mentalcallithump-blog

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“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche (via nomadic-curls)

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K.

It’s ironic how she was born on the 4th of July, because it seems like I need her more than she needs me. It’s ironic how we came together in the first place, how I started wrong but ended up right, how we collided with no intentions, but as if planned or meant to be. It’s ironic how I once viewed her with mild contempt, but now with utmost love and affection And it’s also ironic how we were so alike but had nothing common in our upbringing. 

They say give it some time. It’s pretty obvious that I’m already thinking ahead of things and that won’t help. But it’s like an addiction that I can’t fend off. My mind couldn’t escape her image. She is there in morning when I wake up. She is there when I sit down to work while listening to our playlist. She is there when I close my eyes and try to put myself to sleep at night. But I always wonder if she feels the same way and sees those images, if she was just better than me at ignoring them and keeping herself busy. But it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter to me whether if she thinks of me or not. To me the fact that I can devote my time, my care and youth to her, and that they can somehow make her hapier, is enough. 

It’s been 2 weeks since we started hanging out, but I feel like it’s only yesterday that I began to fall in love with her. I hate myself for being too weak, or too ponderous all the time. I hate myself for being incapable of living just how I had before she came. But these things I want to tell her, these feelings I want to express, they don’t just come and go. They stay and burn and with every moment I can still sense their presence, my soul withers a little bit more. I feel like a dying star, a supernova on the verge of exploding, and every moment with her gives me more life, to reverse the course of my fate and survive. 

But it’s okay. Because as I’m sitting alone in room A015 of the school we both attend and despise, waiting to see her, I know I’ll feel better soon. I will get to see her pretty smile, hear the melody of her voice, and all this sadness will go away.

 She is that special.

“ And it’s just as good as I knew it would be Stay with me I don’t want you to leave “   “K.”  - Cigarettes After Sex -

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I love you in the morning, in the middle of the day, in the hours we’re together and the hours we are away.

anonymous (via fyp-psychology)

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This is a photo of my parents.

I took it a year ago, when our family was dinning out for my brother’s 23th birthday. It was at a Thai restaurant on Bui Vien Street. The food wasn’t great in particular, but I still remember its taste, for I have promised myself to imprint within my mind the context of each and every photo I take of my mom and dad being together. It sounds in itself like some endeavored tribute a child would make to its parents, but it’s not really. We don’t take photos that much as a family. Not that we don’t want to, nor there exists some hindrance to it, just simply because there lacks the occasions for such photos to be taken. We would attend weddings, parties, feasts and dinner-outs of friends or of our own arrangement, but as my brother grew older and became more frequently absent from home, we felt more and more deterred from going out and spending our time together. Part of the reason why lies in the money we always dread to spend, especially when it is for casual festivities and whimsical causes. But I think it was also because we still cherished the concept of “full attendance” very much - it only counts when everybody’s there. So as occasions like these grew scarcer and scarcer, my conscience started feeling overcome with unrest and uncertainty of the dwindling possibility for moments like these in our future.

As typical as it should be for a family living in a thriving city, we had to deal with a lot of anxiety and daily concerns. For my parents, it would be the financial responsibilities they have to assume, or the well-being of me and my brother. For him, it would be the Bachelor degree in Marketing that he was struggling to get; it would be my parents’ disinterest to his girlfriend and the contempt they share about her socioeconomic background. For me it would be my obsession with studying, my self-tearing thrust to be better and my dream of studying in the US. We got worn-and-torn every week, every day and hour. But I guessed we somehow held on, knowing that there is a potent dose of resuscitation awaits us at home. No matter what it was, a 5-person dinner, a football match we anticipate, or a hang-out at the local supermarket, the dose always revived us and made us feel happier. Very much placebo-ish, so to say.

Whenever I take a look back at these pictures, I feel a sense of genuine love. We were not a perfect family. We had our ups and downs, our days of exhilaration and desperation. But throughout my childhood years, there have not been a moment in which I was deprived of the feeling of being loved. I felt loved every day, when I went home after school to saw my mom with a smile sitting on her face, all for her son. I felt loved everyday on my morning rides to school, sitting behind my dad’s broad and warm shoulders. I felt loved everyday, waiting for the weekend to come when my brother can sit down and play FIFA with me. People say family is where your heart resides, where your feeble and tender soul is nurtured and fostered to know they ways of the world and to know how to love. My family is where harbor the fondest of my memories, the treasures of my youth and my greatest joys. My mom told me that I was most precious gift that my family has ever received from the gods. But I think I am not the one who was given, but rather gifted, with a beautiful sanctuary with endless affection.

I still wish we had more times like these as a family. Even after my dad had retired and my brother had gotten his first long-term job, my mom would still have to go to work. Time was still a luxurious commodity to us, and no matter how many promises we made about trying to put off some time for each other, it never got more affordable. But I always felt lucky. Well partly because my parents always told me that I’m already very fortunate to be able to wake up everyday under a roof, with food in the fridge and loved ones around me. But also because I know for a fact that one day I will have to grow up, one day I have to taste loss and have sleepless nights, eyes dampened with tears. I know one day I will have to bid my family farewell to embark on my own journey, all alone. One day the world will stop being so loving, so tender and sweet to me. It will yell at me in the face every morning, complaining about some tasks I did wrong, or some ridiculously ugly graph that shows my monthly performance, that it has been going down so terribly and that having me in its company is a horrendous reality. One day the world won’t need me like it once did. One day there will be nothing or no one that waits for me at home, rides me to school every morning, wrestles with me then hugs me into my dreams and cries for me. One day the world will turn against me, and my eyes won’t be able to cry enough to relieve the agony it brings, and then I’ll stop being myself, I’ll stop living, I’ll stop loving and I’ll stop breathing.

I know for a fact one day I will have to stand on my own to feet.

I know for a fact one day there will be no potent dose of resuscitation awaiting, no hugs and kisses, no flickering candle lights, soft kisses on the cheek and I-love-you-sons.

I know one day I will only have my family in my heart.

My family also know that one day would come, and they can’t be there

That’s how I know they love me. A lot.

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01

I miss the days of junior high, of silly impulsive crushes, of hours and days spent chasing beautiful girls-next-door and scratching through layers of my social bubble. The lens through which I looked upon life was then more transparent than what is guiding my views as of today. Life was prevailed by simplicity, but not austerity. There were basically too many things waiting to be learnt, and much less, to be feared or doubted. I always get a sense of nostalgia, of a reminiscence to my youth whenever I think about my days in secondary. But what hits me harder than all is the metal blue, the avid atmosphere and the smell of leather covering the seats of bus number 01 - my everyday ride.

They say life is like riding on a random bus - you just hop on and hope for the best. The only thing you get to choose, if you wisely do, is what you want to do during your journey, and where you want to sit. People ride with various expectations and purposes, but I was mostly there to watch and learn. 01 took me through the urbanity of central Saigon, to my neighborhood in Chinatown, a geographically seven-kilometer trip, but sentimentally endless journey. On 01, you can expect to see an interesting variety of people. People from different walks, but some how converged on the same transit. 01 taught me my first lessons about how to treat others around me, when I gave up my seat to an older lady, or almost got pick-pocketed by a hooligan. 01 opened my eyes to the beauty of Saigon, of its river, of its residents and of archaic buildings sitting contemplatively among on its busy streets, as we travel through what seems like a historic journal of architecture. The timeless beauty of Saigon, I have grown up with, but never actually known, until 01. That beauty lies within the tranquility of the people, the scenery, the socio-economics of Saigon. A picture painted nowhere else, of graciously blended past and present, of an “ao dai” among ripped skinny jeans, of a pagoda among rising skyscrapers, and of old values embracing new ones. 

01 is something I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try. It pulls me back to my past, my root, the Saigon I love and the people I adore. It was my square one.

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Useful stuff

Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

Enjoy ^_^

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I was quite stunned by the graphics and the setup of the game.

This is a journey deep into darkness. There will be no more stories after this one.

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Nobody is naturally psychotic

They just suddenly see monstrosities everywhere.

Then they see the evil within them.

Then they finally realize they can’t be all sober

Because happiness is the veneer thicker than all

Sadness is the austere truth

Sobriety is merely

The midpoint.

The void.

and Insanity is the only way out.

So they ask their soul to leave.

Decorously 

Lock it outside and the ultimate creature emerges

their twenty-forth.

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Being Muslim Black young woman is one of the most dangerous things in America. Your reblog could save a life.

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Scrollin down this relentless series of rambling logs and essays as I ask myself who the hell is this kid and why doesnt he have a life. Kid stalp using big words maybe that is going to help you erase that abysmal hole in ur soul.

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I have been in too long a hiatus. This state of impasse kills me every time the nostalgia of literary passion hits. Words stuck, cacophonies of chatter in my mind won’t help: it appears that the older I become the more accepting I am to the issues I once regard as loathsome, and that I’m too deeply buried in this gigantic meaningless pile of petty errands and agendas. Nothing seems to matter enough for me to write. The world is still a mess, just like how it used to be and will never cease to be. Extremism, radicalism, populism, anarchism, fascism, the xenophobic crave for mass genocide, the avarice for power and thirst for glory… give me a year and I would still be listing down what of humanity that is so unethical and wrong. Or maybe I just haven’t known humanity well enough, maybe there is something to be discovered about myself and the people around me: as the enlightenment of my social perceptions awaits, so does that of my own personal premises. I guess the world doesn’t matter anymore because it never did. Maybe I need to look inside to know what to value and what is so important about “life”. Cheesy and dreamy as it sounds, maybe sometimes it is something needed for an over-rational kid who has been bereft of the matter of emotions and sentiments. I need my own memories.

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*.-+@)!"?

I haven’t changed much. Still that kid wanting to sound bombastic and verbose with all the words from his self-proclaimedly “desirable” repertoire. I figured out I’ve been sucking at writing. Again. And again. Stan, Mai, Eric, Lara, Michelle … people around me make me feel unimportant - somewhat unoriginal. I’m like a concoction of incompatible substances … I hate transparency … Why can people be so sure about their opinions?… How can you turn a blind eye to someone’s? Radicals be unemotional. Rationals be unrealistic. And I, as usual l, am evanescent. Did I drop something of mine along the road… Recklessly but responsibly chasing my dreams. Or is it all hypocritical ?

I’d rather be blind than see everything. ’“!*;’&%@-

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“We are practically as far as possible from perfection in being, doing, and willing. Our desire, even our will for knowledge is a symptom of a tremendous decadence.”

—F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, §68 (excerpt).

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This is Funnyaf

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HUSHHH!

It is now, in the age of motion pictures, mainstream multimedia and biased newscasts that we are fully aware of the omnipotence of information and publicization. I am not an advocate of conspiracy theories and their ludicrousness, but as I realize the more freedom we are admitted to, the more exposed we are to the hands of our governments, which are in the hands of people who are ostensibly not lizardmen (I know the word reptilians OK) but can be as cruel, brutal and viscous as inhumans. So, won’t that make me some sort of a dissident to the government and close to a potential terrorist? No, of course not, I am just some guy who knows what kind of society I am in, and what I really need to show or hide from public’s eyes. If you have read “1984”, you kinda have a lot of clues what I am talking about. Well, we are not in a dystopian society, but we are avaricious ideologists who try too hard to establish an utopia but omitted a lot of things (because we are human). So here we are, in a world full of injustices, murderers, eyes and ears spying on everything we ever do, and with the media, we are only going to get more of them. If fear was a virus, the media would be the catalyst and conveyer that propelled its outbreak and make it an epidemic. Thanks to our daily newsflashes, we are now afraid of everything. ISIS and global terrorism have become a source of terror due to the accessibility and susceptibility we have to Facebook statuses, BBC articles, NowThis videos and other so-called news company that only provides us with biased information. An aircraft crashes and we loathe travelling by plane, some virus found and we become apprehensive about contacting with people or making overseas trips, for fear that we might get infected. Again,merci beaucoup to the mighty media! I am not judging anybody or anything, especially the industry of journalism. I love journalists, I admire them, for they are courageous, daring and wholehearted supporters of the ideal of Veritas, god of the truth. But if only they didn’t work for mainstream news companies that always write and publish things in the benefit of their subscription rate or state-owned news agencies that are manipulated by the government! I mean some of us are too gullible. Seeing shouldn’t be believing. Try to be Descartes and question everything that is intended for you to believe, be wakeful and alerted, be wise and unbiased. Try to understand from different perspectives, and remember, everything on the internet which is critical is just propaganda. Still don’t know how to? OK fine, start with everything you just read. Should you believe me, or not? Until you realize that everything can be just as made-up and fake as Milli Vanilli and that the people in charge aren’t that lovely and caring, things are going to be just a little bit more difficult for you.

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Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Of The First Principles of Government, 1742 (via absurdlakefront)