Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

Work intrudes but I shunt them away, I let Ryuichi Sakamoto take me for a ride for a few sparse minutes of bliss. I wish I could hang forevermore in this lilting melody with nothing on my mind, no one by my side, but just thoughts of you, holding you.

Why. It's a question I cannot answer. Smses flood in. Msn tingles for my attention. But I can only rivet my eyes and my heart on that few words of reply from you on FB. I close my eyes when it comes. It seems my simple little wish will never come to pass. Ryuichi reaches the climax, as do I when metaphorical tears brim unbidden, for my eyes have been dry for ever so long. No, it is my heart that cries, the stab of sorrow from your nonchalance. Blithely unaware, for I am nothing to you, a thing that can be assuaged with mere words, empty words that hold no meaning behind its inflection.

Behind the facade of books and work, you fade away into oblivion. I would that my heart could do the very same. Oh how I cry out for release.

That boy is a monster m-m-m-m-monsterrrr....

Pardon me, I just got hooked on that song, albeit a little late. One wonders why I'm up at this hour, indeed; I wonder that myself. It has been a ritual to stay up to god forsaken hours for so long I don't remember when I started. But for once, my mind isn't lost in the labyrinths of my essay concepts. Most, if not all assignments have been cleared, CDP 101 Final Presentation concluded on a wonderful note. It was certainly a joy watching each other's meticulously put together production, I can't help but shed a tear. How melodramatic.

But that's just how things are, an entire AY is coming to an end, and for some reason I'm just feeling a tad bit more pensive than usual when my mind goes wandering off to some faraway land. Dead people, that flashback of ghastly make up, I can't help but stifle a giggle. Not that I ever giggled.

I just don't know what to do. Clearly I have a lot to do. Revision to be all completed by friday for the most ultimately intensive examination ever. But I don't know what to do outside of this academic realm. Yes, there is that desire to do something I've always wanted, but here, this world; this society; this place; fosters to such hope. I've always thought myself the conformist, but that changed when I made my decision nearly 2 years ago.

I am being honest with myself. Certain things I want can never be fulfilled, at least not here. It is saddening, it's not like I hate this place, no I love it, it's my home. I'll be a displaced alien anywhere else (ok maybe not). Sometimes I can't help but want to fly, but my wings are clipped.

I can't sleep now. No not so soon. But I know not what to do. What do I make of this mockery of life?

Questions. Doubts. Fears. Incalculable Uncertainties.

There is just so much work. I’m being torn apart. Sometimes I wonder if I really did sign up for this. Brings me back to OBO days, when I’m just out there staring at they grey sea, dreary waves, the black night, okay pathetic fallacy I know, its actually quite beautiful when I remind myself of it now, that I wouldn’t really mind being there again, lulled to sleep by the waves. Alas, reality is a harsh one, and the world a cruel one in which we live in, things were never really that easy in OBO, I went thru hell, I put my mind through worse, all that mental anguish, anguish, anguish. There were times where I screamed all my soul out into the silence of the night with that equal silence in the deepest of my being, I felt like a great big hollow with a great big echo resounding with nothingness into the empty shell of the great metal thing that keeps me afloat along with a hundred other disillusioned idiots. Rime of the ancient mariner, just another bunch of lost sailors out at sea, doomed and cursed to eternal unrest in eternal undeath, to float among the witchy and eldritch lights in the depths of the oceans, flash, flashing, flashes, rippling, undulating, waves, echoes, like orgasms in the water slick.

But there’s so much work. Calls, emails, projects, rehearsals, meetings, essays, oh god the essays, a never ending stream on unconsciousness that pervades even my sleep, my phone is the devil, so many times I wished that I could just smash it into smithereens into nothingness that likewise I might disappear away from this wretched wretched existence. But I can’t die just yet, not just yet, just one more month before I can really fade away, throw my phone away and be alone for a while, but not really can I run away, for once I’m back home there will be no peace at all less the one sanctum I have.
A stream of consciousness. Nothing more.

I wonder if you'll ever know how it feels like to be me.

I wonder for how long I can lie to myself that I'm happy talking to you
Or I'm actually tearing myself apart.

The Sacred Band of Thebes

I unwittingly fell unto this while researching into Classical Greek stuff.

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

From Plato's Symposium

The Sacred Band originally was formed of picked men in couples, each lover and beloved selected from the ranks of the existing Theban citizen-army. The pairs consisted of the older "heniochoi", or charioteers, and the younger "paraibatai", or companions, who were all housed and trained at the city's expense and fought as hoplites. During their early engagements, in an attempt to bolster general morale, they were dispersed by Gorgidas throughout the front ranks of the Theban army.

But was there ever an invincible army?

Defeat came at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), the decisive contest in which Philip II of Macedon, with his son Alexander, extinguished the Theban hegemony. The traditional hoplite infantry was no match for the novel long-speared Macedonian phalanx: the Theban army and its allies broke and fled, but the Sacred Band, although surrounded and overwhelmed, refused to surrender. James G. DeVoto says in The Theban Sacred Band that Alexander had deployed his cavalry behind the Macedonian hoplites, apparently permitting "a Theban break-through in order to effect a cavalry assault while his hoplites regrouped." The Thebans of the Sacred Band held their ground and nearly all 300 fell where they stood beside their last commander, Theagenes. Plutarch records that Philip II, on encountering the corpses "heaped one upon another", understanding who they were, exclaimed,

Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.

300 SPARTA! Much?