one shot to your heart

i.
and i wake to a post-apocalyptic world
where losing you was never about you
where the rain is slathered thick against the ground, swirled like momentary meringues, fast-sculpted and then gone--
where silver lines of light mass themselves dense through the air
dash with so much sound and fury against unyielding tarmac
signifying-
-unquestioning--

ii.
I am sitting at the bus stop, freezing in the early morning breeze, my feet hurting too much to let me even think of attempting the walk home. My all-too-sheer blouse is utterly inadequate for the pre-dawn chill. The air smells of charcoal and smoke; there is a fogginess to the spheres of illumination captured under each street lamp; a very light mist of rain is falling. I am walletless and penniless; my head is throbbing; I might still be a little ways off from sober, yet.

I am, incongruous as it seems, curiously at peace-- even content.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

iii.
And some days I step back and realise under the constant missing-ing there is a dull note of anger that if probed is wont to flare into an aria of fury.

High maintenance, indeed.

iv.
I've been so angry lately. I snarl at the world, snap at my father, sneer at everyone's efforts. I am knives and arrows, barbs and wires; "KEEP OUT" is writ large and spiky all over my days. I've let myself be selfish, chosen not to reach out when I know she needs me, chosen to shut up and shut in and stay in-in-in wrapped in my own self-centred skin. Have I known myself more cynical? I don't think so.

The question: why?

The answer: I'm being repaid in my own coin, and the bitter cuprous tang of the metal in my mouth is a bit I cannot let go of, it colours everything I taste. Bile rises; I gag but don't let go.

I've been so angry, but I cling to the fury because the alternative would be "I've been so sad lately". When my veins are running full of acid it gets harder to feel the salt rimed along each open-lipped slit in my skin. When all that is in my eyes is the burn of temper the heat makes damn sure I'm never crying another goddamn tear I'm going to regret. We've all lost people before. Disappointment is not an exception but the norm.

v.
Come, now, don't be so hard on yourself. You lasted the longest of all, and none of them ever made me suffer as much as you did. I never woke up not knowing who the hell would be staring back at me in the mirror, i never lost all equanimity at two mere words, at a look, at a perceived thought--

/i've never been so haunted./--

Love and hate stem from the same source. They take root in the heart. They grow with time. They are startlingly similar, one can be born out of the other, one can transmute into another in the space of seconds. They are two sides of the same tawdry coin, and I am done flipping. I am paying you in kind, or maybe in cruelty; take your coins, place them on your eyes. Go. I don't hate you, but I can't remember what it was like to be in love with you anymore.

vi.
Maybe this is it, maybe this is all there is to it. Maybe there's nothing beyond, so we should be satisfied with the superficiality of interactions, the fervent clasping of hands trying in overenthusiastic smiles and hugs to make up for the mutual knowledge that we have absolutely nothing to say to each other and absolutely nothing in common; maybe the temporary highs, the transactional cheap thrills that are ours in exchange for gross lucre suffice to occupy the short spans of time we have on this earth. Why shouldn't we spend our hours in cinemas, fritter our nights on rock bands, squander our minutes in what I previously would have called inconsequentials? Because at the end of it all what is at the end of it all? What use devoting your lives and hours to bettering the lives and hours of your fellow humans if all they will do is waste those hours? What use going gaga for animal rights when the beneficiaries may be so simple and brutish as to not comprehend anything beyond the immediate creature comfort before them? What use any of this-- religion, karma, doing good?

Are you going to wag a finger, cite me Pascal's wager? Are you staking your entire life on a gamble? I never was one for casinos, all the dice are loaded anyway. And isn't gambling a vice? You're doubly damned.

Maybe this is it, maybe this is all there is to it, and screw you for ever making me think there had to be a greater significance to it all, that an epiphany existed in every hour, that there was meaning in every leaf's descent, every sunlit morning, every sparrow's fall. Screw you for making me think days could be spent more "meaningfully". What differentiates "art" from "lies"? What distinguishes "culture" from "fad"-- mere time? Oh trust me, there'll be plenty of people willing to invest their funds of time in the latter to promote it to an equal even keel with the former.

What made me think you were any different?

vii.
I finally, finally, finally understand what you meant when you said you were so tired. So, so tired.

and so it is

and so it is
just like you said it would be
life goes easy on me
most... of the time

and so it is-- i got my results today. 9 subjects in slightly under six months playing juggle-me-baby with glass balls of work, study, dance; i won't deny each of those delicately filigreed balls lost some of their shine with each devastating plummet to the ground. but they regained their glory, mostly; and so it was that my final email from one of my tutors, for example, told me if there were a most improved award he'd be giving it to me, because he'd been certain that he would have to fail me at first; and so it was that my seniors repeatedly came up to me after one particular task, reassured me that it was decently done, added that i'd started on the wrong foot but had probably redeemed myself. but in the same way that i didn't want to be judged for that early-days breakdown, i didn't and don't want to be judged on the strength of one "decently-done" job either. i know my inadequacies best, and trust me, they are legion.

and so it is. what a time the latter half of 2011 was-- the jolting resurfacing from the 8-hour dance days i never did quite get a respite from to the unceremonious deposition into work-leavened-with-study-life. i'm still waiting for an email to arrive, belatedly regretting to inform me that there has been a terrible mistake and i've in fact been one of the 2 people who failed 8 out of 9 subjects. the fact was-- as i told cheryl-- i basically danced my way through the entire course. classes were one thing-- there were also the EMCC performances, Recital, and of course the ill-advised but never-regretted decisions to ditch studying for classes in the midst of exams week. i recall the three modules missed in order to go for the first day of EMCC itself, the chain of increasingly-desperate emails sent begging for exemption from lecture, class, tutorial (although i suppose deep down inside i knew i was in relatively safe hands, safe feet-- no one who was famed for his prodigious hip-swivelling to Gaga was likely to remain completely inured to pleas to be allowed to dance too).

I will be honest-- without the chance to recharge or reflect something inside me was very deadened and the journeys from office or home to Kent Ridge never seemed longer or drearier. And I will be more honest still-- the thought of going through all of that one more time makes my soul shrink. And now I will be most honest yet-- if nothing else, this one time it was worth it. I watched the videos at PPP, and predictably cringed at the first night's performance. The second night's performance, however-- even that many months removed from show night i felt the emptiness, the brokenness, the gaping sense of loss, and I understood that on that stage that night I'd told a story I'd never spoken in its entirety; at best an attenuated version had been divulged to one person-- a revelation I still regret. I don't know how to be more grateful to my choreographers, but they were and are awesome. I want to push my body and mind that hard again.

Body and mind, yes-- but not heart. maybe i had nothing left; the same emoting plagued me for Recital. I hated it, hated the need to act, abhorred the "expression! expression!" calls, wanted to scream when the importance of feeling was trumpeted over steps. Not the most even-tempered of harridans, I grew even more fractious and irritable for a whole host of reasons. 3-hour sleeps might have had something to do with it, but if i will be truthful-- i just didn't care. at times i wanted to hurt something, and so i did. maybe at some level i didn't know how to be content. humans! i recall my first reaction on finding out which item i'd gotten into-- startled joy (i *had* wanted hiphop, after all) followed by quick dismay (what, what had i done wrong for street jazz? why was i not good enough for that?).

nevertheless i was lucky, very very very lucky, to have gotten into this item. I don't know if I learnt-- the learning process is as much individually-initiated as externally-induced, and i was such a non-self-starter, but if i were to speak only in terms of commitment, of drive, of dedication and truth and sincerity...! truckloads.

apart from that there are only 2 clear memories that rise out of the fog, now-- mum rousing herself to drive me to bedok and then kallang, trying to defuse my fury with a gentleness i rarely saw so clearly, a solicitude that was touching because for all that I'd clamped my mouth shut and wiped my face blank she could read me like an open book; that, and the walk home after the last performance, when in the wind rustling the half-dusk'd trees i heard the strains of "i'm starting with the man in the mirror/ i'm asking him to change his ways" and in that one moment found peace and the realisation that no one could afford to live this way. and i wanted to start with the person in the mirror, too.

so i started by mirror-smashing. in the midst of exam week-- right after completely disastrous crim pro and intellectual property law papers on wednesday-- i took the bus to kent ridge, enticed as i had been by jack's "maggie's conducting master class for blast camp!!! go?". on the way there i idly listened to songs on my player, heard Mclachlan's Stupid, thought about Erica Sobol, and gave half an absent mind over to the "wow if Maggie does this song" thread of thought. And in UCC, when Maggie played her song-- I screamed, and both Jack and I freaked out along the lines of "oh my god i cannot do this i will cry". that was the least of it. stupidly, egregiously, i lost my temper again (veekay if you're reading this shut up and stop laughing)-- so painful to remember-- and with it any hope of equanimity or poise thereafter. thanks nevertheless should be given for small mercies-- at least i'd spoke to Maggie first instead of outright confrontation.

Maggie's choreo was simple but-- clean?-- not unduly empty but well-spaced with gaps for emoting. HC was a good improv partner-- and accommodating, and willing to try. Jack's timing was impeccable; there is an innocence to her contemp that is indescribable but seems like essential truth. Little wonder the whole of Blast loved her-- I wish they'd put up her solo/duet with Dicky--! yes, complete with pseudo-attempted-rape and all.

But emoting-- eurgh-- as usual I took those gaps too far and by the end of the night was utterly horrified with myself. Amateur! Where had strength and control and awareness gone?! Timing? Steps?! so much for being determined not to be "that kind of [face] dancer". I was so mortified I messaged Maggie after class to apologise, and that Saturday-- as though, like Jason and CT and Magnus for their Seriously Korean showcase, I had to reassure myself-- I went for her class at DP, just to prove that omg I could actually do contemp without turning it into some kind of grotesque facial sideshow. I still enjoyed-- enjoy-- her choreo, though. where is video of jack?!

That Saturday was also the night of Urban Dance Tales-- but it is 2.21am and if I am to have even a smidgen of hope of staying awake at work tomorrow-- today!!-- the rest of what I have to say must desist for a while.

and so it is
the shorter story
no hope no glory
no hero in her sky

19th August 2009 - 1st January 2012

"The fragmentariness of life makes coherence impossible, but to babble is a different kind of treachery."

//-- Winterson, Gut Symmetries

You'll never see the courage I know
Its colors' richness won't appear within your view
I'll never glow - the way that you glow
Your presence dominates the judgments made on you

But as the scenery grows, I see in different lights
The shades and shadows undulate in my perception
My feelings swell and stretch; I see from greater heights
I understand what I am still too proud to mention - to you

You'll say you understand, but you don't understand
You'll say you'll never give up seeing eye to eye
But never is a promise, and you can't afford to lie

You'll never touch - these things that I hold
The skin of my emotions lies beneath my own
You'll never feel the heat of this soul
My fever burns me deeper than I've ever shown - to you

You'll say, Don't fear your dreams, it's easier than it seems
You'll say you'd never let me fall from hopes so high
But never is a promise and you can't afford to lie

You'll never live the life that I live
I'll never live the life that wakes me in the night
You'll never hear the message I give
You'll say it looks as though I might give up this fight

But as the scenery grows, I see in different lights
The shades and shadows undulate in my perception
My feelings swell and stretch, I see from greater heights
I realize what I am now too smart to mention - to you

You'll say you understand, you'll never understand
I'll say I'll never wake up knowing how or why
I don't know what to believe in, you don't know who I am
You'll say I need appeasing when I start to cry

But never is a promise and I'm sick of living on a lie

a thousand words

(the year-- alright, the past 2 months-- in pictures)

1. put a little sunshine in my life

Studying upon the LaSalle lawn! Pleasant, if usually unproductive, because I end up people-watching or wanting to read or sleep or wishing I had at least half an artistic gene in my DNA.

2. ghostwritten Came home one day to see a stack of envelopes and postcards on the bar counter. reading them was like reading letters from a ghost. So unsettling! I wished I sent more of them back-- they were like snapshots of the time I spent in Europe. And that maple leaf--! Selected from the thousands that littered the grounds of the Ekonomikum.

3. it's like i have to write you down to make you real
Fairly early on, Terence sent us a loooong SMS trying to explain what his item was about after one particularly confusing Sunday when, inter alia, Stooffi had asked if it was based on his experiences with Tina. After drying my eyes I copied down the SMS-- verbatim! [sic]s included-- in an attempt to make sense of the item/give it the gravitas it deserved. Jason isn't the only one in need of experience! Thereafter I replied to Terence and told him his message had made me cry-- he asked why, with some alarm-- I said either too emo or lack of sleep-- he attributed it to the lack of sleep -__- I want to write about recital argh!

4. food for thought gobbling down
wild mushroom risotto with (so much!) black truffle from Open Door Policy. It is delicious and my phone does not do it justice. After trying their desserts I finally understood why people make so much fuss over souffles. I want to go back!

5. "so... the chicken has soul...?"
dessert at Jack's, on the night of the Magnus Dinner. We perpetually turn her house into an abode for carousing and feasting and making merry. What indolence!

6. pick a bag, any bag
my Christmas Eve present-- getting my wallet pickpocketed at the Arena. At least we refused to let it spoil our night, and even if I more-than-suspect overenthusiasm on the dance floor on my part at least we had fun. Thanks for introducing me to tequila shots, and for getting on the podium!

No drink ever tasted as good as 10-dollar Evian at the end of the night, though-- and for the sake of all that is sensible even if you're trying to mix things up NEVER try to order a lime tequila. Hideous concoction.

7. bookhunting

my gleanings from the PageOne Warehouse sale. Only Donne is new to me, but Fforde and Pratchett are usually eminently re-readable. Oh well!

8. turning the page
planning to finish the last pages of Jinglin's Drop Dead Gorgeous notebook tonight, and wondering which of these to use next. Both were gifts-- one from Cheryl as part of Team Sneaky Poonie Dammit surprise, and the other from colleague accompanied by a note that said "may your jokes improve in the new year". This, incidentally, is the same colleague that made "open door policy" quip. I feel mis-appreciated.

9. three-headed alien
(i commented that my sister's head over my dad's shoulder made them look like the 2-headed alien in MIB. Mum pops up almost immediately to join in the fun)

one of the reasons i didn't want to go to Japan with my parents was because I wanted to spend NYE alone. It's turned into a sort of ritual, almost, ever since I flew away from Sweden with snow in my heart and a love for solitude that I'd never felt quite so keenly before. I don't know what I'll spend tonight doing, except that I need to be out of a very noisy house-- I only know I take comfort in how sensible I am now compared to this time last year, how much less afraid, how much less... damaged, maybe. I feel less unsure about bidding farewell to 2011 than I did about 2010. Maybe I'm learning to let go. I haven't written about so much-- but maybe I can sum it up in another entry, another time-- now I just want to be away from the computer.

I hope all of you can describe the year that's passed as a Tire (or just lie to yourself till you can la). Reason below:


(It's been a Goodyear!)