love song for 09

Midi Festival - Partie 1 from Nathanaël Le Scouarnec on Vimeo.

Wow, on hindsight, 2009 was a really bad year. A bad year, however, does not mean I wasted 365 days of my life stuck in the lowest throngs of the human condition. Instead, I really learnt a lot from tremendously life-siphoning mediocrities, and I'll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed hoping that next year will be a better one. Being more private about Life Things I learn, I'd rather save them for heart-to-heart talks that may or may not come my way once 2010 trots along.

And, OMG IT'S FINALLY THE LAST DAY OF 2009! ABOUT TIME, HUH?

(Pardon my short attention span, but watching the above video is stirring up a strong desire in me to ditch everything here and fly to the French Riviera.)

pictures of Christmas Eve dinner

Funny story! I was taking a nap in the afternoon, and my grandmother kept disturbing me (she ALWAYS does this when I try to catch some shut-eye in the afternoon even though she encourages nap time) and telling me to start preparing dinner (only in Bahasa because she prefers that language nowadays) and I was like, no, please go away, dinner is tomorrow. Tomorrow. The day after today.

Then I woke and realized, with terror, that it was Christmas Eve and people usually have Christmas Eve dinner, not Christmas dinner. (Actually, this is untrue, but I'm just pandering to popular thought in my household here, and everyone's hankering for an early feast.)

So this was my Christmas dinner: we had potato and leek soup, a naked salad, ribs braised in red wine and balsamic vinegar reduction, rosemary chicken, roasted vegetables and Christmas pudding! My mum and I finished the kitchen work at 8 PM, but everyone forgave us because the food was so good.

Today, I celebrated by 18th birthday with boomxsx (no official spelling) and we went to Watami at Ion! I had the best birthday outing of my life ever! (Then again, I don't remember having outings in honour of my birthday because everyone's still comatose from Christmas and New Year and First Day of School.) THEY GAVE ME A KINO VOUCHER. This has won over my heart. AND MACARONS. (Albeit expensive ones from a noobie tea lounge wannabe, but still the cake with yoghurt frosting was pretty delectable.)

Also, I can't forget the picnic with CTITW minus Andrea at Marina Barrage. Being a class above the common people, (sniff), we had camembert and crackers, eclairs, chicken and assorted sushi. Then we gave in to the more primal urges and threw in a pack of potato chips for good measure. Once again, we had to battle the elements: it was sunny and windy when we first arrived, and about half an hour into our lunch, it started to drizzle and then rain. We took cover inside, and were chased away by an annoyed cleaner who wanted to mop the floor. We then decided to seek refuge in the café inside and lounged about on plush suede covered couches while looking wistfully into the horizon/flipping through Her World (Shiyun's great idea). After hanging out for most of the afternoon, we went to the OC (I feel very urban, saying that) and bought stationery from Urban Write. Angeline found a 20 % discount coupon after purchasing her items, which Shiyun and I very gladly used to our benefit.

So I guess my holidays have been well-spent! (in many senses of the word "spent.") Am currently reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (an interesting pairing of texts), and still devouring the Beat Reader. Some Beats are interesting to read about and have written beautiful, moving and slightly profane things about an idealism which they so strive attain through somewhat furtive/non-furtive means, but a handful are annoying in their stasis - they seem to dwell on the same aspects of their struggles over and over again but after a while their pained introspection of self-afflicted misery seems a tad redolent of the grating emo poems of today, while lacking the carefully interwoven meaning by confessional poets like Plath and Sexton. But I'll leave that for my IS! I'm still forming perspectives and brainstorming possible angles. Sometimes painful, but mostly fun!

It's Christmas Eve!

Bad-ass Satie! I'm pouring through Satie: Piano Solo, which, in my opinion, is the coolest book in the library@esplanade currently.

In other news, MY PARENTS ARE BACK! Life returns to normal, with the exception of copious amounts of chocolate of varying types lying around in the kitchen and trailing out to the storeroom.

I will be strong

Because my parents are finally coming back today (will I still recognize them?), Christabel's coming back, the Andreas are both coming back, the TIP people have already come back, friends-of-friends are flying home from exotic locales in time for Christmas, and I'll be spending my holidays looking through all their vacation photos on Facebook. Apart from wondering What Could Have Been had I flown off elsewhere too (far, far away from Southeast Asia), I can't help but feel a little smug knowing that it's people like me who can only bestow meaning on their snapshots through the act of interpretation, whereby I am the only person who can enjoy the special Interpreter-Interpreted relationship significant to no one but myself.

Then again, I did enjoy my trip to Hanoi, just that I'm still bitter that it has to be so work-related.

Anyway, I'm back from YF camp. I was part-timing, that is to say, only making guest appearances, because I had to be away from camp for most of its duration. Some people were telling me how good the last message was, because it tied up the entire camp very well, and I can only wish that I had been there - choir practices and holiday project meetings beckoned, unfortunately. (In many ways, I am extremely glad that my phone is not working and it is my wish that it can stay this way for the next year.) The camp has been a good reminder of God's reality in my life, and more than any other reminder, I've learnt many things about a relationship with God that I've never really bothered grappling with till now.

Also, the first caroling gig of the season was fine. It was at a CC (think Aunties and Uncles doing a mass dance on stage) and the smoke machine suddenly went off during the second bar of O Come All Ye Faithful. I hope my batch isn't cursed with venues with bad acoustics. That would be most depressing. The experience, however, did not make this a fruitless effort. (I'll let you in on a secret: I've never once gone caroling before.) It was fun while it lasted, and I'm looking forward to something better on the 24th!

In other news, Christmas is coming! I am stating the obvious because anywhere you go, there'll be a hideously creepy effigy of Santa followed by a pack of dubious looking elves. As if that can incite merriment with the immediacy with which they so suggest. But more importantly, I still need to get presents and I have not started on Christmas cards! I do not want a repeat of last year's yuletide horror, when I found myself writing Christmas cards a week after Christmas. But I'm still excited anyway. *excitement*

The rain has held back for days and days,
my God, in my arid heart.
The horizon is fiercely naked--
not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud,
not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.
Send thy angry storm, dark with death,
if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning
startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord,
call back this pervading silent heat,
still and keen and cruel,
burning the heart with dire despair.
Let the cloud of grace bend low from above
like the tearful look of the mother on the day of
the father’s wrath.

Text by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

I'm back from the SYC & Friends concert, and I am still cheesily in love with the repertoire. The first half was centred around the music of Eastern Europe/the Baltic states, while in the second half we were treated to guest conductor Vytautas Miskinis' Light Mass.

Anyway, next week is going to be CRAZY. And because it doesn't rain but it pours, my phone can no longer be charged. I will attempt to survive the early 21st century without my handphone, just like in the old days.

(I re-read The Importance of Being Earnest again this afternoon and it's always funnier the second time round. Can't wait to do it for Lit next year!)

He is dead.
The bird of Rhiannon.
He is dead.
In the winter of the heart.
He is Dead.
In the canyons of death,
They found him dumb at last,
In the blizzard of lies.
He never spoke again.
He died.
He is dead.
In their antiseptic hands,
He is dead.
The little spellbinder of Cader Idris.
He is dead.
The sparrow of Cardiff.
He is dead.
The canary of Swansea.
Who killed him?
Who killed the bright-headed bird?
You did, you son of a bitch.
You drowned him in your cocktail brain.
He fell down and died in your synthetic heart.
You killed him,
Oppenheimer the Million-Killer,
You killed him,
Einstein the Gray Eminence.
You killed him,
Havanahavana, with your Nobel Prize.
You killed him, General,
Through the proper channels.
You strangled him, Le Mouton,
With your mains étendues.
He confessed in open court to a pince-nezed skull.
You shot him in the back of the head
As he stumbled in the last cellar.
You killed him,
Benign Lady on the postage stamp.
He was found dead at a Liberal Weekly luncheon.
He was found dead on the cutting room floor.
He was found dead at a Time policy conference.
Henry Luce killed him with a telegram to the Pope.
Mademoiselle strangled him with a padded brassiere.
Old Possum sprinkled him with a tea ball.
After the wolves were done, the vaticides
Crawled off with his bowels to their classrooms and quarterlies.
When the news came over the radio
You personally rose up shouting, “Give us Barabbas!”
In your lonely crowd you swept over him.
Your custom-built brogans and your ballet slippers
Pummeled him to death in the gritty street.
You hit him with an album of Hindemith.
You stabbed him with stainless steel by Isamu Noguchi,
He is dead.
He is Dead.
Like Ignacio the bullfighter,
At four o’clock in the afternoon.
At precisely four o’clock.
I too do not want to hear it.
I too do not want to know it.
I want to run into the street,
Shouting, “Remember Vanzetti!”
I want to pour gasoline down your chimneys.
I want to blow up your galleries.
I want to bum down your editorial offices.
I want to slit the bellies of your frigid women.
I want to sink your sailboats and launches.
I want to strangle your children at their finger paintings.
I want to poison your Afghans and poodles.
He is dead, the little drunken cherub.
He is dead,
The effulgent tub thumper.
He is Dead.
The ever living birds are not singing
To the head of Bran.
The sea birds are still
Over Bardsey of Ten Thousand Saints.
The underground men are not singing
On their way to work.
There is a smell of blood
In the smell of the turf smoke.
They have struck him down,
The son of David ap Gwilym.
They have murdered him,
The Baby of Taliessin.
There he lies dead,
By the Iceberg of the United Nations.
There he lies sandbagged,
At the foot of the Statue of Liberty.
The Gulf Stream smells of blood
As it breaks on the sand of Iona
And the blue rocks of Canarvon.
And all the birds of the deep sea rise up
Over the luxury liners and scream,
“You killed him! You killed him.
In your God damned Brooks Brothers suit,
You son of a bitch.”

From Thou Shalt Not Kill: A memorial for Dylan Thomas
by Kenneth Rexroth (1953)

It's 11.13 pm and my parents are flying over the Indian Ocean drinking insipid airline wine and unsticking jammed drink holders. Esther and I sent them off a while ago but "a while ago" seems to have stretched back for days and the future is currently a dumb postmodern joke that I cannot laugh at.

Call it separation anxiety, but I still am feeling overwhelmed by parental absence and the mountain of domestic responsibilities that has been thrown at me, and coupled with my current economic crisis, I have no idea how I am going to handle taking care of my grandparents and my sister and a million other things at the same time. The house is going to fall into dilapidation, I'll spiral into manic depression weeping in the corner of the kitchen, and everyone is going to live in a state of depravity. We'll end up living like savages and it's all going to be my fault.

And to say that I'm insanely jealous would be the understatement of the millennium. Like, hey guys, know what? It would be so nice to hear some remorse or slight regret that your kids aren't coming, but no. You pack your bags, abandon us for your exciting lunchtime vacation discussions and forget that yes, we do exist and yes, we are not people from a twenty-year long dream. Does everyone over 50 have cowhides for skins? You could make canoes out of them and they would cut glaciers.

Maybe I shouldn't have expected their worlds to revolve around mine, but BOO it's kinda like your fault I've been brought into this crappy place so deal with it. I've learnt an important lesson: you either have children and be consistent in bringing them up, or forget about it. Taking breaks away from your kids is plain hurtful.

(And yeah, I know ranting about this online is awful and nasty too but I freaking need catharsis. Guess we're now even.)