White Walls

While the bloggers of The Cut are gratuitously ogling the bulges, guns and abs of the Phelps from all around the world, while Bryanboy is yapping about latex leggings recently seen tightly hugging the barely-there thighs of an Olsen, this upstart is knee deep in white paint. And no, I am not trying to do a Jackson Pollock.

So many words, and so much more names, but do these things and these people really mean anything to me? Not really.

Because somehow, I have managed to cut them off from my life for what seemed like decades, but was really just two days. As I have said, I was knee deep in white paint - painting every square inch of my brand new bedroom. 

And now, it's finished.

What has amazed me though, apart from the discovery that my tears of disappointment seem to dilute oil-based paint, is that achieving white walls is one of the harder things to achieve in interior design. I am of course speaking as an amateur, a charlatan who knows nothing about interior design. 

Being ever so quick in transmuting from confused to Confucius, I realised, from my sparklingly anal white walls and the metaphor that has arisen from it, that simplicity is one of the harder things to achieve.

My walls took four coats of paint in order for them to to fine. And another two to make them fabulous. All in all, I have added a depth of two inches to my walls, and consequently reduced my room in that proportion.

Similarly, simplicity takes a lot of coats to master. It requires considerable precision and restraint. You have to know when to put down that brush, otherwise the walls would be too white - if ever such a thing existed.

And clearly, this drunken fool has not yet mastered the art of writing simply. Why use just one word when you can use ten to beat around the bush with?

Photo Souce: nymag.com

Severe Opulence

It was a considerable challenge to my creativity when I was given a bare, blank canvas of a room, which I could decorate in whichever way I pleased. I was given this liberty not just because I have impeccable taste and humility, but also because this room would be my own.

I say that decorating a room considerably strains one's mind because of the multitude of design concepts that rush into the brain in their millions, leaving one confused and suicidal. Well, perhaps the latter was a wee bit of an understatement. 

I think it would be the easiest thing thing to decorate a room opulently, filling it with everything that one could possibly think of, from favourite picture frames in their thousands, to comfy, fluffy, pillows in their hundreds of millions. That would be staying in your comfort zone. That would be easy. With this upstart of a principle in mind, this upstart decided to go against first impulses and instead go with the direction of fashion - severe opulence. 

This is the phrase that Tim Blanks of Style.com has coined for fall/winter 08-09. Collections such as Balenciaga and my personal favourite, Yves Saint Laurent, have strayed far far away from the blings, rhinestones and ruffles and went back to basics. Inspired, I decided to go minimal with my room. 

That meant white walls. Blindingly, Im-afraid-if-I-touch-it-it-would-stain white walls. Fabulous.

Though it may not be opluent, it definitely is severe. And austere. And Jane Eyre-at Lowood-like.

Non-sense ends here.

Seen-icism

This morning I decided to be a cynic. 

Over a complete whim, I underwent a  complete personality overhaul.

There are two key things that have made me decide this. Now, I'm not really the type of person who watches documentaries for the sheer fun of it, but every once in a while, in pop documentary titles in the channel guide that I just have to see from start to finish. Or at least the first five minutes of it, until yet another re-run of Sex & the City begins.

Such a documentary was called "Dispatches: Sandwiches". This 60 minute mini-film explores how blatantly the sandwich industry breaks health and safety regulations. And that, by the way, was an understatement - sort of like saying, Paris Hilton looks kinda trashy. Anyway, this lil' documentary has made me adamantly refuse to eat another ready-made sandwich, the way The Blair Witch Project has made me absolutely reject the idea of even considering the prospect of camping in the woods.

Days after, this documentary, whose name I could not remember due to what seems to be early-onset Alzeihmer's, airs. It's about the part-time abstract artist, full-time little girl, Marla Olmstead, who apparently is a "child prodigy". Her abstract paintings had been selling for thousands of dollars, until a "60 Minutes" episode presented what seems to me as more-than-credible conspiracy theories, questioning whether it really was her who painted her pieces, or whether she had more-than-little help from her father.

Ultimately, I don't even think that these two documentaries really were significant enough to completely change my attitue. I believe that I had already been harbouring a lil' cynic in me.

Now, after numerous, tormenting months of Braxton Hicks contractions - and a further sixteen hours of laborious pushing and deep-inhaling, I had finally given birth to my little cynic.

Foot-lost

My friend Kate absolutely could NOT believe that I have NOT seen Footloose until it was shown on TV last night. Evidently, EVERYBODY had seen it. 

I have NOT heard of it until I flicked through the channel guide thing and happen to accidently switch to that channel. Anyway, now that I've slept on it, I realise what all the strum & drang was all about.

However, it wasn't just the addictive and heady music that clung to me. The film also made me think about the past in general - my past, anyway. It all came flying back to me, one overall at a time. Now, I was not born in the 80s (I'm only 17 after all), but I assumed that the 90s were sort of, not really, similar to the decade before it, in that the fashion of those times are very much eyebrow raising to modern viewers such as myself. 

When I was young overalls were de-rigeur and now, flipping through the dusty and antiquated photo albums that were banished into some corner of the attic, I realised that they might be the most hideous thing ever made by the hands of man. My only excuse for wearing them, and the one which I defend myself with, each and every time, was my youth and my innocence. I was not old enough to figure out what looks good and what looks like a drab costume from the set of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Even though the idea of overalls is nauseating, seeing myself in them, I personally think that I don't look that bad. I have a theory that the only people that can truly get away with anything are, not the Paris Voguettes, not Cate Blanchette, but the toddlers. Anything seems to look sweet and adorable on them.

I have long lost that Midas touch. I will be stuck posing eternally in front of the mirror, analysing what I have on, each and every time I go out. 

It seems shallow because it is. And I am. 

Ordeal By Rollerskates

Sometimes I have those moments when everything that I had never done when I was young (and by young, I refer to the 6-10 age bracket), I do in a single day. 

Yesterday was such a day. I emerged from the rock that I had been living in, in my seventeen years of existence, and had entered one of those quaint little photo booths in an very-busy, very-claustrophobic, elevator of an arcade. Also, I had put on my very first rollerskates - which were borrowed. Yuck. Plus I wasn't wearing any socks because I didn't wake up thinking that I would be rollerskating that day. Yuck-er. 

So I tentatively put on those bacteria-infested, cheap suede ankle boots on wheels, very much aware that I could well take my foot out of them with hepatitis, or some form of scabies and/or an STD. But my hygiene-related fears were soon extinguished because a whole other, even worse fear had arisen. 

I was so much engrossed with freaking out about the possible health-related repercussions of putting on these loaned skates, that I did not, in the slightest, think about the embarrassing fact that I could NOT rollerskate. Stepping into that rink, I no longer cared if my feet were covered with pus and/or scales, post-skating. I cared more about NOT falling on my ass, keeling over and dying - perhaps the first person ever to die on rollerskates. And I was unwilling for the world to remember me just as that.

I had my moments of panic. There was a moment where I was very close to running over this five-year old (who was excellent at skating btw), and there was one where I could not figure out how to slow down - or more importantly, how to stop. Despite all of these stroke-inducing moments, there was a self-realisation that I had, that, in retrospect, over-shadowed those multiple near death experiences.

Somewhere in between those 45 minutes of horror, gasping, breathlessness, severe dehydration, and permanent blushing, I realised that the reason why I had embarked on that semi-suicide was because I was trying to make up for the fact that I never did those things in my childhood. 

Not for the first time, I thought about this theory that I have - that I would grow up, being one of those people who are perpetually wishing to be younger, because sub-consciously, they feel that they had incomplete childhoods, and have unsatisfied lives.

Maybe my body's way of compensating for the incompleteness of my childhood is by forcing me to do things such as roller skating and  photo booth-ing. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe my mind is making a secret "What to do before I die" list and now, rollerskating and photo booths have checks beside them. Maybe I am two checks closer to that elusive state of happiness and contentment, that seven hours of yoga a week doesn't seem to be able to reach.

My fingers are perpetually crossed and my toes are perpetually sore.

Not Much

Influenced by an overwhelming tide of nostalgia, I decided to delve into the archives of the past. Today is the anniversary of the night when our house had been burgled. Seriously.

Ever since that night when my parents, my brother, my sister and I came home to a closed, yet unlocked door, I have persistently asked myself this one question: What's to stop a complete stranger from breaking into your house and robbing not only your personal belongings, but also the security that you have in your home? Your house alarm? Their innate, yet suppressed morality and conscience? I highly think not.

Not much protects us from crime.

Our neighbours, the people to whom I occasionally give a polite, yet indifferent nod when I meet them on my way to the bus top, were also targeted by the thief. Or thieves, who knows. 

Ironically, in a way only fate can create, this burglary turned out to eventually over-compensate us for those that we had lost. Not only have my family made new close acquaintances, but I also have been re-compensated by the insurance company for the laptop that was unceremoniously taken from me.

Mas-Oh-Chism

There is a fairly thin line between consciousness and unconsciousness - and yesterday afternoon, on a relatively sunny day, on a relatively nice tennis court, I was treading on it.

I fell from the rooftop of the GPO and landed on a cart of nails. Twice. At least that's what my body felt like when I woke up this morning. I had no idea that playing tennis for three and a half hours would bring me so much pain. 

In retrospect, perhaps I was aware of that. Maybe I enjoyed the pain.

As I stood there, my unattractively sweaty hands attempting to grip the tennis racket, waiting for my friend Kate to serve, feeling like at any moment, my body would just keel over and die - I realised that I had the capability - and more significantly, the freedom, to stop this amateur tennis game and take a break. But I never did. I was pushing my body to the limit, the way I do my mom's credit card. 

Maybe it's the adrenaline. Maybe the feeling of being invincible, while at the same time, fatally breathless, was addictive. Maybe adrenaline was my recreational drug of choice.

Maybe I'm reading into this too much.

Anyway, I didn't ask for a break. The three bottles of Evian were left unopened and un-drunk. I just kept going. 

As I attempt to write this post (even my fingers hurt like a bitch), I realise that I'm a masochist. 

Like writing this insignificant blog, I push myself to the edge because it feels so good when I stop.