“To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’. The mean­ing of the ‘I’ is an inde­pen­dent, self-sufficient enti­ty that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A per­son who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an inde­pen­dent enti­ty, but a spir­i­tu­al par­a­site. The love of a par­a­site is worth nothing.”

- Ayn Rand

Took me a long time to learn this, and I’m still learning everyday.

I may not be the brightest eyed lover, nor do I always kiss with my eyes closed - sometimes i sneak peeks at you while we’re at it, on a slow-moving escalator as you sneak a furtive hand to cup my butt nevermind the scathing looks of affronted fellow commuters, in the darkness and cushy seats of some back row cinema like hormone infused tizzy teenagers even though we’re on the downward slide of our 20s because love lasts forever if we do not speak it, love can never end if it never even truly begins to begin with, and that’s where we are, at the point when I and you end and we start to begin, no bold romantic declarations of love, no promises of the years ahead, of tomorrow, no home improvement and DIY jobs, but just sitting back and enjoying the ride, and never forgetting the look of hilarity and mock horror in your laughing eyes as I fling a banana peel at your face.

So, this year’s come to an end? Huh? She says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear with a nervous laugh.

I try not to think about the year that has passed, of the days and nights that melded seamlessly, of the wakings, writing and coffeebreaks in between. Of the liminal moments of wakefulness heavily sedated by the anti-depressants life sometimes deals you with especially when you’re absolutely drained and floored and unable to feel anymore. Of lying in bed shackled to a dream you cannot slip back into, that door has been closed, leaving you pacing along a musky corridor with the trodden carpet under foot, feeling up the sides of peeling crusty wallpaper as they crinkle and crumble to a fine ash-grey under tentative finger tips, phantasms of has-beens hawking their wares of memorabilia, mementoes of past loves, wilted dreams, and fresh wounds.

This year I’ve been the most erratic I’ve ever been in my life. But I end 2011 - happy. I know “happy” is overrated, transient they say. But I suppose my happiness is derived from completing an emotionally exhausting year of change and growth largely unscathed. My happiness is not joyous and celebratory, rather a settled, trusting acceptance of the way things are, which could be (and will become) better, but are as it is, good enough for me. Call it foolish optimism, but I believe that the best is yet to be. There isn’t a sure-fire, time-tested route to happiness, or love - and neither are the two mutually inclusive or exclusive. But I believe both are felt in the very now, the present (although I also learnt that there really isn’t such a thing as the present, metaphysically :p). Happiness and love do not have to comprise of spectacular events, of great travels and romances, sometimes they are felt in the simplest and most mundane of situations like falling asleep grasping the hand of the one you love. Happiness doesn’t have to be an undiscerning (or satisficing) acceptance of the current situation, but giving thanks for what it is, knowing it could’ve been worse, and hoping for, and working towards better things in the future.

So it’s been a crazy year, but I end it happy and thankful, with this inane and recalcitrant optimism that even though 2012 looks to be a tumultuous year of change where many things could go wrong, it has the potential to be even more awesome than before.

She stares at the grainy photograph, pixelated in the low light, flares from the street lamps overhead casting an orange hue of their cheery faces, that same old crooked grin he never knew how to smile unless you took a candid shot of him he did, and notices the crow’s feet slightly more engraved than they were half a year ago, heartlines engraved and making their insistent mark on skin, the heady scent of which she had memorized, the surface of which her lips had traced and traversed each little scar moonwalked and teased and savoured, laughed inwardly at the mussed up hair that bore nary a change, there he was, still the obstinate Capricorn resistant to change, set in his ways, traditional, boring she had said, so safe in that regular pose, his arm slung casually around her in an almost protective brotherly gesture for he hated public displays of affection, she always thought that he thought they dampened his masculinity, why so shy she’d always wanted to know, why not just grab me by the waist in a lowly-lit street like your life depended on it, me swaying about precariously in my idiotic inches high blister inducing boots, like I would drift away? so she looks on, and takes in the familiar space ensconced in his arms and realizes that the figure there now is too wide, a pale moon-lit face wearing a radiant smile that seems all too natural yet foreign, as she holds him at a distance yet draws him nearer into the intimations of a still slightly stilted embrace, and entranced as she is, she manages to pull her eyes away, and with a queer quiver of relief and acceptance, wish the new girl well.

“That’s where the expression of ‘pillow talk’ comes from, there are no secrets between people who share a bed, the bed is like a confessional… In order to flatter the person you love you denigrate everything else in existence, you deny and abominate everything in order to content and reassure the one person who could leave you; so great is the power of the territory delineated by the pillow that it excludes from its bosom everything outside it, and it’s a territory which, by its very nature, doesn’t allow for anything else to be on it except the two partners, or lovers, who in a sense are alone and for that very reason talk and hide nothing, voluntarily.”

- Javier Marías, A Heart So White

“Lovers always feel that their meeting took place too late, as if the amount of time occupied by their passion was never enough or, in retrospect, never long enough (the present is untrustworthy), or perhaps they can’t bear the fact that once there was no passion between them, not a hint of it, while the two of them were in the world, swept along by its most turbulent currents, and yet with their backs turned to each other, without even knowing one another, perhaps not even wanting to.”

- Javier Marías, A Heart So White

“Now that we’re married, when we leave the cinema our steps head off in the same direction (the echoes out of time with each other, because there are four feet walking along), but not because I’ve chosen to accompany her or not even because I usually do so and it seems the correct and polite thing to do, but because now our feet never hesitate outside on the damp pavement, they don’t deliberate or change their mind, there’s no room for regret or even choice: now there’s no doubt but that we’re going to the same place, whether we want to or not this particular night, or perhaps it was only last night that I didn’t want to.”

- A Heart So White, Javier Marías

In life there are always firsts, some of which you wish you never had to experience.

On holiday in quaint Danyang of South Korea, I was applying my makeup one morning, poised precariously on the edge of the table where I could get all up in the mirror’s business, when I heard a dull thud that was accompanied a split second later by a sinking feeling in my stomach. Suffice to say, there my beloved Terra Inca lay on the parquet floor like an overturned turtle, crestfallen and forlorn. (I could positively hear it scream “You bitch! Arghhhhh.”) Heart in my mouth, not just because the Terra Inca cost me a pretty penny but also (as all fellow makeup collectors would understand) because it was a star limited edition piece from Guerlain’s highly raved summer collection (try saying this all in one breath! :p), I picked it up, chastened, and realized it had cracked radially across the product like the spokes of a wheel. Sigh. How ironic, considering the surface design of the Terra Inca is supposed to mimic the outstretched rays of the sun.

It should have ended there with me pouring a little alcohol into the product to let its broken heart mend, but no, my itchy fingers had to attempt a rescue mission right there and then. I tried to shake off the excess powder, and this inadvertently resulted in the entire pressed powder product falling in dismal pieces (!!!) into the sink. Well in my defense, I hadn’t known that the product was cracked all the way through. I gave a silent scream that would’ve made a banshee blush, and salvaged whatever I could from the slightly wet sink (gross I know). 

That’s how the dearly departed Terra Inca I passed on. Upon touching down in Singapore, I rang up Tangs Orchard as soon as I could, and discovered that they had a precious 3 pieces left, one of which I immediately reserved for pick up.

Guerlain truly lives up to its name as a luxury makeup brand with great workmanship and such close attention to detail. I especially love the sleek, weighty black wooden case it comes in, carved with exquisite indentations of a sunburst on the cover. It has a magnetic closure that holds well together, making this product good for travel. However, this one function is, in my opinion, its one failing in terms of product design. I wonder if the cover could’ve been hinged instead to allow for more convenient application using the mirror inside. I’m sure that would better prevent other possible Terra Inca mishaps from occurring! 

On the inside, the powder is carved intricately in the shape of the Inca sun. 

The Terra Inca is probably one of my favourite blush/bronzer products because its powder is so very finely milled, with a pearly shimmery quality for gorgeous glowy and sunkissed skin. It is a rose gold with pink overtones when mixed together, or a bronzy shimmery pink and gold when applied separately.

Fairer skintones might want to be light of hand when it comes to applying the Terra Inca as it is quite pigmented. It also has a jasmine scent, unlike Guerlain’s other products which have a distinctive violet scent, one that users either love or hate. With a whopping 14.5g of product, this product could virtually last a lifetime in terms of makeup usage years!

Now I’m absolutely clueless as to what to do with Terra Inca (deceased). I have no heart to send it on its final journey into the bin. :/