The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is an anchor for the troubled soul, a hope for the praying heart, a stability for fragile faith, a confidence in pursuing the lost, a guarantee of Christ’s atonement, a high mystery to keep us humble, and a solid ground for all praise. And oh so much more. O Lord, turn this truth for the triumph of your saving and sanctifying grace.
- John Piper

The stars were the furnaces in which the elements that make up our human bodies were cooked. Chemically speaking, we are animated stardust.
- Vinoth Ramachandra

For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
- John

amaraa was online, using gerelkhuu’s account, and we were chatting. i got a <3 from him. which, i promptly returned, of course, and then printscreened, just because it was too precious. apparently cheemee was in fcs too at that time.

this is the first time i spoke to him since we left; he made me want to run over to changi there and then, and appear at the doorstep of the semi-underground office, -15 degrees or not.

brings back to mind the days i spent trying to persuade for a longer time together

surrounded by his christmas shopping, 16 books of john stott, n. t. wright and their contemporaries,

d: do you think you’ll ever like a guy who loves God, but isn’t a deep thinker?
me: errr. -pause- i don’t know.

well, yeah. interesting question.

___________________

- i watched before sunset yesterday; inspired scriptwriter, cheap director who should be shot. i’m not buying the postmodern ambiguous ending argument, sloppy work is what it is, i’ve seen good ambiguity and that wasn’t.

- casual chat with kangwei turned up a possible travelportalglowingtrapdoor kinda feeling, gradtrip = nepal, tibet, china, mongolia, sounds like woven tribal patterned headdress wearing lovin, possibly possibly. (i also possibly account for half the adjectives in the world.)

- am writing like a dying man taking his breaths./preparing the body at the mortuary

I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with. Because each person has, you know, specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved, because, it hurts too much.

Like I remember the way- your beard has a little bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow that morning, right before you left. I remember that, and- I missed it.

part of a scene with julie delphy playing celine, talking to ethan hawke playing jesse.
Before Sunset, yeah.

1) i sat an afternoon in a room filled with rainbows, that moved with the sun.

2) She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky–before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

george eliot, “silas marner”

3) that was a quote given me; apparently i am eppie. i am flattered and do not mind, but i do not know if he got it right. i have this sudden urge to pick up eliot again. coincidentally enough, in the past few weeks i have been given other labels, all of which i have heard before, and

4) does anyone know how much, how very much i miss mongolia still?
i don’t know how to describe it, except that it’s almost physical, i think someone wrapped a hand around my heart and squeezes it everytime my eye sees x and my mind recalls mongolia. not very eloquent, i know, but that’s how it’s been, my heart contracts and will not let out and i do not know what to do with this cramping inside of me. and the thing is, everything/the strangest things my eye sees my mind connects with mongolia. perhaps i am only an undiscovered champion word/thought/heart associater.

5) you know, it’s still difficult, pinning heartbeats.

(24th november)
i’ve slept 30 hours the past two days, and i know i can go on some more. i wonder why i seek rest so much, and so fully.

read erica’s post on coming a full circle, a year since exchange. me too, dear, i think about it frequently; the scenes, the lessons given, the memories replayed. it’s been a year; more than a year since we left and learnt. sometimes i think i haven’t articulated anything about the bigger girl i am now, the new thoughts tendriling out and about. i feel like a bud, growing within, but still silent and unseen, still keeping her secrets tightly shut.

it’s christmas time (:

hello, things have been good lately. rain watching from a cream couch outside the clubhouse, seeing the drops fall and hit the ground, meditatively, listening to some piano, dancing atop a roof by myself while dusk deepens. cut my hair+fringe, mmm, contemplating with night lights, rain walking under a huge green umbrella, chats with daddy, sitting on the high chair legs drawn up and snacking on seaweed and grapes, although, it’s so cold these days; last night i slept under three blankets! currently have a scarf wound around my neck. oh, and i had the most amazing teh yesterday, orgasmic.

also:
1. the temple downstairs has its own light up, which makes me laugh; pretty expanses of little lights hanging down from trees and twinkling sliver diagonals across the sky.
2. got told i look like a three year old/doll slumped against a corner.
3. decorated christmas tree for church, all the shiny, glittering, elaborate swathes and colours; i was happy.

i’ve been choosing not to write for awhile, but something happened today that made me think that i could take up the pen, again, so to speak.

-

i don’t have many words. there are few things that call to me these days. the gentleness of His love, the warmth of fellowship, cloudy gray rain mists black tree-shaped holes standing about in the Universe. maybe forgotten sunlight filtering through. is filter filter, or fliter? they look the same to me.

in a makeshift list, then, today i saw a blue baby shoe waiting by itself in the center of a path, silently whiling time away till it got reclaimed. i thought of baby, watching from his mother’s back, seeing his shoe grow smaller into the distance, mutely.

i could also count time: now we/i am in the last week of school, a few more days, a couple more lessons, one more test and it will be over. sometimes i think in syntax, where it is an anaphor and the thing about anaphors is that they refer back to the original thing/phrase/word/statement.
i have headphones over my ears, although nothing is playing. i think i would prefer it if my ears were completely immune to soundwaves, people walking about, voices, laundry hanging, discordance. selective hearing, i only want to accept the sound of the fan, comforting, repetitive, lulling.

ice cream, time with girlfriends i grew up with, sitting by the window watching the rain fall clumsily, elbows on ledge drinking in the night sky finishing korean olived seaweed, trudging through conrad’s introduction, reflecting on life, holding priorities up to the light, nail painting, bathing in golden light by a stove- remembering gers atop a valley, an ox-bow lake we used to slip out to in the mornings, the loveliness of it all.

nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere – we do not know where – a sheep we have never met has or has not eaten a rose

march 05, 2007
I’ve been folding paper cranes a whole lot recently. and eating dried [with copious amounts of sugar] logan, and now the shirt I’m wearing- I lower my head and take a generous whiff. good. It smells nice. glad I changed my laundry detergent. The air around me is heavy with anticipation. Not just the onset of evening and the noisy chorous the above birds make. It’s going to rain, I believe. Every southeastasian can sense rainy weather, I think. It hangs in the air, and it could be one of perhaps two things. One: it’s a conscious action to scoop and taste [figuratively] the nearest moisture tapestry hanging somewhere close to your ledge. Two: an unconscious recognition so that if your fellow southeastasian neighbour goes ‘looks like rain’, you don’t think, you nod your head. Either way: it’s an innate mystery much akin to the wonder an urban man would give to the mythical abilities of the red indian.
Eskimo girls blow on each other’s vocal chords, producing an unearthly sound. Southeastasians foretell rain.
and while this paragraph was forming, the rains did come.

all my senses revel in the rains this season, now i am smelling the rain, now i am hearing the drops, the clamour, the drumming from countless pieces hitting various objects countless times, cars, floors, roof, my mother’s nightdress that i didn’t notice until it was too late. seeing the mist of many waters communing, now i am breathing it in, now my skin is drinking in the sensations of rain, the cold, the stillness, and the rainwind is drafting in, bumping the right side of my body, the back of my arm, going up my nose. it’s been two years since i had these rains; i am so glad it rains everyday, and rains heavily, too; i hope it never stops.

i have been listening to lifehouse recently; their lyrics make me a little wistful, there are lines that call my name and hold out unspoken things. last night i dreamt someone telling me a line, the unbearable lightness of being. but the rain. on friday i walked in heavy rain under the shelter of an umbrella, the pavements and roads were flooded and my borrowed slippers were constantly under water. but i was happy, the way i am now, sitting here with my purple korean air blanket wrapped around me. perhaps i should make myself a hot cup of honey crysanthemum tea, and consider myself remarkably well-off.

the semester, the year itself, is drawing to a close. already it is november, which startles me somewhat because november is the month that signals the end. november means the year has entered its last lap. it is for sure now, what once seemed only a possibility. this year will end, this year is on its way to the end. wow.
there is so much that could be said about it all, but i’m still holding my breath; it is not time yet.

i think i shall end this post with a marvellous meme i found, yes i shall. here it is:

Reply to this meme by yelling “Words!” and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ/WordPress/Blog and explain what they mean to you. (And if I feel inspired I might write what they mean to me to you, too.)

#1 hello, i wanted more colour.
#2 the photo is an echo of another, a week short of a year, when we went to the beach.

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#3 i liked this reflection from an old man, about growing old.

#4 i was thinking recently about emotional masochism, as defined by mayboo when she called on sunday. why do we take the pain and press it against our hearts, even as we think we might burst from the ache? what is the call, how is the act justified. and and. in the light of His forgiveness, and promise to give the strength of His grace day after day.. never to forget this; there is joy in the walk.

#5 here’s something that’s worth its time- shining eyes. a short transcript of the last minute or so:
(zander, on sharing a story an auschwitz survivor told him, about her and her little brother)

“she told me this, she said we were on the train, on the way to auschwitz, and i looked down and i saw my brother’s shoes were missing, and i said, why are you so stupid! can’t you keep your things together! for goodness’ sake!, the way an elder sister might speak to her younger brother. unfortuntely that was the last thing she ever said to him, she never saw him again. he did not survive auschwitz. … she said, i made a vow. i would never say something that could not stand if it was the last thing i said. can we do that, no. it would make us wrong, it would make others wrong. but it is a possibility we can live into. … shining eyes, shining eyes.”

my daddy is the most innocent, nicest, sweetest and cutest ever. my 8 year old tution kid brandon broke his super yoyo on the way to my place tonight, and daddy spent the entire hour figuring out how to fix it, the glue he had to buy, etc. what he didn’t know, was that brandon has multiple super yoyos. daddy thought every kid was like the boy he had been, who had only one toy, who would only ever have one toy.

–

/update: daddy’s still tinkering with that yoyo! i heard him in the kitchen, and called out. he says he isn’t trying to fix it anymore, but at least brandon learnt a few things from him tonight “that every boy should know”, how yoyos work, and how to repair them. nyeh nyeh. i LOVE my daddy.