Harsh light of the day.

Well, I got that title from an episode from BTVS, and technically, it's the early evening now, what with the sun setting and rain coming on, the sunlight's not that harsh.

Still, sometimes when I stare out the window, it makes me feel (again) that I don't belong. I only feel the serenity in the dark; I belong to the night.

It's not entirely because that I'm struting meaninglessly in life now. Not because I see all those people walking around with an aim, a motivation, when I don't.

When I used to work 8-5 at LTA, I still don't feel like it's it. I still prefer the early morning near dawn and the evening when the moon's coming up. The dark sky is sacrosanct to me.

I've been staying over at my sis's place for the last couple of days, because my I-poh came to stay again, occupying my room. Moreover, my youngest niece, Xinyi, got infected with the hand-foot-mouth disease, so I thought I should clear out for awhile.

I thoroughly enjoy my sis and nieces' company here(it's filled with oestrogen, baby!) . My sis dotes on me, my nieces are near my age (one 20, one 18) means some girl time even tho their bfs come by everyday, but most importantly, I can smoke all I want in the house, and behave more freely since we're close.

But... I still feel all empty inside. It's not caused by anyone. I just do. When I see myself, even in my memory, I no longer see the brightness that had been mine since young; I see the lined and irascible woman I have become, as if these lineaments had been waiting to emerge since my features had first been formed.

I'm no longer the ingenuous, happy girl who used to attract people with her spunk; I'm only an indolent and inferior woman, one of the faces in the crowd now, with the night, books, and isolation as my sporadic delectations.

I can practically hear a little voice at the back of my head snickering at me.

Why have I fallen so low? Sometimes I just feel so sick about myself and my life. I ought to deserve better than this.

Yes, I do deserve better than this so-called life I'm having. I don't care if it takes me years to achieve what other people my age have already achieved. I don't care how other people think about me, I don't care how my family thinks about me; Ima do it my way, nice and slow.

I live for only myself.


In a Dark Time
- Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.