My charade is the event of the season

There's something about the lyrics to that song that just gets to me.

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher
But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a mad man
I hear the voices when I'm dreaming
I can hear them say

...

Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don't know

On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say

...

Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
The center lights around your vanity
But surely heaven waits for you

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry (don't you cry no more)



It's mainly the verses that get to me. Plus, the guitar riffs are awesome.

I'm pretty caught up in Caellach's story. I wonder if I should write some shorts or drabbles around the same concept of the story, perhaps looking at Caellach's childhood or some aspect of "the incident". Maybe even a look at his and Fionnlagh's friendship.

Recently, I keep smelling sampoerna from my window. Usually I just think it's my brother since he smokes them and his room is next to mine, and I keep my windows open. But I know for a fact that he hasn't been to the house for a while, and I'm smelling sampoerna now. None of the night guards smoke them, either, so... big mystery.


Also, why the hell am I listening to Barry Manilow? It's on my current playlist along with The Carpenters. Then again said playlist also contains Jamiroquai and Patrick Wolf. Changed layouts for both my writing and RL journal on LJ, and the title to this one. Dreaming in Abstract. Seemed somewhat apt. If I ever write an autobiography, it'll be titled "Coffee, Cigarettes and Notebooks". It kind of seems to be the theme of my life, especially the author part my life. The coffee and cigarettes are everything else. Or perhaps I should change the coffee to Mango Passionfruit Frappuccino... or Milo Ice. But it doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

If I ever get another tattoo, it'll be an ouroboros. This one, to be exact.




This familiar image of the serpent biting it's own tail is meant to imply infinity. Or, possibly, eternally being stuck in the material cycle.

Never say I don't have meaning in my tattoos. I mean, the quill and the "Et in Arcadia Ego" all have perfectly meaningful meanings to me. Quill to signify my dream of being a writer, the quote from Nicholas Poussin, a French Renaissance painter and meaning "Death is present also in Arcadia", which I took to mean that there is bad with ever good and vice versa.

Since this post so far has been an exercise in pointlessness, why not just add a little list. Little known fact about me:

1. I smoke a lot. Yes, we all knew that, but did you know that my morning cigarette consists of my smoking in the shower? As I take said shower? Well, now you do.
2. I like stiletto heels. I wear them. People seem to find this strange, I don't live in converse though it might seem as though I do, but not so much recently.
3. I don't actually like writing poetry. Hence why I do it not so often. But sometimes I get the urge to put pen to paper and not just ramble on about myself or my random thoughts, or write pointless bits of stories that I never finish. However, I get very, very frustrated with my own perceived inability to write poetry.
4. I have an obsessive personality. Yes, we all know this as well, but it extends beyond men, oh the shock and horror. I have a leaning-on-OCD obsession with my stationary. I only use one corner of my eraser at a time. If someone borrows said eraser and uses a fresh corner, I get a little freaked out and pissed off. I also buy a few same type of pens in the same colour and number them. Because I like to use up one pen at a time and if someone needs to borrow my pens, I give them one that I've already used (usually the one I was writing with at the time) and use a new one myself. I don't like giving people my new, unused pens. My obsessive personality also comes out in Photoshop. I tend to spend ages and ages making sure details are right. Like, if I'm using another layer to change the colour of a photo or something, and want only one aspect of that photo changed, then (taking the example of hair) I make sure to go around every single goddamn strand of hair if possible, so that it looks as authentic as possible.
5. I fully support gay relationships. I don't see anything wrong with it and it gets my hackles up whenever someone says derogatory comments about said relationships. In fact, I'm a fan of the gay. In fact, I read gay fantasy fiction.
   
6. I has an obsession for the Japanese things. Like their music (rock, because JRock rocks the motherfucking Casbah), their TV (JDramas are much fun), their comics (manga, how I adore thee) and their cartoons (anime, shall I compare you to a Summer's day?).
   
7. While I have guy-ish tendencies in my choice of movies, I simply cannot take horror movies. I'm a wuss. Anything to do with ghosts and psychologically freaking me out and I bail. But I freak out quietly because I hate having other people see me weak.
8. Has to do with what I said in point seven. While I hate to be perceived as weak, I cry quite easily. I hate it when I do, but hey. Also, I fake tears pretty damn well. I can cry on will. I have freaked out my brothers and sister many a time due to this.
   
9. Although I bemoan my being single like most girls, I actually have intimacy issues... okay, that's not quite right. I have commitment issues. I'm very skeptical about declarations of "I love yous" and the like. I pretty much take it for granted that whatever relationship I get into is going to end anyway, especially at this point. Although I'm a romantic at heart, I'm cynical about my contemporaries' relationships.
   
10. I'm a believer of trying things out before you decide it's not for you. And aside from my seeming tobacco addiction, I dislike it when people fall to so-called "addiction". I believe that if the strength of will is there, any habit is possible to break out of. As such, people who use inebriation as an excuse for their behaviour I have absolutely no sympathy for. If you say you couldn't keep your goddamn panties on because you were "too drunk", screw that. If I could do it, I'm pretty sure other people can as well.
    

And that is it so far. Lord, this was an exercise in the useless. Go procrastination, I'm only a day behind schedule for posting up the next part of Hellhound fic. Despite the fact that over 1000 words of that had been written last week. Shit.

...

So, uh, I bombed my mocks. *scratches head* And I've taken the cowardly way out and have ignored my parents' calls and my guardian's calls as well. Though to be fair I WAS ill for the past few days. And I'm feeling that headache brewing behind my eyes again. Oh god. Now I'm feeling properly chastened with my tail between my legs. All I want to do is to curl up in bed with the curtains drawn and sleep for the next hundred years. The whole waking up with true love's first kiss is entirely not necessary. Optional, but not necessary.

I've only got slightly over a week left until the end of term when it will finally be the Easter holidays and yet I'm not completely looking forward to that. Who would, though? I've only got three weeks, then comes the last term and my exams. My first exam is no the 24th of May, and my final exam is on the 25th of June. I have 12 papers including those units that I'm resitting. After which I have a week before Leaver's Ball, which I'm still contemplating not going. If I DO go, I'll have to start looking around for dresses. It's a bigger deal than prom, after all. Leaver's Ball is THE biggest event of the year, and it's our final party together. It's going to be black tie. The theme is 'Secret Garden' and the school usually has a huge marquee and uses a large part of the school grounds as part of it. They hire professional decorators, and apparently we have a casino room and a complete free flow of champagne and huge fireworks show. And when CLC says huge, it means MASSIVE.

In a way, I'm looking forward to it, the end, the big bang of my five years. The end of the end. It draws my school years to a close, finally, and then I will make my way. I'll go to Malaysia for the majority of my GAP year, I'll work, I'll garner some sort of life experience. I'll hang out with old friends, strengthen ties that have weakened, hopefully. And I'll meet new people, findo out new things, gather new experiences. I'm looking forward to it. I'll need to apply to University, though. I'll also need to re-write my personal statement.

I'm also going through a little crisis, though. In regards to what I want to do in Uni. Am I so sure that I want to spend three years doing History of Art and Archaeology? Do I really? I thought I did, I do love the subject but with abject failure staring at me in the face, I can't help but flounder and question myself. Do I really know what I want? Am I really capable of it? And what the hell do I even know about archaeology? I don't want this to be some spur-of-the-moment decision that I know it kind of was. I don't want to go to University and panic in the face of realising that I've made the biggest mistake in my life. Do I really want to face that in my life? Do I really want to go to Uni for three years doing something that I will find out that I have absolutely no talent for, or I have no interest in therefore I'll just snooze through and fail and utterly have nothing in my life?

It's all been so easy for me, you see. All my life, I've always somehow managed to scrape through doing the absolute minimum and sometimes not even that. I've been told that I'm a bright child. Things come to me easily, especially when I'm interested in it. Especially when I was younger. Whatever I've REALLy wanted to get I've managed to obtain with little effort. I wanted to go to KTJ for boarding school; I got in. I wanted to go to the UK to study before PMR, even though my grades were shite; I got into every. single. school I applied for and did the entrance exams for. For three of those four schools, they offered to put me up in the upper grade, despite my abysmal mathematics scores (to be fair, I hadn't learnt how to do some of the stuff that was on the paper) because apparently my English scores were more than above average enough for all of them to comment on it in the report. ALL of them commented on my English paper. So I got in, rather breezily. And while I stumbled on some of the subjects, as people do, I never really FAILED at anything. Which is a miracle in itself.

I'll admit this, freely. I'm a lazy shite. Completely. It's my weakness which I wish I had the power to get over. It's the one thing that I regret most about myself, this inability to work and be driven. I have no goals, no ambition and looking around me at my friends, at some of my acquaintances and seeing them go for their goals, seeing them REACH their goals, I'm left with a feeling of utter inadequacy. Who am I to feel comfortable in my abilities, who am I for some to envy when I have others who KNOW what they want from life and are not afraid to take it with both hands?

All of my life, for as long as I can remember I had one dream. One goal, one ambition. It has sustained me, it has lasted despite whatever things that have gone on in my life. It is the one constant thing in my fluctuating life. It is not ephemeral, not in flux. It is the only solid thing that I allow or that I welcome. I'm afraid that it is also this which has some cause for my behaviour, for my actions, for how I am. I won't make any excuses, I know I'm inherently lazy. It's just the way things are. But somehow it is made worse with the fact that I DO actually know what I want to do in life, have known since the first time I picked up a book, since the first time I learnt to read, since the first time I picked up a pen or pencil and put it to paper: I want to write.

My dream, my life, my sustaining breath and my complete weakness. My writing. I've found myself thinking, sometimes, that the other things didn't matter. What need have I for mathematics, for science, for geography when I wanted to WRITE? What could that help me in my future career. The majority of what I have learnt, I've realised, is ultimately useless in my life, in what I want to do. They are furnishings. They are something there so I can in the future say: I have done it. They are not essential. And it is with that thought, I think, that I have allowed myself to do absolutely fuckall in my life.

My mother told me that she's noticed me scribbling for as long as she can remember. She told me that I picked up a book and started reading earlier than she expected, earlier than my siblings. That I started writing before them. My command of language was better. They constantly make fun of the things I used to say when I was young, like when I was four and I looked at them, angry, and said, and I quote, "I have two words for you: N-O!".

It makes me laugh, thinking about it now. But it also irritates me and embarrasses me because they just will NOT let it go. Some part of me realises that they only do this because it wasn't a mistake I allowed myself to make after they took the complete piss out of me for years to come, immediately. It's the weakness I won't allow myself. My command of English came quick and quickly as well it usurped my command of Malay. I've never questioned it, all my life even when I was aware of how difficult getting work was, how the percentage of employment from University was lowering etc etc etc, I never worried, never faltered. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be a writer, more specifically, an author. A novelist. It was my dream. I didn't want to be a Nobel Price of Literature winner, I had no such large dreams in life. I would like to be famous, or infamous, but only within my field. I have no great ambition of becoming a celebrity, open to the public eye. I'm a private person, after all. Besides, people have often said that if not a writer, then I will be a hermit. It makes me laugh, now, thinking about how UN-hermit like I was when I was just slightly younger and I wonder now what has made things change, what is it that has made me feel slightly detached from society at times, though I do enjoy the occasional social gathering. What was it that made me so fiercely protective of my own privacy, of my independence. Well, quasi-independence anyway.

Recently, reality hit and it hit hard. It was not a matter of what I want to do, not a matter of me questioning my life's choices in terms of a career. No, that has always been constant, even when I realised that I could not make writing be my bread and butter. I appreciate finer living too much for that, so the question of finding an alternate "job" to do to pay for my ultimate career is something I've accepted for a few years now. No, it wasn't if I still wanted to be a writer. It was if I was good enough to be one.

When it comes to banking, to law, to medicine people look to that with respect. They don't believe that they all can do it. It's specialised, it's difficult. But with writing... well, everyone thinks they can write. And unfortunately, there are a large number of people who can do it well, and I am friends or acquaintances with quite a large group. I've known someone whose writing was infamous on the net for a few years, now she is published. I know a few others, actually. I know others who think of writing as nothing more than a hobby and yet they have the ability to move me incredibly with their command of language. It tears me apart, to know that I have this dream, this vision... and yet not know if I'm good enough, if I'll ever BE good enough to succeed.

Eh, enough. Introspection, introspection, angst, blah. I'm late for class. Again.