Mr. Spent and I did politics for today’s KI session. It was… not part of the KI course but it helped get my brains working again. I spent the rest of the day – i.e. from 4 pm till now, 830 pm – on the philosophy of science, which IS part of KI.

I worked on falsification and its competing theories. Indeed, it is logically impossible to derive ‘true’ theories from facts. A phenomenon might occur for various reasons and we may theorise about how this happens, but we’re completely unable to prove the factuality of our theories beyond all doubt. We may stumble across the ‘correct’ explanation, but we wouldn’t know it even if we did. There’s simply no answer sheet.

Scientists often plod along taking certain theories as premises. It is only when a number of them find that theory and fact do not match that those premises are called into question. Quite like life actually: we think that we’re going somewhere because of premise xyz but then things go wrong. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to experiment and find out what went wrong, no time to stop.

By the way, new theories that murder the competition with Ockham’s razor or a whole new viewpoint requires creativity and insight, which seems to be something occurring randomly.

Students of literature are required to be creative and offer fresh insights in order to succeed, qualities which in turn require happy, healthy minds (God help me with lit). Care to try falsifying this one?

[If you’d like to know more, read ‘Truth’ and ‘Conceptions of Inquiry’. The authors are listed on my fav books list]

“How did it go?”

I messaged so many people, only two replied. Of course I was curious, that’s why I got some information from a back-channel. Shock, misfortune, sympathy… so many didn’t get their As despite all the promise shown.

I wondered if it was the teachers who were to blame. We changed teachers for two subjects during our JC2 – or, more accurately, their JC2. I’ve always hedged my bets, making sure I have access to multiple conduits of information, but I always believed – or at least wanted to – in my teachers. Is that faith deserved?

What does that spell for me? I am behind the syllabus and all portents indicate I will never catch up. If I am to have any measure of success, my efforts must be spent solely on digesting and analysing notes. I don’t have time to spruce up paltry lecture notes or waste time on feckless lectures. Put it simply, I don’t have the time for mediocrity on the teachers’ part.

I’ve either failed or marginally passed through every assignment given this year. Each time an assignment is returned, I look straight at the marks. If it’s unacceptable to me, I tear and dispose of it on the spot. I know it’s the content that’s lacking, I just lack the sound memory that comes with sleep. Of course, personal confidence would also aid confident, lucid writing – evidently lacking in this post.

On a brighter note, kudos to POH XIAO YAN, Class of 0730, who got AAC !!!  I will take that as my benchmark, my minimum. It’s not out of my reach as long as things remain stable.

Today, I slept for 14 hours. Well, at least i tried to. I think I’m having an easier time suppressing the ruminations now.

I realised that I don’t want to strive on anymore. I just want to curl up and retreat into some dark corner where I can freeze into ice or become a petrified marble statue. It’s a symptom of anomie, a condition where an individual is unable to attain socially-valued goals and this discrepancy between the self and one’s ideal state (i.e. self discrepancy) tends to result in crime, purposelessness, retreatism, among other symptoms.

My rationality, which is often called upon to assess my status quo and determine the best course of action, has painted a very bleak picture. This realistic and non-delusional outlook has put me in a state of depressive realism – a depressive state where the mind’s self-serving cognitive functions are hampered or negated by a realistic world-view – which triggered the anomic state mentioned above.

Or maybe its attribution theory at work. Maybe I’m simply appealing to the most salient explanations in an attempt to improve cognitive coherence and preserve my self-esteem. Doesn’t seem to be working though.

How nice it is to \hide behind these theories, these paper shields, as if they’re talismans to ward off demons. For once, something doesn’t point its finger at me and say it’s my fault, because it simply isn’t. In any case, I am reluctantly forcing myself to study, emphasis on forcing, that doesn’t seem lead to progress or hope.

That’s why I’m in a state of withdrawal. I guess you could call it escapism (what the hell would I care now) and the dissipating world of novels, anime, and alcohol (as soon as I get my Kahlua and sparkling wine) are very comforting…

…in a world where nothing seems headed away from gloom and doom. Looks like the medicine came to late to save my besieged spirit.

The little things make all the difference.

I’m studying as hard as I would in school, but being at home in casual clothes makes it seem… weird. Maybe it’s the whole student persona that’s lacking, or the atmosphere, or simply feeling that I should be studying. At home, I feel as if I should be relaxing, sleeping and working on the piano instead.

My fucking printers are out of order so before I see my psychiatrist tomorrow, I’ll be popping by the school library to use its printer. Their printer is really fast, the pages come out very sharp, and the ink is so pretty and glossy. I never get any eye strain reading notes that come out of it.

Monday, get black belt. I’m not excited at all. In fact, I’m dreading it a little. It will mean change, but I don’t like change anymore. It’s unsettling and stressful managing it on top of everything else… and I’ll feel that I always have to perform well. Visible symbols of grade often do that don’t they?

I didn’t take all my pills last night. I stayed up till 6 AM reading up on unemployment, then I had the best sleep I had in ages – not exactly fantastic, but good enough for today’s study. Economic strategies of Burma and Vietnam… economic growth… oh, i forgot to get some piano practise. How did my cousin cope with chronic insomnia?

Food, more food, better food. Always always always, partly due to the excessively oily food my maid cooks all the time. Mcdelivery sends me my comfort food, but I mustn’t make it a habit. I gotta get out of the house, but I feel so vulnerable outside. But still I want food – rich food – food for the hedonist!

So tired…

Maybe it’s the sense of success, or even just a sense of progress. Is this a symptom of anomie? Of status anxiety? Strange how rationality isn’t able to rationalise these feelings away.

I want to eat and be satisfied, not just full. I want to drink, not just tasty liquids but intoxicating ones. I want to get high, maybe because I’m not going anywhere these days. If only there were others like me, also suspended and lost, not knowing where to go or how to get there.

Hedonism is such a lovely thing… but even then, I feel guilty spending. I feel guilty about my current position in life. It seems wrong – more than just a discrepancy between my ideal life and current state – but actually immoral. It’s not my fault I’m here, but still…

Insularity is nice, but not when it becomes entrapment. I wish I’d have a blissful sleep tonight, or maybe a nice dream. Haven’t had a nice dream for ages, haven’t had a dream in life for quite some time too.

Maybe it’s impossible to dream in nightmares.

I do not deserve this. I do not deserve to have my efforts thwarted at every turn. I do not deserve to be put in a state where every step forward is negated and turned into a step down into further depression. I DO NOT DESERVE THIS, PERIOD!

Damn the fucking situation. Can’t sleep, can’t anything. Why can’t I just fucking die!? Yea sure, the cancer patient fighting to do her ‘A’ levels is a heroine but the dude who can’t sleep and HASN’T GOT THE DEATH CURE can be ignored, tossed aside, left to study without full academic support. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE BASTARDS!? I’M WORSE OFF DAMN IT

And I don’t even know who to talk to, or what to say…

No one understands, no one can. I’m all alone even though some are standing right beside me – and all I can do is groan within. Its a pain the resists words, an emptiness that is full of hurt and raw wounds that each sleepless night rips open again and again and again!

I have dreams too, hopes and aspirations like everyone else. Why are mine shattered like that? Is it fair? Is it sane? To taste success and then see if dissipate into thin air as if it never existed?! Why the bloody fuck!? WHERE THE FUCKING HELL IS GOD!?

Fine, I have to pull out of school now. Its the best solution least of two evils. I’ll study alone, ALONE, and hire costly tutors. Even then, nothing is guaranteed. Can’t sleep, can’t anything. I feel so wronged by everything, everyone. I just want to sleep and never wake up, since there is nothing to wake up to.

Kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me

I wish I never knew what God is, what religion is, then I could take my own life and make things easier all around.

My JC life, robbed of me! So cruelly, unjustly, I AM WRONGED!

This evil is not one that revels in the public eye. It does not smirk when the world gasps in horror. This subterfuge makes it all the more potent, malicious, as it inflicts its agony behind a veil of normalcy so that my pleas for help fail to resonate with compassionate hearts accustomed to compassion for the dying and the lame of body – for there lies poetic tragedy. My deformity is unseen, eliciting no compassion, yet death will not come to cure me of this hideous disease which has no name.

I wonder who suffers more: those whose ailment trumpets to the world, or those with ailments of insidious cunning which, in its unrelenting sadism, denies me that nocturnal peace that every man has a natural right to.

Of course, I’ve tried to call out. My hails are met with scorn by many; few extend their hands, fewer know how to assuage the hurt. They do not understand it, but it isn’t their fault. Even I struggle to name this evil. The best I can do is to seal up the pain inside, at least I’ll keep my dignity. To thicken the wall of seeming that shelters my plague… life’s ironies trumps fiction’s genius.

____________________________________________________________________________

Hey I think I’m getting better at this! Now if I could only find a similar eloquence when juggling the copious amount of data in history and economics…

Oh, I heard that in the army, some people think that academia is a kind of nut (macadamia), though if the stereotypical professor really existed, this notion might not be too far from the truth.

Of the mind – and mind.

Osama, Khomeini, the UN and it’s charter… somewhere while running through these notes my mind is somewhere else, just a small part of it, ruminating…

…Where can I go? I can’t let go of the past, of old hopes and dreams. I hate the this lack of purpose, this general alienation from… everyone. Fight on…

Discipline, tenacious effort, the struggle… but I’m out by the first lesson, too drowsy, just too out… back home, still can’t sleep, but struggling still. The lectures continue, their cold heartless pace almost coercing me out of the system, saying “you’re not welcome here”.

So where do I go? As I walk through the passing days, my mind is as clenched as my jaw, the storm showing in my brows and sighs escaping my shoulder. I do not have words for insipidity, bleakness, except this: unacceptable.

I had been running just fine until something tripped me. My friends turned back to look, reaching out to help, but they were pushed along by the surge of others also running. I tried to get up again but my legs were wounded, so I crawled to the side of the track and watched everyone run by… their piteous glances all alike, all equally distant.

I rested by the track till I managed to get back on my feet. I tried to run. I couldn’t. I limped forward with clenched teeth, stopping every few steps. Double the effort and half the distance, horrid horrid fate that let me run free before making me lame, the cruel jokes that life plays in its sadistic joy…

I haven’t accepted this fall of fortune. If you were in my shoes, would you? Would you see your hopes and dreams become dreamy fantasy? Would you bear the bleak and dreary torture of living lost? Or would you cling on to the last dregs of hope somewhere between reality and delusion, hoping against hope that fortune, in her same whimsical streak, would restore the sunrise on your horizon?

Or perhaps we were all like angels in ascendance and my wings broke a la Icarus and I fell till a dark cloud caught me. Carried by the updraft, friends could not come to my aid. Is that a better metaphor?

In our age, saccharine words hide sour truths. In a way, metaphors can do the same thing. Euphemisms are still lies.

My classmates, they’re too young, too full of life and all its colours, hopes, aspirations. Life ages us more than time does. Majestic palaces and gleaming skyscrapers all fade in colour with time, but not by time. No, they fade into their bleak backdrop because of the lashing rains and howling winds.

I confess: I am addicted to fantasy.

The sort of fantasy I’m addicted to:

a) Fiction (but I lack the mood)

b) alcohol (but I lack the cash)

c) video games (of late)

Life is too dull, too bleak in reality. Fantasy is my relief, relief my addiction, and addiction - the procrastinator in me.

Put off the work, it will never stop coming. Moderation is more difficult than extremism. They’ve… we’ve begun to have some awkwardness. I don’t know what to do. The urge to just crumble in resolve and hide from the truth is so great that to resist is torturous. To live a lie is easier.

Lie no. 1: I can get off school whenever I want without any dire consequence

Lie no. 2: It is ok for me to neglect my work

Lie no. 3: I am on top of things

Lie 3 is the hardest to live with, or rather to keep alive. One probing question and my buffer shatters, and I begin to crack. 5 days without peaceful sleep… I’m falling into the despondency trap. Again.

Relief… I need relief… but I’m immune to the masses’ opiate.

Black squiggles, themselves meaningless, form to create codified sentences that bear meaning. This we call language.

Distinct sounds, in themselves meaningless, are strung to create aesthetic meaning. This we call music.

Distinct moments, themselves indistinct, soon turn into a continuum we call history.

Apology: I’m sorry I haven’t been reading friends’ blogs for so long. The workload is on the other end of the see-saw and I’m trying to balance my sanity.

Wait, that doesn’t make sense.

Bought star wars PSP game and star trek (the latter is only $10!!) on impulse. Thought it’d be nice to have varied sources of entertainment (read: relief).

Prozac (10) + Remeron (15) + Sodium Valporate (500!) –> sleep

I still remember my chem, hehe…

When I first resumed school this year, I assumed it would be a return to normalcy. I thought that life will be the way it was: busy, rewarding, progressive. In fact, I assumed that I will fit right back into the system and enjoy a smooth course right into university and beyond. The challenges came next, always a loyal companion to change. A tutor missing, a flipped syllabus, new class – things I had to come to terms with, things that I faced straight on. It was never easy, as you probably know by now, but I took it in my stride and continued this struggle for normalcy.

It was a delusion. The medication began soon wore off and everything went downhill from there, a nightmarish Déjà vu. Of course, I pushed forward with a laudatory resilience and discipline that silenced my strongest critic – I myself, with all my fears and concerns – but it doesn’t take much to see that I will never be normal again, insofar as I ever was. It’s the sleep. Even today, I couldn’t last beyond the first lesson and left soon after. There isn’t a point in schooling when one can’t learn, right?

Of course, a chasm has developed between my classmates and me. I am to blame of course, being so frequently absent in person and mind. Nothing like reality to take the laughter out of your heart and from there, one can’t connect with exuberant young students anymore. I believe some of the teaching interns are my age, but then again life has made me older than time has.

One of these days, I expect some well-meaning person, maybe a teacher or one of my doctors, to begin the predictable comparison between my case and some other “special needs” person and how they, despite more daunting circumstances, rose to success. Honestly, I have no idea why people use this sort of rhetoric. Knowing someone else is suffering more than I am brings no relief, nor does it inspire. Chances are that their handicap was physical or psychological and never directly hampered their learning. Even if they did, comparing my case to theirs will accomplish… what?

People like me should just die. No, we shouldn’t even have been born. That way we can save others the trouble of aiding us and save ourselves from all this suffering. Odd how Buddha, realising that to live is to suffer, still held life as sacred and never advocated euthanasia or suicide.

The pressure, sense of loss, emptiness… I don’t know the right words. I don’t know who to talk to. I’m too tired. Let’s just leave it at that.

I’m hemmed in on all sides. I feel a compulsive need to keep studying, keep taking notes and going through them, type them out and store them. My temples ache and so does my head but I can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop.

I know I must stop. Nothing’s sinking in. I know I must stop to rest, recharge, before going at it again BUT I CAN’T! I can’t take my mind off study, can’t stop thinking that I should be studying even though no one tells me to. Reading novels, watching TV, practising on the piano – the impulse to study still haunts and beckons and threatens!

I can’t express this feeling of being hemmed in on all sides. Hemmed in, claustrophobia! Then I become insular, detached, reclusive…. become mentally frayed and frail…

Economics: (1) follow the current lecture topics, (2) do tutorials on the previous lectures which I haven’t covered, and (3) read up on a different topic before my consult. 3 fucking concomitant streams of study, WTF?!

History: (1) go through the readings, which my lazy teacher didn’t condense into lecture notes for us (that’s his job, that’s how a century can be covered in 2 years). (2) Read up on SEA political structures which, (3) follow the current lectures on religious fundamentalism and SEA economic policies. I wish I were history.

Literature: (1) go through fucking King Lear COMPLETELY UNAIDED, (2) follow the lessons and voluminous readings on James Joyce, (3) analyse Boey Kim Cheng for our lessons with a feckless tutor. Yea, I see tragedy alright.

Knowledge & Inquiry: (1) Read up Spencer’s Ethics, (2) IS proposal and restructure my thesis, and (3) think about how the hell I’m gonna cover the whole damn syllabus. (4) Circumvent feeling guilty of having my parents pay $100 an hour for my tutor – which the bloody school won’t pay even though, as a student who REGISTERED FOR THIS COURSE IN THEIR COLLEGE, won’t fucking pay.

CLB: Fucking waste of time

AND I HAVE TO DO ALL THIS PARALLEL TO EACH OTHER!

HOW THE FUCKING HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO COPE WITH ALL THIS WORK?!

Crazy, this is all crazy… die, diE, DIE YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!!

But there’s no one I can blame…

“Reunion Dinner” seems to be a ridiculous misnomer for my family. There is no reunion – we were never apart! Ok, maybe in part, maybe in heart.

All the fuss of ordering a roasted duck, cooking some eggs and sausage with a ridiculous amount of oil – what for? Because we’re ethnically chinese? Is that a good reason for my dad to fuss about the camera, my mum to nag him not to, and my dog to bark himself (and us) mad over all the commotion? I don’t think so. Besides, ethnicity and culture do not have to go hand in hand.

There is no point in holding these '”family events” if the family – meaning all its members – aren’t in the mood for it. The event becomes a hollow form devoid of all meaning, a farce, a troublesome and unpleasant fiasco. Good grief, it is sheer stupidity to practise a tradition to everyone’s detriment.

Ah well, I ate quickly and left the table – no loss. Now I’m pondering whether to catch up on history, literature, or my essays.

How far are aesthetics concerned with beauty?

Events in 1947 changed Soviet policy towards europe. Is statement true between 1945 and 1949?

South-East Asian nationalism failed because of its internal weaknesses rather than colonial repression. How true is this assessment of pre-WW2 nationalism in SEA?

The tide, pressure, trouble, and general lack-lustre of life will lead to the downfall of Benjamin Low. Discuss.

Significant Form Theory of Art and Schopenhauer’s Idea of transcendence

Art is formed when the artist gives certain “building blocks” (colour, sound, clay, whatever) a significant form (or arrangement, structure) that invokes a sentiment that isn’t found in non-art. This sentiment can be rapturous or transcendental, allowing us to momentarily escape the dreariness of conscious living and life in general, especially in music – though drinking is much easier.

My Postulations

Art then is a priori. While the artist acquires his building blocks empirically, the significant form itself is conceived a priori in his imagination. The inspiration may come from without, but its conception is done within the artist’s mind.

My Architecture analogy:

The architect has certain materials he may use to construct a building, but the blueprint of the building itself isn’t implicit in the materials. Instead, the blueprint is created by the architect without which there will be no building – just a pile of glass, bricks and steel.

________________________________________________________

People like me who have little flair for art must be content with theories about it.

There must be something wrong with me, more than just this condition. All that information about history, literature, economics, and the lack of it for KI are driving me up the wall.

It’s not so much the work or catching up but the anxiety that comes from it, an anxiety that is definitely excessive. It paralyzes my mind, somehow tires my body very quickly and haunts me in sleep. Why?

Living with this spectre is much harder than it sounds, much harder than I imagined it to be. Its crazy, but I don’t know what to do about it. I MUST relax – a mentality contrary to its goal. To let go of letting go while under tremendous pressure to get so much done in so little time: how how how

Frustrating. Demoralising. Stressful. Depressing. Enraging. Help.

The economics department of nyjc… making us report to watch the budget speech in parliament… and while we’re watching it they talk on the mic… so how do we listen to either!?!?

I shouldn’t have given them the benefit of the doubt. The budget will be in the papers anyway.

Somehow, by some inherent dispositional trait, I seem to stir up controversy wherever I go. In the middle of a lecture hall, I challenged the lecturer’s accusation of my class and also, the verity of her lecture points. She was so stunned, but things took a conciliatory turn and everything was forgotten.

Yeah right. Now I’ve got a reputation and people in other classes know me. I guess politicians use the same tactic: few know them personally, so they forge a public image through certain acts, gestures, or speeches. Once those acts come to be associated with that politician, the “myth of the Great Man” is established and he becomes He – a figure of authority, moral or otherwise.

I’m contemplating writing an article critiquing certain aspects of NYJC’s teaching method. I’m sure it will provoke a lot of questions, questions which will displease the administration whose favour I need to court, but my conscience will not let me rest without doing something about it. Pros and cons of the school’s system, pros and cons of publicly analysing it. Which to do?

Btw, I love my new class =)

I won’t be putting the fictionalised diary up here anymore. It’s grown so long that posting it up everyday will clog the blog. Thanks for following the quirky tale. I’ll stick to ad hoc blogging.

And I’m sooo tired by school work

OH

MY

GOSH!!!

My new class just rocks! Arts class with people who know how to laugh at teachers, at each other, and talk talk talk! Woo hoo!

The GP teacher = academic fop

My form teacher, Mr. Sequeira, = Mr. Squirrel!

Gosh, it’s such a great day! And the work too, the research. It was probably not worth all our effort, but searching for and filtering information gave me such a… thrill!!!

It was supposed to be individual research, but I got my new classmate, Daniel, and HHD to pool our efforts together making it a “socialist” essay. So damn fun man!

I’m a little behind the syllabus for history, an entire Shakespearean play behind for lit, clueless about economics, without a KI teacher, but I must say it’s the happiest I’ve been in almost a year.

Hurray 0836!!!

6^th Jan 2009 (continued)

Questions

She kept on urging me to go back, which was the rational thing to do. I had been thinking of doing just that because this experiment was turning into an added suffering that yielded no result, but coming from her it was somehow different. It wasn’t act of resignation or defeat anymore; it was a suggestion borne of her honest care. Gradually it dawned upon me that I was never running to a place, but to a feeling of sorts. It wasn’t exactly friendship, nor was it a sense of belonging or hope for the future. It was a bond, the feeling between kindred spirits, the affection that best friends share. It was full of love and care; it was… the liberation from loneliness.

Yes, yes! To have someone who doesn’t just listen because she cares, someone who doesn’t just love but makes you feel loved, that was the magic I lacked. To be with kindred spirits, that was it! To talk about the same things, to share each other’s trust, to simply have company on life’s mysterious journey – to have someone right next to you. More than purpose or progress, kinship gave the dungeon of circumstance a breath hope and the future, though unseen, need not be feared because I am not alone.

Cricket: Hmmm. What’s the difference between being loved and feeling loved? Is it that being loved doesn’t mean you’ll feel loved?

Ben: Exactly. The intent may be present, but the effect might not. It’s like making a phone call when the wire broke somewhere mid-way

Cricket: Haha. Great analogy. I understood completely. Does it mean you have to show that you love someone for them to feel it?

Ben: You need not show it intentionally, it can come across subtly. However, if we want to let someone feel loved, we gotta pay our phone bills. Also helps if the other person lets one know if they understand one’s language :P

Cricket: That’s a really blatant way of putting it lol.

And that is why saying it to their faces won’t work. Oh dear Cricket, if only it could be this easy!