natasha 's wake-up call

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28, NIV

spare me a moment, no longer than this

months ago, we were still in our commonalities of having just broken up, met with car accident before, tue no school, best friend just got married and left us.. and we became buddies by leaps and chance. today buddy james has moved on, found God's princess for him, and I am still the same. .waiting on the imaginary verandah for the prince charming if there ever is. so soon, everyone will be out of this race, they will slowly move on, but I will be standing still, right here like ever before..utterly obsfucated, forlorn, abject to all of these? should I enshrine and incubate all of these thoughts, or to leave them fallow in the mind? the mindless crushes, the reckless doings, and the madness of keeping myself busy and the dwelling in raging memories, they continue to saturate the heart unforgivingly..God made a new chapter for me today, as I diligently bury all those accentuated episodes right here, in this hopefully barren ground below my feet.

da wu workshop,our paper exploits 

da wu workshop at LaSalle (yukari and da wu) 

da wu workshop at LaSalle 

Dip Art Ed Year 2, the 14 of us slogging on the land of NIE. Photo taken April 2005

promises, vaguely choking on dust

consciousness breaks the dawn
Like a gift descend from heaven
Welled up tears
Strengthening inabilities
Even,
maintenance with an identity

Then as in progress,
Binging on tremendous bitterness
Rejection and refusal

His words splattered
Like never before
Compelling a reluctant acceptance
And dispensing a happiness
Not in its totality

Reflections became clearer
Wiping a fuzzy vision
And then it is true
Consolations rattling on
It is true

I plunk constant
at the brim
Of peoples’ lives
Never shifting
How I yearn

Perhaps,
appropriately peripheral
And not of single worth
Only dimensionally palpable

Feeling empathy
For the inner soul
The inner soul
Struggling,
Lonely,
Shrinking away.

He Wishes For the Cloths of Heavens

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

good report for sheer memory's sake

a letter to the cg..

Dearest cg,
I am penning this letter with a heart of gratitude. I am in fact very thankful that God has bestowed upon my life this wonderful cg. I give thanks for all the little gestures of love, gentle touches of care in all my daily frustrations over family, work and financial issues. Thanks for even the forgiveness I am receiving for not being able to unite with you all for events like community penetration and fantastic race, and for accepting me with a big-hearted capacity for who I am and what I do. For once, I know I am loved. I am also at the same time, full of thanks that the cg is experiencing a superb growth in numbers, spirit, faith and His love in its entirety, and we are going to leap farther than this.

There are many an occasion that I am distressed and culpable that I am unable to move with the church and cg in spirit, yet at the same time, I swear that I love this household immensely, which may seem contradicting at face value. When I gaze at your faces, I am encouraged in spirit that God has been real to you all. His existence is true. I want to assure everyone that I am interceding in intense prayers as a warrior and as His child for our beloved friends who have yet to acknowledge God as one who saves lives, but I recognize I can do more than what I am doing now.

I seriously do not know where I will go from now, but I am praying in faith that is alive in me. I want to shout out to the whole earth that God has been good. I desire to look into everyone’s eyes to proclaim that I am alright in Him. For a moment, I thought I was going to die when my family chased me out last week; the rejection I felt was indeed too overpowering for my weak flesh. But yet, God pulled me through again without fail, and I am sturdy again in His strength. Today, I affirm that I am not going to die in the wilderness; rather, I am going to strive in this wilderness. I will be victorious. I am jumping with joy like never before in my heart, breaking through ordeals, rejuvenated again to run this race for this King of all glory.

My prayer for everyone today is that we will persist to have a steadfast devotion to Jesus. From age to age, we belong to him! For God has used His wisdom to create the cosmos and all that is in it, he has designated for us our places in his dazzling display of diversity. He has also chosen to share wisdom and discernment with those who reverence him and search fervently for His wisdom. Only when we use that wisdom and discernment, we will possess the greatest of all jewels and a blessing that will enrich our lives and others’ lives. For those who are dry in their spiritual walks, who feel God is far away from you, He has never left you, I egg you on to make a decision today to perk it up again. God is your best lover, He is opening his arms up to embrace you and to caress you with His touch, His heart is really, always awaiting you.

Genuinely yours,
Nat

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20, NIV

existential intelligence, a brief dream

dark clouds loomed
Immensely hurled up
The crack of thunder
And lightning

I was nothing but
Curled up like a cooked prawn
Placating the album of memories
Coming alive

in soft satin and a silken veil
I stood,
awaiting that hour
People pass me by
A kaleidoscope of words and expressions,
Panic cutting through like a current

Acutely looking for that intrepid heart
The deluge of concerns
As eyes transfixed on me
Tears like pearls
Rolled down
Almost insidiously

Sun rays piercing through the half-opened eyes
Bright autumn leaves fluttered
At the slightest breeze
the steering wheel
I gripped
through the wooded paths
I peeked

friday nights not about drinking 8 pints and getting into fights

Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness..meaning at one-ness, the state of being at one with the object..The picture must all come out of the artist’s insjde..it is the image that lives in the consciousness, alive like a vision but unknown”.
D.H. Lawrence

and so i stayed up last night to finish this woodcut due for april ng's printmaking class next week. im not sure if im done, but so far..finally was able to stay up after so many days of feeling so worn out, maybe i was working on the last ounce of energy last night? i dunno, but i reckon i had a not-so-bad time doing this, my virgin work in woodcut, how embarrassing.

to all the hues in the twilight grime

it has been monotonous, simply dead.
the back aches in agony, only to have the heavy shoulders accompanying
the eyes further swollen in fatigue
somehow,
the cold bitter weather managed to cripple the immunity
and in the darkness
shivering
sneezing
i pulled through the sleep

whirling
jargons oppressed the mind
time taming the wounds
but the physical, defenceless
conscious of occasional cries bottled inside
somewhat compromised

and
the day rides on
smirking at me

"Imagine a whole lifetime of dreams and ambitions and hopes dissolving away in one instant, being blacked out like some arithmetic problem washed off a blackboard by a wet sponge, just some little accident ... ."
-- Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth

but the Father is so so even sweeter. i love u Lord!

this is so so sweet

so i did this as a gift for myself this week, as though a reminder for this same girl who appears in these 3 performances in the year 2005, good to ponder, good to learn, good to sleep with all these thoughts..

capturing my thoughts in rapture

Dear blog,

Last night was out-of -this-world time at instinct chatting with warren and shih yun till about 1am, putting aside the fact that this is my second cab ride this week though it was only Tuesday. I don’t know, this morning I am up, with a different kind of joy that is vibrating within the walls of this 3dimensional body, even when I am right here reading lee wen’s review about “ring around the rosies”, and checking the usual for-your-info and things-to-do emails. I trust things are shifting, though it is inexpressible and indefinable. For a brief moment, I know that I will not give up God, never. No art, but cannot be without God. It is an unusual kind of synergy when I spend time with Christian artists like warren, shih yun and yah, Alvin, whom I just got to know yesterday, a tad uptight, but cool, except for that super strong inerasable aura of an “NJ-cian”, well, the world or rather, my world is beginning to shrink, there you go, you go for an opening, and you meet either someone from LaSalle, from NJ, or NIE.. Now Alvin is a combi of two. Anyway, I am geared up for the coming show that we are undertaking! Yeah, working by faith, that is the one and only thing God wants from us. We can be engineers, teachers, lawyers, but just work by faith and warren will say work by His faith. It is an ingredient of God’s big big plan that we were able to meet and fellowship together, my goodness, it is like a reverie come true! I can talk about art and Christianity at the same time, finally not needing to purposefully isolate one of the other. and I reckon that well, I was reminded that we will naturally love each other and be gracious to work in good health together when we have the same God although we may be speaking different languages or of dissimilar skin colors, this is one thing I will always be in agreement. I am truly keyed up about this show, though it may be only 5 of us, 5 unlikely people maybe, though we may not be established, though we may not be well-known, though we may not be the famous few, but we are the chosen people.

Righteous and tender Shepherd, I life up this coming show to you in your mighty name, I pray for good favor and blessings in the days preceding to it, for receptiveness from the public, and especially your beloved people who have yet to experience your reality. I ask that you make all of us able-bodied and in blessed health in our endeavors and also pray that you will be patient in my sins and mistakes in my own discipleship. I pray that the future brings you more joy at the growth you see in me. Use me as an encourager, a comforter, and a motivator to those seeking to live for you and know your abiding presence. I praise you and give thanks for Jesus, in whose name I pray. Amen.

I am praying for the show, my folks.

Agape,
Nat

i like the shadows somehow

160805 mail art@instinc gallery (collaboration between warren and nat)

160805 mail art @instinc gallery (collaboration between warren and nat)

yesterday

yesterday was a day i will never wish to remember again. i was chased out of the house, for the first time. for the first time, my heart was broken to its limits, pain that stretches beyond redemption. now i understood what it feels like, what it exactly is, to be heartbroken, brokenhearted not by any lover, not by any close buddies, but by your family, the ones you thought so you will want to give your life, your time and all of your possible love to. the ones you thought so were the most important people in your life. i realise that although i have loved and given to them with all that i can give and have, they will never be satisified. they will never be happy, never be thankful. because, they don't know what is love all about and are blinded. but still, i have a faith, even though much diminished now, that they will know it all if they have experienced Christ in their lives. they will know what is the grace of God, what is love and what is forgiveness. persecution is not the best word to describe what had happened, rather it is truth in its entirety, in its honesty, in its most forceful, pushing its weight upon the fragile heart, they don't love me. there i was crying to my invisible buckets, and hands wrung in tears, at my void deck, squatting, crying, and the cycle continues. i didnt know that this could ever in my bizarre mind, happen. but i know, i am not going anywhere. i am not going to move out and leave this house forever, no matter how much i was seething with anger for that treatment i had gotten. i am not going to give up, i am here to stay, no matter how struggling, how painful it is, not matter how rejected and set apart i am. now i know for sure, what it means by rejection. Christ was depised and rejected, although he gave all and beyond all he could to his people. people didnt reciprocate his love, not even a tint of appreciation, denied and cruxified him on the cross. and yet he purchased their sins still, at the Calvary, out of a love that is unconditional and consuming. i want to be like Jesus. i want to be strong, to love the unlovable, to show everlasting grace that flows from the heart. i am not going to cry anymore. i will love them still. i will go on this journey, albeit physically alone.

centre column:pameran poskad-13th Aug 2005 

dedication to a beautiful love

In search for an answer
To a question never understood
Her musk fragrance lingers
Anchored on a promised eternity
Transcending within oneself
Like a painting hung loose

Familiarity to a lonely road
an inner voice resounding
And saturated awaiting
Quiet vulnerability of
the chinks in the whitewashed wall
Like a painting hung loose

That crystalline past
Overly romanticized
Entrapped scarlet letters
in sandalwood boxes
Cognition deprived
Asserting beauty in a constructed space
Like a painting hung loose

Yellow aged papers, spots attenuated
Attesting to his carelessness
And coerced definitions
Twirling in
A hegemony of meanings
Like a painting hung loose

Remnants of thoughts forsaken
In that space apart
Wrinkled to age
Fused together through vestiges of time
In the picturesque within
Like a painting hung loose

Like a painting hung loose,
A heart of gratitude lustrous at its core.

080805 spirit of youth, colors that bleed-performance 'Ring around the rosies" @Your Mother gallery (Photographed by Juliana Yasin)

Off your mind, what is the biggest fear you have yet to overcome?

To watch a movie alone.

what do you have on a saturday afternoon? 

Afraid to lose one’s memory is the fear of being trapped in the present

By the imminence of danger
Storming insecurities
She cringed
Felt small
Smaller,
Imbibed into the millimeters of sesame shell
Lost in his transcendence
Overly romantic
Garbled in the mood for love
Heartbeats tied knots
Her mind shuts, shuts tight

She was alone
Combating the prairies of silence
Disdained grass’s prattle
And Man’s chatter
Loneliness and she cannot be on parity
Someone could
Fill that singular void

But she numbed
A deep frozen love in heart’s very cold storage
In that disquietude
Breeds revulsion, boxed-in angst
Timidity in dire

A consummating breakup
How satisfying this fruition is
All
Into a jittering nought
It pulverized every living in her
Tears embodied, rushes, rushes out

Often
She offers equivocal answers
To life’s questions
And everyday frustrations
Maybe, a glistening touch
In those effulgent daffodils

One day then
She fell,
Without recalling if eyes were sealed
Into her mad sleep

Mourned in abasement, dejection,
Even lugubrious

finally.

perhaps in all this, God is my only recourse.
In the pockets of time I have, I choose to blog before all thoughts fade or subside into nothingness. It had been light-hearted and refreshing to go to cell group on fri and service today after whatever nonsensical and unnecessary had happened. Blogging has turned into a love-hate affair for me, with all the vile and bile floating mindlessly in cyberspace and having all eyes on the blog can be a yucky distasteful thought, but yet, in everyone of us, we do crave for little or much, attention from people in one way or another. There is a good read by sumiko tan today in the papers, “see no evil, blog no evil”. Apart from the cheesy title, it engages in the fact of how diaries which had a history of being secretive and personal has turned into a voluntarily opened, transparent, daily exhibitionist action and on how invidious hearsay and vicious gossip in the net can reflect one’s decency and decorum. Of course, following this article is chua mui hoong’s write on “I think, therefore I bulge” with her usual feministic and deadpan deliveries that send showers of comfort into one’s belly…sometimes I just like to immerse myself in reading and forget, for a moment, that I belong to and exist in a real, tangible world. This is one sparkling characteristic of a dreamer. Being escapist. I have learnt that blogging has transformed bloggers into personal columnists who can attract as much readership as a professional one. Perhaps, I have fulfilled my childhood inclination to be a columnist by blogging, but I am not sure, blogging continues to be an intriguing issue that can be worth contemplating and reflecting at times. I am feeling recharged and will restart my life from tomorrow onwards, with new resolutions for the days to come. No, I mean, new-day resolutions, not new-year resolutions, I am not so ahead of time. No matter how much I hate NIE, I have much to thank NIE for what I am today. I shan’t be a lonely dweller of the past anymore, it is ripping too much energy off me. For now, I am crystal-clear of the mental map in my mind, knowing every nook and cranny of where I should be going and what I should be doing. Trust me, even for once, life is too short to break down and wail, fighting back tears, swallowing your pride, creating facades of being alright, are ways that mould and refine our inner self. Even when you are impetuous, or despondent, even if you think that your whole life is but a bauble, circumventing the reality when it balks at you, is what I am learning to do. As God unfolds His love gifts, I am awaiting for Him to unfold a new pleasant chapter of my life with that little preciousness of the breath of heaven. God has broken through my defenses, and assured me that there is a union which subsists between my soul and the person of our Lord. Deep and broad is the channel of our communion, this is no narrow pipe through which a thread-like stream may wind its way, it is a channel of wondrous depth and breadth, along whose glorious length a ponderous volume of living water may roll its floods. Even on occasions when I tussle with the spiritual red tape, I know in the deep down inside, God is a God who lightens toil and softens sorrow; and over earthly gladness, He sheds a sanctifying radiance.

I know there are 100 billion stars that are named and stitched by God in the whole wide sky, and I am called.
How amazing.

Been stumbling on readings on Scientology of late, I am becoming skeptical, hope they don’t open up a church here.