tuala artistik

So J brought back a grand bale of fresh green towels from his reservist training. To make them a little more feminine I decided to embroider some pastel flowers on them...

(Sorry I don't have a digi-cam, so these pics shall have to do):










Yes I actually have a sewing basket...













Close up of the flowers, pretty ain't it.












The towels are still too green IMO, as I have a colour scheme for the male-female towels in my bathroom. Mine are pinks, his are cool colours. This one shall be an anomaly.

Now what to do with the rest of the bale of SAF towels...

anhedonia:

loss of joy or interest in activities

I gain very little satisfaction from things I supposedly like to do. If I don't do them I will be extremely despondent, like my work, or my hobbies, or spending time with J. But doing them does not make me extremely satisfied either, in fact, I hardly feel anything near satisfaction, joy, or whatever those positive emotions one should gain from doing something enjoyable.

While I am able to draw enough energy to do some of these supposed interests sometimes, other times they are extremely arduous even though I am meant to like these activities.

Hence there is very little emotional motivation to do them again. Or at all.

But I do try anyway. Like we do the things we all have to do, such as washing ourselves and brushing our teeth.

Just imagine though, if the activities that are meant to bring you extreme pleasure, feel like the washing up after dinner or clearing the trash.

I always thought anhedonia simply meant the lack of energy to do things that one loves. But even when you're med-up and energetic enough to wash yourself sometimes, pleasure might still feel like a chore - you just are more able to carry it out.

And that includes my work in Batam. No matter how long I have been desiring such an opportunity, no matter how much I love doing something this meaningful. In out, no pleasure. But not doing this would kill me eventually so I have to do it eventually, just like we all have to go to the toilet everyday.

psychosmatic sleeplessness

I can't sleep because the upper right side of my back hurts when I lie down, either way. Even though I am exhausted and med-up. I also cannot help thinking too much when I lie down, of things exciting to come or of dreary trivia or of sweet things. I get worked up in my heart and mind and my body cannot rest as it should at this time of night. Yet I am really sleepy.

I have repeatedly rubbed my right shoulder and back with massage oil before bed but it is still there. Not a bruise, for it is uncoloured, not my lungs, for I am still breathing and regular breathing does not hurt it. Not a lump in my breast because I cannot detect any. This pain just remains, and hurts only when I sneeze, hiccup or lie down. If it is a muscular pain I have no idea how I strained it.

I read up on psychosomatic illnesses, and aches and pains are somewhat a symptom of depression. This sucks. I also hate the ever-present tiredness, and the fainting spells I get sometimes.

So many ailments I fear to resume my regular workouts, which strains on my physical stamina as a whole. I have to change tack, go swimming instead, with J. Out comes the anti-cellulite / firming gel I need to use to not cause disgust to the other pool-users when I disrobe.

I have always been sickly and I hate myself for that. For whatever I do it makes little difference to my health.

Later when I return to bed to once again try to sleep, the quiet will shrill itself into my head and keep me awake. That and all my thoughts. I just hope I don't wake J with my sleeplessness.

excerpts

Inspired by The Golden Notebook, and partly obliged to update worldsuponwords more often, here are recent slips of writing from my notebook dated since end September.



Nowadays I hate to dream. Most of my dreams are manifestations of crude non-reality. Irksome and disturbing. Sometimes I get meaning and ideas from my dreams, but not lately. When I am awake these dreams are even scarier, like hallucinations waiting to happen. I lie down, unasleep, and they happen. While I am wide awake.

---

"Ultimately, the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."
Oscar Wilde.

---

Everyone has a string of failed loves in their lives. I'm glad to know I am not the only one, an anomaly in the human trend.

---

I find myself having a lack of expression: where description should form, I am vague. Momentous pleasures become plain. Poetry disappears. Street language suffices -- I feel like fuck, damn.

With a lack of expression writing becomes boring for my potential reader, therefore I ache when I write. I foresee what I write here will be boring to the end. How I wish I were a filmmaker, it would be easier to convey in the instant what I mean to express.

I think of constantly reading - and I try to improve my fluidity of word-expression. It hardly helps. I fanatically assume that the books I read will sublimate naturally into improved writing of my own.

A writer probably ought to be a far deeper examiner of what she reads - or experiences - than that. I skim through my reading the same way I skim through how I feel. For years I suffered the self-tyranny of repressing my emotions, allowing them little audience in my life. Thus I fall sick with depression.

Right now I realise this, and so constantly try to allow myself to feel. I ask myself, How do I feel? Oftentimes it is nothing, as I am not used to this exercise. But when I really try to release the stranglehold of my will upon my feelings, I realise the emotions I feel.

Like right now:

I feel anger, one that transcends into sadness. And then since holding on to these feelings is unfruitful, I try to let them go.

---

gloomy late afternoon

It seems like I am reveling in the quiet of the late afternoon rain outside, but in fact I am simply in a daze. The quiet makes me lonesome, yet I am unable to keep myself occupied to the point of distraction. Every task seems to require more energy than I can conjure up, even reading, which I cannot sustain for more than a page or two.

I see Slinky curled in her basket, and I microwave some cat food to feed and keep her warm. While waiting for her food to cool, she sits before her bowl, staring out the kitchen window looking at the rain fall.

I make some hot chocolate in a bid to keep myself occupied, and I try to wake J for some too, so I would no longer feel lonely, but he remains asleep.

There are so many things I could do: some form of work, exercise, shower, ironing, cleaning, watching a DVD. But I can't bring myself to do any of them, it is pointless and too much to surmount even as single tasks, even if as recreational activities. I could go back to sleep but even that feels painful.

The rain has stopped. Dinner time approaches and thus a sense of forced normalcy returns. I push the gloom back with a cigarette and hopefully, find some energy to wash myself before dinner.

books again!

A lot of you know I love collecting and reading books. Some of my most beloved books are outstation, meaning I have lent them out eagerly to friends, to share with them my loves. Sometimes I wonder if I should buy them again, to replace the books on my shelves, because it is hard to lend out books expecting they will eventually return.

This is a list of books that are currently outstation:

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence

These books have been lent out because they are great enough to be shared, so much, that I often press books into the arms of guests at my flat. I know some will never return, and to have a piece of me in the lives of others who I might seldom, if ever, see again, it remains like a physical evidence of our lives being shared for a part. It comforts me that I will not totally be forgotten.

At present, I am actively reading Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and Joyce Carol Oates' The Tattooed Girl.

I picked out Doris Lessing because this book of hers is award-winning, a must-read book of all times. I relate to it because her protagonist struggles with her intellectualism and her pro-communist affiliations. Her friend and her are also feminist, which makes it a trend before their time.

Joyce Carol Oates is a name I picked out on the back of another book I was reading, as she penned off one of those reviews other authors often do as part of the marketing of that book. The fact that we both at one time shared a common interest in the same book, endears me to her writing, that I believe I must also enjoy, since we both have something in common already.

Great way to find new authors to read, by the way: searching for names on reviews for the books you already like.

postmortem on second week of teaching

I'm back! As per my usual Batam-Singapore schedule, I spend Thursday night to Sunday at home in Singapore.

In Batam, I live in a house with my own room. Sparsely furnished with a mattress, a clothes stand, and a stool that makeshifts as a table. There are windows, and one ceiling light, and essentially needed air-conditioning. I have no internet, no TV, no refrigerator in the kitchen, and no hot water for showers. I live out of my backpack, with my things mostly on the floor (all over).

Spartan as it sounds, every time I reach my bed there on Monday night, I feel a peace and quiet as it were a sanatorium. There is nothing to do there in my room except read, work, drink coffee, smoke, write and sleep. It is all very peaceful.

Teaching in the school there is finally becoming easier. I am easing into their pace and standard. I pop some beta-blockers before I start my prep work and my teaching. The kids and the teachers are enjoying my lessons and my training respectively. Soon I will be teaching the Bible school students English too, and possibly pop by to the other centres on the other Indonesian islands for a visit some time soon, to see what else I can do.

The only thing hard about being there is being without J. I also fear that if I get a bout of serious depression or anxiety, no one there will know what to do. I am well and truly alone there. No internet means no Skype, and phone bills cost a bomb. SMS is cheaper on my Indonesian SIM card, but that means no J's voice, only his words. I am glad to come home to him every Thursday.

Today, I am going to do Singaporean things: shop, eat at nice cafes, drink coffee at Starbucks or similar, dress nicely (welcome home to sleeveless tops!), have dinner and drinks and nice restaurants and pubs with friends, and enjoy cool air-con wherever I go. Hurrah for Singapore! Now if only the streets would be less crowded...

real me

You can only be yourself up to the point where the real you will hurt someone you love. After that, grace and basic courtesy steps in to make sure the relationship remains civil and alive.

The real me however is an angry cat. I am perpetually angry and upset, but behavioural standards and societal obligation makes me a different person than who I really am. Between the real me and the civil me, is a great disparity.

This is partly why it is so tiring for me to have to talk to people. Whether I am a good conversationalist or not, whether I am able to communicate to people from all walks of life or not. I may be able to charm and flirt with anyone and everyone, but that is probably not really me. Apart from inherently depleted energy levels because I am sick, being with people is so extremely tiring.

That it stresses me out. The prospect of an evening obliged to be spent schmoozing with groups of people, even friends, stresses me out that much, I have a panic attack, and I blame myself for being weak like that, which of course only accelerates the anxiety.

I have tried so hard to be an efficient networker, charming acquaintance, loving friend and adoring lover, and succeeded in most places. But the reason behind my being so, is because no one will accept me for who I really am, which really is quite otherwise from the above. I have lived concealing my anger and hurt for twenty-over years that I am sick from it now, bursting at my seams, and now you know.

But yesterday J wrote me the sweetest note ever in my notebook:

Jian <3 Elaine for what she is and not what she is trying to be.
This is the reason why we got together.