I like these titles. Reminiscent of chinese textbooks and philosophical essays.
So anyway, m dad and I trashed it out verbally, we settled on an agreement -- basically I'll do whatever he says until I turn 21. How sweet it is, breaking the chains and graphite-sketched boundaries of childhood or adolescence!
Well somehow it involves going to church and cathehism and being confirmed and all that shit, as well as "not bringing embarassment to the family" because I didn't go for confirmation camp last year due to CAP (the best five days of my life, and not because of religious reasons, but rather because I heart writing and we ate, breathed and slept poetry all day long).
What I found hilariously funny was that the priest personally pointed me out to my poor cathehist teachers and asked why I didn't go. Obviously, they weren't too happy at being arrowed, and the little chain of vendettas expanded and swelled. Like Buddha's teaching about a poison arrow hitting a man, who wouldn't let the physician medicate him until he found out the caste, name, poison and so on and so forth. In the end, the man died before even getting the answers to his questions.
To be honest, though no religion is perfect, I think Buddhism makes a helluva more sense in its texts.
My dad also told me to exercise more, instead of getting endorphins stuck to my arse, not that I'm fat or anything. Well, I might as well do so, maybe running to release all the pent up stress and anger I've been channeling into prose.
Okay, so confirmation is basically another wonderful aweinspiring promise we have to make to God and say we're all part of his lovely brethen and would serve him until the earth persishes or something along those lines. Wonderful. Assimilation into a group of people I don't believe in or share any common interest in, (and in this case, assimilation equates announcing to the whole wide fucken world that you believe in that church's particular interpretation of who and what God is. I won't say God is a who, because a mighty force cannot be contained in a physical body. I'm saying what, as it dehumanises him both positively and negatively. I would explain it all but I'll never finish writing this post).
If I am confirmed at the end of June (right on my O's year too, wonderful isn't it?), then it means I have to pretend I accept this belief for, what, *counts* 5 years?!!!!
OH FUCK.
5 years is half a decade wasted. 5 years is one-third of my age now. Five years to waste away like a corpse.
And in the end I suppose when I turn 21 I would no longer be who I was in the beginning. I changed a lot throughout the years, maturing, growing distrustful of people, learning to fake-smile, smirk, changed from a girly girl to a slightly unconventional one, but all along I kept the one thing I felt defined me the most: My ability to keep a sincere promise.
Looks like I have to break that soon. Oh well. Breaking holy promises, commence!
Oh wait. I just realised something. 'Sincere'. Goodness gracious, I do love language. Hail language! My confirmation 'promise' is jsut empty words if I don't mean what I say or believe in it. The priests can flail about in indignation and wave documents certifying I am Catholic-- it doesn't matter because 1) I didn't mean the promises, and never fulfilled it, and hence I am not a 'true' Catholic and 2) Words only are significant if we attach meaning to it. If we don't and just treat them like mere alphabets and sounds, just 'lip service', then it has no meaning, therefore I cannot be accountable for it. The whole 'free will' thing, and the faith comes to bite Faith back in its ass. Delicious irony. I think, for the sake of pissing a few priests off, I shall stay and pretend I am a good Catholic, before wrenching tehir hearts apart when I skip out of church happily at age 21, throwing a convenient middle finger to it, who never supported me thus far.
If God exists and I am damned to eternal hell for being a wolf in sheep's clothing and thinking poisonous thoughts about religion during prayers and whatnot, I'll tell him that it was daddy dearest' idea.
The priest wants to convert me? Hmm. This should prove interesting, very interesting indeed.
Too bad Border's was out of 'God Delusion' and 'Letters to a Christian Nation'. Shall request these as birthday gifts. To balance it all out (I'll say it is good to expand one's horizons and see what people have to say about religion) I'll get them to buy some religious book that I would accept with (fake) smiles and tears of immense gratitude, which I would throw in my bookshelf, unwrapped, and proceed to forget I even had the book.
Since my passive resistance has proven futile, I shall begin Operation: Piss the Priest off enough to make him give up on me. Frankly, I don't really care how I do it or if the damned family name is besmirched forever in human memory (there's too much emphasis placed on names anyway...who the heck still remembers who discovered atoms or electrons, aside from students taking Science and scientists? Not many I'd bet.) Happily, I still have 'The Brothers Karamazov'. Shall figure out how to read that infamous passage of the cardinal killing Jesus and being an asswipe in general out loud.
I shall do my best to be the most irritating student ever seen in the vernated halls of The Holy Family Church. HAHAHAHAHA. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE A 9-SUBJECT STUDENT WHO COMPETES WITH PRCS. I can ask so many questions, and place loads of doubt...ooh, Maybe I can ask the teacher's opinion on the Spanish Inquistion and Hitler.
Speaking of my all-time favourite war hero/villian, I am really serious about my religious name being Hitler. Or Adolf. Or Salazar, but the sad, sad thing is, he's not a saint, although Salazar of portugal was a dictator, a priest and rabidly anti-communist. Did he support facism? Can't remember.
Ooh, the bible is so interesting to pick apart and analyse. So many cases of human rights abuse, slavery, anti-feminist ideals, and blood and murder and violence in general. A lovely, lovely book more on the Awesome Glory of God instead of his good deeds (I wonder if historians have done a reliability test on the bible? I highly doubt it is accurate, considering that there is plenty of room for exaggeration and etc.)
I realise I am probably gonna piss off a lot of good Christians and Catholics here, who might jump the chance of suing me for promoting ill will and tension amongst Singaporeans by spreading discord through lambasting religion, but oh well. I didn't condemn the religion, I just stated my views, you're welcome to have your own (: Dictators are terrible. Promote humanism!
Okay, maybe it would be a stretch to say I don't belive in God, but the term 'God' is quite confusing. In language 'God' is a powerful, omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent superbeing that seems too good to be true, but then again we humans are restrained by our patheticness. Hence the current God=Allah debacle in Malaysia. I say I believe in a greater force, (which can be interepreted as me saying I believe in God), but I don't. I don't believe in other people's intepretations of what the divine and who God is, I believe in my own interpretation of what God is. Make sense? What I am disagreeing with is the church and its corrupt congregation, its attempts to potray themselves as being the Chosen People and all pious and highhanded-- face it dudes, no matter how great your god is, this is the power of God. You cannot confuse his/her power with your own. In reality, in society, we are equal, in a parallel dimension of faith and belief and stuff maybe you're elevate beyond us, I don't know. But don't pretend to be perfect.
Another contradiction. God is supposed to love children because of their innate goodness and innocence and stuff, but this doesn't make sense because children don't know if there is a god or not if they weren't told by your parents. If, as an infant, you had this sudden great epiphany that 'Holy mother fuck, there is a God, and he loves us! I'll be a devout Christian all my life!" you're either lying or a poster boy for the church. Whichever, because I doubt infant can think beyond primal instincts like sleep, hunger, anger and etc. Hence, if God condemns the heretics and those who don't belive in him, why does he not condemn the children? WHy does he love them still? Because of the goodness? Yet, perfectly good people who don't believe in god are still regarded as sinners. WHy is that so? Bias? Favouritism?
You could say, "Dudette, He's God. He can't be explained by us," but, well, you might as well say "The Earth was created by a crowd of squirrels who attained enlightenment from dunnowhere and they preside over humanity and control wheter you go to heaven or hell. They sparke in the sun -- which was created from their farts." This is an acceptable reason for creation, because, obviously since these are divine, magical squirrels, their behaviour and bodily secretions are beyond our puny minds and therefore we cannot rationalise it. Funny. God might've been created through our need to explain and rationalise everything, yet now it itself is impeding rationalisation. The Greek gods were created from this need -- right now in your Science paper when the examiner asks you why the sun rises and sets, you don't answer, "It because this fella in a golden chariot rides across the sky everyday, and by the way you cannot give me zero because that will show you're insulting my belief in my religion."
Religions can be discredited and cast away, they are after all all about the human mind. Master religion and you can unlock the secrets of the human mind.
So interesting. If I become a psychologist in the future, I think I would like to try and psychoanalyse God for fun. It is, after all, always interesting to try and rationalise something complex.
Let me cap this post off with the list of things I want to do when I turn 21:
1) Drink alcohol.
2) Make changes to my IC, particularly the 'religion' field.
3) Sashay out of church.
4) Write an antigod poem.
5) Buy or rent an apartment, and get the hell out of there.
6) Can't think of any yet.
Things I gotta do before I turn 21:
1) Amass a collection of pagan accessories and wear them to church.
2) Or wear the rosary and say it's for fashion. Nothing insults a priest more than insensitivity to religious objects. It could backfire badly though, with me being seen as a convert due to their labour and 'the mercy of God'.
3) I. Need. More. Black.
4) See if I can somehow worm in a funeral dress to confirmation.
This is everything I know about God. He was never there for me, but if he was there for you, you're blessed.
By =westernwoods on dA.
There is a God. I have seen him snap the necks
Of children and inspect their hollow remains.
Pushing past the sinews, there is nothing there.
No prayers clogging the arteries, stopping the rush
Of blood, a blackened jet.
Their mouths had not yet learnt how to
Form 'hail mary's'. Tongues twisted at the sound.
The syllables choke.
There is no use lying to a child who when asking
For God, finds only silence.
He is not interested in them. The purity sickens.
There's a boredom in innocence that causes him
To turn away. His eyes are better fixed on those
Who can praise him. The shallow whore who never
Thought her life would take this path. Legs opening
To receive the golden coins that her greed is attracted to.
The eternal magpie offerers up her soul, asks for
Deliverance, and God, being the greediest of all, basks
In her devotion.
This is worth listening to. Each prayer a pearl that he counts.
His own personal rosary. Saved this one, heard another.
He doesn't think about the thousands who don't know where to
Put their faith.
Children suffer eternally for their silence.
God suffers none for his.
---------
Got into a big fight with my parents, and father made me promise to attend church eery sunday until I'm twenty-one.
If this is the type of God people worship, if these are the type of people worshipping God, I don't think I want this God.
"As she is mine, I may dispose of her..." Never thought it'd happen to me. Never thought how powerless I actually am (no legal recourse for teenagers in this oh so conservative Singapore or laws giving teens the right to choose their own religion). So basically it's just four years.
Had to happen on my O level year, didn't it? All shitty things happen to me right before a major exam. What next? I suppose I'll be paralysed from waist down right before my University exams?
I can't wait to grow up and tear off these restraints. Even if I make a mistake it is my mistake and making bad decisions is better than being lead about your nose by people who talk condescendingly to you, as if you are a emotionally unstable five-year old.
Being older doesn't give you the right to walk all over me, faggot. You are human too, you make mistakes, and don't pretend to be otherwise because that is simply pathetic, reminiscent of the Ozymadias poem by Shelley.
I couldn't pay attention in class today, kept zoning out due to repressed anger. Funny isn't it? Politics everywhere: at home, in school, in the world outside. I could pretend I am dumb and stupid because it would make life a whole lot easier. People do get bullied at work and abused, it's life. Never expected the power plays to come into my own home.
When a person avoids Home, you know something is seriously wrong there.
I am just so...irate! The only other time I remember getting this emotionally worked up was THAT year, and I refuse to write about it on such a public platform.
Now I'd like to think that I am normally placid and wouldn't really curse people, but at that point of time, when ________ grabbed me and tried to shove me down the stairs and I have a fear of falling down the stairs for some odd reason, nearly lost my balance, I watched ____ trip over one step before getting to me and at that point, I wished fervently his foot will slip off all too tenderly, so delicately and ______flailing arms will scrabble uselessly by the banister and off he tumbles, down, down, preferably breaking spines. I've heard that Diabetes Mellitus prevents wounds from healing quickly, so it would buy me time if _______ bleeds all over the floor. I hope by some fortunate incident --- spine will twist into his cranium and eyeballs would slide out, breathless, from their orbits.
No no I can't get angry. Emotion is weakness.
If they think that by forcing me to go to chuirch and leaving me trapped will make me love God, they're wrong. Don't they know that a trapped rat would do anything to get free, even biting off its limbs?
I hate this God. God cannot be physical, if he is omnipotent he cannot be constrained in one body.
I belive in a greater force but not this farce, not this sophistry, not this idol which sparked wars and crusades and deranged people.
See, I know this murderer, and he was the most Jesus person I've ever met. Seems that the whole Jesus and God crap didn't stop him from murdering.
Meanwhile, I shall try to calm down and not burn any churches, for some innocent Malay group will be blamed, and people will die, and as a poet I cannot condone such acts.
But you know what, dearest?
I won't wish you death. Death is too easy for you. I hope that you can no longer know the distinctions between your nightmares and reality, that the phanthoms of past would haunt your every waking hour, echoing by your ear; I hope you wake up crying in the night from a dream you can't remember, I hope you experience half the loneliness I did in THAT year or the near self-abandonment, and this time I hope you will never heal from the experience, so you know how it feels like in my shoes for one moment.
Nobody knows me except myself, I am laconic and I keep secrets pressed in my throat blossoming like bitter flowers.
Funny isn't it?
Those of you wondering why teenagers tend to confide in their friends their problems, I kind of discovered the answer yesterday. Because when life is shit you want a listener and not a preacher or a problem solver. Matters of the heart is best solved by oneself.
And parents distance themselves. I bet five million dollars that my parents don't know my favourite colour, much less the authors I appreciate. You may say it's superficial, but in poetry, this is representative of something bigger. A symbol. How can you claim you know a person, or care about said person, fi you can't even nail down their likes or dislikes? How can you characterise such a person? So what if they can remember my blood group and NRIC number? The computer does too, so does my doctor, but they don't love me, do they?
You know what? I'll end this angsty venting with one quote:
He, like everyone else, could not hear me when I did speak; and so I refuse to
speak now, a decision that has become involuntary—perhaps I have forgotten how
to speak, how to move, how to feel alive.
Even speaking, no one heard
me.
A poet, a storyteller whose voice is unheard. An irony in itself, considering that storytellers and their stories are meant to be heard and performed and played.
Irony. The stuff of life.
And just on New Year's too. Perfect.
I know there's this newly minted resolution on remembering my roots and not looking down on people who have bad English but this just takes the damn cake.
One thing I dislike about Singapore -- its rigidity and the people's unwillingness to be flexible. Even if you encounter a problem with the system (let's jsut say...edulearn?), and have a query to ask, the teachers just brush you off, saying that you could have clarified before the deadline.
Well, the system was up and running merrily I wouldn't have needed to ask you, right? And what if I had received the fateful SMS 2 days after the deadline? Gone means gone, no matter the circumstances?
The bloody admin even had the gall to wish me a "Happy New Year"!
#@$%! Even if it's well-intentioned, it's extremely nerve-grating! (thanks xfa!)
EURGH.
Okay, it's just one component out of five. I'll just have to memorise my gong han well and aim for full marks to save the first CA component. Whatever, I'm doomed to bad marks in Chinese, so what does it matter?
...........
I shall not spectaculate on what type of person the 'problem solver' is because of this unfortunate incident, because it is rude and one should not make assumptions or insult another just by appearances alone. Personal attack is low, and only low-lives do that. If I have to insult someone I want to be coolheaded and logical, not a spitting Medusa with nothing better to do than, say, stalk tagboards and forums. (Cyber attacks/trolls/flames are really beneath one with good upbringing, ne?)
Another to add to my new year resolutions: Do not personally attack anyone this year!
