silence is salvation

silence is a virtue. in this inane world of crazy relentless noise, the silence once begotten freely and in abundance has become an elusive lover that has to be courted and caught.

silence is a virtue.

silence is a virtue that i love. and when silence crawls into my crazy life of abundantly capricious fancies, silence is no longer simple virtue. silence has become salvation.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

-- t.s. eliot, in Preludes
___

an attempt to finally sit down and fill up my ipod with albums i rarely listen to but ought to and think i would like to has renewed my love for dido. as with all music i dearly love, hers bring me back to a distant arcadia that had bloomed, once upon a time, in a farrago of light.

my lovers gone
his boots no longer by my door
he left at dawn
and as I slept i felt him go return no more
i will not watch the ocean
my lovers gone
no earthy ships will ever bring him home again
bring him home again
my lovers gone
i know that kiss wil be my last
no home his song
the tune upon his lips has passed i sing alone
while i watch the ocean
my lovers gone
no earhly ships will ever bring him home again
bring him home again

-- dido, my lover's gone
___

the irony of resorting to music as a net to reclaim silence is, unfortunately, not lost on me. unfortunate, for to be able to claim insanity in a world gone mad is, but bliss.

saigon

___

before i procrastinate further - ho chi minh city 6-8 april. it was meant to be a getaway but i fled to the wrong city, from one noisy to a noisier one. being three days i didnt do much. being saigon, couldnt do much either. it's a city rushing to progress, to modernise, to get rich, and somewhere amid its hurry it lost its way and lost its soul. it's not hard to see what it would be thirty years from now: just look at singapore.

no wait, it is looking at singapore.

did the usual landmarks' visits, there was this temple whose religion (cao dai) counts shakespeare and victor hugo as amongst its saints, had some really good food and coffee, and finished two incredible books by sontag and kundera.

红豆

还没好好的感受 雪花绽敷的气候
我们一起颤抖 会更明白 什么是温柔
还没跟你牵着手 走过荒芜的沙丘
可能从此以后 学会珍惜 天长和地久

有时候 有时候 我会相信一切有尽头
相聚离开 都有时候 没有什么会永垂不朽
可是我 有时候 宁愿选择留恋不放手
等到风景都看透 也许你会陪我 看细水长流

sweet chimera

i had once wished for a day to be like the rain out there - i was on the train gliding through the silver falling gauze. i loved that particular rainfall; beneath the smoken sky it was pellucid, expectant, here to stay. and for it to stay i wished. i wished not to arrive at my destination, for beyond the trellised windows held a sweet chimera. it was a surreal sight where i could see where i never was, and i felt light, felt like a traveller on a foreign land, felt like it didn't matter where i ended up as long as my heart eventually led me home.

only that destination up-ended and dented destiny.

that was in january, a month where new hopes for a moulted life are triggered like fireworks to sparkle the raven stubborn sky. and after the fierce few seconds what then? what else but the return of the night. just as not all dark need light, not all time need be present. my time sank, my time vanished, and april came. how do i feel now? why did i imagine things would be different simply because time had passed? there were moments i thought i hated you. i thought i ought to. then again, who was i angry with but myself? self-acrimony, the most lethal dose of anger, garoting me from within; the dormant pain, of injury, of anger, the strains of indignance rising like a dark tchaikovsky.

couldn't you love me for more than a night?

one more night. how tempting. how innocent. what difference could it make, one more night?

couldn't we change our hearts the way we change our nights?

mexico

___

19.12.2006. cancun. westin. sunrise white beach. christian. margaritas. chitchen itza. on the road to merida. vancouver girl. presidente intercontinental. plaza mayor. catedral and endless calles. paseo de montejo. cafe la cabana. hycendas. robert & arturo. guadalajara. holiday inn. city of roses. swirling pigeons. catedral 1618. mariachis. plaza de la liberacion. tlaquepaque. jaliso. tequila. alejandro. tequila. writing in the dark. mexico city. sheraton. alameda central. palacio de bellas artes. cafe caffe. rene. monumento a la revolucion. paseo de la reforma. museo n.d. antropologia. i love rufino tamayo. antonio. christian. and the endless shots of libreria. i watched: vitus. welcome home. one summer. the wedding director. i read: winterson. hollinghurst. vidal. suskind. burroughs. calvino. marquez. ozick. winterson. 07.01.2007. singapore.

there is only the present and nothing to remember

How does one play word games when the rules and outcomes defy language; and when they route to the heart, how can words ever suffice? Who else but i can hear my own heart break within the seeming stoic slats of my ribs, hear its reluctant, plaintive echoes in the lonely hollow of my chest? They say a metaphor is a leap of imagination, a leap off reality. But heartbreaks make their pain and sorrow felt in all its searing glory. And heartbreaks leave me and me alone to pick up the scattered shards of silent aftermath.
___

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could we go on? How could we ever get up and off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? By forgetting. We cannot keep in mind too many things. There is only the present and nothing to remember.

-- jeanette winterson

redbean

finally, the phd

routine and what i thought were life's little permanancies died the day i finished NS, and when not long after, i emerged from the hospital with a part of me - physically and emotionally - lobbed off, i've rarely been able to see my life past one year's horizon. tasmania, melbourne, NTU - first as a student then a salaried yuppie, and then now at the school where i'm teaching, it had and has been difficult to flip through an annual calendar, and plan for a foreign year. it's ironic because my introverted and indolent temperament naturally craves for the prosaic, the settled, the humdrum. but i repeatedly find myself hurled out there frantically rifling for yet another still ground in the shade. fate or subconscious masochism many times i wonder. simply, why? but i imagine otherwise, like holding down a 9-5 office job in a swanky skyscraper down-swanky-town like every one else and i develop convulsive reservations and worries about my sanity and happiness. so the choice (or, the no-choice) is clear. and so when this morning, when the news that my imminent phd candidature, that has hitherto been wavering tenuously between obstinate destitution and/or effortless perdition, has been awarded a scholarship, i was so relieved i couldn't feel it. and it is only just, a day past, that i realise an eternity of three years has been sweetly sequestered off my checkered life.

couldn't we live forever without running out of occasions?

i havent been posting because of school so that's a good thing. all my energies are channeled and spent there. but i've not stopped writing - am still ruminating in my trusty notebook (of the papyrus variety), and though even the entries there are dwindling in content and frequency, my impromptu aphorisms remain in my head. when i've time they'll appear somewhere for personal posterity. which effectively means during the june holidays.

meantime, i'll take a short cut - and put up something not mine (but infinitely better). so here're some more mark doty, whose poetry have masted my sail past a recent high surf. and not only that, the shiver down my spine, the undulant wave of visceral orgasm. . .

from Chanteuse:

... that is how i would describe her voice,
her lyric that becomes, now, my city:
torch, invitation, accomplishment. my romance
doesn't need a blue lagoon standing by...

as she invented herself, memory revises
and restores her, and the moment she sang.
i think we were perfected,

when we became her audience,
and maybe from that moment on
it didn't matter so much exactly

what would become of us.
i would say she was memory,
and we were restored by

the radiance of her illusion,
her consummate attention to detail,
--name the colors-- her song: my Alexandria,

my romance, my magnolia
distilling lamplight, my backlit glory
of the wigshops, my haze

and glow, my torch, my skyrocket,
my city, my false,
my splendid chanteuse.
___

from The Wings

don't let anybody tell you

death's the price exacted
for the ability to love;

couldn't we live forever
without running out of occasions?

piccies