correspondence

(source)

informal

Need to buy:

Blackberry batteries

Snickers, Kinder Bueno, etc.

A novel like Super Sad True Love Story

Clothes for a wedding

Listening to:

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Sam Phillips, A Boot And A Shoe

Midnight Train To Georgia

Desperation from the PAP truck passing by. Oops, I didn't say that.

Feeling:


Like a G6 (yesterday night)

Humoured, amused

Like I need to invest in a good hat

Saudade like smooth pebbles

Would like to eat:


A McDonald's soft serve cone

Crispy crackly pork knuckles and a tall glass of really cold draught

Garlicky fries, outdoors in front of a stage

The brown shatter from a super thin crust pizza

pulmonary

It has dawned on me that going back to camp is like taking a mini 5-day vow of silence, because I rarely speak more than 10 lines a day. It's very much a culture shock within a culture shock, and I feel like Jack Donaghy thrown deep into the heart of Middle America. (And even then, I'm still not quite seeing that gritty Eric Khoo-esque notion of the Underbelly.) It's weird having to speak with a quaint, folksy Singlish twang in order just to be understood and to fit in, and the most natural thing (for me, at least) is to not bother speaking at all. And that is why I channel Marina Abramovic on weekdays. The Artist Is Present.

post midnight crisis rant wearing a snuggie and novelty bedroom slippers

It's very offensive.

the genius of lowered expectations

I have eaten absolutely NOTHING of redeeming nutritional value today, save for the dainty portobello mushroom sandwich I constructed this morning. The consequent hunger pangs during the poetry workshop (Yes, I went for a poetry workshop and it was the best $95 I helped my parents spend) compelled me to buy an ice cream sandwich (raspberry ripple) from the ice cream stand. It was the kind that's catered for tourists, because it costed me 20 cents more than usual. And, the only people standing around it were batik-clad mainland Chinese on vacation (obviously, they strayed from their city tour group) and ex-pats with Pan-Asian toddlers and amazing cheekbones on their way to Saturday kiddy hip-hop lessons. Also, because the ice cream stand was located along the Singapore River.

For lunch, I had a seafood aglio olio that I used to distract myself from entertaining thoughts of spending my next allowance on a twin-lens reflex camera. Us workshop participants had some interesting conversations, e.g. being mistaken for a lost tourist deep in the heart of Bedok. Topics included: teaching, what to do in the coldest cinemas in Singapore, and how needing a salad for dinner is very French. Additionally, despite being male, teenage and half-bald, I did not feel like the Other there. (At uniformed literary events, wearing anything with the school logo instantly made me a novelty. People gawked and found it adorable to witness folks from the heartlands trying to make it to the cultural elite. It was horrible.)

After churning out a personal poem about ill-fitting shoes, the mediocrity of having a blister and the somewhat contrived allusion to strained relationships, I left and greedily stuffed myself with a monster cookie and a chocolate chip cream drink. Then I found myself standing in front of Best Fries Forever with a cup of Gusto Garlic in my incipiently pudgy hands, trying to shake off the crippling angst stemming from a postponed choir ice cream day. (Here, the narrowing of eyes at guilty parties' facebook profiles.) 

Unsurprisingly, my worldview is shaped solely by food. Unsurprisingly I also stole that line from 30 Rock. I am halfway done with Bossypants. My father is sitting nearby at his iMac, trying to figure out how to create a, what they call, a 'tiny url.' Why does he need to create one? Why is my mother rising from her chair to join-in his journey of learning and discovery? Why did I eat that last bag of hot-n-spicy chips? Why is "How to see who viewed your profile!!" an event in itself? Why are my eyelids suspiciously heavy this evening?

First Person Fabulous

First Person fumed & fizzed under Third Person’s tongue while Third Person slumped at the diner counter, talking, as usual, to no one.Third Person thought First Person was the toilet paper trailing from Third Person’s shoe, the tiara Third Person once wore in a dream to a funeral. First Person thought Third Person was a layer of tar on a gorgeous pink nautilus, a foot on a fountain, a tin hiding the macaroons and First Person was that nautilus, that fountain, that pile of macaroons. Sometimes First Person broke free on first dates (with a Second Person) & then there was the delicious rush of “I this” and “I that” but then no phone call & for weeks Third Person wouldn’t let First Person near anyone. Poor First Person. Currently she was exiled to the world of postcards (having a lovely time)—& even then that beast of a Third Person used the implied “I” just to drive First Person crazy. She felt like a television staring at the remote, begging to be turned on. She had so many things she wanted to say. If only she could survive on her own, she’d make Third Person choke on herself & when the detectives arrived & all eyes were on her, she’d cry out, “I did it! I did it! Yes, dahlings, it was me!

— Matthea Harvey

sparkly

kraft

LET IN THE NEW, THE VIVID, HORROR AND PITY, PASSION, THE STRANGER HOLDING THE FUTURE. ASK HIM HIS NAME.

— from 'Away and See' by Carol Ann Duffy, with everything capitalized to highlight extreme states of mind. Also because I am screaming but only in a metaphysical and highly philosophical way, which is a sound that only the soul can hear. (Okay. Not really.)

I am feeling so blah: like, your future stretches out like a grey nullity, an emotional void. It's like staring down into the proverbial abyss, knowing there's a light switch somewhere but you can't be arsed to look for it, because nothing seems worth illuminating at this point in time. I would be grateful if I shrank into my seat to begin a new life as a punctuation mark, devoid of any ambition. 

Yes, I have no ambition. I no longer have any desires. If all the colour in the world were to be suddenly purged by a freak nuclear disaster caused by a tsunami caused by an earthquake, I'd be the last to realise that anything, if anything at all, had changed. 

Recently I've become more interested in staying really still for extended periods of time, to experience shifting currents in the air. Like prickles on my skin. I read lines about the wind. A shiver / sung like wind through barley up and down her back. ('The Year of the Letter' by Jackie Kay) And it's amazing how it stirs that same feeling in me. A hundred books flap their pages like broken wings. It's incredible how the strongest connection between the wind and brokenness seems purely visceral — it's purely felt; an idea more concrete than an idea. 

I'm going to a sad place where this is abstraction, a world of ideas unfairly lumped together with algebra. (That is not to say one is more or less valuable than the other. But you get my point.) I'm not exactly interested in the Real anymore. I'm drawing the curtains shut.

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night

I had as lief be embraced by the porter at the hotel
As to get no more from the moonlight
Than your moist hand.

Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear.
Use dusky words and dusky images.
Darken your speech.

Speak, eve, as if I did not hear you speaking,
But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts,
Conceiving words,

As the night conceives the sea-sounds in silence,
and out of their droning sibilants makes
a serenade.

Say, puerile, that the buzzards crouch on the ridge-pole
And sleep with one eye watching the stars fall
Below Key West.

Say that the palms are clear in a total blue,
Are clear and are obscure; that it is night;
That the moon shines.

— Wallace Stevens

Self-Portrait as Runner Up

I've never been a shoe-in. I'm always flappable,
and when I make a joke it's like fumbling
for change. My motto is Yes, But.
I'm everybody's third choice, and rightly so,
because I couldn't blaze a trail
in butter. Most of my twenties
I spent paging through catalogs,
my thirties struggling with a stuck zipper.

Now, in my cruise-control forties,
I seem to watch the weather channel
in my sleep. I've never gone
without saying. Believe me, I need
plenty of introduction. When the comet
everyone's mad about appears
in the northern sky, I see lint,
a dim and vaguely luminous idea,
celestial smudge on my glasses.

Still, more and more mornings I wake
and let the cracks and cobwebs
on the ceiling swim for a moment
in my blurred, dread-stirred eyes.
Then rise with a relish past fame
to tend a fire as common as it seems rare.

— David Graham

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like somebody suddenly born into colour.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

— Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

This Long Night

This long night talks to itself.
The dark won't listen to the sound of your name.
I reach out here — my big empty bed.
The space next to me closes in; you say something,
anything, the exact sound of your accent
falling like rain on a caravan roof.
Tell me what you want me to do.

This long night stretches into another time.
Nobody calls my name. Silence —
a thief in the back garden.
Your body, a shadow, flat under the moon.
In my sleep, I open up like a night flower.
My scent comes in the midnight hour.
You come in by the window, don't you?

This long night and I can't reach you.
Your tongue inside me slides away.
You walk till the night grabs you.
A lonely pitch at the dark. Walk
until the road is all of your past.
Then, turn in your sleep next to your marriage,
wake yourself up calling my name.

— Jackie Kay

introspecting

Write a letter to:

Your Best Friend

Dear A,

I've always meant to tell you about the bird that pooped on your bag. I'll tell you some day. I promise. It's hilarious.

---

Your Crush

, 

I lied when I told you I forgot your name.

---

Your parents

Dear Mom and Dad, 

No dinner for me tomorrow, kthx!

---

Your sibling (or closest relative)

Dear E,

Let's secretly adopt a cat together and hide it under the bed.

---

Your favorite internet friend

Dear R,

I haven't talked to you since we were thirteen, but I love how I can tell people I know someone from Pakistan.

---

A Deceased person you wish you could talk to

Dear Susan Sontag,

Please come back.

---

The person you miss the most

Dear E,

COME BACK SOON; I MISS BEING ARTISTIC IN THE NAIVE BOHEMIAN SENSE. :(

---

Your reflection in the mirror.

GO TO SLEEP BEFORE YOUR POSTING DETAILS COME OUT AND PEOPLE START TALKING ABOUT IT ON FACEBOOK... OH GOD HURRY UP

introspecting

Put your music player on shuffle
Press forward for each question
Use the song title as the answer

1) How am I feeling today?
The World Is As Soft As Lace

2) Where will I get married?
Captain Easychord

3) What is my best friend’s theme song?
Joy To The World!

4) What is/was high school like?
Where The White Boys Dance

5) What is the best thing about me?
Nighttime

6)How is today going to be?
You

7) What is in store for this weekend?
Jacknuggeted

8)What song describes my parents?
Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second

9) How is my life going?
Alone In Kyoto

10) What song will they play at my funeral?
Why Won't He Answer

11) How does the world see me?
Josephine

12) What do my friends really think of me?
Is It Really So Strange?

13) Do people secretly lust after me?
You Came To Me

14) How can I make myself happy?
She Grins And Waves Goodbye

15) What should I do with my life?
Unfelt

16) Will I ever have children?
Don't Explain

17) What is some good advice?
Sparkling Bootz

18) What do I think my current theme song is?
Sleep Tonight

19) What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Born On A Train

20) What type of men/women do you like?
Skeleton Key

21) Will you get married?
Blue Moon

22) What should I do with my love life?
I'm Still Your Fag

(gotta love the direction this is going)

24) Where will you live?
Fredag

25) What will your dying words be?
Chandelier Searchlight

26) How’s your day going so far?
Danger!

27) How’s your love life?
You And Me, Bess

introspecting

What are the Top Ten things you would change about yourself?

1. My borderline schizoid personality disorder
2. My irrational fear of stylish gay men
3. My phantom sixth toe
4. My old goggle tan line
5. My perception of income
6. My irreverence for rhyme schemes in old hymns
7. My nightmares about driving
8. My nightmares about having nightmares about driving
9. My Frida Kahlo eyebrows
10. My habitual longing for deep-fried mushrooms

introspecting

Lately I've been feeling restless and inarticulate. In fact, I don't even know where to go after that last sentence. It's probably my hereditary dementia setting in prematurely. In view of this hopefully temporary standstill in mental activity, I'm just going to do memes and quizzes in a disinterested, postmodern fashion.

Put your music library on shuffle. Post the first lines of the first 25 songs that come up. The game: Guess which songs the first lines are from!

1. You can't steal a gift, no-oh
2. I'll lay down my glasses, I'll lay down in houses
3. This is how it ends, we just follow
4. I remember when you used to hide behind your silly hair
5. I've got nothing to worry about, so I worry about nothing
6. Girl afraid. Where do his intentions lay?
7. These things I've found
8. Been reaching for my baby
9. Oh my love for the first time in my life, my eyes are wide open
10. Dark are the days of Emily
11. Orpheus melted the heart of Persephone, but I never had yours
12. Is my heartbeat keeping you up tonight?
13. I've never been to Rome, but I don't need to go
14. Hear my cry, lover of mine
15. People I know are happier alone, they talk about how much it costs
16. I backed my car into a cop car the other day
17. Summer headlights cut into the dawn
18. I want to rule the islands and I want to rule the sea
19. In my early ages I ran down the stairs in the morning
20. What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all round the sun
21. Just one more thing before I go away
22. Ride your car down to the sea
23. This feeling doesn't go away, I feel it inside me
24. I would say I'm sorry if I thought that it would change your mind
25. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

those shoes are definitely bi-curious

Every time I go to the museum, I'm like, Man! Asian art is depressing! This evening, I saw a piece by an artist who was affected by the suspension of funding for performance art. She constructed something erotic out of rocking cables and bare lightbulbs that rubbed against oval mirrors; this sexually provocative installation is constructed to suggest a setting for a performance, and within this set-up she asks: But where is the performer? And we're like, Oh, I understand now — although she constructs, she also creates a very pronounced absence to foreground her critique. So clever! But it really doesn't give us anything to celebrate... if anything, the entire work compels us to rue over the state of free speech etc. etc. And everyone moves on to the next piece, which happens to depict farmers hanging themselves over their harvest, red paint trickling everywhere. The title of the piece is self-explanatory, says the curator giving the tour. We learn that it's entitled How To Commit Suicide or something in that same spirit of misery. We move on to a utopian piece that still features violence and poverty, a Venus of Bangkok made out of rusty farming equipment, multiple phallic drawings foregrounding forced censure and systematic state-driven oppression, self-portraits that speak of knowledge and entrapment... I ran out and started my feedback form collection duty early. 

At Eternity's Gate, 1890

Vincent van Gogh

oil on canvas

portrait, 1932

Francis Bacon

Oil

mothlike

I wish I could paint. And sculpt. And shoot films to scores that make will make millions of teenage hipsters weep with tears that they cannot pin down an emotion to, because it doesn't evoke anything happy or sad. And create incredible towers of wire and steel. And write stuff to make people laugh and cry and then laugh at themselves for crying. And master Debussy. Among other things. s

construction, reconstruction

This afternoon I wandered along the steamy aisles of Carrefour (the air-conditioning was down) mourning the impermanence of identity and the horrible truth that Bossypants, the much-anticipated book by my mentor and life-coach Tina Fey, hasn't arrived in stores yet. I had naively subscribed to the idea that I could perform miracles and think-into-existence a menu for my sister's birthday dinner by strolling around a supermarket much like Jamie Oliver in a farmer's co-op, and handpick gorgeous produce that will become a similarly gorgeous salad, on a gorgeous wooden salad bowl I forgot to buy in Tasmania. Of course, all the vegetables were limp and sad by the time I arrived, but I'd prefer to imagine their future in the compost heap as a promising, selfless and edifying one.

Anyway, I really hope that my plans for tomorrow will work out. But if they don't, it's going to be even more fun!

---

At this point — and it does seem like a non sequitur that I'm broaching this but believe me it isn't — I think my lungs are starting to say Hey buddy we're sorry but your youth is fleeting. I have forgotten how it's like to breathe normally. I hope it's something serious, because a long, quiet stay in a hospital would be so awesome right now. Oh, to finally get to read all my books in the ward wearing a cool blue hospital gown and a drip stuffed up my vein!

(Also I have been re-united with my iPod shuffle that disappeared after the Great Accident of 2009.)

Bare Branches

"What would they say
if they knew
I sit for two months
on six lines
of poetry?"
- Lorine Niedecker

This stark room
how simple, they say,
they not being we
who know it's easy
to be florid,
not get
to the gut.

The bare branches of
the maple satisfy me.
Maybe by noon a bird
will perch in one
like a word on a blank page.
Soon, I hope,
the snow will come,
complete the landscape.

The snow is miraculous
every time it arrives,
like a poem.

— Stephanie Mendel

menu

1. 44 clove garlic soup
2. Soba noodles with aubergine and mango
3. Iberico ham, caramelized apples and honeydew wedges
4. Grilled chicken with lemon, basil and toasted almonds

how fortifying

While eating a watermelon for breakfast (OK, I lie: I had 4 slices of watermelon, followed by a chicken wing, followed by half a bar of Green & Black's, followed by Bombay Mix from Mustafa, all in front of my laptop watching the latest episode of 30 Rock and laughing at Kenneth Parcel's Bird Internet) I realized that I have recently acquired an amazing amount of books. And that this book buying has to come to a temporary standstill, while I save my money during the painful interim. 

But this is part of a larger idea: the time I fritter away in BMT has allowed me to enrich the inner life, the life of the imagination. Time dilates and expands; somehow one can control the movement of time by concentrating on the perception of its ebb and flow. In other words, time flies when you're having fun, and the reverse is also true. Tired of the real world, I escape into some quasi-Barthesian, Pleasure-of-the-Text realm, where meaning is fragile and I'm suddenly sensitized to modes of signification. I feel this rising level of disinterestedness: I'm not really a participant; if there are signs of enthusiasm they are done in jest, in a self-conscious mockery ripe with irony and also abjection. Yet, I am still constrained by this enterprise because it has power over me. (At this point I'm like, who really exercises this power? Why do I submit to this? Am I complicit in my own oppression? Wtf?) 

Reading is comforting because it grants me the autonomy of generating meaning on my own, a counterpoint to a life of constraint and submission to larger structures of power. Constructing and discovering another vivid reality with the ability to engage and stimulate the senses (an illusion twice removed of course) prompted by the deliberate crafting of language alone, I am constantly amazed by how words create and limit. The ideas and feelings they evoke are subjective, but there are fundamental visceral commonalities (I gingerly and hesitantly posit) that seem to string humanity together. 

You know, when I tell people that I love words and I love books, their immediate reaction is scorn and, in charitable cases, pity. People don't realize that it's the same as loving biology, or loving sleep — it's an interest that promises such an immersive experience that it borders on escapism. But it's also, if you will, a curse, because the relationship between language and the self is necessarily isolating. The experiences of the Self are closed to the experiences of Others: the nuances of one word to one person may elude another. When the word yellow appears, it doesn't just signify one flat color devoid of detail. It triggers memories and related words that trigger yet another set of memories, creating this tsunami of meaning that engulfs us for an instant, and then recedes back into a sea of possibility. When I think of yellow I see sunshine, I think warm and surprisingly, I see red flannel shirts and bearded folk artists. (But that's just me because I'm weird like that.)

It's just another expression for the state of being alone and swimming in the harrying, wounding current of thought. Y'know?

Driving with Dominic in the southern province we see hints of the circus

The tattered Hungarian tent

A man washing a trumpet
at a roadside tap

Children in the trees,

one falling
into the grip of another

— Michael Ondaatje

meatless menu

1. Fennel and Mushroom Pie
2. Pesto Risotto
3. Cardamon and Cinnamon Cream Puffs