Colours of the wind

You think you own whatever land you land on,
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim,
But I know every rock, and tree and creature,
Has a life,
has a spirit,
has a name,

You think the only people who are people,
Are the people who look and think like you,
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You learn things you never knew,
you never knew,

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?
Can you paint with all the colours of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colours of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest,
Come taste the sun-sweet berries of the earth,
Come roll in all the riches all around you,
And for once, never wonder what they're worth,

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers,
The heron and the otter are my friends,
And we are all connected to each other,
In a circle,
in a hoop that never ends,

How high does the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know,

And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon,
whether we are white or copper-skinned,
Can you can sing with all the voices of the mountain?
Can you paint with all the colours of the wind?

You can own the Earth and still,
All you'll own is earth until,
You can paint ,
with all the colours of the wind...

I keep asking myself, how will it be remembered at the end of this all?
History is afterall, the victors' anthem.

What you say may not be what others hear.
What you do is not what others see.

What do I mean?
You shouldn't be wondering. This is afterall your teachings,
and I've learnt well.
They say friends are the hardest to impress.
So I have found an explanation to your compassionless, mirthless, eyes
that too often gleam with the hunger and contempt
that frightens me.

You believe you know me in ways that the crowd do not.
the people's eyes are veiled you say.
And maybe you do,
maybe they are.
Afterall, immortals among immortals are but mortals, and a beautiful pavement is cracked and parched up close.
But are you to discover all my inadequacies and resent me for them?
You forget that I'm an imperfect weed.
And you forget that you were supposed to be sun, rain and earth for me.
All the world to me.

If you think I am wearing shoes too large for my feet,
be brave and tell me straight in the face.
Your face betrays you, my friend.
It does not sadden me half as much to know this,
than to have had to find out for myself.
If you say "build a bridge,"
build a bridge!
Why have all these accolades sanded down foundations time after time,
so we've been left to pick up the pieces and build again!

Dear, greatest hypocrite of them all.
Your skin is barely enough to cover your own lust for power.
You need a mask.

Correct me if I am wrong,
(and not behind my back like you always do)
but you have pounced on my every mistake and made them your crowns.
Your little whispers, the silent tantrums,
and most of all, the curl of you lips like a slicker ready to harvest my flaws.
You disgust me.
Your sigh,
like a cloud of putrid smoke to be swatted away.
And I loathe these with all the rage of one,
tormented by an inexplicable lack of self-sufficiency.
Despite all.

So history will be written and let history be written.
You will make your own story,
and I'm sure you needn't be told to
tell it to the world.

You're familiar with the saying
Man's reach exceeds his grasp?
It is a lie.
Man's grasp exceeds his nerve.

And Lord we trust in your unfailing love,
for you alone are God eternal,
throughtout earth and heaven above.

HALO, Foosball and David Poh

Today has been an eventful intra-council day!
It was refreshing to have reached school at 7am, early in the morning to practise mass dances, woah, really gets the blood rushing to your head. xD
So we broke off for "whatever you wish to do" time, and "whatever" for me, turned out to be watching the guys show off their basketball skills and whizzing all over the school grounds on the security guard's bike!

It's been awhile since I rode a bike,so having forgotten the thrills and joys of bike riding, it felt tremendous to be sailing along at great bicycle speeds, up and down the parade square and other ridable parts of the school grounds, and feeling the wind whistle pass my ears. There were about 4 bikes, so almost everyone posted at the gate had a go. Poor Gwen couldn't reach the pedals, but with Dhil's help, managed to get a few rounds too. Most excitingly, Clara actually learnt how to cycle for the first time! =D

Then came 9o'clock and ancient and not-so-ancient seniors began streaming in. Jeanne, Camille, Jerald, Hui Min and Nug were stationed at the front gate, and it was so funny to speculate if each oncoming person entering VJ, was here for intra-council. Camille also got us to do this greeting continuum welcome thing, so that each of us says a syllable but we all collapsed in laughter at our first "customer," so each of us ended up in a lame chorus of "welcome to intra-council day!"

The seniors were trickling in, so we spent some time in the igloo, and the PSII room turned into the "two little pig's cottage' (Leon and Shu). It was so hilarious playing big bad wolf with Dhil, and then finally becoming one of the little pigs. If only the room had a chimney!!
So a second round of mass dance began. The seniors can dance really well! It amazes me how they remember all 6 dances. (Ara:"I bet they secretly practise everyday.") hmm and maybe they have been =P

The rest of the time before the BBQ was spent in the igloo, playing darts briefly, then joing the HALO squad. Whahaha!! It was so fun playing mamapok and killing others and getting killed. It soon appeared that out of 4 places, David (playing Drake) always came in first, with mamapok coming in second. We soon formed an alliance, poor Melanie and Nikhil had to put up with our winning streaks =P but we all enjoyed the rounds tremendously. Foosball thereafter saw David and me, pairing up again, against Mark and Shawn this time. We played three rounds and lost the very first one because I wasn't really adept at controlling the skewered players, but the last 2 rounds were so intense especially because we won the 2nd round, and the last one became the deciding factor. We won the last round in a mood of escalating euphoria, thanks in small part to my improving defense skills and in large part to David's legendary front line, "stop, pass to middle man and shoot hard" strategy xDDD. And so with an outraged Mark and shawn still demanding a rematch, David decided that "we can at last have lunch in peace" and we did.

The BBQ was over pretty quickly for me, maybe in part because we were so pre-occupied with conversations and food. The BBQ-ed corn was really amazing, Hari, Camille and I were happily guzzling away at them long after the fire had been put out! The marshmallows also enjoyed an ideal dying-charcoal heat and turned out a beautiful brown. =) It was a happy eat!

The clean up then began while people started leaving, (in trickles once again)Dhilshad, Ara, Su, Mark, Leon and I decided to stay back awhile though. With so much leftover food, some playful bickering ended up with a food-eating challenge, which we all took on - our mission: to finish an entire tray of fried rice! xD so we all began eating, and talking about everything under the sun, from muslim fasting (which I learnt a lot about =D) to "nigga songs." Haha! Soon, we broke out in campfire songs like "I got peace like the river," complete with the full hand actions, which Leon managed to learn! Yay!

And yep, we did managed to finish all the fried rice, and the day ended with another improptu D-L-Y video production about the reco bear xDD and waking Ara the deep sleeper up with zoo-animal calls! Hooot hooot hoooot! Twit twit! Squak squak! It was such a super happy day and I am so glad I got to know David better too. Kudos to Ara and Joel for such a successful event!! Hmm, I realise that the success of an event is measured in fact, not by the smooth running of it, but rather by how happy and satisfied people go home from it! Really looking forward to the next 24th event!

These times are worth their weight in gold.

If we are enzyme and substrate particles, we have never truly fitted together, have we?
Take out the hearts-suite from a deck of cards. Gloss it all over with goo and try to superimpose the 2 together again.
Viola! A brilliant portrait.

Terrorism

Today, we learnt about terrorism. It made me think of the world as a void filled with tiny, fragile little rag dolls scurrying about and blowing each other up now and then.
7/7, 9/11, mumbai, pakistan.
What's the one common thing among them?
Those poor chaps.
They never knew their normal day was going to turn out not-quite-so-normal.
Then again, if your life was to be blown up in your face every other day, it'd not be not-quite-so-normal would it?

Optimism brinks on foolishness sometimes.

"Yes Peregin Took, there always was hope.
A fool's hope."

And hey, if the monsoons are here, nobody would wish for a sunny day more than the poor farmers out in the field, in the rain.
You know, when it rains everyday, nobody'd want a sunny day more than the rain man.
It brinks on desperate pretense sometimes.
Like wanting people to believe that water is a newly discovered form of photon rays.
So don't be too hard on the poor chaps. They do try so very hard.

Yeah. And don't box them in too.
Don't say "You are a XXX sort of person."
You know, for people who are trying so hard for a breakthrough, it's like a slap in their faces.
Be kind to animals.
They say humans are 99.5% ape-like.

The power of obsession.

And indeed most of my faults are peppered with the ills of obsession, among them a compelling obsession to bring others through movies I loved so that they too can feel the wonderous excitment and happiness I felt.
Moives are like puzzles, I like to think.
each detail, each word, each twist is a puzzle piece.
And the final moments, are like the after-taste of a good piece of ba kua.
If its delicate, subtle flavours are to be appreciated in full, each of these small pieces must be picked up with care.
Today I realise that the exacting approach and rapt attention I believe is key to true movie appreciation can be sorely disregarded for equally valid movie-watchig philosophys.
This can in fact, be turned into a Lang Arts question. Why was I wrong?
I think I have the full answer now.
Because I failed to realise that even under the same conditions, whether or not ideal, different viewers watching the same thing in the same way can receive a movie in totally different ways.
More crucially, there are more than one way to appreciate a movie.

The Prestige was a good one,
I now regret that in my very eagerness to make it a good movie experience, I may have in fact, ruined it.

Badminton on Wednesday was the best session by far.
Interestingly,one of the many lessons I picked up in that game is a plausible answer to what is to me now, one of life's most pressing problem and question.

An element of the winning formula.
What does it take to win? And if mentality is an integral part of the winning formula, what is it?
Watching “facing the giants” on Monday helped me with that question.
Along the lines of subtlety, fear on one end, and pride on the other.
In the middle, like the thin line of precious durian paste in a durian cake is the point of equilibrium—the answer.
Fear breeds hesitance, and pride breeds ignorance. The former is why David Childers went far left or far right, and the latter is why the Giants lost.
Winning 1 game out of 4, I can scarcely say I got the winning formula, and there's the catch. It is difficult to achieve this ideal point of equilibrium. Because the said ills plague us on a subconscious level.

It isn't going to be any easier to find that point of equilibrium in life than it is to find it in physics on paper.

I should never have lost sight of you.
I should have put you save in my pocket,
I should have held you tightly in my hands.

If only I had not gone to the Library,
If only I wasn't so tired.
If only I didn't sleep.

Stabs of regret and the incessant "if only.."s torment the wistful mind.
I must have been living in my own Utopian planet all this while.
People aren't so bad, who'd steal from a tired sleeping person in a library?
Someone did.
I learnt that the hard way.

Where are you now?
I miss you already.
I love the rhythmic flashes of your LED.
They were like your heartbeat, I like to say.
lub-dub... lub-dub... lub-dub...
You were almost alive.

I hated you the first time I saw you.
I hated your white body. I wanted black.
I'd chucked you aside for 2 whole weeks.
It was your lubdub that drew me to you.
We took videos together.
We scored the all-time 90000+ high for Quadrapop
We broke into the Tennis World Tournament.
And we were against the Russian Woman we couldn't beat.
We still can't beat.
Ah, but the videos always did the trick, they made my days.
We barely had 1 year together, and you'd grown to mean so much to me.

Losing you feels like losing an arm.
That babboon of a nitwit took more than just a phone from me.
Now you're gone.
No more bulge in my pocket.
No more lubdub.

It sucks to imagine you lubdub-ing for someone else.
I'm sorry. I should've held you tight.
Yes, I should've...