Sonnet

You jerk you didn't call me up
I haven't seen you in so long
You probably have a fucking tan
& besides that instead of making love tonight
You're drinking your parents to the airport
I'm through with you bourgeois boys
All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts
Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch
By a soporific color cable t.v. set
Instead of any arc of love, no wonder
The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night
You can either make love or die at the hands of
the Cobra Commander


_________________

To make love, turn to page 121.
To die, turn to page 172.

— Bernadette Mayer

why I'd rather be at home

My sister and father are discussing Wuthering Heights —


Father: I did Wuthering Heights before.
Sister: Oh, really?
Father: But my teacher wasn't very good.
Father: Her husband was a neurosurgeon.
Father: I only remember a Catherine. Her daughter was also called Catherine, right?

Improvisation

One thing about human nature is that nobody
wants to know the exact dimensions of their small talk.
I can’t imagine good advice.
If every human being has skin
how come I can see all of your veins?
Clicks and drips target my skull.
Important voices miss their target.
Some cities are ill suited for feet.
I’d never buy a door smaller than a tuba, you never know
what sort of friends you’ll make.
In the future there will be less to remember.
In the past I have only my body and shoes.
The gut and throat are two entirely different animals.
My hands don’t make good shoelaces, but I’m going to stay
in this lane, even if it’s slower.
The trick was done with saltwater and smoke
and an ingredient you can only find in an
out-of-business ethnic food store.
It all comes down to hand-eye coordination.
Once it took all my energy to get you out of the tub
we had converted from an indoor pool to a house.
I ended up on snorkeling spam lists inadvertently.
It is all inadvertent.
If you don’t believe me ask your mom.

— Rachel M. Simon

here

notes

Motto for July: a macaron a day keeps the therapist at bay.

Why am I weary of TCM? Is this a willpower deficiency on my part? Has exposure to science led to a categorical condemnation of non-Western therapy? Is there an experience of imperialism implicit here?

I have decided to be anarchopacifist until I am convinced that the justifications for militarism as necessary for deterrence have legitimate grounding. I am a medic and I save lives. I skip the final line of the pledge. No complicity in state-sanctioned violence and suffering, thanks. Cheer.

The passing of the marriage equality act in NY today (saw it live on twitter, you guys) is amazing and I'm glad it happened. It doesn't cheapen marriage; it reaffirms the institution based on principle - of love and commitment - rather than shallow heteronormativity. To limit marriage by gender is to undermine its core. But tomorrow I expect that people in church are going to lambast it and I will be "corrected" if I seem to condone it. Y'all, according to the Bible, it's also a sin to mix your textiles. Just a thought. (Also I know that that's from the Law which we are spiritually exempt and delivered from, but it's just an example of how people craft a weird theology founded on dubious and power-laced interpretations.)

I suddenly feel like making black bean and salsa vegan-friendly burgers for my family but I am concerned that this will give everyone gas. Sad thought.

rejected lines from shameful older poems

Above/ the moon is a golf ball

Otherness and alterity become words/ I wear like a choker

There is only a brick holding this gaping door open

I am swimming in pools of discontent holding this thought/ like an inflatable donut

I am a starfish

To have and to fold;/ this origami dog

Papery onion skins

But in the end/ Werther kills himself

Signed lies and/ stifled cries

Mrs Carl Meyer and her Children

Names

She was Eliza for a few weeks
When she was a baby —
Eliza Lily. Soon it changed to Lil.

Later she was Miss Steward in the baker's shop
and then 'my love', 'my darling', Mother.

Widowed at thirty, she went back to work
As Mrs Hand. Her daughter grew up,
Married and gave birth.

Now she was Nanna. 'Everybody
calls me Nanna,' she would say to visitors.
And so they did — friends, tradesmen, the doctor.

In the geriatric ward
They used the patients' Christian names.
'Lil,' we said, 'or Nanna,'
But it wasn't in her file
And for those last bewildered weeks
She was Eliza once again.

— Wendy Cope

Autumn Cancer (i.m. Liz Suttle)

Each day, the autumn, eating a little further
into the bone.

A leaf falls on a stiller day, coloured a richer brown,
more glowing, more holding, like glazed bread or old apples;

and the lap of the lake gone smaller, a nibbling as of fishes
at feet in tidal pools. The herons stands longer.

Shoals of leaves float further on the water,
the low sun pulses, and light shafts pick more delicately

over woodland and the limbs of ash grown sensuous,
shapely, as a woman from a bath;

while on the alders, yellow, and here and there,
a round leaf hangs, spent coin in the stillness.

I have never known so exactly
this abacus of days. This withdrawal. This closing out.

— Kerry Hardie

weakness in the sky

Woe

No God's rain petals—

          puddled, shallow
dreams and drifts

as airy as lambs' eyes




A breeze tosses
               light sentencery

for God loves me

and hid me next to you

— Ethan Paquin

[Calmly grass becomes a wave]

Calmly grass becomes a wave
See the body parts you name
unsoothes you where you slip
trying to to write or wake up

The songs overlap each other              baby

an echo knell a creased pit
an animal
an animal

Hello     call me

— Hoa Nguyen

Doppelganger

Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush --
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever --
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.

I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.

I puzzled over it, hiding alone --
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.

A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.

Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him for the first time,
Entering the lonely house with my wife.

— James Lindon

a thing that made me laugh in the lecture room today

From the Sedaratives section in The Believer, issue 78 (with guest columnist Paul Scheer) —

Dear Sedaratives, 

Is it OK to break up with someone on Twitter? What if I don't have a Twitter account and ask a friend to do it for me? What's the protocol?  

Stacie

Orlando, Fla.

Dear Stacie,

As my good friend Kathleen Turner once told me, "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU FREAKY STALKER!" But that's beside the point. Yes, it is OK to break up over Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter account, here are some other options for breaking up. Send a mass text to everyone but the dude (or gal) you're dating. Skywriting always works. It's public, and so much fun. But I think the absolute best way is a singing telegram. It's just not possible to be upset when a man in a gorilla costume tells you, "Stacie don't love you anymore" to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby."

Paul

My co-intern at the medical centre was like, Your magazine has so many words! I gave the same smile that expectant mothers gave when complemented about their glowing skin/jet black hair/engorged bosom/sense of importance/knitting skills/taste in floral textiles.

sundays

balloon party

While walking along Bishan Road back home in the evening, my sister and I recounted all the Awesome that happened today and how they'd be remembered in sepia prints and the gorgeous blur of grainy Super 8 film. 

Before this ends up like a primary school essay-writing exercise employing sensational flashbacks in an endearing attempt to reward the reader with delicious drama in direct speech, (As beads of perspiration trickled down his forehead, John said, "Ya! The vegetarian quiche was sumptuous!") I will cut to the chase (ironic considering my use and abuse of parenthetical asides) and say (or rather write, as if I actually had to clarify that, and now you probably think all this is annoying contrived) that (I remember my teacher telling me that my sentences were meandering and convoluted, but David Foster Wallace gets away with it. It's not fair, y'all. I am now being deliberately verbose and delighting in the freedom of unconstrained and self-congratulatory equivocation) Jim and Shari's wedding was, like, in Valley Girl twang now: OMG. Best. Wedding. Ever. If there was a page on Facebook for it I'd pounce on the Like button and then become the kind of fan who posts pictures and seemingly unrelated material on the Wall 24/7. And then write fanfiction about it. And create a Youtube channel for it. And a Wikipedia entry. etc. etc. etc. (Parodying fan culture here. To clarify again: I'm not weird and I want to be your friend. No, not you. The other guy. Yeah, you.) 

ANYWAY, and this is a big fat Anyway that ought to be bolded in Comic Sans with rainbow colours because staying on-point is becoming as challenging for me as a geriatric learning advanced parkour, I think this is the first time someone closer to me got married, and the first time I felt so involved in a wedding that the cockles of my heart were totally on fire. And that I was actually in the gatecrashing party at a mansion off-Holland V. For one, I think starting the ceremony with a sock puppet show is a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, and the paper globe lanterns with the fairy lights were genius ways to radically transform the hall into a space that was at once romantic and whimsical, dreamlike and laid-back. (If this were to be a film review, I would end the paragraph with something corny and clichéd, like: This, my friends, was no conventional Bridal Fair wedding.) 

Most importantly though — I am really, really, really, happy for them. They mean a lot to me because they are patient, loving, rational, passionate, funny, honest and people who have shown me how God's love transforms and radiates, isn't quick to judge and always, always forgives. (I know I'm corny! I don't care!) I remember the day he told us (the DG) about her, and the time when both of them decided to 'take a break' and we took comfort in His will and His timing, praying about it that Saturday, and now look!— we're  skipping after them down the aisle lined with twinkling fairy lights to You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates. Happy sigh. 

(Also I was generous with the amount of satsuma shower gel I used today and I'm happy that I smell like a ripe, burstin' satsuma. I am happy when I smell like fruit I love. Unrelated: had some liquor-heavy ice cream after dinner. With cappuccino. Remarked to my dad: "You should try pairing the prosciutto with our gruyere" and suddenly felt self-consciously pretentious in the warm night air.) 

beckenstein

I'm hopelessly in love with NY circa. 1970

Here

saddest memory

It is pre-enlistment evening.

Dad: your sergeants will never accept your poststructuralist views on morality or the plurality of human experience.

Me: oh

adjectives to describe my weekend

Side-splitting
Ethnic
Unexpectedly frugal
Analog
Caffeinated
Semi-social
Anarchic
Momentary

frazil

Wednesdays

Hello world, I'm lying in bed, busy not studying for tomorrow's test while my bunkmate complains about how early I sleep. I'm also de-stressing by laughing at a facebook contact that I never knew I had, but decided to keep anyway because her very public opinions seem like good fodder for a future stand-up routine. My newsfeed is just constantly crowded with expressions of her own humanity, among everyone else's horoscopes. My humour's cruel like that. :/

Also V's exciting stay in Paris has got me yearning to go there, romancing macarons, photographing pastries and wearing nautical stripes every day like it's the happy end of the world.

In other news, I'm looking forward to a nice weekend spent in deep relaxation and the possibility of an awesome mojito, and a wonderful, side-splitting dinner with friends. Cue hopeful acoustic guitar riff.

sensor

I'm a little disappointed with myself, not because dinner yesterday was at Starbucks and I said "This deep dish beef pie is the reason why I'm never becoming vegan" or that I couldn't navigate Sentosa on my own even in the daytime. 

It was stupid, and unexpectedly so. It happened in Changi Airport — my sister and I were sitting on armchairs sipping a depressing caramel macchiato and trying to read our novels when these two guys wearing disgusting army-related t-shirts sat nearby and started having a conversation about their A level results day experiences, mainly describing vividly how their fears became unfounded when their names appeared on screen etc. etc. And my initial reaction was purely What is it with you science students and the pleasure you derive from doing well for subjects you never liked in the first place, the typical cynicism one would expect from literate and erudite arts students. But subsequently I became starkly and uncomfortably conscious of my own jaundiced memory of that day, how I walked around in a horrible daze and into my lit tutors much like Colin Firth breaking down on Julianne Moore in A Single Man and the hall spinning like an unstable dream collapsing, how I forgot most of what happened after that but I ended up eating chocolate with fries and calamari. (I know, right?) 

Tawdry reminiscing aside, I realised how I haven't quite let go of my own disappointment re: the results I was given. It still hangs on me like cancer. Honestly I'm not sure why. It's not terrible by most people's standards, but then again there's no real objective way to respond to it. Maybe it's the awful feeling of failing to get distinctions for the components that I slogged day and night for. Maybe it's looking at other people and being partly amazed and happy for them, and partly confused with the disparity between us that our result slips professed, and mostly plagued day and night by the dissonance of it all. Maybe all the sorrow and grief accumulated in 2010 made me feel as if I was owed a debt of eventual success, like narratives that celebrate the "overcoming" of "hardship" and "yay" they are now holding their dream jobs and have just paid off the bank loan for their dream house, and if that was the reason I feel this way, it's disgusting and I feel utterly wretched about it. I miss being younger me and his ability to be more faithful, more excited about a bigger picture. 

Anyway I'm thankful for my sister and her blood-and-flesh sensitivity. It's real nice to have a sibling you can depend on to cheer you up. 

Also, a friend's mother has been diagnosed with the same cancer as my mum and aunt, and this is making me angsty. I'm like, I am fuckin' surrounded by people who smoke, and not a single one seems remotely concerned about their health. It doesn't seem fair that loving mothers who never handled cigarettes before have to go through ridiculous amounts of chemotherapy and radiation, put their careers on hold, waste away on bed with the pain of cancer treatment grating away in their veins, poisoning their tastebuds with the perpetual taste of metal and death, shave their heads only to have their children breaking down with the awful awful physical realization that this thing they call family isn't really the constant they used to believe in. All this, while teenage boys relish "smoke breaks" behind buildings in a grey choking haze. It's fucking unbelievable. 

watching

Recently, just to pass the time on public transportation, I've taken to observing people's radial and ulnar veins and thinking that would be an awesome place for intravenous cannula insertion but I've gotta avoid that valve right there and then self-reflexively meditating on the "creepiness" vs. "practicality" of the idea. And then I'm also thinking if this bus exploded, who should I resuscitate first? The engineering student or the 97 year old lady? The pregnant woman or her hyperactive toddler? And then a secondary school level debate plays out in my head with the Deontological vs. Pragmatic clash being as dissonant as a dance-off at the Special Olympics. This is all happening while I'm listening to Beach House or Rilo Kiley. And did I just reveal too much of my internal landscapes, or what?

Anyway, for the past week, I'm re-imagining and reconstructing my life's narrative as an exciting surreal cartoon drama. (This genre doesn't really exist in real life due to market forces. I posit.) So: right now, here I am, arts-student-trying-to-write-poetry-turned-Emergency-Medical-Technician-with-blood-on-my-gloves getting flashbacks of my grandfather's bizarre stroke incident during patient-assessment training sessions. Meanwhile I am living life vicariously through friends and family, featuring sub-plots such as: V encountering romantic advances of the Continental kind with a French waiter in Paris, my parents using "the Face-book" to post pictures of their "HOORAY LET'S GET AWAY FROM OUR KIDS" vacation to Switzerland, A's earnest and heroic climb to military officership (because every good TV series needs an element of dramatic wartime action whether parodic or not), and J's quest for amazing thin-crust pizza (because every good TV series needs to indulge primal urges and using sex to sell a show is so turn-of-the-millennium.)

And I will end this post by saying: I hate watching out for the rain to stop when I'm dressed for picnics and beaches and sunscreen-wearing. OH LOOK, I've just written a post using paragraphs to reflect and refract the idea of Watching, which is foregrounded in the title, which even ends the prose with a curt allusion to the strained relationship between Man and Nature to reflect an ironic disparaging of the human condition, while parodying that self-conscious style of narrative, just for parody's sake. SOMEONE HIRE ME ALREADY.