This is a meme from onyxx. It’s supposed to be an award thingie that I should pass on, but for now I’d just really like to make the list. Anyone who will get to read this and want to make your own list, please do. You can leave a comment, if you like, so I can read your favorites, too.

1. Books/Reading. This makes the top of the list and is quite the no-brainer. My earliest memories involve holding a book in my hands and being so fascinated by it – the shape, the texture of the pages, the print inside that I cannot even read yet, the embossed title on the hardbound cover. Then I discovered comics, magazines, and other forms of literature. It was love, and it was the lasting kind. It doesn’t matter if I’m reading on a sofa or on a bed or a bench, or even on area rugs.

2. Music (listening to, singing along). When I was in high school,  I overheard my parents arguing if they should provide restrictions with my use of the cassette player. They were worried about the amount of time I spend beside it more than I do “worthwhile” activities. Besides books, the love of music is the one inherent trait I can claim over my other current fixations that are mostly due to acquired tastes and habits.

3. Racquet sports. I love playing badminton. I think I can safely say I’m a serious player now.  [Although I've always been serious (heh!) and I've been playing badminton for years.]  I’m still not the uber competitive type (which is sometimes important) and my skill level can use more improvement to be at par with my usual company, but I’ve been appreciating the game in the artistic level now – how it can be something of a craft more than just a nifty little hobby.  Which is exactly why I love watching tennis. Watching pros, I don’t just see scores and the ball going back and forth over a net.  I see a battle of wills, artistry with shot making, a display of gallantry and passion. I can say more but that’s enough to justify rank no. 3.

4. Media: TV series, films. It’s all about a good story or an ordinary tale told using extraordinary devices. It’s about finding something to relate to or something that will transport you to another world. It’s about fun and escapism.

5.  The Beach. I once contemplated if I’d rather live somewhere with a good view of the seashore or in the middle of green hills and mountains. My answer came to my mind faster than I can say beach. There’s something about the sea that calms me, even if, to be honest, I’m terrified of it. Maybe it’s that combination of power and mystic that fascinates me so.

6. Internalizing. I do that a lot. I sometimes watch people and play shrink. It makes me crazy, LOL.

7. Internet. Almost ALL of my waking hours are now spent online. Part of my job and my “job.” But it takes the last spot because my enjoyment of it is a direct consequence of my other favorites listed above. I surf the Internet for information about everything else that I love.

Copied these straight out of Goodreads:

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“…if a cluttered desk is that of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?”

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Take a look at my body
Look at my hands
There’s so much here that I don’t understand
Your face-saving promises
Whispered like prayers
I don’t need them
Because I’ve been treated so wrong
I’ve been treated so long
As if I’m becoming untouchable
Well, content loves the silence
It thrives in the dark
With fine winding tendrils
That strangle the heart
They say that promises sweeten the blow
But I don’t need them, no
I don’t need them

I’m the slow dying flower
In the frost killing hour
Sweet turning sour and untouchable

Well is it dark enough
Can you see me
Do you want me
Can you reach me
Oh, I’m leaving

____________

Song: My Skin
Artist: Natalie Merchant

[Took this one out of an Alias episode. I think it's such a sad song. I loved it.]

Slow down, you crazy child
and take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
it’s all right, you can afford to lose a day or two

Vienna – Billy Joel

You remember the TV show F.R.I.E.N.D.S. don’t you? I recently rewatched the alternate reality episode (the one where Monica was fat, Chandler was [still] a big dork and a pushover, and Phoebe was a stock trader or something; I forgot about the other half of the gang).  I can remember that when I was very young, I’ve always dreamed about being someone who does “important” things, like Phoebe did in that episode – always on the go and considering time of utmost importance. I thought “looking” busy means you’re doing something with your life.  How wrong I was.

I feel like I want to ask for more time in my hands. I want to do a lot of other things now not because it looks important but because it gives me satisfaction. For now I’m just striving not to stress myself too much. I get to allow myself to lose a day or two now whenever I feel high strung and I found it quite habit forming. Not a very good habit, all things considered, but if it helps me relax and do away with stuff like treatment for acne, then it serves a purpose. Which is more than I can say about pushing myself too hard every single time.

Sometimes you think about what you have lost. Sometimes you want to recover them. Sometimes they fade away. Sometimes they linger and define you. Sometimes you lose what you will never have ever again.

I don’t think I can ever write great poetry. Rainer Maria Rilke had done it all for me.

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

-Lament
translated by Stephen Mitchell

Who, me? Uhm … sort of. You can say I’m busy trying to schedule my badminton sessions or about trying to finish the book The Secret History as soon as possible because I want to jump right away to The Book Thief. I don’t even have time to watch my TV episode downloads. Then there’s my sister whom I’ve been trying to teach how to do blogging about weight loss pills and other stuff she doesn’t really have much idea about.

And, also, I really need to blog.

But as the scenery grows, I see in different lights
The shades and shadows undulate in my perception
My feelings swell and stretch, I see from greater heights
I realize what I am now too smart to mention – to you

You’ll say you understand, you’ll never understand
I’ll say I’ll never wake up knowing how or why
I don’t know what to believe in, you don’t know who I am
You’ll say I need appeasing when I start to cry
But never is a promise and I’ll never need a lie

-from Never Is A Promise/Fiona Apple

I was reading a book today and from there I saw this equation: romantic = solitary + introspective.  Hah! I’ve always thought I am one, albeit the hopeless type.  There may be no cure for it, like that Mesothelioma treatment exists, but, come on, that’s the best kind. 

See that excerpt of that song there above? I can think of at least three different ways I can relate to those lines. I do tend to romanticize things a lot, and probably not in the way people usually expect.

“I wonder which is preferable — to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you’re depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin — everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone — and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?”

— from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

So I’m quite the nervous wreck.  Every night, when I’m alone at the apartment I share with my sister, I choose to stay up pretty late, usually until the wee hours of the morning, because I feel safer that way.  Sometimes when I hear sounds outside that I can’t identify or is too loud to be a small animal,  like a cat, rustling about, I go near the window to listen but I usually cannot summon enough strength to part the curtains to see for myself what’s going on outside.  Paranoid much? Well, I make no excuse. That’s why when I read about GE Alarm online, I made a mental note to look for something like that the next time I go to the hardware store. [I normally go there to buy butane gas for cooking.]

Well, the GE security system is quite more sophisticated than your normal home security system. I’ve talked to a friend who have installed a simple sensor and alarm on his front door recently, and since then I’ve been thinking that I need one, too. I almost always forget, until I saw the Web site for GE home security. They do have the high-tech stuff like security cameras and video surveillance. But, of course, I don’t need that. A simple sensor and alarm on the windows and the front door will do.

My actual worries about sleeping at night also stems from the fact that I’m not a light sleeper. I always fear that something may be going on outside my room and I will not know about it because I’m deep into the unconscious territory. Maybe that’s something I need to work on, but if it means I couldn’t have a good rest, then forget about it. An alarm system may yet be my best bet.

I’ve always known, and heard from personal stories of people I know, that it never does good to force a kid to pursue a line of study he or she has no interest in. When my brother passed the entrance examination in my alma mater, everyone in the family were so happy that we sort of all became half deaf to his pleas that he’d rather study somewhere else – in a school that caters to courses that he’d really want to take. I loved that place, and he did, too, for the entire year he stayed there. Now that another academic year is about to start, he told us again that maybe it’s time for him to transfer. He’s been looking at sample sites of IT job search and he realized that IT is where his heart is and where he is now wouldn’t  give him that.  Well,  I agreed with him. Besides, he told me he’d compose music for one of my old poems so how can I not be supportive?