next sunday is my birthday

Yesterday night, I let myself out.. Haven’t done so for some time. It feels so light-hearted and dreamy and today I woke up different. I think this kind of little releases in life is appealingly imperative to regenerate oneself and even rejuvenate the rigid soul. Well, nothing spectacular happened actually, except that the day was scripted in a very dissimilar way from my usual ones. Was in town early morning with ernest and jonathan doing some NIE assignments. Headed to the national library early morning after I dropped ben and my works at Jeremy’s place. We had lunch at subway.. food that I haven’t eaten for sometime too..but the sweet onion sauce perpetually oozing out from the sandwich didn’t reflect the best of my decorum.. eventually we ‘game over’ at Sim Lim Tower where I purchased my mini surveillance camera----super cool one. When you bargain at these kinds of places, you also discover that it is wiser to trust fully the old men of age who are selling these things and not those punky young lads, though the price they offer can be awfully cheap and low. After that, I met Marienne at Bras Basah Mac and gratefully, she helped me bring her laptop down and I was able to do quite some work in the afternoon before we popped to SMU for the Singapore Art Show…Warren joined us later. Good fruitful time spent with marienne.. you realize how much you miss your dear friends when there is a big gap of time you last see or catch up with them, and the moments you spend with them become more precious and sweeter than ever..and I am guilty of having the propensity to sometimes let work dominate my life…and stashing my friends aside or a while..before getting back to them.. with that, I am not saying im a seasonal kind of friend.. but just not so consistent I conjure. And so marienne, warren, urich, victor and I went to SMU after that and the whole buzz of socializing, a unintended gathering of people, and the ‘hello.. my name is Natasha…what’s yours.. nice to meet you” begins and doesn’t stop till the night fumbles in. an effeminate guy called Alan came up to me and said, “oh gorgeous, you have beautiful eyes…you are such a divine being” and he went on rattling about himself and read his “tooth fairy” poems to me. . and he boasted that tommy koh loves his poems.. yah right…I remember he did mentioned that he is going to publish a book “champagne in handcuffs”.. how distasteful a name… no one will buy.. Am I turned off and wished I wasn’t in existence that very moment.. gosh..what luck. Maybe is the fact for him…"Out of the abundance of the heart does the mouth speak”… that is all in his mind.. he and his poems. i snapped him off saying there is only one divine being in this entire universe. Drifted to kopitiam after that and ended the long eventful day going back with Sabrina on the bus. If only everyday is like that.. being less a hermit.. being a tad more alive.. and on days like these, you truly experience the sensational pulses of being a youth, putting aside the heavy readings, responsibilities, thoughts just for that brief while but knowing you will be back at it…having a passion for living is so significant. . and embracing the whole idea of love in the air.. I am having a happy spirit resonating in me today.
--julie called me from Darwin yesterday =)
--designed a memory verse cover for YA ministry-spend ur precious moments with Him
--met up with my beloved buddy james on Monday for lunch, been praying for him ever since, super lost he said =)
--ex.cue
--been flirting with the idea of getting a pocket pc for my birthday these days.. hohoho.
--you change as you re-focus.
--two people have told me consecutively on two days.. “God is in the heart”, it befuddles me that they can come up with a phrase like this when they can’t even locate their heart.

the night in a building that you pay so much to study in just to be a commuter--SMU--

if only they are immobilised in this picture forever. no, maybe immortalised.

oh yeah, as the name speaks.

singapore art show 2005 SMU -- nothing to feel let down about.

HE WARMS MY HEART

some things new, and learned
1. it takes 2 complete beings to be together, 2 people dun come together to complete each other.
2. stop trying to impress people
3. natasha, your eyes tell the truth
4. you are still finding for that something, and this search has been going on for many years

me and pink: God makes a day for me..

reciprocal-gaze

Palpable,
Emotional distance
Knitted a weight of self-evident fact
In that turbulence and urging crosscurrents
Plunging
into empathy in kinship

Disparate purities, like an existential plight
Creating and re-inventing
Each an own oeuvre

Far too vaporous to be pinned down

A buzzing haze, amidst the smugness of rainbow after the rain
Confessing anguish, baring fears…
As the only percipient

Like a visual artifice
The world is too much with us
Soon,
An uncanny, fragile vitality aglow
Manifesting that structure of thought

An ideal need’nt be coherent in his entrancing

This quirk of construction, contingents in our contingencies
Impersonating in the space of the mind

Again
The old Cartesian gulf between the body and the mind
Spitted a luciferous beam of light
flashing into a brittle mass
Reflected incandescence
A strata of unstable fragments
arrested by the friction of stability

buttress me, this quixotic one

dear God,
It dawned on me right this morning, here on this hallowed ground, that I should be seeking rest upon Christ's sacrifice, and compass your altar with humble hope. No respites of late, I have been laboring for my work to the point of callousness and futility. Life isn’t about completing assignments, or dealing with the uncouth menace of them. Life is to be embraced with the goodness of God. We all are predestined to encase your love. A maelstrom of thoughts and emotions fill me, almost speciously, this morning. I need your provision for this release; it may even be a distasteful rupture of the soul. And by your hands, you will delicately fix the broken fragments of this restless and tireless soul till it becomes whole again. Incessantly, I want to pull through this gloomy semester with your energy. Once all this settles, I will be really fine. If I fear, it is only an indication marred by unbelief, arising from the recollection of disappointments and springing from trivial anxieties. That flood of ungodliness will never make me afraid. Because I know that I am redeemed by the blood of your son Jesus, I am loved too much to be cast away with reprobates. And because of you God, I trust in thy surety that my heart resides in heaven.
I am solely in love with you.

"an island of silence" III /ARTsingapore 2005 

"an island of silence" II /ARTsingapore 2005 

"an island of silence" I /ARTsingapore 2005 

defying descriptions

Oh well, these days, I ask myself so often if I have spent time trodden on complicit grounds or have been blazing with all boldness though my trails? Breathing these questions, bristling with that hostile bulk of uncertainty, I have to agree that I have learnt much the past few days, a clarity of vision searing through this congenital erudition of my life. Clinging on too tightly and unquestioningly to these convictions? I cannot profess anything at this moment of time, but I cannot promise too that I will let go anytime. They are essential to my existentialism, call me capricious… well..being copious in my thoughts, to the extent of being esoteric, I espouse my love for such, to my dear life. I will nonetheless, be an over-comer as that is what the prayer closet produces, and what God has conferred on me in this lonely September rain.

I am here

In that almost overcast moonlight, I shelled out as best an illustration of my spiritual hike with God. Perhaps all too often, I had been pacing myself.. with moments intertwined in between where I knew I was obviously sprinting, running.. and when I ever slow down, I strive to pick up speed again..

"He shall not be afraid of evil tidings." Psalms 112:7

God, take me to the cross..
I do not want to do things that grieve the Holy Spirit.
I want to kneel right at your altar, offering my best to you. I should not be dismayed at the arrival of evil tidings, being bowed down with alarm and cowed with fear like other men. Because I profess to be of your spirit, my heart lives in heaven. Guarding this soul, I will trust in you Lord, and wait uncomplainingly for you, with a composure which nerves for duty, and sustains under adversity, and hum praises like saints in the fires. As I fly to you, I soar on your ever protective and secure wings.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all
men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions,and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in thispresent age... -- Titus 2:11-12



Dear Lord,

my prayer today is that you will control my will to be a godly and wise woman for you. with that uprightness and self-control, i will be firm in your foundation of love no matter how pervasive or alluring the thrills of the culture may be. i ask for you to galvanise my commitment to you from today and in my moments of reticent pensiveness, i plea for holy thoughts of you , and you alone.

in jesus's precious name,amen.

F.Y.I Hurricane Katrina

The name Katrina has been used for three tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean, and three tropical cyclones in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. It was used in the Pacific on the old four-year lists.
Atlantic:
1981 - Hurricane Katrina
1999 - Tropical Storm Katrina – struck the exact same area as Hurricane Mitch a year earlier, but caused little damage.
2005 - Hurricane Katrina – catastrophic storm that is likely the costliest ever and deadliest in recent US history; earliest forming 11th named storm ever, formed over the Bahamas, made first landfall near Miami, Florida as a Category 1 hurricane, then struck near New Orleans, Louisiana as a Category 4 storm after weakening from a strong Category 5.

The modern method of ascribing people's names to storms was introduced by Clement Wragge, an Anglo-Australian meteorologist at the end of the 19th century. As well as feminine names, he also used the names of politicians who had offended him.

(retrieved from Website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane#Naming_of_tropical_cyclones, 10th September 2005)

He doesn't stop laboring for me

God gave me a surprise as a gift
a gift with a big pink bow
and it made my heart smile

even though
i am not like Tozer, who will ask for a hard way
who will ask for a difficult place
God loves me no lesser

i am thankful to you, my Lord

pallid eyes have right of way, i had thought you knew.

as I by chance, assessed my day today, I had actually returned home with a peculiar lightweight ness in my heart today.
I might have been skipping in joy right inside me; it is in there, so distinct, yet not easy to point finger at and to articulate. But it seems lucid enough something had taken place, or been replaced. Happiness, I found it today. This arranged/destined marriage is pure, transcendent and altruistic, and I am so in love.
I say again, I want to fly, with my suitcase of dreams.
These feelings will continue to stir and culminate into, i don’t know, a cauldron of immersed trails of life?
And I pray in all might, this will have its continuum, and never an abrupt end.
His words resounding in the space of the ears, and I shrivel at the thought again. An aberration, that jumps upon me like an epileptic attack.
And the questions blow up titanic bubbles right from the mind, invading every space.
And we become sponges to food, cigarettes and drinks, we are the biggest sponges of time alone.
And we occasionally give the sponge a squeeze, or a clean, just to spruce up the tasteless life.
And we take for granted, the superficiality in love cannot redeem this jealousy.
We appropriate and we thought we own the huge universe
Reflections illuminate us into a mere grain, not more than this.
Sometimes, we fail badly in our lives because of interminable laments and regrets. Although we are the true blue losers encamped in our failings, we never want to be identified with losers, we rather call ourselves the esteemed
And imperfect winners.

story ripped

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed..As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation.They talked about so many things and various subjects.When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists.""Why do you say that?" asked the customer."Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn'texist.Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?Would there be abandoned children?If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain.I can't imagine a loving a God who would allow all ofthese things."The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument.The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street withlong, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard.He looked dirty and unkempt.The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said tothe barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist.""How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber."I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!""No!" the customer exclaimed."Barbers don't exist because if they did,there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, likethat man outside.""Ah, but barbers DO exist! " answered the barber."What happens, is, peopledo not come to me. ""Exactly!"- affirmed the customer."That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him.That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

birthday celebration

contrary to what people will say, i didn't have rats for dinner last night. ben and i pre-celebrated our birthdays before he flies to taiwan for his gf. sumptuous sphagetti with beef, and the special drink mix. ..thank God osh is safe.

yukari and audience(here:juliana yasin) 

030905 performance at tang da wu's opening(yukari).i think she blends in well with the drawings behind. 

030905 performance at tang da wu's opening (kristopher the wax man)

030905 performance at tang da wu's opening 

i want to fly, but i feel dizzy

Events have been jampacked back-to-back since last Friday, and it is only now, today, this thanksgiving moment, that I can sit with ease in front of the computer to jot all of those little thoughts down before they perish. “feeding on art” is what I have used to sum up the past two days. Indigestion? Not yet. txtrapolis(nafa), substation sept fest, sparks @esplanade(performance by effendi, andree, kai lam), da wu’s opening @ studio miu(takashimaya). I cannot fathom how I went through all of the above like a groupie. I did enjoy and learnt quite a bit from the talks, and the remaining bulk from my many conversations with people. (was with agnes and eliza at can café after txtrapolis, then tzay chuen they all with the Rumah Air Panas at Kopitiam...and the large gang headed to Holland village after da wu’s opening) Also met new people like sabrina koh from nafa( well, we should have met, but it is only now that we officially met), ting ting(my NJ peer, heard from chai that she is back, so finally met, adrian from nj as well), guo liang(from p10, and so he is him), and wani(julie’s childhood friend).i wonder how many calories or cholesterol I have burnt in the meeting of people.
There are many take-aways from being a groupie of two days, I reckon. And I am well aware that deep down inside, the direction for my future is sharpening every time, and that explains an unspeakable joy. Although there still lives an itch of wishing there is someone to share love of such, I think I rather remain in this erudition of being happy alone, kissing my matrix.
You are what you read, Goethe’s Faust made me learnt a tad that the more one expands the mind by reading, the greater the sensitivity, the more isolated he becomes to the outside world as he dwells on his inward triumphs, hence the more impoverished the relationships he has to life. Ultimately, in this world that is encrusted in facades of impasse, one eventually dies in his mind, the single-dimension prison he calls his own.
From can café: romantic cynic, poems, misfit, erasure, women, tunnel, 'unbearable lightness of being' by Milan kundera, 1984(I have to agree with kundera that books still contain the essence, and whenever, almost all the time, they are turned into movies, the essential is lost, remaining the accessory which will dismally be the intrigue.)
Terse as it may seem. For now, I have got to stop.

series 1 of 3 sets 

perennially instant gratification to my vagaries

A full blooded individual
As if in a ritual
Seeks an inner wholeness
As she embraces this alchemy

In this manner,
She approaches
forces within herself
organic energies circulating

As if the pen is an extension of her hand and arm
Akin to her temperament
Scraggy writings blotted
A metaphor for the nervous system

Moment to moment,
Dwelling under the shelter
Living in the shadow

The body, mind and soul
Certain potentials cupped
a gamut of limitations and difficulties

Her idiosyncrasy
Only to be
Crushed by the pervasive tyranny of routines

Where then is that imagined impeccable ardor?

happy teachers' day

today is a new beginning as I harness on this new look ...the dust settles again, and i wish i can couch my feelings into strings of words..but it has been rather dry..vindicate me, Lord.