.. touched by an angel

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.. something i cooked up earlier today. All images and writings are of original creation, if any has intention to use or post this on another site, please ask for permission and i will allow it as long as it is not related to porn or sites with controversial materials.



PS : angel, looking forward to seeing you again !

.. tears, idle tears

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

~Author unknown~

.. i want to live !

with the blood slowly trickling away
i waited for the countdown to end
i waited for the final bell to ring
for the eternal escape

a wretched life i once lived
a life that no one should have
a life that is not my choice

a life that is not my choice
yet i played the lead role in it
a role that was played to perfection from my end

now at a time when the final curtain is very close to being drawn
i want to rewrite the whole story once again

a story that is full of happiness
a story that is so full of joy
a story that i only lived in my dreams

a dream that i want to make a reality
a reality of a dream coming true
a story, once re-enacted
will fulfill my desires
will fulfill my destiny

a story that i so desperately want to write
will now remain uncompleted
the countdown has already begun
the countdown from life to death

with the blood slowly trickling away
and the story still incomplete
and the clock slowly ticking away
i want to live
i want to live, once again
i want to live, once again
to rewrite the story
the story that is my life!

Author - Unknown

.. love song

To love a person is to learn the song
.. that is in their heart,
And to sing it to them
.. when they have forgotten.

To love a person is to learn the song
.. that they hum along to,
And sing it to them
.. when they falter in their steps.

To love a person is to learn the song
.. that they snap their fingers to,
And sing it to them
.. when they lost their way in the dark.

To love a person is to learn the song
.. that they would sing to you too
A duet, of a song for love
.. that both would remember to eternity

~end~


.. kian

.. when we two parted

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well—
Long, long shall I rue thee,
To deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

.. vietnamese ladies, a brief introduction

.. these excerpts, i have taken from www.vietnamese-culture.com, it tells the culture, and how local ladies are bred. I find it very interesting, and not in any way discriminating at all, on how they are so tied to traditions. For those who hate to read, please skip this. This is literature and history, but if you all read back my very first post, i like literature and poems a lot ..


The Vietnamese Girl in Popular Poems

The Vietnamese girl never complaints about the condition and the role a Confucian society has assigned to her since the dawn of time. From her young age, being used to hearing popular poems incessantly sung by her mother or sister and continuing to grow up with the rhythm and the sound of the swinging hammock, she began to absorb unconsciously the recommendations found in these poems.
In spite of their simplicity, these poems began to give her not only an education worthy of Vietnamese tradition but also an incomparable resignation and the four virtues that any Vietnamese girl is deemed of possessing at her adolescence: Công, Dung, Ngôn, Hạnh (Homemaking Skills, Appearance, Speech Manners, Good Behavior). This will help her to be able to become in turn, sister, wife, mother, grand-mother during her existence. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that she has thus become one of the themes most talked about in Vietnamese popular poems.

Despite her young age, her mother's labor and wisdom have been repeated to her time and again through nursery rhymes the most known of which remains the following:

Cái ngủ mầy ngủ cho lâu,
Mẹ mầy đi cấy đồng sâu chưa về.
Bắt được con cá rô trê
Tròng cổ lôi về cho cái ngủ ăn.

Little sleeper, you have to sleep as long as possible,
Your mother has not come back from the deep rice paddy replanting seedlings.
She caught a carp and a cat fish
That she will take home for you to eat.

Then at 7-8 years of age, she began to replace her mother and imitate her in singing again the same popular nursery rhymes to lull her younger brother or sister to sleep. She also provided much service to her family: knowing how to cook rice, keeping her younger siblings, feeding the pigs and the ducks, taking water to the family animals, weeding the garden, collecting eggs, participating in family chores.

She also saw the change in the nature of her work when she reached adolescence. The nursery rhymes were replaced by folk songs or popular poems she used to hear singing often in the rice field. It is here that she would know the boys of her age. It is here that we would hear the first revelations of love, the first teasing of the Vietnamese girl through poems or folk songs. Among them, this one reveals and hides the blossoming heart of the Vietnamese girl who is shy, tender, and constrained by traditionally Confucian conditions.

Vào vườn hái quả cau xanh,
Bổ ra làm sáu mời anh xơi trầu
Trầu nầy têm những vôi tàu
Giữa đêm cắt cánh đôi đầu quế cay
Mời anh xơi miếng trầu nầy,
Dù mặn dù nhạt dù cay dù nồng
Dù chẳng nên vợ nên chồng,
Xơi dăm ba miếng cho lòng nhớ thương,

I enter the garden to pick a green betel-nut,
I cut it in six and invite you to taste this betel.
This one is spread with lime from China,
And flavored with the spice of the spice of cinnamon ends.
Please have this betel prepared by me,
Even if it is strong or light, hot or mild,
Or even if we do not become man and wife,
Just taste its flavor for you to remember.

That teasing is quick to find sympathy from the boys. To praise her beauty, these boys would not hesitate to offer not only one but ten loves at the same time, which ended up in the composition of this famous poem entitled "Mười Thương" (Ten Loves) that any young men in the old days would be deemed to know by heart:

Một thương tóc bỏ đuôi gà,
Hai thương ăn nói mặn mà có duyên,
Ba thương má lúm đồng tiền,
Bốn thương răng nhánh hạt huyền kém thua,
Năm thương dải yếm đeo bùa,
Sáu thương nón thượng quai tua dịu dàng,
Bảy thương ăn nói khôn ngoan,
Tám thương má phấn ngó càng thêm xinh,
Chín thương em ở một mình,
Muời thương con mắt đưa tình với ai!

First I love your plaited hair,
Second I love your suave and charming voice.
My next love is your dimpled cheeks,
Then your lacquered teeth more lustrous than jet is my fourth love.
Fifth, I love your bra and your necklace.
And your grand hat with velvet ribbon invites my sixth love.
My seventh love is your manner in speech,
Comes my eighth love of the makeup on your attractive cheeks.
Ninth, I love you because you are still single.
And finally tenth, because you reciprocate my loving glance.

The seductiveness of the girl only lasted for a short time because generally for the sake of socio-economic interests, she would be married very early. Many times in the past, there were financially pre-arranged marriages, which provoked criticisms and jokes through the following popular poem:

Mẹ em tham thúng xôi rền,
Tham con lợn béo, tham tiền Cảnh Hưng,
Em đã bảo mẹ rặng: đừng !
Mẹ hấm, mẹ hứ, mẹ bưng ngay vào,
Bây giờ chồng thấp vợ cao,
Như đôi đũa lệch so sao cho vừa.

Even when I had said: No
But my mother, fond of the sweet rice bucket,
Fond of the fat pig and fond of money.
With uhms and ahhs, she brought this guy in.
Now husband little, and wife tall,
We look like an unmatched pair of chopsticks after all.

Despite this remark, she accepted to become a member of the new family and be willingly submissive to all the Confucian constraints commonly seen in the Vietnamese society. She tried to meet the norms expected of her in the new family by following steadfastly the recommendations found in popular songs that she used to hear time and time again when she was still in cradle. In one of these songs, the following is found:

Con ơi! Mẹ bảo con nầy:
Học buôn học bán cho tày ngưòi ta,
Con đừng học thói chua ngoa,
Họ hàng ghét bỏ người ta chê cười.

My daughter! Listen to me,
Learn to wheel and deal as well as other people.
But try to avoid being sharp-tongued,
As this invites hate and sneer from friends and relatives.

Those are the last recommendations of her mother transmitted from one generation to the next through folk songs. The Vietnamese girl tends to keep them and apply them without failure until the end of her life. The Vietnamese woman accepts this resignation, this sacrifice, this injustice without reserve, which makes her an exemplary model worthy of admiration of her relatives, in particular her children. This is also one of the reasons that explains the profound and unshakable attachment of all Vietnamese to their mothers. The situation is illustrated by the following two verses found in one of the popular poems:

Em bán đi trả nợ chồng con,
Còn ăn hết nhịn cho hả lòng chồng con!

I do business to pay the debts incurred by my husband and my children.
It doesn't matter if I have nothing to eat, as long as they are satisfied.

Or in another, the following four verses depict not only humor but also tenderness, outstanding patience, even intangible proof of the sacrifice and love the Vietnamese woman always carries for her husband and her children:

Chồng giận thì vợ làm lành,
Miệng cười hớn hở rằng anh giận gì.
Thưa anh, anh giận em chi,
Muốn lấy vợ lẽ em thì lấy cho.

My husband is upset; I would try to calm myself.
Smile on my lips, I would ask what the reason is.
Come on, don't be frustrated any more.
Should you want a concubine, I'll get one for you.

.. macaque !!

( .. no actual macaques are harmed in the process of writing this )

.. ma·caque Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[muh-kak, -kahk]
–noun, any monkey of the genus Macaca, chiefly of Asia, characterized by cheek pouches and, usually, a short tail: several species are threatened or endangered. Originates of southeast Asia, Japan, Gibraltar, and northern Africa.

.. this particular species of the simian family had been haunting my dreams since chilhood. I am already 28 now, and once in a while, they would still sneak fiendishly into my night's rest and create havoc. Sometimes, they come in a pack, sometimes they come alone, but most of the time, irregardless of number, they wont cease to terrorize my peaceful rest.
.. ugh, the things they do, i cringe and shudder in angst everytime that smirking hairy face appears. I still remember, there is this particular dream, repeating itself over and over again, with this specific macaque with a bald patch on top of its head, and a black splotch of black fur on its belly, also not forgetting that fiendish grin, as the main actor. He is such a regular that i have even given him a name, Ah Kwong (Mr Shiny, would be the nearest translation in english, reminiscence of this bald patch).
.. i suppose Ah Kwong would be the mastermind in the attacks in my dreams, judging from the way others avoid him and gives way whenever he's around. He has this particular featish with red yarns, where he would every single time without fail, roll up an endless supply into a big round ball, rolling, rolling ... rolling non stop growing bigger each time he turns up in my dreams. This gargantuan bright ball of yarn would chase me to the ends of world everytime. At 28 years of age now, it has grown so big now, i am not able to apprehend it at all.
.. i would just run everytime.
.. every time i end up waking up, exhausted, anxious, and of course swaying my arms or kicking. Just today, i have this ache in my right foot for hitting it hard onto the frame of my bed, in an act of desperation trying to kick Ah Kwong !
.. anyone who reads this, you might be smiling now thinking how absurd this is, but isn't that what dreams are supposed to be? Irregardless, if you do happen to be an expert in dream interpretion, help me!! Dreams are somehow related to your real walking life, events which happen to you, would manipulate itself and represent itself to your subconcious self in form of dreams. No one is ever perfect, everyone has their own issues, up and downs in your life, daily problem solving puzzles which would baffle you to world's end. You will be more of yourself if you are able to identify and adapt to your problems from your dreams.
.. but in my case, with Ah Kwong haunting me, how could it actually relate to anything in my real life !!??