http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:bled&section=today deviantART RSS for by:bled en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:44:58 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/19242014/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/19242014/ Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:37:47 PDT
That if I ever wished you ill, I would will now that a thousand vindictive angels would fall with their blazing swords upon me. I always thought that you were braver than I am, with an intuitive, innate sense of bravery that I can only deliberate upon. And I see you being borne away now by a flood of numbers and arithmetic, with percentiles and scores, on a raft knitted of sheets of grid paper. Your hair spans the surface like Ophelia, and soon you will drink forgetfulness.

If the world was made for geniuses like you. I see in your bosom a singular struggle between what is and what ought to be, between the system of survival and the trance, the darkness before creation. The fallibility and the possibility, where there are no barriers; The book I'm supposed to read for tomorrow seems to cry out sympathy with you as its heroine, for you could very well be. I see all words drawn to you, you at the epicentre of humankind's greatest madness and revelations.

Love is not enough. I am not enough. Once my mother said to me, that she was sorry that our family could not provide for my talent, but then I think that if I had even a widow's share of what you have, I would blaze a path through the flood, and care not for the death of my firstborn children. But on the other side of the coin, if my family had the means to provide for me, I think now that I would have created another raft for you.

I watch you drift as I sit by the bank among thorns. I watch the numbered locusts descend and force back the Words. I cannot say anything of my own; I am dumb as you dip a cup out into the fetid water.

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/19192189/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/19192189/ Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:32:02 PDT
You had written me such a long and heartfelt letter when I left you almost exactly four years ago. Now, you have left your mother in the coastal city and come eastward, to the supposed omphalous of our civilization. Over Serbian pastries and Malaysian foods with names I can’t pronounce, we sit in Dundas square and I try to convince you that this is the omphalous of the world.

Or, this is the exact midpoint of the line between us. For these four years, I have never ceased to hear your breathing over the telephone line, when you were doing my math homework for me, when you would probably not have helped anyone else. In the past year, I have never cased to hear the weariness in your voice, my father passed away yesterday morning.

So, I find it amazing, even if you do not, that we wait for streetcars on a hot Canada Day, in a city I never expected to live in, much less to explore with you. I find it amazing that you will be going to medical school next year, and I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. You seem to be one of the compass needles in my life, one which has never wavered, from the moment we drew peppers in a small, hot art classroom on the third floor. They are shriveled now, if not dust, and now, I tell you that you brought the fair weather with you to this otherwise hot city, and count your new white hairs.

I find it amazing that you would confide in me the ostracization you felt and must continue to feel, because of your diligence and brilliance. Your pensive turns about the curses of illness, the irony in dying of what you devoted your life to. The fears of the future, in some unnamed tutorial room, where maybe again you would be the target to malice and competition. I tell you, it will be all right, though I don’t believe it myself. But I believe you, and believe in you.

Your hotel room has two beds. I leave on the next Kennedy bus. In my quiet room that night, exhausted from two days of euphoria, I sleep between the sheets you occupied, and realize that dream conversations with you are still echoing in my mind.

I will hear them for the next year, or however long it will take for us to meet again.

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/18370252/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/18370252/ Sat, 17 May 2008 16:45:56 PDT
Now in the
White flames of burning flags we
found a world worth dying for, yeah
We've been battered so hard that we don't
feel anymore.

> How can he reach you in exile? They walk across a street in the U.S. carrying the stars and stripes. How does the red and yellow robes of your monkhood rise against the field of blood and stars?

The new generation tire of peace talks and negotiations. Their palms separate in the sanctuary of temple grounds, and with twisted complexion, set the fire under the frying pan.

Are these really your teachings?

> This is where your history has taken you. You can take their beating heart in a box and put it on display like Mao, you can set the Great Firewall of China and complain of unfair media coverage. Your exiled ones can march down the streets in Canadian cities, still snowbound in March, holding flags.

You can go neither way. either watch your people suffer or incur the wrath and prejudice of the world. You can put them into temple lockdown, but in reality, it is you whose hands are tied now.

> I wish you'd see that you are the third monkey to fall off the swing. I scroll down the page and see beside every flag the phrase urging respect for human rights. And yet no one suggests temperance.

> I had a chance to go to Halifax to light the torch of human rights. but I didn't go.

There has been enough written on this. this article may be too long. See Tibet for disambiguation.

II.

> It is surreal, is it not, seeing a crack right across the road, you on one side, destruction writhing on the other. Your neighbours scatter from the epicentre like fireworks exploding, or else they cling to hands of those underneath the rubble. In plastic sleeping bags you whisper through the nights, your eyes gleaming like deers caught in headlights.

How many bootleg movies about the Apocalypse have you watched through the smoke and sizzle of spicy cooking? And now you are in one.

And the funny thing is, we look through the screen and still think you are one.

> One of my professors joked last year that he believes Florida received their due divine retribution. After all, look who they elected to office. Maybe it is time to contemplate your history. Refer to part I.

> A heart has changed to a rainbow. The few long exiles who sided against you in Part I now try to curry donations in remote islands.

> I scroll through online photos and think, there is too much gray in these pictures.

Can we be saved? Has the damage all been done?
Is it too late to reverse what we've become?
A lesson to learn at a crucial point in time
What's mine was always yours, and yours is mine.


Links ---
(Screams always comes through the picture.)

[link]
[link]

[link]

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/15260080/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/15260080/ Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:08:41 PDT
A year and a half ago, he stood before us, the hub of our attentions, drawing the words from the page with his voice. As with other mandatory literature readings, it was unconnected, perfunctory. I chose not to doodle his face on paper as I have done with other authors. My creative writing professor and my English professor knew him, were a part of him, for being “friends of the cause.” Their alter egos, father and son roles reversed, perched high on his pages, to me completely, utterly irrelevant. Why would a man from Saskatchewan interest me? Why would journeys into Texas and Mexico, bringing a letter of love and faith, draw me in?

(Since then, I have understood the character bases located in my professors, their names flying from the pages. Yesterday he was reading to us again, his hands clasped behind his back, and I entered the room wondering whether he was a base for his own character, as I had imagined him throughout. A voice from the part of my mind asks whether he could be Richard.)

Since then, I have clutched at course evaluation envelopes on depressed stairwells, refusing to let the Humanities office take them. I have sent my own letters of love and faith, feared the deprecation that is reason. I have dreamed of longing at the end of the world.

He can follow the wine-red shirt across national borders while I cross the international waters by air, thinking of a particular shades of blue. He follows a psychopath into the brutal assault of foreign languages, and he thinks that he is unconscious justice and watchful reason. His attentions focused inexplicably on false security, the cruelty of pretended revelations. To have baited a Christian girl with her own religion, and all she can interpret is that Mary carried a child while still a virgin.

I think, what you have done to me was so much worse than that, but then again, it was not you. I see people who do not exist in people who do, as I lay sheets of tracing paper over reality and mark the inadequacies and the longevities. All the while, her voice whispers immorality like schizophrenia.

(There was only one other wine-coloured shirt in my life, and the owner of that is long gone. I have lost him in the crowds on subway platforms. I will cease to torment myself over him, because he has ceased to turn around to make sure that I am following.) I follow the blue sweater into the place of last things. I am not following the psychopath but the non-existent psychopath I see in you.

He loses his quarry but finds a holy man. For a moment, pursuit slumbers and he sucks up faith like air, his reason destroyed by a word he cannot remember. I remember it for him, acts it out for him, in a similar hub, except he did not go there to collect his baggage but to drop them off. Hyperventilation. For him, faith and patterns can coalesce, and he understands the other meaning of reason.

The light is different. While it hides from him it reveals too much to me. Under the multi-directional and far-off white lights of airport terminals, where is my conversion? When you drop your bag behind me and give that look of hallucinatory recognition, and my breathing begins to understand itself? If music is like lovemaking, then breathing is masturbation. Even as she lays out cards with impossible fantasies, her voice chastises in the voice of the Criminal Code of Canada. No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed (or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed): repeatedly follow the other person, or anyone known to them, from place to place; repeatedly communicate with, either directly or indirectly, the other person or anyone known to them; "beset" or watch a place where the other person is visiting, lives or works; or engage in threatening conduct directed at the other person or any member of their family.

(I wonder what your girlfriend is like.)

I think of all the followings and wonder at their criminality. I had sent my letter of faith and love. He would have followed the subject of his dissertation along Oxford Street in London, dogging his steps, just a hundred and sixty years too late. She would have filled in the space he made in air, leaving the watching totem pole behind her. Germanic syllables hang in his wake and she sees in him a pre-Christian angel. And I would silence that voice inside my mind for the briefest instant, so I may go without being hounded into the mysterious depths of my school upon excuses. I would try to look through tinted windows and try find the devil in you, where no devilry exists.

Obsession is psychological; devotion is moral. I try to locate in me both, but I lose myself in patterns and the search for faith, and realize that I don't even know your n... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/14173380/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/14173380/ Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:27:04 PDT
She told me that you hadn't eaten for two weeks, fed intravenously through the bags I used to dread when I was five, and six, and seven, in starch hospitals smelling like cleaning solution. When you used to take me to there on the front of your bicycle, I used to see the front of the bicycle wobble back and forth anddrawing a wavering dittany against the concrete. My five, six and seven year old heart wondering even then just how strong your limbs are to steer both of us, every morning, every afternoon.

I remember how I used to have dreams of you, mundane dreams out of character for me, when I would see you get out of tall beds late at night to use the washroom, shuffling old slippers through perversely magnified halls of not-homes. When I told my mother of these flashes, she would joke mingled with seriousness that she hoped you were all right. And now I have no more dreams, and can only listen with half a heart to grandmother try to make light of everything in her child's voice, fooling no one.

Ironic that I am going west to visit a friend because of her sick father, cancer gouging out his pancreas, waiting for death. In this double displacement on the chain of responsibility I displace myself closer to you but never reaching. She says, we are keeping this a secret, even from grandmother. And this is why I cannot return - it would make you suspicious. And I think, you are too wise, learned in these harsh medical facts yourself, and you will realize that death is growing in you.

Old age is only the beginning, how our bodies betray us. Now, twenty-one, I sit in front of my computer trying to digest the hard lumps of reality, and the only sensation I feel is hunger. I dig my nails into the flesh. If I am your flesh, I would reach into my body and pluck out your tumour, hugging whatever biological connection I find. And my mother of fifty-one, putting aside the diseased inheritance of her own frail body, is trying to find an airplane that will go along those same lines of biology, trying to get permission to return home, only to become confused and give up. I tell her that she has to eat enough for the two of you now. I do not know whom to worry for more.

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/13976265/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/13976265/ Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:13:21 PDT and I can safely say
you carry gods with you.
Descending from the sky
in a craft of wrought iron,
holding the world with your fingertips.

We sit,
looking up the traces of Muse
in week-old newspapers,
finding them but knowing
that you will never meet.

But you are the muse.
What is honour, imagination,
your perfect balance,
as I am Chaos that looks on Heaven,
a zenith that embraces
the Energy of Hell.

I will measure out the cubits
of acasia wood,
overlay, incense, gold;
tempered by the fire
of the warrior beyond the sea.
Out of depth of your tabernacle
I hail my loyalties,
ever pledging
even to the destruction of myself.

Your cherubim dance terrible,
wheels of eyes and wings
unwrap themselves in the blurred afterimage
of foreign currencies.
I will sweep aside their idols
of gold and silver
plating, no substance.
Let my right hand wither,
if I do not remember you.

I will awake the dawn.
Wrap myself in the remnants
of morning darkness.
The street lamps signal to the sound
of your journey,
I wave goodbye.
Late at night I stare into the shadows
of the Cave, wondering
what you see out of your eyes, now,
housed by the temple of your perfect body,
composing august dialogues
with the Prince of Air.
When you return I will welcome you,
in this sanctuary of our making,
Praise.

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/13482618/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/13482618/ Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:29:35 PDT
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt. Repairing doesn't work, nor does re-installation to another system folder. and my recent artwork and writing...*sigh*

Sorry if I don't respond to anyone's comments promptly in the next little while, and sorry for not writing this up sooner. The computers at work block my DA page because "it contains nudity and risque" (no idea).

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/12881177/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/12881177/ Mon, 07 May 2007 20:38:52 PDT

Count fourteen lights, theatre blaze
I sneak a photo in the dark.

First note, reverberating through your loss and pain –

Eurydice!

(Votre âme)

Singing to me, your lyre at your breast,
Heaving from your sorrow
Embrace the empty air,
fill it with words.

Lost, lost, music suffuses me.

Each time you appear, my soul cries out,

I am saved.

Your fingers around her shoulders,
Avoiding her gaze, for

She will die.

Look upon me. Watch me, me
In this expanse of darkness,
Me, one figure among many, touched by you,
Reanimated figure from the old stories.

Fourteen lights return, pull me from your lips.
Your blurred features clear,
Eyes too bright, and curling hair
Each limb trembling under the final lights,
Your voice, your fire.

II.

I cannot shake the silver coat of sound,
A layer above my skin.
Passing descent into the underworld of
Dusty corners and rumbling trains,

Into the light and air

Zéphyre.

Old musician, plucking the heartstrings of your lyre
By the memorial,
Fill the empty air.

I kneel, supplicante, on the other side of Queen Street,
Waiting for the moment
to record you in my camera obscura,
to swim in your river of notes
As they rise to the brass night.
They slide past, theatre goers, roller blade man,
Drop you a coin and take
Away a heartbeat.
It shines at their throat as they wheel away.

Your wispy hair
clear against The backlight.
Bard of the urban night,
the world, your stage.

III.

Not enough happened. Too much.
I walked away from your embrace, the last time.
I die this. You go on,
To Olympus, I a shadow far from your words, your voice.

I filled your words for a brief moment
In the hallways, trembling in my limbs,
Pass to yours through my fingertips.
My proof your existence, counterpoint to mine.

There were fourteen ways I could say goodbye,
All of them steeped in dusty corners

And under train tracks,

your soles.

No music.

He will sing again and again,
Reanimate destiny, again the rescue from Hades,
And he will sit on his street corner,
Pluck his lyre, with church bells to harmony.

I sit where we sat here, last year,
Where my immediate future, my memories, were stolen
my black bag on a random street corner,
camera obscura taken, wiped clean of your face.
I sit where we sat last year, your head
against my shoulder,
But neither could save the other from Hell.
If I turn, I still see your long eyes,
That with a gaze lifted me,
And avoided, cast me down.
Alone, with droves of ghosts passing by,
You vanish from the mirror,
And the background music tells me,

Walk on.

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/12832819/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/12832819/ Thu, 03 May 2007 20:04:16 PDT my lips drying, the needle going twice into each top and bottom gums. then he leaves, the wine-coloured uniform swishing out of the door. I am along on a throne meant to be comfortable, staring at the endless refracting light.

no pain, just strange discomfort, as two of my wisdom teeth were wiggled and plucked out like old Peruvian artefacts. a cotton wad inserted to where they used to be, and they, in a little plastic box, on display.

10:30 - it's alright, she said. you don't have to help. boxes, suitcases, furniture, she carts down the stairs in her slim figure, while i hold a hand against my left cheek in the bathroom and watch blood pool in the sink.

12:00 pm - the pain sets in, first the bottom, then the top, strings that control my arm, make it fly out to scatter a box of drawing pencils on the floor. 4B, 2H. i realign them, perfect row of blue staedtler, then look in the mirror. my ragged teeth, out of line, yellow from the blood and fringed with dark red.

i force an amoxycillin 500 mg between my teeth. retch.

i need to get out. i need to go home.

1:30 - i remove the cotton gauze. it slides across my tongue, trailing red jellyfish intestines of half-coagulated blood. my gums erupt like twin volcanoes, the blood filling my mouth, global warming swarming my tongue land to nowhere. God's plague.

hey look, i got my period too. how convenient.

3:00 - i have complained to everyone on my msn contacts. the wcom pen on the pad shakes. I fling it down, pain strings still control my every move. Ibuprofen, where is ibuprofen? How is your jaw?

the new wad of gauze has filled with blood. i suck my saliva out of it. blood lollipops, like those in harry potter for vampires, but it's eating myself i'm doing here.

i never knew there could be a blood-flavoured burp.

4:00 - unable to stand the prison of pain, i go out into the sunlight. my calves are weak from loss of blood, but i need to walk, i need to do something other than lie in bed with my muscles taut, half my head hurting. library, pharmacy, park, pharmacy, library streetparklibrary.

5:30 - hold on for a bit longer, dear.

until 9. i'll check to see if it's stopped bleeding at 9.

why don't you eat something? at least drink some water.

but if i open my jaw, it erupts, mom.

7:00 - so basically, i say over msn, at both ends of my torso there is a wad of cotton stuffed in a bodily crevice, catching blood.

you're gross, she replies.

what do you do if your gums don't stop bleeding? I ask.

her reply: but i'm not in dentistry anymore...

9:00 - I hang up with my mother, i go to the washroom. the gauze slides across my tongue, pulling jellyfish intestines in its wake. it is closed. it is
open, and pain slices through my head, into the back of my eyes, as i stand in front of the mirror, dripping blood and tears.

i -just - can't - stand - it -

it's the cytokines, dear...if you didn't eat for the last 12 hours and then lost blood...

it - hurts - like - hell

of course it does...

i dont - mind - the - pain i just want it to stttop - bleeding

go to emergency, dear. take a taxi, i'll pay for it.

10:00 - my cellphone runs out of money.

11:00 - SHANNON, GO TO EMERGENCY DAMMIT. (on my houseowner's phone)

ok, ok, i'm going...

11:30 - sitting on the row of red seats, my jaw pounding, the joint at the ears pulsing. a black rapper boy with a stab wound comes in with his mother. she sits down beside me. he's afraid of stitches, you know. but someone got him. well, he's trouble, but when you're raising kids...

what's your problem?

my gums won't stop bleeding. and i have my period.

oh i've been in your place girl. when i had 4 of my wisdom teeth out and had my period, i'd bite the head off anyone who came within a 4-feet radius.

she puts a paper bracelet around my wrist. H1155928. follow the green line, go to the room called Minor.

12:00 am - black rapper boy needs to use his cellphone outside. 4 minutes, mom. no, 2 minutes. c'mon mom, i'm not gonna runaway, i've made it this far. 4 minutes. fine, 2 to walk out and back, 2 on your cell.

12:10 - she goes to look for him, i look into Major. a lump of bedsheets on a bed, moving. tired doctors.

a woman shambles out of Major, her shift undone in the back. the shuffles back in. i suck on my blood lollipop.

the doctor, grey steel curls for hair and thin, too thin, but eyes bright and clear, where's jonath... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/12354506/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/12354506/ Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:53:30 PDT
Enough to override my resistance of actions of living by myself, eg eating in restaurants by myself, going to watch movies by myself, etc. A friend was supposed to go with me this weekend, but she had 3 essays to write, so I went alone. I've read the comic already, and I enjoyed the art very much. In the comic, it's gritty and dark, but sensitive, the watercolour giving it multiple layers of definition and complexity. And the movie, being from the same ppl as Sin City, I expected great things from the art side of the board.

I wasn't disappointed. The art in the film was a bit more forceful than in the comic, I feel, a lot more solid. That can't be helped, and it doesn't detract anything from the overall feel. Shots were faithful to the comic, and I think much improved. The whole movie gave me a good kind of headache from all the tight camera focus shots. I found the backdrops deliberately artificial, giving the film a sort of surreal quality. It's hard to describe, but a lot of the shots featured something very close in the foreground, and then very little middle groud, and then a lot of things background, so some shots looked like a filmed stage play, again making it surreal. I was dreading fantastical monsters, having seen the preview, but those fears were unfounded, as anything monstrous in the film could be put to ancient genetic engineering, or parallel to LOTR world elves-turn-orcs and the like. Costumes were realistic and fantastical at once. The scene with the oracle was like nothing I've seen in movies, except maybe The Fountain.

I think the storytelling was amazing, starting off with Leonidas' childhood, then you realize that Dilios is telling you a story, and the end was also being told by Dilios as a story to the council, and then to all the Greek forces. the shifts back and forth between the red/brown palates of the battle and the white palace was fitting.

As for the story itself, I'm not too thrilled with it, esp compared with some other Frank Miller stories like Watchmen. I know that 300 is fairly old, but it just seems such a stereotypical theme, eg small band of brothers facing impossible odds and attaining glory and freedom. When I'd just read the comic, I was worried that some people might use this as justification of the war in the Middle East, and lo and behold, someone does: [link] - Iranian official no less.

I've had a couple of discussions with Korenna over whether Iranian government interpretation was justified. I agree with her that it's quite an overboard view of it, and there's nothing inherent in 300 that suggest that it's an attack on Persians in general. However, with the film, I find certain tidbits uneasy, such as Leonidas' determination to use reason (which in my view is sort of hypocritical of him, since reason is the last property that I associate with him) and his determination to root out mysticism, which sounds a lot like some anti-Islamic demagogery. His rejection of Ephialtes, which is for a good reason I think (that the phalanx works as a team, so anyone who couldn't operate as a a component wouldn't be effective), but the downside of that is a sense of if you can't fit in with my theories, then to hell with you. Also, an aspect which I don't think is in the comic, the emphasis on the anti-war council (Theron), making people who oppose war seem like their attitudes stem from their evil nature and for self-interest. I feel that the story could be less 2-dimensional in terms of people's interests and so forth. Theron was a deliciously evil character, but I think they screwed him up in the end [spoilers] when he was revealed to be carrying Persian coins at the council. Being deliciously evil, I think he'd have more sense than to carry incriminating evidence with him anywhere, much less into a political council.

I did like how Queen Gorgo had a lot more airtime in the film, really punching through that sense of everyone in Sparta, male or female, being every inch steel (I snickered helplessly during her "only Spartan women give birth to real men!" talk - how awesome of her). But, as I recall, wasn't she more sub-Saharan-African-looking in the comic? In the comic, because the drawing wasn't a painful rendition of everyone's faces, appearances didn't matter so much. But still she was an anchor in what would have been whites against blacks. Make her white, and then it seems that everyone o... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/11749218/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/11749218/ Fri, 09 Feb 2007 15:39:28 PST
i picked up BBC/HBO's series "Rome" a couple of weeks ago (after swearing to settle down and be a good student), since i've been seeing billboards advertising season 2, and also because i will be studying Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in March. after a few episodes i shut up about complaints of there not being enough good historical dramas in english.

the bottom-up story is wonderful. kind of makes me want to live back then, effectively replacing my Romanticism England withdrawal (see last journal entry). of course, stuff like slavery and torture and violence don't rub me quite the right way (note that sex isn't included in the list, which is portrayed quite often in the series). even so...I read Shakespeare's version a couple of years ago when ~korenna read it for her grade 12 english class, but wasn't prepared for the depth of emotionality i'd be falling into. byebye schoolwork.

i watched "The Kalends of February" a couple of days ago, nearly died watching it, along with some anime that included a bit of bondage - bad idea. i had a nightmare where the conspirators decides to turn on Brutus instead and torture him to death. they strung him from the ceiling and basically opened him up. and repeat. and repeat. i woke up screaming and heard the house owner's baby crying outside...if this keeps up (and i think i'll die watching the battle at Phillipi) i'll scare more than just the baby.

well, i advise people to watch the series i guess?

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/11027713/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/11027713/ Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:52:41 PST where the Eternal are.

I have immersed myself in the delineation of human passions. I would immerse myself in such ten years more, but the transience of courses provides no grounds for my devotion. Maybe the D level course would, if it could, fulfil my need to press on with this I love, but a year's worth of agonized waiting interspersed between it seems unbearable. And the quality of that is uncertain - trying desperately not to wake up from the dream of life and end this, I doubt I can lean back into the water again and let the submerged sunlight play over my head, as I half drown and half sleep in its embrace.

The mundane interrupts my meditations. To shift now to Research Methods instead of the high poetry of Romanticism seems a poor exchange of loyalties. What nourishment could I now draw from correlational research? I never felt the duty for Psychology as I feel for English. Owing researchers nothing, I cannot love; owing writers everything I can anguish. To the professors who even say to us, I was made to teach this course I have no hopes or sympathies. They are there to teach for the sake of their tenure positions, and I owe them nothing. To him, the former and regulator of my mind, I owe the rejuvenation of my academic life.

Unworthiness is overwhelming. I worship at the feet of a God of whom I cannot discern the face - a back of the hand, a flash of a ring, handwriting from multiple-centenarian manuscripts, are all I know. Even at my best I fail to comprehend the sublime, even if I do receive 92 on a paper, remembering how the day after I lost sleep over something I hadn't thought of. It is Eternal and Infinite, and grasping it leaves my hands raw and it leaks out like vapour.

My destitution tempts me with comforting isolation and daily weeping, but to be brave and face this strange loss is what they would have wanted. If they were here - one would laugh at me and make me laugh at myself; one would rail me with excellent poetic defenses, and one would express his pity for my blindness. I have not even a body to not lament for. Where do I fix my gaze? What Sublime, what Eternal? What is past is lost?

You will be my constant companions. My identity is formed through knowing you. You will sustain me through a thirty-hour bus ride through the long Canadian winter, whispering murder, political justice, and intellectual beauty into my ears, and I will drink your every word.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends upon me; my soul's bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
The massey earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
- from P. B. Shelley, "Adonais"

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/10717144/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/10717144/ Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:57:26 PST
i first saw his book at the toronto airport: All That Matters, which was a sequel to his first novel, The Jade Peony, an account of a chinese family living in vancouver, and their struggles, revelations, and cultural mismatch. All That Matters has a cover of brilliant red butterflies, and the cover of the book had a consistency which i like the best, the cover of a new book - something that feels like the underside of leather or the upside of rare velvet, or of butterfly wings, except maybe two dozen wings crushed together, then filtered through red light. the tactile beauty of the book aside, i understood that i had flown upon something that fit me, having lived as a chinese immigrant in vancouver on 2 separate occasions. but my plane called, and i left for vancouver.

the second time i saw his book was when i tried to sleep over at Hart House, the University of Toronto community centre. there was a small library with antiquated windows overlooking ivy and courtyard, and i settled comfortably between two rust red leather plush armchairs to read The Jade Peony, except at 12:30 a.m., security promptly kicked me out. only now, as i write this, do i realise that the leather plush had the exact touch and feel of those red butterflies on the cover of All That Matters.

this year i saw the author's face on one of those horrid fluorescent green sheets of paper that Cultural Affairs so likes to use for notices, but the green was not so distracting because his name and face were superimposed above what would otherwise have been mold to me. Wayson Choy was coming to our campus to do a reading - and hosted by one of my favourite english professors, no less. i counted the days like i have never counted days, and was not disappointed.
the first thing he did when he walked up to the podium was to take off his reading glasses and close his book. then he looked at all of us and announced that he will not do a reading. his books were on sale, he said, and we can read as well as he can speak, so he would tell us a little about the themes of his life instead.

When I was born, my grandfather looked at me and said, I will name this child Choi Wai Sun, and he will be a lucky child.
he was born in vancouver grew up there, homosexual and chinese, as a part of one of those large extended chinese families that few westerners can understand. One of the first things he told us about was when his father became very ill in toronto, and when Choy went to visit him at the hospital, he would always pass a little corner store. One day he went in and chatted with the store owner [which i suggest you do - they have many things to teach you], and bought lottery tickets. nothing came of that. a week later he tried his hand again, and he bought Guess how many I bought? some of us in the audience said Eight! and others yelled Seven! and he laughed. you see, he said, if I stuck to the chinese system of luck I would have bought eight, but no, I followed the western system of luck and bought seven. And he won fifteen thousand dollars - enough to help his family through his father's illness.

another thing he told us was about taking graduate creative writing courses at UBC. [i made some grumbling noises - i would die happy if i were able to take graduate creative writing courses at UBC.] anyhow, his professor at the time cut up little pieces of paper, each with a colour, and handed them out to her students; they must write a piece which featured this colour. And when i looked at my colour, i thought, what am I going to do with "pink?" but upon going home, he heard his mother and aunt talk about pieces of jewelry that they had inherited from their parents, and as Wayson Choy stepped through the kitchen door, they were discussing a peculiar piece of jade, which was not green, but pink. And he backed out of the kitchen. he had a story for his assignment, and he had what would become his first novel. “When Grandmama died at the age of 83, our family held its breath.”

it was his joke that if he had taken his course a semester earlier, he would have had Tennessee Williams as his instructor; if he had taken it a semester later he would have had another well-known and established canadian author as his instructor. the promising but then unrecognised professor that Wayson Choy had would later win the Pulitzer Prize - Carol Shields. [] and after she congratulated me on the publication of my novel, I hung up, because, well, you know, she had just won the Pulitzer Prize, so there was nothing to congratulate HER about.

after the reading was over, amid the thronging students of Canadian Literature class, i contemplated talking with Wayson Choy. [Though my friends can tell you i don't shut up,] i am usually withdrawn with... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/10086198/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/10086198/ Fri, 15 Sep 2006 23:27:20 PDT to fall in love again

and i'm writing like a normal person for once, because i can't play up to anything that happened this summer in any sort of artistic way, since what happened this summer is art in itself.

about 3 years ago, i fell in love - with IB. IB is a high school program for students who are supposedly bright and consciencious, but mostly quite out of their mind and...used to BSing a lot to achieve their ends. Those who have gone through it know what I mean. I enjoyed this program because i have been known to be out of my mind occasionally, if i had one in the first place. although competition was present and cliques were inevitable, i enjoyed it very much for the creative but critical thinking amosphere and how it change dme intellectually to become someone who thought deeper and harder about different subjects, and how it made me locate myself in my community.

and then highschool ended, and one of our IB executives turned to me while carry a box of papers out of the school and said, shannon, do you realise that we are post-IB-grads now? and then i move away from vancouver to utsc, and cried 5 times in 3 days. at utsc i was a londer for the first 2 years, studying more than setting foot out of the door, going out with friends about twice a year, holding onto some bitterness that time had to deprive me of the best couple years of my life and landed me in a place where professors looked through students with misted eyes and then scrambled back to their research. co-op for me was honestly a way to avoid seeing my mother too often, as i didn't get along with her very well, except only i was of that opinion but not her, and i couldn't very well tell her that i didn't like her. i love her, you must understand, but love isn't something we can help, whereas there are reasons for disliking someone.

i was going for an editorial position for english co-op, but the first offer that approached me was working at Centauri Summer Arts Camp. i confess that i really didn't want to go, since it took me away from toronto and where i live, as well as conveniences like chinese food, computer access whenever i need, library, and boyfriend. added to the forced bargain was that while i lost the former 3 aspects mentioned above for the duration of my absence, the last i lost permanently because i would be absent. and this was very forced, you understand, since i have never had a boyfriend and this was a pleasant surprise that i am still not quite sure actually happened. so in loss i wrote a lot about a certain biblical people as i see pertaining to my case, and went off to Centauri, not at all a happy camper.

i was extremely honest with certain staff at camp who asked me whether i wanted to be there. except now, looking back on it, i would not have had it any other way. losing chinese food, internet access, library, and boyfriend amounted to 4 stars snuffed out in a galaxy of other stars. Centauri is like IB, except all arts of different sorts and not so much science. the closest we came to science was mouse trap car racing and a weird workshop another staff member ran on quantum metaphysics. i wrote more than 60 pages of poetry with 2 writing programs i assisted with, and helped many children create comics, draw anime, write choose-your-own-adventure stories with the necessary amount of gore and axe murders; i played a Narnian giant for a whole day and led 10 girls on attacks, acted mean for an evening as a Slytherin prefect, and became a human chess piece as Venom, and died many spectacular deaths. i helped 2 dorms organize a haunted house and scared 12-year-olds, tried to belly-dance, drank more alcohol than i ever looked at, danced in the rain, got up at 5:45 to film sunrises...

strange that i can't really describe it. if a soldier ever got attached to his regiment by the way of his heart, if a pope ever felt his soul connected from God to his people, if an author ever felt that his characters became autonomous and winked at him out of his ink, then that would sum up my 2 months there. the first thing that happened was two people helped me with my bags, i got a hug from someone i've only met once, and someone said, you're with me. and the staff and i wrote, laughed, and cried together for 2 months, so short in time but so long in memory. every moment was poignant, and i had no dreams for 2 months, because no weird dream of mine would compare with what happened during the day.

i was wholly changed. while IB changed my mind, Centauri changed my spirit. i am more open to experience, more likely to take responsibility, and more aware of the people around. while i am as busy as hell with 6 courses, i feel that what i got this summer was a battery charge plugged into a constellation. so many of the staff and campers said that Centauri, to them, is like a haven where they can go back to and be more than themselves. it is a hav... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/9208507/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/9208507/ Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:37:29 PDT tata! ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/9067808/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/9067808/ Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:38:55 PDT
Genesis 16
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived for ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt upon her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!" But Abram said to Sarai, "Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.
The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am running from my mistress Sarai." The angel of the LORD also said to her, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude." [...]
So she named the LORD who spoke to her, "You are El-roi"; for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing in?" Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Genesis 21
[...]Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. so she said to Abrahm, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac." The matter was very distressing to Abraham on the account of his son. But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring." So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from Heaven, and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him." Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.

The Muslim Account of Hagar:
Abraham brought her and her son Ishmael while she was suckling him, to a place near the Ka'ba under a tree on the spot of Zam-zam, at the highest place in the mosque. During those days there was nobody in Mecca, nor was there any water So he made them sit over there and placed near them a leather bag containing some dates, and a small water-skin containing some water, and set out homeward. Ishmael's mother followed him saying, "O Abraham! Where are you going, leaving us in this valley where there is no person whose company we may enjoy, nor is there anything (to enjoy)?" She repeated that to him many times, but he did not look back at her Then she asked him, "Has Allah ordered you to do so?" He said, "Yes." She said, "Then He will not neglect us," and returned while Abraham proceeded onwards, and on reaching the Thaniya where they could not see him, he faced the Ka'ba, and raising both hands, invoked Allah saying the following prayers:

'O our Lord! I have made some of my offspring dwell in a valley without cultivation, by Your Sacred House (Kaba at Mecca) in order, O our Lord, that they may offer prayer perfectly. So fill some hearts among men with love towards them, and (O Allah) provide them with fruits, so that they may give thanks.' (14.37) Ishmael's mother went on suckling Ishmael and drinking from the water (she had).

When the water in the water-skin had all been used up, she became thirsty and her child also became thirsty. She star... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/8293712/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/8293712/ Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:53:50 PST Sympathy for the Devil
"So said the Apostate Angel, though in pain, vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair: Farewell happy fields, where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail infernal world! And thou, profoundest hell, receive thy new possessor, one who brings a mind not changed by place or time! A mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." -Milton in Paradise Lost, Book I.
I am deceived and enthralled by your words and your lies, Satan, the Adversary. I have no "strength of character." I have no religion and the fortitude of God to back me. The Evil ones are lured by your consort and daughter Sin, the Righteous see past your lies to your dissembling forked tongue, and the Scholars love you, you Fallen Angel, Lucifer MorningStar, for you deep sadness and pride in the face of the omnipotent that we quell under. I be damned for wanting your children, maybe to crawl back in my womb to chew my entrails. I be damned for loving you because you are a figure of all of us when we do not learn to back down. I be damned for calling you a hero for giving consciousness to that piece of naked flesh serving Adam blindly in the Garden of Paradise.

Past Apperances
"This one manuscript ensured that the Old English religious poetry survived to this day...'Cleopad donne se alda ut of helle, wriced wordcwedas weregan reorde. ensegan stefne:"Hwaer com engla drym, pe we on heofnum habban sceoldan?"'" -Patrick McBrine's lecture on "Leohtbered"
Intelligent face, but he is a small and pale man with glasses and fair hair. He may have never seen the sun outside, so like a narrow bean sprout. He greeted me before but I never replied much because I was studying, only saying "Thank you" to compliments about my midterm marks. And then his guest lecture changed him in my eyes. I understood after that he did not spend his life underground but above us all, flipping crumbling tousands tongues to translate, translate, a wizard flipping through records in a tower, shaded magnificence. I could not understand how someone so small and pale can speak and move as if the Holy Spirit were upon him, his voice strong to utter the foreign music of Old English to your ears, move us, transform him from a teaching assistant to one of the Heavenly Host, one of the Fallen Angels, all the writers and scholars he brings to life with his voice, a prophet.

Incarnation
Sometimes I wonder if, if Satan can think Sin into being, whether my I see people who look like my characters because I thought about them first. A rediculous idea but...all the same...
I saw her first, her not pretty face, but calm, a straight nose I envy, wispy hair, short. Nothing. Then he stepped out of the isle in a coat as red as blood, his hair fair, his figure recalling the Classical idea of masculine beauty. I thought it was Satan, since I've been looking at Paradise Lost artwork too much. Then I knew it was him, another of my characters' faces somehow on someone real, and I panicked. I confess it was wrong for me to stalk them. But they looked so much like Marcelle and Kade, or Cade, depends on which one of my stories you read [crossover]. I thought I could see veiled strength and a deep sadness in his eyes, which only glanced at me in passing. That glance was enough to make my heart beat to bursting, my breathing irregular, and to squeeze the shooping basket so hard that I got bruises. so beautiful...so beautiful...I don't know if it was what people call love at first sight; but it was not a first sight, just an incarnation that I saw briefly after years of having him live in my mind. It is dangerous. This obsession to see smoky spirits take shape in real people has caused me to be inattentive yet alert, jittery, and pining away that they may be real.

Baptism
I crossed the river Jordan, the Sky opened, and I saw an Angel in the sun.
I was feeling confused over the weekend over what I want my social life to be. Someone had interrupted my vow of solitude, and I abandoned my duties to...what?. "that's a nice hat." Fine. Ok. No. And past disliking myself to having MPD, with Marcelle yelling in my ear on the way home, you bitch, you bitch, I knew you would turn out like me, you can't deny it, I told you, but the gods what can you do...and I cried. And a couple of days later I went jogging along highland Creek, and wondered if drowning myself was the solution. The water was shallow, but cold, and as I waded in I had a sense of being so out of control and out of touch with either bank that I feared death, feared slipping and being carried away. But then the clouds broke and the sun shone into the water, lighting my path from Chaos to the World. It is easier to walk on water after you have taken the first step; it is easier to continue after having the first fire of resolve. My head was warm from the sun, my fee... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/8032622/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/8032622/ Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:37:59 PST
I love you. The closest thing to a father, brother, and lover that I have ever known. you lead our people, going to death, and kept our people loyal to themselves. You are the brightest star in the heavens, giving light when there is none. I am content to have known you for a short while in my life, before I had to punish myself with someone else. I am content to be a mere twinkle by the fire of your honour.

I hate you. Because of your existence, I lost everything that I held dear, a master, a leader, a country, and my dignity. And somehow because of my twisted mind I ended up with you. I thought that when your child was born, I would strangle him, but I didn't. You blamed me for throwing away my life to act like my idea of a hero. I blamed you for everything. If I feel anything towards you it is lust for your physical perfection, your nonchalance in the face of either love or danger, and how you hurt me.

I met you around 5 years ago, when I woke up with a splitting headache on a bed that was not my own, and saw your back while you studied into the small hours of the morning. Since then, I have been killed, reborn, and united with you a million times over. I know you never abandoned me. I left you sometimes for others, and you never resented my absence. You are the beauty I want to be, the calm surface of the hidden pool, the reflection of my hopes, and everlasting and unconditional love.

You are so much higher than me that I daren't think it, and in some universe it is a different story. When she sat down that day and talked about how you treat me, as if you were real, you became real. Before you died I knew you were going to die, because it is my nature to kill the things I love the most. I cried so much that night, it was like you were actually dying. And after, whenever I think of you, it is always with sorrow. I have moved away from the place that reminds me of you with every block of the road, but I still retain a space of all the places we've been to. I mark your grave with a falling petal.

At first I took your name for another and I didn't know who you were. When I knew you a little, you still did not show yourself to me. You did not hate me, I know, because you did your duty, but you were indifferent. Yet it was only I who saw your shame and torment serving him who defeated you, and your love for another. Dear, mislead man, rest on the distant island I shall never set foot on, and remember me fondly.

You are at the figurehead on the ship, the arrow to the bow, the wise ruler, courageous leader, and the one who tried to see me as I am, not as I was born into. I caused your death, the agonizing moments of blind suffocation. I'm sorry, sorry that the last moment of your life was in disappointment and pain, that I could not seve you forever like I wanted to. I could only lead your brother to your grave, trusting my blind instinct. When he raised you again I told you everything, but you rotted before me. your earthly figure was no more, but may your spirit sing at the gates of Heaven.

I know that this could not have happened, but for the first time I found an equal companion. No one is as bright as you, as relaxed, and with you I feel perfect ease, even though it was a war. when I was sent back, I said goodbye and told you that I would write about you as much as I can. I still mean to keep that promise.

I didn't mean it when I said that you were trying to take over my mind. I know that you meant well. You are the parable of my life, the one whom I can compare to and realise that my life is not so bad after all. Maybe the advice you've given me were a part of my own mind, but maybe you are really out there, somewhere, telling me your secrets, knowing my deepest fears, and holding my heart in your breast so it would not tremble. You can be brutal sometimes, but I love you all the more for your honesty and your constant prescence.

For the first time, I masked myself in another completely, but I can taste his heart, he wants you, loves you so much, but because of that he moves away, afraid that he may betray you, and you may betray him. Thank you for helping him balance his life, for trusting him when he doesn't deserve trust. I am afraid that neither you nor he will survive the test of this turbulent age, and that fear makes me weep dry nights and nights. I want you to succeed.... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/7383038/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/7383038/ Thu, 22 Dec 2005 14:00:42 PST
But this just brings to mind that my yet-unborn Tibia comic and possibly the Dracula one as well are both clamouring around my head, unrealised. I need to start before I lose the nerve, and before someone else gets to it.

Incidentally...if I don't get to make anything Christmassy this yr...Happy Holidays! ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/7071235/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/7071235/ Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:52:38 PST
Yesterday I asked the wind why he was so angry, and he replied that he wasn’t, and it was just his duty to bring in the snow clouds this time of year. I trusted him and my statistics professor who professed (pardon) that it would snow today. And as I type up my compare/contrast essay in the computer lab, I can’t help but notice how the clouds are moving in like vast whales, driven by the wind. The difference in white and dark grey is almost alarming.
Out of the west comes a flock of black birds, distant – I did not see all of them at once, and it looked as if they were flying out of the clouds. Maybe they were. It is a strange blackbird foreshadowing, as the next moment bird-feather white flakes descend on the other side of the wide window, relief bundles from heaven. Soon the snow falls, horizontally.
I wonder if those with their back to me in the facing building had seen the birds and the snowflakes, whether they are writing a compare/contrast essay too, and maybe took a break to take a look at the strange literary symbols that nature employs to tell us that winter is here.

-

A Thirst for Air

They pulled a man, once
out of that vast grey quicksand
waterlogged and dying from
Thirst,

Lack of Breath.

They crowded around his shell
like curious meerekats.

Give him water, on simpered
but his lungs swallowed for him.
Give him air, another chittered
so they all looked at each other
and tried to catch the breeze
with their horned little hands.

He died as they watched
like children

out for a run and back
at the water fountain,
gasping the vertical stream
shooting them in the mouth like a soldier's suicide
they try to drinkpant at once
and hear their heart bursting in their ears

lack of water.

Listen.
They pulled a man once
out of that vast grey desert
his dual need, one was to deny
the other.
He died
while they watched
like children

-

Nightmare

She was visiting a ski resort with a few friends, and met an old acquaintance who was running a small grocery store. It just so happens that misfortune had befallen the acquaintance's family, and all of her family but she had died from a sickness.
Hearing this, she decided to help out and bought her grocery at her acquaintance's store.
One day, she was taking a shuttle bus to the slopes, and the acquaintance got on. Other commuters asked after the girl, whether she could manage the store now. The girl nodded tiredly, and said softly "En, I have help now."
Who are those help though? they asked.
"They will be getting on at the next stop."
She wonders about the help this girl has. She looked at one of the other commuters and they both shrugged. Wait and see.
The bus stops, and the front door opens. The girl rises as her family boards the bus. They are pale, in early degrees of decomposition but not quite rotting. Her sister sits with her feet swinging above the floor, smiling innocently at the passengers with her white, puckered lips. The father speaks occasionally.
No one dares to look at one another.
The bus is silent. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/6629220/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/6629220/ Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:37:31 PDT
On Monday: Voices of a Distant Star, Read or Die, Slam Dunk.
Voices: It was something innocookie might relate to. It was quite a sad story. I wish there was more of it.
Read or Die: Er...very unconventional. I think for an OAV it wrapped itself up nicely. About how an organization, The British Library, dispatched misfits with special powers to track down a lost book that a group of likewise misfit villains are trying to use to kill mankind. I went home with "Za Pay-Paaaa!!" ringing in my head.
Slam Dunk: My cousin in China used to like this series 6 years ago. She recommended it to me but I never got into sports stories much. But I watched it and...well you go and watch it. It's old, so the animation isn't as superb as it is now, but there's a feel to these ancient animes. There are moments of good hilarity. And hot guys. We didn't watch a lot of it, but when I looked it up after I got home I got majorly attached to Mitsui Hisashi, due to the fact that he has gangster blood in him and that his birthday is the same as mine. And he has false front teeth.

On Wednesday: FF VII Advent Children, Gundam Seed Destiny
(I didn't stick around for Destiny)
AC: ><
I have never played any FF games, or read any summaries, or anything. What little I know about it comes from mad-obsessed guy friends in Highschool. I have downloaded more than the healthy amount of art from websites on FF though. Today I did some more research, and realised that I thought Cloud, Squall, and Tidus were the same person. (FF fans, please don't kill me.) So I resolved to understand a bit of the background before I walk into the lounge.
A friend from Van - TriangularCube - tried to explain the basic history surrounding FF VII last night over MSN (and continues to do so even as I am writing this - thx a mil) Basic is perhaps not the right word. It took a few hours to get to something like 30 years before the start of the game. But I was going to get up early this morning to help edit a friend's cover letters, and so I had some time before my first class. I went to [link] to have a look at the story, and got nicely confused. I understood everything up to the point where Sephiroth got dumped into the Lifestream, and I completely lost track from there onwards.
Luckily there was a sort of prelude to AS, which was a 2-D traditional anime about the said Sephiroth getting dumped into Lifestream incident. It cleared a bit up...
AC itself. The animation is wonderful, no one would disagree with that. Characters...I don't know. It seems that everyone is way too depressed. But since I never played FF VII I can't make too much judgments on that. It does give the film a darker tone (As a side note, after I looked at some FF VII in-game graphics when I got home, I shuddered). The action sequences were quite well done, I think, though they confused me a bit. The story was quite interesting. I felt the urge to cry by the end, although I've never really formed attachments to these people. Something is extremely touching about the whole thing. I never liked 3-D animation due to the lack of humanity in polygons, but now I've changed my mind. This film is imbued with humanity through and through.
And korenna, I think you'd enjoy this film from the point of view of a lot of flashbacks and weird atmospheres.

I was going to draw some more Dracula stuff this week, but it looks like I'll be spending time re-watching AC instead. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/6168526/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/6168526/ Mon, 08 Aug 2005 12:22:04 PDT I first read it in the summer between grade 9 and 10, when I was really bored with a math course in summer school. A friend suggested Ender's Game (a book that goes before Speaker for the Dead) and I'd already read it. Speaker, though...
At that time I wasn't in IB yet, and I hadn't taken a whole load of stuff like World Cultures and write stuff like World Lit essays. So although I saw Speaker as a masterpiece I jsut went along for the ride. Now as I read it again, I find that I could anticipate the principles that the book conveys, understand its theories, and feel the cogs in my brain work furiously to organize some of my own. I understand the clash of cultures and the need for self-preservation, the fact that people can only change so much before they die of change, and the power of reading a book more than once.
Because you're not the same person you were when you read it first. you can see different noks and crannies you've never noticed. You never step in the same river twice. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5679573/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5679573/ Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:50:05 PDT
I have mixed feelings about it. I am glad that perhaps after peopleread it, they will no longer think of Dracula as simply a vampire of legend, or worse, some plush cartoon character from Sasame Street. Someone has exhumed him,and maybe he will finally give a sigh that he has last penetrated the minds of man, and no longer stalk the night.

Yet because someone else has written a novel about him, a novel which promises to be popular and wide-sweeping; I have lost the personal feelings towards those tumbled-down ruins of hin, wreathed in the high Carpathian mountain mists, and those who have met him and looked into his eyes are lost to me forever. I thought I had something there, something original, and something personal, but it has changed.

And I feel as if I have let them down. those who have visited my gallery would probably have noticed that I have put many deviations and scraps regarding him. Even if I do manage to write something about him in the future, it will not be the first, and thus will be shadowed by what came before. It is true that nothing is absolutely original, but I had his life in some locus of my mind that others have not touched. And it will not be the same.

To say goodbye is too drastic, maybe, but I have done so with much tears.When I am older and wiser, maybe I can reclaim his life as for some reason meaningful to me, or embrace other annals of history with as much passion as I embraced his life, but now I feel as if I can't. I have never had a break-up in terms of a relationship, but I think that it would feel something like this.

Lost.
Lost.
Lost. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5301092/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5301092/ Sun, 08 May 2005 10:17:38 PDT
~ All the stores close on Sundays
~ "Downtown" is empty by 8:00pm
~ The phonebook (yellow and white pages combined) is about 350 pages...for the entire province
~ Postal codes for Charlottetown start with either C1A ot C1E - and C1E is for places waaaay out there
~ "Are you Japanese?"
"No."
"Are you Korean?"
"No."
"Are you, uh..."

But,
~ Registering for courses at the university takes about 5 minutes - no bureaucracy whatsoever
~ If you stand in the rain, several people will offer you a lift home in rapid succession
~The Irish accent is amazing!

]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5246535/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5246535/ Mon, 02 May 2005 11:59:36 PDT
IB exams!

In my experience, the days before seemed like wading through mud. After the first one started, it was like parachuting. You jump off the plane and you're falling. Then you feel a yank and your parachute opens. You're safe as long as you've calculated the wind speed right and know where you're landing.

Of course, there are a few whose parachute never opens, and you plummet screaming to the trees. But let's hope that it's not you.

Just a few little things to expect:

teachers will pick a few doomed individuals to go into the gym before the exam, and make them sign forms saying that they are witness to course packages which have not been opened and/or tampered with.

Someone will bring a whole pack of batteries (about 16 of them) to the Math exams.
If this is you, prepare to become the centre of attention as other less fortunate students beg you to lend them a couple.

During break when the rest of the school is not trapped in an either under- or over-heated room, they will purposefully restate their freedom forcefully by banging on the blackboard that reads SILENCE: EXAMS IN PROGRESS.

Teachers will ask you to strip your waterbottles of the encircling label. If the exam involves a break, then you will walk into the room seeing hundreds of identical bottles, and not know where your seat is supposed to be. Looking for your seat too hard may result in teachers accusing you of trying to see other people's answers.

The desks that you write your exams on are generously donated by the rest of the school, probably at short notice. Therefore, IBO and the IB teachers are not responsible for matter such as grease, dust, dirt, or other materials upon their surface. As a personal note, I think I had chocolate cake on mine.

Someone will cheat. Since this is IB, maybe someone will cheat creatively. Once, before the advent of cellphones, a student pretended that he had a severe car accident, and came to the exams bandaged to the teeth. During the exam, teachers noticed that a car was driving around the school over and over again. It was revealed that the bandaged IBer did not actually have an accident, and that he only pretended to have done so only to be able to conceal a microphone and earpiece in his head bandages. He was communicating with the accomplice driving around the school, who in turn was communicating with a poor slave researching madly in the library. The teachers were so impressed by his creativity that they nearly awarded him an honourary diploma. Nearly, but did not. THIS IS A TRUE STORY but DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

I hope you have enjoyed this installment, and that it has cheered you inspite of the trials and tribulations ahead. I wish you luck.

Any inconsistencies, misinformation, and exaggerations are by no means a respobsibility of the writer. They are simply due to the constant fluxus of the organization known as IB and their students, who get more outrageous as each year goes by. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5221452/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/5221452/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:33:56 PDT
I was lulling in the fever-blood, unable to sleep, and then blankness of memory takes over the few hours between falling down into sub-conscious and waking, waking in the morning to think that I can't ever eat meat again. Even the angel food cake that obstinately clings to the plastic container is meat clining to the bone, and I can't cut the breakfast food so I break the bread with my hands.

Carnivore, blood drenches my hands, the war paints from the dawn of evolution.

Between my teeth - the strings of muscles, myosin no longer pulling, and my stomach churns -

I feel fur bristling out of my pores, heavy antlers punching out of my skull, and I dash through the undergrowth, a breaking surf of blackberry thorns and bullets slam into my knees
and I feel a fraction of the horror of the milling cows and pigs, following the red eyes of the Judas-goat off to slaughter, the pen closes in and doom
and I feel the mad rolling eyes of an ox, on its knees and fettered to the ground, its throat slashed open and red mad blood pouring out, into the basin that the man holds, whom he has given rides to since he was a boy.

A beautiful man, in a diner, immaculate and dressed in dark suits (that don't reveal the stain of blood). The resteraunt is under lockdown, and the doors are shut. The pretty lights that hang a meter from the surface of the clean table, in a booth in a corner, plush chairs and comfortable dining.
Sit here, he says, taking out a variety of knives and forks, his arsenal to eat with. I wanted to refuse to I walked away. Big mistake. Running, like the deer in the forest, the blind herd-mind of the sheep, straining against bonds that I can't even see, and he shoots, the hunter, the beautiful man in the resteraunt, and I go back and sit.
The waitress (invisible) lays out a stack of clean white plates, and he takes one and lays it in front of me. Takes a knife and puts it into my right hand, takes my left hand; a gentlemanly gesture -
and puts my forearm on the plate, smiles and says, you do the honours, cut an inch or two below your elbow and another cut below your wrist, but then make a vertical cut down your arm, and peel the flesh from the vertical cut towards you; now, cut along the bone and don't waste my dinner.
I pretend not to understand, and I get a scrap of newspaper, teetering on the edge of the table, and I draw a diagram for him, asking, is this what you mean?
He says, don't drop the newspaper, or let your hands under the table, you naughty girl, or I'll get my people to circle you with knives, and you'll stand within their circle, while they peel your clothes and flay you.

I raise the knife, it's blunt and barely cuts into my skin. He watches, a silent prescence on the other side of the table. The fear as the pinprick of the knife measures out the lines to cut , my left arm on the white plate, under the small rainbow halogen lights.

The next morning, I wonder if I would have bled to death from the wrist cut fast enough so that I would die before I could raise the knife and cut another morsel again, and I wonder why I didn't even think to stab him, but when the fear of being eaten grips you, you forget everything else.

Maybe I shouldn't have ordered Chicken Pot Pie at White Spot
and Maybe I shouldn't have watched Sin City. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4871428/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4871428/ Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:26:10 PST
Go look @ Wally-Walrus and egad. Heck just go look at all of them


sorry i haven't been posting lately...U of T studio doesn't give much to post.

Those who have it, have fun in Spring break...before you work your butt off for the IB exams in May. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4415901/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4415901/ Tue, 25 Jan 2005 21:50:41 PST ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4364882/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4364882/ Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:38:07 PST ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4354092/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/4354092/ Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:27:48 PST ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3983057/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3983057/ Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:36:10 PST ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3813589/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3813589/ Thu, 11 Nov 2004 21:19:53 PST It's about the Endless: Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Destruction and Delirium. They aren't exactly deities, they are just what their names are. An arcane group tries to capture Death around WWI, and they catch Dream accidentally. The comic spans 9 volumes, I believe, with side stories and a lot of supplementary art. It's incredible.

It has gotten me so obsessive that I've actually made my first real Fanart piece. I strongly advise people who enjoy an alternate, darker form of Fantasy to read it. It will disturb you to no end, but you won't be and you won't think the same way again. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3663641/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3663641/ Sun, 24 Oct 2004 14:00:30 PDT [link]... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3410366/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3410366/ Mon, 20 Sep 2004 21:33:34 PDT Now it's even worse. Professor for Art history feeds us ideas tht the old traditions hould be rejected, and the studio profs don't teach much skills, instead they let us "mess around". I don't understand how this works. How can we mess aoround if we don;t even know what we're messing around with? I remember a girl in my highschool art class. She painted a brilliant painting of a tree root, and the teacher said, "well, it's just a tree..."
So what if it's just a tree? Why do modern, postmodern and contemporary art have to always reject what has gone by? the things that were favoured before were favoured for reason. although society changes, we carry our history along with us, so shouldn't it stand to reason that we would carry some likely traditions? Why can't art just be "pretty"? Why does it always have to have some deep meaning? Sure, things like inter-disciplinary works make us think, like the garden in Toronto downown based off Bach's music, but how can you design a garden if you can't even draw a straight line?

Maybe it's me; maybe I am supposed to go into University already knowing eeeeeeverything about the human figure, perspective, etc, but I have a feeling that is not the case. I think that some tradition can be good, and art can just be enjoyable rather than some deep philosophical bs. I think that when the Modernists did art, they had an idea in mind, that art should not be restricted to the upper class. What I see now is that Art has restricted itself to the "educated" (so-called) class, and people who do not stand in front of a red slash on canvas and go "Hm...." and nod are somehow intellectually inferior. well I DON"T GET IT, so SUE ME!! I understand that subjectivity is a part of art, and art is expression, but do not forget that art is also made to be shown, and in a certain definition art is a performance.
Iwill conclude by saying that I ratther wish to drop out of university, and I've been barely here for two weeks. < sigh> ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3385715/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3385715/ Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:55:50 PDT manga and my computer!!

Hi Kathy! ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3340129/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3340129/ Sat, 11 Sep 2004 13:50:26 PDT very bored.
and complaining
although really...meh
It's nothing to complain for.
I want to see something nice...
like a violent classical music concert
like Hurricane Ivan the Terrible, Russia
I have no msn...no computer art programs
...no paints...meh use pencil crayons i suppose...
Although its not as good as canvas or the computer
i have 9 courses in the next school yr...6 of them are three hours long (God help me)....meh I suppose I will get through.
i have no natural light in the basement...but meh, three lights
I miss IB!! >< omg I miss IB...I miss everyone...
I miss anime and manga and good literature.
I miss Vancouver tap water a lot...
I want to go to Chinatown...
starving starts now...
Dracula-ing....
singing....
end. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3315303/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3315303/ Wed, 08 Sep 2004 10:49:44 PDT
I am in Toronto right now. I wonder if anyone on DA has ever decided to arrange a mass DA conference in a city or something? cuz it might be interesting. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3249974/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3249974/ Mon, 30 Aug 2004 19:09:46 PDT
I’m posting on Deviant because I won’t be able to access MSN for quite a while. For those who have Deviant accounts already, post me back, and for those who don’t, get one.

I’ve been writing this letter since June 24, and have been adding to it little by little. If I forgot you, I am sorry…find your name/organization and read.

Here’s to:

This World
My rats buried in UBC: I’ll bring you cheese!
Ying, Stephanie, Michelle S:
Joined the right gang in MY, definitely. Sorry that you guys left, thx Michelle for coming back, good luck with yr 2, and sorry about the splinter. Little bits and pieces of stuff…Steph, thx for corrupting me, not that I wasn’t corrupted before. Hopefully, when I get back, You’ll pick-a-lee and stay with him. Thx Ying for lending my your ears. Ying, I will haunt you from Toronto about The Story. You watch.
Shadamus will be back. She’ll fly and hang upside down from your roof. Muahahaha….

Kath: After everyone else left, at least you stayed. You’re one tie to Regular, anyway. Thx for listening. Zai Tibia shang ni ben lai yeng gai shi wo de ma ma ya! Andaricent has no mommy…

Natalie, Andrea, Adeline, Katherine, Michelle Chu: And Kath and Kathy of course, but you’ll have your own individual bits. You’ve made my lunch hour. If I remember something from lunch hour and start laughing like a maniac on the street, it’s probably one of you.

Chen: You should read Kath’s too. Anyway, thanks for putting up with that disturbed “daughter” of yours. Keep mathing.

Tianyi: I should give you a big long letter, but unfortunately I am not as eloquent as you. Don’t study too hard, and take care of yourself more. Don’t eat gross bread things, unless you can force Kevin to eat them for you.

The “Balcony Crew”: Scooter gr 10, I still have it. Don’t know if I should move it to Toronto? You’re ALL great artists, in one form or another. I hope that by this time Daniel has admitted it and Shan and Shayan have got the pop I promised them, but somehow I doubt it. Thx André for putting up with me in Math, and hope you can actually sell that comic I give you . Shayan, you MUST do your own comic one day or I will haunt you.

Michael The: Good Graphics. You should keep at it. Hope you can get one of those tablet things.
If anyone sees Edward ever again somehow, tell him hi.

Yasser: You’ve come a long way, and you can go the rest of the way, no problem. Proud to have a friend like you!
If you see Dominic, tell him I said hi, and that I learned a lot from him.

GSA: You’ve shown me a lot. Glad that I was able to join it, and make a difference.

Amnesty, Rebecca and Janet: Find something like Amnesty wherever you are going to. Thx for a great year.

Big Bang: Given me a feeling for what editorial offices are like. Thx for the co-operation, and sorry if I harassed anyone for layout pages constantly. Great to work with all of you! Thx esp to the Artists. Emily: “I survived IB!”

Amanda and Liz: Argh no more burning strange things in QE park now. Maybe we will again someday.

Mike Liu in gr. 11 going on gr 12: Ah…interesting. Depended a lot on you in band. Have fun with Hurst, Vincent, and the rest of the ppl in the back row. Don’t think about life extinguishers too much.

Band people: One less person to make noise!

Cindy: Band buddy then IB. No Scottish accent for me!

Ellen: Keep laughing, it’s good for you. Tell the rest of the French Video group that ppl w/o makeup artistry always look bad on film but still everyone acted very well. And I am still wondering whether you have time to sing something as long as “My heart will go on” while someone is threatening to kill you.

Iris: Thx for TOKing with me! Send me manga updates and I’ll send you mine.

Grace: Good luck with Yr 2…hope you can find Yami somewhere else. If you want contraband manga, keep in touch.

Jerry: Thanks for listening. Work Hard, be proud. Hope you find a place to live where keeping a deer in your back yard is legal.

World Cultures people: Hope I will go on forced marches with you again. Keep singing. Thanks to Irina for threatening, bribing, and/or blackmailing to make WC possible.

Art Class people: Keep singing also! And all of you better take SOME f... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3004952/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/3004952/ Fri, 30 Jul 2004 15:37:20 PDT
Vertigo Visions:
About comic book covers from Vertigo. VERY
cool.
A book on H R Giger:
OMG he is SOOO COOOL!!! in case u dun know
who he is, he won an oscar for designing the
aliens in "Alien".
The Artful Dodger:
Nick Bantock writing about his life as a artist.
I've never read his stuff, but after this I will
sure try. He introduced me to good collages,
anyway.
Devil May Cry, v. 1:
This comic is so good. I never played the game
but the art is soo good. its published by
Dreamwave.
The Sandman 2004 calendar:
I've been wanting to read the comic for a while
now...but the copies in the library have like 20
holds on them. the calendar is very good. it has
work by Yoshitaka Amano.
Art of Final Fantasy:
got at a second hand bookstore. I suggest ppl
go to those places. you might find something
interesting. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2968346/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2968346/ Sun, 25 Jul 2004 22:53:51 PDT my poor doggy...
my poor doggy...
his eye is swollen... ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2825516/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2825516/ Wed, 07 Jul 2004 12:53:20 PDT Failed IB art...dunno how, but oh well. pay my respects and apologies to every art teacher i had. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2737111/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2737111/ Fri, 25 Jun 2004 21:30:51 PDT ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2706318/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2706318/ Sun, 20 Jun 2004 18:46:01 PDT ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2268839/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/2268839/ Wed, 21 Apr 2004 14:56:56 PDT Exams for three bloody weeks...English paper I first, then MATH, which I am very dead for. Likely I will not post anything until I die and am reborn out of the ashes of IB test papers.

Note to anyone who sees this: Draw a Nephron. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1976745/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1976745/ Mon, 08 Mar 2004 18:56:06 PST She got...tortured(to put it cleanly) by this very promiscuous guy, and she hates him. Now she's in my head and she sees the guy's characteristics in my friends...so she wants to kill them. need an exorcist. ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1860411/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1860411/ Tue, 17 Feb 2004 10:11:18 PST ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1449205/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1449205/ Tue, 25 Nov 2003 09:41:31 PST Dealing with arts annd sciences and why they are not as different as people think...any ideas? ]]> ~bled http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1409097/ http://bled.deviantart.com/journal/1409097/ Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:56:58 PST ~bled