you get so alone at times that it just makes sense

I snuck off to Borders after school today to look for poetry and be happy/sad.
Basically I realised I don't really know anyone anymore.

But I think I'm falling in love with Charles Bukowski. His poems, I mean. I think he's hilarious, eloquent and searingly honest without being glib.


rhyming poem:

the goldfish sing all night with guitars,
and the whores go down with the stars,
the whores go down with the stars

I'm sorry, sir, we close at 4:30,
besides yr mother's neck is dirty,
and the whores go down with the etc.,
the whrs. go dn. with the etc.

I'm sorry jack you can't come back,
I've fallen in love with another sap,
3/4 Italian and 1/2 Jap,
and the whores go
the whores go
etc.

Charles Bukowski 1963.


I made my virgin shopping trip to Ion Orchard today. I stepped inside and immediately felt the long-absent thrill of consumerism rush up my head to seize control of my body (in my surrender and total stupor.) While floating along languidly with the current of the sea of similarly dumbfounded shoppers, I was carried by the waves of absolute wonderment, bobbing every once in a while to a stall along the food hall. FRESH CREPES AND TAKOYAKI the signs screamed. FRUIT TARTS. GOURMET GOURMET GOURMET. PASTRIES. MAKI ON THE SPOT. My sister and I could only scarcely gasp a little while taking it all in. While taking the escalator up to the 4th floor supermarket – STEVE MADDEN RUBI SEPHORA. We spent half an hour at Muji and flitted about looking for notebooks at Artbox. We swooned around in the supermarket while sampling grapes and salads. We became breathless after learning that Valrhona! Is! Opening! There! We then crumpled up, exhausted, at home.

In other news, for the people who have asked, I have performed sufficiently okay in the JCTs. My grades are ACCB and I'm thankful and happy to be in the hundredth percentile for literature. Subjects that were good or have seen improvement: Lit, Maths, KI and Chinese (!); subjects that were not good/experienced regression/were abysmal: history paper 1, economics, KI essay.
I'm a little miffed that I got a B for H1 Maths after moderation (suspicious because I'm still in the 92nd percentile but whatever), D for Chinese despite falling within the usual B grade range, and that economics was fundamentally in all respects a disaster. But I shan't complain though because I'm more or less fine. So far. (This is where ominous-sounding music will play as a foreshadowing device.)

Also, this being the week of nightmarish deadlines and activities, THE PRESENTATION IS SO NEAR AND WE'RE SO FAR (THOUGH MUCH NEARER THAN BEFORE) BUT WE CAN STILL BE AMAZING. It's also weird that I'm donning the sickly green TJ garb now instead of the cream shirt of my happier memories, and don't have to wave down interjecting opponents now. It's great working with Angeline and Warda and listening to Rachelle's comments! I think I'll somehow really miss crazy times with them in the future.

Anyway yesterday we finally managed to get a classroom of our own to rehearse in (about time I reckon. And deride.) and I found this feeling of being able to find a place to settle in very emancipating. I've become so used to being pushed around school by my timetable without the feeling of having a constant in my life. Day in and day out, classrooms around the school prostitute themselves to me. I have carried sorrow like disease from room to room. Life has been generally moribund thus far. Maybe I should start believing in tomorrows once again although they have lost the allure of promise and sunshine after some use.