this city

It's autumn here now, and I took these photos about a week ago, but they look more like winter streets than the usual fiery autumn ones. 

I've been busy with life. It's my final year in university and I have a dissertation to research and write as well as a short film project to shoot, alongside many other things life brings. Through one season, I felt like I had gone through several; being really happy for getting something I earned and having wanted really badly then losing it at the last minute. I told myself it was okay, everyone told me it was okay, that these things happen even though I deserve it, but there reached a point where I felt like I'd lost it all. Then I never wanted to talk about it again and decided to focus on what I have to do for now, and so threw myself back into doing my best for uni work, which I reminded myself was what I'd chosen in the beginning anyway. 

It's a funny way opportunities work. After I'd gone on with life, someone I knew sent me a message to offer me a job. I took it up and despite it being sometimes less than what I would actually want, the flexibility serves me well. Stepping stones, I tell myself what it is. A stepping stone. 

Sometimes I wonder if I'd grown a few more arms, all of which are whirling with their own respective business. I don't know if I'm any good at juggling, but I am willing to do because I need all of these in my life right now.

ps. I haven't been writing much lately, nor have I had the time to read books outside of academic ones, but the academic readings are good and stimulating, and I have been taking so much more photos again so that's nice. I will also have to make time to write to all those people whom I haven't yet replied to. 

Hope you are all well.

lost in flowers

Model: Emma-Louise McCoubrey

Styling: Model's own

Photos taken and edited by Yi Lin T. 

before I see you again (journal entry)

If it has to come to this, here's the challenge: be honest, be real, be true; even if just to yourself.

~

We lie on our own beds, a few thousand miles away in physical distance (although to me there's only you being next to me and you being not, so it's the same even if you were just half a mile away and out of my sight), covered with out blankets of steady love but hugging onto lovesickness. It's been so long, so very long, but the days do pass and the one I've been waiting on all summer is nearing and we'd be in each other's arms again. My heart aches so much for that, that it cries out with each of its little pump.

Soon, love. Soon.

I love that when you couldn't sleep and wanted someone to talk to, you came to me. I mean, they'd all say of course you would come to me, who else? But it still feels so nice that you did (do).

The conversation's different coz we're drunk on sleepiness, so it's an extension of repeated "I love you's" and multiple hearts. Still, it's good. But the love and missing all well up in me, all at once, and I cry. Not in the way I sometimes now do, out of worry or hopelessness, but this is an overflow of the love in my chest, of all I feel for you.

Even the simple tenderness of "Can't sleep love". It's the 'love' that gets to me. The very essence of what we are to one another.

Love is strong. And so are we.

yellow

wildly blown leaves as shadows dancing on my bedsheet a few days ago

I want to start taking photos all the time again. I have stopped for far too long, it seems, and I'm scared that I've almost lost touched.

I want to stop trying to tell others that I'm not a perfectionist when I am always so harsh on myself, work-wise, because I only want to create good work. But then maybe that has hindered me from creating and I've decided that I should just go ahead and do, do, do because that way I'll get practice and learn. Flaws are okay; we'll all get better.

And I also want to share photos again. I have months and months of photos as backlog, all hidden in my external hard drive because I never got myself to edit them and wouldn't share them without a bit of post-processing as that is as much as my process of creation as the act of photographing is.
And I didn't realise it in the beginning, but I'm starting to now. That we all lose that sense of excitement in seeing the photos after I drag them out for too long. And so I want to be more efficient. 

Here are some photos from the past few days. They aren't masterpieces, but I guess that's alright for now.

Dinner at Ruth's the night before: her housemates

Ruth on the floor after being attacked

Playing Charades and the opposite team deciding on a word together

Me, acting out for Charades

Yesterday, one of my closest friends participated in her first marathon. I woke up insanely early to go and support her before she ran, and even though my heavy eyes told me to go back to sleep, I made myself get up knowing that had it been me, she would've done the same. 

She did really well in the marathon, and we were all so proud of her. I came home after a short while though, and had a nap to compensate for my loss of sleep. 

When the race started, Min Fern, Henry, Jacqueline and I decided to go to St. Georges market considering that we were already in the city centre. We wandered around the stalls, peering at some of the little antiquities that were being sold there.

We then took a seat at one of the tables in the middle of the market. Min Fern got up from her seat, telling us that she was going to get something which we'd assumed was some food, only to return with an oreo cupcake she'd seen earlier for Henry. Seeing both their faces light up was priceless; it was the sweetest moment. 

This was the moon a night before it was full, from the skylight in my bedroom. The moon could bring up so many representations to mind, but most of the time I just stare at it and marvel at its glow. 

the way I feel about places

doodles in my journal, just to have a photo in this post :)

These days are busy busy busy and it's exhausting but I like it. Maybe I exaggerate a little, it's just that I have task after task to keep me constantly heading forward, one day at a time, and it's definitely better than a slow drag of nothingness.

I can't imagine why anyone would be interested in my daily life anymore, apart from those closest to me, but I felt like blogging and thought that I would. I have a few things to tell you about anyway.

I visited Wenkai in early August. My family made a trip down south despite my dad saying earlier that I wasn't allowed to travel anywhere because I hadn't gotten a job; which I thought was fair enough yet didn't stop me from being completely miserable because of it. I have a thing with places these days. I can't seem to stay in one place for too long because I notice the way the surroundings shape themselves so much more than I used to. Returning is fine, that constant moving is good for me because I get to see things at least slightly differently. And since getting to know him, I've noticed my perception of certain things change as well.

He drove me around his city, and we didn't always past by the places I'd been, but as I stared out the window from the passenger's seat, there were the occasional glimpses of familiarity. I realise that I don't fight against feelings so much anymore. I am more accepting in ways that only I could recognise, but then this came with a sense of lost. Where I once stood on firm ground of knowing where I thought I belonged shifted, and I found myself nowhere.

I guess I'll learn to get use to this constantly arising sense of lost and remind myself that we never eveer stay in one place so it's okay, we're just moving. I'd wanted to write more about my visit, but I guess this post worked out this way and what's relevant has been said so I'll leave this as it is for now. I can't put my whole life here anyway, and the actual experience always has so much more weight than words strung together. But I had a great time. I couldn't not have, it was with him.

x