Here's how the UN Security Council should be reformed
Enough has been said of how the United Nations is a global institution and how it is inclusive compared to the League of Nations. Everybody knows that it dons – or tries to -- the mantle of impartiality when dealing with issues of importance. Many have posited that its Security Council does not represent all the countries in the UN, and they are right.
The United Nations is ‘irrelevant’ and anachronistic, the former term used by George Bush to describe the institution before he invaded Iraq without the approval of a powerless Security Council. The veto, after all, is merely a symbolic representation of the broader international community’s decisions.
But though the UN has not kept abreast with the changing contours of a globalized world, it is by no means dispensable since Bush, with his head lowered, sought the world’s assistance when he appealed to the UN. He needed the collective effort of the world in dealing with the difficulties of establishing order in Iraq.
Since the structure of the UN is ‘irrelevant’ yet too integral to be dissolved, the UN needs to be reformed to reflect the changing mould of the globalized present.
Here is what should be done:
The composition of the Security Council should be expanded to ensure that more countries are represented – this is after all a global institution. Africa and Latin America, two large state blocs definitely deserve seats. Rotating Seats could also be expanded to ensure regional representation. China, though a developing country, does not necessarily represent the position of most developing countries. An effective way to counter that would be to allow two or three members to represent each region so they do not pursue specific interests over regional needs.
Implementing a system of weighted voting ensures it needs more than just one member to veto a resolution. This ensures that no single power wields the veto out of prejudice and its involvement in the situation.
The UN needs to maintain its own military though this calls into question its ability to fund it. I believe there are ways to go around that – mandatory monetary contributions based according to GDP is one such way. As of now, the UN requires peacekeeping forces be provided by member states and because it does not maintain its own military, this means the UN lacks the ability to intervene in specific crisis whenever members of the Security Council do not agree on specific issues. The UN’s failure to intervene in the Rwandan genocide and Geroge Bush’s disregard for UN resolutions is a case in point.
Number of times vetoes have been used
The critical issue is not what reforms the United Nations should adopt. It is how the United Nations can adopt these reforms without any of the permanent members vetoing attempts of reformation.
References:
Melvern, Linda. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide. London: Zed Books, 2000.
"UN Reform - Fix It or Scrap It." The Economist. 378. 8460 (2006): 13.
United Nations, and NetLibrary, Inc. Basic Facts About the United Nations. New York: United Nations, 2004.
Policy formulation with John Thwaites, Peter Batchelor and ...
Two weeks ago, I attended a conference where I engaged with Professor John Thwaites (Former deputy premier of Victoria), Michael Thurston (US Consul-General), Peter Batchelor (Minister of Energy and Resources), Shell management and a public policy team and there we mooted energy and climate change policies.
Two things struck me. First, how globalization has been associated with progress and its ills linked with exploitation of third-world labor yet many fail to consider the impact of globalization on the climate.
With globalization, India and China have entered their most energy-intensive phase of economic growth as they compete with developed nations. This has resulted in a strain to meet supply. What is more pressing is the maintenance of desirable levels of CO2 and the Kyoto Protocol seeks to balance greenhouse gas emissions. Globalization has allowed mobility and several transnational corporations have relocated to developing countries to avoid stricter environmental regulations. While the willingness of countries to address this global issue – climate change – is a positive example of internationalism, many developed countries fail to meet their emission targets.
While it is arguable that China, India and developing nations have contributed to this global crisis, the total GHG produced by developed nations far exceed those of developing countries.
This means that GHG produced by industrialized/developed countries have detrimentally affected developing countries since it is these countries that face severe droughts, food shortages and the like. With the Kytoto protocol set to expire in 2012, stringent measures and joint cooperation are required to tackle this global conundrum.
Kevin Rudd acknowledged the necessity for a collective climate plan when he met with leaders of seventeen major economies.
It was also interesting to note that Shell -- who has invested substantially in reneweable-energy enterprises stresses the importance of institutions other than national governments.
The second thing that struck me was how the Westphalian definitions of the nation-state and national sovereignty have been undermined (arguable) by globalization. Thomas Hobbes might be tossing in his grave. NGOs, individuals and global organizations have increasing lobbying power since they can influence state decisions. In the recent conference, the policy brief on renewable energy compiled with Shell will be presented to various Australian ministers and the US Consul-General who will consider it with American officials. Globalization means accords have to be forged and policies formulated in Australia will affect American policies since political decisions now have to take into account that of others. I believe the European Union is an apt example of the changing definition of national sovereignty since supra-national decisions have reduced the national influence of smaller EU states.
References:
Berthoin, George. "Globalization and Global Governance: National Sovereignty." Peace Research Abstracts. 38. 5 (2001): 603-751.
Baylis, John, and Steve Smith. The Globalization of World Politics. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000.
Fourteen years ago, I sat at my desk furiously scribbling a letter to a dear cousin who had emigrated to the States. After three weeks, I called to ask if she had read my impassioned letter and she queried 'what letter'?
Today, I e-mail her for updates. The development of Information and Communication Technologies is both the impetus and product of globalization since is it hard to fathom a globalized world without constantly updated technology compressing the spaces between each individual. If globalization symbolizes multilateral trade, obfuscated meanings of identity (One can possess both European and American citizenships) and porous state borders when people migrate in (diasporic communities) and products flow out, the devices that connect and foster our interdependence are the literal representations of globalization.
The Australian Government’s decision to spend forty-three billion to lead the development of a national fibre-to-the-home broadband network up to ‘100 times faster than what many people use now’ in order to facilitate connections of Australians with Australians and Australia with the world is a case-in-point.
Globalization has improved the lives of many with transnational markets and global forums (United Nations, World Bank) -- they, supposedly, benefit the global community -- but I wonder if the gains of globalization nullify the ills that are wrought?
Stiglitz in Globalization and Its Discontents, provided evidence that many global institutions (IMF, WTO etc) lack accountability and decisions are made without considering a nation's status. For example, IMF will provide aid to third world countries only if they lower tarrifs on Western imports (farm produce) yet indigenous farmers cannot compete with Western technological advancements and their pricer goods are shelved.
Globalization is recasting the world into a new mould though it arguably has a Western patina. Even as state boundaries shift when Western interests expand into new economic markets, it is a boon for these developed industries yet other communities are attempting to maintain a sense of familiarity in a world that has taken on new definitions. Jihad is their fight against the encroaching imperialistic agenda of the West, what Huntington argues is an inevitable 'clash of civilizations' if basic religious and philosophical compromises are not forged.
Marx argues that the working class is exploited by the Bourgeoisie (Capitalist West) since the working class is deprived of the profit. While the feasibility of his belief in 'equitable distribution' is questionable, it disheartens when segments of his manifesto are played out in this globalized era as MNCs enlist the skills of the working class in third-world nations. While Marx disregards higher wages as a remedy and ignores the economic perspective, I believe ethical amounts of wages benchmarked against Western counterparts should be paid out so they can live properly.
Globalization is made possible by new technologies and for a world to remain globalized, new technologies must be created. It has fostered interdependence, wired us and in doing so, exposed us to values we (Western perspective) feel are incompatible with our religious/philosophical/economic outlooks and are determined to change.
My friend remarked: 'I study in an Australian university so my understanding of the Asia-Pacific region will enhance my post-graduate education in America and allow me to shape the perspectives in China through the media. I don't care what the average citizen thinks of my policies.'
Globalization has connected our limbs and severed our hearts.
Sources
Huntington, Samuel. 'The Clash of Civilizations.' Foreign Affairs 72.3 (1993): 22-49
Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.
Marx, Karl, and Frederic L. Bender. The Communist Manifesto: Annotated Text. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988.
Wade, Robert Hunter. 'Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency?' Global Governance 8 (2002): 443-466
I must apologize for my interstice. Been getting my hands dirty with various recipes -- in preparation for university life abroad. I promise I'll be back when my schedule frees itself up, or rather I learn to prioritize.
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places"
The fulfillment of this messanic prophecy often much presumed to culminate in an apocalypse where the radiant splendour of the coming of Christ permeates is projected to be in the year of our Lord 2036. Can it be? Or is this yet another one of many Nostradamus' failed predictions? Alas, the skeptic in me.
Here here, firstly, The Sign (pronounced as Thee SSSign), that the world's end is looming, heck not the third installation of Pirates of the Carribean -- At wit's [sic] end -- is: A thirteen year old kiddo with Hitler's German blood coursing through his veins, did what? Proved a team of NASA scientists that hail from ancient geek instituitions, hello, think Havard and MIT, are grotesquely flawed in their calculations. That's what. So you think that's not the "kiss of death?" How UN-insighful. The fact that the team of befunddled old gentlemen at NASA, emphasis: team, couldn't join efforts and spot a miscalculation that a single, emphasis: single, thirteen year old could would mean that they are all, number 1: kindly old gentlemen afraid to contradict each other, or number 2, concurring buffoons that faked their degree from Hart-ford university. I kind of prefer the latter option actually. The significance is that, if a one in four hundred and fifty chance can be miscalculated to a one in forty-five thousand chance; who knows what other configurations of incompetence might have developed or been brewing? Dude, if they mis-calculated wrongly, who knows, they could what, nuke the whole earth wrongly? Man, that's The Sign that they need to be restrained, these American "imperialists." China anybody?
Okay, next, according to both Non-Assuring-Set-of-Asses and NICO, postulating that should a satellite be put out of functioning condition (That means hit by the asteroid la) in the year 2029, the alterations of it's trajectory, meaning, 1104972375 blue whales (two hundred billion tonnes) three hundred and twenty metres wide will crash (Yes like Apollo 13 crashing) into the Atlantic Ocean. I wonder if they miscalculated that with the supposed bull's eye the White House. All terrorist cabals shout "HOI." Anyway, the shockwaves will cause yet another tsunami albeit one of incomparablly magnified magnitude, destroy coastlines amd create a thick cloud of dust that will darken skies. Indefintely.
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."
Sometimes the sentiments that tumble topsy turvy within your cerebral can hardly begin to take form when its flight has already begun. No, it isn't the coined "Writer's block" syndrome as much as it is the trepidation of revisiting those moments one wishes to lay no stake to.
Deception comes in the forms of many guises, the vivacious lass with that disparate disposition seemingly simple, a young boy with his hand in his mother's -- only upon close consternation do you realise that his hand is white from the vice of his parent -- or more vivid is the photograph of an aged couple at a beach, a photo one would speak of as love if not for the millimetre gap between them; a millimetere that hints starkly of the subconscious distance they wish to place amongst themselves as the bulwarks that they have erected within their hearts. Only they see that the picture is an attempt to solicit solace from one another when their loves -- this adulterous couple -- had taken leave one after anoher and that the hastily salvaged marriage was a trashy substitute of the affair that had begun between both parties even before they had wed. They would have chosen matrimonial union with their "fornicators" had it not been for the forces of fate that led to this ersatz conjugality.
These deceptive still sepia frames are but an example of the manifold pretension and deceit much inherent in this lying generation.
"Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts...
The rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to be the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people...
The Fascist State , as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights. The Fascist State is an inwardly accepted standard and rule of conduct, a discipline of the whole person; it permeates the will no less than the intellect. It stands for a principle which becomes the central motive of man as a member of civilized society, sinking deep down into his personality; it dwells in the heart of the man of action and of the thinker, of the artist and of the man of science: soul of the soul...
Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the " right ", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State..."
Excerpted from: THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM, Benito Mussolini
I never cease to marvel at how at the brink of total devastation or when I'm moping in the aftermaths of the inextricable mess I find myself mired in -- my bellicose affinity of chafing the limits of the maximum number of times I can sin in the shortest time span -- God extends His hand by archetypal virtue of grace and forgiveness.
Read an article by Insomniac, an NUS Art and Social Sciences publication which details the monopolised dialogue by a geek and the writer which led to her being flabbergasted. I was amused enough to type it all out. Enjoy:
Writer: How can humans be expected to function like ants? I think we have more individualism and less brainlessness.
Geek: That I agree. Rosseau's General Will remains elusive till this day of enlightened existence.
Writer: The amount of warfare increases as history progresses, I don't see how humans are moving towards an enlightened state.
Geek: I mean it in a sarcastic way. That's why we can never be expected to be formicine.
Writer: Formicine?
Geek: Ant-like. Ants belong to the family Formicidae. Many animal-related adjectives derived from the animals' Latin names. There's quite an array of them, like equine, vulpine, lupine, aquiline, feline, canine, ursine et al.
Writer: Oh.
Geek: For those who don't know. I usually call them asinine.
Writer ... (pwned)
Pwnage 2
Writer: Good thing we don't have any common modules. You'll certainly occupy the top of the bell curve and leave me stranded at the bottom.
Geek: The bell-curve is usually drawn horizontally, so the top few actually fall on the right-hand side, not the top. Conversely, the bottom few fall on the left-hand side, not the bottom.
Writer: Oh yeah. Slip of the tongue.
Geek: Don't get too distraught over the bell curve, it's just a mechanism to filter off the lousier students.
Writer: The more asinine student.
Geek: I didn't say that. But it's kind of strange. They pay their school fees just like everybody else, but they are there to serve as a contrast to the good students. It's quite a myth why they jump in to their demise. It's like voting Stalin into office. You voluntarily get yourself into trouble.
Me: Well we didn't expect computer like students in school who steal all our As.
Geek: What do you mean by "computer-like student"?
Writer (sarcastically): You know how students are made to memorise their notes for examinations, copy down notes during lectures and tutorials and produce essays by cutting and pasting from all the reference sources they can get their hands on.
Geek: I guess that's what a Pentium 386 running at 66MHz on 32MB of RAM would say because they can't perform. Humans can recognize computers, but not vice versa right?
This is the first draft of my valedictory speech delivered in 2007, thought I might as well put it up.
2007 has been an eventful year of radical changes, of radical occurrences that have molded positively or otherwise, the lives of multitudes embroiled in them. It has been a time of mourning – when Singapore mourned the demise of meritorious Servicemen – an era of new beginnings -- Gordon Brown taking over the mantle as Britain’s Prime Minister – and also heralds the inception of a life-long journey that will no doubt be harrowing but peremptorily beneficial in the effective evolution of a successful being.
Likewise, 2007 has been a tumultuous period albeit not one without pleasantries; it is a significant milestone after 21 years of dithering vacillation. My tergiversation and reformation from a rambunctious adolescent to a more focused young man hinges on divine intervention without which I would not have the God-given opportunity of making this speech. That aside, the fortuitous support rendered by my parents, my grandfather, my teachers; my mentors and my peers has been an impetus that sustained my forward trajectory in times when monotony has been a weighty ballast. The Mass Communication class of 2007 has seen new friendships forged, new alliances drawn, old memories renewed and I avidly believe with my beating heart that the end of this course would not prove to be a cul de sac neither would it be a means to an end but the ushered beginning of a new vision; the cross of the threshold in advancement towards a distant horizon.
Although I so often lambast the drudgery of serving as a soldier, ironically, my one year tenure as a serviceman has been instrumental in my uncovering the many facets of life – the blissful and the ugly -- and is the lynchpin of my now dominant drive to succeed in my undertakings. As a nascent soldier, with trite forewarnings of what regimental ordeals I would have to brave, I was thrust into many precarious situations wherein it was a teeter along a tight rope of integrity that opened to a chasm of self-indulgence on the left and an abyss of deception on the right. It was in the military where I realised that the world no longer sung to a refrain at your awkward appearance and ceased to revolve solely around you. It was in the army where I was inculcated with the values of others before self and apprised to the trenchant salvo of camaraderie – together as one. That said, the grace of God aside, the single other motivational driving force that I would do well to remember throughout the rest of life’s mandate would be the creed of passion and of hope. The onus was on me to effectively balance my hectic military duties with my thrice weekly Mass Communication lesson plan and the feasibility of my achieving stellar grades would be naught without the unwavering encouragement of fellow peers and stalwart dedication of lecturers. At this juncture I wish to reiterate my appreciation to my lecturers and peers. Thank you.
Passion is the fervour to overcome what dreary circumstances betide. Passion is zeal unrepressed, daring to stand steadfast in face of calamities and oppositions. Passion denotes ardour unabated, the resolution to march in tandem to one’s ideals and being bold enough to disallow oneself from being coerced by another individual to do his biddings. Passion is integral. It is then an honour for me to have this opportunity to encourage my fellow course mates that to be passionate about endeavours; and having done one’s best, is to innately know that one has succeeded whether or not one is able to meet up to another’s expectation. I have assured confidence that with the promise shown of all in my class; to travail in passion would be akin to being imbued with supernatural strength in subsequent undertakings.
But if I have all passion but have naught hope, of what use would that passion be? It would be akin to a demoralising sprint by a pessimist who vociferously laments his pitiful lot – an unequivocal fiasco. The necessity of hope then brooks no counter-arguments; for it is with the presence of hope that colours life in a gamut of chromatic shades. It is the presence of hope that illuminates the starkest trial emblazoning it with ideals and allows the belief that tomorrow-would-be-better pervade the inadequacy of a conundrum abandoned as a lost cause. When Distraught is my sonorous song and all else fades, I remember that I have hope. Hope, hope; hope and hope.
Let me narrate you a story: There was a bed-ridden lady who had been admitted for breast cancer, and had to have an operation to remove her breasts to avoid the warp of her entire body. Although her breasts were what she felt detailed her femininity, she consented. Life, for her, was unfortunately a cruel game: She was diagnosed with malignant tumours and chemotherapy saw the loss of all her facial hair – eyebrows and eyelashes inclusive. As if this were not enough, her confinement to bed resulted in the need to amputate her limbs due to festering gangrene. She was sore and disfigured, bed-bound and listless yet she never once cried out in disillusionment against God or even piteously professed the misery of life. Every day she would insist on being wheeled out into the hospital garden where she would gently close her eyes and let the wafts of white oleanders, jasmines and honeysuckles rejuvenate her ailing frame. When quizzed what was the cornerstone of her strength to live in spite of such overwhelming adversity. Her single word answer, simple as it was, profound as it is: Hope.
Lecturers, have hope in the seemingly hopeless student; students, have hope in drearily hopeless circumstances.
For without passion and hope, one would be flailing in an embittered battle. For without passion and hope, everybody would be devoid of sustenance to persevere. For without passion and hope, who would have dreams of what yonder brings.
The fountains mingle with the rivers And the rivers with the oceans, The winds of heaven mix forever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother, And the sunlight clasps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea; What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?
To the many people who woke up especially early to wish me well on my test, thank you so very very much (thank God too), I'm touched at that extra gesture and the remembering of my test date though I mentioned it only once.
Behind every metric reading, each metaphor and through the looking glass of rhyming schemes, ambiguous allusion and incantation, a poem really heralds the ideals, dreams and history of another, it tells of lives, loves and languishing; all entwined in the cast net of humanity;
but it also resonates of maintaining truth in your existence, remaining true to who you are; when the swirl of murk threatens to efface your individuality and like quicksand sucks you into mass-conformity.
They are the wings of the albatross, lifting you insofar as you dare dream, and the ballast of the moored Mayflower, reminding you just as there's an infinite expanse of heavens, so the oceans stretch ad infinitum.
"Ma, it used to be here, now it's gone; I cannot hear the thump of its diastole anymore. But ma, it's okay, I'm not perturbed. I trust that it's now cradled in a better abode."
He thought pensively to himself: It always begins in a bus ride. Doesn't it? He chuckled, amused at the twisted irony of convoluted situations that had a metaphysical inclination to wind and unwind themselves. He squinted through the enclosed panes -- he always preferred the non air-conditioned buses, where the wind against his face like the caress of her tresses was tangible, like the ineffable sentiments -- for want of words -- that thrived between them.
Second of January, through the immiscible admixture of slushing gravel that flowed downstream, he trudged up the slight gradient of a slope. Inwardly groaning and bemoaning the day he was conceived into this rat-race of meritocracy where the dead had to live just so they could die in peace; his cerebral cortex still thumped from the surfeit of nasty tequila shots, or was it the lingering vestiges of the cadence from blared music, no, noise.
Staring in impudence at the bemused bus-driver just because he felt that the day wasn't an auspicious harbinger to a brand-new year, he slotted his Translink card and pressed the other blue button -- that was his pet trick, they wouldn't deduct the amount from the card if you pressed the wrong button. Depositing his bag -- there was nothing inside except for a brand new John Sloman text edition that served the solitary function of maintaining the shape of his bag and a packet of Marlboro Reds, the perfect antidote to a chilly aurora -- onto the seat next to him just so everybody got the hint.
Then he saw her, a little too goody, like a prissy mama's attendant, for his liking, but he continued looking anyway, the ride to Dover was by far too long to not do anything, he just had to do something. Maybe it was her hair, possibly her slender jawline, perhaps her porcelain complexion; definitely not her studious personality, it was pretty darn blatant, you didn't need a clairvoyant's yarns to see that she was bursting with anticipation at commencing a new year right and would probably attend every lecture and tutorial. Or was it? She looked into his eyes and then looked away leaving him welling in the startle at her abrupt intrepid gesture. Twenty seconds after she alighted, he realised it had been his stop.
He came to enjoy the bus rides, those tediously protracted ones, and the first thing he did when he boarded would be to scan the aggregation of commuters for that slender jawline, or perhaps amongst the many IDs, Egos and Super-egos, her studious prissy personality that struck a balance and would not tilt Lady Justice's weighted scales.
He chuckled twenty seconds after he missed his stop -- he only realised it when he had to push away the jalousie of the air-conditioning that was directing its blast against his coiffured hair, had to push away his feyly reminiscing. Chuckled at the irony of how things would ensue, of how she sat adjacent to him and then next to him; from how she looked into his eyes and away and subsequently into his eyes holding his gaze, of how their rendezvous would be the Bombay Toast stall in the canteen, which he hated but she loved. He never grew to love it. He chuckled at how the schism was instituted and how she sat away where they would be barricaded by the commuters; of how they would never again look into each other's eyes and how the Bombay Toast stall was anathema even amongst respective cliques and how they became the perfect strangers.
All things good discontinue at the terminus don't they?
I thank God for 2007 which has been one categorised by many fiascos, from which I've seen His provident hand; I thank God for an answered heartcry for people in my life whom will make a difference, in stead of acquaintances, I have comrades who march abreast and I thank God for underscoring my inefficiencies and shortcomings and innervating me to surrender what I've yet to.
A Boy's Bold Endeavour
I thank God for you, for you whom I'm thrilled to embark with on an uncharted maiden voyage -- conformative of all peripatetic traversals; the rhapsody of newfound experiences and the ensuant elation from the tenacious bellicosity through the ineluctable feisty wanders in catacombs where every ginger step, a cul de sac -- maybe not Acropolis nor Le château de Versailles: those are dwellings and architectural habitations that birthed from anothers' pregnant dream and conception. God superintend, I wish to lay our own brick where posterity will forever hark of our narrative inscribed on composite order columns. Destination: Terra Incognita, anticipatedly our finesse finale.
... echt alter egos who accept me -- shortcomings and all -- for who I am without letting my yesteryears be a yardstick. I can't begin to say how touched I am at the unconditional cherishments.
Sometimes it's better not being in the know and even better leaving certain things unsaid, issues when broached could potentially be a catalyst for a progressive reorientation and evince a neccesitation to rethink certain cognitive content and retract a miscellanea of at one time logical denouements for further excogitation.
Why then do you wish to be made privy?
Then you will know the truth -- whatever it may be -- and the truth will set you free.
Watchman of the starry skies and cosmic universes along, She takes her dainty steps through pretty paths, Till Spring with her exodus, hail poignance my song.
What is a thousand and ninety-five when eight a bosom a perforated prong, Wallowing in depressive cogitations of an alternate axiom, Watchman of the starry skies and cosmic universes along.
The terminus that terminates through turnstiles teary throng, Topmost thoughts that tremulously turn then tear, Till Spring with her exodus, hail poignance my song.
Wonders cease to begin with wondering went wrong, Will what he said resonate in what she'll say, Watchman of the starry skies and cosmic universes along.
Turning them thoughts -- farewells to come -- wretchedness woefully prolong, Thenceforth cease to speak, words glimmer, die along with incendiary disillusionment, Till Spring with her exodus, hail poignance my song.
There she goes, the jeune fille, with her nutating wavy tresses, Boys, men, they turn now in her slender wake, so shut my eyes. Watchman of the starry skies and cosmic universes along, Till Spring with her exodus, hail poignance my song.
And what's he then that says I play the villain? When this advice is free I give and honest, Probal to thinking and indeed the course To win the Moor again? For 'tis most easy The inclining Desdemona to subdue In any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful As the free elements. And then for her To win the Moor--were't to renounce his baptism, All seals and symbols of redeemed sin, His soul is so enfetter'd to her love, That she may make, unmake, do what she list, Even as her appetite shall play the god With his weak function. How am I then a villain To counsel Cassio to this parallel course, Directly to his good? Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, They do suggest at first with heavenly shows, As I do now: for whiles this honest fool Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor, I'll pour this pestilence into his ear, That she repeals him for her body's lust; And by how much she strives to do him good, She shall undo her credit with the Moor. So will I turn her virtue into pitch, And out of her own goodness make the net That shall enmesh them all.
Othello, Act II, Scene III
He's not the least flustered or vindicative by what people opine about him, always believed that coming from people close, defections are something to be worked upon; originating from those he's not intimate with, it merely reflects that they don't know him. He's not even vexed if anybody buys into them, if she buys into them. But come this time around, why is he fazed? why is he discomposed when people around her have only negative construals? Maybe because they're from people close to her heart, and he doesn't want her to walk alone.
Maybe, maybe because really, Othello's a moor, Desdemona a Venetian and they never should have loved.
"Oh whatever the pitch and dark the coal, that blinds thy eyes to seemly snow; believe away, for ears need hear, lest thy soul shall be besmeared, and four years down thy demur: "Alas, I should never have ventured thus and ought to them listen." Believe away I say, I bid thee fair wind, sweet marionette, in the gay company of your maidens and knights, that blow you away from the River Lethe from which I partake the downed portion that shall serve aught but naught. Dock gently and there shall you find, a better cavalier than left behind."
The concretism of the enlaced hands, to him, like the union of hearts; the cognisant choice to not let go when it has been taken up, no matter when once the winds of providence that blew west, now displaced by the maelstrom of acrimoniousness -- for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. The intertwined vena amoris that serve as a confluence to two meandering blood brooks, two free choices and liberties with Love's vanguard in unity compromise and counter accommodate to defend that conjoint sacrosanct unity.
19 December 2007, a self-instituted pact: To take a hand when only ...
Not feeling especially perky, quite quite the contrary; cumbersome heart as a matter of fact, but thank you -- all you thoughful darls -- for the Yuletide presents and felicitations. I hardly anticipated receiving anything, least of all sincere wishes from people hailing from far-flung isles. Till we meet again.
Time -- Is it a building block of the universe, a systematic sequence of events, like a roll of film that plays, an interminable nonspatial continuum that rolls in succesion when everything else halts in their ascent; when everybody else is lost in the improvidence of the moment or is it really -- forget Einstein's time-space relativity theory and Lorentz transformation what have you -- a human cognitive invention, where time is really immanent -- its formation only with the cradle of primordial man, the parameters of its constitution only insofar as to provide a systematic register of details; really a tool used to annotate the events and occurences, calamities and sojourn of Providence during recapitulation, and really comes to a cessation when we refrain registering what happens about us though we still perceive it moves on because though time suspends its action in our cause, it moves on in the lives of others, a case idealised by the Kappa effect.
Either way, are we really shaped by history as we ought be or are our destinies and memories as resistant to the forging flames of generations prior as they are to the passage of time?
While physical units with the tick of a second tick away; what then about the ideals and hopes and dreams and love and desires and feelings that constitute who I am?
Can I preserve them, immortalise seconds I never want to pass me by ...
"...until the end of time"
The conclusion: Time and tide wait for none, while they cease for you, they move on in another's life.
but also, time's a telling lesson of how stalwart one's raison d'etre is, a telling tale if they perish in the passing wake, the aftermath of furious time; or like an intrepid conquistador fronts the esoteric winds of fiendish time on terra incognita; no matter adversities.
I've had lots of people ask me if I have been through a break-up what with my ambiguous post. The explanation why I would write about it is lengthy, amongst the surfeit of reasons, one of which is that I wanted to read what a break-up means to me from a detached aerial vantage (At least to me, penning thoughts down helps me see things from a different perspect and in a new light). Also I've always believed that a good writer writes with his emotions so I'm archiving the article for future reference if scenes of a break-up need be depicted.
But it will suffice to say that: "No, I didn't go through a break-up, and that I wanted to capture the sentiments of a farewell, any at all."
Which is also why I highlighted the demarcation of parameters which propounded that the multi-faceted connotations of break-up isn't limited to the societal vernacular of Singapore but rather a holistic account of break-up. I think clarification is due maybe because my readers don't know my idiosyncracy when it comes to verbiage and giving it form. I adopt different styles of writing so occasionally it might prove hard to comprehend the concomitant sentiments that run through my head. Sometimes I'm abstract and not your everyday blogger. Understandable. I must must however reiterate my appreciation at the many well-wishers and those who asked if I needed flowers. It was a laugh.
Also, just for you peeps to muse, do you think that this entry could be an issue that happened 4 years ago?
PS: And oh to my other readers who like the song that was looped, it got on my nerves so just click play if you wish to hear it. Sorry, self-service ay.
O dear heart, there blows an obstinate heart, Look you will.
There's a King, Seated on His august throne; His goodness apparent in all creation. It permeates in the aurora, Refreshes in the saltation of the dewdrops, Glimmers in the effloresce of burgeoning Lilies, And gives mystery to the sussurus of breeze. Even the uncultivated moor sways in His distillation.
O dear heart, but a mortal heart, Can I not be enchanted?
For You cast on me a spell, That charms away all fears
"Everyday will I bless thee, and I will praise thy name forever and ever"
--Psalms 145:2
Lest my soul burst with joy at your divine ordination, though I sometimes struggle to come to terms with reality, I will exult thee that the nights are not more darker than they already are, less chilling than what they could potentially be.
Praise Him in Yuletide cheer. To learn to give praise in stark times? Now, that's somewhat challenging.
And there the sad caricature of a darned (mend) heart will on a string flutter till upon Mount Parnassus' summit it palpitates in consonance to the recurrent rhythm of the crashing Castalian Springs; till it beats with the cadence of passion in the diastole of a tremulous bossom.
"Caveat Emptor": This entry is extremely long but also extremely real (to me) and if you can't take squeamish stuff and do not have the patience to read it slowly understanding every word, just skip the whole front portion and dwelve right into my testimony.
"Leaving him/her to wander in the pangs of farewells gone and partings to come ... "
The writer in me had to chronicle the attendant emotions salient during a break-up, November 26th,
not limited to the societal vernacular of Singaporeans: break-ups meaning an end of Philia or Eros in a relationship,
but an all-encompassing whole (break up of friends, dissolution of lovers' constitution, death of a loved one; after all, emotions and feelings are innately what keeps one distinct from computers that threaten the humanity of homo sapiens.
What do the parting of alter egos, the going of separate ways, the death of a kin have in common? Like a blood-shot wound to the heart yet the reality that it isn't a physical laceration but a hurt that threatens to rend your heart asunder from the inside out. A break-up like a love record inversely spun on a gramophone defines the consonant of the departure of another dear.
This is my brutally honest, and maybe fascinatingly real yet a debilitating morose depiction of break-up in contemporary everyday life though it remains elusively ineffable and quixotic. It is raw without euphemism, jarring without blandishment and though is Chris' document of what a break-up means to him; might not be Biblically concordant so lest you be offended, read AWAY.
Just as lettres de Paul, 1 Corinthiens 13:4 débutes: "L'amour est patience, l'amour est bienveillance, l'amour m'est pas jalousie ..., " ainsi:
A break-up is when nights are tediously protracted and extended that only aid of Zopiclone will quell yet the wake every morning is the desire to fall back into slumber. It is distinguished by somnolence (insomnia), the drift into fitful "rest" marred by haunting dreams replayed ad nauseam. When you yearned to see her in the frivolities of your dreams, now you dread the grotesque scenarios -- maybe the final goodbye that wasn't really a closure -- looped ad infinitum.
Break-up is when surreptitiously, eerily, the inexplicable affright that accompanies the cause of misery's arrival like a tragedian leitmotif, a harbinger of misery supplants all the memories of bliss once shared.
Break-up is like the pangs of rueful forlornness that electrocutes you when you pass by a familiar haunt and the paroxysmal depression that maniacally vices you when you realise that The Love Seat -- The Seat you knew she was referring to when she said meet you at The Seat -- you once shared is now vacant; and will remain vacant with the name you inscribed alongside hers blackened out, your name blackened out.
Break-up is like a discordant high-pitched screech of metal against wood, a coin leaving its trail on a chalkboard and a rusted chair dragged against stucco; really like the recorded sound of your voice replayed back at you.
Break-up is like being at a solely-exodus terminus sipping Ice Caramel Macchiato, witnessing familiar events, people and objects taking their leave while all you're left is the drain of the bitter aftertaste of coffee, the caramel having long gone while your dreams took flight. Abruptly, you're left standing in a familiar depot that looks quite unfamiliar sans the things that made it bearable.
Break-up is when you try to comprehend the Grammar clauses and syntax, wondering if it is a mistake in the Present-tense or a cause in the Past-participle and then realising it could have been both. And really it is like the B you had for an S paper that marrs an A Level certificate of As.
Break-up is contorting one's visage under the watches of sombre darkness when even you cannot see your face, hoping that maybe crying would appease and be an outlet to the lugubrious melancholia to then realise that tears no longer will stain a bronzed countenance.
Break-up is when two travellers set out together with a common objective in the inception to take the forked path and one traverses the safari alone to find the effloresce of Crocuses ravished by an inferno, now a simmering devastation, like dreams conflagrated; remnants but mere embers, dust and ashes, ideals billowing into a miasma of malodorous smoke, dissipating into the harsh swirl of frigid buffeting air.
Break-up is akin to superimposing an other's face on every billboard and neon sign and then reaching out to graze the cheeks to find it unfeeling, hard and cold, not the soft and warm skin you had in mind, like the unfeeling post-break-up sex a mere substitute for the void that took form where passionate pre-break-up sex ceased.
Break-up really is the alternate of roles, from the rugger on the pitch to a spectator from the grandstand, the segue of roles from being involved and attached to distant and detached. From wondering how you'd be to why it happened and if it could be pre-empted and how God could mean it for good what man meant for evil.
A break-up is the conclusion of a Disney tale of shared joys -- things you knew to be fun -- and suddenly you're grappling with something to fill its place but still remembering and giving thanks for whatever sweet that transpired no matter its brevity. Un-wordable, un-writable, un-describable, matters of a hurting heart are more excruciating than a blood shot wound, hurt from a physical lesion knows it's place in time, its ephemeral, but a break up heightens each tremulous sensation. keeping you aware of the bitter sweet affinity of relationships, the yin-yang of life and the inextricable bonds of setbacks and achievements in the world. It keeps you cautiously wary the next time another comes near, wondering if posterity will soon assimilate the Sado-Masochistic mantle of its predecessor. You are apprised to the traps of relationships and then:
You're wiser.
PS: There's so much to eludicate and I can't even begin to end the toughest entry I think I've ever written.
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
--Philippians 3:13-14
The Testimony
At a silent back-alley of Singapore, while I furiously gave voice to all the sentiments of break-up that inundated me, in my cellular, I was benighted by it all, people try not to think about it and there I was slowly turning it and giving form to each and every feeling.
Vis-a-vis break up, I'm one who runs towards God instead of from Him and I decided to purchase Christian books. Being a fastidious reader, I deliberated for two hours, searching in vain for books that would adequately address emotional healing and the anguishes of break-ups. I settled for a book which I grudgingly decided to get for want of better. And un-mistakably, God revealed to me that rather than let the locus be my conundrum, it should instead be re-oriented on Him and I was directed to two books, one by John Piper which addresses a hunger for God, the other a practice of praise which will shape my contentment in Him and I know will drastically revolutionise me, making me a better Peter-Pan man.
I left the bookstore in jubilant spirits, mentally doing cartwheels, quite unlike the wretched me who hugged my Bible to sleep the previous night, November 25th, -- the first time in seven years, the last being in prison -- reciting memory verse:
"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
--Joshua 1:9
Maybe that's why God said that I shouldn't be hasty and that He wanted to do a deeper work on me first. Jesus I love heart love heart love heart You.
" ... she/he takes his/her graceful leave stolid and uncaring."
Altruism -- Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
Then Jesus said to his disciples:
If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me.
--Matthew 16:24
Dear Jesus, when I've been inculcated with the values of the world, it's trying to even begin to be altruistic and seeing another not through tinted lenses with a pejorative attitude and I acknowledge that I need your divine assistance. Help me to place others before my personal self. Give me strength that I may carry on and make this my daily heart cry I pray.
Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Psalms 30:5
So Lord, assuage whatever distraught I might have in my course of tergiversation and may I wake up a happier man Peter Pan.
It's something unpredictable, but still the end is right. I hope you had the time of your life.
--Greenday
So just as the Economics theory states that "The luxuries of yesterday are the necessities of tomorrow," (Sketchy precis: The investment of a rich echeleon provide the monetary means for further development of products that make them easily accessible to posterity; think television.) so my mistakes of yesteryears propound an alternate percept of comprehending futurity.
What are mistakes really? *PS
A deviation from truth? And so what is truth if it not be explicitly circumscribed in the Bible?
And since one's incessant nod of the head in response to another's air of grievance is hardly symbolic of really comprehending the distress, hope, bliss that wreathes each trenchant enunciation, ergo:
Humanity is mistakes personified incrusting one's peregrination with a gamut of unparalleled experiences, each mistake; not an impediment but expedient to growth, is a lesson learnt in time.
"Chris, do you regret what you've done and if you could turn back time, would you change anything?"
"I don't live in regrets and no, I wouldn't change anything if I could turn back time, even more so when His hand and providence are manifest manifold in the aftermath of my mistakes."
Better to have done, committed a mistake and learned than live in the angst of stagnate inaction wondering if what could have been should have been.
--Chris
*PS: Please note that my use of the term mistake is arbitrary and I do not mean wholly inane things whose boundaries are delimited distinctly but rather mistakes that at a certain still frame seem to be a genuine cause concordant to what one believes in (The at one time Present-Tense of the mistake, now, the Past-Particple;) though not necessarily a cause that endures into the subsequent phase, thus in retrospect, the occurence deemed as a mistake (The current Present-Tense of that mistake). But is that really a mistake? Or is it really a cause in the past-participle?
When sunshine's a transient sojourn, This winter solstice; this mournfully short day, Really Baby is my longest dismay. Serendipitous immiscible corporality, So believe what Autumn speaks of me; Maybe Summer I slept with the lass next door. What's there left to tell,
When farewell is most trying, Still the only traditonal thing to do, C'est la vie really.
Being intrapersonal, really, I already know that spending quality time, doing something meaningful, discoursing, with someone, in my case, develops heightened affinity and affection, of course without discount of the fact that the little reciprocal or spontaneous acts of expression mean much to me.
Ergo, doing something together could potentially matter more to me than to another insouciant other, which reminds me to temper my expectations and responses.
Knowing myself sure does help.
The Five Love Languages
My primary love language is probably Quality Time with a secondary love language being Acts of Service.
Complete set of results
Quality Time:
9
Acts of Service:
6
Words of Affirmation:
6
Physical Touch:
5
Receiving Gifts:
4
Information
Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.
My friend once read a cryptic article he could make nothing out of and he asked me to illuminate it. Though it wasn't verbose, neither was it grandiloquent in diction, even I though able to make apocryphal inferences didn't quite get the conveyance of the succinct entry.
I had but one question "Why do you think it is directed to you," and the absence of a reply prompted me to look him solemnly and say:
If the words mean nothing to you, then very likely they weren't meant for you. If you can't see your footsteps, or tell of her reminiscence of your quirky anecdotes, in the entry she wrote, then very likely they conceal another person's tincture. No matter how you remould an entry to fit the pre-defined dreams in your mind, when it is not, it will never be. That's how you tell if you are the addressee.
Following that he resignedly asked me what he should offer in reply to a letter that was scrambled from his construal. Gently I offered: "When words fail to suffice, a pertinent reply would be not to reply."
I don't know if I dashed his hopes, likely I did and it was the day a sentence lost its meaning for my dear friend. But won't you say that sooner is better than later just as living in reality is better than lying in lies?
An apropos song to put up would be When you say nothing at all by Ronan Keating but queerly the song hereunder keeps replaying in my head, maybe because unbeknownst to the Duke, the encoded love messages in the sung songs are mutually coherent only to Christian and Satine; sadly the denouement is still separation, much like what the aforementioned expository hashes out.
Society -- We're inundated by our unceasing strive, bound even by the very self-professed freedom-to-act we bellicosely espouse.
But how free is being free? Is freedom to masturbate and caught flagrante delicto or to prevaricate incessantly without onus of qualms or cost of repercussions and the wanton likes what it means to be free?
Is it? Really?
Or are we really marauding recidivists manacled by the antipathy arousing filth we luxuriate in, really reprobates enfettered by the acts we define is freedom yet ourselves have no jurisdiction whatsoever over; for want of stalwartness to supercede amoral impropriety?
For that matter, is the efficacy of our personal endeavours even adequate?
I believe in the King and His Word. I believe in the Lord and His risen Son. I believe:
If you hold on to my teachings, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
--John 8:31-32
Freedom to say no? Now, if there ever is freedom, that's freedom indeed.
A SATURDAY AFTERNOON in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.
The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast, the heath wore the appearance of an installment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky.
While I most applaud Sartre for his existentialist effort in What is Literature wherein the reasons why we write are perused, I most certainly need not a prose delimit demarcations for my raison d'etre.
The reason why at five in the morning, I'm viced by a desire to put to death all fragmentary sherds of slumber so as to give voice to my wordless thoughts is a reason why I live.
Just as the augur, Orpheus would eternally softly string poignant songs in his doleful direction to persuade Eurydice's liberation from Death's gaol, like damned Sisyphus who heaves a boulder up a mountain to have it gyrate, bearing down over and above him in the bowelled recesses of abyssal Hades, so like the Renaissance artist of yore and Romantic (movement) odist prior; I sojourn in my Outopia -- Elysian Plains -- thriving to embellish and so leave my hallmark, but merely besmirch, an antediluvian Mycenaean fresco with my words.
Writing to me is Liberty when I uninhibitedly evince -- emotions and ruminations -- fettered only by the haste in which I conclude my succeeding word, is a Truth when I can elucidate my most reticent thought sans dread of ridicule, is Hope manifest when I journal of feyly reveries that have not yet their altar in time and it harks also of ataraxic Jubilee, when I lay rest my quill, appeased that I have not obviated and left uncharted in the annals of my chronicle, a vestige of memory to be modelled and remoulded by vicissitudes of age or extirpated by downing the waters of the pool of Lethe but rather, immortalised and forever venerated in its nascent, raw conceptuality.
So harnessed to the begilded chariot of expression are the Hippoi Athanatoi of Freedom and Truth for, search the plains of Ithaca far and the shores of the Isle of Calypso wide; you can find no longer a veritable mortal in these coming days than the naked one in the shade of his Elysian Plain.
Writing; the only lattice of my cogitations, insofar as to what you'll ever comprehend, is to me what music is to another charmed Penelope.
Ps: Idioscyncratic as it may be, the reason why I'm writing this likely be because I'm metaphorically liberating myself from the other sentiment, though on it's veneer hardly cognate, I can do anything but express. So maybe in my desultory muse, one, if aided by providence; might chance upon the attraction, dreams and hope denotations. Love maybe? Ah, the trenchant irony.
Question: What do drug abusers, or people who behave as if doped do when they want to ween themselves off their narcotics, stimulants, excitants; psychedelics or aphrodisiacs?
Answer: They go cold turkey till they're abstemious.
"The only thing bearable about being a star, looking down at human kind when the world is fraught with pain, hate; hurt and wars is the presence of love. Uncontrollable, unbearable, my heart behaves as if my chest cannot contain it, behaves as if it does not belong to me and if you would ask for it, I would give it to you without anything at all in exchange, no goods, no money, nothing. Just having yours in return for mine."
"A philosopher once asked: Are we humans because we gaze at the stars or do we gaze at the stars because we are human? Pointless really ... Do the stars gaze back? Now, that's the question."
And that's how the fairy tale that's spun of the heart of courage, weaved of the lies of deceitful treachery; festooned with magical travel by candlelight spurred on by conjured desires, when stars are held ransom as a betrothal bestowal and embellished far and above all else by a fairytale that would never really be a fairytale and have the makings of one without -- love -- commenced.
The protagonist, Tristan, is conceived out of wedlock when his father many years earlier in exchange for a glass flower said to have the ability to protect it's bearer in exchange for it exchanges a sweet kiss that led to symbolic passion.
Our dear boy, quite the provincial dunce in the inception tries frantically to win the love of his love and very very unacquainted with realism elocutes with verisimilitude: "Victoria, for your hand in marriage, I would go to the gold mines of San Francisco and bring you your bag of wedding gold; I would go to Africa to bring you back your diamond ... " It goes on alongst this note, very much cliched yet strangely heart-warming because it is a tableau of the blind "love" foibles that so many of us fumble with when besotted. At the trail of a luminous meteoroid, struck out of the open cluster of stars in the constellation by a ruby -- apprehender of which will be the heir to a kingdom -- Tristan, grandiloquently declaims, with much hyperbole and dramaticism: "For your hand in marriage, I would cross the wall that nobody else crosses to being you that fallen star."
And so three suitors, albeit for diametrically disparate reasons, employing techniques that best suit their cause, vie for the affection and possession of the heart of the one star.
At one time a speech by Lysander, now an immortalised aphorism: "The course of true love never did run smooth" was reiterated again as unkind fate hurled boulders of adversities to occlude Tristan from marching the course of obtaining the star to claim his true love.
"The little something about love I know is that's it's unconditional and that it's not something money can buy.'
The refulgent star -- Yvaine -- whom Tristan bumps serendipitously into scintillates brighter day by day, just as what stars do best, when she slowly, inevitably falls for Tristan as they brave one calamity after another misfortune and Tristan likewise soon comprehends the meaning of what felicitous love is.
No star can shine with a broken heart.
Touche.
Would I watch it again? Yes I would, with her, because watching the show alone albeit with her in your thoughts isn't nearly quite the same as watching it with her by your side, even when nothing's conclusive.
Twinkle star so bright, light my heart all right
Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minific; Feign do I fathom your nature's specific Exaltedly set on the aether capacious A reasonable facsimile of a gem carbonaceous.
Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minific; Feign do I fathom your nature's specific
I comprehend that my posts of late have broached a somewhat effusive if not inordinate display of passionate sentiments, a facet of which has been extricated from the orifices of my mental and sadly humane crevice; the hiatus from subjects of more peremptory consequences a protracted one, for which I must apologize and most resolutely reiterate that non-deviation, for which reasons abound, should be promulgated.
Here, I shall revert to, well, more intelligible, less tangentially cryptic entries:
The First and the Fourteenth Amendment, architectonic in structure are lynch pins in the liberalism of society, both constitutionally and in the legality denotations.
While the First Amendment heralds liberty, the Fourteenth hails equality; but insofar as to cite that the dual concepts of liberty and equality can co-exist amicably is a fallacy albeit not necessarily unfeasible, the impetus of excessive effort notwithstanding.
Why so?
While most are apprised to the First Amendment, the Fourteenth has been a less publicized one. But, the firstness of the First Amendment has no basis for its precedence over the Fourteenth. While most theorists would cogently argue that the First Amendment stakes the claim to unequivocal significance over the Fourteenth due to its imperative contribution in the 1960s: Checking oligarchy and sovereignty; conversely, the latter's (Fourteenth) reason for it being the incipient terminus a quo of democracy is not necessarily a non sequitur. The premise of an absolutely, albeit idealistic, democratic society cannot be established without the ideal of equality in the Fourteenth as a pre-requisite.
The Fourteenth Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So while I underscore the fact that unscrupulous preference of liberty over equality is most certainly a sophism, the crux of surfacing this issue lies with the notion that: To speak thus exercising my right to liberty would indubitably result in the silence of another, ergo, repression of equality. To simply repress another's viewpoint with a cogent view that could be instituted on rhetoric might not necessarily be anymore valid than the precept that occupied the underhand due to possibly poor demagogy, even more so when an opposing organisation has wealthy backers.
Exempli gratia: The pornography industry is most certainly a thriving one, what with depraved men, which pornographers assert is an expression and transcendal symbolism for which liberty vouches for. But to liberalise pornography, without me having even yet broached the cultural influences (demographics and psychographics) of civil and common law dependant on hereditary judicial systems(most arbitrary to certain jurists who propound that law is a neutral, objective human endeavor that transcends cultures), would be to stifle the unheard and plaintive cry for equality by homogametics who assert, with sociologists' backing, that pornography is a trigger of vile violence against women; their social status having been devoluted to mere malleable objects of masturbation sans credibility and esteem.
So this impasse between the first coming of axiomatic liberty and the second coming of maxim equality, much like the hen and egg cycle, is one that needs to be perused. The liberty one exercises should thus be constrained for social, national and public equity and operable within demarcated delimitation of what constitutes freedom which Hayek provides an exegesis in The Constitution of Liberty.
With the rain precipitates pelting my windows in a rhythmic cadence: dum dee dum, I wake up at five ante meridiem after a bout of somnolence, having only drifted into a fitful three hour slumber; with an insatiable hunger for, of all things, Roti Prata. Don't you?
Before you pass this off as balderdash, it would be wise to hear me out since I've NEVER had a craving for Roti Prata, that is no grandiloquent hyperbole.
I wonder if this inane predilection manifest is due to repression of certain cognitive reflections that are inextricably linked to hmmm, Prata. Edited (November 11) Maybe, I shouldn't ruminate inordinately because the simple reason could be that I like the taste of Prata.
Me thinks, Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life has done me much irrevocable detriment, impairment maybe, than beneficial aid.
Memories, even if lost, when awoken from its slumber one day will serve to remind one of the moments of sottishness, rekindle bitter-sweet reminiscence of moments immortalised in the ignorance and possibly craven cowardice of youth. Memories after they return from its sojourn will allow one to treasure those magical moments, not unlike fairy-tales that never lose their charm, that have spent many a longing day and cheery-melancholic night to day creviced in one's cascading thoughts. It, however, when one has been jolted to apprisal as to what has been lost, might be too late.
Lest I forget the cherished memory:
The last page, the last manoeuvre
You recite verbatim the last sentence of the last conversation and the last word of the last last conversation. You have this uncanny proclivity to remember the otherwise nondescript comments she made, comments you would normally be insouciant over, comments which you now finger delicately; in an attempt to preserve its mystical moment whilst juxtaposing the smorgasbord of varied connotations in different contexts. Shrugging in exaggerated exasperation, after an inebriated half-hour muse, you figure that she was literal, not metaphoric and that you had been beguiling yourself all this while; but still, you turn it over and over, again and again ad nauseam in your head. It's not that you want to you see, but you reckon that this, hopefully transitory, predilection of assimilating yourself into what she said; is corollary of one bursting with emotions, unspoken, unshared emotions.
You wonder if it is a game, but if it isn't a high-rolling game then why are there stakes and odds, lethal stakes: emotions, happiness, friendship and the seemingly insurmountable odds against your placed bet in life's Monopoly.
The boundaries aren't demarcated -- The achromatic vacuum of ambiguity between flattering and battering leaves one wondering.
You realise you need to end, and go, so your silhouette miniaturises in the grit of the distant horizon -- the untrodden path.
The unpretentious book cover -- the contents inside is sweeter than the sweetest art-work that would festoon -- with the embellished title: Sweet Memories in gold Kingthings Spike font closes with a thud and sends the dust swirling in spirals.
Silence presides.
Your subtleties they strangle me I can't explain myself at all And all the wants, and all the needs All I don't want to need at all ...
A falling star, at least I fall alone I can't explain what you can't explain ...
All these thoughts locked inside Now you're the first to know ...
Just a little insight won't make this right It's too late to fight, it ends tonight, it ends tonight ...
In so many a portico reminiscent of this, what but the building blocks of clay, mortar and water are a witness to the surfeit of physical fetes hosted in honour of the underbelly of sinful society -- there can only be one milquetoast and another paladin; one Hector and another Achilles.
The baritone and hasty ramble: "Yo, li, sa," [sic] a dialect that means one, two and three; is a parody of "En garde. Prêt. Allez." At that plangent yowl, the cigarette, maybe Marlboro or possibly Camel is lit as an emblematic initiation, wherein from time-honoured traditions; the gladiator will square off against fate's adversity, like so now, one urchin will come vis-a-vis another gang-member to preserve his honour and retain sang-froid; congruent to gladiatorial conquests of yore, may the best man triumph.
Prior to the seven minutes long skirmish, what seems like seventy when in the arena, the brawlers are first apprised to the rules of engagement: No weapons, no scrotum; at least those are the standards I adhere by. Some battlers go through a platitudinously rehearsed farrago of pseudo-prayer dances akin to Muay Thai fighters, yet others, like myself, content with an exhaustive and also methodical stretch: Quadriceps and hamstring for sweeping sidekicks; triceps and biceps for potent punches.
The ineluctable show-down in a one to one combat is not without much ado and preparation. There is but only so much good lunging with ten kilograms dumbbells in a bid to accentuate agility and heavy punches, and that much battering a boxing bag with rabidity will assist. (My green boxing bag is worn and long-gone.) Alternatively, fighting skills can also be honed from experience derived from sparring bouts to actual one to one fights with peers. That was not an auxiliary avocation but my primary strive, picking "cordial fights" with people rumoured to be adroit, friends notwithstanding. Many a blighted relationship was corollary.
Like fencing with thrusts, parries, ripostes and counterlunges, a fight is an archaic art of the most graceful form, where nimble blithe converges with efficacy. The roundhouse, uppercut, jab; hook and elbow blows are the quarte, octave, counter six and prime of fencing. Fighting is a ballet of non-synchronised cadence; to deter pre-emption of blows, a step to the left could mean a hook to the right whilst a jab to the face is segued with a sweep of the feet. Some however adopt the cowboy style, adapted from local secret societies' vernacular, where punches are exchanged in a flurry, an infusement of brute brunt, but also an imbibition of vigour. It only takes a few well-placed elbows to the temple or maybe an opportune full swing in the throat, preferably with the body mass aiding its trajectory, to knock him out. Like a schadenfreude addiction, blood draws more blood, the more blood he draws from you, the more blood you want to draw from him. You don't feel pain in a fight, the adrenaline sustains you.
To be a Leonidas, a fight is an uninhibited enactment of savagery where sympathy and hesitation cease to exist. The "all out, no holds barred" conceptualisation is assimilated. Consequent is en-visualisation of the bete noire dead or unconscious, preferably with vestiges of life threatening to elude him, so he'll ingrain your name into his memory. "Aim for the stars and maybe, you might reach for the sky."
If you have love, you will not be a good fighter. If you cannot bear pain you fight a losing battle. If you aren't out to maim him, you do not boast of the ethos of true fighters. It is an "either, or" axiom, there is no space in between.
Likely the reason why Hector had his carcass towed behind a chariot on the battlefield was because he had lost the battle to compassion and in so doing genuflected to Achilles' overwhelming hate.
In retrospect, little wonder then why my wintry relationships of February never saw the spring of March. Little wonder when I didn't love God, didn't love my father or mother and didn't love my friends.
It's true don't you see, we traverse life's obstacles and scale the pinnacle; gain the whole world but in doing so we lose our raison d'etre and regrettably we barter love away for the fetishes of our ephemeral pursuits.
I never lost a fight, a bloody stalemate maybe, but the never having lost can be accorded to the reason that I had no love; no capacity to love.
Can we homo sapiens ever be more inept at translating emotions into tangible actions, any more inadequate than we are now?
So we leave contradictory clues along life's cobbled paseo, beseeching that the subject of our arousal; emotional, plays a certain sleuth who resides in 221B Baker Street. Who can boast of never incorporating unspoken messages of the most trivial kind, trivial yet significant to oneself; into one's MSN nick? Or for that matter, trenchant meaningless phrases that are of unequivocal meaning albeit to a personal degree. So whence does the satisfaction hail? What distant shores of obfuscated irony and what mazed labyrinth of cul de sacs? In the knowing that she doesn't understand the message that you're trying to encode and altogether praying that she decodes it, perhaps. Or maybe one is just beguiled at knowing, at the diametric end of two confluent geographical vertices, she, or maybe he, might be pondering the very same questions you turn over and over; again and again in your lovelorn cortex.
What is it about love that makes it so iconoclastic vis-a-vis the gamut of other sentiments and what is it about love that we earnestly pray for and when answered, we're anathema towards? Why do we adopt such pusillanimous pessimism and orchestrate such idiosyncratic acts such as pretending to be uninterested or more commonly pondering the morose repercussions of failed love when its inception has yet to coalesce? Do we wait for love to pass us by before we trail after the bandwagon?
Are we afraid of love, of loving love, of unrequited love or more wary of falling out of love?
At the risk of sounding improvident, will we ever learn to love if the times we try to love we restrain love; I myself, hardly hedonist ,peruse the analysis ad infinitum, coming up with more reasons against; than for each placard that cries "onward, soldier." Ah, the Mathematics of love. To revel in love, carpe diem I say.
My agony is laced with amusement at how blind lusty liaisons actually are. Perhaps it might be somewhat pejorative with such forward a lead, after duly understanding the unseeing infatuated, but pardon me, Chris doesn't usually do euphemism; at least not when such a significant Gordian issue needs to be broached.
So a male buddy shared with me a certain issue his "ex-crush" has come vis-a-vis with:
The inception was at a KTV lounge, as most illicit relationships are; what with uninhibitory acts when a couple has had too many a drink. The trio sang and what-not, till it devolved to caressing.
*I shall spare you the details*
The next chapter:
So the girl has a copulating-relationship with the guy, who without omission of integral details: is married, has a child, and is thirteen years her senior, not to mention he's a Moslem; not that she's a Christian.
And from my friend, she avidly believes that he will leave his wife, child so that they can nurture the relationship, if it could even be termed as that. The ironical insistence when my friend ticked her off for such insensitive acts, was that their amorous affaire is in the dark [sic]and that the formal constituted relationship between her inamorato and his spouse is in the light [sic]. Seriously, the irony: Like hello, of course the relationship is besmirched, you're the bete noire here ay? Anyway, he'd probably leave after he's had his fill, not to mention as an Islamist, he can practice polygamy.
To rend a relationship, leaving a child flailing in an unloving world, tearing asunder the only love he'll every know; to be the factor in another case of divorce and dissolution of sacrosanct union, is an deplorable act of the most odious kind.
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be UNITED to HIS WIFE, and they will become ONE flesh.
Was fumbling for food in the kitchen when I saw a nondescript black diary, 13 by 9, lying on the table. Never one to revel in not doing anything even when I don't want to do anything, I picked it up and browsed through it while waiting for the roast chicken I had hastily stuffed into the microwave oven to warm.
It's the little black book, in the same class as Audrey Hepburn's little black dress, choked full of memory verses which I memorised to remind myself that I was to, with love and patience confront my fellow camp mates (BMT phase) sans the condescending and pejorative demeanour I was/am so apt to display; the forebearance over which has at this present juncture eluded me.
The Manifesto:
Its inauguration no happenstance,
this is a manifesto of truimphant liberty;
of the people, for the people.
An abode of vehement salvo;
it serves as a rallying point for diverse multitudes who like me,
will choose not to be sullied by transient secularism.
A herald of innate insights, it preaches against the lull of the world,
and the falsetto she so sings to.
Fellow plebians, proletarians and stranger passing by,
embrace then, my embodiment of sombre revolution.
Audemus jura nostra defendere
