I will craft for you
with a thousand millions stars
like sand in a dessert
and a river from afar
I will craft for you
- Literature is any written material that stands the test of time, works of imagination constituted by mastery of style and expression and themes that uncover the beauty or complexity of the human soul.
- Literature is a narrative, a story, a history. It is the most vivid and fundamental proof that humanity, with all due complexities, ever exists.
- Reading literature is a way of exploring dimensions other than the lonely one we’re living in.
- To read literature is to study thoughts through the study of language.
- Any metaphor, imagery, symbol is the author’s attempt to connect to reality.
- Works of literature should be valued for ideas and engagement with the world as well as for aesthetic qualities.
- The value of a written piece of literature is purely subjective and contextual. So are the theories developed revolving judgment of literary value.
- Although interpreting and evaluating literature are purely personal matters, it’s always useful and important to acknowledge and understand others’ ways of interpretation (or evaluation) and the values or systems they’ve based their judgments on.
- The most important question to ask is whether literature should be ascribed a “universal” quality.
- Although one type of literature or one particular work of literature tends to prevail over the others in any time period or geographical location, its attention shouldn’t be motivated by external forces other than its own quality i.e. there shouldn’t be any man-made system or scale that privileges one over the others.
Let me feel pain again
Let me feel hope, despair, and desperation
Let me feel the notes of life, high and low.
Let me tell you a story
Em chỉ muốn hỏi anh là. Một người có thể ích kỷ lâu vậy đc sao?
It should be a thing of the past.
Each morning I wake up, it confuses me that I keep dreaming about one person, seeing the familiar face in several nights and several conjectured places. Sometimes he’s distant, his face and eyes cold, lost and transparent as I try to reach over to him with my muted confessions.
Sometimes he’s closer, wildly closer it feels painful even when I already wake up. He would be in that familiar shirt, his face angled and breathlessly happy…
I would dream of that place too, of the lake at Central. and winds so fierce. But it’s dead and desolate, like in Machinarium.
How many more years when I’m already old and tired… how many more years do I have to wait?
Just too busy to really post something with substance.
The fishes died.Two others died the next few days. It dimmers the light in my heart a little bit more. All were buried in the backyard. He did not tell me about the latter two, maybe was afraid of babysitting my tantrum, maybe was just too busy to tell.
Been in a “car accident.” First time ever. No worries. Felt just like a computer game. CRASH. And your perceptions skewered. The whole vision did a little swing. When back to Earth, time rushed and it felt flustering.
Planning to bake an apple pie. or just some plain vnmese desserts. Kinda miss the “intensity” of cooking.
Interview tomorrow. Not mine. Hope he will live up to it.
And books to go through. I’ve grown to like this kind of work. I learn bits and pieces. And fun discoveries.
Yes, you can’t break the balance of this woman’s spirit from now on, ever!
For her, love isn’t intimacy.
shredding of the soul. into pieces. collecting the pieces. locking away the pieces.
It isn’t the holding of hands, of my whole body or touching of my skin or flesh…
Somewhere in the well, my feeling, those pieces. are always there. imprinted with the memories of you. sworn. with the memories of you. They can’t be awaken again. or taken away. or replaced.
I don’t love. by the holding of hands, of my whole body or touching of my skin or flesh…
by keeping you in the well, in my feeling, in the pieces…
In that windy night, love is my silent tremble. behind your back. your hair’s smell. and the wind. the longing. the little contact. tear that trails behind our path.
and your eyes. different. shielded. locked.
You hurt me that night.
Things feel convoluted
But I’ll try to keep it calm
a submissive animal
with a subversive heart
I’ll dangle mine on a maple tree
Hear the red leaves sing my song and let past Wind sooth the raging wound
I miss you like crazy
Em yêu anh
You know what… it fucking makes me angry
And that… won’t be the end of anything
I haven’t yet come out of an internal, psychological torture ritual that I have self- inflicted for making a fool of myself at this job interview I had a week ago. Yes it has been a week, but the storm of self-anger, of vicious self hatred hasn’t subsided. It is waging maliciously at my heart, overwhelming it with the shadow of depression and immersing every effort, every life purpose with a sense of pointlessness.
Gào gào gào lên nữa đi
Không ai nghe thấy mày đâu
“Hàng rong, vỉa hè
Tôi viết những dòng không đầu không đuôi này với góc cảm của một con nhỏ 21, sinh ra khi cuộc sống đã qua thời gian khó, có chút mường tượng trong đầu về những chuyện xưa qua lời kể của những người đi trước.
Tôi còn nhớ thuở nhỏ, sáng sáng tôi vẫn thường cố tình dậy trễ một chút, đánh răng rửa mặt chậm một chút, để đến sát giờ học, mẹ quở trách tôi và đưa cho tôi tờ 1000đ được vuốt phẳng phiu, để tôi mua ổ bánh mì, gói xôi hay cái bánh bò ấm bụng. Đó là món quà nhỏ trong suốt những năm tháng tuổi thơ theo tôi cho đến tận bây giờ.
Tôi thích nhìn kẹo bông đủ màu, thích bứt một nhúm dinh dính và đưa vào miệng để nó tan ra. Thỉnh thoảng đi ăn quà với lũ bạn, lê la hàng quán, cái gì cũng có, ngồi dọc vỉa hè và ngắm người qua lại.
Bây giờ, đi xa rồi, có những hàng quán khác, nhưng cứ mỗi lần về nhà là lại phải đi cho bằng hết những nơi đã từng đi. Đôi khi chỉ là ngồi trò chuyện với nhau, đôi khi giãi bày với cô chủ quán, và đôi khi ôn lại kỉ niệm xưa.
Chắc cũng nhiều người gặp trường hợp giống tôi. Đang ăn thì phải bỏ dở vì bị dân phòng lại hốt, đương nhiên không phải hốt mình. Nhiều người với mẹt hàng be bé thì chạy loạn như chạy giặc, số còn lại thì đành chịu. Có khi chỉ vì việc này mà tôi mất đi một địa chỉ ăn quen, bởi cũng chẳng biết họ chuyển đi đâu khác hay đã chuyển sang nghề khác.
Tôi thích lang thang trên những con đường lớn ở quận 1 vào những chiều gió, hay sau những cơn mua. Đơn giản vì tâm trạng lúc đó nó vậy. Sài Gòn ngược xuôi xuôi ngược.
Thi thoảng tôi gặp những cô trung niên hay những bà cụ gánh hàng rong, với nón lá, đòn gánh và thúng mẹt, giữa lòng một Sài Gòn rạo rực như thế.”
Nước mắt giả
Cảm xúc cũng giả
Không phải là em…
Phài chi em tìm lại được anh
Cho dịu nhẹ bớt cho hết thù ghét hết đắng hết mù quáng
Em chỉ muốn ôm
ôm ôm ômmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
biết hong dương
Before the door on my right is closed and the scenes dart with velocity of wings of the birds
Before I prop myself up upon the stick of perseverance
Before I choose to forget
To close my eyes to the scent of sweats
Before I immerse in the sea of principles
my own principles
colliding and melting
Before I fight again, for an abandoned dignity and fortified values
Before they stretch the fabrics of my soul with selfish hands
Before I lie again,
I think of you
of crescent moon and pearly dew
of summer at the sixth station
In these meaningless gaps in-between
You. My imagination.
That’s all I think about.
I think about you.
Em nhớ anh quá
Em mở lại Wind’s diary, muốn vỡ ra vì nghẹt thở.
Em nhớ màu nắng đó… Em nhớ lúc đứng chờ anh
Em không biết nói gi cả
Người em yêu… là anh.
Mờ mờ mờ mờ mờ
I’m really tired. I’m tired of loving, of fixing all the gaps. I’m tired of resisting, of walking, of being tired.
I’m sorry. You won’t understand what I did. I don’t think you could ever do.
You won’t hear my words. They’re losing their sanity. You don’t hear my words. You don’t want to. I love you. I can only love you. But there are things you know. Things rooted in me way back in my childhood. Embarrassing things. I can’t keep your love any longer. They are duties. They are my principles. They are my scare. They exist to I live and carry on this burden.
You are so little you can’t comprehend. And I. I am little too. Little and ordinary.
You thought I was selfish. Ordinarily selfish. You don’t know how much pain I endure
i’ll wear a white shirt, after all
they’ll give me a smoke
and a blur
the world is grey, cement-like grey, realistic grey
eating on my sensitive
chipping away delusional sweetness
like metal teeth
the patches of emotion dangling on my skin
they invade my dreams, wreak havoc and collapse heaven
trample garden and dessicate leaves
only if the smoke,
it doesn’t clear out
After I ate my breakfast this morning, there was an unexpected, incidental occasion of explosion, which budded on the right side of the tongue, on the smaller region leaning toward my tongue’s tip. It was a sudden, but mild sensation; an insipid, cold and ignorable throb that, after a trice of innocence and confusion, had quickly ignited into an uncontrollable fire disaster and spread like electricity all over the interior of my mouth.
What could I have eaten? Urgently I eye-searched amongst a bunch of confusing, stained wrapping papers and paper cups for the lurking criminal. It must have been a spice. Red pepper. Or a sauce. Spicy sauces that the lady in the cafeteria often sprinkled by habit onto whatever it was that I ordered.
The spice, or whatever it was, quickly drove me to the state of relentless craziness. In my visual mind, my mouth was exploding; fire emanated from the back of my tongue was engulfing my flesh tissues, melting my frail nerves. Water- Shouted my mind. I need water. Without hesitation, I stood up and veered like a mine detector toward the possibly closest water source- a thing that never really had a clear definition in the casual course of my life.
The search did not took so long before I found a water fountain (yes, the epic fountain of salvation) in Alston building. I hunched over, clung onto the metallic basin, let the water wash away the fire, pain, my agitation.
As my nerves were restored to equanimity and normal functionality, I started to remember the “spartan” breakfast that I had: a veggie burger and a cup of yogurt. I witnessed with my own eyes the process of the burger being made and with solid certainty could conclude that no spices or chemical spices were added. Moreover, after finishing the burger, I read a couple of pages from my history book before starting on the yogurt cup. It must have been the yogurt, then. I thought but then wasn’t so pleasant at this inference. How could it be possible that a spicy thing is “dropped” into a yogurt cup?
When it pains so much, attachment does not matter anymore.
Yes, undeserving love is always permanent. it persists in our heart in a destructive sort of way… like alcohols. or viruses. I guess I do have choice and the foolish years of being in a platonic love have already ripped innocence and (false) hope right off my now restless heart.
At three AM, I woke up in the midst of my roomie’s blasting snores. Alcohols and pizzas didn’t really help with insomnia. I knew they never did but I had believed they would give me a reason not to go anywhere or do anything and to just sleep. Wrong. The pizza stuffs kinda turned cold in my stomach and sat solid there stubbornly amidst my sufferings.
Alcohols were a deathly mistake though; it’s not like *you want to get over someone, you go get a drink* but rather that when you were drunk the whole mechanical operation of a sane mind wasn’t so sane anymore. The cloudy thoughts and blurry images began to run wildly like unherded sheep that magically fused into one another when they clashed. And when they did clash, a plethora of memories spilled from hidden corners and pooled your un-fenced mind. Memories that you kinda hoped would just vaporize like the effervescence in your liquor glass. Memories that left you swam hopelessly. The suppressed balm of intense emotions.
There went the misery.
True. I was a little sober before went to bed. A little unconscious of action and speech. I cut my wrist with a knife, twenty times in a row saying this was my distraction. I saw beads of blood, crimson red but I did not panic. Nor did I feel any pain. I was fucking calm and I knew I wasn’t rationalized at all doing this.
Over the phone, a friend was frantically begging and yelling at me in turns like you do to a maniac. I wasn’t any maniac. Sometimes I thought people needed to get those cliche’ out of their stubborn heads before thinking. I wasn’t cutting myself to death nor was I doing on purpose of blaming anyone. I knew with sunlight clarity that it was all on me. I did not say that it was the fucking fate that I was living this way. I just need a little understanding, that sometimes it was hard and I squeezed myself a lot through this limbo world. Now I need a little of easing out. That was exactly how I cut myself…
The cuttings became scars, over the course of a few restless days. After that fogginess of the mind cleared out, multitude of scars that was painful both to look at and to touch surfaced on the subtlety of my wrist and arm. They were ugly like wriggling worms and excruciating on the touch, exactly like what they embodied.
it grows and it’s wrong
I don’t know,
Maybe I will write again,
Maybe sleepless nights will come back and I will write again.
Talk to the person that needs to be talked to.
Speak of the things that need to be spoken of.
That’s all I will do.
And the rest, be assured that I will continue to tramp on your lives, any possible way I can- be it just a grainy friction force or a total knock-out smash.
You, never realize what you did. I don’t have the strength and motivation to go over stuffs with you again. I thought I wanted to be understood and as clear as a crystal about when and how things were over. But you, the person I find almost impossible to handle, adhere to that unjust perception of me and what I did so rigidly that concepts outside your system are to your mind, undoubtedly intangible. I will have to stop trying for any more of my effort will be misunderstood as sign of remnants of affection, or worse, new feelings.
Just… wake up.
letting go… letting go
someday I’ll start a new journey again
where better opportunity awaits me
but for now, happiness will just wither away, like the desiccated petals of a dying rose while I’m trying hopelessly to grasp its shrivelled body
I am so much worn and torn from this battle with the human fallacies, against all my insights and beliefs
For now, just let me rest, free of all constaints and pains.
Like a kitten, snuggling into a distant dream.
Sáng giờ tui bị bịnh nên nằm ì một chỗ, tay chân thì hột hột đỏ đỏ nhìn không khác gì mấy con cá lóc bông- chả dám ra khỏi nhà. Chị K nhìn nhìn cười cười rồi đánh trống lảng “Chời phòng đó giờ thành cái ổ dịch rồi”
Chắc là nhìn tui thê thảm lắm.
Đêm hôm qua tui khóc nhiều lắm. Phần vì đau đầu và sốt hong ngủ được. Phần vì áp lực. Phần vì cô đơn. hay là cô độc gì đó- hai chữ này với tui là như nhau, đều có nghĩa trực tiếp là tui-chỉ-có-một-mình, hoặc là tui bị ngu tiếng việt.
Sáng nay lúc mơ màng, tui thấy có hai ba lượt bóng người đứng ngoài cửa. Thỉnh thoảng thì cửa hé mở, người đứng ngoài rón rén nhìn vào. Lần đầu là ba tui. Mấy lần sau là mẹ và nhỏ em. Mọi người đều âm thầm. Tui vừa ngủ ở ngoài hết một đêm mà. Tui nằm quay lưng lại co ro, mọi người nhìn vô như nhìn thấy con vật nào đó bị thương ngoài đường phố, thương cảm nhưng ko biết phải làm sao. Tui vẫn còn bị đau, thể xác lẫn tâm lý. Thường mấy lúc vậy tui quạu lắm, chả ai dám tới gần đâu.
Nhưng mà người ta không có biết là, chính trong những lúc như vậy, tui rất cần “được tới gần”. Tui cần được ôm ấp, nói chuyện nhẹ nhàng. Cần có bạn kêu tui ráng lên, hay đưa lưng cho tui dựa mà hong sợ bị tui lây bệnh. Tui đang bị tránh xa rồi; hoặc ít ra là tui có cảm giác như vậy- chỉ là người ta quá bận rộn để có thể cho tui- một đứa lúc nào cũng sợ cô độc- cảm thấy được quan tâm.
Tui sẽ vui vẻ dễ thương trở lại, khi mà vết thương này vết thương kia bớt đi rồi. Tui sẽ lại làm cho người khác thấy hạnh phúc- tới nỗi mà người ta quên đi tui đang cảm giác gì. Sẽ nhanh thôi…
Nhưng mà bây giờ thì tui buồn lắm
Though, you will find that the title has nothing to do with this passage below.
Having abolished several of my blog entries and essays, criticised and jugded myself to the point that my thinking appear incredulous and irrational, I realise now that I have failed to escape the ravishing, sporadic temptation to face my real emotions and as tragically as I did every time I attempt to force myself into something that I dont’ really like. For a sufficiently long time, I was mentally tottering out of balance . I thought I was unjust and non-sensible, unable to creditise my thoughts and feelings. I was sick of the ignoble way that I use to perceive the world, which, as far as I know now, doesn’t really need to be “noble” at all. 🙂
That is to say, I’m re-establishing the habit of blogging; though I know it’s pragmatically no use declaring this, to a practical person but to my weird instincts, it’s sort of giving a profound confidence (why would I need this here?) and commitment push-( the commitment that I would write everyday T_T) Despite deliberate rationalisation of the deed as the pressing necessity and seriousness of the problem I’m experiencing , I do enjoy writing, as much as other forms of arts. To me writing itself embodies a kind of perpetually inconquerable freedom- that of the human creativity, fathoming and conceptualising capabilities, the extension of which is we all know, virtually endless; the sort of freedom that enriches one’s living experience and empowers one’ spirit to go beyond any earthly physical bondages. With this infatuation for spontaneity, I naturally dislike premeditated, topic- centred high school essays with the excuse that when things exist with a purpose, the scope for their experience of existence tends to be limitted; just like when you’re tied down by the topic and teacher’s marking scale, writing becomes an assiduous torture, a responsibility-bound exercise of adapting or assimilating to predetermined standards.
In essence, writing should evolve around and from the freedom of self-expression, publicisation and celebration of individual identity; it should also speak of the selfish desire of one to create as well as to preserve such creations.
Not as grandiose as the rationalisation above and more than usual, blogs are my retreat from misunderstandings and disappointments, my escapade where I can bitch about the world and its vexing fallacies, or just simply temporarily hide away from constraints and exposures that are placed on the life of everyone.
Habitually, I dont’ have much socialising as even out in the public I tend to “socialise” with myself, with the comforting and understanding voice in my head and because of this, my blog wouldn’t be reaching out to the confining outside world, but rather the invaried inner mental, emotional turbulence, which I can’t help if you find circuitously dull. Like most writers, or people-who-love-to-write’s, my writing mainly evolves my secretive, obsessing concerns; strange things that happen and encapture my mind, ideas and notions that I peruse over for days, on the streets, in the bathroom, in front of my computer screen and in conversations with people. If you know me for a sufficiently long time (which is normally rare), and I find that you’re trustworthy enough, you’ll see that I actually talk a lot, mostly aimless, non-sensical rambles- exactly what I’m doing now.
Though I am in many ways fond of writing, it’s always terrifyingly confusing (if not bland) to read what I have to say. Generally I have this tendency to digress aimlessly into sub-topics, which will then proceed, without any further notice to readers, into some other slightly related subjects that I inadvertently find intriguing. Furthermore, I have a punctuation problem, like random placing of commas that is grammatically wrong and figuratively invalid (or undecipherable) to many but it does resembles my habit in conversation, like a contemplative pause, and it is sort of contributive to the flow of my words.
I don’t know what to write anymore. All my senses are now overwhelmed. What should I say? I’ve lost the strength to string my words together, I don’t have that sense anymore. Why is it so burdening to me? Why am I ever so depressed? Why did you choose to end it this way? Did you think of me at all? Oh, and your birthday, it’s coming in less than two months. What am I ever going to do about it? Do I just sit in front of the screen lamenting over what should have happened or do I just bleach it out of my mind? What are you to me after all? One of many or just one? Which would be better for me? Why are the lies? Why did you have to make it sound all good despite that it wasn’t? I hate you more than any word could describe. I’ve lost my senses. I don’t know what I am saying. I’m not sure what sort of feeling I’m having but there’s this distinct, scorching pain withering in my chest. Why did you have to torture before letting go?