this morning i woke up acknowledging and being thankful that i am feeling better - what a difference it makes.

live well while you can

Live well while you can. Looking around me at this courtyard filled with shades of green I'd often forget to recognise, realising that I have needed the great outside and the peace which it offers -- I wonder where from that there is the underlying concern that this is asking for too much. For I, too, recognise privilege; acknowledge that beyond the walls of this institution which I got into by a pure miracle, there are few courtyards. Few swings, few hammocks, few individuals that would stride over and give you a hug just because. And sometimes I wonder how, wonder what others do when they need a break, how they'd get there if the green, the swings, the hammocks, weren't right at their doorstep, specifically constructed as if emblems of privilege. But exactly so- with privilege comes the idea of excess, of exclusivity... I guess what I'm trying to understand is why it seems a privilege-like thing to want to live well.

Of course, part of 'living well' sways in one's perspective of what 'well' is, and thus is subject to the blessings that we've had so far. Sometimes, it feels like beautiful cafes in my best dresses, sometimes it is going for two movies in a week at The Projector. But 'living well' can, at it's most essential level, to me, simply mean to indulge in idle activity, during which your mind can ebb and flow whichever way it prefers. To sit on a swing and take many deep breaths, and to romanticise it all. To take care of oneself, to shower herself with love and gratitude, to bathe in rich soaps and smell like fresh lavender. I suppose it is a privilege. I suppose the brooding concern of asking for too much is rightly embedded in the understanding that the life I live is, even when I'm not 'living well', living well.

I suppose the tremor of conflict that I feel now is how to navigate between guilt and gratitude, rejection and embrace. How to not feel guilty for the life well lived, and yet understand it for what it is, to let gratitude loiter and not tip over the edges. Because what is the point of guilt, if it is only to add more pain to the world? For what good comes, what improvements to lives I recognise can be better, if those who can sit on swings and take deep breaths, smell like fresh lavender, do not? Not to say the foundations of such guilt is to be scraped and ignored - there is a lot to do and which we can do, for the world beyond ourselves. But I thus urge myself to embrace the daily, to acknowledge guilt but not let it fester, to rather take gratitude in its full force.


love, elle

Rong Rong & Inri

Chang Chao-Tang 张照堂

“A transformation takes place, in which the images become encoded with metaphors, and with my thoughts,” he wrote. “What grasps me is not a view but a memory, an atmosphere or state that sparks an unexpected thought, a subtle emotion, or a whirl of energy.”

“We may see more now,” he said, “but we may also confuse more.”
Chang Chao-Tang 张照堂

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."
- Albert Einstein

each week passes by the next. i am folded over in joy, relief, hysteria, gratitude, fear, anxiety, guilt, confusion. today i only wanted to fold into myself, to shut the door and reel the blinds down down down, engulf myself in its sub-effective shade in the middle of the day. my clock runs on class timetables, my nights often planned out according to readings for the next day, time in between for all the activities, the talks, the new friends. today i only wanted to fold into myself, to commit to the crucial understanding that everything and its attached anxiety is what i make it to be, that what i do now and the choices that i make will only make a groove on the course of my future... that the future is an overrated preoccupation of the restless subconsciousness.

it is with growing self-awareness that i realise and am therefore appalled by the rate which the mind works. that i cannot remember not thinking, processing, extrapolating, feeling, supposing, and most importantly weighing every little decision that i make on a scale so intrinsically entrenched. is this a good use of my time? is this the intellectual/responsible thing to do? is this my priority? should i do something else first? what is the underlying purpose of my such action? what am i trying to achieve without my own knowledge? how is this going to affect my future? what if tomorrow... what if next week...?

i don't have everything figured out. maybe sometimes it's so much more disappointing because i think i do, every time i grasp on to a flailing vine in the labyrinth of writhing, wet, suffocating jungle. each recovery and thus each day is a white lie then. some self-deceit necessary in believing that one can go on with her life despite the wars waging within her, just because some days the dust kicked up by the heat of the battle clears up and some blue of the sky shows, making it possible to walk the corridors and greet "yes I'm good how about you?" -- but there is no such thing as ceasefire. the blood still pours and covers the earth, seeps into the soil and dyes it deep red or blue-black, or yellow, with time. "life is full of suffering".  a full-stop i place to resist myself for i have rationalised and compartmentalised a thought i have deemed it below standards i have deemed it weak and i engage in self-censorship.

i want the world to go on without me... i want time to merely pass over like water while i take a breath, i just need a couple breaths, i just want to decide when i do what i do because there are so many deadlines and i puncture them into my skin with pushpins they make my heart sag like a grandmother's skin. and i say this and yet i don't do the things pinned by deadlines and what right do i have to complain i complain all i do is complain all i do is weak and all i do is complain.

i put on a show everyday. i am a performer. i don't know what is real, in class they said only the one who tells the lie knows the truth but all i know is lies, how can that be?