monoceros blogsEvery good life has its turns. I now know what it's like to be so confused I can't take the next step without worrying, to start at the smallest thing, to break down at the slightest prod. I can't seem to work properly and I find no pleasure in going about town or eating out. I have an agent in New York who's probably waiting for my work but I haven't written a word or sent her anything. I only dwell and obsess on everything that's gone wrong, on what I can or can't fix. When I was younger, my greatest regret was stealing my brother's glasses and ruining my 20/20 vision. Now I've got any number of regrets clamoring for that top spot.
I think a lot about emotional turmoil. It's wanting to cry in your mother's arms, wanting to be comforted by her voice but not being able to because you don't want her to suffer as she watches her daughter come undone. So you cry in the shower; or if you've nowhere else to go, you cry alone in a corner of the public swimming pool where no one can tell the tears from the blue water, and if you emerge with red eyes, you can blame the chlorine; or you go to the sea and dip your head in until you imagine the waves carrying your tears to another part of the world. It doesn't help when your grandfather comes to you when he's at his lowest and says he wants to end everything. He asks the same question: what else is there to live for? You used to tell him, you'll see my brother marry, you'll be a great-grandfather, but you don't anymore.
Emotional turmoil is also letting someone go, watching them leave you and fearing they won't return. It's knowing you say the wrong things only after you've said them and still, you stupidly keep saying them. It's wanting to help people but not being able to get near them because they won't let you. It's writing to those you hope will give you support and not hearing back from them. It's thinking they don't care, they won't hear your cry for help. It's knowing they're aware of your problem but say nothing to you because they'd rather ignore it. Or perhaps they'll allude to the problem and say something mildly placating but those words only trivialise what you're feeling.
Every week, I save a couple of cards from the Postsecret site. I could collect several dozens of these and map out my life.
No, I don't want to be a cold corpse by my own hand. I have a few things that bring comfort to me yet, even if some of them are merely cold comforts. There are many books I want to read and a few I'd like to write; places I want to see; people I want to meet; apologies I have to make; mistakes that I hope I can still right.
Comfort is a precious thing and you don't notice this till you really need it. Sometimes it's being able to forget and be distracted by the world that's so much larger than your problems; sometimes it's listening to a song; and for now, it's writing the last lines to a poem, a story, a blog entry.
And what did I want from writing this entry? I'm not sure. But I know I can't explain my problems and I don't want anyone's pity. Most days I just get by, others I'm sunk so low you'd have to spend hours digging me out. Perhaps tomorrow some of my thoughts and ideas will change, but for tonight, this is what I feel. What I've been feeling more and more over the past few months. I don't know how I'll be tomorrow or half a year from now. But I'll be here.
Tagged by a l. She always does this, and I always comply. =)
Four jobs you've had in your life:
1) Secondary school teacher
2) Secretary
3) Editor
4) University lecturer
Four movies you could watch over and over again (not to be confused with favourite movies):
1) A Close Shave
2) Bridget Jones' Diary
3) Spirited Away
4) The Last Unicorn
Four TV shows you love(d) to watch (among many others):
1) Scrubs
2) Whose line is it anyway?
3) House
4) 'allo allo
Four places you've lived
1) Upper Thomson Road, Singapore
2) Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
3) Ann Arbor, Michigan
4) Siglap, Singapore
Four places you've been on vacation to:
1) Hong Kong
2) Montreal, Canada
3) Cinque Terre, Italy
4) Chicago
Four places you would rather be (or where you'll like to visit?):
1) Ireland
2) Peak District, England
3) Oregon
4) Tasmania
Four of your favourite foods:
1) Spaghetti aglio olio
2) Wanton mee
3) Ice jelly
4) Cheese
Four websites you visit daily (close enough, anyway, and not counting e-mail):
1) Entertainment Weekly or EW.com
2) NY Times
3) Amazon.com
4) Apple trailers
After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child
And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers
And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.
This one made me remember.
"Bloody Men" by Wendy Cope from Serious Concerns
Bloody men are like bloody buses
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.
You look at them flashing their indicators,
Offering you a ride.
You're trying to read the destinations,
You haven't much time to decide.
If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days.
Not much time to write so I thought I'd put up a few of photos. These are from the final road trip of my graduate school days. It was a very last-minute thing - I was in the middle of packing for the huge move - but I'm glad I went. I never got to see Chicago in this kind of light.
Nothing like the Chicago sky- and shoreline
Folks get to bike, run along, or swim in Lake Michigan
A long, shallow pool for summer waders
I want to be that happy
The heart melted like cheese in the oven when the photo of red-haired Wallace and one-year-old Gromit appeared at the start of Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Peiming (recently married and presently honeymooning in Maldives - I'm envious) and Lim Jia - piano and trumpet players respectively - introduced me to M.C. Escher when they gave me a large book filled with his work for my birthday. Musicians and artful creations, is it any wonder it was those two girls who made Escher known to me?
Later, I picked up a book called G?del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which I've yet to read since it's stuck in one of the gazillion boxes I shipped home from Michigan but have yet to unpack. Noob (since I'm mentioning everyone's vocation, I might as well add that he's an engineer) suggested the book, and since I liked the premise, I made an impulse purchase. According to him and Amazon.com, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book uses references to music, mathematics, and art to explore heavy topics like meaning and form, pattern, number theory, self-reference, and strange loops. Giddy stuff.
I was reminded of the book yesterday when I spotted this picture tacked to my former boss's (an editor/publishing manager - such a variety of careers in this post!) cubicle wall. It's a cheeky illustration from AlienlovesPredator.com - a cool online strip with Alien (he's called Abe; his mom calls him Abraham) and Predator (he's Preston) as roommates in New York.
Here's the original work -
It's 2006. And one thing I look forward to this year is the release (finally!) of Brokeback Mountain in Singapore (I hope the censorship board won't do anything nasty to the film). I didn't read the story in The New Yorker back in 1997 but chanced upon it when I was selecting anthologies for my creative writing class in 2004.
The one I chose - The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction - included the short story by Annie Proulx (whose last name I still can't pronounce, though this isn't the reason I didn't use the short story in my syllabus, or maybe it was, I can't remember) and I read it without knowing how famous it'd been or would be. The story may not be for everyone, but it got me.
Spoiler ahead:
The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
~ from Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
There were many good ones but I was knocked out by this paragraph. Twenty years of meetings that were few and far between, and all Ennis had at the end were his memories and two shirts, one hung inside the other. You can teach your students - or for that matter, yourself - again and again about detail; creating small, telling details or a power-filled one that never feels tacked on by the author but actually emerges from the story and the characters. But they often fail to accomplish this, and the truth is, so do you.
In the trailer for Brokeback Mountain, you can catch a few seconds of Ennis Del Mar (played by Heath Ledger) holding those two shirts. It's heartbreaking, knowing what those shirts mean to him. Yesterday, I found a thread on imdb.com. I didn't read the whole of it but it began with a poignant observation by one writer, Jeff Mallory -
how many of us are out there?
i see them at each screening, and i've been to see the film nine times now.
men sitting alone, women sitting alone. wrapped up in that film like an old blanket desperately searching for something. weeping. finding new meaning in the subtlest of sentences or glances by the actors.
...catching the under-the-brim glance that Ennis gives to Jack, dreading his reaction, after he tells him he can't make it back until november. he bites his nails knowing that he's making his lover sad... we're hoping.
we catch these moments, we sit until the last line of the last song is uttered, "get along little doggies, get along," then we leave the theater to what?
I almost asked a sad looking young man if he wanted to get coffee and talk.
we're all out there. we feed on this movie and take it home, to work, to our friends and family, and for some of us, we take it home alone and wonder..."did I make the right choices these past 40 years? Is there a brokeback mountain for me? is it too late?"
then we sleep and dream, waking to the hope that these feelings have subsided---but for now, they haven't. the world is still here, and this movie is still only a couple miles and couple dollars away. instead of a lonely brew at the bar, we're going back to brokeback...one more time.
it's got us good.
I suppose I might be one of those who'd watch this film alone. I don't have a Brokeback Mountain of my own but I know the pain, the disappointment, the yearning. There are some films, some songs, some stories and poems that uncannily know the correct turns and openings to reach the soul and pluck out every secret, memory, and shame. That's why they're loved, because people recognize themselves or some shade of themselves in those images, words, and music.
On an entirely different note, I'm supposed to locate a male stripper. I'm not the one organizing the hen night, but I promised the organizers I'd ask around for names and numbers. If anyone out there knows of strippers in Singapore, please write me at mae_chern@hotmail.com. I'd really appreciate any help. I won't ask how you know of the stripper or whether you're the stripper himself. Just a few contacts and recommendations if you have seen the display. Much obliged.