breathe. you will live through this one breath at a time.

In fear of loss.

"To take life in armfuls, to embrace and accept it, to leap into it with energy and relish, is of course to invite trouble of all the familiar kinds.

But the cost of avoiding trouble is a terrible one: it is the cost of having trodden the planet for humanity’s brief allotment of less than a thousand months, without having really lived. In a near apocalyptic demise of expectations and standards modern man manages his loss by simply not being man. And like the leper who does not know he has lost yet another finger, the modern world remains oblivious to how it will lose yet another heart."  

- A.C. Grayling on loss

Let this is be a reminder to myself:
If ever I am tempted to yield to the anesthesia of stoicism, what I give up is nothing less than what makes me human.

and i miss you.

hi dear,

here's something i began writing back at the start of October when you first left. it took me a long time to finish it, but i'm glad i did. when i'm missing you especially much, it helps me remember that although it's never going to be easy, it''s always going to be worth it.

it's one of those intermittent times

when nothing seems to move but time itself.

the days go by and you're somewhere else, lost

in your head, in that cesspool of grey matter.

you know,
i'm not a fan of the stoics.

yes, maybe once upon a time, i could have believed in 'possessing only what you wont mind losing' or that being frugal with one's emotions builds a damn fine shield against the vicissitudes of life. but i stopped believing that a long time ago, and i'd like to think that i've come to appreciate the fact that life's pleasures, ecstacies, richness and colours can only be matched by its agonies, disasters and grief.

but i am weak.
the first sign of difficulty makes me want to run, the first hint of pain makes me want to change course, and sometimes i find myself wondering why i chose to do this.

but then i remember how it feels when you take my hand or that look on your face when i say something random. i think about the way you hold me or that silly smile you have sometimes, when you look at me. i think of how happy and contented you make me and how every moment with you is precious, regardles of where we go or what we do. i think about how time with you is never enough.

and i realise that missing you is bitter-sweet, like how the best rum and raisin ice creams often are. bitter, because you're not here as much as i'd like you to be. but sweet, because with you, i count the stars and see how they light up the sky; i laugh at life and dream in colour.

but most of all because,
when i'm with you, it feels like home.

Love,
Sam ♥

21st Nov '09

cos music makes everything better

Songlist

Wintersong
follow you into the dark
you're all i have - snow patrol
should i stay - dreamz fm
just a dream
teenage dreams
hello
peaches by new heights
soul sister
one in a million
runaway by electrico

because i'm feeling sappy today

for all the hopeless romantics and the jaded cynics who just wanna believe that love isnt hopeless after all.


Nikki+Sam from Shade Tree Films on Vimeo.

"She's basically everything plus more on my list. 

and i had a long list, cos guess what, i was never gonna get married again  

and i had have-tos and need-tos and want-tos about a girl 

and she hit them all and more, and i just knew. 

more than that, it was a feeling that i had inside. 

i fell in love with her the first time i talked to her."

"and i proposed to her that night. 

it's one of those things, where there's not even a pit in your stomach at all

it's so comfortable that it's not even a question, you know?

you just..you just know."

- Sam

born to run

lightning flashes outside the window. Seconds from rain, I am chased by the storm. I run. I run and i dont look back. I run, and i dont stop. I run, and i run and all i can do is to put one feet before the other in quick succession. all i can feel is me falling. i barely catch myself before i am falling again. the ground is uneven, and i trip over pitfalls and molehills and imaginary blackholes. I count the steps in my head. one, two. left, right. faith, choice. future, past.

i run from your words, your feelings, that look in your eye. i hide behind rationality that makes no sense. you say you love me, i ask how? 

I run and i trip on my sorrys, maybes and what-ifs.

i would have given you everything,
but someone else has my heart.

Day 03- A picture of you and your friends

Tioman. our very first almost-adult getaway.

Geeky phases, long uniform skirts and terrible hair. Singers, and crushes and heartbreak boys. Loves, and chocolate and whispered secrets. Drinks, and techniques and adult worries. Endless, endless conversations.

9 years of laughing our asses off, 3285 days of sharing new experiences, 78840 hours of growing together;

You are still the ones i run to. thank you for always, always being there.

Day 02- The meaning behind your Tumblr/LJ/Blogger name

Names are important, they identify, classify and characterise.


This blog is fairly recent, and i had a great time trying to find a name for it. for me, my blog is a space to put all the abstract thoughts swirling around in my head into words; a space to give all the things left unsaid a place in this world.

also, a lot of what is written here are things i want to tell myself, advice i wish i knew at that time. they keep me grounded and remind me who i am. Hopefully these words will get me through future days marred by uncertainty and indecision.

So after thinking through what i wanted my blog to be, i started a whole list of possibilities. (View full list here) i struck off the ones i didnt really like, struck off the ones that were taken (which more than halved my list, i lament this over-populated world) and i was left with deciding between Unofficialfridays and Paperyesterdays. i loved how happy Unofficialfridays seemed, it felt like a constant reminder to live my days like everyday's a friday - with excitement and anticipation. However, it also sounded a little impersonal. Paperyesterdays on the other hand seemed to sum up everything i wanted this blog to be. It carried with it the idea that moments are transient, that days are relegated to the past as they happen. At the same time, by penning down the thoughts and emotions inspired on digital paper, i can immortalise these days, events and experiences in words. in the end, the nice dreaminess of Paperyesterdays tipped the scale, and as they say, the rest is history.

note to self

It is 4 27am in the morning. You just got up to do a 1800 word PS paper that's due tmr after a night of total unproductivity.

What the fuck is all that about?

note to self: Remember who you are and what's important to you. Do not lose yourself in all this insane craziness.