Pins and Needles / My Specialist Subjects
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Pins and Needles
10.12.2006
Thank God for speaking to me during Sunday service today; for, just as various good friends have been doing, reminding me that there's NO NEED FOR SELF-PITY!
My resolution for this period of time (not new at all) is to strive to be more gentle and loving. (heh... slow progress has been made over the last year...)
I dunno why my mood has been so oscillatory lately. Maybe as I pass out of a rather numb phase and am able to open myself up to bouts of happiness (which by the grace of God are starting to abound - nay, have always been abounding just that I was once blind to them), the feeling mechanism is also left open to be able to feel sad :P but I guess if one kept oneself numb all the time one would not be able to be happy either, so this is probably all for the best. This is the pins and needles of the blood coming back I guess. Winter unfreezing - a very little.
After exams, I shall:
1. Bake apple pie and gingerbread men (both of which I have baked before) and/or lemon meringue (which I have not) on one or more occasions with or without girlfriends - and something that I would really like to do is find out how to make those seasonal CINNAMON COOKIES - and make them... and EAT THEM! :D :D :D
2. Make Christmas cards - after having defaulted last year heh I need to resume my tradition!
3. Translate more Jay Chou songs haha (mostly for my own learning Chinese benefit heh)
4. Make the blog for KE Pubs Comm and organise people
5. Run with the KE road relay people
6. Write at least 4 poems (and submit CWC entry)
7. Finish reading The Dyer's Hand (Auden), Uncle Tungsten (Oliver Sacks), and three Patrick O'Brian books, which I have been reading ALL AT THE SAME TIME, and during exam period too (terrible habits)
8. Sort out the videotapes at home and perhaps finally sit down to watch...
9. House, Monk, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA! :)
I await the coming tests with faint horror. Am relying on what Eng Keat calls my "aura" to pass my clinical test heh. My "aura", apparently, is of someone who studies a lot and knows her stuff. I think this has helped me to get away with a lot of ignorance in life. May it work this time too! :D
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Hmm...
7.12.2006
The NUS creative writing competition is here again (has been open for a long time lah just that I never thought about it before)... deadline 30 Dec. I think I will try and enter it for the sole purpose of making money haha. I may have many high-falutin' artistic ideals but my attitude to writing competitions is entirely mercenary. :D I will parade my heart, my deepest emotions, for the chance of winning $150. One might as well try to milk one's personal trauma for Practical Benefit! After all, Someone cannot appreciate the emotion, but maybe the NUS Lit Soc will appreciate the verse :P
For those interested, details here at the NUS Lit Soc website
A quick look through the written consequences of the emotional fallout of 2006 reveals 4 poems (out of about 20) that are of submittable standard. And I know I'll write another couple after exams, so I can pick one from there if it's any good and add it in. NUS Lit Soc has cunningly requested that each entrant send in a $2.00 fee with each poem, though.
The previous entry about 'specialist' subjects wasn't really a digression. Fits into one of the trains of thought which have been running in my mind lately. Will explain more after exams, in a week's time. In fact, have been thinking through many things during this exam period, as is wont to happen during exam periods.
it may have been one of those short-lived doomed passions
god knows how two people of such different species
fell for each other
despite being completely incompatible
god knows how and when we drank the cordial
but strange things happen
maybe it was the kangaroo glue
and hey
few people ever get the chance to experience such
grande passion
in their lifetimes
so we've been pretty privileged
- from a stupid stream-of-consciousness I wrote recently which I think is actually rather funny
There have been some recent periods of dysphoria associated with the Usual Suspect, but generally things look up - and thinking through some things has actually made them better. :)
* * *
and i also have over twenty poems
all about you
some of them are crap
but most of them are pretty good
....
but i don't even bother to show them to you
because you won't understand them
still less give them the value they deserve
* * *
(Haha see, maybe NUS Lit Soc will give me the 'value they deserve'! In $$! :D joking lah I'm being shameless here haha.)
It amuses me that the world in general seems to think that I have gotten over Things; I think to get over Someone decently it will take at least another year and at least one full marathon, if not five (and people never get 'over' these things completely do they?); but it is true I am less often overtaken by dysphoria nowadays. Good friends - and running - have had a lot to do with that!
* * *
shucks man
what does one do with these memories
it's all very well for you
you never had any qualms about disposing of them
i feel guilty throwing them down the rubbish chute
just as you did my heart
even though you won't feel it
i feel that i should not throw all this away
but as long as i feel like that
i'll never be able to marry anyone else
...
but then again
i would not like to be pining after you all my life
that would be kind of stupid
bah humbug
better study first
graduate first
before thinking about all this stuff again
in the meantime
i will just keep running
and running
away
from it all
the half marathon has done me good
42 km next year!!
my adizero reason for running:
----- ---- [proper noun]
stupid boy
stupid me!
* * *
And just in case you were wondering, that is certainly NOT one of the poems I am submitting haha... It is not even a poem... Just one of those second-person monologues I've been having in my head the entire year (second person monologues? a contradiction in terms?)... I realised that writing them out can be pretty funny heh.
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My "Specialist" Subjects (not so specialist anymore)
29.11.06
11:17 p.m.
There are a few secular topics that, even now, despite the height of my passion being over and my trivia knowledge all rusty and a fraction of what it was at the height of my 'powers', I can still talk about for days on end (probably boring everyone around me to death in the process heh) before exhausting the topic - though now only as an amateur and no longer with as much precision as before (and now that my knowledge has atrophied, most of what is left is only human-interest; dates and events and 'technical details' are the first to be lost heh). These include:
1. The French Revolution
2. Various other tragic struggles in the pursuit of happiness/utopia - bits of the Russian revolution-Stalin-Communism-Mao-Che Guevara, a very rough sprinkling of Irish trouble here and there (like the Easter uprising)
3. World War II in general (and a bit of World War I) / War movies
4. Spy stories from different eras of 20th century military history (SOE, the Cambridge Five) - as well as spy fiction. And thanks to my father I'm stuffed with James Bond movie trivia as well
5. Detective/police fiction - Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector John Rebus, Father Brown, with a bit of trivia about the other famous personalities in the genre. Also: anti-detective fiction - The Saint, Arsene Lupin.
6. The Arthurian legend: from its pagan origins to later medieval courtly/spiritual symbolism. / Les Miserables, both book and musical (with associated references, etc), and other Romantic literature and poetry / Figures in the Romantic movement. / So-called Christian 'Romanticism': GK Chesterton, Dorothy L Sayers, and the Inklings.
7. My central cluster of adventure fiction interests: Biggles, X-Wing, Hornblower (both books and TV series), Aubrey-Maturin, Battlestar Galactica (TV series), the Lymond Chronicles.
8. Comedy serieses. British: Monty Python (and related movies), Blackadder, Thin Blue Line, 'Allo 'Allo, Dad's Army, Whose Line Is It Anyway. American: Frasier, Seinfeld, M*A*S*H. Best of all, the British adventure/comedy serieses: The Avengers, The Persuaders, Remington Steele. One American adventure series: MacGyver. And, in recent years, the not-just-comic-but-also-real: House, Monk.
9. Medical/science-related/animal trivia and vet stories (this from a lifelong fan of Gerald Durrell, James Herriot and animal documentaries heh)
10. Literature/History and Poetry in general (expect a commentary from a highly opinionated, self-educated, passionate amateur, with MASSIVE gaps of ignorance, and a highly biased and iconoclastic one: my creative self was weaned on the poetic opinions of "bad boy" Robert Graves and ['not so bad boy'] WH Auden and if I can't win an argument based on scholastic theory, I turn all emotional and lapse into poet-speak. Be warned.)
* * *
Heh and as I was thinking about this, I went to look up a familiar friend on Wikipedia and look what I found. Goodness gracious! :D And to think that the last time we heard about any Oscar Saint-Just was in some anime! (Is this recurring choice of 'Oscar' a coincidence I wonder? Does it really go so well with 'Saint-Just'?!?) I haven't been keeping up with the current points of contact of the public with the French Rev, but I never expected one to appear in a universe that I knew. Heh as a self-respecting Hornblower/X-Wing fan, the Honor Harrington universe has always been another potential interest I've wanted to explore, just haven't gotten down to reading the books):
From this article on Wikipedia:
Oscar Saint-Just is a fictional character in David Weber´s Honorverse series of novels. His name is most likely a reference to Louis de Saint-Just, an important figure in the French Revolution.
As First Undersecretary for Internal Security, Oscar Saint-Just was the second highest-ranking man in the People's Republic of Haven's security apparatus. He managed to bring the support of some Internal Security officers to the plot led by Robert S. Pierre and Cordelia Ransom. Following the murder of Secretary Constance Palmer-Levy, he became the last Secretary for Internal Security of the Legislaturalist regime, aiding in the assassination of Hereditary President Harris.
With Pierre and Ransom, Saint-Just became member of the triumvirate which led the People's Republic under the guise of the Committee of Public Safety. He retained his office of Secretary for Security, and amalgamated the many security and intelligence agencies of the People's Republic into a single organization known as the "Office of State Security", "StateSec" or "SS" for short. He was responsible for the many purges in the military and the Legislaturalist families. Despite these violent acts, Saint-Just was not a bloodthirsty person like Cordelia Ransom; he only approved of these actions because he saw no other way. Saint-Just is probably based on the historical figure Louis de Saint-Just of the French revolution who sat in the Comité de Salut Public (Committee of Public Safety) with Robespierre.
Saint-Just was the only member of the Committee of Public Safety to survive the attempted coup by Esther McQueen; all the other members (except Rob S. Pierre, who was killed by McQueen's troops, and Ransom, who had died during Honor Harrington's escape, and others who had been previously purged) died when Saint-Just ordered the detonation of nuclear devices placed under the Octagon, where they had been imprisoned by McQueen. He then became the last Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, which had become a committee of one.
When news of the death of Manticoran Prime Minister Allen Summervale reached Haven, Saint-Just offered a truce to Manticore's new government, which accepted it. Distrusting the military, he planned to place it under the direct authority of StateSec and begin a new round of purges, but Admiral Thomas Theisman launched a successful coup. Theisman, instead of judging Saint-Just in a show trial, personally shot the Chairman.
* * *
Rob S. Pierre!!!!! goodness gracious! I never knew all this about the People's Republic of Haven!!
* * *
In this post-adolescence time of greater maturity and greater responsibility (and greater purpose: a MUCH better sense of what to do with one's short time on earth haha) I may no longer spend so many hours or expend so much passion/heartbreak on all these interests, but, I guess, they can never be NOT interesting to me nor entirely free of emotional significance, so big is the part in my emotional/ideological and mental development that they have played :D
And now, back to more pressing concerns... :)
