and this is what it is like or what it is like in words

19th August 2009 - 1st January 2012

2012-01-04T23:52:00.003+08:00

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

//-- Winterson, Gut Symmetries

2012-01-01T16:18:00.000+08:00

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

2011-12-31T12:39:00.007+08:00

(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!)

late

2011-12-30T00:29:00.002+08:00

God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this,
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,— Lord, do I fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,— let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

\\-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

A little less conversation

2011-12-23T16:00:00.005+08:00

1.
Y: “*absently* ooh na na, what’s my name—“
B: “ooh na na I’m eating grains.”
*collective silence as Joey and I turn to stare at him*

2.
Lunching at Open Door Policy... we finish the appetisers and are waiting for main courses.
Colleague: “Oh look. *points* The door is closed.”
Y: “Yes... it’s air-conditioned what.”
Colleague: “But it’s Open Door—“
Y: “OHMYGOD.”

3.
The Magnus Dinner
J: “*gulps fervent mouthfuls of beer from half-filled Kronenbourgs as she takes them to the sink* I always make these desperate attempts to not waste food”

V: “Yes so he asked him... teehee.”

Y: “*directed at V* Slut.”
V: “*directed at Y* Bitch.”

V: “Do we need plates?”
Y: “No la... (after a while) Ooh look we can just tear up the boxes and use them as receptacles.”
M: “Receptacles.”
V: “Receptacles.”
Y: “What.”
M: “Nothing. Here, VK, let me hand you a receptacle.”
V: “Yes, let’s eat out of these receptacles.”
&c
Receptacle Debacle ensues. I cannot remember who said what anymore.

V: "I can't do hiphop anymore."

Y: "But it wouldn't be exactly hiphop--"

M: "Yeah... It's X's hips and X's hops, but it's not HIPHOP."

Y: “I can’t eat my sorbet because my GARNISH is in the way *glares at V*”
M: “That’s not a strawberry, it’s a tumour.”

V: “*stares at Magnus* I can’t imagine you being a father... can’t picture you being affectionate.”
Y: “Yeah you never PDA enough.”
J: “You will just treat them like how you treat your dancers...”
M: “and HOW do I treat my dancers?”
Y: “...You watch us dance and then say ‘oh my god multiple organ failure’.”

And this is so politically incorrect, so I will censor-censor—but I felt the love hahaha
Y: “Yes like how I look like I’m 28 right??”
M: “WHO said you look 28?”
Y: “So-and-so.”
M: “Fuck them.”

J: “I hope An An ends on time tomorrow.”
Y: “Oh... where are you going? Gathering?”
J: “... Hei’s.”

4.
(speaking in earnest to my sister, expounding upon something serious [i think??] over gchat...)
M: *bursts out laughing*
Y: “... what?”
M: “Did you realise what you were saying? you sounded like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDQCaGlqLFY&fb_source=message ”

... oops (in my defense—oi. Exaggeration.).

5.
Taboo
ZL: “*reads card*... I WHAT you!”
A: “I can think of a thousand words to fit in that, and none of them are polite.”

S: “*reads card* Ok think of a body part--! love what?”
ZL: “BREASTS”
(handles)

M: *reads card* ...ok... this is a HYDROCARBON that you put on your body--!
(general wtf and guessing mayhem of suntan lotion, suntan oil, moisturiser...)

the word was mascara.

6.
B: “Mummy I'm going for a job interview on Monday.”
Mum: “As what?”
Y+J: “Waite—“
B: “STRIPPER.”
Mum: “你给我留在家里我给你二十块脱！”
Y: “I'LL PAY HIM FORTY TO KEEP HIS CLOTHES ON.”
J: “eh pay me twenty to watch leh”

sun, moon, stars, rain

2011-12-21T00:33:00.005+08:00

This is something I've been reading since early 2010-- maybe even mid-2009? I think it was Fred who sent me the link. I disliked the writer's posts at first, found them maudlin and overwrought-- but for a good part of late 2010 and the whole of 2011 I've been a close follower. Either he's matured, or I've mellowed-drama (see what I did there!).

I particularly like that many of the shots come from Japan, and every now and then I see a little bit of a place I do want to return to. I particularly like some of his most recent posts; I see in them emotions I'd like to feel again one day. Some of them have inspired whole posts, entire mental storyboards, based on just the one line.

Take a gander, if you please. www.iwrotethisforyou.me (e.e. cummings reference in latest post-- and book-- is winsome!)

P.S. expect a surfeit of posts to close out this December-- I'm surprised I wrote so little this year!

christmas croonings

2011-12-19T17:23:00.000+08:00

very apt!

the most important thing in the world is little frogs living in a flower

2011-12-18T19:02:00.003+08:00

'I told her we were going to get married, and all she could talk about was frogs.’

Masklin looked gloomily at the rain.

‘Come to think of it,’ he said. ‘it wasn’t frogs exactly. It was the idea of frogs. She said there’s these hills where it’s hot and rains all the time, and in the rain forests there are these very tall trees and right in the top branches of the trees there are these like great big flowers called bromeliads, I think, and water gets into the flowers and makes little pools and there’s a type of frog that lays eggs in the pools and tadpoles hatch and grow into new frogs and these little frogs live their whole lives in the flowers right at the top of the trees and don’t even know about the ground and once you know the world is full of things like that your life is never the same.’

*

... when he straightened up, Pion was giving him a puzzled look.

'Flower is a message?' said the boy.
'Yes. Kind of.'
'Not using words?'
'No.' said Masklin.
'Why not?'
Masklin shrugged.
'Don't know how to say them.'

--- Terry Pratchett, Wings

bittersweet

2011-11-26T04:18:00.008+08:00

"O Crew, you take my breath away. You make this broken vessel feel whole again, you are the reason I dance. Thank you."

That tweet needs context.

I'd been ready to leave. Ready to say my goodbyes, accept that life happens, people change, passions die. I've never felt more deadened in classes, more disgruntled; in the past when it's occurred it's only happened with items, with a surfeit of too many people all clamouring me-me-me.

I'd been ready to stop. I had-- have-- no right to inflict myself on people; I've been insufferable for three different items in three different concerts in a row, now, and if third-time's-the-charm wasn't indication enough for me to quit for good then I honestly didn't know what would be. More than that, I'd begun to feel again that I was throwing my energies at a brick wall-- energies perhaps better directed elsewhere. "I did my best" is an excuse for mediocrity, indeed.

I was ready to go. I was fretting about civil litigation, about the lateness of the hour, about going back to the office, about printing and binding and shredding and reading.

I don't know what made me stay. I think--

I think it was the memory of last year. Of us sitting on the floor in semidark, my notes spread before me, slippered feet still bare from Jessica's item. I think it was the joy I remembered feeling, the stolen pleasure of watching them do run after run, of our shamelessly outstaying a non-extended welcome, of only sneaking out rather surreptitiously when there was practically no one else left.

This time round I watched alone. For a time when I sat next to Kit Yee I tried-- and failed-- to explain the wordless anhedonia gripping my frame, the dismay at the passing of time, the choking-up that wanted to engulf me each time I looked at the stage and thought of the difference a year made.

This is what I saw: Gin's resignation-- 40 minutes of stage time, but half of the crew wasn't there-- followed by the elation that accompanied each cheer that went up as each succeeding member walked in. There was a sense of completion in the air, of something becoming whole. They drew strength from each other-- it was a sight to behold. Watching them work together was an exercise in leadership; someone might take charge at one point, but everyone was always pushing. No free-ridership here!

And then the music started.

Life happens. People change. Passions die. We leave, we give in, we say goodbye. But watching O Crew tonight gave me a little fuel to bank my embers; a bit of hope, a little joy. The item wasn't perfect, but the imperfections filled me with greater fervour-- when I watched KH practise relentlessly, when I watched Allegra or Gin fight to come back to the music when it threatened to overpower them, when I watched An An's intensity and concentration ("WCO-trained 的就是WCO-trained 的!"); Zaihar's flow; Terence's exactitude; Hua's immersion; Weijie's hits, DSS' magic, Fredy's mastery. I cannot name them all. It made my very dysfunctional self the happiest I've been in weeks.

2 more chapters, then bed, then recital!

a stuff 'twill not endure

2011-11-11T14:47:00.002+08:00

and it's got me thinking--

how many parts of a person can you cut away before person no longer exists?

what makes us human? what makes us whole?

I hold out my fingers and watch them tremble.

Health is so precious. Time is invaluable.

A life is a terrible thing to waste.

very Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed, my thoughts today. and by association I suppose The Time-Traveller's Wife is dragged in too.

The skies opened up with insane fervour. I heard shrieks as I rose to shut the windows, and paused, half-laughing, as I watched four Canossian-pinafored girls racing down the slopes screaming in a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

the roses in your hand

2011-11-11T01:17:00.010+08:00

You don't know until you know; until your breath seizes in your throat and your eyes are blind with tears.

You don't know until you watch the freedom a limb can take upon-- and then the stilted stunted breakdown in the next movement.

You don't know until you're on your knees; you don't know until the floor is an absent lover; you don't know until you come up empty.

I don't know what I'm looking for, but I find something a little like it on the dance floor.

I wish I wrested back enough control and presence of mind to do the last kicks properly. and on time. :( I love what Jessica does to music. For that matter, I love what music does to dance, and vice versa. I love what they do to me.

I am sorry, however, for losing my temper at spatially-comatose girl during class. By the time I went to look for her after Jessica's to apologise she was gone. Damnit karma. Self, unbitchify!

But oh my god I'm so glad for Thursdays. I'm so glad for every night.

when you're dreaming with a broken heart

the waking up is the hardest part

you roll out of bed, and down on your knees

and for a moment you can hardly breathe

wondering was she really here

is she standing in my room

no she's not

because she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone

and i will try to fix you

2011-10-25T03:02:00.008+08:00

It’s the quiet moments that get to you.

Rehearsals can be deadening, especially when the demands of life pull you in every other direction. They can be deadening when you stop feeling the music, when you know you’re not giving what the choreographer wants and you don’t know how to go further, how to find more, hold more, release more. They can be deadening because of people, when your fellow dancers don’t find it in them to fight and complacent satisfaction is writ large in their bones. They can be deadening just because.

But it’s the quiet moments that get you.

It’s the silence before a sharp inhalation that draws you upward. It’s the one line of lyric (“then choke on words I always hide”) that sends you blind across the AS7 floor. It’s the unexpected chokehold that rises out of nowhere as you try to explain why an ending shook you to your bones. It’s that one moment of suspension, head down, doubled-up—that single split second of sight when you see the stage lights shining through the singed ends of your hair just before you fling yourself back upright like a gasping swimmer clawing for air—that reminds you why you do this, why something in you needs this, why the burnt child will always love the fire.

I didn’t audition for contemporary this year as much because I really, really, REALLY wanted to try hip hop as because I knew—know—the way I approach contemporary is not healthy. There are only so many times you can bend a mind before it breaks. If I’ve ever wondered before if I could literally go out of my mind I think I came far too close to knowing the answer in the early months of work. Work wasn’t the trigger; I don’t think I know, or remember any more, what was.

But oh, the irony, the irony, the irony. Who does an item to Adele without feeling?

I’ve been told before—and agree—that method dancing is not healthy. Emotion cannot replace technique. I went in numb, I went in for the improvement I wanted to see in myself for jazz. It was easy at first to focus on the technical aspects, the steps I couldn’t do, the release my torso could not find, the lengths my limbs would not reach. But when your choreographers put their hearts into their choreography, their stories into the item; when they ask the same of you, when they want you just to feel, a little, can one refuse?

I speak too little and say too much, because the reality is that writing something down, saying it out loud, gives it the credence it would otherwise never have in my own mind. Jack and Magnus asked why, at one of the final rehearsals, I’d been weeping slow threads of tears for the better part of the entire feedback session. I couldn’t answer. Maybe I’ve never known the words that would form an answer.

All I know is how disappointed I was with myself the first night, how deadened and clinical and cold I’d been on stage. All this, despite the mental dredging, despite the falsifying forced-ness of feeling. I could never cry, feel, emo on demand, and I think emotion was an integral part of this dance. Technique is foundation, but upon that foundation you lay your soul.

All I remember was how determined I was on the second night not to feel that coldness. As we all lay in our positions upon the floor, I gave up trying to induce myself into a mood. I gave up on myself and on the scraps that woven together would form but half a lie. Instead, I thought about telling another person’s story. I thought of what Magnus had spoken about, how he had fused his first love into the choreography. I thought about what Jack had taught and demonstrated but never verbalised and laid claim to—but she didn't need to. Where the body doesn't lie words are superfluous, clumsy extraneous limbs that get in the way of expression. I was determined to tell those stories instead—

And then—

I’ve cried over the memory of a lost friend who found it too much to go on. I've cried for fears. I’ve wept over the sheer audacity of hope encapsulated in the image of a white-clad lover outside a hospital room praying for a halo not to fade away, an image forever imbued in my head with all the echoes of my grandmother falling to pieces beside my grandfather’s casket. But ask me this time what I disintegrated for and I wouldn’t know, except that, unbidden, this was what was in my head:--

-- an easy comfort that broke my heart; brittle smiles falling from faces, shells like second skins, long bus rides that taught me what it was to feel again; the look in your eyes; a need I had never known; Pandora, Pandora, Pandora, who should have known better than to open that damnable box a second time--

For-gi-ve me first - - love - - but - - i’m - too - tired

-- and there was a hand—a touch—i gloried in the spasming, the space, the willful freedom to fling away what i had wanted all along--

Losing control (Magnus’ comment about my “abandon to the point of free-falling”) was terrifying. I’m afraid I lost all vestige of your quiet sadness, Jack, and merrily crumbled to bits instead of portraying cracks the way you thought I would. It was not a pretty performance. It was not graceful, elegant, poised, but for what it was worth, it was true. I could laugh at myself afterwards, laugh at the way I had run out of backstage and fallen against the wall, laugh at the way I scared the poor cleaning auntie out of her wits when I burst wailing into the toilets like a deranged banshee. (ensue hammering on door: “Girl! Girl, you okay?? Girl!!!”). The stage is not my therapist’s couch. Therapeutic writing should not be published; therapeutic dancing should not be staged. You find your own control, you find when and where you can lose it, and then you tell your story.

Thank you for telling me your stories so I could tell mine.

I didn’t audition for contemporary this year because I had had enough of the feeling-feelingness. But oh, the irony indeed. My-Angus-Please-Stay.

A precise emotion demands precise expression, but where you’ve tamped it down for so long, buried it so deeply, held it and let go of it and come back to it and burned it and saved it and doused it so many times over and over and over again that you no longer know if it’s love or hate or longing or just an unspeakable wordless mass all tanglechoked up inside—

I guess a chicken-and-duck-rice metaphor is as good as any.

(How apposite that I am vegetarian.)

Forgive me first love

But I’m tired

I need to get away to feel again

Try to understand why

Don’t get so close to change my mind

Please wipe that look out of your eyes

It’s bribing me to doubt myself

Simply it’s tiring.

Forgive me. It is 2.58am on a quiet Tuesday morning, and I am saner—and much, much happier—than I must sound. If there is nothing else I know what is my reason to breathe again and again and again, and I love, love, love it. It’s been with me every step of the way, it’s been my burden, bane and balm. If I could ever lay claim to being in love-- if there were ever a first love I could never let go of-- I think it would be this.

seeing double

2011-09-26T00:05:00.003+08:00

"My feeling-- and it's pretty, you know, rigorous-- is that therapy is for therapy and that writing can be therapeutic, but therapeutic writing should not be published. My job as a writer is to go through the therapy myself and if I manage to get through it and I feel I have something to share from that, to share it with my audience or my readers. But I don't write novels and seek to have them published so that I can get therapy from having written them. That's really the responsibility of an individual to do outside the context of their published work." -- Alice Sebold, "Fresh Air with Terry Gross", July 10 2002

"When Raphael, who had a pointed goatee and a waxed moustache, said he hadn't a poem to turn in because he was happy and he could only write when he was depressed, Gallagher's Cupid's-bow lips pursed, her preternaturally raised eyebrows raised farther, and she said, "Poetry is not an attitude. It is hard work."-- Alice Sebold, Lucky

all i know is that you were the nicest thing

2011-09-12T01:39:00.002+08:00

i dance because when i do the only person capable of letting me down is me.

that is all.

a simpleton could see

2011-09-04T01:20:00.004+08:00

Memories are the strangest things. They fade and disappear, they get repressed, they're obliterated by trauma; they are triggered by everything and nothing. You think you bury them and then you find them knocking on your door on the second wish of a monkey's paw.

Today's came packaged in brown-fuzzed kiwis. What a strange way to deliver them-- they really just look like hairy eggs, don't they?

I slice one kiwi in half and find a bit of winter, ensconced in the centre like a sudden sullen ice crystal. I slice through another and find a touch, fleeting as a breeze in mid-July. I slice through one more and there, nestled in the golden flesh, curled among the speckled seeds, I find your smile.

Each kiwi half is egg-cup-shaped, small bowls perfect for cradling in the hand. I remember what it felt like, silver spooning soft tart acridity in the middle of the snows, seated at my window or before my table. I think I remember what it felt like.

Everything you remember is nothing of the truth.

*

I can see you now, standing at the crossroads. I can see the cuts on the inside of your wrist, skin taut against the bone. I can see the blue rose tattoo snug against the overhang of your clavicle.

I can see the way your hair spreads out over the wood of the floor, the veil in your eyes when you look up at the ceiling. I can see the way you want to keep running. In your face I can see already the lines that will form, the lines that are forming, the lines that no one else will expect to be there because you smile so much that there isn't any reason for your countenance to be sadder and sadder each day.

Time passes and we learn to not talk to the moon. We learn to stop making eyelash wishes. Time passes and we learn some wishes never come true; time passes and we learn there's no one talking back.

I can see you now, standing at the crossroads. I can see your hair like fire in the sun.

*

(the week of 15th August)

This week I'm learning a lot of things.

I'm learning how entrenched the human brain can be.

I'm learning how easily the body forgets.

I'm learning how I've always thought you were perfect.

I'm learning how to face my fears-- yes, even the wince-worthy bits-- to seek a little more confidence.

I'm learning how the biggest of secrets are told in the smallest of moments.

I'm learning how there are things that still go unspoken.

I'm learning to be joyful.

I'm learning not to discount gestures-- because, as perfunctory and needlessly-for-show as they may be, sometimes somewhere to someone they can mean a lot. A gesture meant I forced myself to speak. A gesture meant two people not going to jail.

I'm learning to love the music that comes with the breaking of every link in the chain. And yet, for every groan of overstressed metal giving way, I hear a sinew snap.

But guess who's going to be stronger?

*

(Equus; or, the philosophy of pain)

"The word 'passion' is rooted in passio, Latin for suffering... Christ's suffering during his trial and crucifixion is known as The Passion."

Is passion always insanity? Must we bleed to know we're alive? Do we live only in pain?

I dismissed Strang as an overwrought glowering brooder (broody hen! I like my men-- possibly my women too-- dark and troubled, but certainly a little less transparent than that). But Dysart stung me, moved me, whether because of oversensitive self-identification or sheer circumstance-- he knew, whereas Strang was merely caught in the throes of his own mental labyrinth. He knew the way out, held the golden thread in his fingers; he knew also the feel of the pyrite gilt disintegrating between them, knew that outside for all his Icarus-charges there would be but the hot heat of the sun and the crushing enveloping waves. He knew, and he had to make a choice, and yet keep the slipping mask intact. What was he looking for but a bit of worship, a bit of meaning, an answer to why?

Why do we hold on to our passions? Why do we hold on to pain? I don't have an answer. I only know at times that I don't know whether my deathgrip is on meaning and sanity or on my own windpipe.

Cheryl tweeted, "Lecturer's question of the day-- are you living or merely existing?"
My follow-up question to that-- which I didn't ask-- "What are you living for?"

it's like i love this pain a little too much

2011-08-08T01:33:00.004+08:00

"... What does that mean-- 'tame'?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties. [...] To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you...

"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world... if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."

"Men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you."

Jeannette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

It's been long enough, don't you think?

Some chains are of your own making. And some, only you can break.

There are some mornings I wake up and I absolutely love my life the way it is. This past weekend was exactly like that.

Silly bundle of no-good contradictions.

the memory of choosing not to fight

2011-07-02T23:48:00.002+08:00

it was the look in her eyes. it was the butterflies. it was the music, the moment, the magic, the knowledge that i'd never consciously chosen to NOT go down fighting before. it's the fact that i can be a downright stubborn bitch when i want to be and now i want to be.

the lows are so low; but the highs, love, are very, very high.

i'm going to try.

there's no easy way to say goodbye

2011-06-29T01:44:00.003+08:00

listen to me.

no, listen to me.

go out. find the longest, emptiest stretch of road that is also closest at hand; at this hour on this day, no one sane or heart-whole or sober will be wandering the streets, and anyone else will be too lost in their worlds to bother with yours.

now, close your eyes. now walk.

it's one foot in front of the other; it's simple. easy arithmetic like the math of one plus one equals two-- except with your eyes closed complications set in and one plus one can equal none, or one, or broken twos.

close your eyes. walk.

everything is heightened. the road is texture beneath your feet-- the grit rough against your soles, the metal grilles smoother. grass is knobby and lets you know you're veering off-course. the wind is exceptionally affectionate-- it weaves airy fingers through hair, touches forehead, trails down arm. and light-- oh the light-- light has a heft and weight this way. shadow and light alternate as they slide across your face, inexorably roll down your cheeks, and you can feel the difference as you linger and break through each end zone to the next.

close your eyes. walk.

they have a chart and graph

of my despondency

they want to chart a path

to self-recovery

and want to know what i'm thinking

what motivates my mood

to spend all night in the backyard

staring at the stars and the moon

maybe i was made this way

to think and to reason and question and pray

and i have never prayed a lot

but maybe there's a loving god

break me open

2011-06-26T08:50:00.004+08:00

and if you only knew the shit that goes around in my head
you'd be a little more fragile when handling me
you see i heal quickly

June! And this is now officially half of 2011—a 2011 I still have trouble existing in, I still have to ask myself “Eh—is this 2010 or 2011 now?” In perfect keeping with my usual upload-photos-3-months-late habits, here are some of the goings-on of 2011, presented with semi-semblance of order:

Shut Up and Dance
i don't want to write much, being this far removed from the event already, except to give my gratitude:

Thank you for knowing when to let me go, Jack. Thank you even more for knowing when I shouldn't be left alone, Veekay and Evon. Thank you Evon for being there selflessly, for offering your house and studio and endless supply of milk tea. Thank you Veekay for messaging and for knowing exactly where I would be despite having told me expressly not to go there; thank you for giving me comments and trying to correct me.

Thank you Ellen for your 3plus am messages trying to find out how I was despite being exhausted by your own practices, for coming up to me during rehearsals to try and test how I was. Thank you Soozey for the same, and for giving me comments; for the 2am call upon reading my blog, for the long SMS detailing what I could do. Thank you Zhiwen for the longest email I've ever received from you, for talking to me, for all the observations and comments from as far back as god knows when, the reminders I'd forgotten. Thank you Michelle for realising how affected I was, for understanding and for not obtruding. Thank you again Jack, for vocalising everything choking me with such a stranglehold. Thank you for your attitude and your sunshine. Thank you Magnus for that completely unexpected message even in the midst of all you were juggling.

Jason surprised me with his camera in the middle of dinner at SUAD intending to film some sort of message for Apesar. I wish I had had more time to compose my thoughts, to think about what I wanted to say-- I don't know how much of this went on film. I was undeniably upset at not having gotten into the item, but I was glad that they'd come-- and in a way I was even grateful for not getting in, because it'd forced me to examine how I danced and why I danced. It'd also shown me how much the people around me cared for me-- and that to me was simply truly grace.

I enjoyed all my items on performance day, although I knew I messed up several times-- bumping into Erwin at the START of the Ohay item, somehow missing a step at the start of the 4th song; completely not getting Fred's part for Janet. The big surprise-- even to me-- came with Pat's item. It would be a little embarrassing if I stopped to be embarrassed: Whether consciously or unconsciously I'd woven everything I'd been feeling in that one emotionally tumultuous week into Airplanes, and more-- everything I'd never tried, everything I'd been too scared to go for, everything I had tried for and wanted with every fibre of my being only to fall short of, to be found wanting for. Every night spent walking streets alone, every shadow cast by every street lamp; every shuddering intake of breath even when it got too hard to breathe. The Apesar thing was a huge overlay over all of that. I wrote a few days after SUAD that I had to learn to listen to music and-- Zaihar's words-- "move with meaning"-- and somehow meaning came through for Airplanes. I cannot explain how the steps came together for me. I only wish I could replicate it, because I really stopped thinking-- not a conscious, forced cessation of thought, or the mindlessness that comes of endless recapping; I was aware of timing, knew when I was going too fast, knew when I was going to go too fast, but all of this was at another level of the cerebellum. Uppermost on my mind was just music, and the moment. I don't know if I've ever felt like that before. I only hope I can, again.

And so that marked the end of 4 incredible years of uni life, characterised so increasingly and absolutely by Blast and dance. I think of the girl who went for auditions the first time, how ridiculously bumbling I was (am!), and I marvel at how hugely different-- and how much the very same-- I have become/still am. What a way to grow. What a way to live. Thank you, Blast.

Before another one can begin
The close of the academic year—and, correspondingly, the end of my university days—came in drips and drabs, not least because honestly for this last semester, like the one before (and the one before, and the one before that, too) I was hardly around. This time even my modules seemed ready to help create that sense of absence, petering out as they did (I highly recommend LKYSPP mods for every dancing lawyer by the way—don’t let the level 5000 labels scare you off. Plus you get to type your exam). I think academically speaking this was one of the semesters I most enjoyed—I finally chose modules I was at least marginally interested in (and which also fit around my dance schedule—keke) and studying for them proved surprisingly agreeable— I have very pleasant memories of camping out by the bamboos in brilliant sunshine alternating between catching up on shuteye and rushing readings for theoretical foundations of crim law, or of lying on my stomach flat on Jinglin’s bedroom floor highlighting leadership-and-women notes (or on her couch alternating between ethics and the public official and confessions of a shopaholic), or of the usual starbucks/black’s experiences scribbling out mediation plans. My results reflected that pleasure—best semester ever: although no A-pluses, for once I didn’t have Cs either.

And on a complete digression I remember that it was in the LKYSPP study lounge one afternoon prepping for class that I first heard Adele’s One and Only, watching Ryan’s class video. I ruined that song within a week by keeping it on repeat for possibly 5 days in a row. It spoke to me in a way no song had been able to do for a while, especially at that point in time; it was like Adele took the words I would have written if I could, the emotions I would have felt if I could, encapsulated and verbalised everything in her lyrics, and sang with *every single strand* of heart and soul—hers? Mine? Everyone’s? And it’s strange because it’s not a particularly wonderful song—possibly not even one of her best or most striking works. In a sense even the melody is predictable—or I guessed how it would go—but even that was a plus point for me. It was like a song that I’d heard before, or a song that was already in me, or that I’d always known. That sense of familiarity, comfort, ease—I liked.

I think most people start their love affair with Adele with one of her more powerful songs—Hometown Glory, Someone Like You, Rolling in the Deep. I started with One and Only. I still stop and listen to it, even if I no longer feel it quite as intensely. It makes me smile :)

Sneakier-than-thou
I felt a little sad—and took it as yet another sign of how much things were and I was changing—that I elected to watch Shakespeare in the Park on my birthday instead of dancing the way I did last year. One recalls how people-- well, maybe just my parents-- say what you do on the first day of each year dictates the confines of that year-- choosing not to dance (or having the choice sort of made for me) seemed like yet another affirmation of how things were ending, or coming to an end. Nevertheless, the day was good; Monopoly Deal with the sisters allowed me one of the best puns yet—literally playing the “It’s My Birthday” card; Sizzler with the family was gutbustingly good; shopping with Cheryl was my link to dance for the day; Macbeth was excellent. The three of us got a free buggy ride—so amazing what a smile can do, although Ning attributed it to my being dressed up and being mistaken for a VIP hahaha. how kind complete strangers are! it made my day.

Macbeth truly gave me shivers. Lady Macbeth overacted her way through everything-- it was so painful-- but staging, lights, blocking, even (especially!) dramatic interpretation-- those i loved. Adrian Pang was a good Macbeth; and, of course, being the Shakespeare geek that I am I got a cheap thrill out of mouthing my favourite speech(es) along with him. The night was just very nice-- there is not much point in recounting the whole thing, it was one of those I-want-to-lie-back-and-just-bask-in-the-moment things. Thank you Ning for sharing, I've missed listening to you. Thank you Ni for your spontaneity, for joining me on another long walk, for coming back with me for supper and then letting me drive you back-- one of my last late nights out and about. Thank you Abby for the wishes from Taiwan (right?). Thank you XF for the video and cow-- eh honestly didn't you mail me a bunch of cows for my 18th as well-- what is this bovine fascination??? All of us-- we've known each other for so long and we've all changed over the years, but something keeps us together even when I'm not trying. I pray it will keep us together for many years more.

And you'd have thought that was the end of it, but no-- I have seriously sneaky friends. Friday may 20 I went to O School only to hear banging on the glass as I was riding the escalator up. Thank you Cheryl for the gift of thought; Fred for sweet sustenance; Jack for flight; Veekay for music on my ears; and Zhiwen for the far away wishes. It was a good surprise, complete with red velvet cupcakes and unglam photographs (and photography!). i feel the love, yo. (and Evon with the milk tea, and Magnus with the chocolates-- and whoever else I missed! eeps)

so-- amazing though it seems-- i am twenty-three. there've been days when i thought i would never get here, days when i didn't want to get here. but here I am. let's see where we go.

TRDO and SBDC
My reasons for joining TRDO were simple-- I wanted to do more contemporary, and it was a challenge, a check, a question: had I changed at all from the girl who decided in 2010 that it was enough, that she wanted to stop? First practice-- April 16th-- reinforced every single factor that made me decide to quit, and then some.

i) I tweeted "wastelands" after the practice, because I felt there was so much waste-- wasted time, wasted effort, wasted talent.

ii) every single one of my own stupid issues came to the fore again-- the need for worth, for doing something of some good-- good i was NOT doing, whether because of my own inadequacy or the muteness of the choreo; the other one-- veekay's told me before that i need to compartmentalise. I don't remember if it was in reference to this. I don't know how to, or didn't-- and every damn thing just came surging to the surface

but the practices got better; i got off my preconception high-horse, got to know the people better, gave some input where i felt like it was possible to push ourselves more (i don't like pretty, empty choreo!). one of the things that made it better was getting to try pas de deux, which I've never done before. Chris was-- is-- really the perfect partner, and I told him as much--strong enough to lift me (that is VERY strong), sensitive so it's not just brute strength, and emo-emo where it's necessary. it was something i didn't fully appreciate until the second round, when i had so much trouble just adjusting to dimensions with Khairi-- oops. I can only hope that I was halfway as decent a partner. I've never felt more physically comfortable with anybody-- and I have so many space issues!! it made for an altogether novel experience in more ways than one. and, just for the record, despite the heat, sweat and grime, I liked the outdoor practices. a lot. blame track (i miss running, too).

I admit to being more than a little petrified for the second round—this time T.H.E. training had ceased for a good month-and-a-half, and even as lost as I usually am in those sessions they undoubtedly had a salutary effect some way or another-- even if it was just by way of sheer diffusion-- alright I'm being facetious. I won't ever learn to move with that ease and surety so inherent in contemporary, and so wanting in my self, but if nothing else merely the increase in vocabulary was very much desired. I think the decrease in comfort, the lack of awareness of my body, showed-- I certainly felt it. In the end I hated my performance in both videos-- the prelims and the finals-- although I certainly thought that we did at least a halfway decent job overall, and I was glad our item moved people to feel something-- from Marika to Jessica to Thomas to the completely random bboy at Scape. I just wasn't moved by myself-- at all. I'm not being harsh-- I'm being realistic.

In a way I liked how I did in the first item more than the second-- although I felt, to the end, that all of us were bound by the choreography, I also felt something on the day of the prelims itself-- from the very moment we started the first walking steps, in fact. It so disconcerted me that I forgot my steps by the third count-- oops-- and I didn't hold my ending pose because I was too busy trying to get a grip on myself. In another way I liked the second more-- because of the choreography, mainly, and the greater challenge it posed-- but I didn't feel it so much on performance day itself. Maggie was right about one thing-- the moment when she thought I was crying was actually the one point I was close to tears, because I finally felt something inside-- but everything else was acting. I hate acting. I don't want to pretend something I don't feel. Sylvia Yong's words struck me:

"Body never lies. Whatever you feel on stage, we feel it too."

So I guess in a way I was lying. Like that faithlessness wasn't enough-- oh my god my lines-- argh I will stop here. All in all I'm very very glad, nevertheless, that I took part, although I wish-- okay I stop here. HERE. except to say that choreographing for the second round was intriguing-- was this something like collaborating on a choreography? it takes thick skin and at least some shamelessness/ insistence-- and also volubility from all parties. mms. might be fun attempting more in the future.

With that said, I think doing two competitions almost-at-the-same-time is not something I would absolutely recommend. I've loved it-- the endless day to night dancing is something I couldn't have asked for in my wildest dreams, and the companionship along the way has been lovely-- but guilt over not being able to give my all for both was troubling. These items may have been the first where I didn't practise on my own outside of rehearsals. Music could have been mixed better. More thought could have been put into costume, song selection, choreography (argh). Earlier notifications of rehearsals (girls I'm so sorry for all my late night messages!! :(( ), keeping to initial session-and-conditioning aspirations, pushing and driving every dancer a little more-- the weight of a lot of these fell upon poor Jack, especially nearing the end when I just died inside. I just couldn't do it anymore, and I think at one point or another everyone felt the brunt of my deadened psyche. It wasn't a nice-- or responsible-- thing to do. Honestly SBDC could have been an all-round terrible experience-- it was really saved by people. It was a learning experience-- painful most of the time, but maybe necessary-- even the battle/pseudo-battles. I hated myself so much after the semifinals; when I saw how upset Cheryl was I started crying with sheer anger. I couldn't forgive myself-- as much as I was no leader, not in terms of dance ability or session-driving or even mere knowledge alone, I was definitely the one who had led them into this. What the hell had I been thinking?

The one thing I'd have taken away from this is the importance-- the sheer, crucial and inescapable necessity of doing this with people I love, who are willing to love me still when there is no reason left to love. I don't express it but I am so so so grateful for even the smallest, most basic of things-- Evon's constant asking of whether I need provender from NTUC, Cheryl's concerns over how I'm coping and offers to help with music, Rachew's pointing out areas we need to clean, Jack's EVERYTHING. I appreciated Cheryl and Rachel's proffered mindset switch after the disastrous semifinals-- when they offered to choreo, to find songs, think of costumes, everything-- I only wish I utilised manpower a little more effectively. If I were to do this again I think I would need to trust more and learn to delegate early so efforts are not needlessly replicated. As it was I did learn to have a little more faith. Not bad work, girls, though a small part of me still thinks we could have and should have pushed ourselves to do better.

Taking back all my secrets
In the past week I’ve received a lot of advice. I’ve been told to hold on to my hobbies (hobbies?! Something in me revolts at that—but then reality kicks in—what more can this be?), because at the end of the day the nature of my work being what it is there is a tendency that it will consume me; I’ve been told that I need to find meaning in my work—that, indeed, the place where I am is the one where most people are able to find that elusive meaning; that, again, the nature of my work being what it is the hours will get longer and the days more tiring and that it is this very sense of value and significance that will sustain me. The workload hasn’t come in yet—we’re definitely still in the honeymoon phase here, folks—but I worry, and fret. I’ve been told—many times, by everyone from my roommate to my seniors to the cleaning auntie—to enjoy this lull while I can, but at the same time I don’t feel good just slacking in the office for any amount of time at all. To be honest I think the other colleagues get pissed that we’re just waiting around too. I just want the worst here so that I can start adapting. This waiting is just redolent with unease.

I worry a little about competency, but perhaps my biggest issue is that I don’t know if I can find that value and significance. Something tells me it might not be so bad—either because fatigue can set in for anything—there can ALWAYS be too much of a good thing—or because, unbeknownst to me, that meaning is already inherent in my psyche. I’ve had a hint or two—the biggest and most startling being the sudden choking up in the middle of my interview when asked, quite innocuously, on my views of the death penalty. Who’d have thought?-- maybe that was the thing about having Eisen or Marcus around-- they always forced me to examine my thoughts, my opinions, my stand-- especially Marcus, considering how we disagreed on almost everything. Nowadays I seem almost content to just drift along.

One thing I've been drifting along for has been on my mind for a while now. It's like finding out what you thought was bedrock is little more than illusion, like the burning up of a paper house. I wrote a little earlier-- what more can this be? TRDO and SBDC combined bestowed on me a fatigue that went beyond the physical-- it was a mental ailment I still possess, a psychical exhaustion that haunts me yet. It's a certainty reinforced every day and I don't know how much more I can take. Those 8-hour days dancing... they were alarmingly draining, and almost soul-destroying, but I think given a choice-- if I were only good enough-- whatever I told Eisen almost two, three years ago still holds true. I would definitely think more-- that much have I grown wary of blind, absolute advocacy even of things I love, and honestly I have to question how much love is present in me for dance. I wish I could say I loved every aspect of it-- creation, concept, choreography and actual movement. I don't. That much was made painfully painfully painfully clear to me in the TRDO-SBDC period.

Nowadays, though, even the most stalwart of those flames is flickering, and I never thought I'd say this-- but to what end? for what purpose? Soozey sent me a message asking me what my biggest worry today was and after a while I answered "living a life of worth"; he further asked how I would feel if the worry was resolved, and I said something along the lines of "incredibly beatifically happy". Although I didn't consciously realise it until later, I drew that answer from how I felt when I did feel good enough.

Fred's said before that I have an-- unusual?-- ability to be content. It's not an ability-- it's a conscious choice. I have lived for far longer than I thought possible with the ghosts of everything I cannot have and will never be, and truly contentment becomes a survival skill. But this skill is failing-- I have stopped being able to find joy even in the too-small things. Happiness is not enough. What, then, is to come? There is an Oblomovian fatalism to my days now.

What do you live for?

going under

2011-06-14T00:44:00.003+08:00

and the waves pass unannounced overhead while you can only hope this breath lasts you through the next onslaught.

be thankful for small mercies (like conspicuous absences), count your blessings (friendliness is not to be scoffed at; neither is the chance to get from work to somerset in 15minutes), stop begrudging the claustrophobia, the loss of freedom, the inexplicable misery. for five exhilarating weeks you steeped yourself in all you ever wanted. learn to go a little without.

the minutes elongating into hours escalating into days stretching into years are illusions. the yawning abyss of forever doesn't exist. there is a finite number of the tomorrows you fear.

all you can do is live in the here and now, and be grateful. be grateful, and live.

(but i miss, i want, i need)

girls talk about the booty too

2011-06-04T03:09:00.005+08:00

too full of mixed emotions to know what to write about, except that i find myself unexpectedly nervous-- and crossing fingers, toes, arms, eyes: don't rush, don't anticipate music, hit, drag, and for the sake of all that is good and beautiful and holy EXTEND-- lengthen fingers, arms, legs, point toes. gahhhh.

the past week hasn't been easy, but a hell of a lot of it was my own fault. The last time I was plagued with this much doubt, this much uncertainty, may have been during SUAD in March-- borne out of the April-Joesar thing-- but then it was my own cross to bear. This time I inflicted it on four other people, directly, and on five others in a secondary-but-still-wholly-unwelcome manner; compounded it by endless fretting and comparison of ourselves with competing teams, myself and what I could offer with other teams' choreographers; then further aggravated it with my own emptiness. The one day (not day-and-night, mind you) we didn't have practice I threw myself under a figurative blanket and hid from the world the entire day. That Norfolk island getaway never seemed more attractive-- I was dying for want of solitude.

Veekay hit the nail on the head when she told me not to burn out. For a while that may have been exactly what I was doing; but burning the candle at both ends has had its benefits (please read St. Vincent Millay!). There is a headiness to the sheer physicality of it-- I could literally feel my body breaking down at the beginning, but of late it's become easier: the flesh may be saying "stop, please, enough", but it's amazing how much louder one's mind can scream. It's a hard-won strength, if still paltry. I love it.

We really don't know what we've got till it's (almost) gone. I don't want this to end. I stared at the letter that came in the mail today and couldn't understand how my dad could be so excited. I don't want next week to come.

So grateful for everyone around me, all the sacrifices they've made, all the effort they've put in. There is a lot more thanks due than I can express at 3.19am in the morning the night before morning prac and competition, with costumes to pack and sew and a hundred little errands to run before bed beckons. I won't forget-- but for now--

*cross cross cross fingers eyes arms legs toes-POINT*

the last of the last of the light

2011-05-16T16:56:00.002+08:00

I felt for sure last night
That once we said goodbye
No one else will know these lonely dreams
No one else will know that part of me
I'm still driving away
And I'm sorry every day
I won't always love these selfish things
I won't always live not stopping

It was my turn to decide
I knew this was our time
No one else will have me like you do
No one else will have me, only you

Pandoraean musings
In February I sat out in the wind and-- fuelled perhaps by another disastrous Sunday, fuelled perhaps by "a fledging hope, a cherished dream"-- wondered: perhaps even if people weren't ready they could grow to be ready.

It's true-- I won't always love these selfish things. Poised on the cusp as I am I can't help wondering how things are going to change, how things are changing.

Some days I know so clearly that my priorities are all screwed up-- but other days I know exactly what I want. I will learn to live with all I cannot have, learn to quench that bitter yearning, learn to make do with what I do have. I will turn cannot into can, and I will try, try, try. But most of all I will be grateful for everyone trying alongside me, for giving of their time and effort and energy so extravagantly. Our first Friday together I couldn't stop smiling, because maybe just maybe this was a part of something I'd been looking for. I don't think I will regret giving up Osaka for this, among other things.

I will turn CANNOT into CAN.

And for everything else there is after. I'll cross those bridges, or build or burn them, when I come to them.

Amazing still it seems
I'll be 23
I won't always love what I'll never have
I won't always live in my regrets

You'll sit alone forever
If you wait for the right time
What are you hoping for?
I'm here I'm now I'm ready
Holding on tight
Don't give away the end
The one thing that stays mine

a question of timing

2011-05-04T00:23:00.003+08:00

(or: the philosophy of pimples)

J: my pimple is hurting my face
i can feel it throbbing

Y: scold it
ok but seriously
ice it?
or if you have pimple cream!

J: no la its quite cool
its like a heartbeat for my face

Y: i woke up today and for the first time in a long while the only thing i could hear was the sound of my own blood throbbing through my veins

i just thought........ what if it's something that lives and has a heartbeat and it's yours and you own it and it's beautiful in its own warped way but it hurts you everytime. don't some beautiful disasters need to be smothered with benzoyl peroxide and killed?

J: i suppose.. but i will kill it when it is at its prime
i will let it live its life to the fullest and then take it all away

hot cross votes

2011-05-02T03:22:00.006+08:00

"My HOUSE is the hottest battleground."-- M to friend

I really hate elections because whenever they come around the house feels alternatively like an ice palace and an acid-filled oven. It's not much fun living in a house where your parents' political sentiments cancel each other out-- and in the cancellation thereof get spitefully vitriolic. This year I get to be the swing vote-- yippee for me. I didn't know how to vote, and the initial-- and still sporadic-- brainwashing gets on my nerves no end. I hate the idea of voting for the opposition just for an opposition, or the perpetual against-government-grousing that you always hear on the radio, in coffee shops, the government-should-this, the-government-should-that (what do you want, a nanny state?!)-- which is what my father castigates my mum for. On the other hand honestly no law student who has paid even an iota of attention in public law classes is going to say that we have a satisfactory governing system. I've been trying to sort out my thoughts and decide which way I'm going to swing (no innuendo intended!!!); I can't even begin to comment on the entire plethora of issues that's come up and obviously there are way better commentaries out there. These are just a few things that've been on my mind.

I'm not going to deny what the PAP has done for Singapore-- cheap education (although I hugely disagree with Maliki Osman-- there are cheaper countries out there. Any student who's gone on exchange to European countries will know!); reasonable transport costs-- in fact, reasonable transport, really, for all our gripes (hello, London Tube??); things as simple as creating park connectors, revamping stadiums, our "many-helping-hands" approach. I'm not saying I haven't benefited personally-- even from their scare-mongering tactics, because their constant-web-trawling was what alerted my bosses in '07 to a damaging online post that, may I add, a staunch anti-PAP-ist had made about me. on a porn site. (thanks ah. you guys are probably the triggering reason i stopped being so blindly go-go-opposition).

In fact, I've benefited a lot-- enough to say that under Alex Au's voter analysis I would fall under (C)-- not fearful, but not frustrated. Speaking as a law student-- I loved how Leon put it (definitely a very good read and it summed up so many of the reasons why I was/am a swing voter), it was a good reminder-- I am extremely privileged. I cannot claim to have known the poverty and hardship that the lower-income face. I feel more than a little ashamed to be asking for declamations on idealism, on higher-order demands, thoughts of free speech and liberty and reconsiderations of the death penalty when there are people who have to figure out how to support a family on a 400-dollar monthly salary, or the old lady (1:20) that first gave Nicole Seah her political awakening.

And yet sometimes I feel like we need to have a government that can look beyond the "drains and mosquitoes" of life to something a little above and beyond. For that I liked SDP's Michelle Lee's speech: "It feels like we are just running harder and harder to find ourselves standing still... We have forgotten how to prioritise happiness and wellbeing and quality of life and we have sacrificed it all in the blind and unconsidered pursuit of high GDP growth." GDP is not an indicator of happiness. Nor are Grow and Share packages-- seriously? Timing aside, comments about "carrots" aside, how much of this money is going to be wasted? 300 bucks isn't going to sway my vote one way or the other-- and really, what do I need 300 bucks for? To spend on another pair of shoes? Shouldn't the money have been given out with a little bit more thought-- to the people who can't afford rice, who have no electricity, who shoulder medical bills that MediShield cannot be used to pay for adequately-- and not the people buying 7-dollar coffees?

I guess in some respects I really do feel that the government does too much, and its efforts are directed at the wrong people/in the wrong direction. But when I heard Nicole Seah's April 30 speech I felt like it was heading in that direction, too. Things like why the government needs to be the one to place caps on prices of raw materials-- aren't we a free market economy? how viable are price caps for the long-term?-- and how does the opposition's presence and issuing checks and balances address rising world prices (all sounded like raw rally rhetoric to me)? Her "How many of our present leaders love Singapore? What do they love? Money!" got to me too-- I cannot believe that. Don't tell me Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong don't love Singapore. Don't tell me me George Yeo doesn't. Hell, to some extent I won't even believe Wong Kan Seng doesn't, much as I've been flat out appalled by every word that's come out of his mouth. I have faith-- at least a modicum thereof-- in our current leaders; however screwed up our quasi-democracy is I don't believe they entered politics without at least some love for this place we call home. Honestly this comment made me revise my opinion of poor Nicole a little-- and she's pretty amazing to me.

And amongst all this PAP complains that the other side is giving "motherhood" statements, with no detailed plans, no concrete statements. I could say much the same of a few of PAP's speeches!; and of the ones that are not, there is nothing inspiring, nothing intense and urgent, no passion or drive I can sense-- something definitely present in opposition speeches. For the PAP, words seem to be there by rote, or maybe they're too couched in "pls revert"-type lingo for me to feel anything. A lot of what the PAP does focus on are feel-good stories about what has happened to a single individual who has possibly benefited from one policy or another; the crux here is that it is in the past. The crux here is that there is a sense of self-satisfaction I really don't like. The crux here is that maybe-- just maybe-- it's the threat of not being returned to power that has forced so many of them to wake up their idea.

I was impressed by the showings of sheer decency-- PAP's Desmond Choo pointing out the missing address on WP's forms, Vivian Balakrishnan and Vincent Wijeysingha shaking hands when meeting on nomination day, Nicole Seah and Tin Pei Ling pointedly refraining from sniping at each other. I'm moved by people who are shaking themselves out of political apathy. I like how the opposition is standing its ground and fighting-- and gaining. I even liked MM Lee's random interviews-- before he got defensive, he was the voice that I was looking for. You hear and read so much that is positive about the opposition that you can't help feeling there has to be another side to the story (or maybe it's just me playing devil's advocate/feeling for the underdog-- gosh, how ironic)-- and there was an idealistic tone to one particular interview with Today that I cannot find right now (argh!) that I particularly liked, which cast PAP in a very good light (although today I pretty much revised much of my opinion of him after reading another of his interviews-- dear god now i know where my father gets his "vote for the opposition and in the future our men will be construction workers and our women maids in other countries" schtick from. To think I thought he was just being an ungrounded nutcase. Thanks ah MM Lee.).

The things that I really disliked however were
i) LHL's treatment of an ex-colleague of mine during his CNA forum or televised speech post-nomination-- whatever it was
I hate how reporters always get the short end of the stick. They're as much the people's voice and representatives you claim to be, and just because they ask inconvenient questions-- questions that we, the public you're incidentally supposed to be serving, might well want to ask and know the answers to-- doesn't mean you can interrupt before they finish a question, cut them off, raise your voice at them, get snarky in general. Says a lot about you as a person and what you think your position entitles you to (eurgh how did half my post disappear)
ii) Vivian Balakrishnan's "outing" of Vincent Wijeysingha-- it smacked of insidious hinting, sly you-knowing. If you want to say something come out and SAY IT. don't insert-asides
iii) personal gripe-- Raymond Lim (he speaks really well though, which is something I honestly had not expected). I listened to his speech-- he sounded so convinced, so convincing; my sister, mum and I were planning how snarky an email we should be sending him about his promises, since the nada-reply on the fixing-pavements-which-broke-dad's-leg-and-please-direct-us-to-suitable-agency fiasco (somewhere along the lines of "there, see, ha-ha, NO VOTE FOR YOU"). no points scored with my mum on that one! no points scored with me either, come to think of it
iv) mob mentality and mudslinging, on both sides. Why in the world do people behave like this?
v) argh so many I can't recall all of them and type them out here again bleh.

In a sense I really don't know how the election will turn out-- for all the sentiment that is apparently out there I think there is a lot that is not being said, a lot that is hidden. People's behaviour at the ballot box may well differ-- I honestly didn't get the fear people were spreading about why they wanted vote secrecy so very much until my mum explained (oops). I know, however, which box I'm crossing (finally! I was half-minded to cast a null vote). But I think I've definitely learnt a lot in this period-- and it's not even over-- a large part of which included learning that you can live under the same roof with someone for twenty-two years and not know the most basic of his/her convictions and/or moral bent. But at least there are opinions. For everyone who's been posting "I'm too lazy to find out la just go PAP" or "stop flooding my wall with all this GE shit"-- seriously? I mean, SERIOUSLY? Especially if you're voting? Unfriend. If governments should be afraid of their people you are exactly the ones to fear, because you will vote with your elite uncaring hands with your elite uncaring unconsidered minds and screw us all over. Get the fuck out of Singapore. You benefit and show no damn love or appreciation, and I have zero respect for your self-satisfied mugs.

"have you heard about the untimely deaths of the pamphlets?"

2011-04-29T00:06:00.006+08:00

sms from my sister: "Workers' party and pap pamphlets came in the mail today.Daddy tore up the wp one andthrew it away. Mummy went looking for it and when daddy told her what he did she grabbed the pap one and stormed out. Later she called me to tell me she was sitting on it -_-"

i haven't stopped laughing. My family is DAMN weird. On the other hand i should probably take a leaf from their books-- this morning i spent two hours shouting at my dad, a follow-up from last night's pseudo-discussion, also with raised voices. For all that he's swearing endlessly at various opposition supporters my dad really has mellowed-- I'd never have gotten away with this in the past. I need a chill pill.

Or not.

Okay deep breaths. Kudos to WP for the pamphlet i never saw which was specifically addressed to all three voters, versus the "dear resident" of the other one.

across the universe

2011-04-24T14:39:00.003+08:00

m: "you should totally meet H. She's doing a paper on the creation of the universe and she has to name this one section about the age of the universe called 'dating the universe'. And because she's her she immediately thought of a scenario where a boy goes home to his mum and says, 'mum, i'm dating the universe. She means the world to me.' and she just goes on and on and after 5 or 6 terrible puns like that she says 'don't you see the gravity of the matter??"
y: "oh my god i think i just found my soulmate can i please meet her hahaha"

i'm the only one who finds this absolutely hilarious, right.

only words

2011-04-09T13:32:00.001+08:00

"Do couples run out of things to say to each other?... I think they don't have to. There is always new poetry."

运命

2011-03-25T02:50:00.008+08:00

amidst the mad rush leading up to SUAD this article made a particularly deep impression on me:

March 11, 2011, 10:33 AM
Sympathy for Japan, and Admiration

... Watch Japan in the coming days and weeks, and I bet we can also learn some lessons...

Japan’s orderliness and civility often impressed me during my years living in Japan, but never more so than after the Kobe quake. Pretty much the entire port of Kobe was destroyed, with shop windows broken all across the city. I looked all over for a case of looting, or violent jostling over rescue supplies. Finally, I was delighted to find a store owner who told me that he’d been robbed by two men. Somewhat melodramatically, I asked him something like: And were you surprised that fellow Japanese would take advantage of a natural disaster and turn to crime? He looked surprised and responded, as I recall: Who said anything about Japanese. They were foreigners.

... [Japan's] sense of common purpose is part of the country’s social fabric, and it is especially visible after a natural disaster or crisis.

I don’t want to overdo that. Japan’s civility masks problems with bullying from schools to the work place, gangs like the yakuza rake in profits from illegal activity, and politicians and construction tycoons exchanging favors so as to loot the taxpayer. But it was striking in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake to see even the yakuza set up counters to give away supplies to earthquake survivors. And Japan’s social fabric never tore. Barely even creased.

This stoicism is built into the Japanese language. People always say “shikata ga nai” – it can’t be helped. And one of the most common things to say to someone else is “ganbatte kudasai” – tough it out, be strong. Natural disasters are seen as part of Japan’s “unmei,” or fate – a term that is written by combining the characters for movement and life.

Full article-- well worth every second, and then some-- here. Read in hindsight, with the spirit of the Japanese people so strongly poignant and sharply contrasted against the back(front?)drop of SG politics, the gag factor of the latter just increases manifold.

(it is very useful to have a sister well-versed in Japanese to translate random snippets of language. it is not as useful when she sleeps at normal hours and you're still keeping Swedish ones.)

p.s. shikata ga nai reminds me of my favourite line from Brokeback Mountain-- the one that triggered epic waterworks--

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."

Your guess as much as mine why that struck such a resonating chord.

cruel to be kind

2011-03-21T00:00:00.008+08:00

i was going to blog an angsty angry post because i really was swinging between extreme smash-a-mirror angst and jack-float-in-a-lake zen. but talking to veekay and hanagami and my sister has made me a little more equable. (see my point about black swans and islands and lighthouses?)

i still think the intent of my original blog post has merit, so i'm going to write it here. if anyone is reading this at all-- please stop being charitable. stop being nice. stop reframing to be kind. if there is anything at all that you dislike about the way i dance-- ANYTHING-- movement. strength. conviction. commitment. expression. my goddamn hair, for chrissake-- TELL ME. once. twice. more if i cannot get it. scream it in my face if you have to. doing "okay" is not okay. not sticking out is not okay. slash it into my skin if you must because otherwise i will never know and never understand and i will always be stuck here running running running nowhere and one day i will run into yet another dead-end and that will be one too many andiwilljustkeepslammingmyselfagainstthatdamnwallbecauseihavenowhereelsetogo.

fifteen minutes ago i could have told you exactly what it felt like to hate yourself so much that looking in the mirror made you physically sick.

i know it doesn't affect my self-worth as a person. but who said anything about personality? what about worth as a dancer? i also know once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, and three times and more means something somewhere is well and truly fucked up. and it's not like i can't feel that there is something wrong in every choreo i'm trying to do.

i'm all out of c'est-la-vie positivity. you guys-- you don't know how much your words are doing to keep the monsters at bay.

i'll be fine. i AM fine. please just tell me if there is anything at all you think i can work on.

Epiphany 101

2011-03-17T16:25:00.001+08:00

in the lead-up to Shut Up and Dance...

I seem destined to screw myself over-- as if last year's hell week wasn't bad enough, I've signed myself up for hell months this semester.
1/3-- 15% presentation
7/3-- 100% research paper (nopes, no typo)
8/3-- 10% presentation writeup
10/3-- 20% essay
13/3-- mediation journal entry, 1 of 6 which will determine 50% of grade
17/3-- 20% essay

27/3-- SHUT UP AND DANCE

27/3-- journal entry, supra
10/4-- 30% essay
15/4-- 60% term paper, 30% case study
5/5-- 60% exam
6/5-- 20% exam (seriously?!)

It scares me-- or at least makes me a little thoughtful, a little wistful, a little regretful-- that faced with all this I readily elect not to go for classes in a bid to make some poor headway on a Sisyphean task. It's like a little insight into the future, the quiet giving way of insanity to pragmatism, of heady hedonism for practicality and "must-needs". Life goes downhill from here, indeed. Meow chided me that this was part of growing up-- but why must "growing up" necessarily involve practicality succeeding passion? Or is there something else to all this altogether?

I've been hearing a number of people ~~complain~~ speak, with no small amount of enervation, that maybe it's time they stopped dancing. That they don't know where they're going. That they've lost the feel for it, that they no longer know what they're doing, or what they want out of this and what they want out of themselves. They speak of concert fatigue, of being sick to death of the songs, of practices being a chore. It's so much-- worse? thought-provoking? sobering?-- when the very people who are vocalising these thoughts are good, in the simplest sense of the word, and who have been leading and pushing and inspiring dancers for much of the time you have known them. It seems like we're all dissatisfied, like the "problem that has no name" which spurred Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is now our malaise, only in a different form.

And yet there is the ugly-- or at least unpleasant-- side of affairs too. I judge, and only a little abashedly, when dancers voraciously seize any chance to throw themselves on stage, willy-nilly, can-do-or-no. I judge even more when experience/ seniority-and-all-that-bs-jazz should have taught you better by now. I'd far rather not be blocked in for an item that I cannot execute properly or that I'm a half-past-six failure for than just grasp at any ray of the limelight that might possibly come my way-- something I've seen happen more than once prepping for this concert. You should have heard me swearing blue murder when Pat blocked us for Look At Me Now; I scuttled all the way to the back from the start of the song only to have Pat change lines PRECISELY at the point where I hadn't learned the choreo at all (catch me skipping another blast class again-- idiot!).

But with all that in mind I truly have to say that I am more grateful than ever for the items I've been allocated. I love the Ohayguys' item-- I don't think there's ever been an item that I've enjoyed quite like this-- seriously I've had fun at EVERY practice. I was very glad that I was doing the first song (I still remember when Xuzi first posted the namelist on FB-- I literally held my breath!); I really like the lines and techy-bits of his choreography and it was something I wasn't used to-- I loved how my body started to get a bit more accustomed to it. Erwin's choreo was equally-- no, actually, it was much worse-- alien to my body but it is so shiok to do that I forgive the rampant auto-tuning. Kevin's Beautiful Hangover blocking is genius-- so simple but so visually effective. Jack looks so good there! The last song is still murder. I still freak out when the music starts. I still screw up steps. Well-- I have a week! (OhmygodIonlyhaveaweek andthennomorelongSaturdays:(((()

I've never listened to music quite as much as I try to do for the Fred/Chun item, whether for the item itself or the doing-doing bits, or tried to subject various limbs and organs to such psychomotor configuring. That part was fun. It's been challenging in some other areas because I get incredibly antsy when I don't know what the hell is going on and honestly that happens more often than I'd like at practices for various and assorted reasons. The attendance thing got on my nerves too arghh but whatever. For this item the point when I really started to enjoy myself was when we started sitting out and watching runs-- and I could see how we danced as an item, how people had different interpretations, how everyone responded to the music or worked with expressions or even interacted with each other. I said at one rehearsal that it made me super happy to watch them dance-- and it was true-- it was only after seeing them all that I managed to work up any sort of a smile while dancing. The people are so nonsense and so funny and so happy-- and happifying! Plus I'm still not sick of the song. go Janet! go Janelle (and funky lyrics)!

And in a way even the oh-my-god-don't-block-me-in-for-this-ness for the finale item was good. After the disaster that was second vetting I kicked myself in the head a few times and settled down to sorting out exactly what the steps were instead of smoking my way through. I learnt-- am learning!-- a bit more about how to make myself remember steps, and even things as basic as keeping on count (no, you cannot substitute lyrics for counts. you CANNOT); things like how it feels when you finally get through a run with minimal mistakes, things like thinking while dancing, things like listening to the music, things like simple musicality. I used to like the song a lot; by the second session or so I started hating it; as the days went on I grew to hate it with a vomit-inducing vengeance. Then somewhere in the days and counts and slow-figuring-outs of it all something changed and now I can't listen to the song without a shiver or two running its fingers along my skin. So strange.

I also got to see more of how Chii Tarng works as the dance captain and I truly think he is incredible. None of the other captains I've encountered in my four years in Blast would have taken this much upon themselves, or put up with so much shit from us, or been quite so single-mindedly dedicated in molding the juniors. It helps that he's got such a strong supporting cast-- Wei Na, Jason, Cheryl. I only wish he had a stronger cast of dancers as well, who wouldn't make him quite so jaded. Yesterday at the penultimate pre-concert practice Pat made us dance in groups; Wei Na, Jason and Chii Tarng were amazing. They gave the choreography a sharpness, a strength, a coherence I don't think was or can be taught (but perhaps can be learned).

And yet it is these same people whom I've heard, among others, expressing fatigue.

I wonder. But yesterday was an Ellen-Kim-esque epiphany. At dinner Jason said he didn't like Wednesdays because they were so long; neither did Jack. I said so many times yesterday that I wished I could go home. I was so tired. The last, unexpected tale that Aloysius had shared at mediation class that morning had been emotionally draining and sobering; the tears that wouldn't stop coming after were born of a mixture of extremely inadequate sleep, PMS, and true sorrow/pity. All I wanted was to be alone, to sleep and not think. But there was Blast, and rehearsal. I arrived at Blast class half an hour late and marked through the first few runs without heart or energy or anything beyond "God just let the day end" on my face. And then-- somehow--

Somehow I found out how glad I was for every breath I could take, for every moment I had. I threw myself into every run and spent the spaces in between figuring out what I wanted my body to do; and if I could not do it at that point with the music at least I knew what I wanted it to look like and I could work towards that. Dicky looked aghast at me several times-- "eh it's just marking. Chill leh!" I didn't want to chill. The music hit me at odd moments (Eminem and angst!!); I was still suffering the after-effects of that morning and kept getting weepy. I don't know if Wei Na saw me-- but she just quietly came up to me and worked through the steps and offered to run through the entire song with me again and again and again. Maybe she sensed something. If she did, I would have to love her for her perspicacity, her decision not to force the issue, her quiet way of just being there.

I said all I wanted was to be alone. But-- and maybe I didn't realise this-- all I needed was to dance. I said I wanted to go home. Home is where your heart is. I said I wanted to sleep. But do I need to sleep if dreams occupy my every waking hour?

Uh okay well the answer to that is still yes but yeah.

On one of our more pseudo-philosophical (as opposed to charades-crazy) bus rides home we passed through a quiet Shenton Way and saw the 24-hour Macs that I flippantly said was there to cater for all the miserable lawyers stuck in their offices till 3am. We got to talking about what we wanted to do, what we wanted out of work; Jinglin spoke about a video she'd seen of someone who just set up a taco stand on a beach in summer and how it really made her open up her ideas of what she wanted from life; I think it was the avant-garde freedom that she wanted. Yet that provoked the question-- do we work our asses off just so we can go travel and laze on a beach selling tacos or read in a cafe? Is the whole point of our lives for nothing more than to get to loaf?? And today walking Krys out of school she said "the only point of living is to prolong not dying". Is that life?

Which is why my Ellen-Kim-esque epiphany. The point of life is to live, and if this is how I can live then hell I am not going to mark through life or feel guilty for choosing to live. I'm selfish. But I'm not abashed.

It's been a swell time. I'm sorry to see it coming to an end, because I think sometimes the best part of me surfaces around people-- maybe around dancers, especially? Otherwise it's like-- people get so attached to me, or so used to having me around-- and half the time I just throw them away with nary a second thought. At least with people this time round I feel a little twinge at the thought of not spending so much time together, or even "oh my gosh it'll be Saturday when I next get to see you!".

I hope I don't jinx anything by writing about this now. Still crossing my fingers about costume changes, about getting steps right-- and oh my gosh about Saturday vetting and Sunday audition :/ But epiphany-wise-- yesterday I finally believed myself, if only for a split-second, when in the space before the music started I breathed and told myself there was nothing to be afraid of.

to be ill-adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown

2011-03-14T05:47:00.006+08:00

18/1/2011 curbside poetry
if i could paint i would paint tonight: the blur of motion in a reckless headlong drive tinged with flavour-of-the-month radio pop. i would paint the cool skeins of wind splaying new patterns of shadows on the ground, the still stealthy darks of quiet, the purple burbling of low laughter. i would paint the crenellations of the curbside where we sat, the harboured damp of the day pressing coolly through our clothes to our skin. i would paint the emotion in our voices, paint the secrets i'd hidden for so long, paint the realisation of how much you were holding and thinking and seeking a balance for.

if i could paint i would paint the way your hair was drawn out in black brush-flicks against your face, shifting in the chancy air. i would paint the hands-- your fingers quick and light, my hands slow and ponderous, rueful with regret.

if i could paint i would paint the truth in all its revelatory light, but i would also paint the shades of the unspoken words that if spoken would layer the picture thick as impasto and render it less a reflection of the night than a depiction of the way my mind is, all the time.

But I cannot paint. And in the words of Rilke, not everything is sayable.

20/1/2011 days
"the fact that theres the ‘day-you-know-you-will-feel-horrible-when-it-finally-arrives’ goes to show you have experienced ‘days-that-make-you-feel-so-so-so-so-so-so-good-that-you-wish-they-never-end’ and that its only up to you to live the days between the 2 days as best as you possibly can."

28/1/2011 you know that i'm no good
today i heard something so ludicrous i would have burst into laughter-- bitter laughter-- had i any energy left.

My dear, the last thing i am is "in control". and some days it is all i can do not to smash the reflection.

various days in february spring-cleaning
emptying all my shelves in a search for academic certificates and the like I come across a brown paper envelope and stare at it for a while.
me: "i am the only person i know who can get penpals out of people I meet in a club."
sister: "*stares* I think the point was to exchange NUMBERS, not addresses. why are you so weird. what if he was a crazy axe-murderer?!"

i'm weird?

2/2/2011 that's what she said
"Yarra turns me on, but not in a 'I want to date her and take her out to movies' kind of way." -_____-

21/2/2011 it's just emotion not taking me over
what is this feeling of which you-- and you--and you-- speak?
i don't know how to distill moments and store things up, then pour them over the page like some florid condiment. my heart is not a ketchup bottle. i've been running on empty. i cannot be happy, and i refuse to fake it.

what happened to my eudaimonia? And yet--
"You notice someone cutting you off in traffic. But not that the earth is still here for one more day."

It ends tonight.

22/2/2011 when you get tired of waiting to die, why not just decide to live
Was uncomfortably unfamiliar with my entire body in Allegra's Minaj-Check-it-Out class. Was incredibly happy that I decided to stay for Gin's Bollywood-hiphop-esque Minaj-Muny class-- body woke up for once, although by the end of class both it and mind had given way to unthinking whacking. Loved the moments of awareness. Gin is crazy.

Later, had possibly the best-- and if not, certainly top-three-ranking-- milk tea of my life (shh, I think it's a very well-kept secret: it's this old [its name is literally Old] HK cafe in Katong). Took a walk. Loved the talk. Very grateful for everything I have, for everyone I have around me.

I don't know know how long we've walked the streets
Talking for ages about the people we're gonna be
We've been waiting for a change
But I don't mind if you don't change baby
Though it might seem crazy
But I'm happy with you this way

I think maybe the one thing that struck me most, watching Black Swan last Monday, was how much we can't live as an island. It's so easy to get lost in the intensity of everything, of ourselves; and if we don't have lighthouses around us nothing stops us from crashing headlong into our personal promontories.

6/3/2011 i can't even get the dates right anymore
today i would wish for time-- time to find white roses and to write a letter. but when i thought about putting pen to paper i realised there was little left, there might as well just have been white paper sealed in a white envelope with only the marks of a name on the cover and nothing else. because that's what happens when you go away, see. when you leave and do nothing more to make new memories, when you let time's waves and undertows and waters rub away your footprints in the sand of our lives. the marks fade, the impressions disappear, everyone gets a little busier and after a while the silence becomes the status quo. I don't know how Eva Khatchadourian kept it up that long.

it never rains on the day you left.

7/3/2011 contrarifool
Just because you've been trying with every fibre of your being to kill something for the longest time doesn't mean you don't break when it dies.

But I might actually prefer breaking. Anything over this cold indifference.

11/3/2011 eudaimonia that comes and goes
Today I was inexpressibly happy. The bad thing about a blog and a gloomy disposition is that I tend to record only the worst bits, the most overcast days, but what I'm not able to write down all the time is how glad I am even for the "bad" parts. I walked familiar routes today and thought of all the intervening events, of the person who walked those roads then and all the things that have happened in between to make the person who walks those roads now. It's marvellous. It's amazing. It's humbling, and all I know is how glad I am for these days, and how much I hope these roads will never end. It's a reckless sort of joy and I love how invincible it makes me feel. The deepest cuts scab over; the starkest scars fade. One of these days you won't hurt anymore either.

Millean questions

2011-02-22T03:43:00.005+08:00

"He's nice la because he's harmless... most harmless people are either nice or boring."
"Am I harmless?"
"You? No..."
"Good. I don't want to be."

word drift

2011-02-18T13:46:00.004+08:00

at FredChun prac one day...
Y: "arghhh I'm so lazy but I need to stretcchhhh I want a rack."
J: "you want a rack?!"

project poetry

2011-02-17T15:22:00.007+08:00

(picture pilfered from Tan Xin)

In the process of making V'day bookmarks for the FredChun people, Jack texted me and said, "This project is such a discovery!" And it was-- I (re)read and discovered more poets/writers/songs/plays/ movies in half a week than I would have in half a year, usually. There were some beautiful ones that were simply not appropriate for anyone, but which I either fell for or which left an impression. This is probably the wrong way to remember them-- listography does not work for everything!-- but needs must. A poem, an essay, a movie, a book, a blog entry--

Gwen Harwood, "In the Park"
She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.
Two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt.
A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt
Someone she loved once passed by – too late

to feign indifference to that casual nod.
“How nice” et cetera. “Time holds great surprises.”
From his neat head unquestionably rises
a small balloon… ”but for the grace of God…”

They stand a while in flickering light, rehearsing
the children’s names and birthdays. “It’s so sweet
to hear their chatter, watch them grow and thrive, ”
she says to his departing smile. Then, nursing
the youngest child, sits staring at her feet.
To the wind she says, “They have eaten me alive.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, "Requiem For a Friend"
Too long to quote in its entirety, this one was unutterably sad. I was more struck-- and stricken-- by the image of "Rilke [writing] it over two haunted nights" (talk about deja vu) than by any particular line, but below is the quote that first led me to it:
"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."

Patrick Marber, "Closer"
Dan: And you left him, just like that?
Alice: It's the only way to leave. "I don't love you anymore. Goodbye."
Dan: Supposing you do still love them?
Alice: You don't leave.
Dan: You've never left someone you still love?
Alice: Nope.

David Mitchell, Ghostwritten
I wrote this one for Yvonne, after talking with her about sakura and promising her a description.
He stopped smiling for once and gazed out. "The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it turns ever more perfect. And when it's perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the ground it gets all mushed up. So it's only absolutely perfect when it's falling through the air, this way and that, for the briefest time..."

"Conventions of Craft", Charles Warnke, from Punctuate This!
The cineastes, bibliophiles, dramatists, authors, and artistic polymaths are all in relative consensus about the substantial inefficacy of a storyteller’s choice to conclude a work with the odious words “and then he woke up.” It deprives a story of its accumulated meaning by extirpating any possible significance imputed to actions done, words said, and things felt, ultimately subjecting the entire narrative to the distinct possibility of being rendered completely irrelevant and nugatory.

But I have been watching you sleep for the last three hours knowing that when you rise in the morning I will be gone. We have been dreaming for so long. We have walked in the endless expanses of the clouds and danced in the ocean and turned the irresolute dirt of the world into something fertile and wonderful. But I am no longer asleep. And I know that for the rest of our lives the only part of this story that will have any meaning is the part where we both woke up.

And Roald Dahl's retakes of conventional fairy/folk tales: numbers 5, 8 and 15

I also finally read Brokeback Mountain-- then buried my face in a pillow and bawled my eyes raw. I loved the ending, the simple economy of words, the matter-of-fact prosaic-ness of it all. Life.

music and (words like) lyrics

2011-02-08T12:55:00.003+08:00

I couldn't describe girls, not like Takeshi or Koji. But if you know Duke Pearson's "After the Rain" she was as beautiful and pure as that.

Standing by the window, looking out.
-- David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

delirium

2011-01-16T19:10:00.004+08:00

the floor loves sylvia yong.

And this is a super stalkerish comment but i love watching KSB watching sylvia dance. All the more so after reading his cfa interview. They were both super nice today and sylvia was very friendly to yvonne (chua).

I am much happier and now very glad I went today despite all my eleventh hour misgivings. Whatever the outcome-- I tried!

Ok woozily unwell self is crashing to bed. Good night.

I didn't want to be your angel, but you were my god

2011-01-16T02:01:00.006+08:00

I've been reading madly-- a residual effect of the idyll of the holidays-- but not had time to write about the books. Here're a few, and a few thoughts to go along with 'em:

Finally finished Lolita after a three-year hiatus; I saw this edition in PageOne after Hoods one Sunday and practically pounced upon it. You have to see the actual book to believe it-- such a cover! I got very weird looks reading it on public transport. I have trouble understanding how blase I was about it three years ago-- I consider myself fairly liberal but definitely found myself more than vaguely appalled, to the point of actually blushing reading this time (yes, yes, unwarranted and unexpected, I know). I really don't particularly like Nabokov's writing; maybe I don't like translated books, I don't know. As it is, one reviewer called it something like "the only real love story of our times". Jack read out that line and said "That's so sad". I am inclined to agree, for all sorts of reasons.

On the same trip I picked up Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy, and had a much easier time getting through the bulk of it in one morning sitting in a waiting room in CGH. I didn't expect it to be what it eventually turned out to be-- I'd bought it entirely on the strength of its first sentence, which is "Let me tell you about when I was a girl, says my grandfather." It is honestly laugh-out-loud funny at times, and endearingly frank and blunt in its reiteration of Ovid's Iphis myth (Book 9 of Metamorphoses) and eventually the-- love interest's(?) mutability. My favourite section from it might be this:

"The grey area, I'd discovered, had been misnamed: really the grey area was a whole other spectrum of colours new to the eye. She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl's toughness. She had a boy's gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and rough as a girl. She was as pretty and delicate and dainty as a boy. She turned girls' heads like a boy. She turned boys' heads like a girl." &c.

Plebeian, on its own, but in the context of the entire book-- and the way it encapsulates what Smith is trying to convey! I tried to explain what the book was about to Angela, even let her read Judith Butler's quote on the frontispiece (is there such a thing anymore-- alright maybe a sort of preface)-- but met with little success. It is a light read, very short, and yet not devoid of meaning. And it is FUNNY. Girl Meets Boy is also part of the Canongate Myths series to which Jeanette Winterson's Weight also belongs-- the second Winterson I'd ever read, huddled in the driving rains of London and in airplanes crossing continents.

Another Winterson I read during the holidays was Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, courtesy of Fred. Here is food for thought:
"I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had been possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky.

As it is I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever, I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy."

Dear Ms Winterson, I love your writing as usual, but I took exception to that. I don't know if I've got you right, but on the offchance that you somehow meant that only the male of the species is unworthy of love, I'd have to disagree. Gender isn't a determinant of anything beyond maybe physicality. That is why I found Girl Meets Boy so very-- close to home? Ringing particularly true? I've said this before, many times to many different people-- we say language, nationality, age (although Nabokov does make me wonder-- eh! reasonable limits apply!), height, looks, income, race, some (myself included) argue religion, shouldn't matter when it comes to love. How does gender enter into it? Must one's affections only lodge in a bosom that is somehow the physical opposite of oneself's (I bowdlerise Rose's exclamations here)? My words of expression are unclear; I hope my meaning is not. Once when I was working a couple came into the shop and dithered over the fragrances on sale. One party cajoled the other for a present; he gave in, half-grudgingly, half-helplessly. I watched in quiet amusement and wonder. Whether this was a mutually-equal relationship I did not know, but truly-- how can anyone see two people, listen to the way they talk to each other, watch the way they interact, stare into their eyes and then deny the validity of their emotion because of their gender; look them in the face and call them unnatural, abhorrent, impossible? I cannot. I think I've found aspects of people I could love, or have loved, or have grown to love. Gender is incidental.

Yet, dear Jeanette, if your meaning was that there is no one who can humanly match up to the idea-- the ideal-- you want, the model molded on God you have in heart, then I begin to understand-- and to empathise. I said I found aspects of people I could love-- but they are aspects, disparate pieces of an incomplete jigsaw. The picture is never whole. I don't pretend I am not asking for too much. A friend (you remain unnamed-- unless you want to be acknowledged!) once likened the process to looking for a meal-- "if you want rice, a place to sit down, et cetera et cetera", then of course it'd be harder, but if all you want is "nice food"...!

But I'm not looking for food. I'm looking for a tall drink of water, cold as cold can be-- that incredible, impossible, clean taste of utter and complete rejuvenation you can only find in water-- exactly that kind of emotion, sensation, elation that you get from it after a particularly gruelling session in the studio. I'm looking for impossibility-- someone who knows I have to be cajoled, because I am every inch my father's daughter; someone who can stand my at-times over-solicitude, because I am every inch my mother's daughter; and yet, someone who understands that I am every bit my contrariwise claustrophobic-agoraphobic self who needs space and also, in Vienna Teng's words, "a love with intuition/someone who reaches out to my weakness and won't let go". There are times I cannot be let go of; but there are times when I will cry, or reach for pain, and it's not always good but not necessarily bad either. I am a bundle of contradictions. I am saying too much. I don't know how to say any more. I am no angel and have no right to perfection. I don't feel the need to keep looking for something I know cannot exist; and I am not willing or not able to change, and I won't or can't settle. I guess like Winnet Stonejar, Jeanette Winterson, whichever and whoever of her many personas she is/was, I thought I'd glimpsed that oasis once. But it feels like a lifetime of ghosts ago.

Not too long ago my best friend said in the ten years she's known me she's never seen me quite like this. I guess I've just never seen things quite this way before. It's not something I know how to explain, when people like Jason or Claud ask me "why do you say you're not a good person to be with?!" or "don't you ever get lonely?" Charlotte Bronte has a quote entirely apposite, in Villette:

"But solitude is sadness."
"Yes, it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break."

So I guess if Winterson is saying what I think she's saying-- I might understand that aspect. Like her I believe that there are people who do find what they want. It kind of explains why I get so worked up over breakups, because I'd like to think that some people find their little bits of heaven here on earth.

Speaking of Villette, I'd forgotten how very emotive and emotional the book was-- how evocative the language, how moving the writing. It is not a perfect book-- far from it! I confess to a certain lack of credulity at the mechanisms of Lucy Snowe's heart, and finding the same drearily over-long portions that I did when I first read it five (FIVE!) years ago. The ending came with the same blow, although I knew to be prepared for it this time. Poor Charlotte Bronte. What a life! What emotion she poured into this volume! I'd read somewhere that the original ending was a lot bleaker; her appalled proofreader/ editor(s) had begged her to rewrite a happy ending. She refused because she wanted it to be true to life, to reality-- her life, her reality. But eventually in fiction she granted a measure of respite-- although the glimmer of hope in her ameliorated ending can only be grasped as light by the eternally optimistic or positively desperate. I like her style of writing immensely-- I would be happy to be able to write a little like that, although perhaps a little less volubly. Small wonder that I used to fantasize (shhh, quasi-guilty secret) that I was Bronte' reincarnation hurhurhur.

I've been in a bit of a blue funk over dance recently. The reason I rebonded my hair-- don't laugh, don't sneer!-- was because after Wednesday's class and rehearsal I couldn't stand how f***ing MESSY and UNCLEAN I looked. My hair did not help; I've been told more than once, by Claud and Puayson, that it was just adding to my messiness. On Thursday taking advantage of an empty seminar slot I snuck out of school and tadah. I don't actually think it's helping, although today when I ran into Cheryl Chew and Jack in the toilet before rehearsal Jack said, "Oh my god!-- NEATNESS".

I feel like I've been spinning into cul-de-sacs while people have been turning corners. At the end of Wednesday-- actually, halfway through Blast-- I was ready to just find a corner and hug a pillar-- after maybe bashing my head a few times-- not too many, just enough to create, in Nabokov's words, "a porridge of blood and brains" (misquote!). But today was better. There are times when really, despite all that I cannot do and can never aspire to be, pleasure still comes through. And sometimes I just have to try. As Keng Wee and I were hanging around in RH after rehearsal today I tried to do the double that Erwin'd asked for-- and somehow, bearing in mind Ryan's words about "mentality", managed a slightly wobbly but still-okay-probably-counts. Keng Wee said, "See? And last time you couldn't even turn!" (yeah well then again I didn't manage to repeat it for the rest of the day although ok I wasn't trying properly anymore)

All jokes about recap-monstrosity aside-- I REALLY am not a recap monster. It's just that I find so much joy in sheer movement alone sometimes, even if it's not valuable or aware movement-- yet (I hope it will be, eventually!). Don't begrudge me one of my few delights la. Dance is my tall drink of water, even with the bitter under-tang.

On the walk in tonight I finally had time to stop by the wayside for the marmalade cat that skulks along the path to the train station-- the cat that I see every time I rush to school, or for class. Her stretch of enjoyment as I rubbed her under the chin was worth a lot, and the night ended on delightful notes of wind, moon, cloud, purring. What is life if, full of care, we have no time to stop and stare.

i want to tell the story again

2011-01-01T19:02:00.010+08:00

(13/12/2010)
Sometime in the end-days of November/start of December I sat out in the garden and re-read old entries in blogs and travel diaries. Some made me smile, others made me laugh out loud, a few called up an all-too-familiar lump-in-the-throat. All of them evoked moments and memories more vividly than the me who had written them could have imagined. It's hard to believe the way hours and days have cascaded into each other; hard to believe that I've been back from exchange almost exactly a year. I keep drawing parallels between what happens now and what happened then; the resemblances are almost unheimlich. I say almost, because some of the parallels are obviously happenstance-- for example, I apparently only read Winterson in winter.

Reading back it's all too clear that the downside of cryptic blogging/writing is that one day you will look back at an August entry and not understand the reason for the tears in your eyes, nor remember why you wrote "I will be okay if it kills me getting there". What was not okay? What was so dark about that night's skies that the stars seemed so much brighter even through the tears? Why streetlamps, and why a smile? But I never wanted a mindless fact-centric reiteration of my days, and if at some point in time I am only able to write this much about this affair, this state of mind, it will have to be it. I feel a bit wistful, seeing how much more detail used to go into earlier entries, and how much more can be evoked. It is, however, "more"; I don't say truth. There is no autobiography only art and lies (Winterson, again). There are entire monuments, entire walls, to serve as reminders that what I remember is not what you remember if you remember anything at all. The word itself is already so telling: re-member, reconstruct. Your art, my lies.

And surprisingly some things I remember. Write things-- even cryptic things-- down and they become memory-keepers, talismans of pixels and bytes and black scrawls on white to guard against the forgetting. I don't know how to coalesce the preceding days into a unified sensible narrative and I will not try. Some amulets can only be made piecemeal. The enormity/numerousness of the pieces is stultifying; it's been a long year.

(1/1/2011)
And at this point, numerous draft entries to the purpose notwithstanding, all I can write (and it's a fair lot) is this:

Other people make new year resolutions. In the last weeks of December I made old-year decisions:
i) Try harder
ii) Let go
iii) Today could be the first day of the rest of your life.

They're on completely disparate things and people except where they concern the same matter. They've not been easy to keep to. They're still not easy. I wish I had a bit more resolve, a bit more determination, a bit more strength; a bit more courage to deal with the fall-out of plausible failure.

I've spent a lot of "significant" time alone this year. I remember driving to the beach just before midnight on my birthday; I remember walking a lot, on various and assorted nights and days for various assorted reasons-- I kind of blame exchange for that, I always had a habit of walking-- just not this much (in any case friends it is generally NOT a good idea to saunter down Geylang at 2.45am in the morning in full stage makeup however upset you are). Christmas I hid from everything and finally finished Antony and Cleopatra-- don't read it! My literature teacher was right when she said it would be hard to make a bunch of teenagers love the characters-- hell, I think it's hard to love them anyway. Spending NYE on my own wasn't a conscious decision, but I was pretty much headed towards that option.

I think I ~~loved~~ needed the last day of 2010. I came full circle-- and in some respects "fool circle" would have been apt. There has been one constant in my life since I came back from exchange and it was fitting that what started the year off (sort of-- my first practice was 2nd Jan?) should be what ended it too. Talk about parallels!-- 2nd Jan morning I spent with the craziest girl I know, lounging by a pool and playing Time Crisis, and then going for Fred's prac in the afternoon; 31st Dec said crazy girl was there for Fred's sharing session too, and uttered this immortal line-- "Did he just say his choreo was spas or sparse?". I enjoyed the session-- it didn't feel at all like three hours, and-- to paraphrase Magnus' words, it's been a while since I've been "oh, floor! oh, wall!"-ing. The emotion in song and choreography was very stark; I grew to love the honesty of the song, the vulnerable promise and self-acknowledgement of that vulnerability in lyric and music. I express myself poorly!-- but the way the choreography touched different layers in the music was... delightful? pleasing? commensurate??? Songs with strings always remind me of XF, and Canon in D, and Fire and Hemlock :)

I liked watching everyone's different interpretations of the music and choreography; Zong's emotion, Jack's yearning innocence ("pao ba hai zi" indeed!), VK's feeling and "moments of violence", Fred's unerring precision and surety... the pangseh-ers, shame on you! your loss :P It was a good piece with which to end 2010 and my contemporary dance sojourn. In a way it cemented the decision-- Steph Phua tweeted once that "there is something about contemp that is very true" (or something to that effect). I lost that truth. I've always used emotion as a crutch to hide complete want of technique, but in recent choreos I've felt more and more like I was prostituting a heart that simply wasn't there-- and it felt almost blasphemous to continue. On another point emotion cannot hide technical lack forever; while it might at some point satisfy the unknowing incompetent, I was no longer unknowing. Magnus calls it his quicksand; it's my mudslide. At the other extreme when I feel for the choreography the emotion gets in the way-- I want so badly to be able to do the choreography, or do justice to it, that I become completely unable to do it, or I am already from the beginning simply inadequate. I hate my timing issues, my lines, my unknowing. The incompetence kills me and has been the cause of many a meandering walk and, in one instance, a particularly angsty post-midnight run that murdered ankles, back, hip.

It's been a beautiful journey in a beautiful year. It was brilliant being part of Jessica's item for recital-- I'd never thought I could feel like that on stage. Watching the video made me catch my breath-- the pas de deux portions!-- until I caught sight of myself *yech*. I've loved pretty much every class I've taken-- Maggie's, which always always always elicit some form of emotional response; Jessica's, which shaped so much of the foundation of everything I know; even Ryan's, if only just to freak out (and incidentally, for everyone who thought my This Moment emo-ness was wrought by Jessica-fan-girling, it was not: Jessica is amazing, but all my meltdowns watching that last dance weren't occasioned by Jess. It was Ryan). And there were of course the T.H.E. sessions; every Sunday was painful, and mortifying, and soul-destroying, but there was beauty in the breakdown-- even if it was just from watching Kuik Swee Boon float into a jete or Sylvia's translation from movement to movement.

Thank you VK for always taking the time to tell me what I'm doing wrong, and for explaining, and even for answering midnight SMSes asking inane things like what your knees are supposed to do when you're trying to split. Don't emo-- you are good. Please don't ever beat yourself up for being inadequate; I loved watching you doing Fred's Who Am I choreo. Thank you Magnus for going through Jessica's jazz course with me!-- so that I wouldn't have been the only person in class sometimes haha. Keep going, your quicksand's not that deep. And stay off the paracetamol! Thank you Fred for introducing me to contemporary dance in the first place (crashing Steph's Gravity(!), Jessica's and Maggie's classes), for convincing me to try again after we came back from Osaka, for correcting me, for inspiring-- whether in your attitude towards dance or in the way you dance. Really cannot anyhow! But you've never been anyhow. Thank you Keng Wee for spending time teaching me to chasse. Thank you Maggie and Jessica for showing me how to feel, how to move, how to be a little bit less scared of everything. And to Malin Larhammar, who in 2009 gave me my first taste of lyrical jazz-- you were right, there is beauty. I just don't have it in me.

On the last night of Blast camp when I told Magnus I wouldn't be going for contemporary anymore he said (with concomitant actions-- I should have videoed), "Maybe one day you'll come back and it will be 'oh floor! oh wall! How could I have been away from you for so long!". Maybe :) until then--!

After Fred's sharing I stayed in the studio for a while and then walked to West Coast in the drizzle before taking the first bus that came along. It took me where I wanted to go; places that were filled with far too much that was really nothing at all. I spent the rest of the day collecting my thoughts, writing backdated entries, reading a little; facing, if not exorcising, personal demons, and confronting a few old ghosts. I am proud of myself for doing so. The day passed, as time always will. I left my post, exchanged it for another, and watched as sunlight drained from the sky. Dusk took the reins from the still, sticky embers of the afternoon; the night grew cooler, almost cold. It was welcome. The winds brought so much comfort; fingers encircling cold bars I did my best to take my own advice. I won't deny the tears, or the bone-aching pain that came out of nowhere. Old-year decisions, indeed.

Sunset on the last day of 2010

In one of my Dec '09 entries I wrote "I have dared to do things, but I am sorrier for all the times I did not dare." And on the last day of 2010 I asked-- and answered-- myself, as honestly as I could, was I sorry for anything this year?

I have no regrets. None. Not even for my dismal grades, because I got exactly what I deserved (and honestly I was more affected when thirty minutes after knowing my results I realised that Contact 2010 had been Sylvia's retirement performance). I tried; in some instances I fell, and the fall was baaad. But for having tried, for having dared to try, I am grateful, if not satisfied; equable, if as far from happy as I have ever known myself to be. Trying is rarely if ever enough. But at least I can say that in 2010 I lived-- truly, completely. The insane heights, giddying and euphoric; the darkness of the depths which even now I am chary of recalling. I don't think I could survive another year quite like 2010. But I think everyone should have at least one 2010 in their lives-- hopefully, one that is a little bit less harrowing than mine was.

It is so hard to say goodbye. But, come! a little Macbeth for this Dorian resolve. I woke up on the first morning of 2011 smiling.

do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand

2010-12-16T11:20:00.003+08:00

i dreamt i was in uppsala on a rainy summer's evening. The streets had another voice another face; the bus had another voice another face; in the studio there was another's voice, another's face.

And when i woke up this was in my head.

when you're dreaming with a broken heart
the waking up is the hardest part

i no longer wonder at my insomnia, because i fall asleep to dream. And these dreams are too poisonous and even after all this time i am not yet inured.

Oh well.

wondering if she's really there
is she standing in my room
no she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone

my newest source(s) of amusement:

cheryl, on the pet shop at fong seng:
"omg it's a FARM."

jack, while passing the brand new extremely loud extremely flashy disco lights at al-ameen:
"Am-een the club!"

jack, on being told soozey works at ttsh:
"he's a nurse?"

conversation between christine and jack:
j: "what's the place where you do hot yoga..."
c: "oven?"

like jack said, very sylvia plath. :)

i cried because i had no shoes, until i met a man who had no feet

2010-12-11T23:59:00.003+08:00

thank you everyone who's asked after me because of the previous post-- i'm fine. Basically my mum fell and hit her head while she was in Genting with my dad and sister and my dad called at about 1 or 2 in the morning to tell us. I overreacted hugely-- or not so hugely, because the offhandedness of my dad and sister's voices belied the fact that they would stay up the whole night, as afraid to sleep as I was, watching for every intake of breath.

Incidentally Google Maps' directions to Genting are deceptively simple... until you realise that in the < 10 steps to get to Genting from my house there is involved a 292km stretch of road. That-- and the fact that I couldn't for the life of me remember where the hell I left my passport-- meant I stayed put at home instead of attempting a 5-hour-7-minute drive at 2am in the morning. Small mercies.

I'll spare you the graphic details, although my dad took a perverse delight in describing how much blood there was and the colour my sister's face turned, and when I was about to take my first look at my mum's wound my sister made me swallow what I was eating (it was a late dinner) before letting me see. The stitches looked like staples, dark and thick with clotted blood.

I am suddenly very tired-- too tired to organise my thoughts. Bad things keep happening. I would ask plaintively why, and fret, but tonight as I walked down a darkened corridor in the hospital I saw a silhouette of a wheelchair in front of me. Its occupant stopped pushing at the wheels and hunched over; there was a sense of a released breath, a minor giving-up. I met his eyes for the briefest of instants as I passed him-- bright, clear, but pulled gently at the edges by rig-lines of weariness. It wasn't until I'd gone out a set of glass doors and he'd pushed his chair into the light that I looked back and realised that his left leg ended in a stump at the knee, the right in a bundle of bandages too truncated to form a foot.

I am very lucky to be able to do what I want, what I love, what I need, wonky hip or no. I wish I could say the same for my dad, who is the reason I was in the hospital tonight. As he was coming out of the car someplace an ex-NSman of his saw him and called out to him; perhaps momentarily distracted, he stepped badly and caught his foot in a broken/misplaced drain cover. The NSman's speed meant he caught my dad before he fell completely to the ground, but by then his foot had twisted enough that the damage was done. Broken ankle, two torn ligaments, surgery on Monday if all goes well. I only found out when my sister messaged me as I was leaving school, and I was so distracted I nearly crashed the car only about 7 times. Dad's still as stubbornly stoic as ever, but he is in a lot of pain, and lamenting all the might-have-beens-- how he'd planned to come back and run this evening, how much weight he'd been bench-pressing, how fast he'd been clocking on the treadmill.

Might-have-beens.

I am thinking of mice, and men. I am thinking of time, and fate, and the vagaries of life.

I am very tired. But I will be fine.

2010-12-07T03:23:00.004+08:00

1.

i'm too scared to fall asleep. too scared to think. too scared even to breathe. stupidly, all i want to do is cry.

like that will make a fucking lot of difference.

2.

i'm the wrong person to turn to for hope or comfort.

your side of the bed

2010-12-04T05:26:00.003+08:00

"dance for the right reasons. Dance from the inside, and always remember that you loved it from the start."

there's your reason to keep going right there. For all the bitterness, the overthinking, the a-little-over-zeros and dancing-dirt-into-snows of it all, nothing supersedes that love.

And if i will always have to love what i can never have then let that be the world to my atlas.

slices of time

2010-11-30T17:41:00.008+08:00

break these calluses off of me one more time 31/10
Do you remember-- have you ever read this story, when you were a child? It was in one of those Enid Blyton books, hardcover and brickable-stackable, often indistinguishable one-from-the-other apart from one stand-out tale. This wasn't one of the stand-out stories, but for some reason it stayed with me. There was this girl who didn't care for anybody, who laughed when she saw children fall down and scrape their knees, who didn't bother to help her mother with her aching back, who basically had all-oblivion-no-tact. One day she literally pushed her luck too far when she shoved an old woman who was walking too slowly for her liking and obstructing her way in the woods. The crone was furious at the girl's insolence, and substituted the latter's heart for a stone. And it was heavy, heavy, heavy, and queer, queer, queer-- because she could not feel anymore, and everything was cold, deadened, grey. The doctor could do nothing for her; she seemed perfectly fine, and she was-- but for the fact that she had a heart of stone, to match her nature.

And she was upset, and terrified, and found the old woman again and begged her to take the stone away. The old woman was sympathetic-- she didn't have a heart of stone, did she?-- but unable to help: the only way for the girl to get rid of the heart of stone was to behave like she DIDN'T have or deserve a heart of stone, and it would go away.

And so she tried, tried to be nice-- but it just got worse. Every time she did something good, something that would show she cared, her stone-heart would hurt, jabbed by a sharp blade's-edge of sheer agony. But still she tried, although each act of kindness left her almost doubled-over with pain each time. And finally she met the old woman again, and broke down in tears, saying she was trying, but it hurt so much.

And the old woman felt for her heart, and beamed, and said-- but my dear girl, you don't have a heart of stone anymore. It's a proper, soft, pink, human heart!-- and the pain was from the melting of stone to become the heart you have today.

I don't know why I'm thinking of this story today. But I said once that it was all safely iced over. I guess I forgot that ice melts. After all, if even stone can give way to human flesh...?

And it's scary to know that I'm giving way in classes again, but oh my god what it feels like to feel again. And what it feels like, to have people see that I can feel again.

and it's just emotion that's taken me over 3/11
i don't know why it seems so complicated to people when it seems so clear to me.

i don't know why it seems so hard to have faith and keep the faith.

i don't know why people need. I don't know how to stop the needing.

Sitting and talking with E under neon lights as smoke wafted around us and clung in ever increasing intensity to our hair and clothes, I was surprised to find myself choking up, as much for how much I couldn't help as for the tears she was crying as for reasons unknown. What is this-- empathy? An excess of sensibility?

the melancholy of suzumiya haruhi 14/11
and the nameless something inside prodded me enough that I tookabreathpluckedoutmyearphones and asked the girl next to me, "sorry to bother, but who are you supposed to be?"

and yes, what a cheery child suzumiya haruhi turned out to be. although her parting comment of "have a nice life" taken out of context might have been a little off.

what we were looking for were lashes of ultra-violence 15/11
it can be painfully hard to reach me even at the best of times and i will freely admit that the "best" has probably passed, a long long time ago. Fred recommended a Borders sale at OC the other day; I wandered down, sifted through the books and was surprised at how much it all just mildly turned me off. almost everything looked to be the same story crammed into different-coloured packages. something inside cringed at each self-important title seeking gravitas and momentum, foreboding and omniscience. something inside scoffed at every plot detail proffered upon each blurb and every accolade splattered across each cover: "insightful", "moving", "chilling", "compelling"; a "tale of love and loss" and ohmygod i'm mildly sickened even trying to type this. how many could even lay claim to the simple epithet of "witty"-- no, let's just try "independent"? how many even had a coherent tale with some spark of inspiration? so overwrought, so strong, the palimpsest effect-- i grew tired even just standing before those books. i think a lot of the appeal of general, generic reading comes from being able to feel, or relate, or having a certain idealism so that there is still delight to be derived from a thriller's plot twist, or even merely to be open to the idea of love and loving. i'm not that accessible-- susceptible?-- anymore.

cynical, cynical, cynical.

i really don't know what i like to read anymore, or at least i don't know how to classify what i do read and enjoy. Jasper Fforde is always a pleasure; ditto for David Mitchell, whose language can be so curiously evocative even at its most pedestrian ("sunlight on waves like drowsy tinsel"?). The same may be said of Jeanette Winterson, and-- from the two books so far-- Janet Fitch. Lionel Shriver and Carol Ann Duffy are hit-and-sometimes-miss affairs, but their hits are bulls-eyes. Terry Pratchett for wit is usually a winner, but his latest-- Unseen Academicals, typed by Rob Wilkin-- is... strange, and somewhat haphazard. my sister says it's missing the mastery of his personal touch. What are these?

i almost long for the easier days of being the dogged slave of a given genre or author. it's literally nauseating how much bad writing there is in the world-- the mental equivalent of microwaved junk indiscriminately drowned with synthetic cheese, the bookish equivalent of some taiwan 龙卷风 melodrama. gag. no wonder we seek refuge in classics.

p.s. on another note, reading Burgess' A Clockwork Orange made me physically sick. I'm not exaggerating.

dreams underfoot 27/11
from a book bought from that same book sale:"There's stories and then there's stories," he said, interrupting her. "The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you've heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them, and pass them on and the giving makes you better. The others are just words on a page."
...
"That's what art's all about, too. My paintings and your poems, the books Christy writes, the music Geordie plays-- they're all lines of communication. But they're harder to keep open now because it is so much easier for most people to relate to a TV set than it is to another person. They get all this data fed into them, but they don't know what to do with it anymore. When they talk to other people, it's all surface. How ya doing, what about the weather."

falling (28/11)
Yesterday at OC I was laughing at ADD as we vacillated between the escalator and the great glass elevator; all ready to commiserate I suddenly realised--

I'm not afraid of heights anymore.

They just make me breathe a little harder, a little sadder. They just make me a little more sober.

when i say jump you say how high

2010-11-23T21:46:00.002+08:00

mum: "不能去岜厘了啦，没酒店房。"
sister: "去香港我很想去！！"
mum: "do what la"
me: "*sarcastically* 买东西吃东西买东西吃东西..."
sister: "*self-evident pose* 人生两个最大乐趣！"
me: "睡觉呢？！"
sister: "oh ya hor. aiyah taken for granted la anyway no hotel rooms we can also just 露宿街头. 捡报纸来卖还有钱拿"
mum: "纸盒啦报纸."

earlier this morning:
mum: "look what i got for you! come see come see."
me: " *grumpy from mugging* What?!"
mum: "*shows me a huge-ass trampoline* see! you said you wanted right?"

... the last time i can remember telling her i wanted a trampoline may have been when i was thirteen.

as an aside--
9th november 2010, karamazov
this time last year i was fervently wishing to be reborn as ~~a ballerina in the Hungarian National Ballet~~ the pointe shoe of a ballerina in the Hungarian National Ballet. and taking extended-slow-shutter-speed photos of Hungarian roads, and papering over fights as we walked along the banks of the Danube.

Now I am here reading about conflict of laws. well, i guess that's still a fight?

what a difference a year makes.

i almost can't wait for friday to come!
(the qualifier is because i am amazingly unprepared. catch me taking another subject because it will "look good" on my transcript instead of because i actually like it. yeah the C is going to look REALLY good. stupid.)

trust me trust me i think i got heartbreak down

2010-11-15T15:25:00.005+08:00

This is possibly my favourite track from Adam Lambert; the lyrics literally spoke to me, and the video clinched it for me in a way I'd never expected-- not from Glambert. Such vulnerability, such exposure. This is an open invite to run with the song in the dark of night-- doesn't even have to be 1am, 8pm will do-- quintessential catharsis.

Who knew the song was written by Pink? :):):)

(I kind of like the Lambert version more, though, but I listened to his version at a point when I really felt the lyrics and so he would be a pretty tough act to follow.)

Props to Pink nevertheless for everything I've heard from her new album so far-- Fuckin' Perfect, Raise Your Glass (which I actually hated at first) and this gem:

so close i can almost taste it

2010-11-11T14:54:00.005+08:00

i can't believe my hell weeks are almost--almost--ALMOST-- over--

(then there is another 2 weeks of being stretched on the rack studying for icl but i'd like to think i can sleep and eat and go out for dance normally for that one. ALSO HAVE TIME TO FIND THE DENTIST-- yes, hell week decided to make itself triply hellish by having the wisdom tooth fairy pay a visit, complete with opercula and other irritating nonsense that i really don't want to think about now. explains the headaches, toothaches, general oh-my-god-kill-me-nows. wisdom sucks.)

I have 2 more assignments due before i can call time on this last stretch-before-the-next... I guess I just wanted to record

i) submitting two of the WORST essays i've ever written in my life-- Islamic Law and Freedom of Speech. I literally spewed words on the page with no idea what I was trying to get at. when I say worst, I mean worst-- and I usually like essays even if I grumble a lot about them. These were Bad. I'm not looking forward to getting the results.

ii) submitting two other essays I'm very iffy about-- ICL and Nego. hoping against hope :\

iii) my nego practical-- I had this ball of dread curling in the pit of my stomach because I'd slept basically two hours after throwing in the towel on citations for my FoS essay, and the last time I'd touched the fact pattern was four days ago on Sunday while watching O Crew rehearse. It went-- surprisingly well? I'm kind of proud, because I liked my feedback-- "thorough" and "steady" are not exactly words that leap to the fore when you have me in mind. This, despite neglecting a very big point and speaking too fast and speaking like a child. And also despite being triply disadvantaged because I am young, Asian and female (i wanted to quip that it just made me a triple threat but realised i couldn't back that up so shut up).

and now i am exhausted and brain-dead but i have a twenty page essay due tomorrow and i haven't started on it. i also have my recital costume to sew and music to burn for the girls. there is no music or poetry or thought left in me. something inside needs to remember to breathe. i can't remember the last time my shoulders were this tense, and they won't untense. i want to dance.

mind your language

2010-11-02T23:40:00.004+08:00

(about 11 minutes ago-- i have to type fast cos the moment she comes back and sees this i am DEAD)

M: There's this very formal form that we have to use in Japanese-- kei-go-- it goes something like this: "Your great and majestic excellency, I humbly castrate myself in your presence--"
Y: *chokes and falls off chair*
M: What??!... The word is castrate right???
Y: *about 5 minutes later* pros...trate--
M: yeah that's what I meant I totally meant to say that.

Y: ow ow I'm laughing so hard the veins in my neck are constricting ow.
M: Why do you have veins in your neck?

B
I
M
B
O (don't even get me started on what she did in school today)

to keep things in perspective

2010-11-02T11:55:00.011+08:00

~~wednesday 3rd nov: multi-party negotiation~~
~~thursday 4th nov: reh at 9.30pm~~
~~friday 5th nov: 9am-- takehome exam starts~~
~~friday 5th nov: 11.59am-- ICL essay due~~-- 22 minutes late woman you are a MCPHAIL.

~~saturday 6th nov: reh? plus block and clean kids~~
~~sunday 7th nov: 11.30am-- stage run~~
~~sunday 7th nov: 5pm-- nego essay due~~
~~tuesday 9th nov: 9am-- nego journal due (i think!!)~~
~~thursday 11th nov: 10.30am-11.30am assessed negotiation~~
~~thursday 11th nov: 2pm-- takehome exam due at student counter~~
~~friday 12th nov: 12 noon fact construction due (TWENTY PAGES?!?! this'd better be double-spaced)~~ 1 hour 6 minutes late. hoooo boyyy
~~sunday 14th nov: 5pm? final journal and annotations for the first 4 due (joel lee is amazinggg thank you for all your timeline reprieves)~~

(14th november 12.31am: omg now that i don't actually have another 2000000 words to type for an essay i actually feel kind of lost. no wonder people turn into workaholics.
oh. i could always start studying for icl.
...
no, come on, screw that.)

saturday 20th nov

------ recital!!

sunday 21st nov

friday 26th nov: ICL exam

and there goes another year.

(have i missed out anything??)

and on a sidenote-- finally a Murakami I can read without cringing (so far).

2010-10-20T13:02:00.002+08:00

idiot. idiot idiot idiot idiot IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT!

(LOML, Clandestine-- you two totally rock. i owe you my paychecks [if i ever get a job] and my first-born child [if i ever ~~abduct a chil~~ i mean, adopt])

kiss me then i'll wake up

2010-10-16T00:34:00.004+08:00

you better lose yourself in the music the moment
you own it
you better never let it go (go)
you only got one shot
do not miss your chance to blow
this opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo

over laptop lunches (as opposed to tv dinners)

2010-10-14T13:27:00.001+08:00

Mon: "I don't have energy to do anything. I have no motivation."
Nette: "Me too. How do you get motivation--"
Me: "By realising that you have seven deadlines in one week--"
Nette: "That's NOT motivation that's desperation."

arghhh

2010-10-09T15:10:00.003+08:00

my siblings, obviously having a hell of a lot of fun at my expense:

standing at the doorway looking at me banging my head on my laptop (figuratively. i was banging it on the floor. no, i was punching the ground la)
M: "do you need a cave? you know what you're like you're like the dragon that lives in a cave that no one ever sees anything of except the fire breathing out."
Y: "ARGHHHHHHHHH"
B: "*sotto voce* let's go she has the newspaper"
M: "is that dangerous?"
B: "she can make AIR dangerous let's go let's go."

reading my essay question
M: "on the basis of readings provided in the syllabus and in Prof HARRGGHHHKKK's lectures, write an analytical essay about the structural transformations that Islamic law underwent during the modern period... political, institutional, conceptual/epistemic-- oh my god he just fell asleep reading your question."
B: "zzzzzz"
M: "*reads on* as compared to its forerunner--"
M&B: "FORERUNNER".
Y: "What?!"
M: "Halo Reach: the race that came before the humans and the Covenants. they made a lot of cool stuff."

suggestions for my essay:
B: "you can submit this motivational poster: it's a picture of a motocross racer flat on the ground in the position you were in EXACTLY with the words MUSLIM DRIVERS and in smaller words '3.00pm. Time to pray, no matter what'. Er, I know it's racist but it really was exactly the position you were in."

yea well like i told them it'd probably get me a better grade than the shambles i currently have on hand.

what kind of heart doesn't look back?

2010-10-06T12:47:00.006+08:00

some days almost everything is a trigger.

yesterday for perhaps the first time i finally saw all the aspects of the mess i leave, all the time, every time. it seems like whenever someone comes to depend on me the one sure thing i will do is let them fall.

the thing is, i don't find it in me to care.

it's just as well that i don't think anyone ever needs me enough that my walking away causes anything more than befuddlement, or for those a bit more sentimental, a few attempts to rebuild burnt bridges.

high time to let this testament go.

no one was ever going to save you, baby

soul food

2010-09-29T01:12:00.004+08:00

One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
-- Elizabeth Bishop

And two weeks ago I found this in a pile of secondhand books outside the co-op... I took about two seconds to decide I wanted the book after reading it.

In Paris With You
Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with... all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.
-- James Fenton

That same book's yielded up other gems, including:

Carnation Milk
Carnation Milk is the best in the land
Here I sit with a can in my hand
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch
- "Traditional" (I kid you not)

6 more cases, 2 more articles, 1 more act and 1 negotiation worksheet to wade through before head can hit pillow. Go me.

two (thousand) steps away

2010-09-27T00:30:00.002+08:00

It's hard to see the fear inside
As I walk away from you
And distance overcomes the miles
As slowly I pull through
And I cannot reach the world today
Cos I'm suffering from you
And the more I think, the more I cry
As I walk away from you

[Chorus:]
I'm two steps away
From loneliness
I'm awake
From the mess we made
I'm alive
And I'm feeling incomplete

I don't understand my life
Or the version that chose you
And the warring hearts and winter came
Now there's nothing left to do
And I cannot reach the world today
cos I'm suffering from two
And the more I think, the more we die
As I walk away from you

two steps away

the way i need to wake

2010-09-24T02:06:00.007+08:00

walking, stumbling
on these shadowfeet
Toward home, a land I've never seen
I am changing
less and less asleep
Made of different stuff than when I first began
And I have sensed it all along
Fast approaching is the day

When the world has fallen out from under me
I'll be found in you still standing

I loved Jessica's piece today. It was the first time I'd felt anything for a choreo in a long, long, long time. I loved last week's Belief too, but in a different way-- not heart-felt (as in felt in heart-- I need more words for love, damnit!), but because I am a diehard fan of floor-and-wall choreography-- a relic of Gravity (I've been forever imprinted!).

We love songs and choreography we identify with. Walking-stumbling seems to be all I'm doing these days, but if it's what it takes to wake up-- let the bruises come. Bruised knees, battered egos; walls, falls, floors, flaws-- bring them on!

(on a completely maybe-not-so-separate note: "my first thought was 'you slut!'" hahaha)

so fragile, tonight

why i am screwed for islamic law

2010-09-20T16:08:00.001+08:00

a general sample of my notes from class:
"The only thing that exists today in Islam that resembles something in pre-modern Sharia law is law of personal ststsuas and even then sh ehas rbbbeen heli heni"

GGXXGLHF

"Nevermore!"

2010-09-17T17:44:00.003+08:00

Y: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
B: "Er... I have no idea."
Y: "Because Poe wrote on both."
B: "... huh?"
Y: "... Poe? Edgar Allan Poe?"
B: "No, I'm sorry I'm ignorant--"
Y: "Quoth the raven "nevermore"--?"
B: "What--Cooked the raven nevermore? Are you sure??!"
Y: "No-- QUOTH, as in like the past tense of quote."
B: "Oy that's shakespeare language you can't blame me! what the heck is quoth it sounds like a swear word-- quoth you! why can't you just use quote. I mean-- seriously-- quoth off."
Y: "*rolling on floor dying*"
B: "Quoth this I'm going to get a drink".

find by word, or heart

2010-09-12T01:07:00.003+08:00

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

snow.

i think even you have given up on me.

i am such a lemming.

p.s. suntec was incredible-- when the 1st runners-up were announced and we realised who the winners were i opened my mouth to cheer-- and literally could not speak. congratulations guys :)
p.p.s. and i hope the gamblerz guy who dislocated-- arm? shoulder?-- is okay :s what a souvenir of sg to take back.

don't it make your brown eyes blue

2010-09-07T01:04:00.002+08:00

if shame had a face i think it would kind of look like mine
if it had a home would it be my eyes

so many things i'm so fucking afraid of.

how can anyone want something this much and not be able to do anything about it?

so strange that we should both think of him, so many years down the road.
but that is not reason enough for this melancholy, is it?

i'll be your lullaby singer

2010-08-25T17:16:00.007+08:00

Two of my favouritest female singers ever just put up new singles this week (one of them just 46 minutes ago in fact). I love!

The Lullaby Singer, Anna Nalick
If her name sounds at all familiar you probably know her as the one who sang Breathe (2am) and Catalyst. Also Wreck of the Day. I love this one-- she has a completely different sound-- she's so much darker. Go Anna!!

i can see you tugging on a wishbone
angling an outcome
bones will only break their word

bent against (?) a shotgun
I don't know if I can get you out of this one
But you can call me up at twenty after midnight
I'll stay on the line to talk you down and tuck you in

Hold My Heart, Sara Bareilles
This darling should need no introduction. I like how honest this feels, how personal. Very City, but less solitary?

i didn't know how to stick around
how to see anybody but me be getting hurt

does anybody know
how to hold my heart
cos i don't want to let go let go let go too soon

i want to tell you so before the sun goes dark
how to hold my heart
cos i don't want to let go let go let go of you

Nalick and Bareilles to sing me to sleep in between lessons on 12.5hour school days. Alright, life is bearable :)

lisa loeb, much-maligned

2010-08-22T02:04:00.005+08:00

(my comp is being a diva and i can't rotate this [dear gods technology hates me] so stretch those necks!)

_______________________________________________
reading through texts in old phone. torn between laughing and crying and laughing until i cry.

i miss.

i ache.

it's been a year. unbelievable.

reasons to be cheerful

2010-08-16T19:40:00.011+08:00

... that over easy
is a fried egg giving up
its golden yolk without distress;

that bowling balls are solid molecules of hope,
and Margot Fonteyn danced at fifty-six
as Juliette, long-haired and loved by Nureyev.

Where to start?

Hip Hop Fest: SixTeen Crew Challenge
The most-recently concluded event; on the last night (Sunday's battle) Wei Na was furious with us-- and rightly so-- because she asked why the hell we were ashamed of the way we moved. I could see her point-- I was a bit irritated by the "oh-my-god-i-cannot"s, because I don't think it was so much "cannot" as "would not". It'd be terrifying, but if you had to do it then do it trembling if you must, but DO IT. And yet at the same time I was ashamed. I loved the way Kyogo's crew moved, the way they battled; loved the groundedness, the flow, the insane musicality. And watching them BATTLE was like seeing the raison d'etre for forming crews in action-- that knowing, that synchronicity, that utter union with music and awareness and KNOWING-- knowing your own body, knowing what was demanded of you, knowing exactly where you as a team were going. The way they moved was-- dance-- in its-- rawest?--form, and it was awe-inspiring.

Dance is expression. I remember telling Tracy that I felt like choreography was a whole different level of engagement with music; that when I tried to choreograph I felt like I was speaking through the music with words of my own, rather than parroting another's script. Then again, however well-crafted a script is, it's still a script. If we always hunger for what we cannot have (and I suspect I do), I wanted-- want-- spontaneity; spur-of-the-moment truth and not rehearsed emoting. I'm not saying there is no beauty in what we do; I'm just saying that watching them I felt the extreme paucity of what I could do. I felt like that when I first went for Maliq's jazz funk replacement class-- the stark, stark divide between, for want of a better lexeme, street-and-studio. It's happening more and more; I literally feel stifled on stage, in classes, during sessions, and so unsure of what ~~my limbs~~ my self is doing that I cannot speak. Suddenly I begin to understand the fierce protectionism street dancers/ "real" hip hop dancers brandish, and I no longer know what the hell I'm doing anymore (if I ever did).

I should be banned from watching any event in which Flair'Nation appears. Eurgh moroseness.

But it's been a truly wonderful experience. I remember when Chii Tarng first took me aside in CFA and told me that I was supposed to dance with (the original line-up of) Eva, Claud, Wei Na. I think I literally paled; I bit back an oath and said, instead, "You cannot be serious. Can you please tell him [Pat] no? Please?"

I don't think I ever let myself forget that I was beyond lucky to even be included in the show at all (I still cringe looking at the videos from Friday and Sunday's shows). I couldn't get enough of the 7pm-11pm practices-- even with Pat's "PAY ATTENTION YVONNE"s-- or the more madcap days, e.g.:
i) get up at 4.45am->teach class at Jurong West (and lose temper with minor firecrackers-not-fireworks in the process)->hunt for school books->go to work->rush to rehearsal->rush for jazz course and contemp class, OR
ii) get up at 5am-> change three lines' worth of trains-> do makeup on train and get mistaken for a streetwalker (yes, LMFAO was playing in my head)-> do show at Yew Tee -> head to Pomo, crash and sleep in studio, wake for lunch, rehearsal-> rush off for Guo Mei Mei stage run and show at CCK (I had immense trouble remembering my own choreo during actual show itself. phail)

in~~flight~~train entertainment (what, it was a looooong journey)
NDP crowd at CCK. Cheryl threatened to wave her pink IC at all the NSmen going past in the mobile column while hollering "ORD lor!!"

Yeah, I liked those days. A lot.

There are things I would love to remember from the days of HHF:
- the not-long-enough practices
- watching UG rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and REHEARSE. shame on us for being slackers
- sitting in the sunshine outside esplanade on a sunday afternoon doing stage runs, when the deejay suddenly plays a track and everyone-- every dancer, stage crew, friend-of and even a few passersby all break into song, spontaneously: "I wanna be a billionaire so freakin' bad". We're all alike in some ways
- wandering into the rehearsal studio early on Sunday and having it empty and all to ourselves-- glorious. "The only reason I'm ever going into practice is so I can afford a studio exactly like this one." Dream abode. What the hey, I would just need a microwave oven and maybe a refrigerator and a small bathroom and I'd be set. I wouldn't even need a bed!!

- watching the other crews practise-- especially Kyogo's. I suppose the free show was eye candy too; Rose certainly seemed pleased
- the realisation that I love practice, I love dance, I HATE the stage. I don't like to perform, at all. Strange words coming from the child-actress-drama-queen, but--!
- Philippine Allstars-- honestly their performance blew me away. Actually so did JATB. i mean, WHOA.

I'm gonna catch a cold from the ice inside my soul
This was triggered by the complete meltdown I had in PA, when Apple shared his choreography to Pixie Lott's Cry Me Out oops. It's true that pretty much the only time I ever feel at all is through dance, but I've been getting heartily sick of being screwy-emo-cry-at-every-choreo-chick. So...

It's working-- sort of-- except now I can't feel anything anywhere. It's a bit scary, but I think it's better than making a complete fool of myself-- especially since my subconscious apparently decided that "not crying in class" translated to "let's cry in public for no good reason at all!"-- which resulted in one crazy day when I lost my temper threw things across rooms and wound up with Eminem and Rihanna at full volume in my ears on the train, crying so hard I was shaking (I love that song by the way). That night ended with me rolling on the floor with laughter as I told Tracy how much I was mood-swinging, so really I wouldn't worry too much. It's all safely iced over now.

I just wish I could feel a bit for choreography. But we can't have everything, can we.

P.S. speaking of Eminem and Rihanna-- I mega adore CT/Wei Na's choreo for CFA showcase. The blocking is crazy; parts that stick in my mind include when the music crescendoes and Rihanna sings again, and everyone is dancing but Jiayi and Melvin who turn and face each other in perfectly exquisite, tormented confrontation; then the last (I know Magnus thinks it's unremittingly cheesy but I am unabashedly enamoured), when Jasper goes on one knee between Rachel and Cheryl who stand and exchange-- a gesture like a blown kiss? But I never managed to figure out if it was a kiss, or a gesture of shock, or reproof, or just pained realisation. In any case I thought the piece completed the items in a fittingly unifying manner.

ground and Centre, we begin
Caught T.H.E. Dance Company's The Man in the Centre on Saturday 13th August. The National Museum is gorgeous, clean colonialism colliding with starkness of modernity and unexpected baroque touches-- curliqued red lamps, anyone? The domed entrance reminded me curiously of Rome's Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (what a mouthful)-- that breathtaking cathedral I had discovered quite by chance after taking off on my own on some day or another last year. Perhaps it was my state of mind. Perhaps it was the blue brilliance of the day.

The SM deg. Angeli
its dome
the National Museum, inside and up

The Gallery Theatre was lovely and dim. I liked the walls-- in the low light I couldn't tell if they were truly constituted of jutting-out bricks of cork or wood or some other material altogether. Was feeling antisocial so ducked away from familiar faces and took seat in corner. Show felt like it was divided into two parts for me. I wasn't very taken with the earlier portion-- move-in-mercury posturing, mundane tasks made to be so heavily imbued with meaning that I felt only oppression, nothing that really elicited a reaction. To be honest I was half-asleep.

The thing is-- my hesitation with contemporary-- actually, all forms of dance, art, expression that involve emotion or a given level of abstraction-- is that everything is so contextual; all interpretations and receptions of the performance must by necessity proceed from/with such a level of prejudice as to render it valid to no one beyond oneself. A huge part of whatever I did manage to take away from watching Centre would have been because of my state of mind and who I was at that point in time (think Jane Eyre, read at ages 11, 15 and 17). Literally-- watching it an hour earlier or later might have rendered a completely different reception of the piece. How reliable are our senses?

But this is what I felt then. The second half was... interesting. I found the video montages unexpectedly intimate, surprisingly personal-- Jessica sitting at her laptop, for example-- because these are usually moments we (think we) own. I don't know how to put it! Some clips were too obviously stagey?-- the hairdryer one, the origami folding-- but the voice-overs clinched it for me. It's the details that make us arresting (yay I've been paying attention in legal argument & narrative), and it felt like the dancers were peeling layers back to show microscopic close-ups of themselves-- we would still not know them as a person, but we would be familiar with this freckled arm, this whorled thumb, this downy cheek.

Even the soundscape changed. The abstraction of the background susurrus-- traffic, the silence-that-is-not-silence of an unspeaking day, etc-- was intermittently broken by single piano notes rarefied by their isolation, dropped like luminescent white pearls into pools of dark water. They were as eloquent in those moments as whole symphonies.

I think Jessica was magnificent-- purity, strength, maturity, vulnerability. Possibly one of the most lasting mental snapshots that I took away with me was this: Jessica and her pas de deux partner, thrown together into an embrace more evocative than Klimt's Kiss, all energy like a held breath after the fury of movement that had taken place before. It was heart-wrenching to watch. It was for me easily one of the most powerful moments of the entire performance, if not the moment. I loved it, and wanted to hate it for what it spoke of human nature, for its commentary on human weakness and human need-- but I loved it.

I don't have an overarching message or story or whatever that I took away from the performance. Honestly I'm not sure that I even know why it's called "The Man in the Centre" (whoops interpretation fail sorry plebeian audience :\). But in one of the videos a voice-over had said something to the effect of liking being alone, of how there were no pretenses, you could just be yourself, you could just confront yourself. I don't think so. It's very easy to just drift from day to day letting time be your novocain. It's equally easy-- maybe even tempting-- to lie to yourself. Maybe sometimes we just need catalysts-- e.g. in the form of Bareilles' Gravity. That was confrontation, that was being alone with yourself. I guess that might have been part of what made Steph's sharing session all those months (months?!?!) ago so... harrowing? impactful?

I think, all things considered, I was glad that my Man-in-the-Centre experience was a solitary one. Some things you really do have to do alone.

Wandered about the grounds after that with vague plans to read somewhere in Fort Canning but swiftly faced prospect of being eaten alive by bugs. Decamped instead to the least crowded Starbucks I could find, leaving green-tea lip imprints all over a napkin. Antisociety continued-- Zhiwen messaged to say that they could probably join me earlier; I nearly replied "but I don't WANT you to join me earlier". Whiled away the hours with Kathryn Simmonds and the obligatory soupçon of legal readings. Magnus and Zhiwen arrived and contributed their respective obligatory genuflections at the altar of readings, in between lines like "read between the wrinkles" and "ME. that person was ME" and we headed for the disappointingly tame HHF artiste party after that. Rose arrived late, flustered, frustrated and furious-- and endowed with a strange new accent born of anger. Everyone should probably listen to it at least once.

Here we are, anyway:

It's ALL Arabic to Me (skip if you've had quite enough of school)
It's barely been a full week of school (by now it's the third week good gracious) and I'm already so behind on my readings it is highly plausible and probable that I'm not going to catch up-- again. I'm taking my first intensive this sem-- Islamic law-- and it is surprisingly engaging... when I'm not dozing off in front of the lecturer. And yes, I haven't been able to keep the Arabic terms straight.

First negotiation class was very awesome-- we had an exercise where the class was split into two sides and then further divided into groups to represent two firms in a duopoly. Each side then had to fix prices for a product-- $180 gave you this much profit if the other firm priced theirs at $180 too, and this much more if they priced at $200, and even more if they priced at $220... basically it was a business/trust game to see if we'd widen the market so there was a larger "pie" for both to share or just screw each other over.

My group ended up with about 107k more in profits than the other (although at one point I threatened to jump out the window to assuage my woebegone conscience). The exercise originated in Harvard; our professor related to us how a group of NY lawyers-- "sharks", to quote-- had gone up against a firm of Montana lawyers-- hailing from a town where everybody knew everybody and were on first-name bases. The end result of that was-- well-- that the Montana lawyers got slaughtered. At the review of that session when all the lawyers met again the Montana lawyer who'd negotiated with the NY representative was literally shaking with fury. His hands were clenched, his knuckles were white, he stood up and shouted that he'd get the dishonourable lying bastard disbarred. The NY shark was taken aback. "It's only a game, man!"

"Yes, but if you would screw me over for points in a game, what would you do for real money?!"

I was SORELY tempted to quote Lady Gaga at the end of the class but I figured I should stop channelling Legally Blonde-itis (especially since at the start of the class I already inadvertently did a "that's what she said").

congenere
I am heartily sick of typing, so pictures will have to do:

i think ni touches down tonight (23rd aug)-- welcome back woman!!

There is no time to breathe, I must plunge back into the water and grow gills. And I could not be happier, because I want to be surrounded by water, I would love to drown. I will take my rain where I can find it...

... but it is hard, harder than I knew, to turn it into snow.

as well ask why i breathe

2010-08-11T01:23:00.002+08:00

i love this, you know? i love it.

don't. let. go.

my sister's (chronicle) keeper

2010-08-07T13:05:00.003+08:00

Life lessons from the sister:
"you can't do the murderous look when you have bits of bubbles stuck on your face."

Apropos of nothing:
M: "Hey I've been meaning to ask you but I keep forgetting: do you want to learn 打狗棒法?"
Y: "-- what?"
M: "大力金刚?"
Y: "what?!"
M: "祥龙十八掌"
Y: "WHAT?!!!!"
M: "Oh come on. Ben wants to learn 玉女心经."

Explanation here.

"Why do all the good men marry and have children-- not with me?"

After putting on some strange sleeping mask and turning injudiciously:
"Oh shit mask mask damnit my pillow is going to be damn smooth la."

and-- this could only happen to my sister:
Recipe
1 "yech-cold"-currypuff
1 sister
1 microwave

Combine, wait. Currypuff explodes.

M:"Yeah heaven likes to make fun of geniuses "
Y: "I'm sure Einstein had currypuffs blowing up in his face all the time."
M: "He had par-ticles! I have curry-pars! what's the diff."

caged birds singing

2010-08-04T02:56:00.011+08:00

"What's to become of us? We can't go on like this."
"Yes, we can go on like this. We can go on exactly like this for the rest of our lives."

I'm surrounded by matters gone awry; people turning and turning in the widening gyre. I'm the last person anyone should ask for anything, but people keep asking. At times I don't know what to say. Most times I say too much. Levelheadedness is easy when you're not in the maelstrom. Practising what you preach is a whole lot harder than I'd ever have realised.

And in the midst of it all I am immensely grateful that I have what I have-- because I can remember having gone without. "It is not in human nature to be satisfied", writes Penelope Fitzgerald, but apposite to that is what we found in one of the Zen temples in Kyoto--

On a stone basin in Ryōan-ji:
(from jimg944 on flickr)

It is only in hindsight-- hind-read?-- that I now realise what none of us (I think?) did, then: the square hole in the centre of the basin is part of the message. It forms 口, so that each character on the basin is to be read in tandem with it: 五 becomes 吾, 矢 is 知, and so on, so that the completed message is 吾, 唯, 足, 知. Translated, it says simply "I learn only to be contented".

Something of the manner in which the message was hiding in plain sight strikes me as being particularly cogent about the nature of the pursuit of happiness.

annie asra's morningside

2010-08-01T00:14:00.004+08:00

one word turns into a war
why is it the smallest things that tear us down
my world's nothing when you're gone
i'm out here without a shield
can't go back now

both hands tied behind my back for nothing
oh no
these times when we climb so fast to fall again
why we got to fall for it now

Maggie's class was awesomeeeeeeeeeee. Made pact with Verena while watching her class last week to go today-- and she continued the choreo! win. Okay I will continue buying dp packages just to go for her classes. Saw CT outside with Wei Na-- he was taking over Xiao's class-- but when I gleefully tried to sign for the class Wei Na said "If you write down your name I will hit your head because CT and I want to go and watch Inception".

Drove the whole day and reached home in one piece (admittedly a piece that was a bit shaky, but still).

Yesterday was my last class with the tnet girls, although i didn't know till i reached home and read Esther's message. Oh well. Took over Zhiwen's MPCC class late that night-- warned that my style was very different from his-- will take end-of-class question "do you teach anywhere else?" to mean that they enjoyed the class, although another comment was "zhiwen's not as stressful" oops.

It's been a great week. Everything is ending, summer is dying, but there is beauty in the breakdown and the promise of flames of the forest (glimpsed in profligate abandon outside arts canteen with rose today), if not forests aflame (not in Singapore, no).

Earl grey lattes give me headaches :(

"We're all afflicted with a disease we never recover from-- Life. And I was just reading this book-- I forget which one-- it said that life's not like a book, you can't gauge the remaining pages with a thumb like you can with a book. Nothing prevents you from turning an ordinary page on a perfectly ordinary day and discovering suddenly that you're not in the middle but at the end. I don't think you should be scared of death. If you were to die tomorrow what would you regret?-- not going to Ireland, not travelling, not spending enough time with family-- then do it now. Do all of them now. Don't hypochondriac your life away-- if you don't like nuts don't EAT nuts, if you want to shop, shop, if you want to dance, for god's sake DANCE.

I just feel like even if you-- I- were to die tomorrow I have no regrets. I don't mind dying young because I think there's a point where everyone's life goes downhill, and I'd really much rather not dodder to death."

“9/11 is the perfect example of why we can’t pretend airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars.”

2010-07-28T13:52:00.003+08:00

Signs indeed that what you think about during the day you dream about at night
I dreamt that the Singapore Tourism Board, which was in charge of selecting the freebies to be given with pre-order packs of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, put in cheap pink plastic razors (for all the chaps who play so much that they have to shave in front of the computer).

For chrissake, thought I, half-awake, can't they use Edwin Jagger at least.

Notable Quotables from a day--actually, 3 hours-- of working with the sister
on random guy wearing sunglasses in OC and a black blazer-- "I'm going to travel to the past! Down this escalator."
while eating sausage bun-- "I eat the bread as a necessary obstacle before I get to the sausage."
a little later-- "i don't want to eat scotch tape-- i don't want to eat biscuits."

edit:
on reading this post: "i don't remember saying the obstacle line but i think it sounds very ingenious! It sounds like something Mark Twain would say. He has a line-- when we are young we remember everything-- even the things that did not happen. I eat the bread as a necessary obstacle to get to the sausage-- sounds EXACTLY the same."

and, from the creatures--
After I put on a vest--
A: "I just noticed that you put on something."
Y: "What, weight?"
J: "*after collapsing in laughter* The conversation between you two is not even that funny-- it's just what she says and how you answer her."
And we had to explain to Abby that bollocks is not an acceptable synonym for balls-- for example, certainly not "soccer bollocks".

咖啡麻醉不了孤单

2010-07-27T03:48:00.000+08:00

dad's back! no prizes but he does have terrible terrible tan lines (omg he is so black it's funny i swear he glistens) and a humongous burst blister from paddling too much. at least we don't have to equivocate about grandma's hospitalisation anymore. apparently my grand-dad's been so lonely without her around that he stayed up till 2 yesterday kneading dough to make tangyuan-- i have a big pot of them stewing downstairs now. i can only wish the hours i keep actually amounted to something as productive.

watched coraline with mum. she was very taken by the animation. working with the sister tomorrow-- finally! packing up suntec today was draining, despite the crystal jade lunch treat thrown in to sweeten the deal; unpacking at oc was almost as bad because it was so interminable. at some point a particularly painful song came on over the speakers and i tagged a completely innocent ysl parisienne a little too savagely i'm afraid.

busking prac was good-- they were so neat i couldn't figure out how to clean them; it's all personal style now :S. pa prac plus recapping was okay. choreo later was dispiritingly unavailing-- i have nothing to teach the girls and nothing upon which to sustain my own mind. met samson at the terminal-- he said, "you don't look happy". no shit, sherlock.

i'm rambling. i'm almost-- actually, i AM-- glad that my phone died halfway today. selfishness and self-preservation demanded me-time that the day hadn't been particularly generous with. at least it meant i didn't end up snapping at ning, which i would have regretted hugely.

another monday. somehow here is gone.

and the fight for you is all i've ever known

2010-07-25T00:41:00.003+08:00

It's been a tiring day. However decent the pay is and however much Jason needs help I don't think I'm going to agree to another round of minute-maiding. Dithered between going for Daniel or Xiao and opted in favour of the latter in order to run errands and also use up DP card. Class was okay. Caught tail-end of Maggie's Battlefield choreo-- Clare and Winnie were amazing to watch. I loved the way Clare held herself, and the points at which she'd let go-- couldn't get enough of her musicality, her selective abandon.

Hospital rooms are prepossessed of an air that makes them quietly soporific. Going to SGH I recalled past visits-- my sleep experiment, visiting Melvin, even the fussed post-SUAD-prac sneaked scramble with Jinglin to leave a letter beside a sleeping cheek well outside of visiting hours. Sitting by my grandmother's bed with the low murmur of dialect a barely discernible thrum in the hushed room was the only time today that I found any measure of peace at all. I think there are few things in the world more beautiful than grandmothers' hands.

It's been a tiring week, mostly of semi-all-nighters. I came home on Monday and spent half the night coding my cousin's solemnisation ceremony invitations; Tuesday brought a wake-up call which lasted till three and left me to face my own disquiet for the rest of the night; Wednesday presented a rambling constitutional and an asshole on the bus ride home; Thursday night dropped multiple alarms-- first the 1am phone call, then the rush to readmit Grandma, then the nightmare that threw me back to the waking world after I drifted off to an uneasy sleep while waiting for mum to come back. Friday ushered in numbed despair at how cruel the kids could be-- I think I will be very glad to hand them back to Esther (also to stop being a Bieber-Believer omfg). Empty studios and open floors returned a bit of what I'd lost. Bus ride home was arduously long, walk in felt like it took an eternity, but once I reached home I was just too unused to sleeping early to sleep early (but it was half past one in the morning anyway-- I guess early is relative).

But I am tired. I think I will have no trouble falling asleep tonight, which is just as well-- recital auditions tomorrow. Sheer exhaustion has taken the edge off my nervousness-- it is fatalism now. Whether I get in or not I guess what matters is that I will have tried?

(Oh such lies, when is trying ever enough).

Shriver can be fiendishly depressing. But The Post-Birthday World is genius of a sort, if curiously ambivalent on the nature of love, of relationships. Constancy is impossible? Sometimes the wrong thing is the right kind of wrong? And oh, does it matter at all in the end anyway. We find replacements, or the universe finds them for us. We make do, although love shouldn't be about making do. Can anyone be content with being a substitute, a stand-in-- the silent sitter at the table, the faithful shadow in the shade? Can anyone be okay with the knowledge that this is unequal and forever will be, on every single possible level?

"What do you want me to do, Poonie?"
What, indeed.

Maybe some fights you have to give up.

Sidenote: i LOVED Jessica's choreo. first dance-high since Osaka, and one of only two this week. bliss, and worth not sending dad off *guilt*.

i've still got sand in my shoes

2010-07-19T21:40:00.004+08:00

Two weeks away it feels like the whole world should've changed
But I'm home now
And things still look the same
I think I'll leave it till tomorrow to unpack
Try to forget for one more night
That I'm back in my flat on the road
Where the cars never stop going through the night
To a life where I can't watch the sun set
I don't have time
I don't have time

Tomorrow's back to work and down to sanity
should run a bath and then clear up the mess I made before I left here
Try to remind myself that I was happy here
Before I knew that I could get on a plane and fly away
From the road where the cars never stop going through the night
To a life where I can watch the sun set
And take my time
Take all our time

OSAKAAAAAAA

2010-07-05T02:27:00.004+08:00

I feel like I need another week of prep before I'm good and ready to go. You'd think that after exchange, travelling would be par for the course-- but it isn't, I still get the same jitters (although there is less dread and a bit more anticipation this time round). I just hate feeling unprepared-- and also feeling like I'm leaving about three million loose ends flapping behind me in the wind of my takeoff. Rose will have to deal with my blocking for the girls-- oh my god I haven't uploaded video or sent comments. I definitely haven't cleaned them enough. I've not done my application to SLS-- last hope, really, but in a way also first. Itinerary will have to stay handwritten and messy instead of typed-out, but oh well.

And what is a post without typical ambiguity. I've been living clean for more than a week now, but certain things set me dangerously close to the brink-- lack of sleep, a certain song, thinking too much, even an evocative smell or-- perhaps most incongruously-- a trio of customers that came into the shop last Thursday. I'm going away for two weeks-- I don't know what things will be like post-this-time but whatever it is the days will trundle on as they always do. Grandma goes for heart bypass on 8th July; I don't know when's my uncle's operation but am keeping fingers crossed that everything goes well for them both. Taking off at this time is honestly more than a little uncaring.

My emails to Ni and Clandestine and Abby must stay unwritten for now. There are 7 more pages in my very-abused travel diary that will stay empty because I'm starting a new one (which is hideous by the way). Posts remain in limbo, thoughts remain undrafted, days will still be uncharted and unrecorded-- I only hope memory holds out for a while more.

Elsewhere, there is someone I'm very grateful to. And they may never know this is for them, but for what it's worth-- whether you know or you don't, whether it was kindness or helpfulness or pure pity-- thank you.

because all of this on twitter would be overkill

2010-06-28T01:49:00.007+08:00

(and because i want to VENT)

around 22nd june: discovers need to register for modules. swears.

23rd june: receives sms from friends querying about mods. swears.

24th june: looks through list of electives. fights rising gag reflex. looks at non-law and public policy modules-- nothing remotely literary or bookish to take. swears.

escapism ensues.

27th june: realises that module registration closes on 28th june 12 noon.

11.40pm: reluctantly starts reading list again.
12.02am: curses under breath.
12.07am: curses not-so-under breath.
12.53am: starts selecting modules, at long last. has heart set on anti-terrorism and law, although it is 9 lecture hours a week for three weeks. sounds damn fun, although missing Jessica for three weeks is Not Fun At All. i'll survive :(
1.03am: where the eff are all the 8-cred modules?! must i take FIVE four-cred modules???
1.09am: epiphany-- realises that anti-terrorism and law module is 6.30pm-9.30pm on tuesdays, thursdays, fridays, from 10-27 august. this means goodbye to Daniel's house (20th july), Jessica's jazz (5th august), and friday sessions. also possibility of clashing with Pat rehearsals if any. gives up cursing under breath, considers making effigy of murphy, burying it in halsburys and steamrollering the whole damn lot.
1.29am: complains bitterly to sister who has just returned home from watching england-germany fiasco. sidetracks and talks about beer, rooney, rowdy germany fans and gaping england supporters.
1.40am: sister goes off to sleep.
1.43am: goes away to stuff face with food. no comfort is found. comes back. glowers at computer.
1.54am: sitting here typing this out. needs to choreo. if first 5 choices are not given me i will be stuck with options i have basically randomly selected. bloody hell.
2.14am: islamic law?? maybe??? omg another intensive-- 11th-30th august-- okay days-- monday, wednes-- oh shit. wtf laaaaa
2.16am: okay i can deal with having to rush off from blast for three weeks... i think... no i cannot. CAN I?!
2.38am: *crosses fingers* arghhhhh ok whatever choreo time

that boy is a monster

2010-06-13T01:41:00.005+08:00

unfreeze. unsmoke. catch. try again. do your best. do it again. get it right or at least better. and then do what you love, love what you do, every single blessed second of it all.

(p.s. the lyrics make no sense wth)
(p.p.s. the brother: "I saw you on Facebook, so I figured you were home.")
(p.p.p.s. Shriver in Kevin was hauntingly poignant. Shriver in anything else [Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family] is disquieting bordering on terrifying, because of the unstinting portraits of the people she paints-- and the accuracy thereof. You have to wonder-- worry-- how close a likeness your own psyche is to that of the characters'.)
(p.p.p.p.s. Ellen Kim is damn cute. Hanagami calls her "Korea". He is some kind of charismatic and lovelovelove his choreo love his werewolf tale [my expression was a cross between "HAR?!" and ":D"]. They blow my mind omg. and I blew the choreo but whatever when do I ever not but omg DANCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)

air to breathe

2010-06-06T13:47:00.006+08:00

"You're Americans," he continues, his voice deep with Chinese authority. "You're not used to seeing tragedies. You pity us, yes, because you can later go home to a comfortable life and forget what you've seen. For us, this type of disaster is commonplace. We have so many people. This is our life, always a crowded bus, everyone trying to squeeze in for himself, no air to breathe, no room left for pity."
-- Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

I have an image in my head, of the old man in the centre of the road outside the darkened Guan Yin Si last night, who gingerly walked to a spot that would have been most in the way had there been people around to care and then crouched down to read a newspaper in-- what, quarter-light?

May we all always find the space we need.

we have felt this way before

2010-06-04T03:25:00.004+08:00

and the words I'll never know how to say-- not in a way that you will fully understand how touched I was and am-- are thank you.

one more thing i'm addicted to

2010-05-28T03:46:00.003+08:00

I write this a little prematurely not knowing how Sunday's show will go. But we had a good practice-- the video looks ~~half-decent~~ only-just-passable, on closer-30-minute-scrutiny, and most of the steps are coming together coherently. Rose and Xinxin had a moment during one of the runs I wish I captured on film-- a synchronised, first-time appearance of the suspension, groove and control I wanted in that particular sequence (which may I add I can't even come close to doing myself). As we were doing the two-by-two runs and trying out expressions I felt an instant when the feeling of the steps seemed to come into being, fall into place; when Xin and I ended Jes' eyes were red. She REALLY reminds me of myself, almost uncannily-- we have the same problems with shoulders, heads and too-much-bounce, and we both go on emo crying jags where dance is concerned. Hur. Is the second song THAT emo?!

Doing this item has been both cathartic and therapeutic, if by therapy one means fighting poison with poison. I haven't exactly been the most efficient of choreographers-- teaching and choreographing don't come naturally to me, and I think I was quite the reluctant "director": unwilling to make decisions, unsure about steps, indecisive about costumes. At the same time I didn't want to turn practices into drilling sessions-- the mood is usually jovial and chatty and calling for run after run just felt a little like overkill, especially when everyone is tired from everything else. I only hope not too much time was wasted overall. I'm not super proud of the item but I am super proud of-- and grateful for-- the dancers. They've put up with a ditzy, perpetually-tired choreographer whose mind is, at best, absent; they've taken time out from work and school and tests and exams and shopping to meet for rehearsals and practices; they haven't complained about flurried/unclear steps; they've made blah choreography look decent. Their patience is unbelievable.

Dance is my poison-- power, pleasure, pain. There is a difference between emo-ing and emoting. Tracy hit the nail on the head with her email; I tend to take some things too hard and, other things, not nearly hard enough. There were days (and nights) when I felt like all I was doing was dancing dirt into the snow; there are still days (and nights) that I feel like that (try EVERY OTHER). I don't know if I've grown at all through this small item, but if nothing else I've at least healed (if only from self-inflicted wounds). Also I begin to see what Xiao meant when he says I have to think less about putting hands to positions and more about owning the steps. In any case-- NO MORE EMO. No more walking down streets in the depths of night wondering what the hell I'm inflicting on dancers. No more feeling like shit because of lousy choreo or because of ghost-paleness-in-comparison. Eh wait-- I take that all back-- maybe just LESS of it all? baby steps, my dear, baby steps.

ohhhh I hope Sunday will be good.

i can't keep up, i can't back down i've been losing so much time

2010-05-26T02:37:00.006+08:00

Tuesday's Duffyean stolen hour, after throwing in the towel on Audacity in particular and people in general-- nothing but sun, sand, sea, clouds and a wafer-thin paper moon, with U2 and Lifehouse in my ears.

Read a little. Wrote a little. Dreamt a lot. Got sand in my shoes (curse bird-brained females who wear 3 inch platforms to the seaside and nearly break their ankles clomping down to the water's edge), my bag, my hair-- everywhere, really-- but with the sand and the wind came equanimity and freedom. I AM happiest alone.

It was so good getting out of the house and abdicating all responsibility and obligations for a while-- forgetting my phone was an unexpected bonus. Thank goodness I somehow managed to remember Liren's number and called him from a payphone later on after messing up Wei Na's (I missed by only one number! 1 too many 7s and 1 too few 2s) so that I managed to meet up with the Blastards for Karen's bday dinner anyway :)

And this was the glorious sunset from AS7 on Monday.

The LOML flew on Monday night/Tuesday morning-- called while I was walking out from AS7 with Rose. Sneaky beast, she evaded all my attempts to send her off again. Had a good brunch with her last Wednesday-- plus her presents: from matching "couple" keychains (heee) to handmade rose to dark chocolate pearls. And the meal was her treat heh. Between the two of us she definitely wears the pants (hello when else have I ever let someone pay for me-- woman you spoil me). I feel a little lost knowing she won't be around for an entire month to cajole me into sensibility and or to arrange to meet on a slightly more regular basis. Have a good time honey. Retrace my footsteps and make new pathways on the roads I haven't yet been on. I'm sorry I couldn't go with you this time round, but I know you'll have fun anyway :)

And now I must seek slumber if I am to wake in time to meet Cheryl tomorrow. Oh, dear.

2010-05-25T14:07:00.000+08:00

too tired even to be angry.

5:19

2010-05-23T01:11:00.008+08:00

hello John Rzeznik, Jason Wade and Matt Hires, you have competition for my flighty affections. Meet Matt Wertz (via Xiao's class on Sat).

I'd be lying through my teeth if I told you that I'm ok
July came, I thought I had it all together
Until you said "I need some space"
Truth be told
It's so hard to wait

One eye on the clock and one on the phone
It's 5:19, I'm feeling alone
If I could talk to you, I'd want you to know
I'm holding loose
But ain't letting go

We both know that I could think myself dizzy
Right now I'm spinning around
You said, "baby, don't worry"
But I just miss you right now
I said, I miss you right now

Baby, take all the time you need
I just want you to know
I'll be here, waiting

With one eye on the clock and one on the phone
It's 5:19, I'm feeling alone
If I could talk to you, I'd want you to know
I'm holding loose
But ain't letting go

i likee many manyyy:)

______________________________________
was an insensitive brat. ensue, self-flagellation. will guilt-driven niceties serve for apology?

also, is te amo possibly the only emo-nemo reggae song ever made? bloody hell

TGIF... not?

2010-05-22T02:37:00.003+08:00

no, today was not a very nice day at all-- melodrama on every front. and it's shaping up to be one of those nights. But I was happy in the studio, and that is all that counts :)

P.S. Seriously, jiayou for tmr!!

inventory control

2010-05-17T13:49:00.005+08:00

Because no one else will understand why I tear myself away from the safe harbour of my computer at four in the morning; because no one else will understand what thrills through me when the winds howl in my ears; because no one else will understand why it is not enough, this is not enough, and I will walk out into the rain and stare into the sky and stand with the rain pooling in my hair before sitting to write by candlelight for an hour. Because nights like this I find myself praying to a god I know does not exist, in thanks for a world that does.

no wonder i've got shit eyesight and worse handwriting.

crimson for disguise

2010-05-12T04:32:00.007+08:00

This morning my father asked me where I wanted to be dropped off; a (lack-of-)sleep-fogged me mumbled "library". But in my head the image that rose, sudden and sharp and unexpected as the flash of a quicksilver fin under placid water, was that of the Karin Boye Biblioteket-- its warmth after coming in from the chill of the outdoors I would always stupidly wander out into without thinking about what I was wearing, the glow of its light-lined wooden spirals, the amber-suffused coves of its corners. I think it says something that I remember the Karin Boye library far more than the Dag Hammarskjold. Quite obviously I spent very little time in the law library-- some things don't change, eh.

I cannot believe the semester is ending. Someone counted 34 days left to the end of school; I met Sue-Faye at Kent Ridge today and we both had a minor panic attack over how little time we have left and how much there is left to do. There are people who come back from exchange and suffer, suffer, suffer. School. Lack of sleep. Sucky weather. I have to say I don't think I've ever been happier. There are times when I wonder how Carmel's classes are going, or when I rue not being able to take Viktor or Karin(!!!)'s courses. There are times when I read about the snow melt and times when I dream about waking up to my own shuttered window, or about sneaking out of my room at three in the morning to lie in unexpected snow, times when I look at the flowering trees in Kent Ridge just by the Mochtar Riady building and long for a countryside set alight by autumn.

But here in Singapore there is -- 30/3/2010

And then I didn't get any further. But now the night stretches before me, the thought of practising is curiously daunting, and I am strangely heartsore-- so to the past I go, if only for a breather.

take it back take it all back now
One of the best things about being back is-- what else?-- dance. These five months have been a flurry: I hope I don't inadvertently miss out anything.

CFA Open House/FA show
Can't find the words I wrote down before going for 1st prac-- they were somewhere along the lines of "omfg my stomach is going to churn itself into offal-bits" because I was so bloody nervous (as I had every right to be). Nevertheless despite self-induced stress and complete inability to catch steps or dance I enjoyed myself. Music issues for first show, screwed up like hell for the second-- oops.

City Alive Flash Mob
Please, someone, put Space Cowboy out of his and our collective misery. The after-party music sucked but I was riding on a high that came out of nowhere and so I actually had fun. Might have scared Rose, Eva, Collen, Rachel, Thomas, Yayi, Brian, Wei-An. Mum picked Eva and me up post-supper, at about 4am-- oops.

EMCC
Had great fun. For Zhiwen's item I remember his monstrously tiring clean-up, self's fruitless attempts to fixate and keep eyes from rolling and exasperated wrestling reason into *coughcough* people filled with hot air; also his stress-inducing blocking, also the learning of his jazz choreo (the first since Malin's! i <3ed it much), also the unforgettable "you all ahhhh". Karen's epic 7-minute mini-drama of a tale left me the closest I've been to tears on stage (and a complete sodden mess offstage/during some practices). I screwed up majorly all the way up to preview show-- and either my selective memory has fortuitously blanked out the offending portions or I didn't make any egregious errors during the actual show. My lovable creatures however did ask, in rather scandalised tones, "what the HECK were you wearing YVONNEEEEE". A girl's got to love them.
Pat's item was, to my mind, still messy-- but thank goodness for Claud who cleaned us up repeatedly. I liked the item anyhow-- I know Hard was supposed to be one heck of a bitch but it always felt like that choreo could kill me, and I like living (and dying) on extremes. It was mindless energy-throwing, which was a relief after all the mad emoting. And mad emoting it was-- I remember Weiting weeping, I remember Claud crying, and I think it was Jesmine upon whom I inflicted the full force of my dissolving-- oops.
Favourite (part of) item (not counting items self was involved in): Weilong's Pyramids choreo. really. Probably also the Kevin/Xuzi collabo, but that was hot crowd favourite anyway.
Thank you Tracy, Jesmine, Veekay, for being there for me; thank you Karen, Zhiwen, Pat for trusting/believing; thank you Xiao, Tracy again, Shiru's boyfriend (?!) and Michelle for your comments and advice. Everything I emoted I felt on one level or another and in hindsight I think the concert was a catalyst for growth/re-acceptance of who/what/where I am, dance-and-feeling-wise.

Impresario
Hel-lo, juniors! Damnably proud. Voted like mad. Rose and I were slapping ourselves-- must wake up our idea! This was when bulk of Stardust discussion took place-- during the singing and band segments anyway. Then Stardust got cancelled, oops, fine, whatever. Anyway yes juniors were spurs for improvement-- talk about putting on a show.

Choreo Ball
Hyperventilated-- literally-- during Kate's item. Claud improved aeons. Ellen and Xuzi were awesome-- Ellen in particular is so much stronger a dancer than my last reference point-- busking last year? Allegra's musicality was insane. Gin was insane. Finally understood O School's hype and reputation. Supper at Shokudo with Rose Eva Yayi and the ugliest but most delicious waffle any of us had ever seen/tasted.

Evocation
I cannot think of the theme without wanting to start humming Together in Electric Dreams. By half-time I was convinced that I liked Xiao's If I Gave You My Life best, but Zaini's Free Your Mind easily displaced that conviction. Couldn't get enough of how insane the choreo was-- if we (Blastards) thought Hard was a bitch, this one would be a "witch with a Capital B". It was fierce-- almost salacious in some parts-- and everyone looked like they were having (irreverent) fun. Me likey.

Dance Uncensored
No question: My Almost Lover was favourite. It didn't fully strike me until the words "I'd never want to see you unhappy; I thought you'd want the same for me"-- at the end when Meow sobbed as Clement ripped the paper heart over her it felt like a physical stab. What a night; on the bus ride home after late late supper (where Fred squirted lime juice into Claud's eyes, Jason uttered his now-infamous "seriously" line and Thomas had his "this is my legacy" video moment), I ended up shifting from one too-brightly-lit seat to a darker one to dissolve in peace. Fail. I'd never been so glad to seek sleep and oblivion.

classes
Bottomline: Consider this writer an epic fangirl of Jessica's.
The rest: tried CH's street jazz-- adore her warm-ups; Lina's reggae-- but she seems so unhappy to see us!; Terence's, Kevin's (I liked this!), ZZ's waacking, Xiao's hiphop, Weilong's Saturday class, Maliq's jazz funk when he replaced Mazlan-- things I'll probably want to go for but not HAVE to go for. Went for one of Ahmad's classes today-- I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy them. There IS a difference between his lyrical hip hop and his hip-hop classes-- or maybe I just don't like Taylor Swift.

Flair'Nation, Code Edge, SDD Prelims, SDD Finals
HELLO WAKE UP YOUR IDEA HELLO DANCE HARDER HELLO JUST SHOOT YOURSELF HELLO OMG AWE. Flair'Nation in particular was slap-in-face-- probably because it was first in chronology and probably also because THEY ARE SO YOUNG. i want that kind of strength, control, passion. Enjoyed watching with the "homies", though.

hazy, lazy
Also did DP Recital, Istana Show, YOG Flash Mob; parts of them were time-fillers, others, learning experiences. I still love Tracy's energy in her solo (duo?) with Clement, and like Michelle am jealous of how Jinglin's foundation always stands her in good stead no matter how long the hiatus. Particular things to remember might be how much I messed up for recital (the post I typed that night is too full of expletives to quote from), Thomas' eleventh-hour emergency situation (:S:S:S) for the flash mob and, as always, the people, the company. :) Also this whispered aside, courtesy of Aunty Hanagami: "Tell you ah I'm secretly damn sick of sluttiness already I want to do lyrical." But he's such an awesome slut! Trinity of Dancing Lawyers and the Book ftw, indeed.
Also went for Fred's Platform. I cannot even start to untangle some things so I shan't-- not that they're Gordian, especially, but some knots are (k)not mine to untie in the first place. Suffice this: 14/4/2010 had many many many tears; the choreography and song touched many people in many different ways; I think we all love watching Fred dance even when he's not feeling the emo.

the closest to heaven that i'll ever be
I am glad to be back. Glad for friends, even if we meet up approximately once-a-month (and both Ning and Ni artfully dodged my attempts to send them off-- have fun shopping and climbing-glaciers-and-pruning-trees respectively!)-- glad for an easy camaraderie even if that ease also means that I must needs do little if anything at all that will disturb that equilibrium. Glad for the comfort I can still find in 21 strings, even if everything I play is by rote and I can no longer sight-read (the scores make no sense to me anymore, really). Glad that I occasionally get to teach-- whether the 10-year-old kids or the preschoolers (ok scratch that I was NOT GLAD AT ALL to teach them omfg) or whatever comes my way. Glad to be going for lessons, glad to dance till my fingers are shaking, absolutely in love with sunshine and rain and nights and even harrowing drives like the one to the airport to send Claud off on Monday. It's all good, baby.

There's been pretty much no attempt at all to settle back into the circadian rhythms of school-- the lawyer definitely subsists on a different plane from the dancer, I tell you-- but sooner or later I'm going to have to come to grips with responsibility. I'm a woman living-- and dancing, and breathing-- on/in borrowed time/heaven. This heady abandon cannot last-- it shouldn't have started in the first place. But I've already started chasing pavements, I might as well go the distance.

hot coffee in a clean white mug
I cannot promise fireflies. I cannot even say I miss you. But this much I have to offer:

May the nights be a little less dark for you.

and i thought i was ready to bleed
It's a physical ache, darling, and the axiom that I must have felt this way before bears about as much comfort as a band-aid for a fresh amputee. I've lost count of the number of times I've longed for Sweden's snow, for ice, for unfeeling-- but although I would give a lot to not feel the way I do, I wouldn't give it up for anything either. Or would I? Am I a bunch of contradictions? Is this hollow-heartedness one of the ways to feel alive? our bleeding hearts worn on our sleeves, and all that? Kitten-- I changed my mind-- I don't think we're in the same situation at all, because I am at least sometimes happy to be where I am. I hope you're okay.

I just counted-- this is my thousand-and-first entry since 9th January 2007. All these wasted words--! Thank you if you've stayed with me that long-- thank you even more if you've read from the diaryland or the bloggercrab accounts. homygods.

go girl, it's your birthday

2010-05-11T03:25:00.005+08:00

Last night the brother stumbled out of his bedroom moaning like a zombie, bent-double-and-clutching his stomach (?). After forcing everything from panadol to antacids to water to dark chocolate down his throat-- and after he threw up, rather spectacularly-- I gave up "waiting to see if it'd get better" (it'd been at least three hours by then) and prodded Mum to take him to the hospital before he started slavering for brains. Quite apart from the snicker I didn't quite manage to stifle when he, adamantly refusing to back down from glaring at the needle, turned the colour of day-old milk and toppled forward, I realised it's been a long, long time since I'd actually looked-- looked-- at any person in my family properly.

Maybe it's something about the cold desolation of the emergency room at 5am in the morning. There wasn't a lot of drama when we were there-- some guy with a bandaged head who'd been in an inebriated fracas, another with a bloodied scraped leg (motorcycle mishap?), and a baby with a toothache-- but hospitals are never exactly full of sunshine and gladness. Match that with a desperate hunger for sleep and the loneliness that always comes before the light and one's got a recipe for missing the missing. for wistfulness. for what cannot be. for what is.

I ought to cherish the people around me more. One day I will leave-- book myself a one-way ticket to destination anywhere. And there will be new faces, and the joy of anonymity-- perhaps even oblivion?-- but I have to wonder if there will be regret. Do I really care as little as I think I do?

Anyway I think I caught a bug or something I've been feeling awfully off-colour the entire day-- to the extent that I've been eyeing the brother's painkillers. The sole respite was when it started pouring at about eight-ish, whereupon I went out and stood in the rain until I was thoroughly soaked and unrepentantly happy. The dog thinks I'm crazy. My sister thinks I'm crazy. My neighbours sure as hell think I'm weird. I could care less.
__________________________________________________________
Thank you all-- for present, for laughter, for treat of ice lemon tea that I wanted and for letting me treat you guys to organic meatless dinner that you didn't want :) and just so you know what you got me (xf this means you):

i don't want to be 22 :(
__________________________________________________________
Mum said: "NO MORE SHOES". I think I understand why oops.

too tired this time to deal with suits that you wear and ties that won't bind

2010-05-08T03:29:00.003+08:00

right now i am complicated
right now i am giving this heart away

I am horrendously sleepy but am fairly pleased with week in an antisocial sort of manner. It's been music-- lots of it! Lifehouse, The Goo Goo Dolls, Imogen (has it really been 3 years?!), Bareilles, P!nk, even the Moffatts for chrissake; dance-- Jessica is Love. I've never yet left her class without literally shaking; friends-- lovely suppers, lovely talks, classy pretty new toy that still looks out of place in my scruffy fingers (I haven't yet had to fold my notes into origami to get them to fit, don't worry-- and thank you I <3 it much); books, books, books galore. Alien Asian is an incredibly depressing read so far-- 45 pages in. People are so complicated, so dense, so conflicted-- it gives me a headache just attempting to read them. Life prods me but I refuse to be moved. Quagmires abound and I have no energy to engage them or engage in resolving them. I discard Coelho-- too much Charisma and thinly-disguised forcefeeding of worldview; love Tennessee W's language but despair at his characters; still HAVEN'T FOUND van Gogh's letters.

I have much I want to write down but I feel it should be done in good old-fashioned longhand on paper. Enough waffling-- finally: "醒着像睡着躺着像思考晨昏颠倒"-- scraps of JJ I heard during walk home on a path I last discernibly remembered taking ten years ago. and how things have changed. how tall the trees have grown; how short the distances, now; how altered the houses, how different my self. perhaps that last is a lie.

sleeping beauty's in a foul mood
for shame she says none for you dear prince
i'm tired today
i'd rather sleep my whole life away
than have you keep me from dreaming

"F*** me!" "Yeah."*

2010-04-28T16:04:00.007+08:00

28/4/2010
Y: i'm going to put you on twitter
M: you can't, i'm not a hundred and forty characters.
Y: yeah you have no character at all.
M: i'll have you know that i am... *ponders* 135 different people. for my pw survey.
-
*laptop screen goes black on power saver mode*
M: don't go black on me, nigger!
-
*examining golden peanut container*
Y: what is the significance of having tiny golden peanuts on a humongous golden peanut?? hello teenage mutant ninja peanut?-- aren't peanuts supposed to be roots anyway that looks like a grape vine.
M: it is a root what. see--
Y: GRAPE VINE.
M: it's a freaking golden peanut container stop PSYCHOANALYSING it GODDAMNIT.

3/5/2010
B: What do you think of an "i Saved the World"?
M: Huh what's that.
B: you know, for iPhone, iPad...
Y: Haha not funny. NOT FUNNY.
B: No no I need it for PW. I've to come up with a creative and captivating slogan.
Y: "Arty Spider".
B: ? Is there a hidden meaning to that?
Y: No-- arty is creative, spider is captivating!
B: No it has to use technology to save the environment. So I thought you could have this app on your phone, when you click on it it charges 50 dollars to your phone bill and you buy a plot of land in the-- the-- the AMAZON FOREST.
Y: you complete gyp.

*mum left phone at home . I dump it on B's bed. phone vibrates*
B: Oh no oh no panic what do I do what do I do?
M: Open. the. phone. and. read. the. message.
*phone rings*
B: what do i do what do i do?
M: OPEN THE PHONE AND ANSWER IT.

in relation to splinter cell...
M: *suddenly screeches* Why the hell am I in FREAKING IRAQ I hate war games how is this STEALTH???

*blog title is exchange between random terrorist and sister (in chronological order) just before she offs him.
__________________________________________________
14/05/2010
The Grimm Brothers' Fairytales according to HoSY:
Rapunzel spun her hair into gold and stomped on the ground; Rumpelstiltskin has a name that can neither be pronounced nor spelt; Robin Hood is the friend of Batman, Hansel and Gretel stole from the gingerbread tree, the frog prince swum around in a well till all his friends died so he could climb up and turn into a golden ball after being kissed by a princess. Were we even brought up on the same planet??
_________________________________________________
Dad and mysticism -__________-

porcelain and china dolls

2010-04-27T01:15:00.001+08:00

this burnt child will always love the fire

2010-04-21T02:41:00.003+08:00

I am a very blessed angry little girl drowning in this petty world (oops sorry reflex GGD fan reaction). I managed to finish my essay; Claud gave me a lobang that will (partially) fund Swaggout (!); I caught most of the steps for Mash (oops sucker for easy choreo damnit); Mum picked me up after rehearsal ended late and I reached home to find that Dad had made scrambled eggs and got me roti prata for supper.

An unexpected sms led to an unexpected meeting with the Fest Pest (Culture Vulture? Creature Feature? damnit which one are you) who was all too happy to show me her newly-acquired toy camera and experiment with it; also to offer me cake and to tower over me in crazy heels. The girl's legs go on for days and days. Rock-Chic Picnic in my honour was decidedly vetoed; I think I get to choose and I shall choose something absolutely ridiculous instead.

I have a crazy sister whom I love very very much despite all her threats of brick throwing:
Me: "oh my god it's a long story I don't want to go into it now."
her: "you cannot say that oh my god. I WILL THROW A BRICK AT YOU."
Me: "forget it just study."
her: "I will throw TWO BRICKS AT YOU."
Me: *whines* (please insert threats with increasing numbers of bricks)
her: *gets up. goes to brother's room* "Ben do you have a brick? What? No? Damnit how hard can it be to find a brick around here?!!!!" *comes back, flexing and unflexing wrist* "This is an imaginary brick. Now speak."

me: "I need a noun for harm."
her: "... endanger...?"
me: *death stare*
(later)
me: "WHAT'S ANOTHER WORD FOR BELIEF???"
her: *takes out thesaurus* "conviction, creed, doctrine, opinion, myxomatosis--"
me: "huh?"
her: "fatal virus disease of rabbits."
me: *dives for throat*

I also have WTWTA-- "there's one in all of us, but there's more than one in some of us"-- courtesy of the ADD kid with a million patentable faces. Quite guiltily- and without very much satisfaction-- I've also finished Dorian Gray. Portraits change. Books change. People change.

I am happier than I deserve to be. I will be grateful for it :)

my candle burns at both ends;
it will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
it gives a lovely light!

flowers in the rain

2010-04-19T15:27:00.009+08:00

I found this lone offering outside just as the rain was starting-- there are no bougainvilleas of that shade very close to me, mine are fuchsia and the only one I could see that matched this shade is a number of houses away. Thank you capricious winds.

:)

The Dog, a bit miffed that I don't have food for him. But he's been having digestive issues again we can't feed him ANYTHING.

I'm not okay with myself needing things from people. I'm not okay with myself needing people. There are very very few exceptions (I can count them on one hand. I may be able to count them on the hand of the woman in Roald Dahl's story about lighters and bets) to that personal cardinal rule of engagement, and these exceptions are bred out of habit, or necessity, or even sheer opportunity. It's why I'm unspeakably grateful for people like Eisen-- I really don't know if you know how much that one call that night did, because I didn't say anything then and I've never said anything since. You've caught me more times than I have a right to expect from anyone, and that is why I think I will always treasure you no matter how much I'm supposed to hate you hur. I apologise if I'm not feisty and zany-- but the answer to your question is yes.

I never ever want to fall knowing there will be no safety net below; I've gone that route before and I never want to go there again.

And the problem here is that I'm terrified I'll end up needing. If I bottle it is as much for your own protection as mine. There may be things I can only say if I no longer care to have you as a friend anymore. And even if it's not that dire they're not things you need to know. If I have to cut and run shoulders-a-swinging wrists-astreaming so be it; if we can't let go (in whatever sense) and we have to, the only thing any of us can do is to chop our own hands off, yes? Let's just hope it never comes to that.

Just don't ask? Anything else I promise I will say.

Thank you *sadeyes* and gleeful one. assay of essay still in progress despite personal deadline of end of march/end of last week/ saturday night/sunday morning/ wee hours of monday morning. I NEED TO FINISH THIS CRAP.

feelings gone

2010-04-15T12:04:00.012+08:00

... remember a time when it was about who could dance. Even if they didn't choreograph the piece, the person who could grab your attention on the stage, or kill the dance in class, was recognized. You were well-known because you were a dope dancer. Now a days it comes down to choreographers and internet attention... Everyone wants to be a choreographer before they want to learn how to dance.

These 2 clips of choreography I made are very house inspired, more so the 2nd one. I love house because you HAVE to be able to move. It's about knowing how to MOVE, not just DOING moves. There is a big difference. You don't have to worry about cleanliness, or anything like that. It's about connecting with the music and letting your body go. It's 2nd nature. You're free to just groove, dance, and be yourself.

...I want to be able to teach what my teachers have taught me, so dance can sustain its purest beauty in which it started.-- Keone Madrid, 10 Nov 2009

16th April 2010, 2.41 am
Some days my own cynicism scares me. Tamp down the fire of any mind long enough and it will turn to cold ashes; speak something long enough and even if it doesn't become truth it will at least become an axiom. Tonight I am Angela, but the paradox there is that feelings can't be gone if they were never there in the first place. At some point you come to question. Some things are easily bred; others easily fade, their glimmer tarnished by the mundane everyday. I am tired-er than I know, of more things than I know. Maybe what I told Rose long and long ago (to her eyebrow-raising incredulity) was true. Now it only remains to rediscover the efficacy of that remedy, and to be content therewith.

2.48am; 1137 words.

5.17am; just re-read a paragraph of essay and realised last sentence of paragraph is line of dialogue (with veekay??) from half-dream segued into while falling-head-starts-nodding-eventually-nod-becomes-precipitous-crash-towards-keyboard-drowse-and-start-awake-asleep. win. fail? *looks at word count* fail.

6.27am; hello freezing in central forum. so cold! mynah has just alighted on step go on eat bread that strange tabby cat would not. plans to finish essay have shrunk considerably to "just reach 2000 words before leaving".

18th april 2.08am (because this is not worthy of a brand new post):

i guess i choose "forever hold".

word count: 3541

if I suffer, it is my own affair

2010-04-13T03:15:00.009+08:00

the week-and-a-bit's gleanings...

...and it took ten years to tell... that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, sane rhyme, same reason...-- Carol Ann Duffy, Little Red Cap, from The World's Wife

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He had been an exile from England almost all his life, he knew very well the rise and fall of yearning that comes with an unexpected scent, the change of seasons, a farewell.-- Philippa Gregory, The Constant Princess

____________________________________________________
Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?
Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts
So it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess,
And to stop the muscle that makes us confess

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just,
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys-- Ingrid Michaelson, Breakable (lyrics before song again, what's new)

____________________________________________________
I go my own way, make my own choices. If I suffer it is my own affair, on my head be it. And if you must know I disagreed because nine thousand eight hundred and forty kilometres wasn't distance enough.-- Marilyn Monroe, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dearoldlove and Google

____________________________________________________
Life and How to Survive It, half-posted by Clandestine a long time ago. Worth reading in its entirety. I like the tail-end of it (which is also what Clandestine posted).

____________________________________________________
I want to link more-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oscar Wilde, more St. Vincent Millay and Duffy, Jeffrey MacDaniel-- but I think this is already overkill. Okay, maybe just one more-- MacDaniel-- via a junior via FB:

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

____________________________________________________
I omitted one word and in time even I will--must-- forget. In this as in all things else my sympathies lie with the nightingale. Perhaps it is self-preservation of a sort; one can hardly be disappointed if one goes about with significantly less than no expectations, yes?

one last, rather more mundane anecdote:

me: *walks into brother's room and sees him sprawled rather grandly in front of computer, instead of being hunched over in Mad Mug Mode* you look very...
B: relaxed?
me: well "comfortable" was the word I was looking for but well--
B: yeah it's cos I'm the pimp king.
me: what?!
B: all I'm missing is the copper cane and top hat.

Yeah I know EXACTLY what to buy this September.

okay stardeeeeeeeeeeee

why wear my heart on my sleeve when it looks so good in your hand

2010-04-09T10:19:00.006+08:00

Having been prompted that my blog is "super (suber??) emo", I ought to clarify that I am NOT. I meant it when I said I needed only that one night to do an Orsino, except more shoulder-a-swingy, and now I am frankly just unspeakably amused by what Not-So-Best-Friend said on fb:

"have you seen XXX's status
EVERYONE IS SAYING GOODBYE TO THEIR ALMOST LOVERS"

The pure plebeian uniformity of our reactions is almost ludicrous. Having said that, Clement and Meow's item really was powerful. See how many people it moved to *melodramatic gasp* *hanky to eye* *lingering look-back farewell* histrionics... oh what can I say, I'm heartless. I'll attempt to do justice to all the concerts I've watched in another post there is no way I am in the right frame of mind for proper blogging now.

and what happens when sisters try to be clever without realising that they've mistakenly mistook "Pods" to be "Pots":

M: (to brother) Yo. Do you want some pot?
B: What?
M: Pot. To eat.
B: Tell me what they are I don't want to end up eating clay pots.
M: They're edible I'm eating them.
B: Yeah well everything is edible-- ONCE.

Damnit not as funny as it was. Hello I need comic timing. or maybe sleep. (I apologise if I've misquoted you guys please don't sue me)

Back to wurk wurk (help I'm repressed help!)
ah slides slides slides!!!

snowmelt

2010-04-06T02:59:00.004+08:00

Well I'd never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me

Goodbye my almost lover
Goodbye my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?

So long my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind

So you're gone and i'm haunted
And i bet you are just fine
Did i make it that easy to walk
Right in and out of my life?

I'll be fine in the morning. Just give me tonight to feel again.

stop calling stop calling i don't want to talk anymore

2010-04-02T06:19:00.003+08:00

because I can't sleep till you're next to me
No I can't live without you no more
Oh I stay up till you're next to me
Till this house feels like it did before

Feels like insomnia &c;

I NEVER do learn my lesson, do I. I DON'T LIKE CLUBBING. Dislike dislike dislike. half-bored to death. frazzled trying to protect inebriated girls. irritated by crowds. CANNOT STAND GRINDING.

Only liked it when Yayi did his usual-- i.e. actual dancing instead of the bobbing everyone is wont to do. Come to think of it that might have been the reason I found City Alive halfway redeemable.

But the girls had fun, so that was good. Played lightbulb again-- twice-- the first was bearable and second was just godawful. Best part of tonight might have been the solitary drive home after dropping off Chris and John.

Now I'm sitting here waiting for sunrise. Hello there, Friday. Please be nice?

ghosts

2010-03-27T00:42:00.004+08:00

The night's magic started with the scent of frangipanis, when I said, "Oh my god *deep breath* what is that smell?" Or perhaps I am wrong and it started with the message conveying the smallest of conveniences, an indication to meet where I wouldn't have to walk and we could just bus the rest of the way-- perhaps it started when I got off the bus and caught sight of familiarity and sudden relief just descended on my shoulders. Perhaps I am wrong-er still and it all started long long long ago. Who knows?

It's not been a lovely day-- although it was made slightly, dark-humourly more bearable because of commiseration from fellow Lawyer, Sociable Political Scientist and Emo Dance Kid-- but it's been a lovely end.

So: frangipanis scenting the air, alcove shaded by my namesake; changing into a dress mid-walk ("damn shocked!"); graphite Longchamp backpack with matching shawl; speaking with macaws; blossoms in pristine condition slotted into the slits sundering boardwalks; hummus! sweet potato! capsicums and almonds!-- best dips ever; fish and chips and ribs (cue pilfering of salad and chips engineered by yours truly); near-death by cake. Daffodils-- real live daffodils!-- and unknown white flowers, wandering lonely as a cloud, moving from lonely to alone, watching stars in darkened fields to a cricket orchestra. Good sourcing, dear liz-the-wiz.

Some day I will look back and not understand what it is to feel like this, to want to walk and keep walking despite fatigue that leaves my eyesight fogged on roads I'd forgotten the black-and-gold of,

but for now it is enough.

knowing

2010-03-22T10:03:00.004+08:00

I'm so hard for a rich girl
My heels are high, my eyes cast low
And I don't know how to love
I get too tired after mid-day, lately
I take it out on my good friends
But the worst stays in
Oh where would I begin?

My office glows all night long,
It's a nuclear show and the stars are gone
Elevator, elevator, take me home

I'm so hard for the rich girl
Her heels so high and my hopes so low
'cause I don't know how to love
I'll take her home after midnight
And if she likes, I'll tell her lies
of how we'll fall in love by the morning
I don't think she'll know that I'm saying goodbye

11.49am: this is crazy, this cannot go on. I refuse to ruin Monday and screw over anyone else. flipping bitch switch to 'off'.

watch you spin around in your highest heels

2010-03-19T19:55:00.004+08:00

Six roses...

in exchange for two daisies...

and the unexpected delight of seeing something like passion reflected in the eyes of a 10-year-old, assiduously practising steps to She Wolf.

Sunday's pictures:

It's been a good week, in more ways than one.

rule of three

2010-03-17T00:55:00.003+08:00

I did some things today that I'm not proud of, and karma completely came back to bite me in the form of making sure I messed up for the only thing I care about. I couldn't catch timing or cleanliness or feel for Choon Hui's class and repeatedly had near-collisions with Corner Guy, and when I moved away from him I ended up cramping poor Rose's style instead. Then we were late for Mash rehearsal and I caught no balls for that either but I like to think the powers that be saw my repentance because I ended up on a high.

Seriously, I may be an utter ditz but in other-- needless-- things I have the freaking memory of an elephant. Get. Over. It.

In any case-- Mash choreo was gorgeous. Rose and Fred the non-identical twins were glorious. Trinity of dancing lawyers ftw. Life is crackeringly--Tucker's-Natural-Gourmet-Crackeringly-- good. Time to start studying.

Also time to go and take my turn on the karmic wheel. Repent, repent!

leave my head and my heart on the dance floor

mornings like this ought to be strung up and shot-- or at least severely prodded

2010-03-12T07:37:00.002+08:00

can't find my contacts, can't find my thumb drive, presentation not finished, eyebags the size of antarctica; blocking to do, music to burn, costumes to cart around AND buy (note: tights and silver jackets plus do they come in kid sizes???).

so tempted to skip tutorial again but i'm presenting. oh hell.

thank you, jack neo

2010-03-11T15:11:00.004+08:00

My tweet is wrong, the proper quote is here:

"You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass..."-- Hamlet

On my way to school today I heard an analysis-- oh, face it, a dissection-- of Jack Neo's presscon over the radio. The entire affair (no pun intended) was distasteful, and definitely not helped by Dad's sporadic exasperated huffs at Mum's insistence on listening to the report; however, one particular portion of the broadcast struck me. Lin Hui expressed dissatisfaction with the way Neo had handled the conference. In essence, she said he had not at all explained himself, or spoken about how the alleged dalliances had happened, or admitted or denied any of the allegations of the eleven women who had accused him; he had not talked about how he had met them or interacted with them, if that he had, he had not expressed remorse, he had not this-ed, he had not that-ed. What did all that amount to?

Add this to the mix: they played a recording of Neo's wife speaking, and as she spoke and subsequently broke down in tears, pleading for understanding for her family in this time, begging for the public's blessing, her words were accompanied by the frenetic snapping of camera flashes that ever rose in intensity as her voice cracked and she started weeping.

And when she collapsed, in Lin Hui's words, the cameramen and photographers immediately surged forward, still frantically snapping. Asked if they'd extended a helping hand, she hesitated and said, "There were staff nearby who helped, of course, but most of our photographer colleagues of course still had the responsibility of their jobs to think of..."

I don't know what happened in the intervening 2 years to have changed that fresh-faced young woman I went to crime scenes with into someone who could justify that scene of carnage, but that is besides the point. The whole mess just reminded me all over again of what I'd happily glossed over in my general nostalgia for those journalistic days-- why I decided to reject NTU's offer, along with the 60k (?) scholarship, and head off in a direction I'd never even considered in the first place.

We're vultures, we journalists, or we end up being damn near like them. We batten on the flesh of the wounded and tear it open, splay blood spatters and shredded flesh on the covers of papers, slap recordings of their pain on the airwaves, name shame scorn them on "new media" (don't tell me that is to cultivate citizen journalism more often than not that simply refers to a bunch of people with far too much time on their hands looking for power to judge in the sulfurous anonymity of the cesspool that is the internet). Lin Hui's dissatisfaction stemmed from the lack of juiciness of Neo's presscon; she wanted the details, she wanted to know what made him tick, why he was drawn to a particular girl or how the interaction between the two progressed. She wanted the gore of a man torn down to pieces with his insides all exposed, with the same sort of unsavoury unholy revelation little Miss I'm-so-hurt Chong exhibited in pandering to the panting slavering of the masses.

We-- I-- end up exploiting people, manipulating them to give us the soundbyte we-- I-- need; I look for tragedy because that forms a story, I want all the gory juicy details because that's the lowest common factor that makes for a titillating and hence commonly-sought-for read, I find out what is interesting about a person because that makes my story arresting; then I smile politely but coldly and disengage myself.

I started out being truly interested in people but I could feel myself changing as the days passed. It is a rare journalist who doesn't end up sizing each person in terms of their value to his/her report, or becoming jaded or burned out because you simply cannot sustain that genuine interest-- after a while it's the same old story, is it not, or you learn quickly enough which newsmaker is worth your time and which one is telling a story that others also have, no matter how heartbreaking or painful to him it is. Yes, there are the good stories-- the ones that inspire you, the ones that make you feel what the hell, this is definitely worth it. But they are few and far between. And of course, there is that rarest of gems-- someone who is truly interested in people and who truly can engage them, someone who can listen. But that's not my point, and more unfortunately still, that's not who I am.

I still love journalism, I just cannot do it-- not on a daily basis. Nor do I want to end up part of a flock of vultures, circling and gleam-eyed, forgetting the ordinary man behind the face to be displayed on our papers and screens. And Neo is an ordinary man-- focus on ordinary, not on "man". I'm not going to judge him because I have no right to judge as much as because I refuse to engage in the morass of public condemnation going on now, and also because I have this memory in my head of the man who took time out from an angry discussion over lunch with his fellow actors to sign a tatty autograph book held by a starry-eyed child.

So that's one more door closed-- quite firmly, I would say. And so thank you Mr Neo for reminding me of that.