The day her wings unfolded in my bough I understood the rhymes and songs of all the poets in the all the world, and Love was born unto me. So I presented it to her in silk and verse, beseeching her lips and hands and said: “this is me. Though the sun is harsh and … Continue reading Untitled 3, Soliloquy of a dead tree
Untitled 2, a paper bag soliloquy
Now with your hollowness folded,
pressed into mine. Tell me,
Are you still the wistful one?
Parking some thoughts so they’re not stuck in my mind.
I have devoted every speck of my energy and savings to this last struggle, and my efforts have been rewarded. I have been admitted into this grandiose institution, and all my most ostentatious dreams have come true. Yet here I am, stranded in a strange land trudging customs, bumping clumsily into people I can't understand. … Continue reading Parking some thoughts so they’re not stuck in my mind.
On openness
Humans tend to systematically underestimate our propensity for change.
I was reading in bed when they took my neighbours away
And I would (perhaps) feel less shame for my silence then, when the Men took my neighbours away and called a Blessing this unseasonal sorrow under a spring sun.
Day 47
... and I remember the beats and coos of winged and vexed things.
A victory for Jacks
Very occasionally, and with a sufficiently (if suspiciously) extended window for attribution, eventually, the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, do go right. Admission season is here, and I got the offer I wanted. Barring the breakout of World War 3, a color uprising, a deadlier covid variant, or some other force majeure, there is … Continue reading A victory for Jacks
Free Guy ruined the Matrix for me
Cypher was right.
On grad school, a mid-application rant
US$450 (not incl. travel to a different city) travel for the GRE examUS$600 for test prepUS$ 85 per applicationUS$285 for World Education Services to verify my degree from LSE, plus 30$ to send it out to each school And that’s just to apply to 3 schools in the US. Australia’s next. Touché, global education-industrial complex. … Continue reading On grad school, a mid-application rant
Reveries
But there will be time to cast a tear for the penny rich bones.
On the GREs
Oh, for the love of Montaigne, for the death of nuance, what the actual fuck.
On having no opinions about things
This is the age of platformed idiots. The rest of us are deluded into thinking that loud idiots are representative of the acme of knowledge.
On farting and vanities,
When you sing, I grate bones.
Sunshine Wednesday
Better immured by walls than muffled noises.
On fear
I am afraid I still won't have gotten a plant when I die.
Flowers are not for lovers
Here, a handful of peonies for your vase.
Waiting in line at the Monet exhibition
These are the clangs of the clock counting sunless times. These are the lives measured by a painted sunrise.
To that which I held for an instant.
The night rends, Its wounds are clear as dawn.
Shipwreck
"Look", they said. "Courage.".
Petrichor
I used to think that the scent of the air after a storm was more fragrant than a lover's kiss
Untitled, a horsefly soliloquy
In the shattered visage of a thousand eyes, I see your hands cleave with swift wrath, And I die.
Arguing with myself: a completely pointless and meandering reflection on religion
This is a far more permissive and palatable approach to the band spirituality occupies on the spectrum of reason. For some, faith is antidotal to the existential horrors of entropy and despair, from which there is no reprieve. It is the last preserve from an indifferent and immutable existence.
This Place
half a dream, half a ruin.
On workplace discrimination
So I keep calm, keep silent, keep my pay-check, and carry on.
The Painter and the Thief
When a hardened man breaks, it is all the more shattering. Such is the agony of being seen, in a world accustomed to unseeing.
(Anti)hustle in the age of Covid-19
Americans aren't the only ones plighted by Workism. It has infected the world's psyche like kombuchas and k-pop.
On alcohol, mood boosters, and not writing
Remarkably, it was only when I started to study Experiences and Design that I realized the glaringly evident biological fact: mood can affect our perceptions and actions. If we're in a good mood, we tend to be more generous, forgiving, and perceive positively ambiguous situations. Hashtag epiphany. Yay. This is how mood disorders set off … Continue reading On alcohol, mood boosters, and not writing
How do you know they are beautiful?
How do you know they are beautiful, with faces behind masks?
London, again. (Pt. 2 of whatever)
People are kind of like plants that way. Once you yank them out at the root, they don’t grow so well.
In an escalated war of words and faces, truth suffers
Mainstream media is mainstream media. One is beholden to censors, another to instamedia zeitgeist. Neither has the moral standing upon which to strike the other.
London, again. (Pt.1 of whatever)
If to seek out the pleasures and sorrows of one’s youth, as cautioned Camus, is a kind of folly certain to be punished, then punished I will be.
Nothing
Winter brought pansies to a bloom
and finches sang and sang while worms sleeping between our rooms
dreamed of nothing.
The Spectator
Brittle. hollow boned. And this kaleidoscopic life Seen atop the wall, where raindrops clung to windows like ghosts and dull lights bounced back to the pedestrian lives below. Between the twinkle of the spectacle and the celestial dome was you. You perched atop the wall like a cat, observing, recording the motley crew of midnight … Continue reading The Spectator
Three Identical Strangers
Three Identical Strangers is the most thought provoking documentary I have watched in while. To fully appreciate this story, you ought to start here, with a 1995 New Yorker Article that first features its progenitor, Dr. Peter B. Neubauer. It was the sixties, a set of identical-twin girls came to the attention of the prominent … Continue reading Three Identical Strangers
Mania (revisited)
It will be a spectacular shipwreck. You enter twilight with your heart oozing coffee and single malt, tittering on the edge of aneurysms bursting, bursting riotously to the pulse of stars beating, beating like drums. Returning nightly to a vacant den dining on an expensive takeout meal for one. Mock me if you will. You … Continue reading Mania (revisited)
On living for ourselves, and a death-day reflection
“April is the cruellest month.” Trauma has a peculiar effect on me. Prompted by dates, places, smells, passages of text, or fragments of music, my body - the muscles, bones, cells, nerves, neurons and all, harmonize to re-enact an affective experience of that ordeal. The mind attempts to forget, but some primordial agent still holds … Continue reading On living for ourselves, and a death-day reflection
A Remembrance
But death is a winter whore.
Theranos, Fyre, and the dangers of confusing vision with mission
My parents were entrepreneurs, the unaccomplished kind residing in the white space of survivor bias, never appearing in HBR articles and McKinsey case studies. The bloody corpse of their business and their likes fertilize the ground upon which your empires of prosperity now stand. Like all entrepreneurs they have an ability to spot and visualize … Continue reading Theranos, Fyre, and the dangers of confusing vision with mission
Fuck you, you have nothing on me.
People who go through crisis end up hating themselves It's the start of every redemption story It's the beginning of the descent towards the divine It's the flesh and the bone and the sinew revealed by the brutal and brutalizing lashes of reflection Oh you will see Oh you will see And then you will … Continue reading Fuck you, you have nothing on me.
Unreality
These are the times when the unreality sets in, and he would notice how incorrigibly separated he is from the comings and goings around, rising like helium above breath. These are the days that stretch long and rides home are odysseys through the "sterile promontory" of other lives. These are the times when even the … Continue reading Unreality
How Theranos shut down my critical thinking
I distinctly remember that my first reaction to the indicting WSJ report on Theranos was to come to its defence. Naysayers standing in the way of progress. Vultures capitalizing on the vicissitudes of a start-up lifecycle. In hindsight, it was a total failure of critical thinking. With no skin in the game, with zero understanding … Continue reading How Theranos shut down my critical thinking
Not quite a limerick
I'm Windows installed on Macintosh, I'm soup in a shallow dish, I'm shuimo painted on color wash, I'm peanut butter served with fish. I'm a Djinni without a wish.
An Anatomy of Intimacy
There's a scene in the 2012 movie Francis Ha where Francis, the loveable epitome of a quarter-life crisis, delivers a monologue while sitting with a group of friends, a part of them, apart from them. “It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and … Continue reading An Anatomy of Intimacy
Reminder to self: stay away from narcissists
An unfortunately high fraction of my personal relationships – platonic, romantic, collaborative, familial – have involved narcissists. I am the common denominator there, so most of the problem lies within me: I seek validation from a sense of being useful and being needed, at the cost of my own fulfillment, at the cost of my … Continue reading Reminder to self: stay away from narcissists
Eye
This was the first time he laid on an operating table. In the months preceding, he had gradually unraveled. First his mind, then his intellect, his heart, and now his body. It happened on a humdrum Wednesday noon at work, when the sunlight percolated ink-stained shades and made the office sleepy and the light from … Continue reading Eye
To weaponize a people
To weaponize a people, you must first carve them hollow. This eon has promised immortality in exchange for submission, that happiness is but a grasp away if you do the right thing and live the right way. So you design them in moulds and make them in factories, and draw a line around them and … Continue reading To weaponize a people
On Censorship
Someone on Quora asked: why is censorship in China a good thing. I have strong feelings about that topic, especially after reading 17 answers in defense of censorship. So this was my own answer, and I'm pretty sure I'll get skewered, but who the fuck cares. Why is Censorship in China a good thing? It … Continue reading On Censorship
Of pants and mannequins
If you’re wondering how I’m getting on with my daily writing challenge, my dearies, this is what it looks like. Those chicken soup gems I poop out are few and far between. Usually they’re just a snarl of thoughts snarling from the page gnarling to be seen. So this is to document to you, that … Continue reading Of pants and mannequins
Work Thoughts: Management Debt
Debt is not necessarily a bad thing. The ability to borrow from another’s surplus, or borrowing from your own future surplus, so long as it is founded on prudent optimism, creates the virtuous cycle upon which stands the capitalist faith. But debt based on unfounded speculations or deceit is what gets us into bubbles. It’s … Continue reading Work Thoughts: Management Debt
On blue
There is a special kind of blue only found in this country, heralding the arrival of lords and kings and captains of nations, the blue of Man’s subjection of the elements. A royal blue, a celestial blue, rolled out across the heavens for the most heavenly of guests. A Presidential Blue. #00117F is a … Continue reading On blue
Micro. Mania.
It’s not that I don’t have the words for it, but that there’s no one around to hear it. And words are lonely wisps, alive only in the eyes of the observer. There is a fresh word for this insanity now, they call it rapid cycle bipolar disorder. No-one else heard its name though, … Continue reading Micro. Mania.
On realism
Many of us are stuck in unhappy jobs trading integrity for a pittance. Many of us are stuck in dead-end relationships that brought into our lives an unbecoming. Many of us have an unfortunate habit of attaching to visions of life as it should be, ourselves as we wish to be, and people as they … Continue reading On realism
In praise of letters
I have long fantasized a life of epistolary communion with those I love the most in this world. There is intimacy and vulnerability in the eager anticipation of sitting down on a Sunday morning by a window-side desk looking out into a day breaking, readying oneself to compose deep and unembellished thoughts, which one prepares … Continue reading In praise of letters
On the question of life (because I can’t afford to buy cool things)
How many models of the iPhone has there been? Variants included? 24? 25? We are Winston Smith drinking Soylent Green, waking up in a Black Mirror adaptation of the Truman Show, rampaging through the set and hitting the fourth wall. We are simulation #19456-fourteen, test subjects for the grad school dissertation of our alien overlord. … Continue reading On the question of life (because I can’t afford to buy cool things)
The discomfort of first-world poverty
Our world at times has an unfortunate tendency to confuse discomfort with poverty. Absolute poverty – not just the paucity of things but the beggary of hope, and of egress – is stunting. The existence of children who through mere circumstance of birth are deprived of basic nourishments in body and in mind, is the … Continue reading The discomfort of first-world poverty
Misanthrope Rising, and a Friendship Manifesto
I have succumbed to the void. But only by a little bit, and for a little while. The successive departure of friends – and I only maintain a handful, deliberately so – has punched holes in me, each one of them an irredeemable, irreparable, inconsolable shape of a soul. However transient it had been, to … Continue reading Misanthrope Rising, and a Friendship Manifesto
Home
It was first known as 'the house', 'my parent's place', 'back there', a cage, my prison. Schoolmates used to ask if they could come by and play, when we walked past my door on their way home. Before I run out of excuses, they stopped asking; soon they stopped sharing that walk with me too, … Continue reading Home
Sunlight tax and parable of the fisherman
I moved into a new apartment this week. A little one-bed room on the ground floor where grasses grow, and snails reside, cozy and resolute. A south-facing suite on the fifth floors in my building costs at least 1/3rd more, the pent house suite is double, even though the layout is identical. Based on the … Continue reading Sunlight tax and parable of the fisherman
Unravel – Perfectionism
While in search for an antidote to perfectionism, I stumbled on the notion of an elegantly disheveled life. I often professed to be a healthy perfectionist, which is a bit of an oxymoron. Anything taken to the absolute is heading into toxic territory. Perfectionism is no different. At best it is conscientiousness with a critical … Continue reading Unravel – Perfectionism
Unravel – loneliness and its antidote
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald I pretended I was not myself during the time of my mid twenties. The country was already stuffed with returnees and I wanted to be different. A … Continue reading Unravel – loneliness and its antidote
Unravel – Tinder and Romanticism
I've spent the bulk of my recovery messing around on Tinder. Ok I am very late to this game… perhaps I missed it’s prime entirely? Was it always so... boring? Is it odd that it’s actually killed my sex drive? Okay… I get that folks don’t go on Tinder to find love. It’s for hook-ups. … Continue reading Unravel – Tinder and Romanticism
Unravel – Perseverance
Managing ourselves is difficult. In the midst of a raging storm, clarity and acceptance can be frustratingly out of reach. Sometimes your body takes over and you become a passenger in your own mind. It is a frustrating fact of existence that we process things intellectually and processing them emotionally at different a difference pace, … Continue reading Unravel – Perseverance
Unravel – the Metaphor
Those sharp little fangs bit down and drew blood and he knew it was a metaphor. Fast friends, they had met on New Year’s Eve and she was in his life for 175 days. Some days he had felt so close to her that his wings melted and felt his monstrous heart plummet from the … Continue reading Unravel – the Metaphor
Unravel – Prologue
A month after my 30th birthday, I found myself perilously employed at a job I resent, functionally broke, estranged from family, inconsolably lonely with an anguished heart, and hospitalized for two weeks from complications during retinal detachment surgery – which had no apparent cause in the first place other than to add to the cascading … Continue reading Unravel – Prologue
My 4-step coping strategy for panic attacks.
It begins with the world closing in and the floors and the desks and the walls and the crowd and the trees and grass and the skies bending, bending towards you with vehement intent and the space around you spinning, spinning into a whirlpool of red, yellow, orange and green then bright, bright light scorching … Continue reading My 4-step coping strategy for panic attacks.
Welcome to me.
TJK; I doubt y'alls are actually reading this, but if you are, hey - welcome to me. I have been a writer only in the most technical sense - that words are tipsily tapped out from beneath my thumbs in a tangle of thoughts, all of it me. But I am not a writer in … Continue reading Welcome to me.
The Guinness Sigh
The sigh that follows a protracted, tantalizing gulp from a fresh, cold pint of Guinness is paradise. That luxurious satin nectar of bitter ecstasy filling around your tongue, your gut, your blood. It's the hard-earned sigh when propping up a stiff foot after a long hard Saturday, where the fifth cup of coffee … Continue reading The Guinness Sigh
Weeps the harlequin
And goodnight to you, good lady. May you wake to a bright and better tomorrow. It bows. Such is the role it plays. The Jester. The fool. The harlequin to the Innamorati. Translator of absurdity, the courier of consolation and conveyor of catharsis, who rides upon the east wind and sparkle with dew. It entertains, … Continue reading Weeps the harlequin
On friendship, and parting
There should be a better word than sorrow for friends parting. Cherished friends, to whom you’ve subtly grown close, over a surprisingly few moments of connection: that one morning perched on the balcony of your regular restaurant sharing toast and poached eggs, the sting of the winds tempered by a spring sun; or the wintry … Continue reading On friendship, and parting
On flowers, and artificial grass in a pot
In one surreal moment, Ido was up at five a.m., head bursting with frenetic thoughts that demanded to be committed to word, only to delete the draft by accident with no idea as to what had poured out of him, and spent the day in that hazy, drugged up sentimental way, as if he'd lost … Continue reading On flowers, and artificial grass in a pot
P.N. Setepenre
Is today's sunlight same as yesterday's? Kind of brain-scraping when you think about it. There's nothing intrinsically different, in the sense that they're all made of the same 'stuff' - electromagnetic radiation from the sun. Which would make sunlight truly egalitarian - to kings and beggars, sunshine is sunshine. Life has been shitty lately. Supposedly … Continue reading P.N. Setepenre
Silence
I'm not terribly good at writing dialogues, mostly because real-life conversations seem to consist of two or more people taking turns talking, over and at one another, making sounds that pass through each other without stopping and disappear. It's never as lyrical as they should be. People don't really talk like that, you might … Continue reading Silence
Work thoughts to clear my head
The theme of this year is ‘innovation under constraint’. I wish I had a bigger. I wish had I more people on my team. I wish I had more time on my hands. I wish my boss is a bit more forthcoming with his thoughts. Right. Me and a billion other people. The ability to … Continue reading Work thoughts to clear my head
On almost burning to death but not quite and now he’s not sure how to react to it all and to the shitstorm that is living.
Ido almost burned to death last night. It’d have been an embarrassing death. His trusty old electric heater got covered by a fallen towel and set itself on fire, while he napped a few steps away. Rest in pieces, iridescent old friend. Many a night of warmth and comfort you have brought to him. Fitting … Continue reading On almost burning to death but not quite and now he’s not sure how to react to it all and to the shitstorm that is living.
Because Ido is a fucking insane person and can’t sleep and there is pandemonium in his brain.
Mani and Clinny D are fighting and Ido is trapped in the middle for the nine hundredsth fucking time, twin planets grating in his head. D has the upper hand. Clinny fucking D. It turns out that D can’t die. She’s a magnificent un-k-i-l-l-able tardigrade. Mani had drowned her. Smothered her in asphalt. Quartered her. … Continue reading Because Ido is a fucking insane person and can’t sleep and there is pandemonium in his brain.
Remembering Mrs M.
When I was a kid, if the air in my home became too still to bear, I’d escape to my friend D’s house and spend the evening playing Oblivion, watching the Big Bang Theory, and riffing on his guitar. I never stayed for dinner, though not for the lack of invitation. I still had the … Continue reading Remembering Mrs M.
Love. Mania.
You construct your life from the tip of a pin. Woe is you. Hope is you. Harsh sun is you. Bitter wind is you. The ones who brought you to this world naked and screaming, they were barely twenty-three. A dark alley blowjob and a motel rump and voila, a child and half a mortgage … Continue reading Love. Mania.
The old man at the hospital
They discarded him in a puddle on the gurney by the window, crumpled between a mass of robes and linen, tangled in a mess of bandages and tubing. Lights painted him in shades of yellow and blue. Eyes shut, skin taut, ash tongue protruding from a barren mouth. Between arduous breath his withering husk would … Continue reading The old man at the hospital
On the absurdity of scented candles
I went candle shopping with a friend today. Her indulgence in a highly inefficient means of distributing light and scent is part of a self-care routine, so who am I to judge? But the existence of the $50 scented candles is quite absurd – in a Camusian sense, that it sheds light on the unfathomable … Continue reading On the absurdity of scented candles
The search for whimsical things. Pt 1.
The family next door has lived here since 1954. The ones upstairs moved in a year later, but when the original owners died, their children had the place stripped and refurbished into a studio, now inhabited by an American or European expat whose only encounter with me is the cacophony of her sex life at … Continue reading The search for whimsical things. Pt 1.
On Gratitude
I am at the tail end of a crisis made endurable by the fidelity of friendship. Let this be a memento that through hardest times there were those who offered the rarest gift, without supplication, and thus the anguish brought on by the utter rejection of some was redeemed by the unconditional validation of others. … Continue reading On Gratitude
Pondering the economics of carry-on luggage.
A few of my flights this year suffered the plight of excessive carry-on luggage. At times it became a safety issue, where several bags had to be pile in an empty row of seats in the back. My most recent flight was an Airbus A321. At a glance, it had 20 x 6 seats in … Continue reading Pondering the economics of carry-on luggage.
Sunday
It's the way Sunday morning feels, aloft, everything else in the world suspended. You wake up to the tickle of sunshine, to a serene stillness occasionally rippled by faint snoring from the silky silhouette besides you. You can’t help but smile at the memory of last night as you tiptoe around the mess on the … Continue reading Sunday
What I’ve learned from being fired
... this was a mishap of youth. It isn't always about the job, or even doing what you think is the right thing, and your best intention doesn’t negate its impact.
On Bilingualism and Identity
But I reside in the discursive space between two cultures, and I feel more aimless than ambivalent.
On Growing Up
Growing is recognizing that you can’t run away from who you are. As a child, I imagined adulthood to feel cinematically stoic and demure. You grow up to become steadfast like an aircraft carrier, standing upright between heaven and earth with the world on your back. The things that terrified you as children shattered upon … Continue reading On Growing Up
A Reset
I was a teenager when I started to entertain a fantasy. It goes something like this: I am standing on a stage built upon a life of imposing accolades and lavish success, and declared before a thousand captivated eyes: My name is Peter. I am your boss, your colleague, your employee, your partner, your neighbor, … Continue reading A Reset
Home
The rebel act of a wayward son.
A Pilgrimage, Part 2 – How to Wreck a Paradise
Missing the point.
A pilgrimage, part 1
I’m on a pilgrimage of sorts, a lonely trip into the mountains of Shangri-La, in search for clarity and catharsis. Clarity I have yet to find. Catharsis, I’m halfway there. I travel to wander. Pick a destination and head there. The destination is not the point, the journey is. You’ll wander into the middle of … Continue reading A pilgrimage, part 1
On Credibility
Credibility is a peculiar currency. Once gained, multitude of it compounds. Once lost, it is nigh impossible to regain. It’s the one characteristics that leaders must possess if they wish to be effective over time. This should be intuitive: to achieve the unimagined, she must be believed. To be believed, she must be credible. I’m … Continue reading On Credibility
There fell thy shadow.
~ Citalopram Chronicles (Week 3 and 4). “Non sum qualis eram.” I had hoped this would be a celebration of the efficacy of medication, that the moral of the story would have been: seek help if thy brain is faulty, take thy medicine like a good boy, and all would be well. I had even … Continue reading There fell thy shadow.
Citalopram Chronicles, Week 2
The first three days began with the nausea subsiding. The Tremors dwindled. The heart stilled. But the discomfort did not disappear completely. That sensation of some dark melancholic thought chocked at the throat was ever present. In quiet moments, my gut still fluttered. And sleep did not return at night. On some nights I caught … Continue reading Citalopram Chronicles, Week 2
Citalopram Chonicles Days 4-7
Day 4 Took meds at 7.12am Physical: sleep disturbances have set in. Woke up at 2am, tossing and toiling until 4am. Managed to catch 2-3 hours of Zs. The wave of nausea punched in exactly 1 hour later. Maybe I should have taken it at night instead so that I could sleep through the worst … Continue reading Citalopram Chonicles Days 4-7
Oh but it was only sentiment.
It is the knowledge that is comforting. You are surrounded by a motley crew of midnight faces, boys and girls enraptured in the moment. She is there, across the room. She doesn't look at you, and you don’t look at her, but somehow you know she’s there, that there is a secret world shared by … Continue reading Oh but it was only sentiment.
Citalopram Chronicles: The Beginning
Days 1 to 3 I am beginning a new course of antidepressant medication after some years off. This time I’m going to document the effects, good and bad, as they occur. Going on antidepressants for the first time is like venturing to a new planet, but I've been here before. My first course of treatment … Continue reading Citalopram Chronicles: The Beginning
On my birthday, a suicide
This is my cycle. I know it well. It begins around Christmas, subsides with the onset of spring, and burst out in full swing at this exact time of year. For most of my life I was a passenger inhabiting a vessel, watching with detached eyes, feeling it all, but unable to act. But now … Continue reading On my birthday, a suicide
Ugly
I set the ocean ablaze with my own sun.
It was just a cat…
The cold should have killed it. It inched towards the edge of the treeline and curled up there like a fuzzy ball, legs tucked into its body. A grizzly encounter in the past left it limping with a gushing scar that extended from the paws of its hind leg all the way to its back. … Continue reading It was just a cat…
On Art
My good friend K is a brilliant painter. In the company of her craft, I am awed and humbled by her skills and quite embarrassed by my boorish tastes. The thing about art is, you’re often expected if not assumed to know it already to partake in the conversation, which makes it awkward for one … Continue reading On Art
#00117F 