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'Oh that won't do.' said Bilbo. 'Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after? '
'It will do well, if it all comes to that.' said Frodo.
'Ah!' said Sam. 'And where will they all live? That's what I often wonder.'
~Fellowship of the Ring
How much space does love need to live in?
The only thing we needed,
we realised, with all that moving around,
was a toothbrush.
Everything else was supplemented by make belief.
Why do people fight about bread or love?
People who don't have time for grocery shopping,
forget the romance in it.
The freshly baked bread and cream pies,
the fruits we wait to ripen
so that we can get them half price!
The milk we choose - chocolate, skimmed, full, extra cream!
and the breakfast we dream about making - pancake from scratch?
The sugar and fats we could live without,
but couldn't help purchasing.
It's about finding the bargains,
splitting the bill and carrying the groceries home together.
Sometimes you will buy flowers,
and i'll leave them on my too full table,
letting them overwhelm my keys,
receipts, pens and half lost earrings.
You were always good to go,
you would knock on my window and say
I've got a surprise for you!
Me, in my messy pyjamas and oily hair,
I would look at you and say, Go outside? Now?
I haven't even brushed my teeth.
But perhaps, in your eyes
I was always good to go
and so I went.
Those adventures in our backyard,
I will find some place to shelve them
wherever our new home might be,
even if its a shoebox,
we will overwhelm it as always,
flowers, receipts, and
oh those delicious seedless grapes.
One of my friends complains that I write too little, but I tell her that I can write more but I would mean less. Koh Buck Song's "East Coast Park" holds great meaning for me. When Erica sent us the poems for her thesis, it came right after I went to East Coast Park to eat chilli crabs again - and that feeling, it captures so well, of a place moving on after you have moved on from it, of youth as a memory that will always subsist even in change - even now, I can't just see East Coast Park in the moment, for it will always be all the moments, the jumping into the sea in school uniform and sitting in front of someone's bike and hoping we won't fall of. "Imagery of love/ is as old as the sea", young love is as eternal as the song in our hearts.
a lifetime seems to gape
from when we carved our names
on a coconut tree
now long-lost among the hundreds
shading this haven,
that jack-knife cut
a whisper to the wind,
youth’s vandalism of hope
corrected by the
grammar of growing up
but, like a nursery rhyme,
love’s basic vocabulary
repeats, still speaks
chapters of comfort,
folios of faith
seen from this shore
here is another snatch of stasis
on the hurtling continuum:
on one side
the shimmer of Shenton Way,
on the other
Changi Airport’s shine
and in between
a seamless string
of ship’s lamps,
like some Milky Way
of Neptune
imagery of love
is old as the sea
but each time
the metaphors recharge
renew what they signify
in the abiding language
of the heart
East Coast Park, Jan 26th 2010
"Nope. Not at all," I said.
"So if you guys didn't meet in holland, you won't have met in Singapore?" Dad continues.
It feels like a tiny spark goes off in my head.
Dad gives a wise "Ahh...." before spouting a very long profound chinese proverb. It goes kind of like this, if you have affinity with someone, you will meet even if it's a thousand miles away.
I give Dad a kiss before I get off the car, like the good night kisses he collects every night. Before driving off, unconscious, he says "sweet dreams".
Salome is the main character's mother.
According to Salome, that second one was high-hatty, but she could make him produce the cash if she wanted to. "He's richer than God," she said.
"Then he must have sunrise in his pocket. And mercy in his shoes."
She stared. "Is that from one of your books?"
"Not completely."
"I don't know. It sounds like it would be in Romancero Gitano . But it isn't."
Her eyes grew wide. She had put her hair in a shellacked wave, hours ago, but now it was coming apart, the short curls across her forehead coming loose from the rest. She looked like a girl who had just come in from playing.
"You made that up, sunrise in his pocket and mercy in his shoes. It's a poem." Her eyes clear as water, the points of her hair just touching her brows. The candlelight found long, narrow lines of satin in the cloth of her dress, a pattern that would never show up in ordinary daylight. He wondered how it would be to have a mother, really. A lovely, surprised woman like this, who looked at you. At least once, every day.
"You do need another book, don't you? To write down your poems."
But already he was on the last page.
Someone asked me during the holidays why I don't write funny stories about my family anymore. I guess because the dynamics are a little different and it's harder to capture in a few words. Pearl is always lost in hall and turning into various different shades of brown, so it's a lot like an award-winning comedy with a bit of a cast change.
The latest episode I think was the Case of the Missing Fishes in our new mini water fountain. Pearl, ZM and his younger sister, the four of us went to Qian Hu to have our feet eaten by fishes and to get 6 lucky fishes for the fountain. Ever since then, Dad and Mum have been bugging me about how many fishes I brought home. "Are you sure it's six? I only see three." "Are you sure it's six? I only ever see four." You can see how it goes. The missing yellow fish was never found. So Dad and Mum went to buy more fishes from central, and they go on about how cheap their fishes are. And every now and then, one of them will go out to just watch the fishes. As I go upstairs and meet Dad along the way, He will go, "You don't want to look at the fishes?" And I'll go, "Erm... I just saw them just now with you guys."
So, Sunshine has kind of lost her place in the family temporarily. She's a strange one, with a psyche either so developed or so simple that I still can't quite grasp. I've developed a "Thirty-Min Sunshine" tactic, which is to visit her, stroke her until she gets tired of it, and then go off. Come back in thirty minutes. She will respond more and more warmly, and the next day, she even came out to greet me! Sunshine isn't a rabbit that likes to be surrounded, but I think perhaps, all living things get used to being loved and that's when they understand loneliness. Therefore, loving anything is a powerful gift not to be used lightly. Even for thirty minutes.
1) Exercise. Especially after my ankle heals. Whenever he asks me about when I will sign up for my yoga class, he asks with this smile that wonders what excuse I will come up with now. Also, this is to satisfy my dad's wish for "oxygen in my head". Any problem I have can be explained by this lack of oxygen.
2) Closure. There were some holes last year I didn't face head-on, because of perhaps emotional denial? cowardice?confusion? about whether the holes exist (they do), what kind of holes are they and what to do. Holes aren't like tooth decay, you don't get to fill them up even if you are willing to bear the pain. It's a bit like a mahjong game, when you have made so many errors that you know it's about impossible to win this hand because all these while you have been waiting for the wrong tiles.
Although the novel does work on a meta-textual level, making you conscious of your reading as you try to bridge the gap between truth and your own and the characters' presumptions. What I love most about the book is its undeniable belief in the power of words - whether they be false words or true. Words written in anger broke a powerful historical and political alliance, asking for an opinion of words caused a great man to be killed. Words, ah, words. The main character of the book, but not its only narrator, is a man of words - he is often referenced as a fish and his journals his water - but his main belief in life is that "God speaks for the silent man". For all the things he chose not to speak, he writes. And words being so important, often fall missing in this beautifully crafted novel, things referenced, feelings anticipated, but all cleverly referenced without actually delving into - this lacuna that you can't help wondering, thinking, and wanting to sink in with all your built-up feelings. In fact, I remember plowing through the book, excited for a certain event to occur before my eyes, so I could read it, relish it, but this book presented as a publication of a collection of journals, skips past it - like a diary event you didn't write down, because who after all, is meant to be the true reader of all these words?
I struggled to tell S a few weeks ago what kind of book I was looking to read this holiday. I finally settled with I want something to make me happy . But now I know what I really meant, I wanted something with heart. No doubt, this novel is full of brain, full of ambition - things are often on an epic scale. But we never leave the heart, the true heart of a boy whose education laid in books, often borrowed, or stealthily stowed away. The heart of a reader, a writer, a word smith.
(written in the first person perspective of the narrator, the other person is Lev - Leon Trotsky, the famous Russian Revolutionary)
"Young Shephard! What business could keep you so late in headquarters?" Headquarters of the Fourth International is his name for the big office next to the dining room. Natalya moved in all three typewriter tables and her roll-top desk, the telephone, bookshelves, file cabinets, and all. It was her idea to make a separate office so all can work here - herself, Van, the Americans who've come to study with Lev - without driving the commisar out of his mind. Lev keeps to his little study in the other wing by their bedroom, writing in peace until he needs someone to come and take a dictation.
"I'm sorry, sir." Gather up the pages quick, put them in a folder. No confession unless forced. "It's nothing that will liberate the people."
He waited for more, standing wide-eyed at the doorsill in his shirt and tie. His white hair stood on end from a long day's work. He pulls his hair while he thinks.
"Sir, I'm reluctant to say."
"Oh, no. Some secret report to the adversary?"
"Please don't suggest such an awful thing."
"What, then? A love letter?"
"It's more embarrassing than that, sir. A novel."
The muscles of his face collapsed like a dumpling, all dimples and wrinkled eyes behind the beard and round glasses. Lev's smile is like no other. He pulled out Natalya's desk chair and sat in it backward, straddling it like a horse, leaning his elbows on its back and laughing until he nearly wept. "Oh, this is a mechaieh! "
There was nothing to do but wait for a more comprehensible verdict.
"I've been worrying where it is you go, my son. When your mind is not here." He clucked his tongue, said some words in Russian. "A novel! Why do you say this won't liberate anyone? Where does any man go to be free, whether he is poor or rich or even in prison? To Dostoyevsky! To Gogol!"
what is this road that separates us
across which I hold out the hand of my thoughts
a flower is written at the end of each finger
and the end of the road is a flower which walks with you
—Voie/Way, Tristan Tzara
"I don't think most people can describe where inspiration comes from. All I know is that if it is not put to proper use, it disappears," He says. "I've got some notes that I jotted down 10 years ago, but I can no longer remember why I wrote them. Now, I don't know how to use them. It's lost forever."
- Newspaper Interview by Magdalen Ng
Utrecht, 31st March 2009
Brief dark shadow of a city tree, the light sound of water falling into a sad pool, the green of smooth grass - a public garden on the edge of dusk - in this moment you are the whole universe to me, because you entirely fill my every conscious feeling . I want nothing more from life than to fill it ebbing away into these unexpected evenings, to the sound of other people's children playing in gardens fenced in by the melancholy of the surrounding streets, and above, the high branches of the trees, vaulted by the ancient sky in which the stars are just beginning to reappear.
- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Looking into the old/new science laboratories, "thinking rooms", new fancy named corners as if calling a place a Westernised name will make it sound posher, our past looked carefree. But you know it wasn't, you know you once promised yourself that you will remember how hard it was being twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen and won't be-little your teenage children when they are that age. We probably don't fit in those chairs anymore i thought wistfully. "You used to be so messy" one said and the other chorused "we always used to take turns to pack your table!" and then another said, "yes, return how mrs low specially gave crystal a cardboard box to keep all her books!". I laughed, "It's a wonder I managed to have friends!"
I haven't woke up so early for a very long time, willingly. In my rush to leave the house, I tripped and sprained my ankle. It's still really bruised and swollen. That cut short any of the many plans I had for the new year. I was planning to zip across town, as if one was transversing time.
When people talk about time, what one is really saying is Why are you not here with me now? If we could go back to that time, we could go back to everyone, every place, every thought at that moment. As if life was beautifully framed at every second, and one just needs to wind back and place one self at its natural place.
All through life, friends have said I'm like a social butterfly. Part of it is meeting lots of people, but mostly, because I'm actually very shy, is the quiet and frequent drift into my own private world. But for all those who are still here, those who read this and those who will not, thank you for making the journey. Thank you for being here, even if all these turned out to be nothing.
Cacharel spring 2010, image via NYMag.com; Gustav Klimt painting via leninimports.com
Tsumori spring 2010, image via NYMag.com; Vincent Van Gogh painting via redlibrary.org
Our picnic essentials:
Pink Picnic Basket
Wine in Ice Box
Huge Boombox
Sleeping Bag & Salmon
Very Happy Person
The greatest surprise, however, were the Monkeys. One medium sized male monkey hovered around us, climbed up the great tree next to us and was poised for food theft. We had finished our lunch, and was lounging around, reading magazines and feeling a lot like food. After we changed our positions, and chased away that monkey, suddenly, as if we were in a chinese martial arts movie, we were surrounded by 4 monkeys. It's never-ending monkey food ninjas and we decided to leave with our hearts intact.
I thought about two things. The Fox in the Little Prince who warned the little prince not to tame wild things, for a wild thing tamed will be yours forever. The Monkeys at Seletar Reservoir has changed because of humans who feed them - when no one feeds them, they have forgotten to be monkeys, to forage for their own food - and have become like the people who feed them - violent and hungry. Isn't this a small micro-scale of the fate of our world? No one can come to a conclusion at Copenhagen because Mother Nature cannot speak for itself, humans only listen to human pains and we haven't been hit where it hurts yet . There is an indescribable balance that exist in the world, and one cannot disturb it without consequences.
On another non-environmental note, I was really touched by the picnic. I don't think anyone ever has a perfect relationship and it is ultimately a learning process - at every different stage, the relationship teaches you something new. Inertia happens when either party stops listening. Relationships are a lot like memory banks, imagine you are building a house - these memories are your foundation, every beautiful memory becomes a solid brick, every suppressed emotions weakens the basic structure of the house. Love is perhaps a combination of feelings of the past, present and future - you need warmth in every moment. So this picnic, now part of the memory bank, was a fulfillment of a promise in the past, a beautiful present and a hope for the future.
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awoke, and there I was, veritably myself again.
Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
- Chuang Chou
I've always loved that quote, every now and then, my thoughts flit onto it again and some new thread of meaning will seem to flow seamlessly out of it. It captures beautifully my feeling of returning from a short but peaceful trip. Returning home feels so different from being in that warm surreal cocoon of constructed happiness, designed to bring relief and pleasure - so what is real? Is something less real because it was only meant to exist under certain conditions? So I turn twenty two, and I think with my mind, the most unreal medium of all, that what is most real are your family, your love, your friends and your soul.
Butterfly in Venice, the most unreal city of all
I still probably keep more things than I should. I found the pamphlet of the first group piece I did in junior college. We look so young. It was called "moments". The quote we left on the pamphlet, still resonates, like the last scene, none of us could see, because we had all left the stage - but it was as if i had seen it before, and knew I would see it again because "we: spectators, always, everywhere, looking at everything, and never from!... Who''s turned us around like this, so that whatever we do, we always have the look of someone going away? Just as a man on the last hill showing his whole valley one last time, turns and stops, and lingers - so we live and are forever leaving."
Picture of the holland lop as promised! She's like this crazy genius. Now she has learnt how to open the door! She headbutts the door like crazy, and it opens and she even knows how to close the door! I woke up shocked, to find my computer cable all nibbled up. Too shock to even scold her.
She doesn't smell at all and she's as soft as I always thought softness should be. I always thought clouds and snow felt like this too... they don't, but at least we still have bunny dreams.
P.S. For people who have been asking, my exam ends on 2nd Dec. Of course, I have lost my desire to study long ago. But I have a bunny for good luck!
I sat down today and thought about the simple things I wanted. The truly great and universal are the individual and small things. I want to cut my hair, even though some days it's really very pretty. They are like long loose tendrils, part of a secret vineyard full of as yet discovered sweet grapes. It falls around me like a soft shawl and protective cap. But if anyone knows me, they know how I like to change things like that about me even if they don't need change. I have had some really bad haircuts, but I don't regret any of them - even when they were bad, i never felt bad, they just became better as time went by.
I plan to buy a lovely swimsuit, so I can swim in the Bintan beaches with my hopefully fresh locks. I want to buy endless books. I got a little plan, instead of fiction, I'm going to try and find really interesting biographies or medieval history. Feel like expanding my knowledge of the world and trying to re-interpret something old, find that truth, and fit it in my own modern context.
Also, I need to cook all that promised food of love. My dad wants the sweet and sour pork I cooked for him when he visited me in Holland, and I have been telling people they need to try my risotto - because it's really that good. Only because risotto is always better home-made, or made in a small cosy place, like this little italian shop tucked in one of the far away islands of Greece, with a warm lady so nice she made us risotto for lunch even though it was only available for dinner, just because we returned again (too good not to). Risotto is something you have to make slowly, stirring it ever so gently, mixing all kinds of spices, ingredients, wine, or not wine, stock or not stock, a little cheese, a little butter, it has to be just right. Imagine, with each stir, you stir it for someone - now this stir is for you there, and this stir is for you here. Risotto is not something you cook for yourself, it is meant to be a gift.
And also finish another big jigsaw puzzle with him and our long awaited picnic, eating crabs, meeting friends in all sort of beautiful places. Turning twenty two. Merry Christmas and then find out what lies ahead in the new year. Sometimes, I walk around in a bit of a daze in school, as if my mind was trying to put a finger on something. But it can never find it, and then someone will smile at me, call my name and say hi, I kind of awake from my daze and think that while my mind was trying to figure out what that missing something was, I was missing this .
