of convenience and little consequence

This is the season of Love.
I know some one who does not believe in Love.
It must be very difficult to live a life without believing in Love.
You cannot not believe if you have known ... that must mean my friend has not known Love.
Or is it just a reason or excuse, just a simple matter of convenience with little consequence.
I had hoped that my gift could wash over his shell
- and touch something...
I was wrong.
Perhaps all there is,
is just the shell.


~r

arriving

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me - the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods -
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house - , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,-
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate in the evening...

~ rilke

masquerade

beautiful creatures
behind sequined masks
and colourful feathers
one enchanting mystery night
some partly disguised
some partly hidden
veiled in a crowded glitterati
allowing anonymity
the perfect accessory
to the love of transgression
when a different persona
begins to perform
a new dance
the question is
which is real
what is pretense?
~r

my world belonged to me,
no easy surrender,
yet a higher wisdom
a better being by far
stays with me
- tonight I feel lost but never alone,
the emptiness only time could' ve shown
- You make my life You are my life,
my strength all along
I screwed up and have done You wrong,
i wont blame You if you don't forgive me,
i accused You when I couldn't see,
yet knowing
all the while You love me
- my world has ceased to turn right without You,
With You i lose my will to fight surrendering my heart.

~r

ART

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others-Vincent Van Gogh

civil rights to human rights

"It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights. When you deal with human rights you are not dealing with something clearly defined in the Constitution. They are rights that are clearly defined by the mandates of a humanitarian concern."- Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated April 4, 1968.

acceptance

Acceptance - is not just tolerating - it's celebrating our family and friends - appreciating who they are - giving lots of space for them to be free to be who they are and plenty courage to develop and change, even if the changes are not to our liking because we prefer the status quo or some quirky idea of what we feel "should be". nothing is as it "should be" - it just is. i celebrate you, my family and friends. and especially, a big kissy huggy welcome to this wonderful strange world, lil Ana Choi, born 1.1.2005! You are already a delight to your aunties and uncles, grand ma and grand pa, not to mention your anxious first time parents! what a wonderful start to 2005!!!~ r

limitations

Argue for your limitations and sure enough they're yours-Richard Bach

feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers.
Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other:
then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

~ e e cummings

fortress

i built my little fortress
made of memories
cemented by scars
with you...it took a bit more time than expected
a little over six years?
and now a decade later
and the fortress stands tall

The story of Terri Schiavo

Terri Schiavo was a mentally disabled young woman. Her birth father was granted right to end her life, notwithstanding protest from her mother and stepfather, parents willing to take care of their disabled daughter. The birth father had long before moved on to another life and family.
Terri Schiavo was severely mentally disabled but was not dying. So now we get to decide to end the lives of similarly disabled people, even children, whose mental capacities greatly diminish their quality of life?? Some one puts it so clearly, "the issue is not their quality of life, but the ethical quality of our society." What is happening to the human race? Have we so degenrated that we terminate a life when it no longer enjoys the quality we decide it should? Mercy killing is another word for murder?

the game

once in a while
i glimpse another part of me
in a stranger's eyes
and so the game begins
the smile,
inviting challenging,
the touch,
sparkling the sensous tingling
the pulse,
becoming the sound of drums
the hunger,
once satisfied,
returns again a million times stronger
and the flame -
burns too bright too soon sizzles and dies. ~r

the difficult path

the difficult path
to meet grief and despair
is to realise that dreams and hopes
grow only by onslaughts
of the initiation of the soul to Endings
and to be silent - listening to the sacred songs
songs that hold the secrets of the soul

the difficult path
to meet grief and despair
is to accept the spinning of fate
and the turning of time
and to open the door
take the step into the Unknown
dancing to the rythmn and the lead of Fate.

~r

Paris

Alone
in a crowded city built on romance
What am I supposed to do?
Should I stay and wait for you?
What am I supposed to do?
Should I go and look for you?
What am I supposed to do?
Screaming out, break the silence
and empty this void for you?
~r

is love a delusion?

"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another" ~ quote of day on Bangsar Bodega's board

3 comments (not doing a Carrie Bradshaw here):
1. Love oftentimes IS a delusion (illusion, even and for some of us elusion) . OR is it lovers who are often times deluded? I read somewhere that one only knows if it's truly LOVE (with capital L, O, V and E) on hindsight, years and years later, after its tried and tested. For the present, it s very much a gamble or an act of faith - love or delusion?
2. That comment is hilarious! I think it s a cynical stupid remark (am I sounding too judgmental?). There are no 2 identical women. Even twins differ. And WOMEN - we take pride in our diversity... in fact, no one woman remains the same one minute to another .. it's a SO female trait - we are fickle!
3. If all women were the same, then life is so much easier for men - no more search for the elusive "IT- girl", no issues with commitment, fidelity and insecurities. BLISS.

I am getting back to work... p.s "delusion" also defined in the Oxford English Ref dictionary as " a symptom or form of mental disorder" :-)

how?

Sleepless last night
Wake up in the morning
Flooded with day light
All the things I've dreamt
Repeating in my head
And I stare into emptiness
face to face with loneliness
What did I expect?
Did I see forever in you, my dream?
I never wanted it to hurt
I hope you're satisfied
I never was.
How can I miss
That which I never had
How can I forget
the dream which I never lived.

~r

sunny hague days

(a special mention of the hague and e.e cummings, i think will do justice
to the simple enchantment of the Hague)

" i thank You God
for most this amazing day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birth day of life and love and wings:
and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing
seeing breathing any-
lifted from the no of all nothing
- human merely being doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)".

~ e. e. cummings

of fire and ice

Some say
the world will end
in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted
of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction
ice
Is also great
And would suffice.


-Robert Frost

freedom?

From the beginning,
women have made men
pay for sex -
- a leg of wild boar, goldchains, marriage.
Now, their daughters give it away,
call it freedom!
~Hilary Tham

love?

"Love is a joint experience between two persons
- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved.
There are the lover and the beloved,
but these two come from different countries.
Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto.
And somehow every lover knows this.
He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing.
He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer."
~steven mitchell

mystery of the heart

We may one day unlock all the physical secrets of life.
We may eventually decipher
the miracles of the universe,
raise the principles of science
and the musings of philosophy
to unknown horizons.
We may banish ignorance
on a galactic scale,
but no matter how far we travel,
or what wonders we create,
we will never fully comprehend
that which defines our humanity.
We will never penetrate the sublime mystery of the heart,
and nor should we.
Unlike baby milk or the speed of light,
Love will never be reduced to formula.
It will be fated as the eternal irony.

~spink

bitter love

Bitter love, a violet with its crown
of thorns in a thicket of spiky passions,
spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come
to conquer my soul? What via dolorosa* brought you?

Why did you pour your tender fire
so quickly over my life's cool leaves?
Who pointed the way to you? What flower,
what rock, what smoke showed you where I live?

Because the earth shook - it did -, that awful night
then dawn filled all the gobblets with its wine;
the heavenly sun declared itself;

while inside, a ferocious love wound around
and around me - till it pierced me with its thorns, its sword,
slashing a seared road through my heart.

(Pablo Neruda Sonnet III)

(* via dolorosa: way of suffering - the legendary road Christ was supposed to have taken and forced to carry his heavy cross naked after being tortured throughout the night)

miracles

Sermon topic : Why do we need miracles?
My lesson: To love Him for His Person and not what He can do for me.
Having God in my life is more than enough.
Can I utter my daily prayers without asking for anything for myself?
That will be a challenge especially at this time.
What i will ask is for His Will be done and leave it at that, with trust that He knows best.

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed.-Bernard M. Baruch
It's not so much for a long and fruitful life for me- it's more so for restful sleeps at night. Been tossing the past few evenings - my mini emotional tsunami - not from all the excitement of Christmas - more so of realising how fallible and undiscerning i can be with matters of the heart. Albeit it's Christmas, and it's a season for giving - nothing can excuse my overspending matters of the heart. In the clear mindedness on Christmas morn, it's time to make amends of mistakes made. The visa of heart currencies afforded to a scrooge was withdrawn. I learn to forgive myself, the scrooge, and all the intentional wrongs or otherwise mistakes unintentional - and hopefully i will sleep with a smile and wake up with one soon enough. ~r

my choice

give me pain,
if that be the price of friendship,
tears
rather than the cold distain for love
i rather be
laughing and hurting
than be a dweller of grave and tombs.
~ r