Haircuts and hot towels

Sure, they say sex is amazing, but could it really live up to the feeling of a hot, hot towel being pressed on your face, especially when it's contrasted with the cold three-layer winter outside? Or with the feeling of your face being massaged by soothing hands? I had nutella pancakes this morning, and this even beat that in terms of the joy it gave me. I could live in that moment forever.

Hopefully the aftermath of sex is better though, because this bliss was immediately followed by the torture known as blackhead removal, and may I please say that I have never, ever experienced anything more painful? Waxing is a close second, but at the moment even that feels less awful. Like sure, my skin looks better now, but at what cost, I ask you, at what cost? It was so bad I dug my nails into my palm and wrists to get my mind to focus on something other than the pain on my face, but the procedure hurt so bad I couldn't even feel my nails- and let me tell you, in normal circumstances, my nails hurt. They are weapons. This was so bad, I literally had tears streaming down my face. But did this woman care? Nope, she just continued scraping my face like it was a greasy pan, and scolding me (much to my mother's delight) for not taking care of myself. ["How old are you now? If your skin is so bad now, what will happen once you grow older? Once your skin gets bad, it's really hard to fix. What are you going to do when you get married in three-four years (pfft) and you want your skin to look good? Think about how stressed your mother will be, mothers want their daughter's skin to shine on her wedding day."]
Then the process ended and then space cleared up in my brain to feel the pain in my wrists and palm as well as whatever my face had suffered, so that was nice.

But after this, I got my hair cut! By Shahid! Shahid is the guy who cuts my hair every time I'm here. I love Shahid. I mean, I love Shahid. First up, his name is Shahid, and I love that name. Second, he's cute. But third, and most important, he's really sweet and jovial, and will make you feel like a goddess even if you resemble a homeless person more than anything else when you go to him, as I usually do (law school is hard okay). Unlike most hairstylists/parlour people, he is not condescending and does not feel the need to diss each strand of your hair individually. Even when he disapproves- as he did of my hair, which have turned into proper straw this past week- he's nice about it. I love how he handles my hair. I also love that I can tell him to do whatever with my hair and trust him to do something brilliant, as opposed to most places where even detailed instructions leave you with a mess to bring you to tears. (I literally had tears in my eyes after my last haircut, and let me tell you, they were not tears of joy. And I'm no crier.) Anyway, Shahid had left the place he worked at earlier- news which evoked a very shocked, very sad squawk from me- and I thought I'd lost him forever, but then we found him and it was beautiful and then he did my hair and everything was right with the world. ^_^ Then he had to go do someone else's hair and some other guy who knew absolutely nothing and who pulled my hair too hard came to blow dry and set my hair and ruined everything and I glowered at him throughout. Then Shahid came and fixed it with one brush. <3 (I may or may not be seriously biased here.)

Then I had a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks, which completed my winter picture because the classic winter look in my head is basically hot Starbucks + coat + gloves + boots. I was wearing shoes, but that's close enough; and my lovely black gloves with gold threading. And I had on my favouritest coat in the world, which is this red coat that we refer to as my little red riding hood coat. My mom saw it years ago and bought it when I was in the second grade because it was so lovely and she figured she might as well keep it. And now I'm old enough to fit into it, and cold enough to actually be able to wear it! ^_^ I love winter clothing. I only wish I'd had my beanie on as well, but ah, let's leave something for another day.


Love,
~Sam

Life is a car.

I've decided that the best metaphor for life is a car. It is not a train, chugging along peacefully (I have a very romanticized, happy image of trains), nor is it a rollercoaster, rollercoaster-ing away. It is, instead, far more mundane a means of travel: a car. Some people are content with whatever car they have; some people love their cars in all their broken beauty; and some are hunting for a better buy with better mileage no matter what they already have. Sometimes it breaks down because you haven't been taking care of it. Sometimes it decides to stop functioning simply because, and decides that it's a good day for an existential crisis. Mostly, it just gets you from place to place, which is pretty much all you care about, unless you have a cool life like  a Porsche or Maserati, in which case I really don't know enough about your life to be making any sort of analogies, and why are you reading this blog anyway, and can I please have some money?

Okay enough metaphors for tonight, Imma go work or something.

BYE!
~Sam

Songs belong to their listeners.

You know what I really like about books and paintings and art in general, but music in particular (because I just thought of this because of Wake Me Up When September Ends)? A lot of the times, you go through a lot of emotional trauma to write that one song, whether it's about a loved one passing away or a break-up or depression or even how pretty the sky is (maybe that one isn't so emotionally traumatizing). But once that song/book/whatever is out there, it creates so many new memories for so many new people. It's completely out of your hands, the effect your art has once it's out in the world. It's a little like what John Green says about books: they belong to their readers, and once it's out, the authors have no more authority over it than the readers do. They'll interpret it on their own; they'll imagine their own futures for characters after the end of the book. But also- they'll have their own story with the book, how it spoke to them and the memories it created, the feelings it evoked.  Something that grew out of an awful experience for you might give strength to someone else, or might just be a happy karaoke memory, or background work music. Or something which you wrote on the happiest day of your life might be the song playing when a listener gets bad news. It's just weird how every single person who comes in contact with art, including the creator, has her own particular relationship with it.


~Sam

Optimistic Fractions

Because I have nothing to say, I will just resort to blogging profound-at-the-time conversations with friends.

Me, on hearing of the break-up of a couple I'd been fond of: I don't like the world.
Doobie: But this is only a fraction of the world! There's more to it which you will like, however small that fraction is. ^_^ And you will love it and it will keep you going. ^_^
Me: And what fraction is that?

Doobie: Depends on what your expectations of the world are. Everybody has their own fraction. ^_^
Me: Wow, you're on an optimistic roll.
Doobie: But I do believe that.
Me: It's a beautiful thought. I will also believe in it. I will, in fact, blog about it.
Doobie: GIVE ME CREDITS!! I AM WISE AND PEOPLE NEED TO RECOGNIZE THAT!



~Sam

Inertia of the Mind

I was stalking myself, and I realized that we've been on blogger since 2011. 2011. It's almost 2014, now, and it's crazy how fast time has flown. Things I could've sworn I wrote last week are actually, somehow, last year's posts-my space-filling posts are now almost a year old. Yesterday's memories are last year's memories. And last year's memories, last century's. I never quite realized just how very old my old memories were. Thoughts of home now refer to a place which doesn't even really exist anymore. I've been through so much, and so little, and-everything is just so mind-boggling right now. It's like my train soundlessly moved ahead and passed a million stations while I kept my eyes shut and still thought myself at the first one.

And yes, I know three years isn't very long, but it's so very long, you know?

Time is weird.
~Sam

I remember.

I remember the first time I applied kajal, I smudged my face so badly that I resembled a raccoon. I remember trying desperately to scrub it off, the concept of a make-up remover being alien to me back then. I remember red, sore eyes for hours afterward.
I remember going to buy chips with my brother, and dropping a packet on the road. The awe in my eyes at his courage (stupidity) in making his way through the (albeit light) traffic to pick it up again. He was the wisest, the bravest man ever, back then.
I remember believing adults at face value. Believing them to be stronger, wiser, better.
I remember the first time I (vaguely) understood death, and life.
I remember my first concert, my first Enid Blyton, I remember having fixed ideas of the normal and the abnormal. Having role models because they did one good thing. Seeing the world in black and white and technicolor, but not gray.
Definitely not gray.

~Sam

Peace and Poignance

Things are so poignant sometimes.
Simple things, daily things.
The leaf lying on the grey road,
Unremarkable, old,
And yet I want to take a picture.
The tilted bench against the brick house,
The grown puppy teetering around the door.
Nothing new.
All routine sights,
And yet, I want to capture them all.

-----

Just a mood.
When your mind is scattered,
Unfocused, adrift,
A certain sadness hanging,
In the dusty shelves that comprise it.
Just a mood.
When you can wander every-any direction,
Direct your steps here,
Then there, at anyone's beck,
And call.
Just a mood.
When you're peaceful,
Not worried, not thinking,
Just looking and seeing.
At one with the world.
At once away from it.

-----

Why is it associated with sadness,
That peace,
That comes with calm,
That comes with acceptance,
That comes but so rarely in our existence?
Why is it associated with sadness,
That emptiness,
That connection,
Which comes with nature,
Which drains and nurtures?
Why is it associated with sadness,
That bliss,
That emotion,
That for which we have no name.
That for which we have no name.


~Sam

To Be Or Not To Be And All That Jazz

Impromptu writing session with a friend.
[Like, written-in-three-minutes-in-the-middle-of-an-unrelated-conversation impromptu.]
We alternated stanzas. I'm the hopeful one.

To be or not to be,
To love or not to love,
To laugh or not to laugh,
To live or not to live,
When it all ends in tears.

It seems so difficult,
So impossible even to imagine,
That it could be easy.
But it can be easy.

I tried my best,
Opened my heart to a world of hope,
But all I got was a world of pain,
Can you blame me when I wonder
Whether to be or not to be?

But some days it gets better.
Some days I can see.
The shining letters dancing,
Screaming, "Be, be, be!"


~Sam

A period-less post.

Okay I am in love with Rascal Flatts I'm pretty sure this is no suprise to anyone who knows me because duh it's like their songs are composed of mush and love and the tears of heartbreak and just pure amazingness which is basically me but yeah I've basically been listening to them all evening and wow

Does a period-less post remain a true period-less post if there are capitals and punctuation and paragraphs and maybe I'm not as good at this as I thought

Buzzfeed just posted a picture of a hedgehog in a sombero and wow it's at times like these that I'm glad the internet exists though I've basically just been ugh about it lately because wow there's a lot of stuff on the internet it just drags you in you know no okay it's just me then

I'm really sorry I just don't think I can write anymore I don't know what's wrong with me oh yes I do laziness and writer's block

I can't believe I'm actually going to publish this it's totally going to come back and bite me but ah well

~Sam

I'm not even sure why we have viewers anymore (if we do).

Hi, it's time for the normal spiel again, i.e., it has been a long while and I am in no position to write something deep or coherent [shit loads of work left, and a friend is making the strangest noises as she experiences Confessions of a Shopaholic-the movie, not the book-for the first time]. So here is a bunch of things I've thought since the last time I blogged, in no particular order.


Loving is giving more, and getting more than you'd ever imagined you could or would.

Beginnings and endings are so special to us, to all of us, as a race. One rarely comments about the beauty of the sun at high noon-it's always a sunrise or a sunset that wells the heart. Maybe because they actually are more beautiful, but the same can be said about births and deaths, which have a way of bringing us together in a way that most occasions don't. We celebrate birthdays every year, a symbol of a beginning; we celebrate weddings and moving and retirements and farewells, because they're a new beginning, and an ending.


Not yet.
Not yet decided,
Not yet written.
Not yet a star,
Not yet a somebody.



Putting something into words is such a big deal. It imparts such a sense of certainty. Permanence. Words are so..lasting.



I am intensely fascinated by bruises, both metaphorical and literal.



Epiphany of the week: I've realized that I actually have hope for the human race, despite all our contradictions and our wars and our stupid silly quarrels and our egos and our occasional insipidity. Despite our Hitlers and our Idi Amins. Because we still have Schindlers, so many Schindlers that we don't even know their names. Friends, lovers. Who sacrifice for us, even if it is something as simple as staying up all night just to let us rant. And despite what Ayn Rand may have preached, I still do believe that to sacrifice for someone is the greatest thing you can do for them, and, in the right situations, for yourself.


~Sam

Look at the stars, look how they shine for you.

I wish I could be that star. The one shining, or the obscure one maybe, I don't care. The one people looked up to and saw shining bright, looking down at them, far away and blinking. The distant beauty. Or the one that they didn't really notice, the one even farther away from it all, the one that didn't even care to be noticed, just chilling by itself, just present in the background. The wallflower star.

~Sam

The post-work peace.

It's 3:30 am (or was, anyway, when I wrote this, except my stupid phone refused to publish the post). The stars are beautiful tonight. I just finished a bunch (or whatever it's called) of work, and I have three days until the next bunch of work begins.

I've decided I like having nailpolish on my toenails. 

I've also decided that I like long, long-due showers.

Goodnight stars.

~Sam

Dark and Light

She asks me what the thin line between dream and nightmare is called.
Reality, I say.
Perspective, she believes.
I don't understand her, nor does she understand me.


I still think it's reality that straddles that line, teetering on each side by turn. Or not by turn, it seems to lean towards one for extended periods of time, then the other, always favouring one side more than the other.
And you always know that it's going to teeter right away from the dream as soon as it gets there. That the darkness is going to return, eventually. Soon.

~Sam

Update: March 20, 2013. I now understand a little more of what she meant. Perspective makes just as much sense as reality to me, now. Because it really is just perspective which differentiates dream and nightmare. And it really is just reality which teeters on teeters on that line, going one way and another. 

Things I've thought recently.

I wonder how much of religion is habit.

Trust not the crystal ball.

I hate you, all the people on the street. I hate you, all the people who don't think, who refuse to see.

Does Switzerland have an army?

I pray and I hope that someone is listening.

I petition, but I've realized no one's listening.

It never rains, but it pours.
No. It rains constantly, and then pours intermittently.

Sit in the corner of the train, next to the panoramic window. Sit and observe. The scene changes, merges into another. Trains come, and go. The guard lifts and loosens the bar. The scene moves, the scene changes. Everything changes.


Teenagers.
Opinionated,
Isolated.
Wandering,
Adrift.
Buffeted nightingales,
caught in the rain.
Pressurized,
becoming diamonds in the rough?
Disbelieving,
Questioning.
Lost,
Looking.


"Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love."
-The Unbearable Lightness of Being
[Which is one of the most beautiful book titles I've come across, ever.]

~Sam

I should probably space out my posts better.

Meh. Management has never been my thing anyway.

~Sam

Why I Want the World to End In December

Because it would be SO COOL, to begin with.
Because I want to know what happens.
Because I want it to happen in my lifetime.
Because I don't want to die alone. I'm the girl who drags someone along with her everywhere she goes [reminds me of Harry's dilemma with Cho in the fourth book, harr harr], so yeah, I would prefer for a couple of billion people to accompany me on my final journey, too.
Because life sucks and then you die. [Had to say that.]
Because I want to know when I'm going to die so that I can plan the remainder of my life accordingly. Even a couple of weeks in advance would be fine. I don't like living in ambiguity (the irony, considering this is my natural state of existence), and how am I supposed to plan out my life if I don't even know how long I'm going to live for? [I have a post on this and I would link you to it but Í'm supposed to be working (surprise, surprise)].
Because I'm a last-minute-r. I've spent most of my life leaving things to the last minute, and I'd like this to happen when I'm relatively young so that when imminent death galvanizes me into finally living out my disproportionately long bucket list, I have the energy and the will to do so in a proper manner.
Because..other things which I don't have the time to articulate. Suffice to say, it is a long and convincing list.


~With a pinch of morbidity,
Sam 

I dream.

Of being on the New York Times bestseller list.
Of having memes of my quotes, fangirls (boys?) of me.
Of being happy.
Of being sexy.
Of finding Him.
Of being beautiful, in love.
Of chocolate cake.
Of opening a bakery. (I can't bake, this won't happen.)
Of marrying a baker.
Of bakery-scented deodorants. (Yes, I like bakeries.)
Of comfortable stilettos.
Of long, beautiful hair.
Of a beautiful house, and an even more beautiful home.
Of a world with no mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats, lizards or hate. (The rest, I can live with.)
Of flawless skin.
Of tasty health-food. (Again, not happening any time soon.)
Of a world of love.
Of a world I love.

I dream of writing something beautiful, something original, something so deep, so profound, that everyone can see its truth, everyone can feel it; that no one has words to express their awe, that everyone will remember always, and quote, and dwell on, and revel in. I dream of writing something that is mine.

~Sam

Though these days of course, I pretty much just dream of sleep. 

The problems with living for today.

That sounds like an essay title.

Bleh.

Anyway.


I've been repetitively listening to Imagine for a few days now, and while I agree with and hope for most of what Lennon says, the line "Imagine all the people living for today",  sounds to me a little..problematic. I mean, if I lived only for today, I wouldn't get anything done at all, and I'm quite sure the rest of the world agrees with me on that. If someone told me I'd die tomorrow (and if I believed everything I was told), I'd hop onto the first flight outta here and go absorb as much Europe as I could in a day. Or go visit my friends, live out my bucket list, something. I certainly wouldn't sit at my desk and work and contribute to the continued functioning of the world as we know it.
And if everyone thought that, everyone would want to go out and have fun, and no one would work, and there would be no one to man the flights, or drive the taxis, or sell fruit, or do anything and then there would be chaos and riots and mobs and the world would collapse and everything would end and the sun would swallow us up and we'd all die.

I could go on, but I think we can all see how Utter Chaos And Death would be a problem.


[Yes, this is what I get from one of the most hopeful songs in the world.
Then again, I'm the one who gets cheered up with Welcome to My Life when I'm depressed, which goes to say something to you.]



Though I guess if you took Lennon a little less literally, and a little more utopia-ic-ally, which I suppose is how he intended himself to be taken, everybody living for today wouldn't sound like such a bad idea after all. Maybe.

~Sam

Thoughts

Some thoughts are like the phone when a friend calls you and forgets to cut the line when she’s done. You can try as much as you want, but you just can’t cut the call. Can’t sever the connection, can’t get rid of it.

I still haven’t managed to write down, or quite compose my views on God, but I think I’m an agnost. Not an atheist, not a believer; an agnost. Why? Because I apparently revel in indecision, that’s why. It’s like, my natural state of existence: Undecided.

You know what else is my natural state of existence? Guilty. If Barney has an extra awesome gland instead of tear glands, I have guilt glands instead of…every gland.
Talk while the sweet new teacher is teaching? Guilt.
Be a bitch about a bitch? Guilt.
Be generally PMS-y and bitchy? (Albeit belated) Guilt.
Forget to thank Random Guy who gave me directions? Hang up too quick on my mum? Instant guilt.
Skive off on a job? Get yelled at? Let loose the guilt gates.

Yeah, you get the point.

~Sam

Catatonic

Mosquitoes bite and suck my blood.
Flies buzz around.
I try to remember what I'd thought earlier.
Try, think and fail.
I stare at the screen.
Look, see, stare.
I move the pictures around.
There.
Now it reflects my mood.
Blank.
Blank as a washed whiteboard, blank as a fortune-teller's gaze.
Empty, headed nowhere.
Drifting away in a daze.

~Sam