This took a while. Nevertheless...

"别再为他流泪"

你走了太久一定很累
他错了不该你来面对
离开他就好就算了心情很干脆
他其实没有那么绝对
远一点你就看出真伪
离开他不等于你的世界会崩溃
转个弯你还能飞
就别再为他流泪
别再让他操控你的伤悲
就算有一点愚昧一点点后悔
也不要太狼狈
他不值得你的泪
把那遗憾留在大雨的街
你曾在迷失的旅途中盲目追
以后为自己醉
每段感情都非常珍贵
他的好你就放在心扉
记得有个人曾让你那样的心醉
你笑了照亮夜幕的黑
什么梦都不比你的美
多少年以后想起他还有些体会
那些你已无所谓
以后管他是谁

~ 梁静茹

On the highway tonight

I've been listening to Chinese songs while marking English literature examination scripts. Poetry for my ears, and for the eyes, it's brain-numbing prose in a terrifying display of chicken scratchings. Life is rich in irony...or is it juxtaposition? Both perhaps. My mind is in such a muddle these days, and my hands are tattooed with ink stains and paper cuts.

The best part of the work day - the drive home with music keeping me company. Today, after spending most of it marking in an air-conditioned room, I turned off the one in the car, rolled down the windows and let this song play in tandem with the rumbling sounds of the vehicles on the highway.

The brake lights
Are really quite lovely
Thousands of souls
All stopping together

On the highway tonight
There's no reason to cry out your eyes

That's Marion Cotillard of "La Môme" fame in the car, and a little Hawksley Workman dangling from the rear-view mirror, trying his darndest to console her.

No Reason To Cry Out Your Eyes (On The Highway Tonight), by Hawksley Workman

Bookends

The film (yes, I'm still in a "(500) Days of Summer"-themed reverie) plays this song near the end to highlight one of Tom's weaknesses - his selective memory. Should we remember only the good moments or both the good and the far from good?

"Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence, a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left you."

Bookends, by Simon & Garfunkel

Weekends

Last weekend, I organized a mini karaoke session, something I never imagined doing (I hadn't stood near a karaoke machine since I was 11). Still, I did so only because I'd won a free two-hour pass from a contest at a work dinner. Couldn't let it go to waste now, could I? We had two enthusiasts in our little group - an Aussie sailor who wanted to sing the theme song from "True Blood" (it wasn't available, unfortunately) and a girl from a Turkish city famous for mandarin oranges (the two us raised our arms and snapped our fingers while singing the Beatles' "Girl" ala traditional Greek dance style). It turned out to be quite a rollicking session. We morphed with every song, going all emo when OneRepublic's "Apologize" started up and then turning giddy and trippy with "Yellow Submarine." We extended our session for a couple more hours and sang until we were hoarse. Actually, we were already hoarse when we finished our first two hours but nobody seemed to care.

This weekend, sans the sailor, we went to see "(500) Days of Summer" (finally!). And how we loved it. H declared she wants a young man who would love her as sweetly as Tom loves Summer. And me? I loved the writing, and how it doesn't have a fairytale plot, and that it has an awesome soundtrack full of indie music, each song perfectly selected for its scene. The characters are flawed but sympathetic, unique but still recognizable as everyday people. They exude the joys and confusion and tenderness of what it means to be human.

A lot of the themes reminded me of those in Alain de Botton's writing. In fact, Tom reads The Architecture of Happiness by said author, and how fitting, since Tom trained as an architect, though he winds up a slightly unhappy greeting-card writer. The film also mentions Werther, the protagonist of The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe. How uncanny, because in the last month, I read two books that refer to the character (one of them being Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, a good book to dip into every now and then). In the film, at a karaoke bar (yes, another coincidence), Summer teasingly refers to Tom as "young Werther."

In one of the most moving scenes, Summer and Tom are sitting on a bench, with Tom's heart withering after a particularly difficult moment. Still, perhaps because of this conversation, he manages to retrieve the ideals he recently discarded, but with some important adjustments. (He reminds me of another romantic architect, Ted Mosby from "How I Met Your Mother.") Before she leaves, Summer tells him, "You weren't wrong, Tom. You were just wrong about me."

There goes the fear, by Doves (from the film's soundtrack)