New way to define how great time spent with someone was:
whether or not you feel drained after talking to the person.

Am still feeling energetic today.

"good friends are the ones where you can talk like you used to even though you haven't met up in half a year"

but maybe that's not what good friends are, that's just what good friends can do. And surely we can do better than that?

Fernando Pessoa

Portuguese writer with almost 80 heteronyms.

Self created Multiple personality because he let the existence of conflicting sides emerge in an organic way, from the undefined realm of betweenness. He did not control the creation and existence of his heteronyms. He let them be, simultaneously.

Self control is not an absolute good, nor is chaos just disarray and confusion. At the heart of the urge to control lies a vision of perfection. Perfection is ultimate loneliness, disturbed by nothing.

Interactive arrangement of multiple creative personalities generated spontaneously in the chaotic domain of the psyche, in response to the limitations of his self-imposed monadic existence.


* Has different heteronyms; some used to think, some used to feel.

* "One writes to become other than what one is". (Guilty of making up alter-egos to compensate for a life deliberately unlived?)

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Despite these, Pessoa possessed a common sense of consistency of thought and plausibility of character. Unlike ordinary people, he did not reject whatever occurred to him in contradiction with his prevailing vision of himself. -- What exactly is the idea of a self?

Artistic value: instead of unconsciously reducing his consciousness in order to make it cohesive, he reordered it to create room for different kinds of minds and talents within it. Pessoa did not lose his identity - he developed multiple identities.

He created rules put together by heteronym, one of which stated by Bernardo Soares (of the book of disquiet): "Enlarge your personality without including anything from the outside - asking nothing from other people and imposing nothing on other people, but being other people when you have need of others" -- why is he so adamant on being independent though? He was previously hurt?

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Nobodiness: Writers' nobodiness, manifested as a contradictory, fluid or missing self is not limited to the duration of writing. "I am no more than a secretary of the invisible world"

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 Pessoa experienced a state close to his idea of madness, not madness.

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Two way collaborations of concepts of self may lead to a more fully developed account of the self.  The two concepts:

1) "minimal self" - a self devoid of temporal extension. Clarified by drawing a distinction between the sense of self agency, and sense of self-ownership for actions. (In schizophrenia, sense of self-agency may be disrupted).

Sense of self agency: the sense that you are the initiator or source of action.

Sense of self-ownership: the sense that it is your body that is moving.


2) "narrative self" - involves personal identity and continuity across time. Necessary condition for the non-fictional aspects of a narrative self is the proper working of the episodic memory. One's own self narrative is always entangled in the narrative of others.

An individual self consists of the abstract and movable point where the various stories (of fiction or biography) that the individual tells about himself, or are told about him, meet up.

Language has played a role in developing our own self-concept.

David Hume: self consists of a bundle of momentary impressions that are strung together by the imagination.

Perfection is ultimate loneliness, disturbed by nothing.

Thom Yorke - Last Flowers (Live from the basement)


Appliances have gone berserk
I cannot keep up
Treading on people's toes
Snot-nosed little punk

And I can't face the evening straight
You can offer me escape
Houses move and houses speak
If you take me there you'll get relief, relief, relief, relief

And if I'm gonna talk
I just want to talk
Please don't interrupt
Just sit back and listen

'Cause I can't face the evening straight
You can offer me escape
Houses move and houses speak
If you take me there you'll get relief, relief, relief, relief
Relief, relief

It's too much, too bright, too powerful
Too much, too bright, too powerful
Too much, too bright, too powerful
Too much, too bright, too powerful

-

This always works. Listen and keep calm.

That very fragile zone, lines blurred, between which you find comfort in being alone and intense need to communicate with someone. But what does that mean, if the need to be alone is birthed from the desire to communicate, properly? The core is perhaps, still only in people.

Insecurity (or the need for recognition), disguised as pride.

Btw I've been extremely asocial as of late. I skipped all three lectures today and stayed in the room doing nothing the whole day, besides having dinner. Drawing for geog project remains half-complete but that is ok for the deadline has been extended. My friends know I'm hermit-ing so that is ok as well.

Left: The book of disquiet has finally arrived!!

Right: The necessary read (lit text)

Must I be an adult and do the necessary :(

Looking forward to Sarah's arrival in approximately 2 days, but at the same time I'm unsure of what I'm looking forward to. The thought of being able to talk to her without having to say "I gotta go for class" or "I've got work to do, talk to you later, sorry!", maybe.

It's been a while since we've had a proper conversation, and honestly I don't know how much have changed. Perhaps what has changed is us, and not the way we interact - and that isn't really a problem I guess.

The idea that "Things will be awesome when she's back!" is merely an expectation, and now I'm not so sure if I want to hold on to it - with nus being so far away, project deadlines on those weeks, her having other friends to hang out with and such. We'll find time for each other whenever we can, and just enough time to remember why she's someone important. Despite our lack of communication lately, and us feeling fine about that, I'm sure we'll come to realize once again what we can share with each other.

Friday's only two days away. The "omg let's do xxxx when I'm back" things might not happen within just that 1.5 weeks but that's ok. A friend's back and that's all there is to it.

Welcome back, I'm really looking forward to the weekends, or whenever we see each other. Not in the "I can already picture it" sense, but in the "I think I grew tired of looking forward to anything so I can't feel much right now, but I know things will be great" sense.

My posts have been so annoyingly pointless. 

Hate to admit it but my headache disappeared after I cleaned up my room. Left no stone/corner unturned. Cleared every single damned pointless housekeeping matter I was supposed to settle from the period of a month ago ~ 10 minutes ago. (Please read that in CAPS). 

myself

I'd actually prefer company if I were more comfortable around people. But i'm not. I can't feel safe enough to offer anyone else my view on things, besides the few. So I bombard them with words.

8.5 hours of sleep last night and all I did the past hour was to find comfort in that enclosed world. No worries about keeping up a conversation, about what to say and what not to. I can never outgrow this thing called escapism. I was an expert back then, perhaps it's time to be good at something once again.

I don't want to talk to anybody at all.

back to being a thinning bubble, unsure

if I'm wanted a feet away

But I was the one who put myself further apart
hoping they would prove me wrong

There's not even time to do anything spontaneous with someone i haven't met in AGES. I'm tired.

A LOT has happened. I need time to write about all of them before I merely remember them as "events that occurred". But where's the time? The coming week is going to be more busy than the last.

Locked myself in my room the past few days, and
the pages of my journal are filled once again.

I feel satisfied and contented
(despite being screwed for midterms for I have barely studied)

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So I got a little distracted:

"to know nothing about yourself is to live,
to know yourself badly is to think"

~ Fernando Pessoa, the book of disquiet

Going by that, I (or perhaps, we) live to think. There's just that immense satisfaction of being in a state of 'disequilibrium' (living), then discovering more about yourself from that experience (thinking).

I have finally purchased another copy of the book of disquiet, after filling in the wrong address half a year ago. I actually really want to read it. (Somehow the lure of other books strengthens (by a lot) when you have textbooks or compulsory material in front of you)

I hate voicing out my opinions

1: [I was staring blankly at this guy in lit class who kept going on and on about what he felt about a certain passage from 'the great Gatsby'. Honestly, I never really understood the need to have a discussion about your feelings towards something with such a big group of people. I would understand the need to express ideas just to know which point of the spectrum you are on, or to gain insight - but feelings? Then again, I wouldn't share my opinions with more than people at the same time, either way.]

2: [I was staring blankly at the guy in lit class who kept going on and on about what he felt about a certain passage from 'the great Gatsby'. Honestly, I find it strange how people would want to discuss their feelings towards something with such a big group of people. Isn't it frightening? 

Voicing out in class is like putting your (personal) views up on a pedestal, allowing people to oppose them, strip them of their worth. People like defending their ideas and they'll want their idea to be right (therefore, yours, wrong). They will have views on whatever you said even if they don't express it. Isn't it simply too frightening? 

I think I'm only able to trust people with my opinions, one at a time. It also heavily depends on who the person is. I want to talk about things I care about like everybody else, just.. not in front of a whole group of people whom I do not know or barely know. 

Writing here is fine because there's no direct opposition. Also, when I'm here I feel like I'm writing to myself and for myself even though I know people do read. Somehow I'm able to magically ignore the fact that this place is still, to a large extent, public]

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Version 1 didn't feel genuine so I wrote version 2.

I kept version 1 to remind myself that I always try to come up with some form of reasoning for my behavior, when what lies beneath is simply my reluctance to accept my vulnerability. Pure feelings of vulnerability and insecurity.

My phone decided to go on an adventure (again) today, and found its way back home to Tembusu. So the conversation went,

P: "it's okay emma, nobody really steals stuff in school"

M: "you see too much good in people, really"

I'm just thankful there's really that much good we can find in people here, it's been proven wrong time and time again. 19 years of residing in Singapore has allowed me to let my guard down, for better or for worse.

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As much as there's so much to dislike about the stifling, stressful environment, I do wonder if my lack of mistrust in people (I'm not saying "the amount of trust I have") will allow me to thrive elsewhere. Nonetheless, it's still great that I'm granted the luxury of retaining that non-suspecting, childlike view I have of people. Or rather, the part of me that wants to see the good in others. I'm sure things will change once I'm not under the protected environment of a school, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Trust really does come in so many forms. I can be typing all these, but another part of me would be thinking twice, thrice, about how much truth there is behind what someone is saying. That's why I find it so difficult to put labels on people - "trusting", "skeptical", "helpful" etc. They vary according to time, circumstance, people....

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On another note, I wonder if there is more to the word 'circumstance' (conditions that cause change) than the element of time, space, people and emotions? These terms seem to exist within the realm of 'human experiences'. Thus,

What are the elements of the human experience?

Can we discover more elements (when we do not even have an inkling of its existence or non-existence, or what it even is)

How can we ever know limitations of a human? Never.

We were just talking about the fear of withdrawal and I said we should embrace all kinds of experiences, good or bad.

Today I caught myself thinking (or trying hard to convince myself), "I'm alright with the lack of response, I don't think we'll be good friends anyway".

Denial is a safe bubble. Pop it, we're meant to fall. 

Comfort and attraction seem to be mutually exclusive things.