year of meteors pt iii

Schizophrenic year. Year of ambivalence,
of incongruous volatile polarity.
year of conflict and tensions and
opposition and duality and
interruption. Year of growing
apart and fragmentation.

Year of descent, of iridescent
spectacle. Of vanishing and
transient burning. Year of wishes
and disappointments. Year of shadows
and searching and distant flickering.
Year of trail blazing and disintegrating.

---

Leaving year. Year of departures.
Year of going and not knowing
if you'll ever come back

gross nostalgia / megacreep / you look good blues

a picture of aggregation without distinction
the whole of last year is out of focus
a blur, even more than usual
maybe it gets better
but how bad is it now
how bad is it now?

八百万

i just... i don't get it. why do you put yourself through all this rejection, through so much pain?

he took one long puff of his cigarette, then turned to face me as if he had been waiting for someone to ask him that his entire life.

so i can be accepted one day, he said.

the museum of you / bad apple, rotten millenial / no wrong answer

There is a man never believed fortune telling not all  
He never never took a book of greek mythology 
He said Fortune telling is for teenagers who falling love 
i never knew my constellation and i never want to 

He woks as a doctocr all around the world  
oneday little boy asked him in jet When is your birthday? 

He answered 21st of December 
The boy said Same as me! You like journey too. 'Cause sagittarius!




---

"... and surprised to find it is made up of other people"

---

- i worry about forgetting...

- forgetting what?

- who... I was... who I used to be...

---

"you're the guy who never figured out the answer to 'what do you want to be when you grow up'"

"that's... that's not true."

"so what do you want to be then?"

"... my... myself"

---

remembering involves the same pleasant surprise as discovering. it is exploring what you had forgotten, and hence the experience is a novelty. But the discovery has an extra dimension. The reward includes the thoughts, feelings, desires, sensations you had at the time. You re-experience what a previous version of you experienced, plus what the current you, many moons down the line, and get to reflect on your reflections of that experience, you get to think of the experience again in a new light, as well as think about the thoughts you had of that experience. So the same experience becomes richer. It's a little bit like being able to live twice.

logos

To cure sometimes, to relieve often, and to comfort always

---

As you probably know, hieroglyphics were called "the words of God"

---

"Sen, define quote origin."

"All people commit sins and make mistakes. God forgives them, and people are acting in a godlike (divine) way when they forgive. This saying is from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.

Do you want me to highlight new vocabulary words Jonathan?"

"Search Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism."

---


https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/korean-word-e8b37e830ebfd0eef98e4923c1468de973f38856.html

疲れた Tsukareta has the sense of being 'worn out' or 'weary' having 'endured' or 'persevered' to reach this state. It only applies after exertion. If the person has exerted themselves in some way.

おつかれ (rōmaji otsukare) お疲れ: an expression of appreciation for a coworker's hard work
It was an after work ritual to say this to everyone after a shift at sushi zanmai. Even though it was an empty pleasantry like 'how do you do' - it still generated and fostered rapport. The idea of being a team.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EC%88%98%EA%B3%A0%ED%95%98%EB%8B%A4

"But if you want to thank someone for their hard work “수고했어요” (sugohaesseoyo) is a better and more commonly used phrase. It means “thank you for your work/efforts”

A quick internet search for what the word 고생 means returns the following results: 'trouble.' 'pain' 'hard life' 'sorrow.' The 'Go' comes from 'Ku' 苦 (grade 3 “Kyōiku” kanji) pain, anguish, suffering, discomfort, hardship, worry (Buddhism) dukkha, suffering

'고생 많았다.'

I've been hearing it more recently since watching Produce 101, a show whose premise (reality survival popularity / talent contest where 101 young girls compete to form the ultimate celebrity girl group) belies the depth and scope of genuine, capital R real, unscripted human drama portrayed, specifically wrt what the girls go through and sacrifice in order to achieve their dreams.

When the trainer says '고생 많았다', there is a weight and gravity behind her words. One which manages to encapsulate that she comprehends the depth and weight of suffering that has been experienced - and also a note of approval, of being proud and showing compassion and pity all at the same time. Of consolation and congratulation. Of recognition.

Similar to Ganbare - they are collectively one of those semi-idiomatic phrases for which there is no sufficiently nuanced English equivalent. Also similar to Ganbare they place emphasis on the effort, on the will and intention behind the act rather than the result. It is to acknowledge the choice that the individual makes. It is that rare strain of comfort and consolation that comes of identifying with someone's suffering - of being understood and not alone in your anguish and pain. Not glorifying the trial but validating it. A kind of vindication that feels like redemption. That someone understands the fraction of the cost of the burden you bear. How four words can hold so much meaning, so convey so much kindness, can relieve so much pain.

And why don't we have these words in English

---


"Human are animals that are very good at enduring pain. Most animals will respond by running away, by doing everything they can to escape the noxious stimulus, but not humans. Humans put themselves through tremendous hardships voluntarily. And so they train themselves not to think about it. To distract themselves. The moment of suffering passes and you laugh again. You act like it never happened. So you think it goes somewhere else. You believe that all the hardship you endured has brushed off you like rain on a raincoat. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it sinks down deep. It accumulates. It changes you. I am trying to tell you there is a way to let go of pain and suffering -- and the first step is to acknowledge it."

hieroplasty

I was standing by the hoagies smoking a joint when I noticed him. There wasn't much light. It was late afternoon. He looked bald and unassuming, the way I had heard him described. I looked around at the crowds making their way back to their cars. What on earth was he doing here?

The late afternoon lights made the park look sad the way Christmas trees look sad after the new year.

---


late Middle English: via Old French and medieval Latin from Greek hierarkhia, from hierarkhēs ‘sacred ruler’ (see hierarch). The earliest sense was ‘system of orders of angels and heavenly beings’; the other senses date from the 17th century.


---


Quill found Grace on the couch in the mess, wiping the tears from her tired eyes. 'Oh hi!' She said, with a forced gaiety.

"Hey Grace, how are you feeling?"

"Oh... just tired." She chuckled apologetically.

He nodded. "It's been a long night for you." He said, sitting on the couch opposite.

A pregnant pause filled the air. Grace was just about to excuse herself when Quill started speaking.

"Hey Grace, did I ever tell you about this patient I saw in A&E? He was an elderly gentleman, came in with pretty straightforward COPD exacerbation. He had had some nebs and the regular treatment in the ambulance, so I went up to him and he seemed pretty well on oxygen. Then an hour later when I walked past he was slumped over, chin on his chest, not really responding. I thought to myself, he's probably just tired from all the huffing and puffing. I didn't want to disturb him, so I had a quick listen to his chest and there wasn't any wheezing, so I was reassured that he must be okay. Ten minutes later my registrar Rob bursts into Resus with my man and as he brushes past me, he says 'this man has a very tight chest,' and he starts organising Aminophylline and NIV to correct his profound acidosis. All the while I was stunned. I wanted to help but all I could do was think about my mistake. I had missed something serious, something potentially fatal. It was the worst feeling in the world. I felt like I had absolutely failed as a doctor.

When I went home that day I just wanted to crawl underground and stay there. The feeling only went away once I stopped beating myself up and started trying to understand what had happened - and what I could do to prevent it. So I went to my Oxford Handbook and I looked up COPD and silent chest and respiratory acidosis and the whole thing, and I was super crazy careful about the next few COPD patients I saw. But what I'm trying to say is that - because of that experience, I was able to recognise what was going on tonight with that lady, and that's how I knew what to do. I could have looked at that mistake and took it as a sign that I wasn't meant to be a doctor, that I just don't have what it takes. But instead I decided to believe in myself - that I could still be a good doctor and move past it, and learn from it. And that mistake... prepared me for tonight. If I hadn't made that mistake then, I wouldn't have known what to do tonight. And the thing is - when I went in the next day, Rob didn't blame me. He didn't scold me. He still trusted me - which made me believe I could still trust myself. And I made sure to ask him or someone else for help whenever I was struggling or out of my depth. And the more I did, the more I got feedback on whether I was doing the right thing or not, the more confidence I had in what I was doing. This happened relatively late on, by the way. Not as an F1 - but I wish it had. I wish I had learned these things earlier - because that's when I started to realise... that everyone, literally everyone - consultants, registrars - has felt out of their depth, unsure of what to do, wanting to call for help and not knowing whether or not they should. Everyone has felt at some point that they have let themselves and the patient down. Even Rob - who was at that point to me basically superman and could do no wrong - against all odds, he must have felt like me at one point. After that day, I learned to beat myself up less and ask for help more. That was the important lesson that took me a long time to learn."

They both said nothing for a while.

"Anyway, I'm gonna bugger off now - it's way past my bedtime. You've worked really hard tonight. Take it easy and get home safe, okay?" He said, getting up to leave.

"Quill?"

He turned around.

"Thank you... for everything."

He shrugged. "Just doing my job."

to the moon

bon voyage

[prime]

gone home

Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

---

Saying goodbye to fellow junior doctors, one by one, with hugs and bittersweet smiles, as we each leave the department to lead our separate lives. 'I'm leaving medicine, for good.' He says. It's a shock. To begin together and end alone. you know it's inevitable but the absence feels so sudden, goodbyes always somehow manage to blindside you

---

All the leaves at once
The remembering self
is nostalgic in advance

The house
shrinks to fill the space
echoes of memory
evaporate with the clutter
the whitewashed emptiness
crowds out the past with its presence
with its newness

and now you are left
on the precipice
you too will go over the edge
as your heart strains
to absorb as much now
as it can
before everything
changes forever again

the world of yesterday

10−2 mentality

Last night I dreamt that my dad was getting me ready to go to school in the morning. Towards the end, he had a habit of waking at the crack of dawn - way earlier than he needed to - to spend some time with me just reading the bible and having breakfast before school. Now I realise it was his way of trying to hypnopompically pass on a few values and smuggle some good habits into a son that didn't seem to be growing into anything that remotely resembled him. I retaliated by complying with this regimen like a psych patient receiving legally mandated neuroleptics, hoping each day my sulking and languid disinterest would force him to realise the futility of his efforts, the idea being one day he'd throw his arms up in defeat, forever renounce his attempts to rehabilitate me and finally stop waking me up in the morning.

In my dream, we're in the old house again. I'm a lanky seventeen year old with no real world responsibility yet. As I rub the sleep from my eyes, I catch a peripheral vision glimpse of dad, staggering about bleary eyed at the threshold between my parents' bedroom and mine. He is standing still, facing away from me. It's as if he's trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or stay awake. I can sense that he's tired, that he'd clearly prefer to be comfortably asleep instead of awake at 6am, and that he isn't doing this for any reason other than because he loves me - and without thinking I place my hands against his back, and I hear myself say, in a voice too gentle to be my own, "It's okay, dad - I can do it myself. You go back to bed."

I guess some of it sunk in after all.

---

old enough to know you're old enough to wake yourself up now

infinite test

"... eventually you figure out that the things you should value are those that are everlasting, and irreplaceable."

왜 계속 불만족 / more more more

Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.

---

Dear 25 year old me,

In case you haven't noticed, trying to make yourself happy is the thing that leaves you feeling the most unhappy.

Best wishes,
Yourself

dope tunes vol I

the order of time

"Einstein understood this slowing down of time a century before we had clocks precise enough to measure it. He imagined that the sun and the Earth each modified the space and time that surrounded them, just as a body immersed in water displaces the water around it. This modification of the structure of time influences in turn the movement of bodies, causing them to “fall” towards each other. What does it mean, this “modification of the structure of time”? It means precisely the slowing down of time described above: a mass slows down time around itself. The Earth is a large mass and slows down time in its vicinity. It does so more in the plains and less in the mountains, because the plains are closer to it. This is why the friend who stays at sea level ages more slowly."

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time


---

A mass slows down time around itself. What does this mean for us. When time passes differently for us, is this a perceived or a real change? Are we simply moving faster than before and therefore sensing the world relative to us decrease in pace? Or are we gaining mass in these moments? Becoming suddenly denser than ever before. When you are grieving - when the night seems eternal - at the point of death when life stretches behind and before you, do your future selves, all the years you should have had, all the people you could've been, collapse into the present and instantaneously concentrate the self into a single, immensely dense, vanishing point. The big bang but in reverse.

---

So much of our world is built around this concept of time, directed by it, informed by it, regulated, deadlines, shift patterns. In A&E seconds are precious. We have a four hour target, because we understand that when it comes to acute medicine, time is a deciding factor in patient outcomes. Troponins have to be done six hours after chest pain or they won't be reliable diagnostically. Everything / everyone in the department, as soon as you step onto the shop floor, the clock starts ticking. Time to triage. Time to be seen. All of these outcomes are measured, audited, presented. Our time to act is short, our minutes are precious - this is more true in A&E than elsewhere in the hospital. We treat it not as a resource but rather as a force of nature, we see a side of it people rarely confront, a cruel, impersonal tidal wave of change, unstoppable, unrelenting. Not something to be weathered or outlasted but something to keep ahead of, to try and stave off, something you actively battle, something you keep trying to outrun, snatching babies from its path, shoving elderly folk just beyond reach of its endless rampage.

We understand that giving antibiotics within an hour and giving it four hours later can decide life or death, or at least we have convinced ourselves this is so. It's what is revealed when we interrogate our little history of medicine.

Time is so important to us. Time to water the crops. Time to cook food. Time to get to know someone. Timing, it seems, really is everything.

Even now I'm counting down the minutes to my next shift. How this job makes you focus on time, makes you think and obsess over it, how you allow it to rule you, to dictate your every decision. And is this really the way it should be? Is this an accurate representation of reality? If time is really so important in these next 8 hours, always on our minds, knowing that every moment exists in the context of a countdown, then why do we still make time for small talk? Why do we allow ourselves to slow down? Why don't we act like this all the time?

---


There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.

And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.

I said to myself, “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.”

I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?

- Ecclesiastes 3

---

No time is passing outside you at all. It is amazing. The late ballet below is slow motion, the overbroad movements of mimes in blue jelly. If you wanted you could really stay here forever, vibrating inside so fast you float motionless in time, like a bee over something sweet.

But they should clean the board. Anybody who thought about it for even a second would see that they should clean the end of the board of people's skin, of two black collections of what's left of before, spots that from back here look like eyes, like blind and cross-eyed eyes.

Where you are now is still and quiet. Wind radio shouting splashing not here. No time and no real sound but your blood squeaking in your head.

Overhead here means sight and smell. The smells are intimate, newly clear. The smell of bleach's special flower, but out of it other things rise to you like a weed's seeded snow. You smell deep yellow popcorn. Sweet tan oil like hot coconut. Either hot dogs or corn dogs. A thin cruel hint of very dark Pepsi in paper cups. And the special smell of tons of water coming off tons of skin, rising like steam off a new bath. Animal heat. From overhead it is more real than anything.

Look at it. You can see the whole complicated thing, blue and white and brown and white, soaked in a watery spangle of deepening red. Everybody. This is what people call a view. And you knew that from below you wouldn't look nearly so high overhead. You see now how high overhead you are. You knew from down there no one could tell.

He says it behind you, his eyes on your ankles, the solid bald man, Hey kid. They want to know. do your plans up here involve the whole day or what exactly is the story. Hey kid are you okay.

There's been time this whole time. You can't kill time with your heart. Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.

- David Foster Wallace, Forever Overhead

주고 받기 / comes and goes

a broken heart is one that dared to hope

dog days are over

caveat emptor

Having visited KL gateway mall, from the outside they inspire awe, and on the inside I find they all have a quality in common, they all look identical in their opulence, in their hollowness and vacancy. In they way they all leave me feeling empty. Or maybe disappointed is the right word. The fact that they are all smaller on the inside than they appear, that they offer far less than is advertised. Trying to connect, palpate or interrogate its identity but coming away with nothing, only surface, trying to love a pretty girl who never lets you see under her makeup, whose answers are all superficial and reveal nothing. Trying to love the shopping malls as an extension of the city, it doesn't feel authentic or genuine.

it's tiring, as tiring as trying to hold a conversation and connect with someone who has resolved to only show you their sparkly, shiny, scintillating side. Who thinks they have to perform to earn your attention. Who never dares to put forward their fears, to acknowledge their shortcomings, to ask you to love them, someone who never lets down their facade of being appealing, who is consumed by appearance, who is trying all the time to make you like them.

all tell no show

abortion country II

"Do you think it's a miscarriage."

I purposely avoided her eyes, leaning over to fasten the tourniquet.

"Well, it's... something we have to consider, given the history."

18 year old female, approximately 12 weeks pregnant, one week history of lower abdominal pain and sudden onset frank PV bleed today.

"I mean, I know you're not allowed to say... but do you think it is one? I think it is."

Gravid 2, para nil. Elective termination September 2017. 5 foot tall with large mousy eyes and an angular nose, she was small in a way that somehow also managed to be lanky. To me, she seemed younger than 18, which is to say that if you were to rank her on a bell curve in terms of phenotypical precocity, specifically with regard to the estrogen dependent secondary sexual characteristics relating to mammary glands and fat redistribution, her spot would be somewhere in the lower centiles, which is to say that to me she looked like a kid. She looked about as adult as she probably felt right then - no longer a girl, not yet a woman.

I could tell she had steeled herself for the ordeal. I pictured her, after the initial panic, riding the ambulance in silence, surveying her predicament with a growing resolve. Throughout the history taking, she displayed a good-natured equanimity I had come to associate with the older patients, a calmness that comes from acceptance.

When she said, "I think it is," I looked up from the tourniquet. A lot of times, the answer to 'how should I respond' is 'what does the patient need to hear' and the clues typically tend to reside in the face and the eyes. Does she want for me to deny or corroborate? Does she need the honest truth or a well-meaning platitude? Which will cause the most harm? Which will do the most good? But I saw no pleading or desperation or bravado in the face that accompanied the statement. Only a gentle resignation. The declaration was simply that, a confession with no expectations, with no reciprocal obligation.

I turned my attention back to the tourniquet. "Well, I think... You know... we'll - we'll see what the gynaecologists say... but, you know, it is something... we do have to consider."

She was quiet for a moment, then looked away. I winced internally, wanting to give her more than 'who knows', and having basically told her, 'well, it isn't not a miscarriage'. But it seemed that was enough for her. She withdrew again into her resolve and then only asked innocent questions about blood bottles and being a doctor.

Minutes later, we sent her up to the gynae ward to be assessed. Would it have been kinder just to say, 'in all likelihood, it probably is a miscarriage'? For one, I wasn't clinically experienced enough to be certain of the diagnosis without a scan to confirm. And even if the diagnosis were certain, I wasn't equipped with the knowledge, wasn't in the right setting or frame of mind, hadn't practiced the magic words to counsel her on what it meant, what to do next or how we could support her.

In medicine, you sometimes find yourself in situations where it is your privilege and duty to break news that is life changing. Sometimes it's good. 'The operation was a success.' 'Congratulations, it's a boy.' Sometimes it's not so good. 'The biopsy results have come back, and I'm afraid it is not what we hoped it would be.' Sometimes the best way to break bad news is to let someone else do it.

In a year's time, I wonder if she will remember that cloudless day in May, the one she spent in hospital. In ten years' time, she will recall having a miscarriage when she was 18, and it will be an indelible part of who she is - a part of the bedrock for the house that she calls herself - and my microscopic role in it will likely have been forgotten.

Likewise, I will forget what she looked like, what we talked about, how I felt about the whole thing. But maybe some of it will have made a difference. Or maybe what you say doesn't matter at all. Maybe it gets swallowed up in the tide of everything else that happens. A kind word. A comforting hand. Can small acts of kindness make any kind of lasting difference? Is it metal in a broken bone, that stays in and supports their weight forever, or is it just honey on a dressing, covering over a wound temporarily to help it heal.

As you begin to age, you begin to lose friends, hair, family members, bladder control, memories, and you begin to realise that life is as much about what it gives to you as what it takes away. The day you find out you are pregnant. The day you find out you aren't any more. These landmark moments form the raw material, the minerals and marble out from which you get to carve meaning and identity. And as life gradually stops giving, and starts taking more and more, you begin to understand that life is also about finding yourself in quarries sometimes, and trying to give each other good marble to work with, even if it's just a pebble.

reality tv

analog man

angel of music

---

the note in itself has no meaning. It could be any note in isolation, it doesn't matter, doesn't convey any feeling. But put two together and now there's a story. A tension maybe, a harmony perhaps. Now add another and you have a chord. A chord can be sad, can be happy, can be strange, can be jazzy. It's the relationships between the notes that give it meaning. The distance. A semi-tone, an octave. And then add a melody, separate them in time, play them sequentially, add another relationship. The timing, a quaver, semi-quaver, ghost note. How long - how short, what you decide will give the song another quality, another dimension. The scales are the fundamentals. Now I realise why. There are certain structures that resonate with us. Certain distances that just feel right. Major scales, minor pentatonic scales, Dorian. We give them names, the same way we name plants, children. There's a feeling of having discovered them instead of invented them.

No matter how lovely you can sing / play a single note, how much vibrato, how strong, how clear. It's the relationships between people that give life meaning, and getting the distances right, practicing your scales, learning to play your instrument well enough to play with others, that fill it with music.

---

maybe listening to this kind of music doesn't make you a better person, but maybe it helps you realise that you could be one, maybe even that you want to be one

---

it's mind boggling to think that a human came up with this piece. That at some point these notes were just ideas in an individual's head, and then notations, scratchings of ink on a piece of paper.

When you encounter something as elemental and pure as this, it's difficult to imagine that it ever existed as something other than perfection. When you get into the middle, to the rolling, rushing, cascading waves of emotion - it's as if there was nothing to be translated. You forget there is a pianist, a composer. There is only the music - the timelessness of it leads you to believe that it must have predated its inventor, just as it has outlived him.

It's hard to believe there was ever an intermediary between forces of nature and the analogue signals coming from the piano. There is no evidence of human striving, it doesn't feel calculated, contrived or engineered. It feels as natural as sunlight, as the tides, as breathing.

How does this music make you feel? And how did Debussy feel when he wrote it? Which came first - the music or the feeling? And if the feeling came first, where did the feeling come from? Are all our acts of creation simply a transcription of what lives within us? If so, how did it get there in the first place? If the source of all our art is internal, then how is it that we appreciate its beauty intuitively, universally, the same way our ancestors who, without ever having to explain to each other, understood what it meant to stand alone in the reverential night and gaze at the moon.

---

"you know, it can be soul crushing - but in a way that's soul expanding when you stop being crushed - but sometimes it's hard to find time to stop being crushed."

late romantic

b mine

痛み / Weltschmerz II

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.
- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

---

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

- 2 Corinthians 12:9

---

how to grow without ever being uncomfortable

---

"and found once I stopped thinking I was entitled to a comfortable and easy ride - once I started expecting it to be hard and difficult, I stopped hating it so much."

---




My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

history in the making

I realise that having grown up in KL I've lost a lot of perspective on the place - my consultant in A&E told me she was going for a visit and asked me for recommendations - and I was so cynical. I said Batu Caves is the touristy kind of thing, locals don't really do it. I sold it as a super industrialised capitalist pseudo-metropolis, with only shopping malls and food stalls and no authentic cultural identity - but i've been watching youtube videos of foreigners talking about what it's like to live in Malaysia, and discovering the country through their eyes - it helps me discover what Malaysia actually does have to offer. One particular youtuber was absolutely charmed by bangsar - the fact that retail outlets coexisted / abutted a quaint little residential area. At the time I held that the juxtaposition and incongruity was a sign of fraudulence. But the Ang Mohs see it as a charming idiosyncrasy. A metaphor or synecdoche for the city whose facets of personality are legion.

I feel like I have a prejudice against the new - the hipster - the things that don't pay homage to the past. Fusion restaurants, franchise coffee joints. Even though they're homegrown and not imported. Maybe these things aren't a false veneer - covering up for a lack of identity - as I initially thought. Maybe this is what Malaysia is. Maybe the Malaysia that foreigners are in love with and gush over is the real Malaysia. Maybe it's really grown into itself, and I simply can't recognise it because all I remember is who it used to be.

closing time / weltschmerz

Closing time 
Time for you to go out go out into the world. 
Closing time 
Turn the lights up over every boy and every girl. 
Closing time 
One last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer. 
Closing time 
You don't have to go home but you can't stay here.

---


What do angels understand about being in hell?


---

"So is your man going home?"

I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't. It wasn't that simple, unfortunately.

"I mean, he should go home... the question is how to get him to do it."

I gave R a look of exasperation and she grimaced back in sympathy.

"Maybe if I subtly nudge him closer and closer to the exit until he's out of the department..."

"Just say, 'sorry sir, we're closed.'" She said.

I laughed, but I really did feel sorry for the guy.

He was 67 years old and had backed his car into a fence after drinking two bottles of brandy. The police found him in his car, intoxicated. He reeked of alcohol and lived alone, so they brought him to Chorley to be assessed. He told me he was having trouble coping with the chronic pain in his knees so he decided to drink today. Didn't mention anything about his history of depression and intentional overdoses. Denied being actively suicidal. And after I had concluded there was nothing medically wrong with him, he told me, "when you get me to the ward, could you give me a sleeping tablet, so that I can just rest and see how I feel in the morning. I think I would like to just go to sleep and forget about all this." I told him there wasn't anything we could do for him in hospital. I tried explaining that he would be better off at home. "Please," he said. "I'd prefer to stay a night in the wards. The nurses will look after me."

When I admit a patient, I always ask myself - how will this benefit the patient? What will this admission achieve? Will it cure his substance abuse? Probably not. Will it help him feel better? Maybe. Will it deprive another patient of a vanishingly scarce and invaluable hospital bed? Absolutely.

One of the hardest parts of being a junior doctor is learning that you can't fix everyone - and that some people aren't looking to be fixed. What my patient wanted was palliative care, an opiate in the form of a hospital bed, a holiday from being himself. Corporate policy is to get rid of these patients in a benevolent manner. To reject them mercifully. To kindly decline.

The word 'triage' comes from the French word 'trier' which means 'to separate out'. The term was used during World War I by French doctors treating soldiers who had been wounded on the battlefield. In its earliest form, victims were divided into three categories.
1. Those who are likely to live, regardless of what care they receive
2. Those who are unlikely to live, regardless of what care they receive
3. Those for whom immediate care might make a positive difference in outcome.

It was a way of deciding how to allocate scarce resources to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The same principle applies to triage systems in use today for dealing with natural disasters or crises. In advanced triage, there is an expectant / black category. The only reason this would exist is that we believe that in certain situations, allowing some people to die will ultimately allow for more people to live.

Maybe the right thing to do was to kick him out because he would be fine and get better on his own. Maybe he was the walking wounded, and all that was required to heal was time. Or maybe it was the right thing because he was irrevocably terminal and admission would have had no effect on prognosis. Maybe he was expectant; beyond help, beyond hope.

Or maybe he didn't fit into any triage category. Maybe the natural history of his sickness dictated that he would keep repeating this cycle of behaviour, oscillating in a kind of limbo between living and dying, recovering and relapsing and recovering and relapsing irrespective of any treatment - before ending up in hospital for good.

But none of this made a difference to the patient in front of me. This man was trapped. He was  suffering and desperate to escape it, pleading. And what I do to cope is think about abstract principles that justify my actions so I don't have to think about the feeling I got when that man looked at me. Why doesn't he understand and just go away quietly? I'm doing my best to explain the logic behind my decision, as if logic held any sway over his actions.

How must it have seemed to him? How unfair. How unmerciful.

But I didn't understand a thing about the man in front of me, what drove him to act this way, what demons he was trying to escape. If I did, it would be harder to turn him away, and I had decided I was going to turn him away. When did humans become arbiters of mercy and justice? What gives me, a green as grass junior doctor who knows only the barest of details of this man's life, the right to decide whether he stays in hospital or goes home? Why does my decision automatically overrule his? Does the fact that the hospital institution backs me up suddenly make it ethical to turn these patients away? When did I get to decide that some lives are worth more than others? When did I get to decide that some lives cost too much to save?

We are taught that capacity is decision specific. "Do you understand that staying in hospital will not make you better? Yes. Do you understand that you are depriving another patient of a bed, who will likely benefit from it more? Yes." What do I do then?

We have a duty to protect our patients from harm - and that includes the potential harm that exists as a corollary of choices that other patients make. Choices that are sometimes illogical and selfish. To protect them from negative externalities even if it means placing an embargo on compassion. If we admitted those who were medically fit for discharge, we would have less room for the septic, the fractured, the at risk of exanguinating.

Our job is to care for these people, to give them everything we can afford, to bend over backwards to meet everyone's needs - but it's also our duty to understand that some people don't get better no matter how much you give, and that we can only afford to give so much.

---

As doctors, we hone our empathy. Learn to focus it, harness it. Train it to palpate the psychological distress of the person in front of us, identify tender spots and strategically deploy sentiments that will be maximally efficacious / analgesic / palliative. We use empathy to deliver targeted therapy, but sometimes also to profile a patient's mental health, patting down its outline - nothing too invasive. We make sure they aren't carrying any sharp objects, ligature wires, explosive devices. And once we are satisfied they don't pose a risk to themselves or others, we reel in the acumen, holster our empathy somewhere between frontal cortex and amygdala until it's needed again. We don't probe any further or venture deeper. At most, we offer a little squeeze on the shoulder as we withdraw our feelers - a consolatory touch implying the embrace we don't allow ourselves to give. A brief, brusque nod of vulnerability as we retreat to a safe distance.

silent chest / medicine pt II

I missed it.

I missed it. 'This man has got a very tight chest.' Rob said as he moved around, seemed to move past, move through me, his brow furrowed with frustration / concentration, moving at inhuman speeds to organise Xrays, Aminophylline and NIV for my man all at the same time. It's the worst feeling you can have as a junior doctor. And now I'm the one who can't breathe. I'm the one who cannot speak.

---

A very tight chest may not wheeze at all due to poor air entry. Beware the silent chest.

---

There are many ways of suffocating, some subtler than others.

---

show me all my sickness, make me understand my mistakes, then tell me how to get better.

---

can't have the clouds without first tasting dirt, can't be taller than angels before meeting the devil first.

---

Medicine is a way of getting better that often requires you to first feel worse

---


So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

- 2 Corinthians 4:16-17

---

"I mean, I like it and I hate it at the same time. It's the same attitude I have towards the whole of medicine I guess, you're doing amazing things, but it's hard at first not to suffer from... performance anxiety, like the first few times you're kind of walking on a tightrope. Doing stunts without a safety net. To get better you first have to realise all the things you don't know, come to terms with all the ways you aren't very good, and so when it happens your confidence takes a hit... and you doubt yourself a lot. And then you have to continue anyway, and try and overcome it with persistence. And you usually push through. But before you do, it's like your heart is being scooped out and torn apart or crushed under a massive weight. This is the part of the job that I hate the most. And knowing it's temporary or necessary helps me to endure the weight when I remember, but doesn't make it any lighter."

Forrest Gump vs. Pygmalion

Hello. This voice I speak with these days, this English voice with its rounded vowels and consonants in more or less the right place—this is not the voice of my childhood. I picked it up in college, along with the unabridged Clarissa and a taste for port. Maybe this fact is only what it seems to be—a case of bald social climbing—but at the time I genuinely thought this was the voice of lettered people, and that if I didn’t have the voice of lettered people I would never truly be lettered. A braver person, perhaps, would have stood firm, teaching her peers a useful lesson by example: not all lettered people need be of the same class, nor speak identically. I went the other way. Partly out of cowardice and a constitutional eagerness to please, but also because I didn’t quite see it as a straight swap, of this voice for that.

My own childhood had been the story of this and that combined, of the synthesis of disparate things. It never occurred to me that I was leaving the London district of Willesden for Cambridge. I thought I was adding Cambridge to Willesden, this new way of talking to that old way. Adding a new kind of knowledge to a different kind I already had. And for a while, that’s how it was: at home, during the holidays, I spoke with my old voice, and in the old voice seemed to feel and speak things that I couldn’t express in college, and vice versa. I felt a sort of wonder at the flexibility of the thing. Like being alive twice.

- Zadie Smith, Speaking In Tongues

---

I have no common sense. I have only uncommon sense. I believe in everyone. I believe everything is possible.

---

Sometimes people ask me: "where's your accent from?"

The truth is, I don't have a good answer. I want to say, 'a little bit of everywhere.' (Nowhere) I want to say, it's a remix of a mash up of a portmanteau language. But then I have to explain.

In primary/elementary school we utilised a crude yet expedient pidgin consisting of fragments of English, Mandarin and Malay which then morphed into a more systematised monstrosity at a privately funded secondary school, where English predominated as the medium of instruction, and where I discovered that it is customary (sometimes even necessary) in most other countries to speak only one language at a time. Shortly after this, I moved to an International School where a cornucopia of foreign dialects and inflections clashed and assimilated and intermingled with each other on a daily basis - and I decided nobody would notice if I started speaking differently here, since nobody talked like each other to begin with. And so I began the process of co-opting my already confused and unruly pronunciation into something vaguely American - something that approximated the way people spoke on TV, because by then I understood that to be on TV was to be universally validated. To be on TV meant that you had somehow earned the tacit approval of the vast anonymous majority, and those who appeared on TV must therefore be paragons of populist appeal, an elect distillation of all that was humanly excellent and beautiful, unblemished specimens whose overwhelming pan-attractiveness clearly trumped us too-generic, too-eccentric, barbaric, imperfect, untelevisable folk. I believed that if I learned to speak the way TV people spoke, everyone would love to hear me speak. I shed my old ways of speaking like a woman attempting to lose weight to fit into a very tight dress, and for pretty much the same reasons. I settled into this new way of speaking with very little difficulty.

Four years later I moved to Nottingham to study medicine and my faux american accent began to take on shades of East Midlands intonations. And now that I live in Preston I'm starting to sound like a proper northern lad. But I exaggerate. Truthfully, these latter two transformations have only been minor adjustments. Tweaking the way I say, 'alright', 'go on', and a handful of other phrases. My speaking voice is essentially the same as the one I had developed in college. The only time I notice it drastically altered is when I speak to other Malaysians. Especially those from Penang or Johor, or anywhere other than from KL. It occurs near enough unconsciously now. I flatten vowels, drop consonants like it's nobody's business. 'yes ah?' 'ya, liddat lor.' I marvel at how good it feels to speak badly. To be a different me for a while.

---

The thing about my native accent that I'm apprehensive about is that when you say big words with a KL / Malaysian accent you sound cognitively impaired. Painfully foreign. Vulgar. Backwards. Unsophisticated, if you want to be generous. When I say 'big words' I don't mean complex, nuanced constructions like conglomeration or disestablishmentarianism. I just mean words with three or more syllables. Words like Photography. International. Anatomy. Anaesthetist. Government. In local parlance, using the phonetic say-as-you-see-it pronounciation of Malay, everyone said 'foe-tow-graph-ee' instead of 'photog-graphy', and so on with 'in-te-nash-she-nal', 'anna-tommy', 'anna-stet-teis'. Thankfully someone decided that 'go-vern-meun' just sounded silly and we all opted for 'gahhmen' instead. (Sometimes, 'blaardy gahhmen') We know how it sounds to you non-Malaysians. We are aware none of you talk like this. So we translate. We speak 'Ang-Moh'. We're careful to give more emphasis to 'tog' instead of apportioning it equally to 'pho-', 'gra-' and 'fee-'. We make sure to include the 'R' in 'international' but somehow can't help phrasing 'in/ter' as staccatos, as if trying to isolate it will help us really nail that crucial second syllable. But then we're stuck, because we can't adopt these new voices wholesale. We can't overwrite our cadences and rhythms altogether. There's something grating about hearing a Malaysian say 'fuh-toh-gryph-i' instead of 'foe-toe-gra-fee'. It just stops the conversation dead in its tracks. You want to say, 'ooooh look at you, Mr. Fuh-toh-gryphi - you stahdee overseas is it? Action lah.' It reeks of trying to be something you're not. It's not Malaysian to speak Ang-Moh unless you have to.

My grandmother studied abroad in a British boarding school and used to teach etiquette at a country club to nouveau-riche families who wanted to appear a certain way. Around the house, she would correct me if I said 'tree' when I should have said 'three', 'rubbish bin' when I meant 'wastepaper basket' and 'hAah??' instead of 'pardon me'. It's probably thanks to her that I grew up with two voices, two registers in my head, and an understanding that there's nearly always more than one way to say what you mean. That there are many names to refer to the same thing and some are simply more accurate or appropriate than others. (My paternal grandmother couldn't speak a word of English and spent her afternoons lounging around in floral patterned tai-tai pajamas, watching cantonese soap operas reclining against the differently-floral-patterned sofa cushions.)

But with opportunity comes cost, and the cost of choice is consequence. I'm particularly cautious around 'photography', because it comes up the most when talking to people. When I'm talking and it dawns on me that I'm going to have to say the word at some point, I have to quickly decide - how do I want to say it? And why? And is it not too late still to try and cobble together an elaborate circumlocution to get me out of this? Neither option is 100% authentic, and neither is 100% phony. You see, the more you acclimatize to 'fuhtog-graphy', the less 'fo-to-gra-fee' sounds plausible. Maybe there's an easy solution to all of this. Maybe I should throw caution to the wind, rip off the straitjacket of conformity and just say 'Foe- tuhgrafé' from now on, and hope they understand. Throw in a little pantomime, maybe. Malaysian sign language. They'll know what I mean.

fascinoma / personality disorder

In the end, empathy - it is one of the most useful social glues and one of the most wonderful things for us to behave rightly towards each other but it’s nothing without political systems that function, without a kind of exercise against injustice, which is slightly more active than ‘I read Middlemarch and I felt so for Dorothea.' You know, there’s a limit to that kind of empathy and action. And I think the novelist should always be aware of that. You can fool yourself writing novels that you’re saving the world, you know, one by one. Opening the hearts of people so they become better. But people’s hearts can be opened extensively and they can do nothing. You have to be careful with that idea.

[...]

I just think that the English tradition of the novel as represented, the kind of apex of it, by Eliot, doesn’t always recognise that people are perverse. People are profoundly perverse. The French understand that very well. But the English, they tend not to look at things which are… certain parts of human nature they’d rather not think about.

- A Conversation with Zadie Smith

---

'where did he cut?'

'both his forearms'

'which parts?'

'the uh, here. outer-'

'so the outer aspect, not the wrist or inner forearms.'

'yeah.'

'so he doesn't want to die.'

'... no I guess not'

'I'll take that. Where is he?'

It might seem cold or callous but the consultant's attitude was simply pragmatic, and he was kind enough to be frank with me about a referral that wasn't very sensible.

It turned out that my gentleman had attended A&E multiple times following intentional overdoses and other forms of self harm since the age of 16.

Medical school taught us that previous episodes of self harm and attempted suicide were indicators that they were capable of acting on their intentions and carrying out their plans, and therefore higher risk of self-harming or attempting suicide than someone who had never done so before. What I didn't understand was that if someone had been in and out of A&E a thousand times with the same presenting complaint, chances are that they will survive long enough to continue the trend. Chances are they aren't in imminent danger of dying. What are the odds that this day is unlike the other 100000 days they have done the same thing?

Patients with borderline personality disorder are characterised by a pattern of behaviour, and specific coping mechanisms which are learned, and maybe can be unlearned. This episode of self harm, probably like many others in the past, was one such coping mechanism, and wasn't an indication that his mental health had suddenly deteriorated. It was simply how he had learned to express himself - to get what he needed - which was release, and then someone to provide reassurance and care and empathy afterwards. Me calling the mental health liason team was like activating the major hemorrhage protocol for a patient with a papercut.

This wasn't an isolated incident. I have an unfortunate history of overreacting when confronted by unfamiliar situations -- especially when dealing with dishonest patients. For example, just the day before I had seen a 49 year old gentleman with a drinking problem, who had, according to him, had a seizure two weeks ago and since then had lost sensation in a small patch of his leg, and that he had cut down on his drinking for a week now. He was desperate to be admitted, to be seen by the alcohol liaison team. When I explained to him that alcohol related seizures normally occur after the detox, he changed his story, saying the seizure happened only a week ago. And that he had hallucinated his dead brother during it. "That's impressive," said the consultant. I didn't realise what he meant at the time.¹ There were a few other signs, visual field defects, abnormal sensation, diplopia - all subjective, come to think of it. All relying on the patient to be faithful with his reporting. The consultant didn't think it would show anything, but I pushed for it and we treated him to an unhealthy dose of radiation via CT scanner. I even added on B12 and folate levels. The next day I looked him up on the system. On the stroke ward where I'd put him. CT was normal, and so were his bloods. Plumb normal. I'd been duped.

Common things are common, is the adage quoted to medical students as a rite of passage, and yet I managed to complete medical school without fully digesting the aphorism. Instead I felt in my bones, without any sense of irony or mistrust, knowing my luck, all the uncommon things will happen to me. And so I spent most of urology, most of general practice and now the first two weeks of A&E being hypervigilant. Dotting my 'i's and crossing my 't's twice. Being unnecessarily meticulous. Trying to spot zebras in a herd full of horses.

Afterwards I sat in a corner, ruminating. Trying to construct some kind of argument that would justify my referral, but I gave up halfway, realising all I was doing was trying to collagen-adhese together my lacerated ego. Maybe the system was the reason he kept coming back, I thought to myself, seething quietly (which even if it were true, doesn't justify a mental health review). But I knew it wasn't the mental health team's fault that the patient kept coming back. I knew they were doing everything they could. Sometimes if a student fails, it isn't necessarily the teacher's fault. Maybe this case was the exception to the rule, an anomaly. Maybe in this particular case, as opposed to the rest of medicine, the pathology was in fact the patient's fault.²

How do you distinguish between patients who self harm the same way some people compulsively masturbate and patients who self harm because they are on the brink of ending their life? The answer is: you can't always, but it helps to appreciate that there is a dichotomy - and also, if you've heard enough horses, chances are you'll have a pretty good idea of how their hoofbeats sound.

That's the value of experience. Once you've witnessed enough chest pains that aren't heart attacks, you'll stop believing that every one is. That's also the curse of inexperience - that until you've witnessed enough, you will continue to believe.

---

<sup>1. When the consultant said 'that's impressive,' what he was implying was, 'you don't get visual hallucinations with the vast majority of seizures, and even when you do it's not of dead relatives. The story doesn't make sense.' At the time I understood this. I was aware that this didn't fit into my medical school diagnostic framework, but I doubted myself more than the patient, thinking, 'but what about the tiny minority of seizures? But what if it does?' I've never been any good at being skeptical of patients. I think of them all as victims of misfortune, who can only be healed with good intentions and a pure heart.↩

2. I still find it hard to grasp - thanks to my coddled, sheltered, middle-class upbringing - that there are people who will leap at every opportunity to take advantage of the people who are trying to help them... and even then I find myself wanting to excuse them by saying - this is the only pattern of behaviour they know, and if they were lucky / privileged enough to have formative experiences that hinted to them that there was a different way to live, they would be able to choose it over this manipulative and selfish and despicable version of themselves. If they knew there was another way to be, they could stop being this way. Maybe.

If you were raised on cocaine, how could you ever desire - how could you ever believe in anything else? ↩</sup>

nova scotia girls

"you can usually tell from the kid, what the mom is gonna be like"


---

i don't recall ever being as wholesome as these kids are...

---

the effectiveness of the wholesome meme movement depends / relies on a kind of fluency and familiarity with the unwholesome memes that predominate. The original memes were conceived as a spin on a trope, some of which have now become so widely recognised that they have become tropes in their own right, and thus ripe format, fertile ground, activated substrate for subverting convention, parody, ironic variation etc. What i'm trying to say is that the wholesome meme was created in response to a need to oppose or resist the prevailing culture, the status quo. While outwardly it resembles the wholesomeness of dogs and babies whose loveliness is innate, effortless, unintentional, it has more in common with the deliberate benevolence of the holocaust survivor, the veteran social worker, the mother of a child with a disability. Their wholesomeness owes its existence to the unwholesomeness of human nature, but it manages to both acknowledge and supplant this. These memes don't offer us a cute fuzzy distraction, they don't try to sugarcoat the way the world is - they only ask us to try shifting paradigms. They offers us a different way of thinking and feeling in response to familiar set ups. It operates not by skirting the issue but by actively addressing / countenancing / confronting the patterns of thought we have grown used to. These memes were the result of a conscious decision. It's the result of us collectively staring down our cynicism and biting irony and unhappiness, folding our arms and saying, we can do better than this.

alone in the night

Hey there,

I don't know when you'll get this or how long this will take to reach you. To be honest, I don't even know where you are right now. People move so fast, they move around so much these days. I have a question: do you ever find yourself out late at night, listening to music, just walking aimlessly - no one to meet, no place to be? I suppose it's dangerous nowadays, to be alone like that.

When the sun sets, the city seems like a different place. Some nights are so still, so quiet, you become conscious of how much space there is, above you, beside you. You begin to understand on an emotional level all the implications of the word 'void'. You begin to feel extremely small. I think it's because we're used to being surrounded in public - we expect to have people constantly near and around us - so to be out at night is to find yourself alone when you're not expecting to be. Alone in the night, you are liable to find that your familiar places now house constellations of memories, a galaxy of silence, a new identity.

Where I'm from the nights are quiet. The streets are wide and empty. The stores have lights out front that glow like a tired person's smile. If it's April there's a bridge in the park with water flowing underneath, and a cool breeze will come from nowhere to kiss your cheek. The branches are bare and withered. They hang overhead like bony beggar's palms, reaching, not daring to touch, asking, not expecting to receive.

Are your nights like this too? Can you feel the April wind against your cheek? Can you hear the train carriages rattle like great metal skeletons in the distance?

I wrote this song thinking of you. Thinking maybe one night, you'll be out walking, listening to music - with no one to meet, nowhere to be - and if you are, maybe this song will come on. And when it does, maybe you'll feel the wind against your cheek and hear the trains in the distance and look up at the same night sky as me and see a lost universe hiding in small spaces. Maybe you'll find the cosmos in shop signs and streetlights, in the way the wind kisses your face, maybe on a page.

I hope you find this. I hope this helps you feel less alone in the night. Who knows - maybe someone else out there feels this way too.

torches of freedom

There is a yin and a yang to city life. In some ways it gives to us, and in other ways it takes from us.

---

consumerism is the new liberty

---

my boss used to smoke
her breaks on the roof.
a smoldering
immolation, burning herself
for fuel

#lowkey #twentysomething #midmillenial #angst

source: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/204

---

chill is the new black

prime

maybe heaven is a do-over. a world where everything happens as it should. where everything goes according to plan. Where the pen drops and the right two people reach for it at the same time; where there is a mix up with the coat check and he returns it to her while his cell phone is still in the coat; where the heel of her shoe breaks just as the two pass each other on the street allowing her to fall into the arms of an attractive bachelor, who just so happens to share her same warped sense of humour, her same obscure taste in music; where the improbable conspires to bring the right people together instead of tear them apart; where every misstep leads to a prayer answered; where every accident is actually an opportunity.

---

eventually, all the pioneers become predecessors

---

disappointment comes in many flavours, and so does joy

---

whosoever shall seek to purchase their sound shall lose it, and whosoever forsakes their sound shall find it

---

"Do you remember a lot about being 25?"

Gerald thought about it for a while.

"It was okay. You feel wiser and smarter than you've ever been before and you also know this is as young as you'll ever be again. It's a good time to be alive."

The cars shone in the afternoon sun, their bodies waxed to perfection.

"So how should I make the most of it?"

Gerald turned around and squinted at his nephew.

"You're asking me?"

"Should I not?"

"Here's my advice: don't listen to my advice."

"Why not?"

Gerald stopped walking and put his hands on his waist.

"Look, I know a couple things about cars and interest rates and politics, but that doesn't mean I know everything. I made a couple of mistakes when I was younger. I had... a very different experience of life compared to you."

"How so?"

"You're really not giving up, are you?"

"Nope."

"I... wasted a lot of opportunities. I pushed away the people who loved me the most and spent my time chasing people who decidedly did not love me at all. I was selfish, arrogant, destructive, cynical."

"So what changed?"

---

25 is the age of hedonism. Of laughter and thrill and distraction. The age of borrowing before lending, of spending before earning, of leaping before looking, of knowing before learning, of doing before dying, of winning before trying, of being before becoming.

---

"We've front loaded life. We've filled it with so many trinkets and goodies and surprises that it's completely possible to go through your twenties and thirties without having to feel lonely. We've designed it to be full of accomplishments, goals, achievements, education, romance, adventure, distractions. There's no space for loneliness anymore; it's wake up, achieve, do this, do that, feel this, try that. Improve yourself. Go to the gym, read books, date girls. We think we've escaped it, but all we've done is delay it. Young people nowadays have no idea how to be lonely without romanticising it, without turning it into a monument, another feather in their cap - or thinking there's something wrong with them. Why do I feel this way? And why does nobody else seem to? And when they're older, and they can't achieve any more, when they've run out of dreams to pine for - they keep dreaming. The chase for them is no longer a pursuit, it's an evasion. They live the remainder of their lives as fugitives from themselves."

solidão

---

 and living exactly like everyone else

---


She's walking east to west, and I west to east. It's a really nice April morning.

Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about  myself, and ­ what I'd really like to do ­ explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled  the world.

After talking, we'd have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.

Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.

- Haruki Murakami, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning

nothing steal my joy

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

- John 16:20-22

---

perfectionism can be malevolent, malignant if you let it fester. It can ruin you if left unchecked.

The thing that haunts me the most these days and probably has been haunting me for years is this insidious perfectionism that tries to justify itself by saying 'you're getting better because of me! you have such high standards, and look where it's got you!' but really, it's killing me - this feeling like I have to live up to this ideal or standard and then worrying about how apparent it is to everyone around me that I fail to measure up to it, my inability to fulfill this self-imposed mandate.

---

I have passed up on so many golden opportunities for fear of looking foolish

---

Whenever you share something you risk rejection. No matter how good it is. Maybe it's time I understood that being foolish and delusional and prone to error and just plain wrong from time to time is part of being human, and that there are worse things than looking foolish and being misunderstood/rejected, for instance, being too much of a coward to share anything real/that matters to me and thus never connecting deeply with anyone.

---

the great thing about forgiveness is that it allows for failure -- expects it, even

---

related: http://www.happletea.com/comic/real-talk/

resurrection

Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, "Who do the crowds say I am?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life." "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"



---



So, tell us, what really happened? You have told the story nearly a thousand times by now. But it's a good story, so you tell it again. 'When he raised me from the dead,' you say, 'I heard someone calling my name, but I did not know who. Then a bright light pierced through the dark, and I heard him say Lazarus, come out! I followed the voice and found myself again in the land of the living.' Sometimes they ask, 'But what of the stench? The smell of rotting flesh?' You recall that there was indeed a terrible odour, but to your surprise it came not from you, but from the grave. Once the grave-clothes were stripped away, people were amazed to find your skin and flesh were not withered or rotten, but soft and smooth; brand new, like a baby's.

The news spread like wildfire. People flocked from all around to see you. You hear them gasping as you make your way to the well, camping outside the house to catch a glimpse of you opening the shutters. It became somewhat of a nuisance really. The first few days you did your best not to leave the house. Eventually Martha pointed out that you couldn't hide forever and you'd have to leave the house at some point, and the sooner you satisfied their curiosity the sooner you could all be rid of the crowds. They no longer camp outside your house, but their curiosity doesn't seem to be diminishing at all. Almost everyday you get some awe-struck man or woman approaching you in the market, and you oblige, of course. It's not everyday you get to talk to a dead man. Still, you can always tell a kind of disappointment in their eyes once they have met you - and you know it is because of how ordinary you seem. They seem to expect rays of light to shoot from your eyes and gold to drop from your mouth. Even Mary and Martha were a little estranged at first, weren't sure of how to act around you. Even you at one point, after having made sure the house was empty, standing at the edge of the bath, tried to see if you could walk on water, which did not go very well. It hasn't taken much time for things to go back to normal, with Martha continually pestering you to help out around the house. 'Woman!' You feel like saying. 'I was only dead last week!'

The question at the front of their minds - that is always on their tongue is, naturally, 'what is it like to be dead?' And your answer never fails to underwhelm them. 'It's not like anything, really. It's like being asleep. A sleep with no dreams.' 'Did you meet God?' 'No.' 'Did you see Moses?' 'No.' 'What about my grandfather, was he there?' They are always expecting flames, clouds, harps, cherubim. But the honest answer is that if there was anything of the sort, you don't recall it. All you recall is a nothingness that seemed to have no beginning and no end, a darkness that gave way to light, no memory or emotion or experience of time or even space. Total silence, an absolute void, and then his voice calling your name. But they aren't interested in that stuff.

The other thing you have noticed is that members of the Council keep giving you dirty looks in the market and the street, as if it were your fault that you died and were resurrected. As if you plotted the whole thing just to spite them. The townsfolk have by now begrudgingly accepted the fact that you're basically still a normal human being. But it isn't true that you're exactly the same. When Jesus raised you from the dead, it seems, he didn't raise all of you. Some of the old, the unworthiness, the guilt, the unkindness and selfishness it seems, remained in the grave. Sometimes you catch yourself going back to the old ways. Falling into old habits. But when you first emerged from the grave, you discovered you were still yourself, but also that you were different. You saw the world with new eyes. With a sense of wonder. You carry with you this inner peace. You no longer have any fear of death. When you read the scriptures, the words seem to hold new meaning. And they stay with you throughout the day. After the resurrection, whenever you prayed or read the word, you felt connected. Cleansed. You felt joy.

You think of the nights afterwards spent with Jesus, and how he treated you no differently. He acted as if he had simply loaned you a shekel, not given you new life. You think fondly of that last night with him, talking and laughing, breaking bread with your friend, conqueror of the grave. You wish every night could be that night again.

And yet you know you owe him an immeasurable debt. It's not true that you don't remember anything. You remember being very ill, and that they had sent for Jesus. You believed, without doubt, that he would come to your rescue, even as the life drained from your lips. 'Do not be afraid,' you told them, even as your sisters wept. Even as the sickness caused your tongue to be dry as sand. 'Do not bother with the funeral arrangements,' you said. 'Do you not trust in Jesus to rescue his friends?'

But where were you when it was him who needed rescuing? You listened to the crowd screaming 'Crucify him!' You watched as the nails went into his hands, you watched as he hung there dying, as he breathed his last. Mary says that Jesus wept outside your tomb. And now it is him in the grave, not you.

The next morning, the skies were clear. You listened as the birds sang their song and green leaves rustled with the wind, oblivious to your grieving heart.

When you first heard about the empty tomb, of course you had to see for yourself. You didn't even think to doubt her. You had never run so fast in your life, tripping only twice. You ran like a madman. You stopped at the mouth of the tomb and stared into it. You hesitated, reluctant to go in, fearing that death would recognise you and claim you again. But eventually you dared to enter, and seeing the linen and the cloth lying there, you dared to hope.

And now Mary claims to have seen him. If not for the empty tomb, you would assume she has gone mad with sorrow, but she is not sorrowful in the least. In fact, her face glows with joy. And not just Mary but the others as well. They claim to have met him, to have shared meals with him. They say they have felt with their own hands where the nails have pierced his. Can it be true? A man claiming to be the son of God, put to death by sinners, and now risen from the dead. They say that he appears to disciples in houses, in the streets, in prisons, by the lake. And what if it is true? This tale as ludicrous and preposterous and impossible as hearing a dead man speak. The question remains, what will you believe?

betrayal

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus declared, “this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”

---

why was Judas chosen if Jesus knew he would betray him? Why did God allow the devil to tempt Job?

Maybe it's only in the face of evil that men can become good. Maybe there can be no faith without some fire.

---

Finally, the time has come. You thought it would never arrive. You hoped even that it could be postponed indefinitely. Why now, you wonder? In the dead of night. The Rabbi's disciple gave no coherent reply, only that he felt compelled to act now.

The council is more divided than it appears. However, all agree that simply detaining the Rabbi will accomplish nothing. Those who pledge themselves to him grow in number every day. They have all but crowned him king. And you know he is not one to accept a bribe. All agree that he must be silenced, permanently. This is the only solution. Your own spirit is troubled, but the council has decided. He has signed his own death warrant by going against the council. This troublemaker, what does he hope to achieve? You have heard that he is a man of mercy, a man of miracles, who can raise the dead. And yet he is only a man. In your heart, you believe that this is all in vain. That if the Rabbi is truly from God then the council's plans will be thwarted, just as they have been for so many months. And if God is not with him, then you will bring Him glory by executing a heretic.

He presents himself as being pure and righteous, yet he eats at the table of sinners. He says he is humble and merciful, and yet he dares to accuse members of the council. Because of him your tradition and your law is in jeopardy. He seeks to mislead Israel. Yes. The righteousness of the nation is at stake.

Though the people clamour for him, he is not your king. Not if you can help it. He holds no sway over your actions, or the sovereignty of your thoughts. Of her. Cherished lily in the marketplace. Oh how you love to see her smile as she greets you in the mornings. How lovely she is, her voice bright like glistening nectar. Sweet as honey. Her lips, they glisten with ripeness, like fruit on the vine. How your ache for her burns at night. How you allow yourself to entertain the thought of her in your room, long lustrous hair falling over her uncovered breasts. A waterfall of pleasure caressing her skin. Her softness is almost tangible, her voice thick and breathless, her sighing as supple and delicate as her thighs. How strong your desire is for her, how untamed, how solid is your longing for her that you have slowly created something real out of nothing - summoning her to your room every night, albeit only an image, an apparition.

Here he is now. He is betrayed by a kiss, and yet he calls his traitor friend! Does he not understand what is in store for him? Or does he yet believe that God will deliver him. But no, God has left it to you, this council of priests and elders to judge who is righteous, and the verdict is already decided. The crowd is becoming excited now, a simmering, savage frenzy. The torches cast monstrous, fiery shadows of men about the garden. Oh Rabbi, if you truly are the son of God, ask yourself this - why has He turned His back on you?

passion

Then Jesus returned to the disciples and found them sleeping. “Were you not able to keep watch with Me for one hour?” He asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

---


By this we know what love is: Jesus laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone with earthly possessions sees his brother in need, but withholds his compassion from him, how can the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us love not in word and speech, but in action and truth. And by this we will know that we belong to the truth, and will assure our hearts in His presence: If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and He knows all things.


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“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”
- C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces


---


"Is it difficult being a disciple?" Is what a boy asked you last week. You wanted to say something profound, something that the Rabbi would say. 'It depends on what you mean by difficult - is it difficult to be a man?' but you knew that wouldn't mean anything. So you decided to just answer honestly. 'Sometimes,' you said, getting down on one knee. 'You have to follow the Rabbi wherever he goes and leave all your old friends and family behind. But you get to see some pretty cool miracles, and you always get front row seats to hear the Rabbi teach, so there's that.' Satisfied with your answer, the boy smiled and said, 'I'm going to be a disciple when I grow up!' 'Good for you!' you replied.

Right now you are finding it particularly difficult to be a disciple. The Rabbi has gone and said some very upsetting things over dinner. Even more upsetting than usual. Just a few hours ago the Rabbi said that one of you would betray him, and now you're all on edge. You wonder if the Rabbi is talking about you. If you are harboring some hidden grudge within your heart. If there is some unknown evil brewing deep inside you that the Rabbi can see. You and the others can sense that something is off. It started when the Rabbi decided to wash all the disciples' feet. That was really bizarre. To make matters worse, the Rabbi keeps hinting that he is about to leave, but refuses to say where he will go. He keeps hinting at some terrible fate that awaits him. You can't imagine anything worse than losing him now. You wonder if you all have done something to upset him. Despite this, you know in your heart that you would never abandon the Rabbi. That you are prepared to follow him even until death. There is no way you would let anything happen to him.

The night is cool as you stare up at the stars. It is so quiet and peaceful, here in the garden. The Rabbi is kneeling and praying a stone's throw away. He has asked you and two others to keep watch with him. Even from a distance you can tell he is in pain. You feel a knot in your gut every time you look over. You feel so helpless. Tomorrow things will be better, you tell yourself. Tomorrow, surely, the meaning of things will be revealed. You've been through worse. You think of the miracles. You think of all the times the Rabbi has come through for you. How he's always rescuing you - and this time is no different, you tell yourself. Perhaps this is a test of some kind. A character-building exercise. You may be suffering now but soon it will be replaced by rejoicing. You can sense it. A flutter of anticipation stirs in your breast. How many days has it been since the Rabbi arrived in Jerusalem? You will never forget it for as long as you live. What an entrance! The hooping and hollering! The children doing cartwheels and the people laying down their clothes on the street. Oh the colour and sound! When the children and women began singing, in unison, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord!" you nearly wept. The streets were filled with their voices. It was as if the whole world had gathered on that street to adore him.

And for once the Rabbi seemed to welcome the fanfare and praise, instead of trying to hush everyone up the way he usually does. There was no doubt that this signaled the beginning of a new era, of liberation and restoration for Zion. Not to mention the temple cleansing afterwards. Talk about overt symbolism. Shortly afterwards, you and few of the others dared to fantasise of a coup, you imagined Israel free of Roman rule, of the multitudes who would rally behind the Rabbi, of what it would mean to be ministers of his eternal kingdom. Surely, this was the Messiah. Invigorated, intoxicated by a glimpse of freedom, eager to see the kingdom of heaven, you grasp the hilt of your sword. You wonder if it will be violent.

To the death. The thought keeps repeating for some reason. Your mind is clinging on, chanting it over and over to try and stay awake. The Rabbi hasn't moved in ages it seems. You're trying your best to muster up some zeal. To the death. Yes, you would follow him to the death. This unshakable conviction, who can steal? Your heart is secure. Your spirit on fire for God. Yes, yes. Of course. But your eyes, they grow heavy now. Holiness and glory feel far away. And God. All you feel right now is weariness and unease. Where is this peace he talked about? You can't help but feel a little confused by what the Rabbi has said. A little alienated. You fear he has turned his back on you. Is being a disciple difficult? Right now the answer is yes. The Rabbi wouldn't do that. You're trying to pray, but the words won't come. To the death. You've prayed for strength. You've prayed for joy. But all you're getting is more tired. And this sorrow. Maybe a little sleep would be good. Would help. Just for a while. Couldn't hurt. You should. Try a little longer. But your eyes are closing now. Your Rabbi is going somewhere now. No, he's right there. Somewhere you can't follow. To the death. Your eyes are closing now.

hawking / rojak

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 

---

  - whereas KL is...

- the city is essentially one big shopping mall, albeit one that is 85% open air food court.

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surely this is the best of all possible worlds.

---

big changes start with small encounters

---

how much more common is illness compared to health, do you think?

How many people walking around do you think are actually completely healthy, disease-free.

How many have not even one thing wrong with their bodies?

Think about how many different things could go wrong, think of the dazzling dizzying mind-rending complex processes and structures that make up a human. How many opportunities it has to go awry. Think of the one way it was designed to function, and think of how each of these things depend on so many other things to function properly, which themselves depend on an exponentially interconnected web of other things working as they should. Think of how easy it would be for chance to interfere, for one particular tiny aspect to malfunction, causing a knock-on effect to the microscopic rube goldberg machine like cascades within the cell, within the copying of DNA, proteins folding and unfolding and transcribing mindlessly like machines in a factory line, the foremen asleep at the wheel, off sick, or simply not paying attention, bringing the entire show to a grinding halt. A seed of fault spreading through the entire system, infecting it with its imperfection, a rock that poisons the entire lake, a yeast that spreads throughout the dough, disguising itself as something natural, insidiously, imperceptibly only frankly manifesting once the final product is formed, or rather, misformed, deformed, misshapen, inbred, once it's too late.

Is it actually rare or is it actually so overwhelmingly common that we overlook the small imperfections - that we become numb to it.

That what we call health is actually a disease we all have. What if you've always been diseased and you've only ever met diseased people. What if you've never met a truly healthy person before.

What you are talking about is mutation. Mistakes are what make us beautiful. Mistakes allow for novelty, for freedom. For progress.

Is this what you call beautiful? Tell me, what part of this screams progress. Virtual space - the real self is in a wheelchair. Hawking talks to a 20 year old amputee.

'you'll notice this bit gets very familiar,' Mikhail said. It was a reskin / a replica of the lobby from the Terror Tower games. M had reused the resources, as ascended the stairs, Stephen glanced over at the

Working very hard to remain down to earth, not pity himself.

"There's a... a uh... a dinosaur attacking the city."

"Oh yeah, just ignore that. That's for a demo next quarter. We wanted to see how far we could realistically push the dimensions for height and distance.

Doing his best to ignore the screaming and sirens and roars.

rehabilitation clinic amputees. prior to receiving myoelectric limbs, practice in virtual space, electrodes, tactile feedback. endless possibilities.

I still prefer the real world.

in an alternate universe.

Alana, but you can call me Lana.
I used to be a computer gaming AI. Puzzle games mostly.

crux - longing for a life you can never have - a life that should be yours. stepping into an alternate universe, as torture.


---


pretty girl simulator, VR experience

guys are just really nice to you, they come and talk to you for no reason, pretense, get catcalls, text based choices. blow him off, encourage, smile. unwanted attention, hey baby, smile. you could get it you know. everything focused on appearance, finally meet a guy who 'respects' you, turns out like all the rest, or maybe worse.

---

the malaysian identity has always seemed to me a makeshift, slipshod, nebulous kind of thing, which makes it difficult to tell if you belong to it or possess it - especially when the accent is overwritten. Maybe it's the endless heterogeneity, the irreconcilable incongruity of the populations it seeks to gather together and categorise - the fact that the outliers outnumber the average. We have a stereotype of the British, which their sub-stereotypes of northern, posh, lad, all conform to or at least recognise to a degree. The Japanese have their cultural identifiers, bywords exclusively attributed to them, as do the Italians. The Thais are renowned for their love of their king, curries, massages, united by hospitality. They all seem to possess a set of unique virtues and vices. what do we have? Corrupt politicians? Char kuey tiao? A childlike earnestness and lack of sophistry? it appears that the only indisputable facet of being malaysian is the uncanny ability to tell if someone else is Malaysian or not. The ability to recognise your own.

(Maybe what brings us together is our diversity, our lack of a common history, our differences, our dissonance. The state of not being from anywhere else.)


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the pakistani kid next door will have grown up listening to the pixies, hillsong united, mac demarco, winona forever and kpop.

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i am the same age as filthy frank

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Falling into the malaysian habit of chasing a better future by forsaking what you already have