When There's Nothing Left To Burn (Set Yourself On Fire).

Welp. What a way to end a pretty awful, almost comically bad week. Not my proudest, for sure. All that fatigue after staying in for the past 5 days. Got caught up in so many silly, pointless arguments (euphemestically, "discussions") which I really shouldn't have, too. Pretty frustrated with myself over so many points over the past few days. This isn't me.

Sometimes you feel like all you need is a win, huh? Big one, small one; in whatever area of your life. Anything. Anything to halt the slide. Oblivion beckons sometimes, doesn't it? The losses are mounting and I'm beginning to lose my feet, a little bit at a time.

It rained today. Wasn't it so annoying? The exasperation as the rain, instead of thinning, got even heavier. As water began seeping everywhere. As your clothes and your shoes get wetter and wetter. How bothersome...

What a life! When was the last time you had time enough to really look out in the middle of a rainstorm, this tropical phenomenon, and not feel penned in, not feel perturbed by it? It is its own strange beauty. In the way it obscures and masks everything. In the shadowy half shapes it forms of the most concrete objects (buildings and lamposts and schools and churches). All these tantalizing possibilities, no?

Just reading The Harmony Silk Factory and have been absolutely lapping it up. What a superbly assured debut. Not a bad way to see out the rest of the week at all.

Thankful, also, for the opportunity to celebrate a dear friend's birthday over supper! Wouldn't have ended my self-imposed 5 day "residential phase" any other way. Despite all the crankiness and tiredness and frustration from days such as these.

And so.

Live through this and you won't look back.



明天會更好 ! (Thanks for the memories, kids.) (Haha gross, I know, but still....)

Working Title.

Here we go. Thus, I guess, does a new year begin, again. Year on year it just seems harder and harder to drum up any sort of excitement for new beginnings, huh?

Some days it seems as if we're sliding two steps back for every step we try to take forward - these are the lost days. Some days we try and we work hard enough that we convince ourselves this isn't happening, until we stop for just a second and notice the nothingness.

What a difference a week makes. What a difference a year makes. All this time, day by day, second by second, we're accumulating - but what difference does it make? We get older and colder with each passing day.

The kind of deep, unspeakable disappointment you only ever feel about one's own. Family, they say. And when will we ever be able to forgive each other for all these things we've done? Scar tissue fades; it never goes away. All these things we've been building so precariously all these years - how easy it is to bring it all down with just one sweep of the hand.

Do I have the energy to rebuild all this? Can I afford not to? I don't know anymore. But I think I have to. Is it worth it anymore? I have to believe so, right? Right. So here we go.

And since we're at it, here's to giving up on all these things I've held on for too long, too. Hope, even. Hold on to something too long, too tightly, and it leaves its imprint on you - grooves in your hands, holds in your heart. Sad as it may be, you let go.

Goodbye.