cynthetickravings...

Friday, October 31, 2003

the hamster returned...

happy halloween!

... posted at 2:26 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Thursday, October 30, 2003

my hamster escaped!

... posted at 7:26 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Wednesday, October 29, 2003

.... to discover crippled buds and to bury them... to wonder about the doors that seemed half opened and to feel them close... to watch life escape in a redness unseen and to grief its departure...

... posted at 5:59 PM by C.flava. 0 comments


Monday, October 27, 2003

Belly-dance class today almost killed me.... the pulling of the muscles... the brain coordination... I have such little control over my body... it's not even funny...

there was this one move that I just loveeed though... you shake your fats over and over real quick... jigle jigle... i call them hyper shimmies

... posted at 7:41 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Friday, October 24, 2003

The scent of fresh mango covered the air as I moved towards the elevator... I work in a neighbourhood that's rich with layers of different smells, different sounds... sometimes I feel directions into the past, other times, I sense a lonesome present that divides itself into a time and space that's so alien to myself.

... posted at 9:48 PM by C.flava. 0 comments


Thursday, October 23, 2003

Happy Deepavali

I came across a philosophical discourse of the beautiful Festival of Lights.

"Many Deepavali festivals have come and gone. Yet the hearts of the vast majority are as dark as the night of the new moon. The house is lit with lamps, but the heart is full of the darkness of ignorance. O man! wake up from the slumber of ignorance. Realise the constant and eternal light of the Soul which neither rises nor sets, through meditation and deep enquiry. May you all attain full inner illumination! May the supreme light of lights enlighten your understanding! May you all attain the inexhaustible spiritual wealth of the Self! May you all prosper gloriously on the material as well as spiritual planes!" -HIS HOLINESS SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA SARASWATI MAHARAJ

I remember my dad coming home from India and bringing home lotsa hindu comics... I loved the colors and reading about the mythology... about Lord Shiva, Hanuman... I soooo want to find those comics he bought me...

... posted at 10:14 PM by C.flava. 0 comments


Tuesday, October 21, 2003

This morning, the heat held the air in moist... you could feel the thickness go through your nostrils and weigh on your chest... I examined the four corners of my room while dread overwhelmed... each corner, a shade more dense... maybe it was last night, or the night before that had lit up in crisp lightness... or maybe it was last night or the night before that danced on a moon lit openess... or maybe... i don't remember.




"Australia told it has too many whites to be part of Asia" (read more)

Now that's something to laugh about...



I dance like this thing

... posted at 10:01 PM by C.flava. 0 comments


Monday, October 20, 2003

did i mention that i thought britney gave madonna too much tongue at the mtv music awards back in august?



not a girl, not yet a woman... well not till madonna anyway...


I got a hold of President Bush's CVs... impressive!

... posted at 4:17 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


It was a DVD night for me yesterday... and, I don't normally get sick feelings at the end of movies, but I did with this one. We watched Frida... I think she was an outrageous artist, considering the time and place she lived in... in many ways, her life, portrayed in the movie, was a lot like the nightmares I have... of losing my body parts... of going through physical pain... of losing the ability to walk... it happens in my worst nightmares, but for this artist it was a genuine life.... and it showed in her art... blood, bodyparts... almost surreal, but not quite, I think they are way too painful to be completely surreal.



What the movie didn't depict was the times she attempted suicide throughout her life... her life wasn't just physically painful... she did however paint a suicide scene she had read about in the papers...

and for my own little cheeky self sake, the movie didn't show enough of her life with her women lovers :P

_____________________


I've also become one of Margaret Cho's fans. She is more than hilarious... she's... why don't you just read her blog.



I remember watching the "All American Girl" when I was a lot younger but... she never left much of an impression on me, aside from the fact that she was Asian, and American... and well different from the other stuff on TV at that point. It's true that I never understood the term- "Asian American", until, I actually lived in San Francisco for awhile... I mean, all my life, being "Singaporean-Chinese", I could see how you could be two things at once, but... "Asian American" seemed odd... because it was as if, a lot of different kinds of people were lumped into one single term... and it was sorta true... no matter what their back grounds were like... they seemed to dress similarly, talk similarly... and I don't know... they could be Korean, Japanese, Indonesian... but they were somehow lumped into a tiny box.... driving hondas... girls with layered long hair, and guys with short cropped hair... where was the variation?... if there was variation then they were gay maybe?...

One time, this dude that I randomly met, asked if I was a lesbian... and I asked him why, and all he had to say was, well you're not the typical 'asian american' type of girl... and i was like, "yeah I'm singaporean'... his response was that he knew lots of Singaporeans, and none of them looked or talked like me.... in actual fact, he only knew one other Singaporean Indian business man... so yes, of course, he didn't talk like me... I was a chinese singaporean raver girl, studying psychology.... e, glowsticks and techno were my only business.

There was one very strange conversation I heard at Club Bien Bien... which was THE 'Asian American' dance club back in 1996... that played remixes of Hong Kong and Japanese pop ....

'Asian' dude with spikey hair: "Man I thought I was asian enough, but that guy was hella hella Asian"
'Asian' girl with long layered hair: "Yeah, he was cute though, just sorta FOBish."

Fisrt of all what the hell did it mean to be "hella Asian"... man have they been to Asia...? Do they know how many different sorts of cultures and people we have here?... and no, we don't all love Sanrio!... alright i do... but I know tons of people who detest it... *blush* but really... not all of us worship hello kitty... hm... in Sarawak they have lots of statues of cats... although I don't think they are the Sanrio variety...

ok, so they say all Asians look alike... but... it seemed like if you lived as a minority in America... you were just that... I always felt like just a visitor in San Francisco... there to participate temporarily... sometimes... and on some level, I think I chose to live that way so as to maintain that little bit of difference... ego, i suppose.... sometimes, I thought I might have want to live there longer, or even settle down there... ...

now with plans to move to Austrailia... lord knows how that will turn out... one things for sure though... i will have someone by my side.

... posted at 1:44 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Saturday, October 18, 2003

your conquering world splashes in... i breathe silence in a heart ache unseen...


remember moments ink marked blank pages and accented rythem... remember wrinkles that spread across skin and outlined inner emotion... remember the vapor that worked on iron, designing orange-red patterns... corrosion at it's most briliant moment... marking, tarnishing, meaning.

... posted at 7:55 PM by C.flava. 0 comments


Friday, October 17, 2003

Sometimes the minority of possibilities does happen... my mother does not have cancer. I feel an odd combination of relief and fear...

and one more thought...
I'm convinced that human beings are a freak of nature always on the verge of destroying themselves.

... posted at 12:24 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Wednesday, October 15, 2003

and more thoughts about the 'scarcity mentality'...

I don't think I was built to live in the world like that... too often, I have seen the brightest child, full of potential, being beaten down by competition and the mistaken human belief -that survival's about fighting others... contest... the most horrifying power struggles happen in intimate relationships and well... on massive scales as well... maybe not all trees were meant to have the same amount of sunlight... but still... come on, grow the fuck up... chill out... and LIVE! yes, I mean LIVE... live and drum magic....

a couple of days ago, my mom told me there was a high chance she might have cancer... we'll know the results next week... but still, the tension... its been wrecking everyone's emotional state...

... posted at 8:51 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Clarification:
Not taking money for drumming just secures the degree of fun and enthusiasm and passion and life and sweetness and magical moments I will always have with it. I'm not being walked over. Money might take that all away. Plus, who would you rather drum for you?? a vegetable loving drummer? Or a dollar per beat drummer? I would choose vegetable loving drummer. Wouldn't you?

... posted at 6:03 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Monday, October 13, 2003

I just created this drum circle group on yahoo





Click to subscribe to drummingmagic

... posted at 4:13 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


I have made a resolution today to never take money for drumming.

Over the last half a year or so, I'd been so interested in middle eastern beats. I suppose it began in Belinda's belly-dance class... But I became really enchanted with some of the traditional beats... it has that sacred sort of uplift... mysterious and infinite, you can almost imagine long endless desert land, mirages... so I have a friend who teaches these beats...

he didn't want me in the class because he was afraid I'd take over and earn the money for myself... which was a down right tragic thought in itself... how secure can one be? You can manipulate your surroundings, build walls around yourself... imagine power over territory... how much control can you have over fate?... and really, the more you do that, the more your insecurities show... and the more your spirit for anything dies.

So there, I'm never taking money for drumming again... I'll only request for transportation fees and a free vegetable platter... money sucks the life outta drumming


... posted at 12:13 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Friday, October 10, 2003

So the truth was revealed. The reason I was a fat child was because of "black chicken culture"... what is it? might you ask... well my mother claims that I had a nanny who would brew this black chicken skin soup for me all the time leaving a thick layer of chicken fat for me to consume... it was said to be one of the most nutritious things you could give a child... and just as she told me that, I had these odd flashbacks of consuming the damn black skin bird in a thick oily broth... *vomit*...


over time, I think I learned that, really, what was best for my body was just to lay back and eat just enough to function but not too much to the point where you feel abdominal pains and bloatedness...


Also I was given a dozen bottles of Ribena sugar water which I called "Ang Zhuiee" (hokkien for 'red water),,... "that's why you were so chubby" says mom... I was crazy about the silly drink and refused water unless it has that black current sugary dose of Ribena berry magic... the sugar was converted into thick folds of flab... cute when i was little, tormenting when I hit adolescence...

... posted at 9:26 PM by C.flava. 0 comments


Thursday, October 09, 2003

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.

Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

--Rumi

... posted at 5:43 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


There were some points in my life where I believed the world was my dance floor and possibilities lay open in an infinite sense. Those were moments where I felt power over my sense of self, my body... my life. I don't know where those days have gone to.

... posted at 2:06 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Monday, October 06, 2003

Sometimes I almost believe someone's causing all these odd coincidences to happen... this morning I was slouching behind the computer trying to make sense of a lot of psychology for work... then like some psycho lighting jet... weird coming out thoughts danced in my mind... I wanted to get up, start doing the flash dance and sing my coming out theme song (Breaking All the Rules)... right... so right there and then, as those obscene flash dance moves were totally lifting me onto some different dimension of imagination... the most homophobic, prudish, judgmental co-worker comes up to me: Hey wanna listen to The Sound Track of The Wedding Banquet Musical? *She TOTALLY hands me this CD*... put it on, it's good....

And at that point I thought... well now, look who's looking down on us and laughing... I put the CD on... and man, was it like a severe coming out musical material... and to top all that off... my homophobic co-worker transforms the work place into some major coming out karaoke nightmare... "this is the part where he confesses he's gay.."...she proudly informs me...
***wait weren't you just telling us how you'd never give counseling to a gay person?*** *...I gulped my coffee down.


_____________


Did I mention what happened last Thursday? I came out to a co-worker... who happens to also be my belly dance instructor... I felt like I was 19... coming out to good friends all over again... but this time without the pain... it's amazing how it feels today... may I just say... for the record, that if not for where i lived, if not for my parents... this would not even be an issue...

So how did it happen, as usual, i get them drunk on beer, drag them to a corner and traumatise them with the info... "So I just got engaged" "Whoaaaaa to whommm?" "We***..."... "oh wow, YOU GOT ENGAGEGED!... I'll support you when you tell the rest."

So there's my lil' coming out entry.


... posted at 6:53 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


Sunday, October 05, 2003

I'm wondering the consequences of so many things at the moment. I've come to see that I spend too much time pondering lost chances, missed opportunity and frown at the decisions I've made in the past. There was a period of time where I had nightmares of my death, and literally felt the fear of my body being injured, body parts being severed.

I've compensated a lot for these missed opportunities... these regrets... But these things can never totally be compensated for... Each moment of discord from life feels like stolen breath... it's like something else is supposed to be happening, and i fear losing even more in the future. My biggest fear in life... is missing it.

... posted at 9:18 AM by C.flava. 0 comments


profile
nick: cyntheticflava
gender: female
d.o.b.: 240878
location: San Francisco/Singapore
food pref: lacto vege
work: field of shrinkology
musical instrument: djembe
fav colors: blue, maroon
fav food: baked corn
fav body part: armpit
music: d&b/hiphop/jazz
fav writers: kundera, murakami