Kleptomaniac's Dream.

That's what I'm calling my mega shopping bag. Probably none of you has ever seen me carrying it but I can tell you one thing, it is a grocery shopper's dream come true. Ever since I discovered Wilkinson offers a student discount (OF 15% NO LESS!!)#!) I've been going there much too often to be healthy.. for my manhood that is. I think I've become domesticated. I have just proudly returned from a shopping expedition where I bought a baking tray, a roasting tray, a wok, and some tea towels.. Well now.

But one other day as I was leaving one of the supermarkets I was stopped by one of the cashiers who sheepishly asked to take a look inside my bag. He probably thought he was being quite rude or something but on the inside I was thinking: What a fine young man! Doing his job with mettle and panache! Cause I could see that clearly, I looked pretty suspicious. It's so easy to slip things into this megabag, hence what I've christened it.

Been reading the (thus far) excellent City of Small Blessings by Simon Tay, and will hopefully proceed to complete it today cause I've decided not to let such a glorious day go to waste! Gonna hit the park later for some sun-on-boy action before I get all pasty again.

I also bought a lampshade the other day. A mother bleeding lampshade. What devious spirit hath possessed me so?? It is a gorgeous piece of work, handmade (because I am a total sucker for all such things, as I might have mentioned once or twice before) and the result of a little chat with the delightful maker of the Kitsch Attic one-off pieces, and learning about the new (I presume, if only because of an appalling assumption that it has to be cause I've never heard of it) and cool and environmentally conscious practice/trend of upcycling.

I'd like to think that most of the things I purchase has some sort of meaning or story behind them. (Not all of them, cause that would be atrociously pretentious.) Because, as I tried to explain one of my pricier purchases to my sister once, what are you willing to pay for if not for a certain human experience? Is that not the point (or at least one of the points) of art anyway? A connection; with somethings or someones, often in a surprising or unexpected way? So when I stumble upon a quaint little shop or something somewhere, and find myself in conversation with someone so completely apart (or foreign) to me, it is an unexpected connection, so I am willing to spend (sometimes exorbitant amounts of) money in order that I may have a keepsake of such connections.

Of course, there are the completely random things, like my 10 euro clock, or my cheap wall hanging, random postcards etc which happen to catch my fancy and I just like, and there's nothing deeper about that. But still, it soothes my aching soul (and ravaged wallet) to think that there is some meaning behind some of the things I buy. That they are not just random pieces of worthless junk I have a fetish for (okay I admit maybe to a little of that.)

I read this article about this 24 year old guy who's been to every single country in the world. Every single one of them. What in the world?! (and I guess he's the youngest and one of the only persons to be qualified to actually use that term.) It's pretty inspiring. And the way he got about it, from part-time jobs, hooking up with locals etc, it's truly admirable. But I was just thinking that some people collect countries the way they do badges. Oh, this list says I have to go to Paris before I die? Check. Cinque Terre one of the you-wouldn't-believe-it-exists-must-see-to-believe places to go? Check. Without any genuine interest, if you know what I mean, instead just leaning on other people's hype?


And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.


Truly what would we be without the internet, I wonder. I stumbled upon this most sublime poem by Pablo Neruda through complete accidence (coincidence? more like incidence than coincidence I guess) which really makes you wonder how different life would be had we not have had so much information at our literal fingertips almost all our lives. I wikipedia-ed Pablo Neruda and found out he lived in Valparaiso, which sounded familiar so I googled and confirmed that yes, it was from the story of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. And the way sometimes we find answers to the questions we didn't even know we were asking. Well, I guess it's not just the internet that offers that, but anyhow.

I had this random thought about us millenials the other day. I'm not certain what exactly the proper definition for that term is but I'm gonna appropriate it and use it to mean us folks who grew up (or were forced to) at or around the turn of the new millenium. Probably including most of you reading this I assume. Weaned on a diet of TV and games as we were growing up, most likely (at the risk of over-simplifying and generalizing a whole host of people, which you'll notice in most commentaries on Gen Y or the Strawberry Generation, it is hard not to I guess). The world was pretty much our oysters, the world was our classroom, etc etc. I was just thinking about this the other day and I came up with this thought: That we are interested, but not interesting.

Do you think yourself an interesting person? What is it about you that is interesting? I tried to cough up something and came up rather empty-handed. I could go on at length about what interests me, but interesting? It is, of course, rather an exercise in futility cause I don't expect most people go about thinking what makes them interesting, or have (sensibly) too much humility not to. But is it our fascination in things that makes us fascinating as people? Possibly it is. But I was thinking of how likely it is that we have grown up to be a generation of vaguely interested, ultimately vapid people. Chock full of one-liners taken verbatim off of 9GAG, ever-ready with references to books and movies and TV series, in all their banality. A generation of reproducers (not in that sense. you know, the biological one) instead of producing anything of real value ourselves. Random Access Memory (also that awesome album by Daft Punk) as apt a term as any to describe us (and all our random references).

It is, of course, easy to condemn one's own generation, because it is a well-known fact that people oftentimes do take to self-indulgent self-bashing in order that they may feel better about themselves (that they are so self-aware perhaps) or whatever other reason they do. And it is easy for an older generation, perhaps even natural, to condemn a new generation of young punks, much in the way you'd deride your cui-looking/acting/pimply juniors in school. Usurpers, the lot of them. So perhaps alot of the flak that Gen Y receives is unwarranted, merely an echo of the bitterness and resentment of a fading generation, a generation long past its glorious heydays. But how much of it actually rings true?

Our lofty expectations. The way we cling on to that incredible belief that despite everything, everything's somehow gonna end up all right, because that's what we were brought up to believe (laying the blame on TV series and movies of course, in exactly the same way violence can be traced definitively to video games)(I'm not actually serious here.) That we are special and that we deserve better. That love will magically happen in random coffee shops around town. That it happens just like that, you just know, and requires no effort whatsoever. A generation of hopeless dreamers, if you will, except in this sense it is not "romantic", it is just sad.

Not that I'm knocking hopeless dreamers (oh that tired cliché), surely at some point most or all of us has identified with exactly that state, or still do even. The world needs its share of dreamers. But it needs its realists too. What I'm afraid of is that we have far too many of the former, and inexplicably, far too many of the latter too. 

Too many dreamers who will never see their beautiful dreams realized, who will wind up bitter and resentful and unable to fully grasp the providence of their realities. So keen on chasing down only the most beautiful of dreams they are unable to appreciate the smaller littler things life has to offer, the serendipity of minor occurrences.

Too many realists who see the world based solely on their own pragmatic views of it. Chasing the tangibles, going after only the definites and the unshakeables, like their 1st class degrees, the 5-digit salaries, all the while not realizing why exactly, or what exactly it is they are working for. Instead just vague ideas of stability and "progress", social mobility, and whatnot. Never asking the question: and then what? Or they do, and it's answered unfortunately by that black hole of an answer: More.

Okay so I kinda got caught up with yet another verbose (and pretentious, as the usage of the word verbose clearly demonstrates) post and the sun is going down and I am slowly getting chilled in my room so I really don't think I'm heading to the park now... Meh. Baking an apple cake tonight though, and was gonna do a baked rice too but I forgot to buy cheese while on my expedition just now sigh. Well, what do you know, even DomesticDe isn't perfect..

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper is my newest soundworm, and she seems so young too! Definitely not what I was associating with that voice. Okay then, see ya later guys.