tags: inspiration
2000
July
- 2000 Jul 5
- Trying to Fight Fate
I know what everyone else wants, but I can never figure it out for yself. Typical melodrama of course, but you've got to add some spice to life. Too early to give any useful details away anyway. Got to find a proper way of exposition.
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2001
February
- 2001 Feb 10
- High
I want to yell obscenities, not because I'm pissed off or anything, I just think that the world is deserving of obscenities.
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2002
November
- 2002 Nov 28
- Summit
Inspiration strikes at odd hours. I have said this once before. I hope I do not live to regret it. And I mean that last sentence in all the ways it can be interpreted.
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2003
June
- 2003 Jun 29
- Where Art Thou, My Muse?
Longing desperately for some inspiration
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2006
March
- 2006 Mar 12
- fuck human nature
I am, ultimately, an idealist. However, I can understand that there are limits to trying to achieve utopia. There are physical laws—thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics—that make certain things impossible. But when someone tells me that something is impossible because of the recalcitrance of human nature, I call bullshit.
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April
- 2006 Apr 7
- rabbit holes (a tale that's been told over and over)
I finished rereading Memory, Thorn, and Sorrow by Tad Williams, which has been (like many other fantasy novels such as The Sword of Shannara and The Wheel of Time series) compared much to The Lord of the Rings. While there exists much older literature that could considered fantasy (for example, The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser written in the 16th century), I believe that it was Tolkien that allowed booksellers to actually have an entire marketing category devoted to such stuff.
· Read more… - 2006 Apr 30
- inspiration
Three things today:
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May
- 2006 May 14
- an even more perfect sunrise
So, yeah, I clearly have my issues with regards to how things in the past have (and, more relevant) have not gone. I mean, we’re talking a good eight or nine years now of what-never-was and what-cannot-be, and I really can’t think about these things without getting disordered. Er, more disordered than I already am.
· Read more… - 2006 May 15
- in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end was the word
Ursula K. Le Guin, in her fantasy world of Earthsea, comes up with a brilliant system of magic, one predicated on, essentially, words.
· Read more… - 2006 May 16
- the metropole-province axis
Another concept that definitely informed my conception of the imaginary city of Cantral Araban is the metropole-province axis, which is basically the dialectic between the central city of a region and the surrounding countryside. This dialectic is especially characteristic of ex-colonies. I learned about this paradigm from Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson, which was one of the required texts in the Southeast Asian Studies survey class I took as an undergrad, and analyzing Manila through this particular lens was very enlightening.
· Read more… - 2006 May 24
- there is no suffering without desire
I ran across this phrase on a random blog, and this phrase happens to be a major tenet of Buddhism. I have waxed philosophically much about the Art of Not Wanting and it is such a tricky thing. As I’ve noted, this particular state of bliss has nothing to do with the avolitional state which undergirds atypical depression and schizophrenia. Instead of a lack, an emptiness, the Art of Not Wanting is a sense of completion.
· Read more… - 2006 May 24
- thrust out in the spotlight (this is blogorrhea)
I don't know why I worry so much about things that haven't happened yet, and aren't going to happen any time soon. It's not like I can do anything now to mitigate whatever will happen.
· Read more… - 2006 May 26
- may, might, shoulda, coulda
I think I probably wrote this somewhere else before, but I always find the month of May filled with possibilities. I have always identified it with the end of the academic year, with graduations, with confirmations, with Pentecost. The point of transition, the time when the old order slows down, and the hint of new beginnings tantalizes.
· Read more… - 2006 May 26
- self-sufficient
I hope against all hope that I remember this simple fact the next time I am faced with extreme crisis.
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June
- 2006 Jun 3
- portents
What is the most likely explanation is that the only thing I've had to eat (at least since 11 a.m.) is practically pure unadulterated sugar. Never underestimate the fact that sugar is actually quite a potent psychotropic agent.
· Read more… - 2006 Jun 8
- the quest for water
I have developed the habit of coming home from work and making a beeline to my bed. I seem to be running out of gas much too early these days.
· Read more… - 2006 Jun 11
- meditation on inadequacy
I find it interesting that my mind is unable to remodel the emotional trajectory of my life through at least the last 10-15 years. I remember being someone who was a perfectionist, inordinably hard on myself, always thinking that I was a failure, that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t smart enough, that I’d never succeed. I recognize that a lot of this was in response to a mother who was excruciatingly demanding, who couldn’t stand things being done in any other way than her own, and who would just do things for me instead letting me do things my own way.
· Read more… - 2006 Jun 13
- sunset over the sea
This was one of those days that I wish I could bottle up and save for when times get bad. With my iPod as my personal soundtrack, I felt unstoppable. There were moments of such heartbreaking beauty that I felt that I could die.
· Read more… - 2006 Jun 21
- summertime
The sun stands still for the longest day of the year, and I can’t help but pause and reflect. There are less than 90 days before I turn 30, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I need a long-term plan.
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July
- 2006 Jul 9
- consolation
I am trying to trace down the etymology of the word “consolation,” wondering if it is necessarily related to “isolation.” Alas, there are no clear answers, but are there ever?
· Read more… - 2006 Jul 15
- old is not up
The funny thing is that, despite my lack of organization, despite my disdain of long-term plans and schedules, my dislike of homogenous order, my claustrophobia in the face of structure, I am, deep-down inside, a control freak.
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October
- 2006 Oct 13
- no day but today
There are three musicals that I used to know all the lyrics to: “Beauty and the Beast”, “Once On This Island”, and “Rent” Each one encompassed a particular period of my life, and “Rent” reminds me of my junior and senior year in college, especially because my roommate at the time was quite obsessed with it. Being in college, the Bohemian lifestyle, the conflict between making money and making art—these things all resonated.
· Read more… - 2006 Oct 15
- one sunset at a time
Nothing like a nice sunset to snap me out of a terrible mood.
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December
- 2006 Dec 5
- yet another sunset from some random day
sunset from Torrey Pines
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2007
May
- 2007 May 1
- tempus fugit
My oldest friend whom I’ve known since we were in third grade is getting married to a wonderful woman sometime in 2008, and I can’t help but marvel. It seems like it was just last week we were playing Wing Commander II and listening to the Cure, the Smiths, Soft Cell, and Front 242, or walking up that godforsaken hill while playing some weird word game. There were all those hours spent in front of the Commodore 64 and the 8-bit Nintendo. There was Robotech. Voltron. Bastketball in my backyard. Junior high football. Watching movies at the AMC in Burbank. I could stop and reminisce for hours on end, and my memories may be astray. But it all goes by so fast.
· Read more… - 2007 May 6
- mika “any other world”
In any other world
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you could tell the difference
and let it all unfurl
into broken remnants.
Smile like you mean it
and let yourself let go. - 2007 May 8
- holding on to a thin strand of hope
I suppose if that’s all the medications accomplish, I’m still getting somewhere. For the first time in a long, long time, I actually believe that there’s a good chance that my life will get better. I’m actually looking forward to the future.
· Read more… - 2007 May 9
- the witching hour
It’s 1:30 a.m. and I just woke up about half an hour ago. Ever since I finished up my last call month for this year, I’ve just been exhausted. I suppose I have about a month of sleep to catch up on. But this makes my sleep schedule completely screwed up.
· Read more… - 2007 May 11
- happiness, the continuing elusiveness of
Now I realize that happiness in of itself is a rather empty goal, reserved for victims of unusual strokes, the congenitally mentally incapacitated, and the clinically deranged. You lesion a few tracts in your brain, and you can be permanently happy until your dying day, singing “zippy-de-doo-da” out of your asshole, your face guaranteed to freeze with a rictus grin. I can see it now, a corpse grinning maniacally in his/here casket.
· Read more… - 2007 May 17
- crossing my fingers
The last time my sister graduated, I was seriously in love with S. While in the back of my head I suppose I always knew it wasn’t going to work, I had been doing a good job ignoring that particular fact. Naturally, when I got back to Chicago, everything went to hell, and I went into a patented downward spiral.
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December
- 2007 Dec 11
- the longest road
Just when you thought it couldn’t get lonelier. Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any more difficult than it already is. There will be no resting on any laurels. The road ahead climbs up steeply, into the forbidding vault of the heavens.
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2008
April
- 2008 Apr 25
- how i hate the night (reprise)
Now the world has gone to bed,
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Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
June
- 2008 Jun 10
- turn
found on ayşe's tumblr
· Read more… - 2008 Jun 14
- there are no happy endings, because nothing really ever ends
I don't remember the last time I wept tears of joy. Tonight—even though I have 16 days left—I felt that, at the last, it was truly, finally, over.
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2014
July
- 2014 Jul 1
- dreaming of morning dew on rose petals
April was the cruelest month
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long buried memories disinterred
like a knife wound to the chest
bittersweetness, chances unfulfilled
time lost to sorrow and despair
and yet there was no chance
time transforms chance to inevitability
all hope is lost
Yet I remain