ultra racist pictures. they were real ads for Pear's soap during the colonialism period.





so so shocking.

another inspiring picture. but about patriarchial society. :) i love this one.

the colour of today.

Your words are like knives
They peel my skin and pierce my soul
Your body will burn tonight
Though your heart may still remain cold

And I will blame myself
For holding onto what i hoped would keep you by my side.
I will blame myself

The sheets are stained with
Memories of your soft kiss
Now this is all I have
Paper and pen
to remember you with

Can I have you?

- Dallas Green, Like Knives

im not sure how to do this anymore.

it seems most of us have problems defining the wispy line between true lover and soul mate. must a soul mate also be great lover? must the soulmate be The One? Who's The One? a person with whom we have a great affinity, or someone you are romantically attached to? must you love your soul mate? must we only have one?

there has always been that assumption that soulmates constituted mating. that is, most of us assume that our soulmate would compliment our sexuality. you hear it in flamouyant romances, accounts of "soul-fusing" sexual encounters, and in wedding speeches, great love declarations all the time, about single inviduals who somehow manage to successfully play all the roles he/she is generally expected to, and become the hotly sought after cliche : friend, soulmate, lover, partner, cleaner, waitress, waiter, etc. does having a perfect marriage, perfect life, great sex, mean you found your soul mate? or did you just find a perfect partner?

we dont hear much about the platonic relationships, deeply rooted friendships, simultaneously complex and simple bonds between people, true understanding that does not require worry about sexual preferences, or romantic love. Are these people we hold so dear to us(and we dont even consider having sex with) our soulmates too?

heterosexuals appear to be the only ones allowed to even entertain this idea. well, we do know religion has done its trickery on most people .. so have olden greek legends about hermaphrodites, and even modern romance harlequin novels and movies that falsely romanticize man-woman relationships.it makes me wonder... if having a soulmate is a priviledge given only to hetereosexuals... is it just another one of those ridiculous stories used to socialize our sexuality?

another belief holds that we only have ONE soulmate lurking somewhere out there.. and that there is one for everyone. this thought is horrifying. what if we cant find him/her? what happens then? are we lost souls who wander the planet incomplete, a soul without its supposed companion? i simply do not accept this notion. it is simply too cruel, too narrow... inflexible. afterall, are we not creative humanbeings with our wonderful variety and multiplicities? wouldnt that mean the permutation of our intricate qualities, personal understandings, bring so many possibilities instead?

besides, what IS a soul mate really? are there different types? varieties in the type of soulmate a person can have? are soulmates default... or can we grow them? a dash or fertile soil, a sprinkle of seeds of potential, occasional rain, and a sweet hearted gardener.. wouldnt that work? and can soulmates lose a connection.. due to tragic experiences, disasters? "happily ever after" implies permanency.. but then how come collisions happen even to the best of us? no one ever talked about cinderella burning the toast once too often, or snow white getting a tan, or jasmine wishing aladin would go work, or beauty hating how her prince leaves the castle so much due to business trips, or Ken staring at the newer barbies.

do soulmates belong together? or can soul mates be apart, just being a part of each other?

.....

during my racism class on thursday, i learnt that being cunning was attributed to the chinese stereotype. it somehow shocked me, although i know it shouldnt, to be reminded that people around you are constantly taking in how you look, what you have and who you talk to, what you do, and insist everything that makes you YOU, physically and inside..MUST cohere. it also shocked me to hear something so absurd and almost foreign. Is that me? Is that us? Who is us?

i have always been aware of racism, sexism and other random crap tha social science has taught me, but at the moment of hearing it, i finally understood. i didnt feel defensive, or smug, or suddenly hating myself for having belong to a certain ethnicity. it just hit me in that very instant, that hey, its an inevitable part of me, and of every single one of us. not just in books, the black and white war, not just on tv, ur angry groccer, ur feelings of injustice and embarassment. these ideas, language, our life experiences are the very things that shape our flesh, calls us into existence. its name.. racism, whatever -ism. is just there. named, or not.

and must be fixed.

....

someone recently told me i had a very systematic life. highly structured, everything neatly placed. emotions here, brains here, actions here, and how. it was suprising.. to hear that. i always felt i was in a mess, everything i did was a mess, i am a mess in itself. confused, jumbled, worthless and scattered. emotions and all, everything was a huge mixed puddle of splatters of different paint.

maybe i let my emotions tell me more than they should.

....

i have plenty more to say.. i dont know why.. im tired, worn and my heart and head hurts. ill continue another time..

no more.

colour of today.

now.. where did i put my drugs...?

im getting fed up with this pretend-love bullshit. romance, girly(note the gender) mushie ooshie stories, experiences are all simulated, lies, illusions. propaganda for men or women(and heterosexuality) which/who do(es) not exist, the notion of the soul mate merely an apparition, a false destination that is permanently out of reach. a smiling ghost that mocks at you every time you notice its lack of tangibility.

people/i find themselves "incomplete", lonely, sad when they/i are/am left on their/my own. suddenly the world seems to empty and dull, its essence slowly and torturously gouged out layer by layer using some heated icecream scoop to be served chilled for another's pleasure. the ruby from raspberry sherbet loses its colour, with a generous dash of desertion, desperation and neglect. not to mention what other emotions and irrational actions that would invoke.

why do we/i let these pretenses and lies get us/me down... or even up?
...

i remember the first time a boy made me cry. it was strange but the only reason why i did it was because it felt appropriate. i didnt want to cry, i was not as upset as he was, i couldnt care enough. i was fine. who cares? but after heaving a book into his skinny, adolescent chest, i learnt that hurting is one of the ways to show you actually care. but i couldnt physically smash his face in for making me feel like shit. so i cried.

i didnt believe in love then. sex, thankfully was not yet in the equation. boys were fun company. i liked their lack of restraint, their coarse yet innocent taking up of what was supposed to be masculine... until i did it better than them with a nice punch in the stomach. they were easy going, less complicated. and besides, i was obligated to like boys with penises. which of course, i do. but like i said, that was all i knew then. i was convinced love was a coverup for hurting one another, selfishness, possessiveness, financial obligations, monogamy, and fake family values. tears were silly, a sign of weakness (=emotionality), girlishness. oh how i hated girls back then. useless little long haired helpless brats with pink mary janes and tears. and then that one day i mentioned above, i felt that helplessness. i became weak. i became a girl. suddenly i needed that love coverup.

now, the act of crying is alot simpler. most of the thought process is gone. just like how those dogs salivate at the ringing of the bells, for me hurt = tears. and there is hardly anything i can do to stop it anymore. in the name of this thing called love.

then came sex. because love makes us weak, susceptible to any form of tenderness and heightened intimacy, not to mention the mysterious hype surrounding it. to be clear, sex here means anything physically personal most of the people reading this blog would already have had experience with. for me, there was no mystery. i had the mindset of just figuring out how things are supposed to work. emotional attachment..? none. it was like the first time i played pool, drank beer, took the bus on my own. I felt a little excited only because i was doing it, and finally getting to see what it does. for a few years it did nothing for me. Apparently sex was supposed be part of love. part of the beauty of being stupidly vulnerable and close to your lover. but how come there was no fulfillment, satisfaction or even that much fun? most of the times it was awkward, ticklish and strange. all i knew it made things even complicated. little did i know in exchange for the awkwardness and the lack of fun for emotional attachment and good stuff, it would get even more complicated with investments, emotional/physical stock markets and so on. Even with extreme methods of contraception thanks to modern technology, is sex ever safe?

Now I am in love! I ride on the waves of endorphins, I yearn for one person, one body. I let sorrys work their magic because I care so much I forget myself. I want him to be mine. MY raspberry sherbet. MY world. And I want to be HIS. Is this love? Or is it a coverup for hurting one another, selfishness, possessiveness, monogamy, loneliness and the socialized desire to find a soul mate, one who "completes" me?

During the downtimes, I revert to my cynicism, angry with myself for letting myself get so easily hurt. Disappointed. Hopeless. Weak. Silly. Wrong. Useless. Deserted. Even more lonely. Pathetic. I mean, arent parents made to feel like that all the time too?

I tell myself its my fault for believing the hype in the first place. And that I am just stupid to give in to such romanticized notions of living life and the relationships that form along the way. But im secretely hoping someone would tell me I am wrong.

i falter.