Red Curtains

Recently, I bought some fantastic readymade curtains for my room. Well...red is a bit of an overstatement (if you're looking at it from a saturation standpoint) and also an understatement, if you're looking at it from a shade standpoint. It's more of a lovelt copper/auburn that glows a fierce and deep hue of red. I love waking up to it and feeling so utterly encased in a warm light, a cocoon that reminds me so much of when you're eyes are closed but you're looking at the sun - the light filtering in is bright but mellow, warm, not yellow, reddish.



I don't like using the word emo, but that's what I'm feeling. It doesn't happen very often (not unless its in a feeling-down-about-world-affairs-feel-their-weight-on-me sort of way) anymore. Perhaps writing off what I'm feeling in such a remorseless, thoughtless way is unfair of me and maybe I'm buying into pop culture more than I should. But...I have no words, none to describe what I'm feeling.



All I know is, now, I never feel like drawing the curtains, I'm sitting in a dark room with my father's office lamp (that I stole...it was mine first!) and tapping away at my desk...looking for a purpose. Looking for a reason to take action. It's not like I'm happily idle; I have a million things piled up. I finally finished an application last night and I have editing work for Existere - second round corrections are (mostly) in. It's due Friday but what is freaking me out is that we have to be ready by the middle of next week....the issue comes out on September 10th. Or it has to be in to the printers by then...I don't know. All I know is that there's shitloads of work piling up - and I have no will to do any of it. To even consider it. I'm imagining myself doing it; in fact, I'm feeling very go-getter, very productive. I have to start planning my duke of ed...I have to find money to take a dressmaking class on avenue rd. and find time to volunteer. I have to get involved, chase opportunities, be fresh and re-read last year's essays. Finish Benazir Bhutto's thoughts on democracy, and essays and lectures by George Steiner and Jorge Luis Borges, respectively. In other words, I need to get in gear for next year. I need to blow Johnathon Warren out of his Yale-educated mind.



But I also feel like I want to light a room with a thousand light bulbs and then smash them all. On occasions like these, I need to sit back and absorb. I need to...I don't know, get lost. Synthesize. I'm feeling tired, gross, icky. I'm feeling drained - not of energy or hope...but of will. Of reality.I'm tired of the 9 to 5, the children, walking to work and back every morning routine. This is why I could never be married. Domesticity makes me itchy. If I ever had to care about carpool and PTA meetings...I'd stick my head in the oven too, minus the lovely poetry. (not that that's why she stuck her head in the oven by any means...)



It makes me numb. It makes me smile falsely at the parents of the school where I work when underneath I'm too exhausted to even produce a halfway decent insult about the correlation between their children's level of indiscipline versus the cars they drive. It's a positive one, needless to say.

Sometimes, it's not enough...and sometimes, there's just too much. So I'm now going to go drown myself in A Bit of Fry and Laurie and finally watch Kaminey. Vishal Bhardwaj + Shahid double role. This, I gotta see.

This was bound to happen. Lots to consider. Many things come to mind; one of them: do what you have to do so you can do what you want to do.

Liz coleman says: What do you do when you are feeling overwhelmed?

Answer: You have a mind. And you have other people. Start with those.

Mmm...Shoes.

The story of Beatrix Ong and the Hermos boot

YEAH. Enough said. These are quite possibly the sexiest boots alive. They are so beautifully English - I could wear these on a dozen things. I am quite obsessed with British things (must be the occupied Indian in me). They are just the most perfect riding boots...that alternate as a piece de resistance. I mean...you could walk around naked in those boots and still be classy. Not that I would walk around naked in these...I have yet to build up a body for that - currently I'm alternating between Bridget Jones on my lower half and someone thin on my upper half. What I'd like to be is April Wilkner all over.

And just because I love her so much - APRIL SPAM

Back to the boots:

Of course, at 198 quid, these are understandably out of stock. Sounds like a bit of a sham, very sketchy, really, because the official site states them for £264. Which...when you do the conversion, comes to about $479 CDN. Which, along with delivery/shipping makes me shiver in my knickers that this is wholly more than I pay on a visa bill in a month. It is nearly half my limit and that is...scary as shit. It is not more than I would pay in rent, since real estate is not really THAT down in Toronto. The only reason that keeps resounding in my head is that perhaps I should invest them now because this is one of the last times in my life where I won't have to worry about rent.

Also, I hate that I'm doing such a silly, frivolous post; the poor-rich girl likes, all she worries about is if she can afford shoes. But seriously...I would live in these shoes. Also, women are justified, especially single ones because they are prey to the metropolises they live in and have no one to badger about leaving the toilet seat up. So they must occupy themselves with shoes. Personally, in my experiences, shoes are a better investment anyway. Though the bitches will sometimes pop their heels or break a strap if they're feeling particularly underloved.

Really don't know how/when I'm going to be able to shell out enough money to buy these but, essentially, I must raid my the cracks of my couch and under my bed and in old jeans pockets before november. This is rather inconvenient, me falling in love with these shoes because I was kind of saving up for these (much less expensive but no less sexy in their own right) Steve Maddens:

So BRIGGHT

God...they're sexy. The boots. And I would finally own a piece of the british brilliance that is beatrix ong. Someday, I will not be poor. And by not be poor I mean able to afford shoes on a whim despite exorbitant rent-like prices.

OH shit. I really really miss Singapore and I want to go back, like now. Back to Takashimaya and orchard and bukit timah and jalan besar and mee goreng on sentosa and shopping at kallang and taking the mrt everywhere. shitshitshit.

What-ifs, Wherefores, Why those

Returning from abroad is exhilirating. It is energizing. It is exhausting. It is like a beginning to the shining middle and an end to that rotten beginning. It is also rather dangerous because this very illusion of new found hope starts to get you dreaming - dreaming like you might have scarcely dared to before.

It fills you with a vigour upon whose pace you travel with such speed and motivation that it scares even you. That feeling of expanse and a deep connection with the earth, real, hard, terra firma can do that to you. It is rather dangerous, really, all the things you see yourself accomplishing and daring to hope as you might have never hoped before.

Change is a very organic substance and is, I believe, the base of every single thought, phenomenon and action in this world. The difference brought about by change; Derrida, he was on the right track. That idea of difference is the power that change grants and there is no power so heady nor so combustible or useful as change. It fuels originality in thought, in design, in life, really; our need for change makes us think, wonder...so I quirk one eyebrow up and ask the most quitely dangerous question: what if?

What if, indeed. What if - so many things! Where to begin, and where to go once the beginning has been determined? And it has...my beginning has been 20 years in the making...but whence to proceed from here? There are about a million and one possibilities and iterations and I almost wish I could send out a dozen copies of myself to take different tracks and report back to me upon merger 40 years later.

I promised myself that I wouldn't be overwhelmed and inundated; that I would relax and take it as it comes. So far, that is proving to be the right thing to do, even if it is rather (read horriblee) hard for me to do. I keep having to shift my mind away from the niggling thoughts but I think eventually that will become second nature. There is really just so much to tackle: pick your cause. I'm having a hard time (or was) picking mine. Which is funny because no one really asked me to pick in the first place; everyone assumes students will eventually leave their shelter of hallowed halls and change the world in new and wonderous ways. The problem is that I love it all too much. I love it all, I'm passionate about most things and am far too interested and curious for my own good. Also, I don't trust our generation to be the same way; very few of them are and of those few, you must weed through the self-proclaimed, arrogant and pseudo-intellectuals to reach the actual stars. So I feel it is encumbent upon me to pick all causes and save the world - oh, I almost long for the days to come when I'm 28 and disillusioned and bitter like Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson.

I find myself lingering on every sight and sound that passes my way with a new energy that has been missing for almost four years now. It is surprising what a new wardrobe can also do. Filling one's life with only the pieces that make you happy and energized and...important. There is nothing like it. And if I sound unbearingly optimistic, I don't apologize but only hope to re-iterate that I am a realist - who is currently on a high.

It seems strange to say it as a marker of what seems so right these days but my skin seems softer, my sleep feels deeper and hair looks nicer, even if I've tumbled down from bed. Maybe this feeling will fade and maybe it won't but, as of now, I'm not too worried either way. Yes, I am sunk in debt; yes, I am not nearly as mobile as I would like. But...its not like those things seem any smaller; only more doable- more changeable, more manageable. More likely. This life seems more likely, no matter what track.

As a sign, when my mind starts to wander and ponder on the various alternations of futures that could be and makes mini, start-plans as to how to get there, I instantly feel nauseous. But now I am really enjoying going through all the what ifs and thinking further, without the strain of actually trying to make it happen. I guess I am saying - I'm happy to be in the moment, allowing myself that luxury (for once). The what-ifs don't come accompanied by can-dos. They just stay their lovely old states of what-ifs.

What are the what-ifs? Good gosh, too many.

What-ifs to scripts and novel ideas. What-ifs to getting published. What-ifs to volunteering and teaching in Macchu Picchu and exploring the Himalayas. What-ifs to leaving civilization for a few years and changing the face of education and misguided mindsets. What-ifs to writing for Conde-Nast and National Geographic (*faint*). What-ifs to Brown and Rhodes, browsing beaches in Maine, to Carnegie Mellon. What-ifs to street theatre, kathak dancing, scholarships to Delhi. What-ifs to curating or publishing or designing or working at the MMoA/Bartle-Bogle-Hegarty. What-ifs to dual citizenship and splurging rent money on Jimmy Choos. What-ifs to working for idols and invitations to premiers at Leicester Square. What-ifs to changing the face of inspiration. What-ifs to meeting and falling in love to changing lives and healing them. What-ifs coming to terms with all the past and forgiving and moving the fuck on.

So here's to all that was- that can be, that will be and, mostly, that is.

That Great Philosopher, Mick Jagger

Last night, Singapore time, I was trying to sign up for my classes. And I found that, thanks to some stupid technicality and the fact that I am a mere 3 creds away from being considered a third year student, that I cannot take third year courses. Even though I am a third year student. I kept panicking. I kept trying to call the English Department, I kept getting impatient and angry at their lack of knowledge, their response. That I, the student, had to outline to these dunderheads my situation and then light the path of solution and problems with the solution FOR them. That I had to wait for a response from people who seemingly sit on their ass and do nothing while a whole ocean and several countries or a whole ocean and half of america separate me from Toronto.

So I raged. I cried. I stormed. I left a long, detailed, slightly-shaking-with-anger message on the Undergraduate director's answering machine. After thinking bitter, surging thoughts of the level of incompetency in departmental offices of academia, I fell asleep.

They say everything looks better with sleep, but this is rarely, if ever, true. I was just as angry, just as annoyed and panicking jsut as much in the morning. But the plight of the situation and my own mental neuroticies spurred me to think of another way to reach the same goal. I couldn't do anything; I might as well sit back. I realized, I was re-evaluating, as we must do, when things aren't going our way.

I knew my end goal and decided that, before freaking the hell out, that I might as well see if there were any way to get what I wanted, what I needed, to be done if I took another tack. I'm not going to give up by any means - I am still going to rage and storm and push until they give me third year classes. But...I will be okay and the world will not collapse if, in some bizarre and alternate universe that I don't get these classes.

Mm, perspective, it is a lethal weapon. Would I be able to breathe were in toronto? Would I have ben able to let the matter lie so quickly and decide to search for an alternate solution so quickly had distance and three time zones not separated me? Probably not. I would've charged over there the next day and demanded to be seen, and then using my Inherent SuperPowers of Rhetorical Persuasion (also known as annoying persistence like that of a housefly), I would've gotten what I wanted.

But then I remembered those famous words, bless their drugged british rock hearts: you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes...you get what you need.

Which allayed my fears only slightly but worked to calmm me. Speaking to a friend this morning (her night), she updated me on her life. Telling me that she was going to be coming to the same university as me and then outlining her thoughts, her goals. I started to think...gosh, I didn't see that happening. Who would've thunk it? Could I have ever honestly imagined that, a year later, she would be at the junction where I was, a year earlier, emotionally mature and ready to explore? No. Again, time and space grants you many boons; one of them is this. As ecstatic beyond words I am at the fact that she will be in toronto, that I will get to see her and that FINALLY she will be purusing what she wants, I realized again:

What she wanted changed so dramatically. A year ago, if you had asked her what she wanted, it would've been something completely different. And yet, here she was, standing at this crossroads, ready to take the plunge. She tried to plough through...then she tried to change her life. And maybe it's not what she originally wanted. But she got what she needed baby. She got what she needs. I am proud of her - and equally astounded with the veracity of those words.

Seeing this in action...sort of blew me away. Filled me with disbelief and then gratitude that I could see these eternal words in play. Put things into perspective further for me.

Because you can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes....you get what you need.

Ohhhh baby.