Elder

Oh, how I loved him.
He has everything I could wish for in myself - attractive looks, charming personality, good physique. But I don't love him because of that. I love him because he's him.

Oh, how I hated him.
His arrogance, his laziness, his bullshit. He thinks he's a demigod, one who doesn't even have to care about his godly parents, not to mentioned the "petty mortals". He thinks he doesn't need to give a damn about his family, refuses to share any responsibilities, and knows only to point the finger of blame at others instead of sharing the guilt or help make things right. The only thing he wants is to have things done his way

Oh, how I hated that I loved him.

Who?

My brother. My darling, younger, spoilt brat brother.

Opposites, Versuses, Againsts

Come to think about it, just about everything in this world has an equal and opposite element to it. Science has art, life has death, earth has sky, and even our brains have left and right hemispheres (which control the opposite side of the body).

Taoism perfectly describes the phenomenon with the "yin-yang" concept - with every manifestation of active (yang) power, there's a passive (yin) power to control it. Its a cycle with neither beginning nor end. Sometimes, some factors may went over the edge, while others were suppressed until they were not able to cope, but Mother Nature has a way to restore balance. Given enough time, Her agents and mechanics can return things to how it should be.

But humans have a differnet view on how "balanced" their surroundings should be. They tipped the scale, not just in their favour, but way into their desires. They created imbalance so that their lusts could be satiated, then they requested for evermore. In the process, actions that could destroy our own beloved Home, were committed to the extent that natural regen will be too late for mankind. One can only hope to attribute a little at a time, the best they can, to help heal the world so that the next generation will not inherit the consequences of their fathers' wrongs.

Are we too late?

Its Just Emotions

" 'There's no shame in what you are feeling, Harry...... on the contrary, the ability to feel pain like this is your greatest strength,' Dumbledore said calmly.

'Look, I don't want to talk about how I feel, alright?' Harry said heatedly.

'Harry, suffering like this proves that you are still a man! This pain is part of being human-'

'THEN-I-DON'T-WANT-TO-BE-HUMAN! I-DON'T-CARE!' screamed Harry until his voice broke, while he seized Dumbledore's instruments and hurled them all over the office.

Dumbledore merely observe Harry demolishing his office before replying, 'You do care. You care so much you feel as though you'll bleed to death by the pain of it.' "

- Excerpted from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix"

If you are in Harry's shoes, how would you feel? Know that you must live without a family for thirteen years, to suddenly found someone as close to you as a family can be, only to lose him/her, by a mistake you felt you should have avoided?

Would you do as he does, yelling till you're hoarse that you won't care, while inside you're tearing apart? Would you show no feelings, but inside you're still grieving to the point of insanity?

Nowadays, people would chose the latter over the former - to grieve for someone, especially in front of others, was now treated as weakness rather than compassion. My regrets considering the situation, since that the griever who does so often end up really, really bad. Its like trying to wall-in a flood - when you can't hold it any longer, it breaks and come forth multiple times worse than when you first felt it.

"Oh, well, we'll get over it," you say. But to get over it, you have to let it go first, not clinging to it. And, well, I've yet to find a better way to let it go than to just express it, no matter how histerical it'll come out. Everybody feels better after doing so - the first step to move on to the future is to let go of the present.

Wanderings of the Abodeless

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,
Yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your
Teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed,
To me; I lift my lamp, beside, the golden door!"

- Excerpted and adapted from Emma Lazarus's poem of the Statue of Liberty, America.

Telcontar is a worn traveller, that read the excerpt and envisioned a place that was not his homeland, but feels as intimate to himself as that homeplace of his; a place, where, he knew he'd feel safe and comfortable, though not exactly, home. To him, it worked just fine, for his so-called "home" was lost to him for a long time. He was one of those people that called themselves "the Abodeless" - the people whom had never thought of a place as a real home.

He had been to deserts, savannahs, forests, mountains of untold heights, oceans of width immeasurable by himself; by today's technologies, those places he visited could have been charted as a whole map.

He was always alone. It wasn't that he didn't attract felllow Abodeless to offer going together with him; its just that he found company trying and he preferred to be alone. And it was just as well - there had been circumstances where he'd could've survived only by himself.

Now, he had an impulse to go aganist the Abodeless'es rule of going without any direction - he wanted to see where the place described in the poem looks like. He was disapointed. Turns out, his fate was probably to wander abodeless forever.

Upon further reflection, he realised that he was, in fact, at home - his wanderings to found a place to belong has become a place to belong. With a small sile at the notion, he turned his back and walked straight to the horizon, his figure shrinking out of sight.