i think (too much) therefore i am.

today on this particularly wet morn, i decided to take a stroll around the neighbourhood (on my way to get ciggies haha). walking past the ostentatious display of a wake in the void deck, i glanced at the picture on the coffin as i always do, checking if i recognise the departed neighbour. no effort was spared with this one, garlanded with lights worthy of christmas at orchard. it marvels me how love is expressed in our culture here, especially the taoist one where  much of it is a display of  piety and i suppose, love.

then i walked behind two aged persons ambling along to avoid a slippery fall, their bodies bent in jaded resignation. perhaps they would rather trade places with the chap in the coffin any day, having instead to bear the prolonged suffering of assorted maladies. mentally i noted that i would never want to live this long because the truth is, despite all advances in medicine, nothing can cure that undefinable loneliness of old age, even if you fill your life with mindless activities which add up to mere time-passers.

passing the daycare center, i observed a young mother struggling with her brolly and tot. at first glance it would appear she was the granny by the varicose veins which spread across her calves (yes i seem to be drawn to legs because i find it an obsession to help those who could use toning) and i wondered why she had managed to let herself go, possibly from toiling over a stove or filling her life with the usefulness of performing domestic chores.

i guess humanity fascinates as much as it reviles me, and often i find myself reacting with a strange mix of pity and misanthropy. the former because many seem beguiled that they are really content when in effect they have probably repressed dreams of something more, the latter because they seem to have resigned to their imperfections, giving up on trying to fix them.

perhaps that explains my fixation on human flaws, my private and constant need to fix my own, which in failing, i try to work on the superficial ones like maintaining a respectable physique. the remaining iniquities i have more or less chalked up as the sum of all parts, the baser traits of who i am honed from personal experiences.

but one thing remains clear to me, and that it is a bane to be born with a mind which observes and processes to an annoying regularity. it is possibly the same quality which plagued the many thinkers who ultimately killed themselves. society would like to label it conveniently as depression or some form of mental disorder, i prefer to call it, being much too aware of our surroundings, from the sublime to the asinine displays of humanity. the cliche of ignorance and bliss applies very much to the rest of society which is content to turn a deaf ear, or pretend they are happy when trey're merely coping, or delude itself in its smug indifference.

and i mean no contempt or arrogance when i ask, do i wish i was one who achieves 'greatness' rather than to have it 'thrust upon' me? perhaps in my private moments i am glad i can see beyond the artificial constructs of 'happiness'. but a large part of me can't help but wonder how my life would have turned out if i could simply be innately dense.

And with a great sense of irony, the bard once observed,

'What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how

infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and

admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like

a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,

to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—

nor woman neither.'

(Hamlet, 2.2)

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p.s and just like that, as i write this, a timely text from kat lamenting that she's broken up with xinni because the latter is interested in someone else but wants to keep kat as a back-up gf.wtf