booksactually lovesyou.

I am ambivalent as to whether I should share this little gem tuck away in a second storey old shophouse along Telok Ayer street with a man sitting inside, head bent clicking away on his tpewriter. (Check their namecards out!) Books Actually is a small, quiet, cosy bookstore with a decor that is full of subtle surprises and is quite alluring.

The view that greets you as you climb upstairs.

Companionship on drizzly nights, early mornings and other solitary times.

Have to finish, have not started.

There is a deadline to be met and in search for something to write, everything now seems to be a potential topic to be given a voice to. I am paying more attention to crannies that did not exist previously, having little conversations with myself, thinking about how to set thoughts into words, selecting words that can connect, looking at an insignificant scene and giving it a description, letting it be part of a narration.

I think such desperateness is nauseating; the urgency to force a thing out of nothingness is excruciatingly exhausting. When I bathe and the hot water hits my toes first, I instinctively turn that into a phrase, a line, and wring some emotion out of it. Or in the bus, on the train, I start scrutinizing every face, thinking hey what is beneath this wrinkle, this powdered face, finding something to muse on. But-what can I do when there seems to be nothing worth ruminating upon that has been brought up twenty thousand times before.

It is a sunny day; I am going to the library now and hopefully find an Idiot’s Guide to Good Writing.

I ask:

Between the wet and the dry,
There are curtains, square grills, two panels of glass and translucence.
Between out there and in here, there is vagueness.
The rain can be heard, but not be felt.
Between the wall that demarcates,
or the glossy white bouncing off-
that hopes to skirt and mark…
Between here and there, now and later;
between all betweens,
The glossy white shines inside but is wet outside.

In seeking certainty, betweens must cease, like a downpour.
With conviction, there is day, and there is night.

But there is midday, midnight and a wee morning
trailing.
Not omnipresent, but their existence
overlapping.

The rain continues, it is still wet outside and dry inside.
Between all betweens,
I pull the sheets and go to bed.
Wondering whether shadow(s) exist in singularity or plurality.

For a good conversation

I watched Wong Kar Wai Dreams the other night. In it, a woman blends characters from his different movies and her situation is a concoction of these imaginary people, only that she is oblivious to it. She is quiet, very confused, and speaks of her difficulty to singularize dreams from reality. It is the instant when you wake up suddenly, trying very hard to recollect if the dream you had was fictitious or if it belongs to the world of routines, except that this instant happens excessively for her.

I am thinking of characters from my favourite movies coming together, Raymond from Rain Man, Joel and Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Forrest from Forrest Gump, Sam from I am Sam, Guido from Life is beautiful…

[Raymond doesn't want to go outside when it rains]
Charlie: Hey, Ray, you take a shower right?
Raymond: Yeah.
Charlie: Well the rain is a lot like the shower, you get a little wet. What do you say, Ray? What do you say?
Raymond: Of course the shower is in the bathroom.
Charlie: That's the end of that conversation.
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Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it.
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Forrest Gump: Will you marry me? [Jenny turns and looks at him]
Forrest Gump: I'd make a good husband, Jenny.
Jenny Curran: You would, Forrest.
Forrest Gump: But you won't marry me.
Jenny Curran: You don't wanna marry me.
Forrest Gump: Why don't you love me, Jenny? I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucy: I won't read the word!
Sam: I'm your father and I'm telling you to read the word. Cause I can tell you to because I'm your father.
Lucy: I'm stupid.
Sam: You are not stupid!
Lucy: Yes, I am.
Sam: No, you are not stupid 'cause you can read that word.
Lucy: I don't wanna read it if you can't.
Sam: No, because it makes me happy! It makes me happy hearing you read. Yeah, it makes me happy when you're reading.
Lucy: [Lucy reads again]
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Guido: [being shipped to a concentration camp] You've never ridden on a train, have you? They're fantastic! Everybody stands up, close together, and there are no seats!
Giosué Orefice: There aren't any seats?
Guido: Seats? On a train? It's obvious you've never ridden one before! No, everybody's packed in, standing up. Look at this line to get on! Hey, we've got tickets, save room for us!

I don’t usually fuse characters from different movies like the woman in the play but sometimes, or maybe too many times, I get the déjà vu sense creeping onto me. The feeling you get when you hang the laundry, clip toenails, walk to the train station, look at the same scenery and at fixed times see the same people doing the same thing. I think it is a case of having too many repeated conversations that I feel as though I have been through this before. Little talk, deliberate teasings, one-liner ice breakers.

We need to talk the talk. We need to open our mouths, we don’t need any right atmosphere, we just need someone to start.

-

I am stuck whenever friends ask me, "So, how was your trip?" It is difficult to find a fitting description, so most of the time I reply, "Extremely impactful", realizing that these two words do injustice to the amazingly powerful experience. And I struggle hard to find the right words to verbalize moments so that they can feel a fraction of how I did.

I remember WC telling me to blog more about the trip and include some real description, but I am too aware of the problems of representation and not being able to fully encapsulate my wonderful fifteen days refrains me from writing about it.
Perhaps, pictures will do a better job. Here is a slideshow of some 60 odd photos selected from a collection of 3000 photos the photographer of the trip took: http://family.webshots.com/slideshow/559362455QQFffJ