Just set aside your fears of life, with the sole desire

I don’t know where my mind is. At all. In the past two weeks of freedom, I have started three draft blog posts (none of which saw the light of day), finished reading Atlas Shrugged, Less Than Zero and Snuff, and painted my new-2nd-hand dressing table which I bought off a friend last month. So here are the photos that have been requested both irl, via txt, email and twitter. It was a 2-day effort, especially since I only started painting it late in the afternoon of both days. And although it wasn’t what I had in mind to start with (I’d initially intended to do crackled gold over the top… but that didn’t work out at all), I think it looks pretty alright. I must say, the final product looks much better in person. Especially since I took those pictures at like 2am when I was finally, exhausted, but delighted to be done with painting textured gold:

Post-exam/assessments state = mess mess mess!

Green base

Using gold powder which is apparently older than I am, rather than the gold acrylics I had intended on using… because it turned out a shit shade (literally) when painted on. This caused a huge detour in repainting the top and a drawer, and general mayhem.

Flakeypie sleeping on my clothes as I paint.

Finished product. It looks funny with flash, but otherwise the gold doesn’t show up. It’s a lot softer looking in person. Eck, anyway. Not amazing, but better than boring cream.

I think I’ve just been really quiet on this blog ever since I’ve been on holiday because I’ve been having trouble with figuring out where I am. Existential problems of a twenty year old. If I don’t change my mind between now and clicking Publish, I will get up and rip a few things off my bedroom walls. November’s a new month. It’s not clogged by university stress or deadlines or pressure to catch a certain ferry in the morning… Summer’s a new season. I need to get onto this wave of “newness” and ride it out for as long as I can – as far as I can. Away from this current spot. This mindset.

I just feel like decisions are harder to make everyday, every year, because the older you get, but more important these decisions tend to be. Back at age 16, whether or not I wanted a summer job, or which jobs I might like to apply for only affected how many movies and concerts I could go to. This very day, a year ago, I had landed at LAX with a bag and plans full of a lot of nothing, and a mind full things I wanted to dump and acquire. Those twenty days changed me a lot. But having said that, I’m changing a lot, all the time. Although my whole life, I’ve always been the kind of person that “changes a lot” and constantly feel like I am, or must be, in a state of motion. A state of momentum, be it pulling me forwards or often times, even backwards… but I always had to be moving… changing. And so right now, when I find myself so idle – right at the end of a period of great motion and turmoil, and on the brink of another such period… what do I do? I want the next twenty days to count – as much as those same twenty days had counted for me, last year. As if not so much, at least, I want them to have meant something. I don’t the next three, four months of summer to turn into a dull, smooth blur, like what the sea appears to be, whilst a dangerously powerful rip lurks beneath the surface. Because that’s what I’m like.

The periods where I am just “alright” are possibly a million times worse than those periods where I experience the whole range of emotional extremes. I’ve contemplated getting medicated as a trial, maybe for a couple of weeks, now that grades and creativity aren’t things I HAVE TO be stressed about… but at the same time I also think that that would be copping out. That it would ruin the past year and a half of resumed talk-therapy and trying really hard to set right the bad mold I’ve been pressed into. Most of all, I think the biggest thing I need to overcome is this need to apologise for everything – to apologise for the way I am, and the things I do, and how I do them. And having to feel like I have to earn things. That I have to earn people’s love, attention, and earn the feeling of deserving any good thing that ever happens to me. This is a messed up topic, most especially because I haven’t put any of this into context, I know, but that would require like an entire autobiography of the past fifteen years, and this blog might explode, ha. But hmm. I can’t believe I just typed all that and not deleted it all. Fuck it. I’m sick of having to censor out the bad things because I don’t want to get too personal, or because I still struggle with anonymity and privacy issues. I’ll share what I want to share.

Anyway, the point is – I’m going to – I’ve got to keep reading like I’ve been doing this week, keep attempting to write, keep clicking the shutter… and heal my hands so that I can play the bass. I had a bit of a dumb accident with my left thumb last night and I feel like I’ve either lightly sprained it, or at least really pissed off a ligament or something, because it hurts like a bitch, and I can feel pain even when I’m not moving it. And then when cutting my nails just before, my right index nail split from the flesh way too deeply and it stings stings stings! So there goes my pivoting finger (left thumb, on the double bass), and one of my playing fingers (right index). Great. So much for working on my chops.

In 14 hours the boy will be exiting his last exam of the year and I can’t wait. Following that we have dinner plans, and we are also going to the cinema together for the first time ever. This has been the source of much heated conversation though. I used to think it was awesome because we’re such an interesting couple that we don’t have to resort to cliche coupley activities. Eye roll. But other factors came in and I got angry and what do you know, I blew the lid off things, as usual. Nonetheless, it will be great and then three sleeps from now we will be seeing Portishead together and I shall cry in public out of sheer happiness and the plan of making these twenty days count will totally be working out. Yup, that’s the plan. Playlist to come! Happy posts to come!

In the meantime, here’s a recent live video of a beautiful, tear-drawing song by Portishead – one of my favourites – and I’m quite positive that it will be played on Thursday night because I’ve been stalking their tour set lists online, and it’s been a staple. Oh god. How will I remain upright when I experience them for myself…

And the hunger of those early years will never return, But I don’t mind, I don’t mind

Daylight savings is messing with my head. I know we’ve only flicked our clocks an hour forward, but somehow that hour throws me off so badly. It’s weird that I handle weird jetlag far better than this! I had my “technical jury” today, which is a technical assessment on everyone’s main instrument, in front of a panel of two teachers. It went well, I think. Not flawlessly, not amazingly, but well. And to be honest, that’s all I need right now. To be relieved. To breathe temporarily. I feel like I’m just clinging onto this university year by the fingernails (that saying sucks, bass players have really short fingernails!) so that I will be able to fall into the abyss of dreaming once again, come November. And then I will once again have to make some way-too-serious decisions about my courses next year that will potentially affect me for the rest of my life. What’s with young people and having to make big, huge decisions around the ages of 17-21? Maybe it’s for this reason that I sometimes feel I suppose the US college system where people just get a Bachelor of Arts or Science and then do post-grad if they want to do something more specific and refined. The whole specialised degree thing in New Zealand is kicking my arse right now. I don’t want to be a uni student for that much longer!

I was looking for some old travel photos earlier and stumbled across this – a photo someone took of me from 2 years and 2 months ago. I want to be that thin again. Somebody please preserve my generous bust-line and lipo my thighs away, please! That sounds awful. Urgh. Seriously though, if it weren’t for the fact that I tore those jeans in Malibu last year, I would try and take the same photo again, just to compare, for self-torture self-motivation. Why do us females do this?! So many blogs that I read have at some point or another (if not currently still) been through some kind of weight-loss scheme. I can’t handle taking tight-skimpily-clothed-photos like Amanda does, nor will I ever go “on a diet”, so I don’t see the point in rambling about this, but can my magic lose-4-kilos-nonsensically powers please come back? kthanxbai. (btw, that was the first – and last – time that I’ve ever typed that “word”)

“it would be nice to look like this again” photo. Everything’s just kinda gotten bigger – bigger boobs, bum, and hmm, hair is a close tie for size, I’d say – but they didn’t need to be! gah.

Tokyo, 2010 – taken by my friend Joel

Whilst I’m on the topic of useless requests, I’d really like to be transported back to Tokyo like about now. As seen above with some sunnies, Canon, asymmetrical-zip trench coat and thigh-high boots. I guess when I’m that covered up, I still look exactly the same… In all seriousness though, the good news of this post is that the boy and I are going to Taiwan and Hong Kong. We finally paid for our flights today, and I will leave for Taipei in mid-December, whilst he finishes up work and joins me on Boxing Day. We’ll mostly be doing awesome things everyday, as I tend to do whilst traveling – galleries, museums, shopping, eating, drinking, dancing, gigging, and photographing our way around town. It’s going to be a blast, and it will be the first time that I’ll see the infamous New Years Eve fireworks at Taipei’s 101. We’ve only got two nights in Hong Kong though, so trying to cram all the things to do there will be interesting…

I’ve also been going on and on about wanting to go to London and New York (I don’t care which first, at this point!), but as neither of us can afford it right now – obviously not after this trip! – it’s been put on the back-burner of things-Amanda-constantly-remembers-to-wish-aloud-for, haha. I need to take up more shifts promoting chocolate and crackers at the supermarket. Uni is getting in the way, but hopefully I can earn some moolah in Nov/Dec to save up ahead of time.

Taipei, 2010 – taken by my friend Joel

And summer hockey starts this week, yay. I’m playing in two teams on both Wednesday and Thursday, so it’s going to bring a lot of exercise for me that has lapsed since winter hockey finished this month. Maybe this getting-my-old-figure-back thing might actually happen after all, haha. In the meantime though, I just might tape up my knees so that they don’t get skinned and see blood, as the law ball is on this Saturday. You’ve been warned: the boy has bought the most amazing suit ever, and to be honest, I don’t think he ought to go out in it as it’d just be a waste of hundreds of dollars since I’ll just want to rip the thing right off him. Plus, it means I have to fight for the limelight, which was meant to be relatively easy in a gold dress, but not so, next to a fucking gorgeous blue suit worn by such a handsome lad. I really miss him tonight, can you tell?

Yeah, the river, it spoke to me, It told me I’m small and I swallowed it down, If I make it at all – I’ll make you want me

Leaving the internet and blogosphere behind for a bit has been good for me. I’ve been doing a lot of major thinking in terms of re-structuring my life, my studies and my future. I still haven’t made a 100% commitment on any decisions yet, but at the moment it looks like I will be stuck at university for quite a few years to come, yet. I guess I’m just going to really try to make whatever I decide work for me. Ahhh. The woes of being multi-faceted, apparently multi-talented and seeking a more academic outlook.

A couple of days ago we had an “AS Music class plus Joel Reunion” roast lunch at Cara’s house. She had bought a few kilos of pork last Sunday and forgot to freeze it, so it went off and she had to re-buy the meat again that morning, causing us to wait until 2.49pm for lunch! All of us had skipped breakfast in anticipation of the roast lunch, so we ended up pigging out on my cupcakes as entree instead. The food (when we finally got to eat) was amazing though, so kudos to Cara for having us all around and being a lovely domesticated host. Poll of the day as to who would produce offspring first went to Cara (be it good or bad), so I guess it’s a good thing that she can do a bloody good roast!

Clockwise from the man in the beanie: Kingi (William), Freddy, Joel and Cara tucked away in the background.

Cara, Colin and Kingi. It’s funny how weird someone’s first name sounds once you get stuck into calling them by their last name.

Typical Joel slouch. With possibly my glass of Lindauer that he nicked and drank! Which I didn’t quite complain about though, after the wine incident last weekend.

The lovely view from Cara’s parents’ house. We had the lunch there instead of at her flat – because it’s much brighter and nicer. Plus it’s plenty more familiar territory to me.

Making sure we eat our greens…

Almost meal time.

I brought up how weird it was that we are all still friends, even though we rarely see each other, let alone everyone at once these days.  Joel (the tall, lanky, token finish-all-the-leftover-food guy, haha) is an absolute all-rounded genius who can write more Kanji characters that I can, who also makes Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry conjoint degrees sound too easy. When he tried to explain to Colin what “mechanical engineering” means, and the possibility of becoming a rocket scientist, we begged that he should become one just because of the endless “you don’t need a rocket scientist to…” jokes that we can pull. He was also the friend who traveled with me to Taiwan and Japan last year, although we really only became friends in 2008 from a mutual friend. That was the same year that Cara and I became friends as well; prior to that she absolutely loathed my guts because of some doped up footballer I dated and then dumped (because he was too stupid…) all the way back in those junior days of high school. She now works full time in freighting (is that what you even call it?) and sings in the Auckland Graduate Choir that often performs with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. I don’t really remember how I became friends with Freddy at all asides from music and economics class; he’s the token Asian chick-magnet who has severely buffed up this year and we have to constantly tell him to keep his muscles to himself! I’m also not sure how I befriended Kingi, but I only remember that we bonded over our mutual distaste for our music teachers, growing up in the “ghetto South Auckland” and concert band camps back at college. Lastly, there’s good ol’ Colin. Mister Spanish-speaking gossip extraordinaire law student who is now also studying Chinese and constantly asking me for pingyin of words and phrases he doesn’t know. What a weird and eclectic bunch we are. I’d say it again – I simply don’t know how we’re friends. But that doesn’t matter, right? One or more of them are always there in times of the oddest needs. I think I’ve received late-night rides home from everyone except Kingi. I gave him one once.

So back to that afternoon, our lunch looked like this:



Then Freddy left because he had promised to meet someone at the gym in town, and look at how gleeful the rest of them looked at the sight of dessert! The action shot of them all shaking on some bottle of mousse or trying to get ice cream or meringue is absolutely priceless.

I have to admit: I’m not too keen on Crunchie ice cream. I don’t like Crunchie chocolate bars so the ice cream didn’t go down too well with me at all. Plus I was extremely full. Kingi rebutted my excuse of the ice cream being “urgh yellow!” was “but you are too!” – just priceless! Especially coming from the Pineapple Lump/Crunchie Bar man himself – brown on the outside and yellow on the inside.We are full of racially colourful jokes, aren’t we, literally… courtesy of our high school culture, I’d say.


Then Colin nicked my camera off me and embarked on a mission to photograph me. As usual, I resorted to my face-hiding tactics…



Creepy stalker-like photo by Colin, tehe.

My dessert!!!

In all seriousness though,  I need to lose some pounds and get over this lens-shy habit that I’ve formed in the past couple of years. I don’t know how I ever managed to fare as a child model, but apparently I’m supposed to go back to Taiwan in some months to let some famous photographer shoot me. Good lord. Help! Gulp.

You seem very well, things look peaceful. I’m not quite as well, I thought you should know

Sometimes, some things just aren’t okay. And don’t feel okay. And… well they just aren’t okay. And when there’s nothing more you can do about it, when you’ve done your very best according to you and everyone else you can find solace in, then what are you supposed to do and feel from here? I hate that so many things are great in my life right now, but it seems that fate will never let all external factors be okay with me. I know, I know, life’s not meant to easy. Neither are friendships and relationships with everyone and anyone in life – but it just seems like there always has to be something wrong in my life. When it wasn’t drama with one friend, it was drama with another friend, or drama with classes, teachers, classmates, drama on the sports team, drama in the music ensembles, drama in the family (okay, that never seems to and I know will never go away, but it at least has its calms), drama with boys, girls, more boys and more girls, drama oh drama drama drama, all the time. And it sucks so bad when it’s with someone so close to me, who I so badly want to talk to, hang out with all the time, and it’s not reciprocated. In this post from back in September of last year, I expressed the pains of breaking up with a former best friend, and how it feels like – if not worse – than breaking up a romantic relationship. It’s different of course, but you know. Anyway, some really messed up and traumatic thing from about 15 or 16 years ago unwittingly surfaced for me recently, and I’ve finally managed to deal with it head-on… and afterwards it just made me think, gosh, the things I really want to say, and the people I wish I could tell them to right now – the shoulder that I really need… isn’t there.

I was feeling really shitty and end-of-mid-semester-break-blue today, and got really cheered up by the surprise revelation that classes don’t resume on Tuesday as I had thought they were – classes actually don’t start until Wednesday! I was all frantic and “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!!!” to the couple of people I was txting who replied with “I thought you knew”-type responses, but heck it made my day. Also, instead of getting anything legitimate done (okay, I did some more writing, but that’s not uni-work, thus not “legitimate”), I devoured three films with mum today. One was a Chinese film which at first seemed like commentary on life, romance, priorities, marriage, etc – but with a really warped and twisted sense of humour – but then it ended up really depressing towards the end when someone died of cancer and decided to hold their funeral while they were still alive so that they could attend it. I don’t know if there’s a proper name for when they do that, instead of an uhh “funeral”. And the latter film was Robin Hood. You know, the one with Russel Crowe, which I had largely questioned about the casting of, and was initially skeptical about but it ended up being enjoyable enough and wasn’t quite as the mother and I had expected it to play out as.

I’ve had a huge up-and-down of a long weekend, starting on Thursday night when the boy and I decided we were going to make it an overtly indulgent and decadent evening of fine dining and wining at home. The highlight of dinner was my chicken cordon bleu with pesto, and my god we drank so much wine that night that even with the copious amounts of food, I was drunk enough to doze off whilst watching Boston Legal – and it’s my all-time favourite, funniest show, so that’s saying a lot. The wines were a mix of his 21st birthday presents and leftover party wine, plus some Villa Maria that I had bought on sale ages ago that’s been stashed at the back of our pantry. Neither of us are habitual wine drinkers, but we’d been talking about it for sometime now, and watching the film Sideways the other night had helped to kick it off. Four bottles that night. Or technically three and a half. Not a bad effort. It was fun to mix and match up Riesling, Chardonnay, Sav Blanc/Pinot Gris (and also some Merlot) to see which best matched what food.

I’m hungry, just looking at this now.

A lot of capsicum. I had  kiiinda forgotten how expensive they were, but my god I love capsicums. Or as Americans call it, bell peppers.


Brock’s Italiano salami – my favourite – and brie. Another favourite of mine. Ahh!


These photos were all taken before I got too “happy”…

Another night later, another bottle of wine.

So many calories to burn off, but hockey training is getting tougher, and to make things worse, a fitness regime is also kicking in. But we are still young and must live close to the edge while we still can. Before we are too self-important, and too heavy with weights too dear to bear the risk of toeing the edge. And I will leave this post with this:

“Honestly, honesty never gets you everywhere. It may get you a lot of places, likewise your pretty face and ratio between your waist and hips, and those glorious breasts of yours that both sexes visually devour. But you hate that you can’t take any credit for how you look, so you feel more and more empty every time someone does a double take at you, or when strangers cross the room just to meet you. Because all they like thus far is to look at you, and maybe some of them like to hope that there is more to you… but alas, most often there isn’t much to them either so you’ve learnt to not get your hopes up. You need to learn what it’s like to look forward to something again, to be so excited for something that you’re counting down the days, hours and minutes as if nothing further down the line matters. You need to learn what it’s like to be free and young again. And worst but most of all, you need to remind yourself that you are indeed still young.”

Oh, and I ended up finishing Looking For Alaska the day after I started it, and am back to The Great Gatsby. Hopefully reading stays on track as my life starts to veer again.

Stuck inside my imagination, Busy making something from nothing. Pictures of hope and depression, Anything is better than nothing

It’s been a mind-and-history-delving, poetic-reading and inspired-writing couple of days. The highs and lows are hitting me in waves, waves and waves like nothing before, but it’s been interesting to see how I’ve grown up and changed in the way that I’ve been dealing with everything. Asides from an intense hockey training tonight that kicked up with a huge run around the block (man, that block seems so much smaller when driving!), everything I’ve done for the past few days hasn’t really taken much physical effort. Oh yeah, I forgot that two days ago I trekked my way into uni in the stormy weather to have a kind-of rehearsal – but because of yesterday’s events, the day before feels like a month ago by now.

Three albums that have been on repeat for the day:

New Moon – Elliott Smith

A posthumous release, I had never really paid much attention to it until recently. But tonight,  the songs between “High Times” and “Going Nowhere” are really striking a chord with me. Pun unintended. For me, Elliott Smith’s music is largely about the mood and lyrics, since majority of songs aren’t instrumentally or musically complex at all. I mean, sonically, only “Everything Means Nothing To Me” (one of my favourites, ever – definitely worth a listen) from his Figure 8 album really really stands out, because it’s in an epic key on the piano, full of black notes.

Raven In The Grave – The Raveonettes

The Raveonettes is one of my favourite bands, and this is their latest album. My favourite is Lust Lust Lust, but that has its time and place, and is a whole other bittersweet story altogether. Point is, I don’t care what Pitchfork or whoever else says, this is a great album. Not a life-changing release that’s about to influence me and leave the same imprint as Lust Lust Lust did, for sure, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless. They just do concepts, atmosphere and nostalgia so fucking well. And I’m all about atmosphere and nostalgia. Oh nostalgia! Take me back, when…

23 – Blonde Redhead

Even though they’ve been around for years and years and years (in other words, they first released something when I was aged 2), I’ve only started listening to them recently. So it’s a huge testament to say that now they’re my 6th top band on lastfm, which I’ve been scrobbling on since late 2006 – albeit with a couple of years off in the middle. They’re just amazing and so far I’ve haven’t ceased discovering something new in the many layers of their music, every time I listen. In a way, I think that I look up to the Italian Pace – brothers who make up 2/3 of the band – because of their “backgrounds in jazz”. According to various interviews and web-sources, they seem to have Bachelor degrees in jazz, so it’s refreshing to see jazz graduates moving on and making such beautiful yet relatable music that isn’t jazz. They would be around the same age as my tutors at jazz school, and I can’t help but hope that their paths is the one I take. I mean, jazz is wonderful, but I just don’t have the same passion for it next to some of my fellow students. I’m kind of in the middle-ground actually. There are those that are wholeheartedly intent on making jazz waves and they live, eat and breathe jazz; then there are others who are purely doing it for a music performance degree, and don’t even enjoy jazz. And really, I’m in the middle of the two. I enjoy it, but it’s not my #1-always-all-the-time thing. Music in general is. Anyway, wild tangent aside, I love this album.

Something I wrote two nights ago in a frenzy. Always in a frenzy:

Lines­ on my face
this clear trail you can claim to
Scars in my chest
these years you’ve been through.
So much easier now that she speaks
and you’re not listening
So much harder now that you talk
and she’s not hearing.
Uneasy questions on my face
you can’t respond to
Wounds in in the harshest place
those nights you’ve lived through.
Haunted by the spark I blew
The one true part I claim of you
Realisation in your eyes –
to truth.
I weep.
If I walked once so easily
What makes you trust and stick with me?
If I walked once so easily
What makes you trust and stick with me?

My copy of John Green’s Looking for Alaska just arrived today so I think I might tuck into bed with it now. Although I’m partway through The Great Gatsby, I think Fitzgerald can wait. Just a little while. And for now, some relevant, such relevant… food for thought (it makes more sense and is even more relevant in private, but I can’t go scrawling such internal ancient matters on the internet):

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Kubler Ros

By that definition, who are the beautiful people you know?

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