one week of vacation, and now i can't bring myself to do any work! i can't understand why, but my engines just refuse to start and what's worse, my work is just piling up like crazy. just spent like 3 hours trying to upload my florida pictures (in vain) and another 2 hours trying to look for yang yang's birthday present. thanks goodness i found something! :)

ladida.... florida was cool. what's really cool about the trip though was the people i saw or met during the short 5 days there. number one on the list: CAB DRIVERS!!!! every single cab driver we met was like a caricature himself. there was Rachid the cab-fee-squabbler; Love the perpetual smiling machine from Haiti who laughed at our chinese conversation even though he had no clue at all; !!Bachiri!! the drama driver with his characteristic "New York Chinese Buffeee" and "satisfee", his conmannish schemes, his half-hour lecture on Islam and his terrible hair; and the two chinese drivers who, well, just drove.

in fact, orlando with its jungle of theme parks and fantasy worlds was more or less an entire universe of caricature -- all bright and sunny and smiley and obsessively colourful. and now cornell seems like the dullest place on earth.

wanna go home!

Snowflake

if i were a flake of snow

if i were a flake of snow
i would be sapphire blue
smooth, thin, light as a feather
to ride the wind and seek you

i would float while others
fall through greying skies
and wait as you step outside
to greet the world with tearful eyes

but down i would spiral
as you walked silently on
with shadows in your mind
your defenses gone

till you see my smile
like shimmering blue seas
and you reach out your finger
to touch me

and for the rest of my life
that brief eternity
i'll take care of you
and you'll take care of me

for me, art has always been that shimmering screen of water that overflows from a barrel filled past its brim. it's an expression of what is already there, it's an extension of everything i experience in my life. art is never something that i can just sit down and create. i guess the word "draw" says it all -- siphoning off a portion of my life and emptying it onto a clean sheet of white paper. thus my art in junior college was a frenzy of creativity, of soft flighty drawings alongside raw, stark poetry. i was restless and passionate, confronted everyday by social intricacies, surrounded by more restless and passionate kids trying desperately to grow up.

when i was with kay, my drawings would take weeks to painstakingly emerge, and my poems all turned into songs. i felt older, and thought little of my enthusiastic and confused explorations before. everything i created looked beautiful to me. going through my break up, the songs i wrote comforted me. i was surprised that i could still write, even though my drawings were starting to fade away.

now i'm sitting here, and wondering why i don't draw anymore. why no more songs come to me. why my words don't rhyme. and why that barrel seems a whole lot lighter.

Ultimate Reward: the wonderful feeling of walking home.

Silent Prayer: to have someone to walk home to.

Reality: whatever i want to make of it.

Painters don't have to explain their art, but architects do.

i'm staring at the screen and i'm at a loss -- i have nothing to write, nothing to tell...

maybe it's because that single story that has crept its way into every blog, weaving through every line, every paragraph, has finally ended. the story that never seemed to end.

how many times must you close the door on me before i stop knocking?

how many times must i listen to your gentle and never-changing voice in that answering machine before i'll learn to stop calling?

why is it so hard to stop myself from thinking of you?

why is it so hard to keep you from my dreams, to stop reaching out for that vague transient memory in the dead of the night?

why do i paint this perfect picture of you in my heart, when i my mind tells me otherwise?

why does my heart still break?


and why, why can't i cry anymore...?