The point of all these is?

It was drizzling in the evening. I started jogging back before the droplets on my shirt joined together to form a big wet patch. Between panting and stitches and thinking how beautiful the sun is when it’s at it’s softest, I thought of the Laos kids playing in the rain. Dipping themselves in the newly-created pool, hair wet, bodies cold, playing those jumping games they always play.

It was a happy and sad thought, being able to re-visit and not relive. There is an old man in the documentary: Invisible City who showed black-and-white photographs of police hitting students from the Chinese schools then, and he retorted something of the like to the black video filming his angry face, “If something is not recorded, did it not happen? Read all the history textbooks, they say Chinese students were violent. Tell me who is violent, look.” Last week’s lecture on Lim Chin Siong being erased from the official history in our secondary school education and the whole issue of alternative histories ties together with memories and perhaps our obsession with documentation.

“If something is not recorded, did it not happen?” We need to click away, to capture an emotion or an ambience, so that there comes a day when we can look at the photograph in it’s real, glossy, physical form and say, “It happened. I remember now.”

-But technology is very dangerous. Cameras, vidoes, blogs, they leave some traces of flavour behind, without being able to record it's entity, so that on that one day when you re-visit, it becomes an exaggeration or a romanticization.

life, extended

These evenings and nights carry the smell of incense in this restless land. The sun is too hot; the rain comes at the wrong hours. Days have become forgettable and rants audible. These sights and little conversations are ebbing to a place. The world’s a stage, our lives are films, memories shoot back when credits roll.

The wind that sends hair whipping faces, unconscious smiles, racy heartbeats, hungry hearts, immortalized seconds, details that matter will mute sulks.

Credits that roll too fast for reading, we have forgotten what appreciation is.

Feeling Your Invisibility

Crisp cornflakes,
Old newspaper cuttings,
Thoughts at thirteen,
Musty bookshelves,
Unearthed at twenty,
Brown edges,
Wine turning sweet,
Round handwriting
Turns cursive
News at ten every night,
Different news every night,
Becomes history someday,
Plural smells of the same wind,
Sunlight changing hues,
tearing
calendar pages
the same tune, the same lyrics, the same singer,
an altered feeling,
transforms to be an oldie.
someday,
photographs will record decadence.
smells and fears mingling
have turned soggy in milk,
warm and sour.

swept under the rug.

For anyone who has read Kafka's The Trial, this is it in our very own local context:

http://www.blurty.com/talkread.bml?journal=sleepless77&itemid=161258

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/281669/1/.html

MOE's standard, very bureaucratic reply just wipes away that little sense of pride I have these days from the red and white flying everywhere and those patriotic songs on the airwaves.

don't know what it's like.

“Where do I begin?
To tell a story of how great a love can be.”
-Shirley Bassey

My fringe is falling, my singlet sticks to my back, there are so many men and women here. I am curious, but I need to cycle faster. From afar, these men and women look like they are huddled together, they belong together. As the fonts on the signboards of hotels’ names grow larger, I see them clearly now. Men who are skinny, dark, with two buttons undone collar down, two buttons undone waist up. Women who are fair, with hair a brown that has turned golden from over washing and roots an unsightly black. In my singlet and shorts that hikes up as I peddle, I feel immodest beside sneering strangers who look at our sweaty, gleaming arms as we passed them. We are intruders in their territory where men make their selection as women offer their most sultry post. Men who wipe their nose excessively, women who are meticulously made up. There is a man who wears a white long sleeved shirt and has tired eyes behind his glasses that slips down the bridge of his nose. There are men who walk in pairs, hides a sniggle, silences the rising pleasure and impending excitement. There are women fanning themselves, one leg strutting outwards. There is a woman in skinny jeans that wraps her too tight, she carries a look, I cannot tell the thoughts behind this expression she holds. There is a man who places his hand under his shirt and flaps it upwards, fanning himself, it is a hot night, as he makes an offer, presumably. The woman looks experienced; she knows the procedure, the smile, the tilt of the head, it has been done many times. They walk together down the lane, I am reaching the end of the street, there is a junction ahead and tau huay awaiting. I leave behind men from failed marriages who are seeking love, women from varied backgrounds who are hanging on survival, men with wives they used to embrace whom they have grown tired of now, and it is such a hot night for intense passions, to relive their youth and the moment that has been kept away for too long, they want to remember how and what that moment is. Women who watch a string of shadows moving in the dark, who would want to latch on a bicycle.

I am in Macau, this is Grand Lisboa Casino. There are so many tables here, bright lights and performances. The place smells of cigarettes and sin. On the laps of some men, there are women staring at nothingness, looking at bottled water, or the brightness of the light, but not at the men beside them or the casino table. They look familiar; it is a look of desire, a longing to be somewhere else.

I am in Singapore, at the Parliament Lane. There is an old couple, the woman is ahead of the man and she turns around to wait for her husband. She reaches out her hand and calls him “dear”, he limps ahead, towards the hand that is all too familiar.

In Macau, there is chattering everywhere, a kind of hurried, furious, loud chatter that never dies. It is Cantonese, and I cannot catch anything they say, but mo man tai, which is used a lot, which means no problem.

What is love, really? I am starting to believe, that love is made of emotions rising at certain moments, it is made of impulsiveness, it is made of sonnets that romanticize the mysterious thing that nobody knows, of songs that sing, “he fills my soul with so much love that anywhere I go I am never lonely”. But how long does it last, that after the years that passed, that you still could be passionately swept away. When I visit older others who are sick or hospitalized, there is an overwhelming sadness and realization of the transience of life that brings tears. There and then, I think, so this is love, isn’t it love, I am sad. But a few days down, I bother less and I am moving on with my life very well, because there is still bidding, there are still movies to watch, outings to go to. Why do men go to prostitutes? Why are there women who turn around to wait for their husbands, are they not tired of their faces, of waiting, of doing household chores, of caring, of the same bed they sleep in every night? Why is there even a need to demarcate the boundaries of what love is and what it is not? When one does not know what love is, how does one know whether he/she is loved or whether he/she is loving? Mo man tai, I guess and hope, one day, there will be some who have stories of how great love can be to share, of the hand that is always there.

I want to vomit.

I remember watching Sylvia the movie, and thinking how mentally unstable this woman is, to get so frustrated over writing, to be so overwhelmed by motherhood, to be unable to contain her own life in her own hands. Mostly, I wondered why she tore and burnt her work.

Today is the first day, since a long time, that I've spent the entire day at home, from morning to night, not stepping out at all. I have finally, after deliberating for more than a month, found a topic. It is a mammoth task ahead as I lay in bed wondering which voice to write from, the techniques I can use and later sit in front of my laptop, backspacing almost every line that I've typed. After which, I would click on Tools and Wordcount to see how many words I have typed. I walked around my room, the house, opened the fridge, ate things, came back to read whatever little has been written and I think what lousy work I have. And then, I think I want to achieve something, I have to press on, I need to push myself. So, I try to force another line out and 7 minutes later, the Internet browser is up and I am surfing around, finding nothing, but looking at everything else.

I couldn't understand Plath because wasn't writing a reflective and very liberating act? But I feel choked now. I cannot construct two sentences without cringing. I feel as though I have lost something and I am looking under the carpets, on table tops, everywhere for it, knowing that I will only find it one fine day when I'm not looking for it.

Inwardly

In the shelter of my green umbrella, the wind carries a mist that gathers on my face. My toes are wet and from my ankle up towards my knees, my jeans slowly turn a shade darker than it originally was. I feel the moist on my skin, the tips of my fingers are cold to the touch. I held onto the “Play” button, wishing it could turn on at least and when I saw red on the battery life, I hope it would last longer than I could bear silence. On the train, it was very cold, a kind of freeze my burnt skin would have yearned for during the six days of camp. A cold that chills the blue seats, stings the skin and is now deemed undesired by the forlorn. My Ipod is still alive and I do not have to deal with otherwise. I placed the notebook on my laps, pen in one hand, phone in the other, and search for a day that has not been scribbled on. Instinctively, my fingers find a name from the list of people I have to meet up before the semester begins and texts the person. I am surprised the train is still at stations I thought it had passed. When I close my eyes, I think about the girl from Eating Air, a white blouse stained by purple ink, her purple flower speeding across the underpass. She carries an expression I cannot fathom, I feel like a teenager from that movie. When the loud noises from the arcade dies away, when a camp of loud cheering is over, I am in my room, my bed on the right, my laptop in front, my air-conditioner behind. In the room, there is one person, and I am suddenly not used to that. Every free, wakening day is a time to catch up with old friends, while securing new friendships. In the company of so many others, and in the rhythm of left-over silly games from camps, in days that follow where I am pre-occupied, I have forgotten how voids and emptiness can be soothing.