i love my rotten, ungrateful children

The above words were on my brash family doctor's fridge magnet.

Yesterday was a historic day; I took my first injection in ten years.

Pickering Padma

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my dream dining set which is being rightfully dusty in a sungei kadut rattan warehouse

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Upper Thomson's Neverland

forty light years away

If I'd been born in 1947 in another world, I would have watched stardust 50s in amazement and mary-janes. Adults dancing to Frank Sinatra, girls going mad over Elvis' pelvis, gleaming grammophones, nina simone. When the 60s hit, I would have been 13. The Beatles would have been a kaleidoscopic explosion in my pubescent life. I would have saved every penny to buy their records, discovered Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, cried for Simon and Garfunkel, admired Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. I would have been 20 the year Sgt. Pepper was released, and 23 by the end of the decade. I'm not sure where I would have been. And if it was Singapore I was born in, I would have listened to my records from home in a kampong, tried to explain the english lyrics to my parents (if we shift back a couple of generations they may have spoken mainly hokkien and mandarin), cycled into town to buy records, and gone to sewing school, daydreaming with every
stitch. The songs of August 1965 would have been I've Just Seen A Face and Majulah Singapura. A camera would have been a piece of magic. In the Summer of Love, we may have had to leave our kampong for expressway-construction and move into queenstown, where we could go to Queenstown Cinema for late-night new movies, and a television to watch man's voyage to the moon.
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What are we doing in 2010?

frequent flyer miles

Watching an old movie is like visiting an old friend and discovering how you've changed. I remember so well how I felt about my favourite movies; the feelings are felt in embedded images and heart-squeezes that cannot be articulated. So when watching those movies again after sometime, you are watching not just the movie, but also yourself and re-feeling, as if an intimate observer, your intense feelings and associations to those movies. Do you feel that too? Is it strange? Punch-drunk love was, to me, dark frosty nights being the only one awake, red and blue, magic shifting landscapes, intrigue and strength. It is much the same.

making up for lost time

¿dondé es tu chubasquero verde?

Cuando tenia siete años, querré ser actriz, escritora o ilustradora. Pues, ¿no me he caedo demasiado lejos, no? Padma y mi iremos a Indio dentro de un mes. Quizas me encontraré mi primero profesor de japonesa allí. Dijo a la clase un día: ¨Siempre he querido ir a Indio a pie.¨ Irá a hacerlo eso verano, pero por fin, su amigo no pudo y pienso que Sensei no lo hizo. Despues, volví a Japon. Era un hombre maravillo que tenía sueños. Espero verlo otra vez. Me pregunto, ¿quien interesante vamos a conocer en Indio, y qué haremos padma y mi? Me siento que este viaje va a cambiar todo.

Almonds Anonymous

'I'm a bumblebee!'

me/my brother

real false lennon

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Mr Miller came home after travelling the world, plonked into his old armchair, and said, 'I think I'd like some fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, please.'

i wanna tell her that i love her a lot, but i gotta get a belly full of wine

A gerbera my tubby doctor-neighbour tried growing in his garden, that he likes to tend to shirtless and showing his adorable humpty-dumpty tummy. He drives a light blue car and waves at me as if in slow motion (with neighbourly nod) when he sees me. One day I was cycling and saw him halfway reversed, just staring at his patch of gerberas. So I asked him about them, and he said he's been trying to grow them, feeding them with leftover vegetable skins (the dedication!) and giving them special treatment, but they seem to have developed a disease. He pulled some out; I took one. Today I looked where the plot was and it was all green, no more yellow gerberas.

wistful simon and garfunkel

time it was o what a time it was
a time of innocence, a time of confidences
long ago it must be
i have a photograph, preserve your memories
they're all that's left you

me/my brother

my inheritance

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please may i take a train with you

i promise to stick to you like glue

i won't get lost in the dining car

we can take turns to read al lado del mar

we'll pass through strange cloudy fields

have cake after all our meals

see all sorts of stormy sunny weather

pick up pennies and feathers

watch a busker, his accordion and drum

nap like cats in the afternoon hum

please lets take this trip someday

any,

any,

any

which

way.

my father's hair does cartwheels

像冬夜里没有光明

We are in the throes of hard work and inspiration, which is a marvellous real way to be. I haven't truly felt this way since Let's lick lennon's lemons, which I just found out at dinner just now (after all these years) horrified my parents, my father especially.

But here is his admission:

"I must admit ah, actually ah, that tsd really give you very good training you know."

Yes Papa.

(It really must be horrifying for a man to see his 18 year old daughter in not-much, just big fake daisies covering the essential parts.)

*

The routine these days is, try to wake at 645, actually wake at 7, leave house by 745, listen and sing to Francoise Hardy in the car, reach at 830, put packed lunch in fridge, go to editing room, edit while being addicted to almonds, pee, microwave lunch, eat lunch, back to editing, eat more almonds and granola bars and cucumber with almond butter, pee more, microwave dinner or buy dinner, eat dinner, fill water, edit till computers shut down, backup, go home, bathe, sleep, inadvertently dream of Fantastic Yellow Pee, wake.

But the magic takes place in between all that (and ironically on big scary computers), despite it being in a cold and frigid lab. It takes place between lucy and I giving birth to a something from the bottom of our hearts. And now five days before the deadline, looking at the screenshots, I can't believe all the things we did; it all came from a feeling we wanted, and now it is Something.


KOPITIAM GOI GOUI JEWELS ABALONE IRON NR NRR ELDERLY WAVES FROM ITALY ANTICIPATION OF TOUCH ONE THOUSAND PEAKS AWAY THOSE IN LOVE FLACCID THING INDECENT SEXAGENARIAN GOT ONE WILDFLOWER KALEIDOSCOPE.

goodbye mister salinger

'You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did.'

salty thunder knows no sweetness

I do this

so that I won't become like this

though I'll miss them the day they are gone.

The current configuration of stars now known as the constellation of Orion roughly formed about 1.5 million years ago, as stars move relatively slowly from the perspective of Earth. Orion will remain recognisable in the night sky for the next 1 to 2 million years, making it one of the longest observable constellations, parallel to the rise of human civilization.

"What kind of nose?"

On the morrow Wat and the Dog Boy were the firmest of friends. Their common experiences of being stoned by a mob and then sacrificed by cannibals served as a bond and a topic of reminiscence, as they lay among the dogs at night, for the rest of their lives; and, by the morning, they had both pulled of the noses which Merlyn had so kindly given them. They explained that they had got used to having no noses, now, and anyway they preferred to live with the dogs.

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The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White

My Grandmother

She kept an antique shop - or it kept her.
Among Apostle spoons and Bristol glass,
The faded silks, the heavy furniture,
She watched her own reflection in the brass
Salvers and silver bowls, as if to prove
Polish was all, there was no need of love.

And I remember how I once refused
To go out with her, since I was afraid.
It was perhaps a wish not to be used
Like antique objects. Though she never said
That she was hurt, I still could feel the guilt
Of that refusal, guessing how she felt.

Later, too frail to keep a shop, she put
All her best things in one narrow room.
The place smelt old, of things too long kept shut,
The smell of absences where shadows come
That can't be polished. There was nothing then
To give her own reflection back again.

And when she died I felt no grief at all,
Only the guilt of what I once refused.
I walked into her room among the tall
Sideboards and cupboards - things she never used
But needed; and no finger marks were there,
Only the new dust falling through the air.

Elizabeth Jennings

Pea-Trapping Moustaches

This time as the obsessive clingfilm feeling comes over me, I think of myself as an archaeologist. Very, very slowly unearthing treasures and making progress bit by bit. Using the brush to dust fossils gently. Taking days to restore an underground artefact. It helps in packing my whole room, and not get all dizzy and ganchiong. I even slow down my movements, and remember to breathe deeply (not at dusty areas though). Things I saw today- lynn's note from the end of secondary four on how she will miss her lamb, sushilla's comments for a lit essay, madame butterfly shoved into a box wrongly labelled XJ's Movies, my special pens! (one of them has a radar you can use to eavesdrop on conversations, the other has balls and a hoop for playing miniature basketball), endless paintings the kiddos did on saturday nights, sparkly old jewelly purse i never used, giam3 cai3 fading paper of Starlight that Harris did in class. I was feeling hopeless and wondering why I was keeping everything when I realised why. It's because when I grow old and am a granny I will go back to my childhood and my past and take out all the artefacts and things and put them all around the house, and examine them and look at them everyday. I will be surrounded by all my young things when I get old. Diary pages could line the toilet walls, old purses used, toys displayed, nonsensical paintings that now have no space to be anywhere hung. It would be marvellous, not sad. It wouldn't be to hopelessly nostalgically indulge in old memories, but to...live in another way. Anything can feel different if you change the way you think about it. And now on, I think I can deal with my sentimental habits in a healthy way.

But something my mother said scared me a little. She said that when I get to her age, even a room will not be enough to hold everything that I keep. And that is possibly true. But I think that is ok. I will have a room, all organised, for everything. The walls could all be painted funny colours, and with different areas of the room for different times of my life. It would be like walking into memories. The Room of Memories!

Found

a girl's best friend

It's been a few weeks, but here's me new bicycle. It's from a handsome, long-haired, lean uncle whose quiet son helps him out at his small bicycle shop in Sembawang. Every neighbourhood should have an uncle bicycle shop! (mine moved away. Uncle had two dogs, Mickey and Minnie, the absolute loves of his life) It's the little-known hardworking people like them that make Singapore special. It's things like that I'll miss if I ever move away, that'll drive me mad when I'm alone in wherever it is and i want to drink milo in the kopitiam cup among pajama-wearing people or slurp cheap and good hokkien mee at a kopitiam table with yeos chrysanthemum tea, or bring me bicycle to the corner shop, where uncle will be. Anyway, Uncle gave me a karang guni horn that a few of my little neighbours love to press, but they need both hands to create the sound.

Spartan's March

Suspended Cymbal Girl and Tambourine Girl

Back in the days, in the saliva-floor band room, we were on the other side of the partition, the side crammed with percussion instruments of all sorts. Timpanis, drum set, suspended cymbal, xylophones, huge chimes, a terribly big gong, endless files filled with old scores, all kinds of drumsticks and mallets, and a basket of random small instruments like castanets, maracas & triangles. We always made mistakes and even at the end of it all my percussive ability was rather pathetic. For four years I couldn't read notes (only rhythm but not do-re-mi) but I made it, evading xylophone parts. Once at an outdoor performance at Raffles City, I unconsciously vulgarly chewed gum throughout the performance and was punished by being made to guard the instruments while everyone gallivanted off during breaktime. Every Monday morning, we had to go early, the only morning we had to play the national anthem and school song for the school at the field instead of it coming through the intercom. When it was over and we had to listen to the boring Monday speech, we all sat on the track and picked at the little red-brown rubber bits. Best part was playing marching songs, they were the most glorious pieces! You felt so wonderfully smart in the uniform, shiny snare drum strapped over your body, marching in time, turning sharply, playing the snappy rhythm. (I still wish I were in a little marching band. We'd wear mad homemade costumes and march through streets playing magic songs) And now, my dear little sister is, lo and behold, in the same cca and same section, using my very first pair of drumsticks, playing from some of the same scores.

Ah Leaping and I, we had nicknames for everyone and laughed till we ached.

roll over the ocean, roll over the sea, go and do your part to build community