To be a hip cat, you gotta practise- plenty.

swing it, spiffy cat!

bob, i've missed you

your breath is sweet your eyes are like two jewels in the sky Cardamom flavoured floss! It's not the thin, cutting translucent sort but made of soft but tough thin cotton and it's super shiok. Cardamom explodes like stars in my mouth so everytime I floss I am reminded of India, the possibilities of being there and the impossibilities of being here. I'm exaggerating but add a semi- in front of possibilities and impossibilities. They're building a kampong here. (http://www.kampungtemasek.org/) * Email from Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Founder-- Dear Mary-Jane Leo Salty Thunder Bindi Galaxy-Ladybird Smithereens (Member No. 22588),

I'm sending this quick email out to members of the Cloud Appreciation Society based in Singapore to tell you about a new 'cloudspotting area' that will be opening there soon, and to ask if you might be interested in speaking to The Straits Times about why you like clouds. .....

The society has just agreed that the new observation deck on the 56th floor above the ION Orchard shopping centre, Orchard Road, which is going to open to the public in January 2011, should be recognized as a Cloud Appreciation Society 'Official Cloudspotting Area'. This is because it is going to be a great location from which to enjoy the cloudscapes over Singapore. The observation deck will be called ION Sky and will include a Cloud Appreciation Society diagram illustrating the 10 main cloud types, to help viewers identify the beautiful skies that they are looking out at. ION Sky will, in fact, be the second official C.A.S. clouspotting area in the world. * This is bewildering. I don't blame them, but if they had done more research by living in Singapore for a bit, those innocent dreamy cloud-lovers may realise that ION is a symbol of the materialistic sickness that kills good things and via the infinite links of the world endangers the loving of clouds. Luce you said you understand, maybe I'm trying not to because it's HALLOWEEN. I get so vehement I scare myself. Today it can be blamed on the chunks of blood falling out of me, but when it's gone there's nothing but to live outside the descending fog with a bunion aid splint. I'm going to have to get used to the frustration and bewilderment in my father's eyes everytime he looks at me. *

Pet Sounds

Every night now I say this: 'The night was quiet and nature was resting and I was at peace.' And then I can sleep. I made it up myself. Isn't that great? Saying it now my eyes feel a little tired.

Big Brian isn't scared of anybody and Little Brian is scared of everybody.

-Brian Wilson

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/24/popandrock)

*

Synesthesia- possibly the only scientifically chronicled magical power of today

a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied toanother modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound inducesthe visualization of a certain color.

In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.

Over 60 types of synesthesia have been reported by people, but only a fraction have been evaluated by scientific research.

Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained.

Synesthetes often report that they were unaware their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them, while others report feeling as if they had been keeping a secret their entire lives, as has been documented in interviews with synesthetes on how they discovered synesthesia in their childhood.

To the contrary, most report it as a gift—an additional "hidden" sense.

As a child, Pat Duffy told her Dad, "I realized that to make an R all I had to do was first write a P and draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line."

already october,vermillion hearts near the 169 busstop

Final Performance
by Cynthia Cruz

I crawl along the wet floor
Of my mother's childhood,

A serpent, or a long-buried secret,
In my mother's bisque
Chiffon gown with small stars

Stitched in silver, a crown
Of tinsel pinned into the dark
Blonde knots and dreads of my hair.

I follow a sequin thread of dead
Things, stop when the moon clocks out,
Polish my long nails in the sun.

*

I'm drugged again having given up on lovely bitter powder potions (which i've concluded are better for treating long term illnesses slowly) but not having the heart to tell my white-bearded neighbour traditional chinese medicine doctor (who just called) that i switched to pills though i rejected the antibiotics from my adorably stern teletubby family doctor and i feel like Chief trying to beat the fog, beat the combine, run out into the salty night like the dog, the more i research on comic history jumping from one tab to another luce now i know how it feels but i never got to your level of tab madness google chrome is very good doesn't hang like internet explorer and you can STAR your favourites i chose the theme with mushrooms and elves in a woody forest and why are there so few female comic artists maybe i could meet lily lau and lat and kenfoo who hates facebook so much been rerereading Boy they went ISLAND HOPPING with their fearless mother during all their norway summer holidays oh roald you and quentin are my heros and quentin apparently has never married! i have been sleeping alone more than i ever did my entire life as grandmother is accompanying cousin in his house i found out that opening the windows at night lets you really feel the night and its orange darkness and the sounds of crickets in the forest nearby and feel the soft weight of the black tar outside and know of the possibilities of things while aircon suffocates you inside i can't breathe anymore aircon or the green phelgm tickles and my little baby cut her hair short yesterday as she bounded down the stairs she had a thick shiny chin length bob with a straight fringe (just like i had when i was my auntie's flower girl many years ago and they took that awful pouty photo in the living room) and her crazy violet plastic glasses and she was wearing her old mustard-and-navyblue spaghetti strap from giordano kids, a hand-me-down and her butterfly-thick eyelashes, a hand-me-down too that i have some of, and her silver-capped bad tooth, and it was like magic exploded before my drowsy brain but with my last bit of coherence let me describe what this cough-syrup feeling is like, like when the titanic hit a crazy huge iceberg in nowhere and you are falling, tumbling, nodding off to a place where it doesn't matter...

Un Chien Andalou

Because a razor cuts across a frame of film,

I wince, squinting my eye,

and because my day needs assembly

to make sense of the scenes anyway,

making a story from some pieces of truth, I go

outside to gather those pieces. 

Thousands of moments spooling out

frames of mistakes in my day.

As if anyone's to blame,

as if anyone could interpret the colliding

images, again and again, dragging

my imagination behind me, 

I begin assembling.  

I don't know anything, so I seek 

directions, following the path  

of ants from your palm, out  

the apartment door to  

a beach. Is this where I'm  

supposed to ask if my hands on you 

bend some light around shade? Maybe 

I'm not ready for the answer. They say 

art imitates what we can sculpt or write  

or just see when we turn ourselves  

inside out. I can't turn my eye away 

from the sight of failure. The rain pelts rooftops. 

I listen to the song, thinking  

when the sun comes back, 

beating down the door 

in my head, I'll salvage whatever sits 

still long enough for me to render, 

before anyone knows what really happened.

A. Van Jordan

just like little girls and boys

Happy Birthday.

"Reality leaves a lot up to the imagination."

les trois mousquetaires: sin, cos, tan

2xy + 3z = 9

I miss the minute mint-green squares of graph paper, equations that mean nothing, jabbing the calculator with vigour, combining fat and thin strands of eraser dust into grime balls, the sound of a pencil drawing a long line, the dizzying blank cosmic world of (a + b)², numbers, letters, pi the eternal amount, models please, three significant figures and if Ahmad took 3 hours from point A to B at 70km/h, how long did Devi take at 54 km/h?

(Not the end, obviously! The uncontrollable sentimentality of a cancerian knows no bounds!)

I miss the pious share-the-love chime of the school bell, ice milo, the deep right-hand-side pocket of the pinafore to hide ham-and-cheese sandwiches from prefects, the warm chewey sandwich that mists the plastic and warms the thigh, the crazy feeling of Romeo and Juliet in a classroom, the long classic denim skirt of Mrs Sushilla, 听写, blanco mounds on hard tables, highlighted fingernails, crawling spidery ink on soft skin, the scrawl of the gray classroom chair if you scratch it, the long indent at the head of your square table, chalkboards and the floaty migration of fairy chalkdust clusters before they were arrested too, physics, chemistry, biology (xylem and phloem), trigonometry, the romance of a dark orange classroom, the sleepy soft whirring of the ceiling fan after recess, awkward bodies at PE, the dank saliva smell of the band room, bubbling test tubes of crimson and forest-blue, hijinks, laughing till we keeled everyday, the warmth of the OHP, the possibility of your entire, awaiting life.

I think OHPs have been replaced with visualizers.

Sukiyaki tears crash on...pubescent eyelashes!

x= [-b±√(b^2-4ac)] / 2a

leave me to the abyss

half of what i say is meaningless, but i say it just to reach you

I march into school at 7.20 as the speakers blare a warbly, sorrowful, heavenly instrumental version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. People, including me, smile with their mouths but seldom their eyes. Off-white, gray and emerald.

**

Last week:

"Mervin!"

"HO YEAH." (intonation: HO4 YEAH3)

"Can you read the cloze passage?"

"HO YEAH HO YEAH"

"Ok, go"

"....SDU....Sexual Development Unit....sex parties..."

**

(girl raises hand during exams)

(me bringing her extra paper)

"can you ask gregory to stop shaking his leg? it's very distracting..."

**

Invigilation puts one in a daze. Up, down, up, down, stand, sit, lean, watch. Nervous students glancing at the clock. Someone has two correction tapes. Someone else has 6 similar pencils (maroon with gold words), and 4 similar black pens. I've found my invigilation calling. It's hard to daydream and be present, so I've taken to peeking at handwritings as I walk past the tables. How does she do her 'a's, why are his letters so long and skinny, nice prawny words.

**

After the first day of exams (english compo) I walked to the school gate to leave. In front of me were a group of boiz from my sec one english class. (I call them the kopitiam gang because during class they talk non-stop like chatty uncles of different shapes, sizes and lengths) Finally one of them noticed me as they passed the gate, started murmuring/exclaiming, "Miss Ng, Miss Ng" and the rest followed suit and suddenly, all but one of them were screaming like little girls and running away. The only one who stayed, the coolest of the gang, with a semi-mohawk on his tiny, pre-pubescent head, came up to me and coolly but sincerely said, "Hi Cher" and started discussing the compo topics. In a year he'll be taller and will melt the hearts of girls. For now, I'm glad the rest behaved like such silly poo-poos.

Presenting...

Fishie the Jailfish!

and...

Oliver Paul the Octopus!

mostly created and glued together themselves

Me: "Yay, they can be friends!"

Them: "NO."

they forgot to meet Sharkie!