thing of the week: the leaky air-conditioning. bed? bathroom? who can tell?

I'm feeling
jump in the guestbook. but don't hesitate to write me at
[email protected]. to sign up for weekly updates, say so in the subject.

Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
- The Duchess, Alice In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

  Recent
  scatteredprose animal abuse essay.
  poetry new poetry in motion. navigators.
 
  I've found enough time to level out everything so this site is smooth. On another note, the
  pictures I change periodically on the left were not taken by me. I found this one here.
  And hey, remember to come again.

---

January 2003

I have still been writing, just not here. I've moved to somewhere new. I won't say where. I do link to this site from there, merely for reference purposes, and my meteormagnified list which I've decided not to bring along with me.

If you are a fan of public journals, then we will definitely meet again.
Aw don't groan now.

Liyana

---

November 8, 2002
a disappointed playwright

Listening to: Queens Of The Stone Age - No One Knows
Reading: Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

The last day of school lacks a lot of fanciful ceremony. The egg-and-flour fights were as active as always, an unbreakable tradition I hope I won't ever be a part of. It's just that, people have just stopped going to school after the exams altogether, no longer coming with board games, card decks, and great conversation like the previous years. I miss that. The official last day of school didn't mean anything at all this year, because as far as everyone was concerned, school was out a long time ago.

I didn't get to finish a lot of things I wanted done, most importantly the shooting of the play for english class (that everyone else including the teacher had most conveniently forgotten), because there wasn't a time when everyone was free. It was a shame. My second unsuccessful script out of the three I wrote this year.

I wrote another one earlier this year for the english literature seminar. The assignment was a play on the open theme of 'family'. The play I wrote for my group was a series of soliloquies for five women in a family, coping with the news that one of them, a teenager, is pregnant. I particularly liked that script.

On the day of the play though, the lead character (a 50 year-old playing the teenager) decided that she didn't like her monologue, because she was against teenage parenthood. Then she decided that her lines had to be rewritten. Even more unfortunately, she put in the alterations herself, during the play, and stunned the other four characters (myself included).

So that was a catastrophe. Four monologues reacting to the news of the teenager having and raising her baby, and that one monologue from the lead character herself saying 'you know what, I don't want the baby'. It made the entire play pointless. I've always thought that your opinions should have nothing to do with the character you're playing. If you don't like her way of thinking, just deal with it! Don't alter it just to have it your way! Personally, I don't like the idea of teenagers getting knocked up either. And I was heartbroken to just stand there onstage with her, playing my role while hearing my script go down the drain without even the slightest warning.

The successful script was after that, also for the english literature class, a synopsis of Long Day's Journey Into Night, Act 4. It involved four other teammates and myself as the narrator, all of us holding up white A4 papers for dialogue, drawings of props, character analysis points and so on. It was a haphazard last-minute attempt (a silent play so we wouldn't have to memorise any dialogue), and it turned out great.

And now, since I was co-directing the medley play with my script, my affection for it was on an entirely different level. It was so much fun. And all I wanted was to have it finished, on a VCD ready to play later in the future for all of us to laugh our asses off. I don't think that's going to happen either.

---

in poetrydust

Navigators
4 am, november 6 2002

weaving songs of gray black and blue
weaving individual ones just for you
they come
they will follow the commands and take you away
for they are your nightly navigators.
faces constantly in shadows but arms always outreached
tattered garments and gowns reveal their bare alabaster feet

pale and slender
male and female
winged and walking
one and many
beautiful and distorted
melancholy and gothic
grayscale never colour

you never want to meet them but when you do you would not think of leaving

such perfect knightly navigators.
they will bring you away
and walk behind you as you enter,
eyes closed
into territory unfamiliar but not new.
within the murky swamps of nightmare fog they cannot assist you
or help evade that monster on your trail
or erase those gruesome images rising forth to haunt
neither will they dance with you in those empty crowded hallways

they wouldn't wipe the beads of sweat on your worried forehead
but they will shield you from
those screaming stars
until you wake

they are your nightly companions.
reminding you that when they visit
you are always alone, self-confined with them
the unforgettably majestic beings
that fade away with
the consciousness daylight brings.

you're trying to recall
but you don't remember them, do you

---

5 Nov. 02, a poetry-in-motion

THE LONELY FIGURE IN BED

laughs of childhood years
born babies to big-little dreams                

           awake her to old reality

    beyond despair                            the mother cries

---

5 Nov. 02, an unarchived moment of excitement

Look at what I'm now part of! It all came together, I was watching Finding Forrester then immediately after, I stumbled across this site, NaNoWriMo. What else?
I'm in!

---

November 4, 2002
five minute li: entry for the if project

Listening to: From Autumn To Ashes - Eulogy For An Angel
Reading: Einstein: A Life by Denis Brian

---
If you have five minutes to make
an impression on someone you are
meeting for the first time, what will
they see? How closely does the image
you project reflect the inner you?
---

I carry a notebook and a pen with me wherever I go just so my thoughts don't fly out the window unwritten. When we first meet I may be writing. I read a lot too, whether in a cafe or on a bench. I may be immersed in a book when you first meet me.

I might be sitting in silence, or giving a comment, cursing, laughing with a friend. I may also be playing with a stray cat, drinking coffee, observing people, or listening to music.

I almost never wear makeup. If I do you'd barely catch it. A little bit of brown on the eyelids or some strawberry lipgloss, usually. Clotheswise, I wear a lot of unskimpy tops, pants, long skirts, mainly dark colours, creams, beiges and whites. I have no piercings anywhere. I like beads and bandannas.

I'm almost never on the cellphone in public.

All of those facts may somewhat contribute to your first, fleeting impression of me.

Then, when we do strike up a conversation, it'll usually be about a mutual interest or to discuss an issue, or to ask a question. Maybe it'd stem from a compliment, one that I give or one from you.

Maybe we'd talk about animals, books, poets, authors, frappucinos, writing, art, music. Usually we'd just swap comebacks. But really, who knows?

You may ask me where I went, because of my accent (which is really just fluency in English, minus the 'lahs' and the 'lors' and collage of many languages). And I'll tell you I've never stepped foot out of this country long enough to adopt one. But apparently, I have an accent nonetheless. People tend to judge me the wrong way because of it.

So that's what you get. I have never faked a laugh, or used a line, or flipped my hair, winked suggestively, and most importantly pretended to like something they liked just so they'd want to know me better. Certainly this fact is stressed the most, not only in this collaboration but in all entries for this month's ifproject.

Most often with people that approach me, or people that I approach, we hit it off. Then when we say goodbyes and walk away, one of us realises that we didn't exchange names, let alone any form of contact number, and by the time we want to, it'd be too late. Either I'm gone, or you are.

It happens every time. It must be my bad memory. Then again, all the previous persons didn't do anything either.

The truth about first impressions is that they're almost always inaccurate. But if they do turn out that way, I won't be the cause of it. Lill the Five Minute Version is as faithful to Lill The Big Picture as it can be, despite all the limitations imposed upon it.

---

3 Nov. 02, stuck this in the test-results page (leftoverstars)

*looks at the current world's population* You must have a lot of frustration then.

Sur-prise. Well can you really blame me?

What pisses you off?
Created by ptocheia

---

3 Nov. 02, watching MTV again?!

Crap. Two Christina minijournal entries in a row. You know, she's one of those celebrities I'd love to hate. The puppeteered plastic and fake everything. But her voice remains undisputedly good. Though she's started to warble and lose melody, she can afford to warble and still have people admire her voice. I just watched a TRL special, to reinforce my love-to-hate thing for her, but from the little soundbytes and two live performances I fear very greatly that I actually just might like her album. God help me.

---

November 2, 2002
bush boogies and bad babies

Listening to: Green Day - Hitchin A Ride
Reading: old Rolling stone magazines

Despite my angry, cantankerous, foulmouthed opinioniated self, I laugh easily. And if it's really good, I'll tear up a lot. I'll even pepper in some profanity when I catch my breath. And for some reason, my entire way of laughing scares a lot of people that I meet. They keep asking me if I'm okay too. Damn, I'm laughing, laughing hard! How okay does it get?

It doesn't even have to be about what they say that makes me laugh. It's just how I hear it, and envision it. That's why I hardly laugh when I'm on the Net.

Breaking news! This site (reality check on a baby naming forum) had me tearing and laughing at five in the morning, so hard that I had to clamp two hands over my mouth before I woke everyone up. My cheeks hurt because my bursts of laughter kept exploding in my mouth.

And yeah yeah, I do hate little site animations that just constantly twitch. This is the first (last?) exception. Entertaining isn't it? I'm becoming attached to them, and I keep them very clean and happy. You can tell they are well-fed and possess interesting characteristics. If all doesn't work out I'll let them battle till death. If strange people decide to interrogate me, all I'll say is "She made me do it!"

---

1 Nov. 02, after watching MTV

Dirrty! Filll-thay! Nassz-teh!

Let me quote from Rolling Stone #902, Aug 8 2002 page 32:

"I wanted to make a record that was about me completely. Nothing superficial, no hype, no gloss." (Christina) Aguilera considered Stripped as an album title. "But we thought it could be sexually misconstrued," she says.
"We don't want to give the wrong impression."

Then, ladies and drooling germs, there was the dirty video. Oh, my bad. I meant the Dirrty video.

---