are you happy?

Happiness is everywhere in a capitalist society. Well, almost anyway. Think advertisements. After all, the main emotion they are selling is happiness. It's an over-hyped emotion that has been packaged and flaunted in shopping centers, on the streets and in between your favorite TV programs.

Perhaps, because happiness is advertised and shoved into our faces so much, we become sad. For every corner we turn, we are reminded of the disjuncture between the ideal of happiness and our own innermost emotional state, and that makes us feel worse about ourselves. Happiness is a model state of being that we are not experiencing, can't seem to reach, and is supposedly, the default mode of feeling - if nothing is wrong and everything is well, okay.

So if you're not happy, something must be wrong. Which may not be true. The fact that you're not happy doesn’t necessarily mean you're sad either.

In sum, maybe advertisements should feature the melancholic and the depressed. That way, we'll won't feel the need to be happy, or think something is lacking when we're not. In fact, we might just feel much better about ourselves. Happier, even. I'm not quite sure whether the products being advertised will sell then, but the possibility is there. After all, a lot of people are attracted to sadness, and sometimes, even seem to want to be sad. (That is perhaps why sad songs in general always sell better than happy ones.) But this draw may be because sadness has been repressed too much by a society that has overemphasized happiness. If ads showcase depressed people instead of happy ones, it may dilute or disappear.

But anyway, bring on the frowns. Don't try too hard to smile. We might all be happier.

pulling strings

Must the show go on?
There must be some mistake
I didnt mean to let them
Take away my soul.

Am I too old, is it too late?

Where's the feeling gone?
Will I remember the songs?
The show must go on

Pink Floyd

thanks

"I love you but I never thought of owning you."

Of course, you have her. Funny how something - for the last three years - always end around my birthday.

"Thank you, but sorry who is this?"

Maybe this is the decision.

darren's wedding - shopping w prof - mac party!

split it 3 ways

My heart wishes me to be a simple person with faith, and my mind tells me there's no valid reason to believe in religion, while my body ignores everything and goes about its bodily functions.

So maybe my heart will go to heaven and sing Hallelujah with the angels, and my mind will get roasted by devils sporting little red horns in hell, while my body decomposes six feet under and befriends maggots.

Just a bit down.

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On a separate note, I wish I'm not so shy and anti-social...

words

These days, I read everything except my readings. And write anything except academic essays. If this sounds familiar, perhaps you too, are well versed in the life of a professional student.

Maybe you are also, like me, the kind of student who misses deadlines (or meets them just in time), take ages to read and understand a paper, think books make hard pillows, and is convinced that the library is actually a very cold bedroom.

Don't be mistaken, I like where I am now. And am thankful for it. But come on, I bet you can relate to what I said in my previous paragraphs.

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On another note, a writer called Walter Benjamin has won me over with his book One Way Street and Other Writings recently. Was reading him just for fun. Here are some excerpts:

"Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up."

"Pilfering child. - Through the chink of the scarcely open larder door his hand advances like a lover through the night. Once at home in the darkness, it gropes towards sugar or almonds, sultanas or preserves. And as the lover, before kissing her, embraces his girl, his hand enjoys a tactile tryst with the comestibles before his mouth savours their sweetness. How inviting honey, heaps of currants, even rice yield to his hand. How passionate this meeting of two who have at last escaped the spoon."

"He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest."

immobilised by two pins

And I yelled - even before he inserted a needle into an acupuncture point near my ankle.

My knees felt weak and my legs didn't feel like mine. I stayed still, at the mercy of two tiny pins, while recalling an earlier conversation with the doctor.

"Will it hurt?"

"No, it doesn't. You'll only scream, that's all."

Now, consider that a prophecy came true.

turn me on

my new bedroom lights, which look like candles in the sky!

state of mind

Denial. It's an easy mode to live in. Like now, I'm thinking but only unrelated words come and then go, dissolving into incoherency and ambiguity. I'm missing people but I don't want to know who I'm missing, preferring to hide in a state somewhere between clarity and uncertainty, all the while getting by by believing it's the former and that it's all about control.

Try to be cautious, and you slip into moments of impulsiveness. Try to be nonchalant, and suddenly you miss the times where nothing matters except now.

Imagination and reality. Forgetting and remembering. Moving on and hanging on. Believing, and then sweeping it all away. Maybe life is always, somewhere in between - while you get on with behaviors that make up the everyday and try to escape from yourself.