ambiguity

"There’s only a certain amount of control that you can have over a situation. I’m interested in working in that area in which the mind can no longer hold on to things. The point at which all ideas fall apart."

— Fred Sandback

objectivity

Olivia Bee

narrativity

Stephanie Davidson

what I want to do after december 2012, because it's never too early to plan

1. Complete my wall of Penguin book covers (because my dad bought the postcard box set some time back and now it's sitting around looking very fashionable but also forlorn.)
2. Paint a wall saffron
3. Make a batch of macarons (sea salt and caramel). All my culinary hopes and dreams are banking on this.
4. Run some marathon without getting caught on camera and then having to untag photos on Facebook because a very small and select group of humans look good when running and I don't belong to this small and select group.
5. Book a flight to NYC; couchsurf + make friends with someone of non-Asiatic ethnicity who can make amazing fish tacos and have secret 30 Rock in-jokes with + "lose myself" + "find myself again"
6. Finish reading Infinite Jest — it is not a portable read.
7. Canoeing expedition
8. Kayaking expedition
9. Mountaineering expedition
10. Skiing expedition
11. Super-secret-spying expedition
12. Prison Break expedition
13. Grow a herb
14. Hang out with friends in the spirit of spontaneity and all that is cavalier + avoid annoying them
15. "Fight crime" (this is subject to interpretation)
16. Buy an iPhone and then disparage it for being too mainstream
17. Learn how to drive
18. Feel sad about not getting a car
19. Become bitter about not having a car but then reconciling bitterness with renewed sense of eco-friendliness + entitlement to self-righteousness at the EZ-link top up station
20. Frost cupcakes in unconventional ways: "Surprise! That wasn't chocolate!" cupcakes, "Orientalism" curried potato cupcakes to celebrate the life of Edward Said, organic gluten-free vegan "Nouveau Upper Middle Class" celeriac, marjoram and agave nectar cupcakes, poverty cupcakes (brushing of demerara symbolizing dust, grit of hard labour), "politicized masses" oatmeal raisin cupcakes, Post-Cupcakes, Post-Post-Cupcakes, "She felt something move in the attic" detective night cupcakes in celebration of Agatha Christie's birthday, "Cupcakes Against Interpretation" "cupcakes" in celebration of Susan Sontag's birthday, etc. etc. etc.
21. Throw a hissy fit on my 21st birthday.

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

— Richard Brautigan

yknow

I am very afraid because I have a colleague who talks like he's in a Dilbert cartoon and another who frowns like Charlyne Yi, and another who reminds me of Michael Cera, and I wake up in the mornings to dew-covered cobwebs frosting the huge field in the backyard of my new home and badly-made orange cake. I am afraid, because I might wake up and find myself back in BMT, waiting for my turn to throw the damn grenade. I DON'T WANNA WAKE UP. I WANT TO STAY IN MY AWESOME AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM (THAT I WILL CLEAN UP TILL THE PAPER CLIPS SHINE OR AT LEAST ARE RUST-FREE) AND RUN AROUND IMPORTANTLY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHEN SOMEONE SEMICONSCIOUS ARRIVES WITH MUCH FANFARE AND PERIODICALLY POP BY THE TREATMENT ROOM TO DRAW SOMEONE'S BLOOD, ALL THAT TILL DECEMBER 2012, AND IT'S OK IF THE WORLD ENDS BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE I HAVE GOTTEN WHAT I WANTED AND I AM CONTENT. I'm not shouting; I just couldn't find a good place in that paragraph to switch back to normal caps. 

Anyway I'm going to haul my SAT practice book to my office and hopefully I will get like a million billion marks and immediate acceptance letters from Havard and Yale (oh, and maybe some smaller colleges like Vassar and Swarthmore, and their letters will be like "Please come to our school cuz we're small and select blah blah blah small liberal arts college blah blah blah tiny, tiny cohort blah blah blah amazing staff to student ratio cuz we're that small! come on! we're a little liberal arts college on a prairie blah blah our education is cute blah blah blah hipsters worship our alumni") and I'll be like, OH NO, EVERYONE WANTS ME BUT I HAVE NO $$$$$ :( :( :( :( :( and they'll be like, OH — SNORT — DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT, WE'LL PAY YOU TO SIT IN OUR CLASSES, and then I'll snap out of my daydream by some whiny patient who has been waiting for 6 hours like it's all our fault. 

Oh, life is so hard. I am going out to buy a popsicle but it's not going to change anything.

wikipedia articles I have recently read (reprise)

wikipedia articles I have recently read

Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934) is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism... A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work

The Resistin Radicatz, a radical cheerleading group, do a cheer in front of AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington before joining the Million Worker March at the Lincoln Memorial.

A Escrava Isaura ("Isaura the Slave"), a 2004 Brazilian telenovela based on an 1875 abolitionist romance novel.

reading

After reading Super Sad True Love Story and The Handmaid's Tale (finally), I am struck by the many similarities in the authors' convergent visions of the future: literacy is either obsolete or oppressed, public spaces have become so sexualized that radical movements have risen to spur a dramatic return to a chastity and purity, and religion (in particular Christianity) creates agency for the politicization of erstwhile primarily social concerns.

I think it's a scary combination, and I will instead read something frivolous like Julie & Julia because I don't intend to contemplate the future right now. I meant that in an ironically flippant way. 

I'm falling ill. I am supposed to be watching HP7 later. I am supposed to be watching it with smuggled curry fries and a large milk tea, but now all I want is a crisp head of lettuce to munch on, like a fluffy bunny. Not that I am comparing myself to aforementioned fluffy bunny. I hate cinemas and their monopoly on crappy food. I want to grab handfuls of popcorn and throw it at the manager, saying Your food sucks egg (I mean, have you seen how much they charge for those tepid cheesy hotdogs? It's downright disrespectful.) I want to fling the popcorn passive-aggressively around the movie theatre. I want to make a German Expressionist film in stop-motion using popcorn. I want to graphically and violently destroy the popcorn in time to mournful bassoon music. The very action of contemplating cinema food makes me so angry. I am also angry because of my cold. 

This post sucks.

Here is a picture to make it better.

chinese restaurant syndrome

My mind: completely blown.

kapustin

why structure doesn't quite speak to me

When I say "I'm not a very structured person" I don't mean that I'm crazy, liberal, would prefer crazy rasta hobo hair and would like to do away with any sense of order whatsoever. It's just that I'm skeptical about compromising meaning to serve the boundaries set by structure. In this way, meaning is necessarily limited and artificially compartmentalized. Structure really is a manifestation of meaning. Structure necessarily follows meaning, and that is the logic of their complex dynamic.

Right now I'm speaking abstrusely in vague terms seemingly distant from reality. But I think the structure-meaning discourse is something that affects everyday life enough to be worth at least a passing inquiry.

Putting stuff in tables

Tables are a convenient way to categorize information, to access information and to compare across the catagories of information. It is an efficient method of organizing knowledge because it demarcates, defines and offers a means of comparison within the same space of inquiry. The only qualm I have with Putting Stuff In Tables is that boxing up information forces them into categories, and this negates the interrelatedness of the content you're working with. At best, they discourage inquiries into interconnectedness.

What do I mean? Imagine working with three factors to explain the rise of a certain nationalism in a certain region: 1) Economic frustration 2) Colonial policies 3) Regional influence. Normatively, the argument for the burgeoning of nationalism is spliced into three separate lines of reasoning. (Usually following the local-metropolitan/regional-international or a social-political-economic type of framework.) Yet there are several significant overlapping between the factors — economic frustration was the by-product of colonial administration, which was in constant dialogue with regional events, regional dissidence stemmed from economic upheaval etc. etc. So you see that there is an interesting interconnectedness across the factors, yet a table forces them to be expounded on as if they were totally discrete from each other.

My main quibble here is: if interrelation and convergences are observed in the external world, and if an appreciation of this complexity is to be valued in inquiry, then perhaps diagrammatic attempts to make sense of this world privileges convenience over truth, and is something we should be alert about.

Quantifying the abstract

I'll start with an example:

"On a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rate your enjoyment of this course?"

I think questions like these invite results that don't reveal how enjoyable the course was, but rather, tell us how people translate experience into a number and perceive the indices of this sliding scale.

Another common way the abstract is quantified is through the use and abuse of Key Performance Indicators in organizations. As a way to set benchmarks and gauge progress, KPIs are a useful tool that can benefit work productivity (or whatever managerial bullshit you can think of.) However, when the workings of the organization begin to serve KPIs as if they were concrete objectives to be met as if they were an end in themselves, the original thrust of the organization is undermined and overlooked. This is similar to the argument against examinations — that they fail to offer a holistic assessment of the student's progress. Examinations don't accurately reveal how much the student has learnt; they merely tell us how well a student can answer a predefined question in a predefined setting in a predefined length of time.

Justifying violence

Here I'm talking about larger structures: structures of power, structures that organize wealth and resources, structures that organize people. I am wary of structures, institutions, of power because they are traditionally self-serving and oppressive to varied extents depending on where you come from. I am questioning the foundations of statehood and its necessity in daily living, how it produces the social and ideas about the civil, how its subjects are born into its relentless conditioning not even knowing its pervasiveness in daily life. Pragmatically (and admittedly), a radical upheaval of statehood as the superstructure of global power is impossible due to real economic considerations, but having said that, we should be awakened to its flaws and among them, its systematic monopoly on "legitimate" violence. 

That the state is fundamentally paranoid about its own existence is the Achilles' Heel impeding the possibility of peace. The converse is true: existential paranoia on the level of the state produces the desire for defense, and consequently, for the use of force to deter. (No matter how one tries to deny it, the use of potential force as an active mode of deterrence is still a violent gesture.) A dominant theme emerges in the apologetics for statehood: the structure provides, the structure stabilizes. But the structure also attacks, forgetting that contained within other structures are people, vulnerable and fallible, all serving some structure one way or another.

In place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. (Sontag, Against Interpretation)

I want to discuss how accurate it would be to describe Elephant Parade as twee, the ways in which this labeling is necessarily reductive, and how we are able to locate the elements that afford them the musical nuance and subtlety of emotion in spite of our ironizing of pleasure and skepticism towards genre.

the c word

So many loaded words begin with a 'c'. Some you write in lower case : cannot, cunt, cretin, creep. The c is a toxic curve of ink that starts resolutely and defiantly with pen stab and ends in a curt, arrogant upward flick of the wrist. Some you write with a capital C. Printed, it looks like a hook, the precursor to an entrapment, an instrument of pain. Cancer, Chernobyl, Chemotherapy, Catharsis. They look very melodramatic on a page.

I was reading a magazine when I found out that my mum had cancer. I was like, OK, That's no more real than this tattooed model wearing Marc Jacobs and CDG. These things are on the same ontological plane to me. We also have insurance. Things will be OK, OK? I'm not sure how I slept that night but I still dragged myself to Bedok the next day feeling marginally shittier than usual. 

A few days passed, the chemotherapy started, and the choir concert came and left. I returned home at eleven to the dim light of my flat when only the kitchen lights are on. I had the bouquet of flowers that Ms T returned to me ("bring them home to your mum" she said), and I left them on the counter. Minutes earlier, my teacher-in-charge called to say that the performance, in essence, frankly kinda sucked, and we had to do something about it. Or was it that I had to do something about it? Or was it also that I had to do something about myself? 

I can't remember clearly in the darkness, anyway. I found out that my mum had shaved off her hair earlier that afternoon. Patients usually say they do that to regain a sense of Control because it's better than seeing hair strewn all over your bedroom floor every morning. Control also begins with a C, but I didn't feel the sense of assurance and authority that capitalization afforded. I sat on a chair and wanted, there and then, to shrink to the size of a bean and collapse under my own gravity like a faint clap.

The popular conception of cancer is that it is a narrative, and the narrative of cancer has a duality to it — it is a story both of triumph and defeat, propelled by a moral will. (Cancer is a "battle", people "succumb" to cancer eventually.) But really, cancer has no narrative, has no insistence on the duality of fates. More accurately, it is circular and absurdist. It has no plot, no dominant style. There is no meaning inherent in illness. (I devoured Sontag's opinions in Illness as Metaphor and tried to make them my own, vainly.) 

My aunt discovered her cancer shortly after, and recently, two friends' mothers have also come down with cancer. Not one of them smokes. There is no moral undercurrent. She is a stall owner selling clothes, a doctor, a missionary. 

Here is a different metaphor that stems from inverting the provisional logic of the original. (The C isn't a letter; it's really just a bracket, the start of a parenthetical enclosure. It has an end but it isn't a finality.) See that? It is closed off and sealed like an aside in a paragraph, and the text goes on, and the text has more meaning in its holism than in its fragments, and the text is more important than the fragment.

last saturday I:

1. Woke up to WHEN LIFE KEEPS HANDING YOU ANCHOVIES/ YOU COVER THEM UP WITH SOME EXTRA CHEESE/ AND MAKE A PIZZA/ WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT/ JUST MAKE A PIZZA/ WITH EVERYTHING ON TOP. This is my alarm clock in the morning and it calms me down.
2. Was startled by the suddenly-bespectacled S at Harbourfront, who later took pictures of everyone's breakfast at Starbucks. MX ordered a egg white wrap that looked like a teabag. I had an iced ristretto americano. 
3. Walked around Safra eating a giant apple (courtesy of MX) and chocolate pebbles, waiting for the e-mart to open. We were so bored and desperate to kill time that we nearly got our nails done had MX not ventured into the parlour to discover the exorbitant prices they were charging for an imaginary sense of beauty and dubious, kitschy aesthetics. Also, we discussed the value of opening a cafe called Porn's.
4. Flew to Hougang Mall to buy ingredients for a yoghurt parfait with my DG. Canned fruit and low-fat yoghurt were all we could afford. We are heroically poor. 
5. Flew to Provence (the bakery not the sun-kissed place in the south of France. Unfortunately.) to meet A and A and to disturb SY who was working at the counter. I had a sesame pizza because the sign said FRESH! JUST BAKED! And really, who can resist a slice of pizza with the cheese still sizzling in tomato juice and grease? Who even cares about the gluten? I don't. I stuffed the thing in my trap like it was a calzone on steroids and made a huge and undignified — though entirely justified — mess on the wicker tray. 
6. Took a creepy video of MT grazing on curly fries outside the bare torsos flanking the soon-to-open Abercrombie & Fitch store at the corner of Orchard and Bideford (I love saying "at the corner of" it sounds like I'm describing my apartment in freakin Greenwich Village). Douchebags, take note! 
7. Visited Mrs H at her swanky apartment behind the Heeren; tried to absorb the egg tarts via telekinesis but the sesame pizza seemed to have clogged up my entire digestive tract.
8. Was brought out for dinner at the wonderful and magical Spizza's and we all had a great time + excellent conversation. Italian food is beautiful. Peranakan food is piquant, charming. French cuisine is challenging, elegant. Australian food is cosmopolitan and refreshing. But Italian food is beautiful, is sublime, is moving, is heartbreaking. It leaves a memory beyond what food was served at the meal. 
9. Called my mum to say I couldn't make it in time for the extended family dinner... a wave of guilt engulfs me.
10. Read I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris and then sank into a sort of fuzzy, I-Love-My-Linen, There-Are-Too-Many-Pillows-On-My-Bed, I-Feel-Bad-For-Turning-Off-The-Lights-Before-My-Family-Got-Home type of slumber. It's a complex feeling.

Constellation anxiety

A capricorn enjoys long walks
by the beach, rolling sushi and
the satisfaction of clean windows. Occasionally enjoys the complex
bouquet of a cabernet sauvignon.
Avoids pinstripes. Fills-in the gaps
that other people, a Taurus or
those pesky Geminis, make in their shoes and their souls.
Cries at that scene in Harold and Maude
when she throws the ring into
the sea "so I will always know
where it is." Isn't wonderful
around kids.

The stars don't quite get it
when they proclaim that
the lost love of your life
will return in the night, and at 3 am
when you realize that it isn't going to
happen, you open up
the supermarket guacamole and
an early episode of Friends,
cast in the sacred light of
their east village apartment.
Above: a plane etches a line
through the canvas of night.
How beautiful and savage that
the twinkled brows of the sky
imagine our existence, and we
their delicately lined providence.

-- WH Lee

Is bored in bunk

sundays (with grapes)

Today I made a belated dinner thing for my mum! Cake: improvised pavlova with yoghurt and grapes.

Soaking porcini after lunch. "Hello!" say my grandma's slippered feet.

Parents returned home from lunch and were excited to let everyone try freshly made kueh from MacPherson.

The television played shows from the 90s where the female protagonist usually has crazy teased hair, purple eyeliner and considers eye-rolling a profoundly minimalist way of expressing contempt.

Then I splashed balsamic vinegar over the grapes and sent them to the furnace.

I cry a little when I smell onions browning in butter.

Adding cream and mushrooms. (I chickened out and bought "light cream" instead. I suck.)

I purchased a jar of white asparagus but they were so phallic-looking that I had to shred them lest my dinner party turns into Conservative Blushfeste 2011.

Shaved fennel is amazing.

Pasta course with roasted grapes.

Cardamom creme anglaise with a cloud of chai meringue floating breezily on its soft custard surface. In the background, the passionfruit are just turning overripe, their skins blistering with the promise of runny sunset colored yolks. Fantastic. 

Pavlova is demolished.

pavlov's lesser-known cat

Initially I had planned to do just the creme anglaise, but with four egg whites left over, it's hard to say no to experimentation. Not unexpectedly, I made meringues and flavoured them with chai (and sprinkled masala tea powder over half a batch for pretty brown flecks that my sight-impaired grandmother will probably mistake for mould.) I will float them on the cardamom-infused creme anglaise, perch the tangy pulp of passion fruit on top and hopefully impress myself enough to consider an alternative career path as Southeast Asia's answer to Alice Waters.

tomorrow's dinner

cavatelli + porcini mushroom cream sauce + roasted grapes = pasta

fennel + olive oil + lemon + garlic + prosciutto = salad

creme anglaise (chilled) + cardamon + passionfruit + sprinkle of crystalized molasses = dessert

drinks = lapsang souchong / ice wine

a great stir in the milk-house

The rumors are true. I am disgusting. I woke up at 5.50 am, then decided that I will not wake unless the sun wakes up with me too. (I believe the cosmos revolve around me like that.) Then I got out of bed at 8.30 and microwaved a burger from KFC and enjoyed the seasoned slab of factory farmed flesh on my plate. Then I was like, Should I still crash today's POP at Marina Bay? But there will always be another one. So I re-read some magazines and drank a rose vanilla infusion. Then I spent the rest of the morning reading food blogs and sticking receipts on my journal to old Burmese music, and now I am declaring that The rumors are true. And I am disgusting. And I hate the squiggly red line when I type rumours instead of rumors. 

Knowledge

Of the vastness of clouds
We knew nothing;
We slept in houses underground.


How the sun brings day by spreading light across the sky,
How night covers the earth in darkness
To reveal the stars, the planets


In their courses fixed
For eternity—


Here, what's left of the lost book On Knowledge ends.

Where was I born?
Where was I when my mother fell?
When Gail died?

Convinced 
Of the gods' existence that
These wonders were their handiwork—


New Jersey.
Asleep.
Asleep.

— James Longenbach