weekends come with such heavy expectations

Perhaps I should try something new every day
Let go of pre-conceived notions

a good day

Spent being kind to myself and the people whom I care about most. In the morning I felt sick and tired, did a bit of rope jumping to mitigate the previous night's mistakes. Went out with Mother to the city for a SAT consultation and ended up having a lovely lunch in spinelli: cobb salad, ham & cheese panini, cafe latte with an almond biscotti. We talked through things and thought about the future. On the bus home we sat freezing with her pashmina scarf wrapped round us like inseparable twins.

At home, Sister was crying and we all had a great heart-to-heart talk on the sad irony of life. I did a lot of math, cleared out a whole stack of notes (what a relief) and blended up a raw black sesame banana ice cream, now sitting in the freezer. I was looking at the clutter and felt real physical nausea - of forgotten responsibilities and leftover projects. But the afternoon yoga session left me calm for the rest of the night. Dinner went well, anxiety-free. I took a walk with Mother again around the neighbourhood and we talked and talked about meaningful things and I was grateful for so much.

Tomorrow is the big day. I will sleep now. The future holds so many possibilities and although things are overwhelming I am happy where I am now, breathing, slowly.

When we eat mindlessly, the body expands (to the extent to which mindless eating leads to overeating) and the mind shrinks (to the extent to which mindless eating denies us the experience of eating). Your stomach is full but your mind is empty, and you are craving seconds just to have the very experience of eating you missed in the first place.

When we eat mindfully, the body shrinks (to the extent to which mindful eating reduces mindless overeating), and the mind expands. Mindfulness is vision. Mindfulness reveals the reality of what is, in all its nuanced, complex and unique such-ness. Whereas mindless eating robs us of the experience, mindful eating allows us to reclaim the eating moments of our lives.

two hours of sleep and going

"The rest of the world, the everyday daily-grind Samsara world takes the separated state as normal and, even though Awakened, my mind patterns must come across a ringing shadow-like footprint within a somehow residual imprinted echo-like background-base of that state. It is possible to wander from the Awakened state depending on the situation, bringing forth a lapse in detachment as it were, for various lengths, especially when dealing with trying people and an impatience with such people.."

luminosity, the wanderling

I felt an odd sense of déjà vu upon finding the wanderling's website. Either I dreamed of it before, or I must have passed it once in my many explorations. The quote here is apt in describing my growing disillusionment with daily life. Buddhism is wonderful. It reminds me that nothing is real, everything is empty in the end, it is comforting.

My phone is gone. I am glad to be liberated. I have lost my sense of time. Outside the sky is light blue and the faint shadows of trees are beamed on the neighbouring estate. I don't want to owe anyone anything.

I yearn for the solitary life. I'm tired of living up to people's expectations. All are "visionary flowers in the air". I will fight selfishness with selfishness.

The weather has been good these days, although erratic much like my mood. The other day on the bus there was a road divergence, and it passed a new mixed martial arts institution. I feel very much like dedicating myself to this life again. I want to start from the beginning with this new outlook (that I need to reclaim.. it has been lost for the past few weeks)

lavender scones

anxiety

I can't remember when I lost that degree of control over my emotions. Perhaps all those times back then when I thought I was letting go I was merely pushing aside everything I felt behind the proverbial door, letting it swell, pile up. This is the result.

I will probably delete this in a while. I cannot bear to look at anything I have written in this state of mind. I feel another wave of anxiety coming over.

sun was high / so was i

1. typewriter was not fixed
2. cinnamon rolls are rising

immense relief

A strange turn of events and now I'm sitting by the pool with my history notes, fingers aching, my macbook on m. dash's lovely blog & my new starbucks tumblr filled with warm earl grey tea. The sky is impossibly blue, the clouds unreal. The water is like rippling glass. It is comforting to know that the world will continue being phenomenally beautiful even in the face of my impending 'doom', so to speak.

Life is so much more than all this mad rushing and memorising and sleeplessness and anxiety. Life is short. Tomorrow I will
1. get my typewriter fixed
2. bake cinnamon rolls

Glorious recipe from joy the baker.

tomorrow I will suffer

I am worried because I am not worried. The past half an hour was spent lost in 4x3 inch vignettes of better lives. When will I learn?

despondency

I am bored and hungry.

I often find myself wishing I were somewhere else. Not at home but alone and surrounded by familiar unfamiliarity. Being cold helps.

The other day at starbucks the barista attempted some form of small talk with me as he was brewing my cappuccino. He said something about soy milk and I told him about my 'lactose intolerance', but really just a terrible excuse for my vegan diet.

My life is an abandoned half-finished project.

bitterness

I am home with my pile of readings. I have closed the sliding door, turned off the lights, so the small words on the page are lit by the afternoon sun beamed through the yellow window.

I hate people:
She doesn't respect me and I have given up trying to blame myself for the way things have soured. There will never be room for two-way compromise. I will live with this and systematically break her down for the rest of the year if I have to survive in this household.
He is so fucking two-dimensional it makes me physically nauseous. I thought he could have been something more but everything he says and does is so predictable, even his secrets. He reads like a book. I pity him.

What a great consolation that people are merely arbitrary conceptions of the mind like any other forms, as I would quote Kerouac at this point in time.

please let it be bright

...so that I can run tomorrow and maybe stop hating myself.

i think pessoa was buddhist

"Why should I look at twilights if I have within me thousands of diverse twilights... and if, besides seeing them inside me, I myself am them, on the inside and the outside?"

it is always worth it in the end

It is pouring to high heaven outside but I am safe behind the frosted glass of starbucks. I reached here in record time for once, but the journey itself was as usual wrought with anxiety. Warm chai tea latte tastes divine. I'm armed with
a punnet of fresh blueberries
lavender scone (impossibly moist and crumbly)
juice magazine
piles of readings to go through

I couldn't be happier

free

It is a sunny morning 10am with no school. The house smells of freshly-baked lavender scones and I am going to swim. This is real life