the bud

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

-- Anaïs Nin

it is time to move on from titian madness, for reasons previously mentioned and also simply to find a space where my words can bear more truth and clarity than in the present.

these pages will remain, however foolish and inadequate the words were at times. they contain enough of what deserves to be remembered.

but thank you, with all my heart, for reading and for sharing your thoughts. if you wish to keep reading, please email me at titianmadness@gmail.com with the url of your own webpage.

a reminder and a glimpse

tonight, an extremely rare (read: i don't recall the last one) phone call from my brother. we've been a little out of touch since he settled down at his job (read: stopped going on about his daily exploits at work). his brotherly agenda this time?

"when you have the time, give mom and dad a call. they're starting to ask me why you're so busy."
"because i seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth."
"exactly."

oops. i've been so caught up in studying and, admittedly, problems with men, to provide my family with anything more than the odd sms reply asking about their health, the weather, the puppy, and occasionally the papaya tree in the garden. i haven't been home for a little over two months now, and haven't even had a decent chat with them in the meantime. the daughterly guilt is starting to accumulate.

but when he asked how i was, i realized that i could hardly tell him the truth about what has been going on over the past month, even though he's only a tad more conservative than i'd like. and if i couldn't tell him, i could forget about telling my parents. i'm projecting future months of elusive answers to their questions about my personal life. i could go on and on about the work bit, lord knows i've done it in the past, but it would be wilful deception about what's really going on. and given that i have such a wonderful relationship with my family... the idea of months of deception is painful. you can call it painting a rosy picture, or postponing the truth. it is what it is and i don't like it.

the beginning of the end

my most common, and well, most truthful excuse for not blogging is "i've been busy living", or less diplomatically, "i've been busy".

but i know that there are some words drifting around the mess in my head that want to come out when i keep signing into blogger and staring at a blank post. if i didn't really feel like writing, i don't even get beyond staring at my comments page (95% of which consists of indy).

then the questions. what do i really want to say? how much is saucy fluff and how much is real substance and emotion? when is the right time to write? and increasingly, who might read this?

yes, i blame my scanty blogging on work. i failed to mention that when i discovered that the number of people i know in real life who read this blog is more than expected, and that some of them might feel compelled to talk or act as a result of my posts, my enthusiasm to write lessened considerably. don't get me wrong, i love that the people i know are interested enough to keep reading, but it doesn't change the fact that i write for myself, not for others. quite simply, this blog was not meant to be read by personal friends and acquaintances. the blurring of this line has led to more than a few annoying and troubling consequences.

ahh, consequences. don't we just hate them.

the only solution i can come up with is to move to a new blog/url and take more care with preserving anonymity. i would love to do so immediately but i don't have the time right now to set it up and design a template that has a little more oomph than this one (limitations of technical ability, not personality!) and perhaps set a little more direction for the new blog - less griping about my workload and more of the truth and clarity previously aimed for. there are too many worthwhile things i am seeing and doing that never make it here simply because i don't take the time to sit down, reflect and collate.

let's give it a month or so.

living forward

during one boring class last month, as a girlfriend recounted yet another crazy club-hopping night, i couldn't help but ask her where she found the time and energy to club. her reply was "by not doing much of anything else".

the truth is that i envied her terribly, her deliriously upbeat take on life, her irrepressible energy, her carefree schedule. we once spent an entire night working on an assignment together. at seven am, she was turning up the dance music, singing and shimmying away in the car, i was blearily trying to confirm my week's appointments and grab some shuteye at the same time.

it struck me then that i was missing out on a lot of fun while trying to build up a mile long list of accomplishments. and really, there are few sadder things than being twenty and dull.

so in the last month, i've gone from juggling work to juggling work and play. it's still bloody exhausting, perhaps even more so, but i'm having fun, doing new things, meeting new people. and there are a couple of intriguing new developments which promise to be quite an experience, good or bad.

and that's the way i like to live.

in life as in dance: grace glides on blistered feet

There was a night, a couple of weeks ago, that marked the first time i stood in the studio and wondered how much more i had to give, and the answer was, "nothing, or barely any left."

Performing has never been the way I like to dance, and especially not with many couples dancing in synchronicity. The emphasis turns to uniformity, the stress is on perfect accuracy, and most of the inherent joy in the music and freedom of movement is lost, at least to me. And when there is no joy in dancing, there is no real purpose to it and all perfection is meaningless.

I want to be able to work much more intensively on style and technique, then translate that on a dance floor and across from a partner, without dilution of emotion or without cramping of freedom to interpretate.

There are some who would find me weak for giving up performing. I don't think I lack discipline, but I do find myself increasingly unfulfilled by it. We all have our reasons for dancing, for enduring the sweat and toil and pain, for the many sacrifices we make, and increasingly I find that the satisfaction from performing is not quite worth the price I pay.

Or maybe it's just temporary disillusionment.

girls behaving badly

someone i know (well, obviously) went to quite some trouble at 2am last night to find a shop still selling yesterday's Straits Times, simply to buy it and show me the cover page article of the Home section, titled "wild girls". i still don't understand the insistence on showing it to me, especially since he also said, "thank god you're not like that." (and no, he is not my father.)

but having read it, i invariably and unfortunately formed an opinion. not on the girls - since i hardly have the right to judge them, not ever having been in the kind of situations that they are in - but on the article. the cover states that they "spent the last eight months finding out about the kinds of trouble girls today get into".

if you're going to state that you spent two-thirds of an entire year researching an article, at least have the depth of research and analysis to prove you haven't been spending your field hours having coffee breaks. the six-page article (three-page actually after excluding big graphics and half-page ads) was shamefully shallow, chockful of generalizations, and seriously lacked context.

then again, i'm probably just grumpy that i wasted precious time reading such superficial reporting.

hanging in the air

the relationship has been plagued with all sorts of trouble for the last two months. usually drama and instability is a sign that we are approaching the end, and i know myself to be ready to give it all up.

for all the dear friends who have gave advice, convinced me to talk to him and reminded me that there were wonderful times and not simply the incessant conflicts, i'm very grateful. i badly needed that reminder.

now we're trying to work things out. i'm not sure how it'll turn out because i think of what he did and my defenses go back up.

but at least for this week i'll be too busy to think about it. i won't be around him much, at least.