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LEAVING
CORNFLAKES
ON
THE
SOFA
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[Monday, 11/09/09] |
1. Had an especially good weekend in Manchester, walking along the Northern Quarter and taking swigs from a carton of soy milk while singing Last Night in the pouring rain. Sherman and I also spontaneously caught An Education in a little cinema with a piano, after I casually mentioned I'd been planning to see it.
2. Scattered thoughts on Continental feminism, which frankly isn't my cup of tea: I disagree with most of what Cixous has to say. I don't think there's a distinctly feminine style of writing and I have no trouble with language being linear and teleological. Next, Irigaray's point about lesbianism being liberating doesn't seem tenable in practice - she'd roll in her grave at the sight of modern-day lesbians rigidly organising themselves along the very lines she eschewed. I've always wondered if it's in our nature to ascribe binary gender roles to ourselves - or whether we're so accustomed to viewing ourselves in that light, that whenever we try to break out of one mould, we leap into another.
When I was with my first girlfriend, our relationship wasn't at all rigidly constructed, but I did detect some telling patterns. Though I was far from getting a crew cut or binding my chest, I relished small, frequent acts of gallantry, and I loved it when I wore jeans and she a dress. I recall a definite element of pleasure in these interactions, as if they made us more complementary - like playing police and thief. In any case, I'm sure there's an entire corpus of literature dedicated to exploring this matter, and I should refrain from ignorant speculation.
3. Last night I dreamt I was hopelessly restless, and wanted to go on an extended road trip, Beat generation-style. In reality I'd lose my way repeatedly, and rant about filthy motel rooms. I also dreamt I was back in secondary school and, to my chagrin, coerced into attending additional Chinese classes every evening. I protested passionately, citing the fact I'd already passed my A Level exam and dedicated my life to ethics. My teacher, stern and curly-haired, was unimpressed.
4. Synth guitars are so cool.
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| The Pixies |
[Wednesday, 09/23/09] |
Out by the box-car waiting
Take me away to nowhere plains
There is a wait so long (so long)
You'll never wait so long
Here comes your man
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[Tuesday, 09/08/09] |
It's September. Referring to my mother's yellowing music scores, I used to play an oversimplified version of Autumn Leaves; melodramatically singing along, embracing the slow tragedy. Back then I'd never been in love - or at least I believe that on hindsight - but I pretended anyway. It's a beautiful song, like most other jazz standards. I wish I had a piano here, just to watch myself struggle through the notes like I've forgotten how to touch.
Saw Eva Hesse's sculptures this afternoon - they were more like ornaments, really. Some were grotesque, resembling shrivelled organs or parts of rare animals, carelessly shed and found in fishing nets - others were exquisite, paper bowls curling naturally at the edges.
Some days I want my life to be simple, only retaining its most essential elements. Like walking into a wardrobe and seeing every shirt in its right place, well-ironed. Throwing out the sizzling fat. Other times I want to fill it with excess, abandonment, pleasure without refinement or regret. I've had this dilemma for as long as I can remember.
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[Monday, 09/07/09] |
There's a song playing on the radio
Sky high in the airwaves on the morning show
And there's a lifeline slipping as the record plays
And as I open the blinds in my mind I'm believing that you could stay
And oh if you stay I'll chase the rainblown fields away
We'll shine like the morning and sin in the sun
Oh if you stay
We'll be the wild ones, running with the dogs today
Watched fireworks on the bridge and loved them, even when my vision was obscured by a bus stop. Lounged around in a pub afterwards and was denied the right to purchase cranberry juice, by a busty waitress with heavily lined eyes, because I lacked my passport. Luke bought me a morbid postcard.
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[Thursday, 09/03/09] |
This academic year's resolutions:
1. Clean my room consistently
2. Stay (relatively) thin, which implies going to the gym and walking aimlessly
3. Contribute regularly to newspaper and attend meetings, even if they do clash with lunch (priorities!)
4. Make sure I have nice hair
5. Remain outspoken in class, even if the professor is terrifying and classmates attempt to steal my thunder
6. Attempt to have a life outside of university (should I even bother?)
Works in progress.
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[Wednesday, 08/19/09] |
Today I ate lunch by myself in a Japanese restaurant. The last time I was there, I said goodbye to a friend who was leaving the country. I chewed on egg and chicken, clumsily scooping up chunks of sticky rice; sushi travelled past, colours and textures blurring pleasantly. I avoided reaching for the expensive plates. Beside me was a man in his early thirties, who rambled on about his family and personal strengths, while his female colleague listened passively. I couldn't tell if it was politeness or stupidity.
In the evening I went to the roof and smoked a cigarette, while the distant flats and apartments seemed to shine with new paint. It felt like being eighteen again.
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| Linda Gregg |
[Wednesday, 08/19/09] |
Asking For Directions
We could have been mistaken for a married couple
riding on the train from Manhattan to Chicago
that last time we were together. I remember
looking out the window and praising the beauty
of the ordinary: the in-between places, the world
with its back turned to us, the small neglected
stations of our history. I slept across your
chest and stomach without asking permission
because they were the last hours. There was
a smell to the sheepskin lining of your new
Chinese vest that I didn't recognize. I felt
it deliberately. I woke early and asked you
to come with me for coffee. You said, sleep more,
and I said we only had one hour and you came.
We didn't say much after that. In the station,
you took your things and handed me the vest,
then left as we had planned. So you would have
ten minutes to meet your family and leave.
I stood by the seat dazed by exhaustion
and the absoluteness of the end, so still I was
aware of myself breathing. I put on the vest
and my coat, got my bag and, turning, saw you
through the dirty window standing outside looking
up at me. We looked at each other without any
expression at all. Invisible, unnoticed, still.
That moment is what I will tell of as proof
that you loved me permanently. After that I was
a woman alone carrying her bag, asking a worker
which direction to walk to find a taxi.
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[Tuesday, 08/04/09] |
Once in a while I mock other people's writing. Today is one of those days.
In response to a question posed by the Workers Party, a 15-year-old elaborates on her Ideal Singapore:
"I live in a typical HDB flat secreted somewhere in a typical HDB estate, buried somewhere on this slender island indistinguishable among all the other typical blocks of one same prefabricated mould. Yet I live among neighbours, friends, and family that are all but typical, for there is no one typicality; we have no type, no category, we are who we are and all that we need to be. We are drawn every day by the classifications of newspaper statistics, grouped in to races and split into classes by the size of our homes, a nation vivisected so it is easier to rule.
I belong to a Singapore that will not scrabble in the reclaimed sand, to unearth an identity cobbled together by plastic Merlions and the glossy glare of multiracial banners under the midday sun. We deserve a nation content with its own neuroses and habits, a culture not subjugated to the whims of a plastic tourist industry. We deserve a culture unmolested by bowdlerising national policies, we deserve a national pride grown organically from the pits of our being. Our annual charades of piety are hallmarks of uncultured nouveaux riche, rites of orchestrated patriotism that dissipate almost immediately. We are a nation that should aspire towards ideals but stop pretending we have already achieved them, a nation acting its religion of pragmatism and recognizing reality.
I belong, as you belong, as we all deserve to belong to a Singapore secure in who we are and all that we need to be. We are a people that will wrestle back our minds and rights to self-definition. It is our lot that we are a young nation, though we are not blessed with the comfort of long histories fading into legend and time. Even America was young once; in infancy her poet once blustered, why should they not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, a religion of revelation to us and not a history of theirs?
Our world is different, thus so will our nation; this freedom is not a curse of unknown haplessness but a blank slate for us to create our future. I dream of a Singapore that shall forge its way into this rollicking horizon, a nation among nations. I dream of a nation build on the pillars of honesty and hard work, democracy and daring to believe."
In my Ideal Singapore, people who write like that have kind family members who'll give them constructive criticism. And word processors programmed to perform grammatical checks.
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[Sunday, 07/12/09] |
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2009: my most talkative summer yet. I've been spending so much time sitting outdoors, breathing in muggy Singapore smells - carbon monoxide, cooking oil, drying paint. My smoke, mixing with yours, clinging to us. I water my throat with caramel tea, acrid lime juice - and ask question after question, wanting nothing more than to know, pausing to chew on my straw. The past days have been a whirlwind of going out early, staying out late, boarding crowded and empty buses; everyone's eyes and voices.
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