My Past Works aka Ramblings

Dredged up my old writings... These were from wayyyy past, and they reflect a more "fiery" me, I guess. More coming up...

1/11/2004 1625
It's kinda scary because I seem to have lots of controversial opinions in the past, which seemed to have been shut down by something or someone as I grew older in age. I just read some pretty controversial shit (well, controversial in a relatively conservative environment such as in Malaysia) I wrote about two or three years ago. I have to admit, I was pretty vocal and opinionated in what I wrote, taking the "if-you-don't-agree-with-me-then-fuck-you" style of writing. That piece was about religions, philosophies, and mutual respect. I find it kinda weird because when I re-read it two years (or three) later, I seemed to have a feeling of reverent awe for myself. That reverent awe feeling is usually reserved for someone whom I truly respect because of his/her style, opinion, or methods of executing something. Certainly not reserved for a more fiesty "me" that existed two (or three) years ago.

Man, what would Freud say? Haha.

But maybe that's just it. I guess lots of people lose fire when they grow older with age. Fuck, I was so full of youth (as opposed to "teen", heh) angst a few years ago that whatever was on my mind I just had to put it in words that seemed so arrogant, so... descriptive, shall we say. Or maybe I was just full of it. A juvenile train of thought that says "fuck you" to the world and the world laughs back at that individual, knowing full well that the individual knows jack shit about what he has written about. I'm not very good at metaphors, so fuck you. Haha.

But seriously, I have to ask myself, although it might seem a little unusual to ask myself in an article that nobody will ever read, have I really lost my fire, my opinions, that I had several years ago? You see, I have this theory that as we get older, we develop a type of herd mentality that causes us to follow what the majority do, that causes us to gradually abandon our own opinions and follow blindly what others are doing. Maybe as we mellow through time, we realise that somehow, our opinions don't count anymore, as if what what we had believed in so many years ago was just not real, not in sync with the laws of the universe. We would be content to agree wholeheartedly with whatever the prevailing thoughts of the day were, completely in denial of what we had believed in earlier, even though those two thoughts clashed.

Of course, shit happens in life that just change our perceptions and opinions from time to time. I know I've been a lot of ups and downs through life, and those experiences change and shape my opinions and principles constantly. Hey, you have the right to call me an unprincipled person, but I don't fucking care. Or at least I think I don't... Recently, I've been asking myself, "Do I care what other people think about me?". You see, several years ago, if you had asked me that same question, I would have proudly, and with nary a hint of hesitation, said "fuck you, of course not", and proceed to give you a kick in your balls. Well, maybe not the kick, but definitely the "fuck you".

Now... now I'm not so fucking sure. I mean, I THINK not, but I FEEL otherwise. I'm certainly more wary of my own behaviour now, more aware of those little things I do that might seem CRAZY to other people. So does that mean I really mind how other people perceive me now? I'm confused. Maybe it's hormonal imbalance or some shit like that. I dunno. I haven't touched science for some time now.

But somehow I've remained the same "occasionally incomprehensible madman" that I was several years ago. I might have mellowed down on my conspiracy-theory-ultraextreme-violence-ultraincomprehensible-babbling-SOB persona that I adopted several years back, but some people that I know now do sometimes find me weird, bizarre, incomprehensible, crazy, or any combination of these traits, or all of these traits. I make incomprehensible jokes. I make complex conversations. I do things that ridicule others, sometimes even myself, in public, so much so that my friends stay away. I throw sudden temper tantrums. I say certain hard-to-understand academic shit that I'd read several hours ago. See? Some things never change. In essence, I'm still the same me, I guess.

That's why not all people I meet can stand me, and I just have a select few good friends. I'm not like some people who just seem to click with everybody. Some people have even called me antisocial. Which is true, to a certain extent.

One thing that I seem to be losing as I grow older is the ability to write engaging, systematic articles. I discover, when I compare my writings from different "eras" in my life, that I seem to be more fluid in my writing when I was younger. Of course, fluidity in writing does not mean fluidity in ideas. My ideas and points might be scattered all over the fucking place when I was a 12 year old kid writing stuff, but at least my vocabulary, my style, was never scattered. I had control of my vocab, of my style. Now? Man, sometimes I think for the right word for several minutes without success! I used to contribute my opinions to the newspapers when I was younger, and my letters almost always got published. I recently sent a letter to Star lambasting (kind of) my university and until now, three weeks after I e-mailed it, it hasn't been published. I used to be proud of the fact that I could churn out a well-thought out letter in a matter of hours, and it almost always will get published. This particular letter that I wrote several weeks ago took me TWO WEEKS! Damn, talk about old age catching up!

Maybe it has got something to do with my somewhat inconsistent writing attempts. You see, I had not been writing constantly over the years, especially between the periods of my graduating from PUO until... err... now. Before that, I had a neat little cyber-platform (not to mention a connection to the Net from my home) where I could share words with my secondary school friends. Somehow, three of these cyber-platforms demanded dough from the users, and, getting tired of the whole "big corporation wants little money for our services" mentality, we just said "fuck you" to these cyber-platforms. I hadn't been writing like this ever since. Not for lack of trying, though. I tried. Many times. I tried to begin short stories. I always stopped halfway. Never had the confidence, idea, inspiration, or guts to finish them. Dunno why, though. I enjoy reading other people's words, and I think I have synthesised my own writing style, but somehow I just felt that my own ideas, my own words, are cliched and not good enough.

Fuck. I reckon that when I read all this shit that I have written, I would be saying that word. FUCK! Or, in Stephen King style, F-UUUUUUU-CCCCC--KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!
Heh. Gonna take a break now. 1710.

8/11/2004 1633 Wow, a gap of six days and I'm still feeling lazy and uninspired. I always wonder how acclaimed authors who have millions and millions of bucks keep it up. Their ideas and books, I mean. Where the hell do they get the inspiration? Even if they get inspiration, there must exist a special kind of vocabulary, grammatical, and in general, semantical skill to weave a good story, I guess. I devoured everything (well, almost) from classics to cheesy magazine articles in the past, but now I always find it a chore to even finish reading a short story. I'm pretty sure that my sense of appreciation for other people's works has decreased, but I can't figure out why or how. Goddamn it!

I used to churn out spectacular (in my opinion, anyway) short stories when I was in secondary school, mainly to prepare for the SPM 1119 English paper. The continuous writing section of the exam meant that we had to concoct stories to prove our mastery of the language. The essay questions typically involved several types. My favourite type would be the "given this opening" or the "given this ending" types. An opening paragraph or a closing paragraph would be given, and the candidates would be requested to fill in the rest of the story, in parellel with the given opening/closing paragraph.

I used to conjure up what I termed "twisty" stories, often taking the liberty to include vulgar (by our standards) words such as "damn" or "shit". Yes, I had often been reprimanded by my teachers for doing that. But the main gist is, I was adept at this stuff, Whether it was a narrative (often in the first-person view) or a descriptive story, I tried to inject all kinds of stuff in my story. I remember distinctly three stories I had written, which stuck in me until now because of their originality and effectiveness in execution. I just wish I had that in me nowadays. I even wrote a violent story in my actual 1119 exam, which earned me a glittering A1 grade...

Up until two or three years ago, I still had "it". Somehow I gained a Band Six for my MUET examination. No fucking easy feat, as it required someone (*ahem*) with near-perfect mastery of the English language to obtain that kind of result. Mind you, in that particular batch, only 60-odd candidates IN THE WHOLE OF MALAYSIA obtained Band Six.

Contrast then with now, and I feel depressed. *Sigh* 1647