Ashcan rantings

The inner arsonist in everyone is unleashed during the seventh month. There are copious mounds of ash sitting at the void deck waiting for the wind to come and blow them through people's windows. I am not spared the attack of the ash fragments even though I stay on the 12th floor. I come home to the sickly (sweet?) smell of burning joss paper and compulsively arranged candles that surround the block at irregular intervals. Who was that who said 'we have no one to fear but ourselves?'

I unwittingly borrowed a graphic novel from Orchard Library 'Batman: Arkham asylum - a serious house on serious earth'. 'Unwittingly' because I didn't see the tiny words 'batman' on the cover - it was too cluttered with other images; and I don't normally read Batman, (despite having my film lecturer speculate almost every week now that Batman is gay). I have to say the book's bloody brilliant. (pardon my French, but it works well for alliteration, and plosives always go far in emphasis). It's rather Neil Gaiman-aspiring, but it really explores all areas of the theme of madness well, from duality to repressed emotions/the Oedipal complex to self-mutilation 'just to feel something' (though I know this sounds really cliche); from hallucinations to visions to lewis carroll to heavenly images (a la Ginsberg) to the denial of madness - it really screams "EN2101_2!" (which in case you are wondering, is the module code for 'Madness and Literature' which is what I'm doing now.) Illustrations (done by Dave McKean who did work a fair bit with Gaiman), are really cool in ther 'gothic-ness' and there is beauty in the gore. Pretty.

(I did notice though that the book lay neglected on the shelves for quite sometime. People snatched at other stuff like the manga and The Far Side and Buffy..)

Was zoning out at Holland V at night and was spotted by Chandran (my director) who peered through the already transparent glass door of Delifrance and waved. It was most possibly the highest point of today, considering today involved sitting through a mind-numbing social work lecture and a mind-screwing film, Memento. I will officially attain a higher state of conciousness if i don't get some sleep now; maybe I'll go mad, which is a rather attractive option now.

"I see now the virtue in madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary. I pity the poor shades confined to the Euclidean prison that is sanity"
- From the Journals of Amadeus Arkham, Batman-Arkham's asYluM