and to josh rouse, for calmness and serenity on the eve of the new year.

If I need to be curious

I’ll hold it back

If I seem to be serious

I’ll spout it out

Last year was the best I ever had

Last year was the best I sold you that

Now I hear your voice again

It’s like someone’s listening

I know you’re there

If you’re not in this world once again

Watch the way you backstroke across the room

Arms out, floating

It consumes me

You haunt in your trail

100m Backstroke – Josh Rouse

the year draws to a close, and 2003 will soon be one of memories and mirages. it has been a delightful year; the best in my schooling life, and also my saddest, of could have beens and what should have beens instead of being reduced to mediocrisy. and this is the story of eighteen years of my life, and the curtain falls on the most important chapter so far.

i screwed myself up, in all brutal honesty. i could have gone overseas if i had only worked; right now as all my classmates are being accepted into u penn, oxford, stanford, i can only look to myself and wonder, if only i had worked. but i didn’t, and this will be a baggage i will have to carry for the rest of my life. i could have had a shot at going overseas, but i didn’t treasure it. it’s my fall, my hubris and the knowledge of this descent will weigh on me for ages to come.

one day perhaps, the guilt will kill me. but not today; now is a time for closure, and acceptance.

and almost finally, i seemed to have discovered that inner sense of calm and tranquility that has eluded me for so long, and it’s a fine balance between peacefulness and melancholy.

hello all, it is new year’s eve and i woke up this morning a man humbled, sombre, reborn.

and this post is for you; thank you joce.

and then she was gone, the luminary symbol of her time, and ours.

2003 has been a very bad year, thank god it’s changing soon.

and i positively swear, army makes you duller by the moment. as of the moment my cranial functions are processing at an amazingly delayed rate, and i have quite nothing to say.

note to myself: do not ever, EVER, sleep at 4am on the day of your enlistment. your body gets shot into pieces.

—————–

army so far has been fun, until i woke up this morning to a 38.6 fever. saw the medic and was given a three day mc, set to return on the 30th. but considering that the 30th is my company’s anniversary, and all of us are released for new year’s eve, i only have to return on the 1.1.04. AHAHAHAHAH!

-coughs and dies-

bloody flu.

hubris

hahaha all these sound so fatalistic! oh well.

2.42 in the morning with my mom screaming at me, i remain indifferent and calm.

(and i think i have been a very bad son.)

somewhere within me, part of myself dies.