end

It's the last day of the year, passing by with a saturday morning's quiet laziness. Dogs barking, a bus stopping, but other than that, silence. A mynah just popped round, perching on the window... it looks drenched. A very quiet end to a pretty eventful year.

I guess it's been a pretty good year... school, YO and stuff... geog competitions, becoming principal bassist, vienna and delhi, keyper, getting through an entire taboo set, AND learning to play bridge, hearts, spades, and speed (lol). It's certainly been a memorable year. And to all those who shared their 2005 with me in any way, thanks... and happy 2006!

It feels like the year's getting torn apart right in front of me, like Macondo. Life's going to change a lot next year. I'll never be in 4Q (haha) again (sigh).

I don't know if i'll continue updating this blog. A blog is a nice thing to have. But a blog that keeps dying? After all, I'm not exactly used to putting my life on show on the internet. If anything, this is my way of trying to claw out of my introvert shell. It's difficult to blog.

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I've taken to going to minstrels and reading random poems. This one captures my mood perfectly, just that it's the wrong number.

ON TURNING TEN
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

- Billy Collins

Farewell to 2005.

Happy 2006!