Intrinsic Masochism

Just a short one for today.

I find human beings intrinsicly masochistic. We just have to find some way to hurt ourselves in one way or another.
How many times have we jumped head-first into relationships that hurt even when we know not to?
How many times have we prod and peeled at a scab even though we know it isn't healed?
How many times have we wasted ourselves just to feel like shite the next day?

I am pretty sure we have many wonderful and imaginative ways to self-destruct. As the saying goes, no one can hurt us more than ourselves.

And so we go on doing so.

Cry and Carry On Crying

A long long time ago, when I am with someone who is crying I, can't help myself but cry along with them. I try to emphatize and the sadness just seems to amplify. I'll try to help others stop crying.

Not so long ago, I've learnt how to offer comfort to those who cry. I try to tell them everything is alright. I am there by their side. I am the shoulder they cry on. I'll tell them to hush and stop their tears.

Recently, I've finally realized, everyone needs to cry once in while. It always feels better after you've cried, and only when you carry on crying till your heart tells you to stop. So I've stopped telling people to stop crying henceforth.

No Exit

Forced to look at my reflection
A perfect mirror with a cracked smile
Bona fide contradiction
My only hope is for a life worthwhile

Living with or without
What else does it matter?
I am looking for a way out
Of this misery growing deeper

I'd just want to shut the door
And wallow in the darkness
Scream out till I hit the floor
And go down with my madness

Proseac: For the times I choose to shut everyone and everything out.

The Music and The Song

When did this piece started playing, I probably would never know.
I can hear my life as it echoes out in song.
The melody is faint and it is hard to sing to, but it plays on nonetheless.
Sometimes it is a bare and lonely melody that plays eerily in the still of the night.
Sometimes my song intertwines with someone elses song.
The union forms a beautiful harmony and the song goes on.
We try to to fill in the lyrics and we try to sing to the tunes.
Eventually our songs split apart, but the music goes on.
My song is of highs and lows, never in monotone.
Sometimes I crack singing in a falsetto pitch I can never hit
Sometimes the deep bass resonates, barely audible.
My song is a magnum opus built upon a skeletal tune
Events in my life strike certain strings that forms chords to my tune.
The chords ring out as the echoes meld into my melody.
There is no constant beat or rhythm to my song
The tempo speeds up and slows down without notice
It is a song of drunken stupor, of drug induced hallucination.
It is a song of infinite sadness, a song of pain.
It is a song of romantic love, of beauty and memories.
It is a song of infinite joy, a song of happiness.
The music fades into the background,
My song is sung in accapella.
Slowly my song fades out from the fore of day.
It is a tune for myself in the still of the night.
Watch me sway to my music and song.
It will never stop playing till the end of my time.

About Giving and Taking Back

It may be a blessing or it may be a curse that we all will fall in love with someone else at some point of our lives.
Personally, I have fallen in love a couple of times (and have been involved in several relationships) in my life time thus far. It is very unfortunate, that nothing has worked out right up until now.
I've just been musing for the better part of today. When we are in love with someone else, we just can't seem to control ourselves but to give. Give and give even more. Give to the point where it hurts, and still we cannot help but give. A part of of us always goes out to that special person.
I wonder, after all the giving thru all those years, thru each and every person that was special to me, how much do I have left to give? So many parts of me have gone out and will always stay with them.
The tragic part is, all that has been given, can never and will never be taken back, no matter how hard I try.
Maybe I just really don't want anything back.
If giving hurts, taking back truly kills.
Them, whom I have truly fallen deeply in love with, will always have a special place in my heart from here on until the day my heart ceases to beat. Sure, the memories have faded from my head, but deep down inside my bleeding heart, I know that they are in there somewhere.
Introspectively, there isn't much anymore that I can give. It is all running dry. The essence used up. I can feel myself, just the cynical shell left with life sucked dry.

So yes, I am twisted. Yes I am aloof. Yes I am cold. Yes I am emotionless. Yes I am one selfish fuck.

Simply because, I have nothing more to give and I've died in my attempt to take something back.

How I Deal with A Problem

It is inevitable that I have to deal with problems day in and out.
Numerous experience from dealing with problems have imparted me an important skill:

"If I can't solve a problem, the next best thing is to laugh it off"

Yeah, it may sound silly, but I suppose it is better than sulking, hiding and whining. Most of the time, if I do manage to keep my spirits high, I will eventually solve the problem.
It is either that or the problem seems to go away, at least for a while.

Ten Things About March

There are ten things I would like to highlight for the month in which:

1)The month is March, and the date currently is somewhere very near to the date of my birth quite some 20 odd years ago. (Its quite a big odd to add on to the 20 years if you must be precise)
2)Sometime during the period of this month, I will be aging yet another year, which possibly might be an excuse for me to get drunk.
3) March was originally the month where the Europeans had their 'New Year' because spring is just round the corner.
4) Astronomically speaking, this is the month of fishes and rams.
5) The month is supposed to be named after the Roman God o War - Mars (or Ares in Greek). Does that make me a Martian? (ok it's a bad joke, so sue me)
6) Everyone is paying way too much attention as to when the date I was born. The attention is causing me a little bit of discomfort.
7) Fact is, I don't enjoy being the centre of attention at a party. I prefer playing side-dish to the main-course, or so to speak.
8) This month always seems to cause me some heart-wrenching moments for one reason or another. EVERY YEAR without fail.
9) It is also a month that seems to just whip on by very very fast, in spite of it having 31 days in total. (The only other short month I ever remember is Febuary, but I suppose that would be normal?)
10) Finally, a dear dear friend of mine will be having his daughter coming round the corner real soon. She might just share the same birthday as I. My prayers for her that that will be the only thing she ever has in common with me. Nonetheless, I will still love her. This month is dedicated to Baby Gwinny, coming in from the stork and arriving really soon.

Just a Plea

I know I can't stay here forever,
Someday our party ends,
There ain't no dance that last a lifetime,
There ain't no footsteps on the sands.

I know I can't be drunk forever
Someday the smoke will clear,
There ain't no hurt that last a lifetime,
There ain't no sadness to remember.

I know I won't be alive forever,
Someday I'll part with a plea,
Though the dance don't last a lifetime,
Maybe someday you'll remember me.

Proseac: My eulogy?

Uno Silencio y Uno Grito

Listen to the silence, it is but one more sigh to a scream.

The Valentine Cliche

Bouquet of flowers;
Box of chocolates;
Candlelight dinner;
Sappy love-songs;
Love themed movies;
Romantic beach walks;
Hugs and kisses.

Celebrating a day for lovers and romance, we also mourn at the funeral of creativity.

Proseac: I just have this way of making everything look bleak. Ahhh.... fuggit.

Looking for A Female Contributor

I am extending an invitation to a fellow blogger to contribute into this little depressing space. I've kind of figured that I want to do this for a couple of reasons namely:
1) I've figured it is kind of hard to get any sort of continuity with my spasmodemic updating of the blog. Two minds contributing should roll the blog along at an acceptable rate of sorts.
2) I am conducting this experiment just to wonder if there is a kindred spirit out there in cyberspace somewhere that is actually able to share my mind's wave length and thus contribute to this blog
3) I have decided I want a female contributor because I think it will ultimately balance stuff out. Think of it as getting two sides of the story.
4) Dialogues are more fun than monologues.

Now down to my requirements of the candidate.
1) People who know me in person or know me in my alter-ego form need not apply. I am thinking of this as an anonymous blogging experience. Blogging with people I know somehow kills the experience. You know what I mean.
2) I want people to write stuff in ENGLISH. People who write in English variants like 'Singlish' or 'Maglish' need not apply.
3) Please don't try to 'brighten' up the blog. I like this blog as it is, as an indulgent space for the darker things in life. Think of this place as a place where people will come to for inspiration to sorrow, pain, morbid and alternative intellectualism.
4) Don't treat the blog like a diary. I don't think this is the place for people to read about what I've shopped for today, what I had for lunch and who do I know. I certainly don't want to know what happened to the neighbours dog yesterday too. As you can see, it is not really relevant here.
5) I welcome muses, proses, short stories, poems, literature and stuff like that. Personal experiences and afterthoughts are nice too.Be really dreamy and creative with expression and mood play. That is the essence of this blog.
6) This is a blog. Not a photo-log. Remember that.
7) Not all your writing needs to be sad and morbid and painful. Bittersweet entries are fine.
8) Don't involve the blog in politics or current affairs. There are enough of those out there as it is already.
9) You can be dirty in your contributions. Explicit language is fine. Just bear in mind to use it with taste. Remember, the only difference between 'The Birth of Venus' and 'Jenna Jameson XXX' is in it's expression as an art form.
10) Any and all names and characters mentioned on the blog are fictional. Keep it that way.
11) You may be confrontational, but never offensive.
12) Finally, I value all intellectual and creative property. Be original in your creations and don't plagiarize. Please.

I seriously wonder who in the world out there will share this with me. Ah well, gotta try anyway. Interested contributors, just drop me a mail at asketx(at)gmail.com

That Toilet Moment

I wonder sometimes, is it just me or does that toilet moment happen to everyone?

Ever tried holding your piss or bowels in and enduring the agony for long long long moments? The tingling sensation of things arriving at the border. Holding it in cause the toilet is just around the corner and you keep on telling yourself, 'It is just a little bit more, a tiny little bit more!!'
Your face goes blue. The breathing gets rapid. The little hairs on the back of your neck starts standing up as you shiver.
So off you go running as fast as you can as soon as you hit home, racing to the toilet while trying to unbutton your pants at the same time.
Finally, you arrive at the toilet bowl. Staring at it, all your motor functions go limp as you whip out your tools as fast as possible. For that one instant in time in the presence of the almighty toilet bowl, you cannot seem to hold it in just for a couple of seconds more, in spite of the hours you've been holding it in up till this point.
Pathetically you leave a huge mess behind.

Piss, crap and all. It must be some sort of strange magic at work there.

Its not all that bad though. Savour that exhilarating moment of relief. It sure beats orgasm of any kind in my opinion.

My Blender Metaphor

I remember giving out advice to a friend of mine once. We kind of got into that conversation out of the blue. He was none too happy with the way he had with the people around him. It seemed like he was dropping out of relationships with girls and losing friends faster than a can of Bygon can make the flies go bygone. The good thing for him was that his career was on the pick up. You win some, you lose some, most might say.

So we were just hanging around having a casual conversation over a cuppa when out of my mind came something that I think made a lot of sense but somehow eluded me all that while.

I think it is funny how books and people tell you to partition your time and get organized. Decide how much time we want to do what and spend time with the people that we care about and doing the things we need to do. Having it mapped out like clockwork and sticking to it like mechanical is the essence to success in all aspects of life.

Strangely, I didn't exactly agree with what books and people are saying. More to the point, I think the instructions were a bit misleading. See, I do agree strategic division of time and devotion to our different aspects of life is a good thing. It is the right way to move forward. Can't move forward unless we're all organized right?

The problem is, most people follow that advice without really getting the right pictures in their head. Most think that their time is like a pie, or a cake.
Take a knife!
Cut it up and divide!
Partition. Keep it all like clockwork.
Follow like machines!

That is where the problems lie. We start getting so effecient, we either start to hate what we do or the people we know start to hate us for what we do. Either way, it is really back to the starting point.

I think most people miss the key message. It is really not so much about the division, it all has got to do with the proportion. Don't divide and partition time. Proportion time! Think of it of like making a martini. If you will only make a glass of martini. How much vodka versus how much vermouth versus how much ice ultimately gives you how good or how crap a martini you end up with.

So I suppose the books and people with the wise advice were right in some sense. They were correct in a way, to tell you to partition your time. The only problem is, we would've ended up with too many pieces of cakes to juggle. The cake would've been too disjointed. It's so much easier if we had all those proportioned pieces back in one cake.

Well my guess is, for all the wise advice, they simply forgot to tell you to put your divided pieces in a blender.

Masks

Masks have a strange strange power over people.

It is either that or most people simply don't like being themselves most of the time.

Putting on a mask puts us in a state of uninhibitation. The mask is that last bastion of security between our inner selves and the wild wild world out there. We will dare to do things that we will never ever of have done. Say things that we will never ever of have said. From the most outrageous to the most insane to the utmost depraved even.

Of course I've thought that the explanation was simple.

People simply just don't want to be recognized for doing things that they shoudn't of have done.
That explains the bank robbers in balaclavas and the convicted felons with paperbags over their heads.
But the mask goes way beyond that.
People don masks and achieve a different state of consciousness. Maybe its a point of contact to our inner self. We play out the role that we really want to be under the shroud of the mask. We play the hero. We play the villain. We are the animals. We are the hunt. We are who we want and are not to be. A being with no readable emotions. An automaton. We become the life
of our masks.
As we go through life. Think about it. How many times have we rejected our true selves just to give life to this mask that we force ourselves to wear? The facade. The masquerade. The deceit.
Underneath it all there is only one truth.
We simply want to be discovered.

And We Drown

As the water closes above our heads
And the icy grip of death pierce us
We stare at mortality in its face
We fear
We tremble

Breath by breath
The air thins and disappears
The beginning of our fade to black

Slowly the fear is overcome
The comfort sinks into me
The image of your courage and love
The picture to my grave I carry

With you in my deep embrace
The grip of death slowly released

Still we let the water wash over our heads
And we let aqua close us in
Baptize our journey
And drift us far away

Precious Tears

Infinite sadness in the night,
Tears well in her eyes.
Each droplet falls,
Like diamonds from the skies.

Every tear a dying star,
A measure of broken dreams.
Sauntering gently downwards,
In trails of stardust streams.

Every droplet from your eye,
Shed in love for he.
A sigh, a wisp, a breath,
Tear drops falling free.

Precious are the tears of love,
Liquid diamond drops.
She weeps now and then again,
Will ever the sadness stop?

Proseac: The inspiration came from the art piece that I came across while surfing the web. The original artpiece could be found at www.fullmoongraphics.com.

Two Skies, Two Worlds

Loneliness speaks to me
Gentle whispers in my heart
My deepest fears are true
We were meant to be apart

Our different worlds exist
Under two seperate skies
Where yours is clothed in velvet
Mine is draped with lies

Where you have a world to live for
A life fulfilled in full
Mine is a nihilistic world of loneliness
Where I play the fool

The princess and the harlequin
Coupled paradox we make
Not a fault of you that we part
Another cruel twist of fate.

For Every Moment...

For every laughter that escapes my lips
I am reminded of an orphan crying in the world somewhere,

For every sip of wine that I drink
I am reminded a child dying of thirst in the world somewhere,

For every morsel of meat that I eat
I am reminded of a man suffering famine in the world somewhere,

For every festive cheer I feel
I am reminded of a mother in sorrow in the world somewhere,

For every easel of comfort I know
I am reminded of a family tragedy in the world somewhere,

For every moment that I live my life
I am reminded of someone dying senselessly in the world somewhere.

Proseac: I am so utterly thankful for my life, however depressing it may be. In this season of festivities and holidays, take a moment to remind ourselves how truly blessed we really are.

A Bruise, A Cut and A Haemorrhage

A bruise goes beneath the surface, a mark left behind after a bad knock. It hurts quite a bit right after the first knock, but it tends to recover rather quickly. Usually, it does not hurt after that. It only starts hurting again when you prod, massage or exert the bruise. Sometimes, even with prodding, you are not even sure if it really hurts anymore. It tends to tickle a funny bone and makes you laugh. When a bruise heals, you forget that it ever existed.

A cut is the opening of the surface exposing the tender bits underneath. It hurts a lot more after a cut and it recovers a lot slowly. It hurts even after it starts to heal. Prodding and exertion on the wound will break the scab, and the healing process will have to start all over again. The pain is absolute, that you won't ever think its funny. When a cut heals, it sometimes leave a scar, reminding you of the day the cut was made.

A haemmorhage is buried deep inside, a mark of a potentially mortal combustion. It hurts like you've never been hurt before. Usually, even when you have stopped hurting, you still aren't sure if you have healed completely. On the surface everything looks calm and steady, but deep down inside you bleed. Bleed and die. It leaves no scars and you won't even realize that your life and hopes ebb away. The only signs of what happened will be in a post mortem report done in a lab while you lie on the slab in the morgue. In other words, it will always be too late.

Consider the above. Look at my heart. What stage of hurt do you think it is in?

New Year?

Ahhh, the end of 2005 and a 'fresh new start' for the year 2006.
Seemingly I feel compelled to write simply because this day is like a bookmark of sorts. It is supposed to mark the beginning of a 'new chapter' and also bookend the 'old stories'. (Pardon the cliches)
I prefer to think of it as an interlude that temporarily changes the time signature of things. Slowing down the prelude and setting the tune for the coming climax.
Anyhow, to break out of the box a little, I have decided to cheer up my blog (at least a little) with sprinkles of optimism.

So here is to another year ahead.

Cheers,
Proseac