Need a cure...

Tough day.


From the Poetry Speaks calendar, today.

Butterflies
By Siegfried Sassoon

Frail Travellers, deftly flickering over the flowers;
O living flowers against the heedless blue
Of summer days, what sends them dancing through
This fiery-blossom'd revel of the hours?

Theirs are the musing silences between
The enraptured crying of shrill birds that make
Heaven in the wood while summer dawns awake;
And theirs the faintest winds that hush the green.

And they are as my soul that wings its way
Out of the starlit dimness into morn:
And they are as my tremulous being--born
To know but this, the phantom glare of day.

As I read it, I felt I could identify with the frailness of the butterflies. It is, perhaps, one of the better pictures of my life at the moment.


After Mr Kali's class, Raveena asked me what coke is. I said there are three possible meanings: Coca-Cola, cocaine, and a carbon-based industrial substance. She meant the last.


I did some stupid things in school today, involving a flagpole and a cement shard in the basketball court. Can't say I'm proud of them; can't say I regret them. Somehow I feel lots of creative energy welling up within me, and without responsibilities in school, I fear I might channel them into vandalism for lack of other productive avenues. After all, VILADS (VI Literary and Debating Society) season is coming to an end this year; I have only an essay or two remaining.

There were some heated words; some tears; a number of concerned friends; a friend who stood by, sat and walked with me; Cik Wan Mardziyah and Pn Jaya Karuppiah who told me not to sit on the ledge. It's been an especially tough and rough season... for me, for Li-Shia, for Phak Hoe, and probably many others as well.

The school counsellor, Pn Nirmala, wondered if there was something wrong with me. She asked me to see her maybe in a week's time or so, in her office. Fancy that! I've never been summoned by a counsellor before. I may or may not go. If I do, my words and actions will probably shake her up a bit. Heheheheheh...


While in Jaya Supermarket just now, Mum pointed out a poem on a plaque in a Christian gift shop. It's the same one that's printed on a small card on my desk. It was a timely reminder for a time like this.

What God Hath Promised

God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through,
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

God hath not promised we shall not know
Toil and temptation, trouble and woe.
He hath not told us we shall not bear
Many a burden many a care.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labourer, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.


Picked up Max Lucado's Cure for the Common Life from Glad Sounds. I haven't read any of his newer books, let alone this, his latest offering. But it seems to be exactly what I need to hear, and the book's epigraph says it all:

This is God's Word on the subject: "...I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—-plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

--Jeremiah 29:10-11 (The Message)

And the opening verse of the Introduction reinforces the book's theme:

Each person is given something to do that shows who God is.

--1 Corinthians 12:7 (The Message)

It may be a good thing that I'm reading some Lucado. May help with the essays, as he did some years ago when I started writing. Will blog more once I'm done with it.


Life can really piss you off when everyone demands something of you, and also when no one demands anything of you.


Li-Shia brought her stuffed cat, Chilie (the one Pearl gave her for her birthday) to school today, and I brought Hushy the basset hound and Jonathan the monkey.