Fun day at the beach

Little Ms. Ana also happens to be Little Ms. Scorpio. For those of you who are aware of what that is all about, I bet you’re heaving a sigh of “No wonder…” Yes, this blog is a testament to the complexity of my character. If you haven’t yet noticed, some days I would write about trivial unimportant things, and on every other day something really weird comes out of the blue. This is because it has always been difficult for me to just float on the surface without uncovering what lies beneath. Today is the every-other-day and I’m writing about the old Ana and the sea.

As one who is born under this particular sign, where the element is water and it is fixed, I have always been intensely attracted to the sea. Perhaps as any body of water becomes a mirror to the sky, so is the sea a reflection of my very being. Who would have known that despite the unthreatening, impassive surface, turbulent passions are always stirring underneath?Hehe.. I know that sounds corny.

That is why I needed an avenue to express myself, I needed something to help me sort my thoughts out. And I found that through writing, singing and random conversations with both strangers and friends. If I was to keep everything to myself, my feelings would turn against me by blurring the lines between what is real and what is temporary, what will always be and what will soon fade away. These feelings would become imprisoned, even destructive like a time bomb slowly ticking my life away. Why put together something that you would have to disarm later?

My needs would often subject me to obsessive compulsions which can be resistant to reason. I do things out of the moment and I say things out of my head. Sometimes, they were received well, others highly unlikely. I can recall the number of times where I might have been too frank for my own good but people tend to overlook the fact that it’s not out of meanness. I’m sorry sweetie… I don’t make it a sport to hurt anybody’s feelings. Not my fault you’re ultra-sensitive today.
Back to speaking metaphorically as in I am the sea, wet and wild, with a tendency to regard my surroundings as fishy. It’s really hard for me to trust just about anyone. Relationships can be a little complicated, especially with the opposite sex (We girls get along very fine). Supposedly, the typical Scorpio is interested in marriage and long-term commitment. Furthermore, to us love is an intensely passionate and enduring emotion that may be directed at one person only. The first is true in my case, for I am an idealist. As for the second, it depends on the definition of love. I do not restrict love for lovers since that would be too selfish nor do I squander lusty affections to the lusty affectionate people I meet on the street since that would be overly kind. Therefore, the love that I have for my guy friends are far from being backup plans in case of emergency. Call it a character flaw, but I find it impossible to allow myself to desire someone that I grew to love over time in ways that could make even the experienced blush.

Let us dive into this. When I meet someone for the first time, being a creature driven by intuition, I could naturally assess whether that person will be a friend or provided that I play my cards right and he has good hands, more than just that. I suppose it’s safer that way. I mean if I see things not working out, we can instantly switch to being just friends. I know you might think that it’ll be the same for the other case since you can always go back to being friends. But through everything that has happened, would you necessarily be able to trust your feelings for each other ever again? I do not want to take such risk, at least for now.

In conclusion, as complex as I may appear to be and as complicated as I am, it only takes a person with an open mind and a kind heart to really see what I am made of.

Happy Birthday, sis..

It's her birthday today.
But I miss her every single day.
And somehow I can't bring myself to write about her.
Like I'm scared it'll be too much even after so long.

But, Jannah wrote something beautiful about the person we both love. Please read it so that you know why I'm at a loss for words.

There's someone I need to tell you about

How come I don’t read books anymore?

Aidil; getting a head start

I asked this particular question not so long ago and I now already found the answer. It’s because I was too busy with other stuff, like photography, singing and youtubing, completing the semester hopefully with straight As, and playing very complex computer games (Have you ever tried opening a bakery?). But now that I have more time to spare since school’s out for the break, I can safely say I’m reading again. Yay!!

Let me share a little something. When I was a little girl, I read a lot of story books. I can confidently say I read more English books than the average Malaysian primary school kid do. I read all the time, even when it was passed bedtime, even when the only light available was the one in the porch of which we would leave on the entire night (I don’t know why we do this, it’s not like we want to aid anybody in properly picking out good shoes to steal). I was practically obsessed. You know what they say would happen if you read in the dark too often? Thank God my eyes are still good and I don’t have to rely on glasses except on the occasions that I would want to look like the geek that I really am.

Geek in the brink of self discovery

And during this stage in my life, I was quite the “self-spoiled” brat.

self-spoiled
adj.
having being spoiled through personal efforts rather than by natural favoritism.

I remember how I would beg my dad to buy me at least three books by Enid Blyton every month. But it would only take me less than a week to finish them all. My parents, seeing such encouraging behavior on my part, obviously supported my book craze. I mean, I bet any mother’s heart would melt at the sight of her child reading a book that has pretty pictures of teddy bears and tiny red shoes (separately of course, have you ever seen a bear dance wearing a pair of shoes?). And I reckon any father would be proud to see that his little girl actually enjoys the book that he had personally picked (even if she had given him a long list beforehand).

My booksies

What I love about reading those books was the sheer excitement that I gained with each turn of the page, especially as I get closer and closer to finishing a book. Of course, sometimes I never really understood the stories. I asked my mother a lot about words I don’t understand until she had to remind me that she’s not a walking dictionary. But the determination to finish each book made sure that the more I read the more I began to understand. I would guess the meaning of the words, sometimes they were correct, other times I would miss the whole point and invent new meanings (I think they were pretty good too). It was not until this semester in school that I learned that when I was a young reader, I did almost exactly what good readers do and this was explained by Catherine Wallace (1988), the author of my “Reading” textbook.

“The successful readers tended to select from a range of strategies. For example, they skipped inessential words, guessed from context, read in broad phrases, and continued reading the text where they were unsuccessful in decoding a word or phrase.”

Yes, I did a lot of that skipping part.

What started out as a mere childish desire to collect as many books as I possibly can turn to a genuine love for reading. As I grew older, I began to develop a taste for reading books that are unconventional, when girls my age would be reading what do you call em? SUVs or SVUs, I turn to young adult horror/science fiction novels by Christopher Pike. Of all the great writers that I have always admired, one name started it all. Maybe it is due to his marvelous creations, the stories that he conjured from the abyss unknown that triggered my love for deep thinking.

His books have inspired me in such a way that no textbooks in any school could ever accomplish. I suppose that is the power of literary fiction. It can change lives merely by the turn of the page. I've learned to appreciate life and the world as it is and what it could be. And I owe it a lot to him. In fact I owe every writer, big and small, who have given me an insight to their ideas and ideals, without which I would not be everything that I am now. And I think the most incredible thing that they have helped nurture along the way without physical presence is the gift of creative imagination.

Allow me to be a little sentimental over here. Books have opened up a window in my head where I could gaze not just faraway but beyond that, look out into another realm where anything is possible as long as you can think of it in the first place. I realized that I wanted to share what I see with others, I wanted them to know of my innermost thoughts and dreams in a way that could somehow help them at the very least by giving some company during those moments when absolute solitude becomes unpleasant.

And that’s why I write, to give back something so that the cycle continues, so that this particular story never ends.