there comes a time in every graduate student’s life (more than once, perhaps) when they feel so stuck and hemmed in, like one of the commuters on the yamanote line at peak hour. and they can only stand stock-still and look upwards, keeping their faces deliberately blank, minds working busily… silently screaming in their heads, let me out. let me out.

it has been a terrible couple of weeks. i have a disjointed brain that starts and stops with annoying little jerks. i mishear and misunderstand and misinterpret things – too many misses in two weeks. i feel as if i have crumbled into dust and am scattered all over my room – on the floors, on top of the tv, in my shoes.

this sudden and pseudo breakdown that i have been through before. many times before. i know i will be laughing as always in a week – perhaps even a day. but i can’t seem to get off that green-colored train for now, and it is so maddening.

when i wake up tomorrow morning, i will be suspended in nowhere for 7 hours, and i am glad. nobody can get me then – no emails or phone calls or the ugly cawing sounds of hostility. nobody can tell me i’m wrong, slow, or stupid. just for a while. let me float in the happy delusion that i can.

in the midst of packing and laundry and music-learning and survey-making and room-cleaning frenzy, and simply trying not to think.

i haven’t been sleeping well again. i don’t feel well. i went to bed at 8 last night, exhausted with thoughts and memories. i remembered my brother. that day, and the days following. i fell asleep. at least, i think i did. but it could have been a full twelve-hour movie marathon playing in my mind. back in my primary school, a hulking giant amongst those tiny children, running from room to room. looking for a place to make exactly 22 copies of a certain set of scores or risk the wrath of the music teacher. attempting to attend a choir practice session and a drama rehearsal session, and have a coffee break, all at the same time.

what will i see tonight?

this video has been making its rounds on facebook and blogs lately. i must have watched it more than ten times, and still burst out laughing every.single.time.

ode to joy is hilarious too. don’t you just love beaker?

and the classic. mahna mahna!

i sometimes wonder if these people in tokyo – people from all the tiny little towns of japan, people from all the tiny little towns all over the world – have unanimously decided that it is acceptable to forget your sumimasen in tokyo, to push your way around the trains and stations and crowded malls just because it’s tokyo.

i sometimes wonder about my fear of death. two nights ago, i dreamt that a high school friend – someone i haven’t met or talked to for a long while – had a heart attack. right where i was standing, watching. and he just keeled over and died.

i sometimes wake up with a start and a violent jerk and my heart beating wildly, right after i fall asleep. i have no idea why. i’m sure there must be a scientific reason for it, but it always makes me feel as if i have just had a close shave with something dangerous.

i sometimes believe that certain people no longer figure in my life. but something pops up unexpectedly – photos, their names on facebook, music – my heart starts hammering, and i realize, boy, do i have a long way to go.

i sometimes walk under the canopy of trees. i like the feeling of leaves falling gently all around me and birds overhead. then certain absolutely unromantic thoughts get in the way, and i step out hurriedly, afraid of being pooped on.

i sometimes lose complete track of a japanese conversation. i sometimes read my own writing in japanese and have no inkling of what it was i meant to say. i sometimes hear the singaporean accent in my japanese speech and cringe. i sometimes wonder why i thought i had the ability to do this at all.

i sometimes lay in bed in the morning and feel the heat of the sun on my face, and think of home.

i had a tough night, for reasons better left unspecified. so i started singing. and singing. and singing. and i didn’t quite care that it was past midnight and that the walls were paper thin. the pulsating beats of the light mass felt like sunshine.

in times of weakness, god (it doesn’t quite matter which one you believe in) sends his best ambassadors. i guess i’m not quite ready to give up singing yet.

i have a lot to do this week, most of which is neither pleasant nor fun. but next week sees me boarding a plane for home… home, home, home! the operation date has been set, and i am worried and excited at the same time. how could going home be such a complicated affair?

i wrote on my alter ego blog about my hunt for the perfect birthday outfit, but external appearances are really not the only things on my mind when it comes to my birthday. my 30th birthday, to be exact.

birthdays are always a time for reflection, and mine happens to come on the heels of new year – more reason for obsessive “i should have…” and “i will…” sessions. more so, because i am turning thirty. not so much by virtue of the fact that i will be three decades old – it’s not as if i am going to get a new nose; but by virtue of the things that have happened in this, my 29th year of life… all the things that overwhelmed me for several months and left me rather incapacitated for a while.

i must say, i never really thought i would be single, unmarried, and unemployed at this age. perhaps one of the three, or even two… but all three? it never once crossed my mind. but here i am. and for a while, it mattered to me. it mattered horribly – this sense of being an underachiever, of having missed something important along the way (along the way to… what?). but perhaps it matters no more. i want it to matter no more.

i want the next ten years of my life to be golden and shiny and colorful, even if i never get the big things that are supposed to make a person happy forevermore.

i have blogged about the gitanjali some time in the dim and distant past, but picked up my copy for once in a long, long while yesterday. for those not in the know, this is a collection of poems penned by nobel laureate rabindranath tagore, and it is absolute.raw.beauty.

the one below a little more than the others, because i sing.

and i think, like yeats, i will start carrying this little volume around with me, “reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants.”

————————————————————————

When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart
would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears
come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one
sweet harmony – and my adoration spreads wings like a glad
bird on its flight across the sea.

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only
as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song
thy feet which i could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee
friend who art my lord.

i think i should just stop blogging and direct you over to dr. boli’s. i love randomness, and he is really just about the most random person i know whom i don’t (did you get that?) but i think you have to be tarred, at least slightly, with some randomness too, if you want to laugh at his little irreverent pieces.

and here’s his take on socks.

it is dark and gloomy and wet this morning, and will continue to be for the next three days. i would usually spend such days in my pjs, lounging around on the bed, attempting to get some work done. but a friend from home is in tokyo, and we will be tackling the optician this morning. i have never had glasses made in japan before; did you know that it is possible to get a pair of glasses made in half an hour? why do they make you wait for days back home??

i have known this friend for a long time, but never actually spoken to him one-on-one for a good, long time before; i wish i had. he is intelligent, funny, and full of such sincere good thoughts about the choral scene back home. i miss talking to people about such things, in a language i can handle. i haven’t felt like singing lately, and rather shocked him when i told him that i didn’t quite care about my voice anymore, and decided that i wanted to drink.  but talking to him brought back all the myriad emotions that i have for singing and music, and stirred me; and now i want to sing again.

i can relate to people like him – they have ideals but a firm sense of realism; earnest, sincere, hopeful yet jaded at the same time. at times, i become frustrated when speaking to young japanese; they seem to be either entirely indifferent, or naively idealistic (in a miss-universe-world-peace way). but then again, young singaporeans sometimes seem to be entirely indifferent and overly-pragmatic. both are the result of living in sheltered societies – isn’t that ironic, and interesting?

bogoroditse dyevo raduisya

it is so strangely warm today. we have, once again, those blue skies that stretch for miles and miles with not a single cloud in sight. you don’t get to see that a lot back home. it makes me think of texas, for some reason, and i have never even been there in my entire life.

i’m sitting at the library, dreamily attempting to draw up my research schedule for the next three years or so. it’s hard enough to plan the week ahead – three years! how does one go about doing that? there are tinkling sounds in the air, as if someone had left a musical box open in the library. nobody seems bothered. nobody seems to have noticed. i cannot stop myself from looking up now and then; i am not quite disturbed by it, only curious. i take a stealthy sip of hot tea from my tumbler. you aren’t supposed to drink in the library, but it is simply another one of those rules made to be broken. an ambulance goes by. that distracts me. ambulances bring my mind to places it does not want to visit.

it has just hit me that my glass ring has yellow, blue, and white streaks across it; my tumbler has yellow, blue, and white flowers on it; i am wearing a yellow top with teal and white earrings. entirely unintentional, i swear. but aren’t blue and yellow the best color-friends ever?  sunshine and sky, warm and cool, bubbly joy and calm.

and i, am ever randomly yours. because i had a matcha old-fashioned donut earlier.