Why I adore the night... and Winterson

I love this piece by Winterson! *awww*

the passing of an age

There's this funny feeling today. I keep remembering the times that have passed. Times when I was younger, in my late teens, and times when I was perhaps happier, even though I didn't realize it at that time. And not only in thoughts, but also the smells of particular times, places and moments that wafted in and lingered at the back of my throat. Those times of carefree Sundays and rainy afternoons. Those times when I was young.

And more than once I felt... fragile?

***

A few days ago I was sitting by my desk by the window. It was a dazzling spring afternoon, and I saw how beautiful the scenery was. First the window - a long, white, and elegantly-paned bay window that extended down from the ceiling; then the building opposite painted in yellow that reminded me of Miami; fronted by a lone tree and lamppost, the sky was blue beyond, and neatly scattered with little square puffs of clouds. All framed by the elegant window, presenting a tableau so literally out of the ordinary, so beautiful, like it was a painting brought out into the garden, into a farrago of light.

***

And here I am by the window again, and now it's night. A last night of sorts. Reminds me of that remarkable, brave, beautiful, luminous novel by James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room:

I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window pane. ...

Only I hope my morning tomorrow wouldn't be the most terrible. Just that it wouldn't be yet another morning.

It would be the morning where I shall mutter to myself with all the joy and lightness of spirit that I can muster: And the lovely night could only last so long. An age has passed, and time belongs to a new day now.

Secret blog

Ok, do it if you want, if you insist. Just make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. Go. Do it. I dare you. GO!

__

And this is a great blog - The Secret Political Blog - all the more amazing they're JC students! I think if every Singaporean read them instead of the shitty Straits Times, Singaporeans will finally grow a brain. Hehe. Bookmark the blog for your daily dose of brainjuice!

never ever

never. ever. do. a. phd.

Is it October already...

I was scolded by a dear friend recently. I had so wanted to leave, and now that I have left, why am I wasting time, getingt bothered by what's going on miles and mile away, when Melbourne is right at my doorstep? And he's right. Why not use the time to walk the parks in the morning, read in the cafes... and ... write my thesis? There're only 18 months left. There should only be me, my thesis, the occasional indulgence of Melbourne. Isn't that what I've been wishing for - doing what I'm doing and being where I am?

I haven't been reading a lot of novels of late, initially I was quite up to speed with my writing, then I got distracted (by you know what) and lost that momentum. For a good month or so I didn't touch a novel. And then Coetzee's new novel came out and I bought a copy, and I thought, 'Gosh, how I miss reading novels.' Coetzee is brilliant. So very brilliant. There's a Melburnian connection too - I first read him when I was here a few years ago. Read his Elizabeth Costello, and then borrowed his Youth from the library. Didn't like him at first, found him dreary and his constant stream of rhetorical questions irritating. Of course that was before my literary turn. . . And when that turn occurred, Coetzee appeared to me a great writer, exquisitely so, remarkable, given that his style is so understated, pared down, and yet, each word, cadence, sentence strikes right into your heart. You see his words there on the page but they seem to hover beyond the page too, in a luminous kind of way. Lambent, I think is the better word. I suppose great writing is transcendent that way. Anyhow, his novel-memoir Summertime is really good, not just the writing but also how he subverts genre and plays with structure and form. Any publication by Coetzee is really quite an occasion in itself.

Then, a few months ago, I chanced upon an article written by the Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig. He was writing about the bush fires that had just ravaged country Victoria, and somehow that article - the writing - struck me. Light, poised, and very touching. But there was something else and I didn't know what exactly was it. I sent some of his articles to a friend, who after one look, said, 'I like how he reaches into the sublime.' And that was what it was - he would talk about his childhood, write about nature and the birds and mornings, and then his words would rise ever so often, so effortlessly towards the sublime. He's like a modern-day Blake who writes in prose. I now look forward to his fortnightly column, and I just bought his collected essays. All very, very, good. Here's one of my favourite articles of his: Gently Downstream.

I remember spending an entire summer here alone that few years ago. Three months of hot days and lazy afternoons, it was a book and a different cafe everyday. I had just bought Faye Wong's album then, and simply couldn't stop listening to it, so much that the songs in that album now never fail to remind me of those days, of Melbourne. I was listening to it earlier on the way to the gym, and the familiar streets, the sunny weather, the music, just brought me back to that few years ago. Those were really quite happy days.

I didn't plan on writing so much, just wanted to talk about novels, and what my dear friend said. I guess it's a timely scolding. It's October already. I have to buck up. There's only gonna be me, my thesis, and the occasional indulgence of Melbourne. I've decided to not do any work on Sunday. So tomorrow I'm gonna wake up early and head to the Botanic Gardens, read in the cafes, visit the galleries, bookshops, generally wander about the city.

Gosh this is starting to sound like a confessional, or one of those shuddery self-help books (that don't help anyone at all). But there've been some bad times, times I felt alone, afraid, doubtful, felt like packing my backs and going back to Sydney, or even Singapore (the horror). But I'll always remind myself of this one particular afternoon, where I had just bought myself a takeaway latte and was walking home and was feeling miserable and having these thoughts of giving up and going home when I took my first sip of that latte, and, gosh, what a revelation that sip was! The latte was absolutely divine! And I thought, *this* is why I'll never leave this place.

Disgrace

Some things your government and its propaganda newspapers don't want you to know: the slums of Singapore.

Have we lost our humanity?

Reform Party

Excerpts from an interview Kent Ridge Common had with the Reform Party's Kenneth Jeyaretnam --

KRC: If there is any message you would like to relay to the NUS community, its alumni and students and staff from other tertiary institutions, what would it be?

KJ: My message is that it is possible to have hope. We can change things for the better but to effect this the Reform Party needs your support. We therefore call upon all Singaporeans not to be afraid, to wake up from their slumbers and come forward and support us. If you share our vision of a free and prosperous Singapore, where your government aims to raise your living standards rather than just to increase the size of the economy by expanding the population, where every citizen is empowered to exercise his or her rights and to express themselves freely without fear, where the years that you gave up to serve the country during NS count for something rather just being a millstone in the race to compete with foreign workers, then vote for the Reform Party.

Fengshui & Faye

I bought a sturdy chair, and I moved my desk to the window, and now there's light. Lots of light. And I find myself sitting here reading, thinking, looking out of the window into the horizon and right into the sunset. Is good. Good fengshui I think. Is all good.

Though I should be banned from Youtubing Faye. Someone find me another Chinese singer with that voice. That voice that I have fallen in love with for half a lifetime now. THAT VOICE.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH~~~

Tan Hong Ming

Look at these two Malaysian advertisements (out of the many on youtube), and be amazed by how mature and advanced the Msians are in discussing racial issues. Makes Singaporeans look like baby ostriches with heads stuck in the sand.

The hours

One of my favourite films is The Hours. It's a remarkable piece of art on many, many levels. Ostensibly, it's a film about three mundane lives of three women. It's split into three narratives running like a Bach fugue. The first narrative portrays the life struggles of the great Virginia Woolf in the 1930s just as she is writing her great novel, Mrs Dalloway. The second narrative is set in the 1950s, and revolves around a Laura Brown, who is trapped in a marriage with a devoted husband whom she does not love, and who reads the novel Mrs Dalloway and empathises with the protagonist in the novel. The third narrative is set in present-day NYC, where a Clarissa Vaughan (who shares the same name as the protagonist in Mrs Dalloway) is preparing a party for that evening (just like the Clarissa in Mrs Dalloway) for her good friend, Richard, who had just won a major literary prize. During one of the movie's climax, something happens to Richard, and Laura Brown from the second narrative enters the third narrative; and we find out that she is Richard's aged mother. In a way, they're all linked to the novel Mrs Dalloway; and in a way, they are Mrs Dalloway. Art and life woven into a lustrous spiral, and from it, a higher, greater art is created.

Three of the finest and most remarkable Hollywood actresses play the respective leads - Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep - who deliver the exquisite screen-lines penned by the acclaimed playwright David Hare. The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, who in turn had written his novel as a tribute to the great Virginia Woolf and her great novel, Mrs Dalloway. And coruscating throughout this luminous piece of art pretending to be a movie is the hauntingly beautiful orchestral, composed by none other than one of the last living classical composers of our time, Philip Glass.

Like all the good things that have happened to me, I can't really remember when I first watched it, or how I came to watch it. Probably someone lent me the DVD, and an innocuous movie-afternoon turned into one of those proverbial life-changing moments. I've watched the film many times since, and like all great things, like all great novels, great art, I take away something new, something different each time I watch it. Something I never knew existed in the film, despite the numerous viewings.

There is this particular scene in the movie, where Virginia Woolf tries to escape Richmond to go to London, but is stopped just in time at the train station by her husband. In that explosive scene, Nicole Kidman delivers a stunning, absolutely stunning performance, and with the most intensest of dialogues, just pure poetry. I shan't try to replicate it here; the effect would be lost. But watching the film again recently, and feeling all that I've been feeling lately, it was as if Virginia Woolf came alive and was speaking for me, was me.

So the gamut of emotions, of loss, of finding myself lost, and alone, and confusion, despair, and then that intermittent, temporary, glimmer of light and hope. And the thoughts of moving back to Sydney, of giving it all up and moving back altogether, thoughts of all those what-ifs and maybes; what if I'd remained in Singapore to teach; maybe I'd have been happier? Maybe it would've been the better choice? But all these come to nought when it comes to where I am now. I am happy where I am, I'm happy to have come. But the thesis is beginning to weigh me down and like Mrs Dalloway, I can't help but worry; worry if I'm good enough, if I can pull it off, buy the flowers myself in the morning and throw one hell of a party in the evening. Like Virginia Woolf, I can't help but feel for certain that I'm going mad again, that I can't go through another of these terrible times. That I shan't recover this time, that I'm beginning to hear voices, and can't concentrate. . .

That last few lines are from Virginia Woolf's suicide letter just before she killed herself. I'm not gonna kill myself and do what seems to be the best thing to do. But there were times I thought I was at my lowest ebb. And then there were times when I remembered, from the film, that while we defined our own humanity, we cannot find peace by avoiding life.

___

When the month of June was here, I had wanted to put up one of my favourite literary lines. I've put it up in this blog before, a few years ago. It's a line from Mrs Dalloway. But somehow I just didn't get to put it up. And June came and went. And then July, and August, and the winter, all have had their time and gone. Spring is now here, and September has arrived. Time really flies. Like that little sparrow you can never catch, living its own time in yet another spring September sky. One can only watch aside, look up from below, and admire such beauty, and hold on there, wishing for a fragment of time's precious fragility.

.... they love life. in people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

-- Mrs Dalloway; Virginia Woolf