Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, there lived a poor but beautiful little girl. She was a poor orphan who wore tattered clothes and slept on the floor of the church. The church people allowed her to help to do some chores at the church in exchange for her sleeping on the floor. She would beg for alms and would make a living despite that financial times were bad because afterall, she was a beautiful little girl.

One night, an evil witch who happened to pass by the church saw the little girl, felt deep jealousy of her beauty, and decided to turn her into an ugly little girl.

The next day, the little girl woke up and wept and wept when she found herself to be ugly.
The church people kicked her out of the church as they did not want an ugly little girl to be sleeping on the floor of the church or do chores when they could get other beautiful little girls to do that.
People stopped giving her alms as they did not want to give alsm to an ugly little girl when they could give it to other beautiful little girls.
So, the little girl wept and wept and thought of the world unfair. She cursed and cursed the evil witch for picking on her. Finally, she thought about ending her ugly life.

The ugly little girl took herself to a nearby stream and jumped into it hoping to die. She did not die successfully and sobbed on the bank.

An ugly prince was passing by while walking his pet cow, Spotty, and saw her, and asked her for her story in exchange for a glass of Spotty's milk, as the hobby of this ugly prince was to go around his father's kingdom exchanging Spotty's milk for stories. It grew dark as they spoke. The girl dried her ears with a tattered piece of her clothes and realised that her ears were full of wax. In a fit of innovation, she gathered all her ear wax around a piece of string and formed some kind of candle. They lit the candle and talked about what the girl can do from now on.
When dawn broke they realised that the lit earwax candle was not melted at all. How marvellous this was! A candle which will take one year to burn out!

So the ugly prince took it back to the castle and sold the marvellous earwax candle to his father, the king, who was a sucker for collecting useless things and paid a huge sum of money for the earwax candle.

So the ugly girl was no longer poor and did not have to die. She spent her time having fun and making earwax candles for the king. She grew older and naturally, fell in love with the ugly prince who fell in love back. They got married and lived quite happily ever after.

Later on, the story of the ugly earwax candle girl spreaded far and wide across many kingdoms, and through many distortions, somehow, resulted in ear candling to be what it is today.

(Dedicating this story to the Samurai Cheryl and Weijie.)

Today

I got a paper cut on my right middle finger.
I got messy hair.
I am so sleepy and tired.
I am losing my imagination.

A rainbow in the sky

I saw a perfect rainbow in the sky that day.
Behind me was a sunset that dyed the whole sky orange in a milky sort of way.

I stood and looked and saw a big perfect rainbow against the milky orange sky,
spanning from my left to my right or my right to my left,
it seemed so near, yet at the same time, it seemed so high.

I remember feeling a felt of delight. I remember smiling a smile to myself.
I remember to remember the perfect rainbow in the sky.

The girl who is sad

There is a girl who is sad in a way she had never been sad before,
like many girls who are sad, she thought about ending her life.
Yet, unlike many girls who are sad, she thinks if she is being melodramatic.
"How unfortunate," she wonders, "that I do not know if I'm being melodramatic because I shouldn't end my life for melodrama's sake."

So, the girl who is sad in a way she had never been sad before, just falls in sadness without ending her life.

She lives each day with sadness.
She sleeps because she is so tired,
She tosses and turns at night,
She sleeps each night with sadness.
She wakes up and wishes that she were dead and therefore need not live another day of sadness.

"Am I being melodramatic?" she wonders, "for is sadness so truly unbearable?"
The girl who is sad in the way she is sad in doesn't know how to compare her sadness and has no answer.

So, she just falls in sadness and lives each day and night wishing she were not alive.