Blank Doll

2012-01-10T23:47:00.001+08:00

Always dare to hold a red balloon. Always reach for the stars. Always look ahead with clear eye and open heart. Always sing the songs you love.You're so heartbreakingly beautiful. C'est tout.

2012-01-09T21:43:00.001+08:00

This life is too good not to be lived.

C'est tout.

2011-12-31T08:16:00.001+08:00

Happiness, being a newly acquired state of mind, appears to be a pair of shoes that need to be broken into. I have not worn it long enough for it to become me.

But I will try.

C'est tout.

2011-12-20T05:48:00.005+08:00

Children will break your heart, though you will gladly let them. You did it and so did I - when we left our mothers' grief behind.

C'est tout.

2011-12-03T18:36:00.001+08:00

I look to the future, as uncertain and unreal as it is, because the past is just as fictitious and deceptive. It is a different country whose name I can no longer remember but whose people, places and things hold a strange resonance like the stray figment of a long ago dream.

Then there are the memories we store in things, those delicious attempts, that we take out to look at in the dark when the present moment does not appear to suffice. Frozen, neither in time nor space. Sometimes I wander through those old halls again, just to get a sense of what we were thinking or where I was.

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. It is also rather self-congratulatory.

C'est tout.

2011-12-01T21:44:00.001+08:00

Travelling to Chester County, PA for Thanksgiving, I am reminded of Alistair Cooke's Letters From America series. For all that has been written about the sameness of America's "monumental and mundane", there is a multiplicity of nuances when one traverses the unpeopled distances between states.

Yes, we stopped in at a Home Depot very much like the one in upstate New York. There was a DSW and a Staples and a TJ Maxx. And yet, in this little gem of the country, there is the mushroom capital of the United States, if not the world. The land is given over to pasture - the area is generally affluent and the terrain of gentlemen farmers. There is a Fresh Market - I have not seen that in New York so far - and in Kennett Square, there is a real thriving community with its own idiosyncracies.

Driving to Chester County takes you through New Jersey and brings you quite near to Elizabeth whose towering cranes and cargo ships can be seen from a distance. Elizabeth also happens to be the largest port on the Eastern seaboard and was to the east coast what Pearl Harbour was to the west. The drive through it is not the most pleasant but it was most surreal to see the machinery ablaze with night lights against a cool, black sky.

There is the America of strip malls and large box stores. It is the cultural desert (that is also a cultural monolith) which we grew up to fear, deride and scorn. Growing up in a different country, I sometimes wonder if our Anglophilic teachers had an unspoken prejudice against American culture and American norms. The traditions of a dead empire are always a lot more quaint when viewed through the lens of nostalgia. They did not prepare me for the astounding diversity of people, terrain, ideas and manners found in this country - and for me to say this, when all I have explored is but a sliver of this great country! - and against their words, their snide comments about American pedagogy, American literature, American food, American politics and American society, I find increasingly that they have given this country short shrift.

God bless this sainted country for it is indeed, the New World.

C'est tout.

2011-12-01T14:04:00.001+08:00

"Everyone knows I'm the pretty one."

No, you're the funny one.

C'est tout.

2011-11-09T11:35:00.002+08:00

I apologise for I will never be as competent nor as level-headed as you would like me to be. I try and I try and it is not enough. There will always be something else I could do better.

I apologise but at the end of the day, I find myself exhausted of the capacity to care what you might think of me.

C'est tout.

2011-10-12T20:39:00.002+08:00

Whenever I think we have crossed some unseen threshold beyond which lies safe territory - away from the moments fraught with tension, the inevitable conflagration that must also lead to the inevitable reconciliation and the long moments of flat nothings - I am very quickly proven wrong.

We seek to inhabit each other's spaces with the permanence of familiarity (and there, the cat alternately ingratiates and pushes away) but we have so much more to learn. Happiness is possible but the millstone must ever more be pushed upwards.

C'est tout.

2011-07-29T02:17:00.002+08:00

I remember a day in winter when we were to give a party. Nevermind the dark corners that still threatened to waylay us, we decided to give a party as a couple. You had sent out the invitations and ordered the food - sushi, of course, no self-respecting New Yorker in the past four decades have ordered anything but sushi for a party - while I had promised to take care of the drinks and flowers.

There was a queer scent in the air on the day I went out into the cold to get flowers. It had been late and the sky was ominous. The flower district had looked ruinous as it always did though there, from a man with rotten teeth, I purchased two giant sprays of yellow orchids. They had looked, I recall distinctly, like canaries about to take flight. An old man on his jogging route told me so. You could not believe how beautiful they were and we shared a moment of satisfaction as the cat played with stray ribbons.

What a curious sight - the two of us. It was then and still, it remains. I do so love to throw a party.

C'est tout.

2011-07-25T09:25:00.003+08:00

Playing a certain song in this sultry heat, I am transported to another night in a different time. The air feels vaguely threatening, tantalising in its stillness and its promises of everything and nothing. My mind is constantly on the threshold of being overwhelmed by the wane, melancholic strain of music at midnight. The constant awakening from a drunken stupor only to find that a new day has begun and one must make do as if the world was fine.

For indeed, the world was fine and yet, we were miserable. The thick air hummed with warmth and unspoken words, each act laden with a surfeit of meaning. The shadows talk, perfume sprays into the air and the lipstick is applied in a broad lacquered stroke. Later would come the cigarettes smoked in the dark, the raucous laughter over cocktails and the inevitable tears. Always the tears, as inexorable and certain as the hours.

A suitcase leaves the continent, another comes this way - the partings and the arrivals elide and collapse into one another. Now it is the past, or maybe not. Time is such a funny creature that our memory and our eye never seem quite able to perfectly capture it. On a night like this, the right song in the dog days of summer can bring back the smoky flavour that sits curled at the back of the throat like the last draught from a cold glass of scotch.

C'est tout.

2011-07-18T23:52:00.000+08:00

There is nothing chic about drop-crotch pants.

C'est tout.

2011-07-14T23:42:00.003+08:00

Society does not want a man grown as Nature would have him do. No, such a man must then be given to each and every impulse that has been his birthright since the beginning, where every instance of kindness or malice must come untempered. In such a creature, there would be a singular absence of temperance - a virtue upon which we have built our race's great legacy.

Rather, a well developed man is one who will bend to the forces of society and let himself be shaped by what is deemed decent and good. He must employ his considerable faculty for thought in assaying these standards but truthfully, he must choose from one of society's standards and not the baseness of simple flesh.

C'est tout.

2011-07-12T03:58:00.003+08:00

Even then, the birds were watching. They watched you, eyes hidden behind a frayed denim cap, as you settled your gaze upon the boy's flickering silhouette. You watched as he frolicked amid the froth and thunder of a molten sea, its waves beaten upon by sunlight. Yes, they were looking, though you did not know, when your eyes followed the boy along sandy trails as he chased after a stray seagull.

C'est tout.

2011-07-06T20:34:00.003+08:00

Sometimes we build daisy chains around the people we love, erect labyrinthian rows of shrubbery and wild poplar trees so their gazes should never stray to the bright lights afar and bind them to us with a silver kiss on the cheek. It has taken too much courage,too much faith and life to not claim the prize that love sets dangling in the distance. Like a cold man convinced he did not want the hearth, we relish the summer days of adoration and mirth too much to endure the winter's cold spectre though it might be inevitable.

Other times, we can do naught but place the olive branch upon the steps to a shut door and walk away. There is no calm without forgiveness, no way of moving forward. It too has taken too much courage, too much faith and life.

C'est tout.

2011-07-06T10:43:00.003+08:00

"Darling, Mummy isn't feeling very well. Be a sweet and get her the bottle in the bathroom."

There is a price to pay when the mother makes the son feel beautiful.

C'est tout.

2011-07-06T01:22:00.003+08:00

And it finally struck me yesterday why you licked those stamps to send your picture cards from a thousand places in the world. They are slivers of time - the present, to be specific- that slice across the great ocean-misted distance to pierce the hearts of the unwary. These arrows turn to shards from the past, a memory, or a scent left still lingering upon the surface even as you had sat there in the cafe, the paper perfumed with roses and the ink spilt from a turquoise pen, pondering where to in the future these little pictures cards would travel.

And there, in one fell swoop, you bridge the three faces of time.

C'est tout.

2011-07-01T22:36:00.002+08:00

Because they are pretty, are dipped in gold and have charcoal filters, they must be good for you.

C'est tout.

2011-06-28T06:23:00.001+08:00

It is a blessing to be loved by so many and to be able to love.

On a cold winter's day, I'll take the magic passageway and drink a toast to you.

C'est tout.

2011-06-07T10:20:00.002+08:00

Tweet tweet tweet tweet (Nobody deserves me in quite the way that you do.).

Tweet tweet (C'est tout.).

2011-06-01T04:51:00.001+08:00

A little part of me is dying. In little gasps and sighs, a side of me grows still colder and fades away. Pressed against the sultry heat of summer air, these shadows are bleached bone white. They reveal none of the old anguish nor pain.

We can fight for there is still a little darkness left. But it remains a ghostly bloom, like old ink on white parchment.

C'est tout.

2011-05-10T20:03:00.000+08:00

Home Burial

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: "What is it you see
From up there always?—for I want to know."
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: "What is it you see?"
Mounting until she cowered under him.
"I will find out now—you must tell me, dear."
She, in her place, refused him any help,
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."

"What is it—what?" she said.

"Just that I see."

"You don't," she challenged. "Tell me what it is."

"The wonder is I didn't see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it—that's the reason.
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child's mound——"

"Don't, don't, don't, don't," she cried.

She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
"Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?"

"Not you!—Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.—
I don't know rightly whether any man can."

"Amy! Don't go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs."
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
"There's something I should like to ask you, dear."

"You don't know how to ask it."

"Help me, then."

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

"My words are nearly always an offense.
I don't know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught,
I should suppose. I can't say I see how.
A man must partly give up being a man
With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement
By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you're a-mind to name.
Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.
Two that don't love can't live together without them.
But two that do can't live together with them."
She moved the latch a little. "Don't—don't go.
Don't carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it's something human.
Let me into your grief. I'm not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably—in the face of love.
You'd think his memory might be satisfied——"

"There you go sneering now!"

"I'm not, I'm not!"
You make me angry. I'll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it's come to this,
A man can't speak of his own child that's dead."

"You can't because you don't know how to speak.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it."

"I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.
I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed."

"I can repeat the very words you were saying:
‘Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.'
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world's evil. I won't have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!"

"There, you have said it all and you feel better.
You won't go now. You're crying. Close the door.
The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up?
Amy! There's someone coming down the road!"

"You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you——"

"If—you—do!" She was opening the door wider.
"Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—"

Robert Frost

2011-05-07T12:15:00.002+08:00

We are not given the flesh of the dark rose, but pale thorns are just as good.

C'est tout.

2011-04-20T21:51:00.002+08:00

The City can be a lonesome place and we walk its streets alone, though sometimes, we dream in digital space as one. We steal furtive glances, not daring to speak, and later, we shuffle through electronic repositories of desire, looking for thieves.

Don't talk to strangers, we were taught. But neither of us is that strange after all. So we move in our glassy silence, the sparks never quite succeeding in crossing the great divide that sits half an inch across us in the subway.

Returning home, the litany of comfort resumes. The cat greets you at the door and all that is forgotten. But there was something else before we cannot quite shake off. We have left our heart's shadows on the elevated rails.

C'est tout.

2011-04-05T23:13:00.002+08:00

I am my mother's son, but I am my father's child.

Betimes, I wonder if our world might be a much kinder place were only children treated with greater regard. We grow up hiding these half-forgotten scars, sleepwalking through the rites of passage that encompass our journey to adulthood and to it we give the shiny, awkward and wrecked name of teenage-hood.

I am my mother's son, but I am also my father's child. I am the child that was left behind to sit in the sandbox where I learnt to build glass palaces and Escher libraries. Age does not change that, except perhaps the sands of time and the dross of doing served to obscure the writing. Polished the surface too, but nevertheless, the writing was lost.

You too, my love, are your father's child. Decades pass and still you yell and shake the earth to its foundations, crying for attention at a world too indifferent to your needs. These giants in your life nourished you, reared you and left their imprint upon you. They have done nothing to cool that burning fire whose oxygen is indifference.

We are children under a great sky, mourning pains inflicted upon us that we cannot remember. There is joy too, of course, but betimes, there is a great sense of loss and pain. Were the world kinder to children, we would live in a much kinder place.

C'est tout.

2011-03-28T12:00:00.003+08:00

There are days when there is no explanation, no solution nor the will to call into being some higher faculty and the world does not seem as bright as it ought to be. The shrill echos of fear sit uneasily in the air in spite of your best efforts and it is all you can do to keep yourself from tearing down the streets.

In moments like this, when not even a lover's embrace suffices to soothe the harried soul, we take a deep breath, pray for strength to tide this over and go to bed. Surely, nothing shines like a beacon of hope as a fresh day barely begun.

C'est tout.

2011-03-19T21:23:00.002+08:00

So tear down that pedestal and walk free. You are a muse and all the world awaits your word. So come now, tear down that pedestal of your own making and walk free.

C'est tout.

2011-03-08T21:55:00.002+08:00

This morning, as I walked to the laundry, a peculiar sense overwhelmed me and I could not quite shake off the intimations that we were all images parading upon a holographic surface. As I crossed a road, the world about me froze for a second as if a greater collective force had inhaled and now held its breath in suspense, but then puffed a slight sigh of disappointment.

The world continued. A woman in a black puffer jacket pulled her groceries up from the cratered asphalt and passed me by, the cold wind tugging at her hair. I turned at my corner and as I arrived at my block, light filled the street as it is wont to do on a New York spring day and for a moment, I could not see the door.

We are all images, wandering on a surface. Delicious, nutritious images.

C'est tout.

2011-03-07T10:48:00.002+08:00

You were right last night, as we sat in the crowded diner eating our salty ribs and cuban stews (the plantains were pleasantly sweet though I would have also preferred the garlicky crispness of the savoury ones). I take in people with my gaze and I do not allow myself to see what I want to see. It is the gaze of old seers, shadows at the fringe of a great bonfire and the insomniac. There is a mad clarity in it, whose extravagant excesses have burnt away and all that is left is that, a quiet awareness that will not be silenced.

You were right though, I do not forget anything about you. About us. There are too little memories though I know time will take care of that. Our memories are treacherous at best, completely arbitrary when we are honest about them. Take this for example: you will not remember this but that evening when you taught me how to use a bottle opener - I proceeded to splash bloody red sangria across the floor and, I supposed, the cat suffered for it - I felt another chip in the glass wall fall to the ground.

What wall, you ask (or perhaps not for even in that, you have surprised me). There is a glass fortress you do not see. But how could you, as you take your hammer to it, smashing it into pieces, chip by chip. They fall into a puddle at your feet and look! You do not see, but the glassy shards that fall do not all come from this frozen place. No, for that, you must look closer to your bosom where I have lit a candle near your heart.

C'est tout.

2011-02-15T13:07:00.003+08:00

All I want to do right now is sit next to my man in his car, the roof down with the wind in my face as we drive down some summer-lit highway. He will be cursing at the cars around him - always too slow or too fast - pausing only to give me a heart attack as he proceeds to text someone even as I try really hard to match the map directions to the road signs. We'll end up lost on some highway. He will yell at me while I meditate aloud and all the while, this great country unfolds its beauty before us.

I can taste the first hints of spring in the air, and summer cannot be too far behind.

C'est tout.

2011-02-05T06:57:00.002+08:00

Holly Golightly taught us that we should never love a wild thing. I wished she had elaborated on what we ought to do when two wild things fall in love.

C'est tout.

2011-01-14T12:58:00.002+08:00

I know a place in the City with wonderful martinis - they are the best I have ever tasted. The staff is impeccably polite and they will show you to the same table, as the one you first sat at when you had that perfect experience. They never frown if you order more than you should, only ceasing to ask if you would like to try another type of gin. There, the bartender refuses to make you a drink if it be too sweet or too frivolous. There, the preferred drink is stirred and bitter.

You take your drink in the floodlit hall, and if you have the foresight to go alone, you take a book with you. The staff never asks, if you cry as you drink your martinis. And your waiter will always remember your drink, the bartender will always have it right.

The food is superb too, but who cares. Nothing matches the sumptuousness of being utterly privy to your own thoughts, in the sole company of a perfect martini.

C'est tout.

2011-01-14T03:40:00.002+08:00

Today, I saw a street dissolve into the winter's light. It gladdened me for a part of me will always turn towards the light.

C'est tout.

2011-01-10T02:05:00.002+08:00

So it has been a week since the new year has begun and while I did tell a dear friend that I would write a new year note soon, I could not without first spending some time alone. The family, for all the warmth and joy they bring me, cloud my thoughts and I cannot think when they are around.

A second dear friend of mine is a great proponent of the pithy and the succinct but I fear I am not. A crisp sentence is not always a good indication of clarity, so here goes:

Family. It begins and ends with the family. Each member rightly deserves a place in this indulgent exercise of writing a new year note but all too often, are grouped together into the collective. There is my stoic stepfather whom I greatly sympathise for having to deal with the daily madness that is the family. As the years pass - and this has been the year of eternal revelation - I see how he has become a vital pillar of strength to my mother. We have had our disagreements and we did not begin well but this has been the year where the two of us became father and son without realising it, united in our love for the same women. Assuredly, it is not an easy feat.

There is also my father with whom I shared so little growing up. It has become increasingly clear to me that the man and his absence have had a hand in the way I have turned out. It was not always so and this has been the year when I could finally admit to the fact. Perhaps the distance of age and space has made a difference but we are finally beginning to communicate again, taking up where we left off when I was eight. I know he might be reading this - having stumbled on this place once - so yes, let us hope that the new year draws us closer.

There is, of course, my pride and joy - Jean. A chapter closed for me at twenty-two, when the fears and hurts of growing up seemed to have been surmounted, and another opened. It does not make a difference, of course, because through it all, I know she will always be there as my companion, friend and accomplice. Words fail me when it comes to my sister. She looks at a person and sees his past while I only see trajectories. The new year will see her standing at the gates of a school I loved, not quite in my foot steps but treading the same concrete floors. It makes me happy and sad to watch my sister grow in painful fits and starts, experiencing the same fears and anticipations and the impossible beatings of a dream that refuses to be quiet. She will be seventeen this year but it does not make a difference, I remain her companion, friend and accomplice.

I cannot speak about growth and family without talking about my mother. My amazingly insane mother who frequently baffles me but without whom I would never have come so far. This year, more so than at any time in the past, has revealed to me the woman as she is and the mother she has tried to be. A dear friend once said that if it were difficult to be me, it was just as difficult being my mother. I came out to her this year. For so many years, we had dodged the subject, sweeping it under the carpet even though - to continue the metaphor - the awkward bump was always in plain sight.

On the night I told her that I was gay, it was remarkably easy and it felt as if the last piece of the puzzle had been put in place. All the years that I had spent trying to wrest my thoughts and feelings into place, the terrible things that would not go away and then the eventual escape abroad, it never quite occurred to me that this was the reason why I hurt. To know that my mother loves me, all my ugly parts and the beautiful sum of those parts, is to learn something unspeakable about the nature of love. The new year will not change that.

A new person has entered my life, in many ways entirely unintended. He is, on so many levels, the first man I have known who possessed the elusive quality of masculine strength. His simple ways belie his intelligence, his passions and energy do not dull with age, and to take the measure of his great heart is to be humbled. We have hurt each other in our ways, the lion and the bird eternally wrestling on some field under the sun, but we have also found a way to love. For a man who claims to see the future, I certainly did not see this coming so in the new year ahead, Laurence dear, we will walk the long road together but for God's sake, give me a damned map.

There is another person though and she is all over the page, hovering but not quite seen. (Yes, you're included as family) This has been a great year for us, not quite so for the dry cleaners, and hopefully, the new year will be even better. I cannot wait to stand in front of Tiffany's with you, croissant in one hand, yours in the other.

This stream of consciousness (here's looking at you, dear bug) will end soon, I promise.

Perhaps nothing was quite as important this year as the fact that I have gained a new home. For the longest time, I struggled with the fact that I did not love the place in which I was born. Too cold, too crass, too anti-intellectual - eternally insisting that I apologised for the way I was - I could not love it for all that I loved its history. In the summer when I returned in a bid to make peace with it, I realised I could not. The summer was not altogether lost though since we made up for it with plenty of martinis, sad songs, exquisite little things, laughter and tears (plenty of tears). So cheers, darling.

New York City is a different place altogether. Enough has been written about this place by far better writers than me so I will spare you the spiel. Nevertheless, here, I can breathe at ease. The people are great, everyone alive with their dreams and poverty, each with a story to tell. Here, I do not hear the exhortations of lowercase society. It is great being able to be myself and all the contradictions that entails. No, I do not forget that family is home but this place too, has become home.

So excessive verbiage is not a good indication of eloquence or clarity of thought either, but I could hardly care. The new year has begun and I cannot wait to dive right into it.

C'est tout.

2011-01-10T00:14:00.002+08:00

Surely one of the best reasons to live alone is the ability to dance and sing in the morning, in complete privacy.

And yes, I am envious of my youth. Foolish youth!

C'est tout.

2011-01-09T01:17:00.000+08:00

I dream of a fortress, wrought in glass and mirrors. There is no end to space. There is no end to solitude.

C'est tout.

2011-01-06T10:32:00.001+08:00

He's losing the fight and you don't even notice.

C'est tout.

2010-12-28T12:18:00.000+08:00

I am impatient for you.

C'est tout.

2010-12-09T21:17:00.002+08:00

Your witchcraft knows no boundaries, crossing the digital ferment to the other side. The oceans and their mysteries do not hold you at bay for your magic slithes upon their turquoise tinge.

Often in the moments between night and dawn, time stands still. Where our flesh had lain limpid like dolls of clay, now we are changed. The lion claws at the little bird even as it frantically flutters around. They wound each other, re-enacting a lifetime of hurts and laughter forgotten, find truce and lie upon the ground.

Soon, it is daytime and the air smells of coffee grounds and tea (breakfast, not decaf chai). The spirits return to their shells and the day begins. Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, you take a breath and cast your face towards the night. The bottle has long gone dry.

The sun also rises.

C'est tout.

2010-11-29T11:35:00.002+08:00

In juggling, there comes a moment when you have thrown everything into the air and your focus is trained on the little spot in the air upon which hinges everything. It is the invisible centre, the imaginary fulcrum upon which all your impossible transactions depend and even as your mind weighs upon it, your limbs have now submitted to a voiceless force of their own volition.

And then, the moment snaps and in that eternal second, you ask yourself that cursed question and the centre opens into a gaping hole. Everything hangs now in the air - time has some mercy still - as if the world itself had held its breath and all you can do is try to recall how it was you did this to begin with.

Or in that singular moment, you could choose to walk away and let the pins scatter as they fancy.

C'est tout.

2010-11-25T01:07:00.001+08:00

Parfois, je suis juste un garcon avec des penses etranges.

C`est tout.

2010-11-24T13:45:00.007+08:00

(4/4) am here and that this is all real.

C`est tout.

2010-11-24T13:45:00.005+08:00

(3/4) and I can taste the air. The sounds of people at night is a perfect reflection - a dark symmetry - that patterns itself upon the day. It tells me that I

2010-11-24T13:45:00.003+08:00

(2/4) attention - he asks for a place to stay - but is ignored like some spectre from another decade.

The city at night comforts me. It heightens the senses

2010-11-24T13:45:00.001+08:00

(1/4) Sitting in the subway late at night comforts me. A man with a suitcase hollers in english and creole across the tracks. He tries to catch someone`s

2010-11-18T05:45:00.002+08:00

No zagat could quite capture the experience.

Lead me to the guillotine, my love, I have had my fill of brioche and am content.

C'est tout.

2010-11-14T23:03:00.003+08:00

It breaks my heart when I read the news and find faces of war veterans staring back at me. Their faces hard and raw, their limbs never all in place and their hearts as scarred by IEDs as the temple walls of far flung war zones. They walk the streets bearing the price of civilisation but are unheard - society has confined them to their white-washed hospital wards.

In Singapore, the boys are brought into the military where they emerge as older boys. They do not become men for there was no sacrifice on their part - the fears for survival have ebbed with prosperity and the assurance of wealth. For evil or for good, the same cannot be said of the servants of empire and civilisation. They have ventured into dark territories abroad and have returned with visions - fractured mirror images of our world.

Purple hearts and medals of honour - what do they mean in the face of unemployment, social marginalisation and the awkward silence that cuts a room discussing the values of democracy and freedom? We are all bound by a scarlet thread.

C'est tout.

2010-11-07T23:10:00.001+08:00

I love your story. I just cannot see where I fit in it.

C`est tout.

2010-11-06T06:45:00.002+08:00

You cannot possibly know this - our trajectories are too far apart now - but I do miss you and think on you. It changes nothing for I am happy here and you must make happiness where you will. Even so, I can think of you and smile.

C'est tout.

2010-10-16T08:27:00.002+08:00

We are often blind to what we have.

C'est tout.

2010-08-18T21:53:00.002+08:00

There was a reason why I kept my silence on Singapore's National Day - a day when I usually wrote something in the usual conceit that my sentiments about my country would mean something to someone besides myself. It was because, after three months of teeth-gnashing and wailing and general ambivalence, I found myself oddly indifferent to the country.

A place where I was born had ceased to be home. It was a repository of memories - some good, mostly bad - and a place where my friends and family were. I grew up in Singapore, absorbed its mores and customs and even in my reactionary stance against it now, I recognise that it nevertheless defines a part of who I am. Yet, it is not home.

The City feels like home now. I do not call it home yet because practically, there are too many uncertainties for this place to be called home. But I am making a home here for myself. It is not a home I was born to - not something put in my lap by an accident of birth - and in that, perhaps, the home I forge will be one I treasure all the more.

In my brief stay in Singapore, I had been very petulant - almost disparaging - when it came to Singapore. I did not act that way without being aware that I was, in some way, disparaging a place my friends and family call home and must apologise for my behaviour. Yet, I cannot in this moment make peace with that country and must maintain my distance.

It does not mean I need also maintain a distance between my friends and family whom I love. For indeed, what is six thousand miles but a figure in the head?

So away from friends and family, from things I am familiar with, I have returned to a place I could - in a stretch - call home.

C'est tout.

2010-08-10T22:41:00.002+08:00

You were this summer. For all the people and the places, you were summer with all its drunken tears and laughter.

Words escape me in this moment. I know the folly and the futility of seeking to express love with words. You taught me that, in all the different ways that you held my hand, shut the world out in prayer and sheer will, and laughed along with me.

But I do love you and in this moment, I am reminded once more of what a frightful creature I am - lucky and terrible at the same time. For all that I may speak on the unfairness of love, I am often the beloved and seldom the lover.

Thank you nevertheless. I know that to you, every moment is a perfect moment, never to be regained, but I also know that one cold winter morning, our eyes will meet again and while it might be different, it will still be perfect. Like two halves of a scarf joined together.

I've seen it. It's your turn to feel.

C'est tout.

2010-08-03T10:37:00.003+08:00

It is a strange thing that I may read our words once more and feel such a great sense of ease. Things unravel as quickly as they had inexplicable come into existence and I suppose I have been quite the fool for it.

In a certain court, I set my case against you. Point for point, I meet your suit. The witnesses are summoned. The matter-of-the-fact filed. The jury is swayed and cajoled and pled with.

It does not matter because in the eyes of the judge, you and I are one and the same. One of us inevitably wins and the other loses. I am unsure which victory I would savour with greater delight and all I may do is trust in his divine judgement along with the terrible word that weighs so heavily on my tongue these days.

C'est tout.

2010-08-03T09:49:00.002+08:00

I do not like feeling as if I were trouble, or some sort of burden you try your best to carry with a smile. If that be the case, I would rather you did not try at all.

C'est tout.

2010-07-23T18:20:00.002+08:00

The Ancien Regime, the First Families, the Five Hundred, sons and daughters of privilege, the landed elite - the name may change but the nature of the class does not.

The first rule is, of course, that no amount of money will guarantee you a place among them. Earn all the riches you wish, plunder the land of its marble and gold and erect the largest mansions, throw the biggest parties, buy the best paintings and china and wines and all you will have earned for yourself is the title of the wealthy fool.

The second rule is more subtle: never give them cause for alarm. The ruling class may be weak, soft from complacency but it is still powerful. Revolutions succeed because they are roused too late. Threatened, the ruling class will always choose to tear society down with it than to cede its power.

The third and last rule is perhaps the most difficult to learn: the liberators of the oppressed will inevitably take on the mantle of the ruling class they deposed. History repeats itself because human society abhors a vacuum and power is too great a temptation.

C'est tout.

2010-07-17T06:14:00.003+08:00

Most of all, what I remembered was the way you sat on the couch, your things splayed across from you, and the way you stared into the air. I imagine that was the way the boys (now men) who had gone to the Somme used to stare as the soft sunlight of late spring smeared their faces with its golden hue.

You mentioned terrible things and as you spoke, your eyes welled with the tears you dared not shed. There between our bodies, a great gulf - squashed into the infinitesimal line where our gazes met - rose to divide us. I saw you walking home alone, always alone. It is cruel of you - to effect great concordance and empathy with the people who come to trust you. You have higher regard for the things that do not speak. But yes, how could you not? People have disappointed you.

I wanted to hold you then, for all that I lived in the flicker, and most of all, I wanted to show you what it meant to pierce the hollowness of this world erected by the people about us and to discover that something bound this little corner of the universe, kept it from falling apart. I could not, of course, for you remained a man and men do not indulge in melodrama - at least not their own melodramas.

This world is not so bad that it is insufferable. It is not so cruel that we cannot all have a little piece of the sky and the earth. It is not so empty and grey that the light does not waft through the looming haze. You make your point, trust against all reasoning in the terrible force we have named love that is also the unspeakable name of God, and forge on.

Across time and space (a distinction without a difference, if there ever was one), we clasp hands and bid each other to shut the open eye. There is time to rest.

C'est tout.

2010-07-10T11:28:00.002+08:00

Above all, it pains and exhausts me each time I return to the same decision - that I cannot leave you because to do so would be all the more painful. I try to reach for the anesthesia that will stop the ache but I cannot. I have fought long and hard to feel and I cannot give it up. I cannot give you up.

I suppose it does not matter that you will not know - or that you do but it is not in your character to respond - the personal flagellation I endure. What salvages this situation is that you should be petering about the house (there is the porch that will be painted a beautiful cream - dust resistant paint I hope for I will not clean it) amid the silence of flowers and hummingbirds.

Someone once wrote something that would have been very elegant were it not also terribly sentimental about how electrons are paired and how they spin and vibrate in unison even if they be separated by a universe. He forgot though, that when one flickers and fall, the bond is broken.

I am ready to go home.

C'est tout.

2010-07-08T22:08:00.002+08:00

Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to take a walk through a very old place. It is astonishing how little changes with the passage of time.

It was a place of ghosts and remains one, though then as now, I did not know if I was not, in fact, the one who was a ghost. The hostile gazes always averted in the nick of time, the words spoken in a language I cannot understand and the dull heaviness of a world without dreams - the ghosts have not changed.

And then I lit upon an old sanctuary. A library. It was the only place that had not felt as if it shared the same soil, as if crossing the threshold, I placed myself in a different land. I bade it farewell after spending a couple of moments in there and left, its parting gesture a cold gush of air.

There are lessons taught to us that we do not fully appreciate until a certain stage in life. Someone who meant a great deal to me a long time ago did something very remarkable but which, had remained incomprehensible to me. It was terribly brave and quite terrible an act too.

I swore I would never repeat her sacrifice, not even for love.

I was too young to recognise then, what it had meant and that it was not a sacrifice. I too will do something very remarkable and quite incomprehensible too. I have seen the door and I can do naught but leap right through.

C'est tout.

2010-07-05T15:07:00.003+08:00

It is not easy to love the poet. It is not easy for the poet to love.

So we rise and rise, just so we may take the last leap of faith.

C'est tout.

2010-07-01T23:00:00.002+08:00

And there comes a day, when I look at your lovely face and I do not remember. I cannot. It is not forgetting because I know, instinctively, that there must be some reserve left. Those years could not have been so ill-spent. And yet, I no longer possess the will to summon them - those echos of feelings and thoughts.

I see your face and it frightens me. We sit in a room, the air a deep lull of post-coital chatter, and for all our intimacy, untold years of living lie between us. Your past becomes a thing denied to me, a pool I cannot drink from.

But love is worth fighting for, or so I once heard in the half-drowsing lullaby at the end of a yoga class one cold Sunday morning, and I understand it now. It is a bitter lesson, but it is also sweet.

So lead me to the shore where I will lean my face against foamy rocks to catch stories in the wind. They tell me of a time when you were young, young as I am, and you were not afraid.

I am not afraid.

C'est tout.

2010-06-19T22:21:00.003+08:00

She sits in the library where shafts of light pierces the musty darkness through the thin aperture of a half-shut window. The shelves are barely dusted, though the books - uniformly bound in leather and printed with their titles - sit comfortably in neat rows. The old Stanton works, albeit with the occasional protestation, and the room echos with the strains of something sonorous, some piece of music from another time.

She is lost, of course. Her eyes are fixed on the bright outline of the window but she does not see beyond it. Her gaze does not register the space in which she inhabits but drifts on the cascades of music, broken only by distant hints of radio static. There is a bourbon dry at her side, untouched, the ice cubes long melted and condensation pools about the glass on the table. The last time she took a sip out of it, the Stanton had not been playing.

She sits in the parlor where the drapes are closed though the artificial lights above do not flicker. The furniture seems barely lived-in, freshly perfumed in plastic, and clean. The table has a cloth on it. The television issues its laughter, its wit, its spectacle, and the room rings with its self-congratulatory sounds.

She does not register the moving images upon the dead screen, of course. Her eyes are searching only for the other person whose absence in the room threatens to engulf the fragile space about her. There is food in the kitchen to be made into lunch, though she knows it will not be eaten. The last time the dining room was used, everything had been different.

C'est tout.

2010-06-07T22:05:00.004+08:00

He buys his oxford button downs and khaki slacks from Brooks Brothers and his wide leather shoes from Johnston and Murphy. The other tailors his shirts slim, cuffs his skinny jeans and wears sleek loafers in suede and leather boots. He drinks a gin and tonic. The other finishes scotch by the bottle.

He likes his colours in different hues, throwing scarlet cushions on purple couch and yellow walls with homespun rugs. The other wants only black, white, red and shades of grey - silver or stainless steel. He loves the sweet purr of a loyal friend. The other prefers his fur dead.

He fights for his ideals, constantly asking hard questions and is not afraid to use the stick. The other looks on and sighs, his heart masked by ennui not always feigned. He tells the other this cannot be. The other replies it has always been so.

And yet, they both cry when the leading character dies in movies or when the woman is denied her love. They both sit by the quiet spring, watching the lay of the land unchanging. They both want to believe that someone out there will love them too, as they know only they can love. They both switch off the lights in the evening and as darkness falls across the room and only the silver shine of the northern star remains, they bid one another good night.

C'est tout.

2010-06-03T23:43:00.003+08:00

Nostalgia is the name we give to the hunger for the imagined past in the face of a here-and-now that does not measure up to expectations. It is paradoxical by nature because the expectations upon which it depends must have been derived from some other point in history, either in the past or the future. Since it cannot be the future which has not been lived (that would be called hope, not nostalgia), it has to be the past. But what of the past is real and what of it is imagined?

Of late, the American Suburbs of the 1950s and Manhattan in the '70s have plagued me, inflecting my desire with their amorphous content. A sort of collective remembering is occurring here - the sort of memory embedded in our popular culture. Watching Mad Men or A Single Man, that period in American history should be very foreign to a young Asian man in Singapore. And yet, something stirs.

There is also a word for collective remembering - anamnesis. It is the twin sister of nostalgia and both are as potent now as ever.

C'est tout.

2010-05-22T20:54:00.002+08:00

There is something quite repulsive about how close Singapore can get up to you. The realisation that it does not end at the uniformly smooth pavement, nor the cold glass panels of every new shopping mall, nor the glassy stares so often quickly averted, can be a cause for meltdown.

It ends where the air meets your face, pushing and pressing into crevices where it is not wanted and does not belong. Its hyperreality surpasses and undermines the solidity of the City that quickly melts into air like a broken narrative.

This place is asserting itself and I do not like it.

C'est tout.

2010-05-15T11:22:00.002+08:00

Some of our greatest fears have to do with love. We are afraid of loving, we fear being loved. We worry about unrequited love and lie awake in bed through the night wondering, not daring to ask.

Do you love me?

It could be maudlin to some, melodramatic to others. It might even be unnecessary, fussy or an unwanted wrinkle in an otherwise orderly life. The uncertainties of love and the revelation that so much could depend on the sentiments of another person are enough to destabilise the inner workings of any mind.

Such arrogance on our part! To seek to press for love or to withhold it, as if our lives were completely in our hands. Perhaps love is our desperate attempt at defiance in the face of our mortality, our irresistible urge to procreate and die. I like to think that we love in spite of death and its inevitability, not because of it.

There is something worse, of course, than the cycle of infatuation, disillusionment, heartbreak and separation. It is loneliness. Not the solitude that brings with it a peace of mind, but the mind-numbing sense of being alone amid the multitude that is such a sedative. And you take to drinking, sleeping, not waking, waiting for the days to end, waiting for night to take away the relentless howl of your loneliness.

So many fears. That lovers may die, that lovers may cheat, that lovers may grow cold and grey and fade away. So much to ask of a singular connection between two individuals.

C'est tout.

2010-05-11T08:30:00.002+08:00

One of the most terrible moments of the human existence is the split second when your lips move to say the words, when you dip into your essence in search of an authentic sentiment and then rise with nothing.

Nothing echoing the nothingness of an "I love you", vainly spoken.

We live minutes on end with the full conviction of our loves and loyalties. We validate ourselves by the names we whisper and the trembles they cause. We collide, over and over again, until there is nothing left that has not been exchanged, experienced, said and felt.

I do not want to fashion a hologram of my emotions. It makes me feel ghostly, like a spectral watching the lives of other people scatter like sand in the vast, arid desert. In this instance, I do not want to run. I do not want to flee from questions I hold no answer to.

Perhaps after all is said and then, when empires have been made and dissolved, when the world holds nothing more to be desired, the last thing you ever needed might possibly be the most important one.

I want to have the courage to tell you that I love you, and then ask, if you in turn love me too.

C'est tout.

2010-04-27T09:03:00.002+08:00

We often think of innocence lost as a sort of taint on the soul, tainted like a scarlet bloom on a sheet of white, and that it is necessarily a bad thing. So we seek to preserve the innocence of children, of the people we love, of the people who must be innocent.

What is innocence but ignorance by another name?

There is a reason why the Christian devil was the angel of light and music for it is the light that pierces the dark. It is enlightenment - the realisation that the world encompasses a far larger space than what our limited minds may engender - that is dangerous.

Innocence is not so much lost as wrenched away and it all begins with a kiss. The first kiss tears away the dark veil to let in the light in its painful glory. It is perhaps apt then, that temptation originally meant a violent assault of the senses.

There is no use for innocence.

C'est tout.

2010-04-19T00:29:00.002+08:00

What is there in the name of love? We skirt around it, chasing light from somewhere else in circles, slamming into spectres of ourselves from the past, from the future, another time, another place.

You and I, we share something we dare not name. For to give it a name would be to ruin it, like a magic spell whose power lies in the incantations yet-spoken when the air freezes over in suspense and the world holds its breath.

I cannot understand a love that dares not speak its name. I want you to say it for me. I want you to listen as I say the words.

Go on, say it. I'm listening.

C'est tout.

2010-04-05T10:44:00.002+08:00

Black is either the sum of all colours, or the absence of light.

Perhaps it is neither and is, rather, a state of mind. I imagine black to be the optical manifestation of primeval possibilities. It is the primordial ferment from which we wrench forth the treacherous gifts of Man's ingenuity. Nothing is quite ever black in nature, safe for the things that are dead or are not alive in the way we understand. The black panther's coat is not black. It is a singing prism of purples and indigos, deep crimsons touched with brilliant light.

Your heart is not black because a black heart is really an absence of a heart.

Or perhaps, black is a race. If such be the case, then it does not really exist as all except for when we perceive it. Race is, after all, a reification of predetermined differences based on the presumption of acculturated genes.

Black could be some sort of force - heavy and unfathomable like the hand of God, dragging us back into the original unity before the ego and the id parted. Or it could simply be a memory of the satin shift you wore that night, or the leather collar he wore the night after.

Black is also the colour of sleep, that thin sliver of darkness before we cross over into the meta-reality of dreaming. I see you there, beyond the black, waiting in a place that no longer exists here in the light.

C'est tout.

midnight in the city

2010-03-28T21:00:00.002+08:00

At the stroke of midnight, we peer behind our shoulders and when nobody looks, we step through the cracks in the city's air and take a step into another time.

Another time. When the city was dark and beautiful, the lights of the tallest towers like cold stars burning brightly in an unholy firmament, and people rolled in the slick wetness of riverside piers. We stepped through a portal of broken cast-iron gates and treaded a path of cobblestones, through cigarette-scented air.

Through cigarette-scented air, we talked as the city revealed its deep bowels to us. The people were lovely - an agglomeration of glamour, dirt and broken parts. You kissed a woman who turned to dust while I watched the onset of love between two men through the dark windowpanes of an empty shop. The streets are full of people, each bursting with words and memories and lost love and betrayed loyalties and lessons learnt and seconds lived and worn out truths.

Worn out truths. We return to our little space in this world, through shadows cast by smashed-up cars. The air is clean and the night is young. You look at the glassiness in my eye and tell me as we kiss, that we will be young forever. That we will never turn to dust.

C'est tout.

a world of too many people

2010-03-22T09:39:00.002+08:00

It is often said that the multitude which affords the individual such refreshing anonymity in the city is also the same faceless crowd that results in such agonising solitude. We pass a hundred different people each day, half-guessing if we have passed them before and then wonder if they are doing the same with us.

I sometimes think to smile at them as they pass, remembering to lower the impregnable defenses of a hard stare and a rigid face. Elsewhere, I wander from person to person, willing them to turn around just so I can hear them say hello.

Another pretty face glances at a darkened window pane and is startled by the spectre of still another pretty face checking him out. This City has so much beauty.

C'est tout.

a kiss, and then nothing

2010-03-21T09:46:00.002+08:00

Somewhere in life, we learnt to expect that love be followed by the happily ever after and are disappointed whenever it does not happen.

We crossed the line, didn't we? You and I. And there, in the mist and easy smile, we taught ourselves to wear love lightly.

Life is sweet.

C'est tout.

1.

2010-03-15T13:39:00.002+08:00

I have lost the ability to write. Ah, the tragedy.

C'est tout.

what we do

2010-02-26T05:00:00.002+08:00

It really is quite unseemly that the first post in quite a while should be a complaint but the Art History department (or whatever it is called) has been particularly aggravating and taking Words and Works this semester has not been a good idea in retrospect.

We have been told that all essays (Paper, essay. Is this a lift/elevator conundrum?) had to be submitted to the Writing Centre before the final draft was handed in. It does not offend me when a teacher does not like what I write or when he suggests that I go to the Writing Centre to get a second opinion on my essay. It does, however, offend me greatly when it is made compulsory and when I am given no other explanation as to why it should be compulsory other than the fact that it is part of the course requirement. This is very obtuse reasoning and anyone who has the audacity to insist that I go to a Writing Centre without first reading what I have written should recognise this.

I suspect that the underlying reason is that the department has made the assumption that design students are semi-literate and we cannot string complete sentences together. I am too choked on anger right now to continue.

C'est tout.

In good hands

2010-02-18T12:46:00.003+08:00

God loves us.

You have to believe that it's true.

Even when it hurts so much that you cannot close your eyes, God loves us.

Even when the silence threatens to smother you, God loves us.

C'est tout.

no logo

2010-02-16T10:40:00.003+08:00

Not too long ago, Louis Vuitton launched a series of ad that looked very much like Vermeer paintings with beautiful artisans posing serenely with their products, transcending the sweat and grime of labour to achieve an almost Frostian ideal. It drew its share of flack, as was expected, by observers who pointed out that the luxury goods company had long since outsourced the majority of its peripheral production (incidentally, products on which its profit margin was built) and most of what remained was the atelier at Asniers - really little more than a pet project the way haute couture has become at some of the major fashion houses.

At a time when a Louis Vuitton or an Hermes is available in most parts of the world, it does not seem too far-fetched to consider if there might be some sort of incongruity between the availability of luxury goods and a market's capacity for the appreciation of these goods. This smacks of snobbery, of course, but the appeal of luxury goods lie in something rarer than the actual products - connoisseurship, the acquisition of which is something that is not immediately available with wealth.

In fashion and associated luxury manufactures, a brand is a sort of shorthand for a given style or community. You wear a Chanel and it means something. You wear a John Galliano and it means something else. How do you reconcile the relentless ephemera of branding and coolness with the necessary permanence of craftsmanship in the production and marketing of luxury goods?

I take the stand that an ad man or a designer must understand that there is a difference between reality and the image presented and consider the trade-offs between quality and the margin. It becomes quite dangerous when the spin doctors believe the stuff they spin.

Certainly something to think about.

C'est tout.

silence

2010-02-14T12:51:00.002+08:00

It means many things to people - silence. Right now, it means I wait with bated breath because I do not know how this should affect the larger scheme of things.

It is not easy to contemplate death in silence. The hurt that emanates from the passage of a loved one is the revelation that one's existence will never again be acknowledged and all that will be in reply to the grandest pleas or the most eloquent declaration will be the cold, heavy weight of silence.

The silence of apprehension is another thing. So I wait, standing at the common ground, wondering if the world had changed while I was not paying attention.

C'est tout.

Self-destruct

2010-02-12T04:02:00.002+08:00

McQueen dies and a whole world grieves. In a couple of seasons, his name will be forgotten and a new champion of the fashionably avant-garde will take his place.

Who remembers Ossie Clark? Or that Yves St Laurent's death was a recent tragedy.

C'est tout.

Nok Heads and Silk Butterflies

2010-02-04T08:54:00.002+08:00

For all that I disagree with the liberal sympathies of my school, the teacher and I do have our common ground. During one of our classes, he observed that the world does not want for human resources nor technology in the approach and resolution of its issues, whether it be the ticking demographic bomb or climate change. It is an inability to organise and to arrange resources in such a way that they fit into a cohesive system that works which underpins much of our woes today.

This will sound like aggrandisement to people who do not share my appreciation for design but I genuinely believe that much of today's problems can no longer be solved solely by the world's politicians, scientists, lawyers and philosophers alone. It is time that a designer's perspective be brought to the table.

In criticising the culture we have today and the sheer amount of material waste it generates, it is often easy to accuse designers of being at the vanguard of the implacable logic of consumption and production as functions of our civilisation. We do, after all, conceive and make desires into matter. Yet, fundamental to the creative facility is the potential to organise spaces and systems - living spaces, systems of knowledge, symbols and network spaces.

Architect, product designer, fashion designer, textile producers, interior designers, furniture designers, landscape crafters - all disciplines of design are increasingly being melded together as designers come together and speak a common language in the aim of creating a better future. It is after all designers who create the choices which consumers face and upon whose decisions our world is shaped.

I see a certain parallel between the role of the designer in today's context and the role of the scientific polymath in the 18th century. In an environment of uncertainty, where the rationale behind the existence of everyday objects must be questioned, it is the designer's role to ask the questions and, perforce, find the answers.

On that note, whoever designed the chairs that litter the dormitories ought to be shot for crimes against humanity.

C'est tout.

stealth and then, nothing

2010-01-28T06:06:00.002+08:00

Central to the idea of camouflage is concealment or the effacement of differences that an individual might have the misfortune of possessing in relation to the community at large. Therein lies a measure of safety - for camouflage enables the individual to live without assimilation - and also, surprise.

A wearer of camouflage adapts but is not changed by his environment. He retains characteristics intrinsically different from his environment and by that incongruity between appearances and reality, he manages to surprise members of the community when the camouflage is removed.

A man who never takes off his hat even in his own home is a man who never reveals his private self. His wife kisses but a stranger.

C'est tout.

beauty amid the wreckage

2010-01-20T05:44:00.002+08:00

The urge to create is largely an extension of the impulse to live. Conversely, the urge to create is strongest when the destructive impulse cannot be ignored. Life stands always in the mirror image of death and all artists create from destructiveness.

You cannot see the positive mass without the negative space.

You cannot create if you do not destroy.

So we cut ourselves, each atom liberated from our flesh is an atom unleashed into the world.

C'est tout.

2010-01-11T10:04:00.002+08:00

It took her exactly two minutes and forty five seconds to convince herself that she loved him.

You surely do not believe that.

I do. It took me almost as long to do the same.

And yet, the sense of loss should last a lifetime, festering like a poisoned wound.

Ah yes, you would know.

It has taken me quite a while.

C'est tout.

sometimes, the darkness still waits.

2010-01-08T11:46:00.003+08:00

But perhaps, not tonight.

I am here in your presence and there is no fear. You can switch off the lights, nothing else hides in the shadows.

These words are hard to form. They come unbidden in the dark and you become aware of their glitter only when you behold the faint constellation set on the ground. You try to speak but there is no need. These words, formed, do not go away.

I sit here in your presence and it is dark. Your face is veiled in shadows, your lips glisten. I want to see your eyes. They shine like frozen smoke.

You close your eyes and in the darkness behind the lids of our eyes, we meet again. Our bodies are divided by the thinnest line - there you are and here I am - but we touch.

In the darkness, sometimes, there you are. And it is enough.

C'est tout.

well night a week late

2010-01-06T03:57:00.002+08:00

The new year did not really begin for me until my family's departure. The two weeks we shared together was well-spent and I truly do look forward to meeting them again come May.

Before writing this, I read through some of my older entries - specifically, the entry I wrote on my birthday. I think everything I wrote in there held true for the old year, more so than in past years.

In retrospect, when I predicted that 2009 would be a year of change for me, I did not really know what I was in for. I was only reminded a couple of days ago that, were it not for the miraculous intervention of a dear friend, I would not have applied for Parsons and I would have spent 2009 in Singapore.

Seeing my sister after a protracted absence was very good for the both of us. It makes me ache a little, to think that I shall be missing so much of these precious years when she takes her first steps towards womanhood. How does it feel to love with all the ferocity the heart may summon? I think I understand a measure of it with my sister.

Something changed in the year with my mother. I do not know quite how to put it but we are in a better place, as if some understanding that we had worked so hard over the years to achieve had finally set in. Family is a very powerful emblem. We make of it what we will as we grow up but what we do make of it is of great importance to the growth process.

The new year promises something else. I see a glimpse of light - a different light. It will be interesting to see if I may indeed learn the lessons I seem at the cusp of learning in the new year. We never cease to grow, so long as we are willing to move to a different place. The world is large enough to encompass all the lessons we need to learn.

C'est tout.

seeds

2009-12-21T13:32:00.002+08:00

In a city as large as this, the proliferation of human connections and potential connections can be so overwhelming that one feels more alone when surrounded by a multitude of people than when one is sitting among the silent shadows at home.

But we can hope, can't we? So we walk the streets in the day and we cruise the dark alleyways of our shared dreams, always on the look out for that someone who returns your gaze, offers you a handshake, a hug, a kiss, something more. It is not enough that you have a thousand friends on facebook because those thousand friends are all virtual connections - their heartbeats have no warmth.

No, what you want is a real, breathing agglomeration of flesh. A person. Somebody who defies the algorithm of hellos and goodbyes, a living person who transcends the hypersensitive electronic to deliver more than the sensory. Someone who listens to you, speaks with his own cadence, looks at your soul with his, who presses his flesh so near to you his heartbeat is but a second's width from yours and it is all you can do to stop yourself from reaching up to cup his face with your hands, your warm flesh.

We are not seeking love, you and I. We wander the cityscape, eyes wide open, with hearts held out in the frozen air. We are only looking for meaningful connections. Someone who does more than wink, a twinkle in the bright mirage of the sun.

Maybe you and I - that was what we were looking for in the first place.

C'est tout.

1/8 done: lessons learnt at the end of the first semester

2009-12-18T06:46:00.002+08:00

The end of my first semester at Parsons yields a number of lessons, some of which immediately springs to mind while others will most likely percolate through my consciousness in time to come:

1. Design takes practice. A talent is a talent but a talent untrained is a talent wasted. Through sufficient practice and effort, it is possible for someone to be an adequate designer by gaining a greater understanding of design principles and a heightened sensitivity to the consequences of design choices.

2. Design can be lost in translation. Every product or design seeks to convey a message or a function. This can be lost during the conception and implementation stages if one does not take a step back from one's project to critically examine it from a point of detachment. Often, an excess of emotional investment can create blind spots.

3. Art critiques are important. Be prepared to defend your work because nobody will do it for you. Never turn up for an art critique and bash your own work, taking it for humility when the matter of the fact is that if you did not like your project, you should not be presenting it. Having said that, be open to feedback as long as it is valid without regard to the person who gives you the feedback.

4. Time management is critical. All projects have deadlines and a natural work flow. Your teacher seeks to guide you in this area but to really get on top of your work, it is the student's responsibility to grasp the importance of time management. Schedule rest time, never procrastinate and stay disciplined.

5. Expectations management is also critical. Too often, as design students, our key strength and weakness is an overactive imagination. It is imperative that the student learns that the first step to achieving clarity of design is to attempt the possible and more. The impossible is always tempting but one should always seek to push the envelope without shooting for the moon. You seldom succeed and then, failure does not teach you any lesson because you did not critically examine the limitations of your project at the beginning.

6. You are not entitled to a good grade. Notwithstanding the occasional streak of favouritism, you should always accept your grade, bad or otherwise. A grade is given based on merit and is an indication of a need for self-improvement.

7. Learn to be independent. The teacher is not your nanny. Be responsible for your own learning. Listen before asking, internalise before seeking clarification.

I'm already excited about the next semester.

C'est tout.

almost over

2009-12-15T09:19:00.002+08:00

The protracted absence may be blamed on the fact that preparations for the finals have largely consumed my life. The City has segued to winter while I was not paying attention and though the cold can detract from its beauty, it really is that - beautiful.

Grimy, but beautiful.

I love this city.

C'est tout.

And the faithful shall inherit

2009-12-09T13:25:00.002+08:00

One cannot learn to love a whore, without first learning what it means to be one. You learn to stop seeing each act of fornication as a transgression against your declaration of love and you teach yourself to stay your arm, that each night spent away from you is not a manifestation of infidelity but something far more trivial.

How does one describe fidelity? I want to call it loyalty but then, loyalty has always sounded a little obtuse to me - mulish to a fault. I think fidelity entails a certain honesty. You commit yourself to the defence of someone's belief in the possibility of love and you do everything you can to protect that belief, even if you have to leave the person to fulfill your promise.

To lie in the arms of another person is not an act of infidelity. When my father left my mother for another woman, the act itself was not the heinous crime. It was rather the fact that he had forgotten his commitment to my mother - the promise to protect her fragile belief that the happily ever after was not just a literary convention - and it was that which hurt the most.

I think about it all the time. What constitutes fidelity and unfaithfulness? I could tell a dozen people that I loved them and meant it all. Does it then follow that I am faithful to none of them?

What remains certain is that in considering the possibility of infidelity, one has already fallen too deep in love - the commitment has already been made and all that is left is a heart to break.

C'est tout.

body in time

2009-12-04T10:23:00.002+08:00

What does life teach us about strength?

If I look back at my life, strength was always a certain independence - a sort of detachment - from the people around me. It meant that if I slipped and fell, I did not expect someone to catch me from behind. It meant that I would always find within myself the capacity to stand up, dust myself off and continue on my way.

Strength was also the ability to get things done. It meant being able to push myself to breaking point without calling it quits. It meant efficiency and competency. It denoted thought before action and that I listened to my intuition in the event that my thought process was limited. It meant all knowledge was worth having, that we are all only worth what we achieve and that I did not suffer fools gladly.

Above all, strength meant I did succumb to elevated sentiments of right and wrong, morality, what it meant to be human, niceness or any of the wobbly virtues/sentiments people always seemed to employ to compensate for their ineptitude and/or weakness.

It meant I did not give in to love. It meant I loved only with the greatest of caution and that I did not sacrifice anything for love because love is essentially selfless and so, impossibly foolish. It meant breaking myself over and over on my dream until that was all that was left.

It meant so much and then, nothing at all. It meant I drew strength from a certain solitude that I have grown used to. It meant I stood alone, looking on at a world that was mine to take but not to share.

And yet, there is a certain strength in weakness. There is a certain strength involved in the baring of one's throat, of laying down one's arms and accepting the mercy of another. It takes strength to bow one's head, to extend a hand in offering or to simply whisper the words "I love you and to do so without artifice.

Perhaps it is a lesson that endless suffering and struggle will teach. Perhaps it really is nothing more than weakness in the end and we only learn to settle for it in age because there is no other measure of strength. But I have not learnt it.

I am strong, as I am weak.

C'est tout.

exchange

2009-11-26T23:24:00.002+08:00

And you will be lost between your false sense of control and his growing affection for you. There can be no other way to bridge that great divide that is three decades of living.

Living. We never gave it much though, did we? To live is to accumulate a wealth of experience, to constantly swap bits of identity with the people around you, to struggle against the implacability of age and mortality, to take a step closer to a conceived reality, to not die, to hold out, to hold on, to defy, to cherish.

Three decades of all that divide you. It makes him more and less than you at the same time so that you offer your youth in measured quantities in return for his memories, his age, his experience, his past, his wealth. You devour the fruit of knowledge even as he savours the lost perfection of youth.

We are all enriched in the process. We are all bloodied in love.

Someone said to me once that all was fair in love and war. I told him there was no point separating one from the other.

Love is war and we play to win.

C'est tout.

arranged space

2009-11-17T08:05:00.002+08:00

In the final weeks of our first semester, the rush to register for classes in the next semester has commenced. Some people make their choices based on the sort of work week they want, some do it based on the teachers and the courses that they want to take. The teacher in question is rather important, especially at Parsons where teachers are given considerable autonomy in deciding what they wish to do during classes.

It struck me, in the midst of planning my schedule, that I had a preference for teachers who were trained as architects. While I came to Parsons to train as a fashion designer, I have significant respect for architects as designers. I believe that architecture is the discipline that comes to closest to being pure design without the distraction of the decorative. This is a gross generalisation, assuredly, and one immediately recalls Baroque opera houses and Rococo palaces. Nevertheless, in relation to other areas of design, I feel that architects have an added constraint - that their designs have to stand the test of time and and the test of age. This means their products must have physical endurance and aesthetic longevity on a scale that one does not often encounter in a different discipline. I think this is a natural extension of the nature of their products. We do not consume structures in quite the same manner that we consume other products of design, the elaboration of which takes too much time to go through here but is worth thinking about.

Strolling through Chinatown after lunch is always an odd cultural experience. It is odd because it is both foreign and familiar. I identify with the shared legacy of the overseas Chinese without quite belonging to them. You recognise but do not share in the shadowy corners and unspoken tales that make Chinese recollections always vaguely terrifying. It then occurred to me that I am first and foremost Singaporean and then Chinese.

Elsewhere, Erica Jong breaks my heart.

C'est tout.

a quarter way there

2009-11-11T11:51:00.005+08:00

This might be one of my more honest posts but what use are birthdays besides the receipt of gifts if one does not use the opportunity for reflection?

Eight years ago, on an insignificantly significant night, when I cried myself to sleep gnashing my teeth at the impossibility of it all, at the sense that none of this was ever going to suffice, I could never have known the sort of person I would become at age 21.

Twenty one is significant for many reasons. It marks the coming of age. In some countries, it marks the point when society recognises an individual's responsibility for himself. It marks independence for some.

It marks a different stage in my life.

Sifting through my memories, remembering lessons I taught myself and lessons taught to me by others, it is amazing how our lives take such different trajectories. We edit our history and create our future. I have deleted large chunks of my past - they do not have a use. I have kept others.

Most importantly, I am very happy that in the past year, I have finally found a circle of friends who ground me and whom I can feel comfortable with. They accept me for who I am. They accept me for all my quirks without expecting me to be anyone else but myself. We have grown together from the jc years and share a common experience and hopefully, a friendship that will continue to grow in the years to come.

I have also had new opportunities to make new friends. It is strange how past a certain age, you no longer feel certain inhibitions that once might have stopped you from meeting people. To grow into one's skin is not a cliche and if I am not completely comfortable with what I know I can be and am, I am glad that I have at least recognised the need for self-awareness.

I have made peace with family. For most of my years as a child, family was both a source of intense hurt and strength. I never surrendered in the face of adversity simply because I knew my mother and my sister depended on me. We have had our fair share of fights and quarrels but we have survived. I have come to recognise and love my stepfather. I have begun to reach an understanding with my father. If there was ever a time when I would willingly accept the role of a man, it is with home and hearth where I can and will bear the responsibility of protecting and taking care of the family.

Coming to the City in time for my twenty-first birthday is an apt gesture. I am particularly fond of significant gestures. It marks a break from the Singaporean nursery. It signifies the beginning of the next stage in life and another cycle of growth, heartbreak, revelation, hurt and wisdom. It promises a future that I will learn to cherish, to hold onto and to live to its fullest.

Standing at the cusp of adulthood, I can look back on my formative years and smile. The hurt was worth it. All the awkwardness of growing up different, of being too good and not good enough, of having to bear an emotional burden greater than what I thought was humane for a child my age - it was all good. I will bear the scars of childhood for some of the hurt will never go away, but I know I can stand by myself, strong.

C'est tout.

these strange lights

2009-11-07T09:25:00.002+08:00

Haunting the City at night, one sees unfamiliar sights on familiar streets. The air is pregnant with something, in the vast emptiness of little spaces and sharp corners. You peer into half-closed shops and glimpse the ghost of something else. A concierge guards the way into a cavernous lobby along a little street. It is not so much the people but the City itself that never ceases to astonish.

Two boys sit side by side. Two boys sit side by side. Two boys sit side by side. Two boys.

C'est tout.

parfum

2009-10-26T04:42:00.002+08:00

Sex smells of yeast.

It smells like the breaking of bread in the morning, across the bracing iron of good, black coffee. A bakery with a thousand doughty staffs of life rising in their little metal trays has the same aroma. Your kiss tastes like brioche, or a hint of post-coital mystery.

A million different notes are tattooed onto me. My body is still damp from the dewy ink of your desire, your touch carved into my flesh. It is tinged with the crimson of your anger, your black jealousy and the rusted iron of your rough embrace.

I have lost my skin underneath your rough embrace. I have lost it in the perfumed haze of your musk. I have lost it under the nutritious scent of yeast.

C'est tout.

this too is sacred

2009-10-18T23:32:00.002+08:00

It has been a long time since I have had the bliss of waking up slight near noon - the perfect time on Sundays for brunch. No heavy philosophical thoughts, no circular reasoning, no emotional crisis.

Just an empty stomach (supper has a miraculous way of not counting in the morning) and a desire to throw myself into the world out there on this cold, rainy but eminently lovely day.

C'est tout.

cold snap

2009-10-17T02:51:00.002+08:00

In the course of an October's day, the City has settled into the brooding chill of late autumn even though summer had only officially ended two weeks ago. The air tastes and smells different, crisp and biting like the first long draught of a good vodka.

I am taking in the air shot after shot.

This month promises to be interesting. It seems a long time ago when I predicted that this year would be a year of change for me. I think it was during national service when my days were wasted performing menial duties for under-qualified and over-compensated military officers in the unfortunate company of ineffectual people who only spoke with any degree of fluency the tragic argot that cannot be called English.

Apologies. Thinking about national service always results in the mental equivalent of a rash.

In any case, I had said to someone that my life was due for a change. I had said that to someone with no aim in life besides the exigencies of his own desires - Maslow on steroids - and the subconscious prescience still surprises me.

There are so many more things to say. Friends who are genuinely concerned will know how to reach me.

C'est tout.

on voit ce que on veut voir.

2009-10-04T01:41:00.002+08:00

It becomes increasingly clear, though it was not so at the beginning, that an education in art has a way of subtly altering one's mode of thinking and sight.

As an aside, something interesting happened in class last week. We were supposed to present our concept proposal to our instructors on a mapping project. It was expected in retrospect that nobody would have had their concepts approved seeing as we had a one month period to work on our projects. Presenting our concept, the instructors rejected our proposed product but gave the green light on the concept. For those of us who were more goal-oriented and tactile, it was quite a frustrating experience. Nevertheless, one of the instructors mentioned something that seems a recurrent theme for the week: in an age where all we have to do is generate a blueprint on autocad and load it up on a machine, where 3-d printers are increasingly a possibility - what matters is not so much the final product but the thought process as encapsulated in the final product.

When our era practically guarantees that perfection and symmetry may be mass produced at almost any scale with regard to almost any product (we will note that the human body is not excluded from this phenomenon), that ceases to be a goal that a designer or an artist strives for. A parallel may be drawn with the advent of photography and the Impressionists. When science has enabled you to capture reality with such startling accuracy, the value of perfection in craft is perversely diminished at the same time that the spirit of craft is more cherished. You capture a perfect moment imperfectly and in that ghostly chasm is something else. A different instructor made the point on the subject of modeling polyhedrons that in our post-modern era, the monotheistic emphasis on symmetry and perfection in form has been complemented and supplanted by a greater appreciation for asymmetry and a curious sort of harmony.

All very thought provoking and self-improving.

C'est tout.

art student, the making of

2009-09-29T23:12:00.002+08:00

You know you have become an art student when, seeing something that catches your eye, your first impulse is not to reach for your camera but for your sketchbook.

Apologies for the incredibly short post but returning to school after the short break in D.C. gives cause for brevity. Lots of thoughts on the political capital of the United States of America - will write them down asap.

C'est tout.

awake before the sun

2009-09-28T09:22:00.002+08:00

At 4am in the morning, when the light does not yet seep through curtained windows and the white figure of flesh glimmers with such ambiguity against the black ground of night, what is it that keeps us awake? I imagine a moment unmatched in surreality - a sense of reality so strong it overwhelms our capacity for sensory perception. When you are caught in the half-struggle of coitus, do you remember the sweat and musky stain or do you forget who you are in embraces where flesh dissolves and individuality loses meaning?

I think of a moment frozen in time. It diminishes in size as we race towards a future we cannot see. I imagine existing in that crystalline second when the world stands still and all you hear is the echo of your own sighs.

At 4am in the morning, who is it that keeps you up?

C'est tout.

redux

2009-09-23T10:01:00.002+08:00

It's returned and I do not like it.

We spent the day at the Museum of Natural History drawing dinosaur bones. The exercise was interesting because we have been doing live model drawings thus far and the opportunity to draw something else was refreshing. Freed from the confines of the classroom, most of us reverted to old patterns of drawing that we had learnt from past training. I found myself treating body forms like still life drawings - breaking them into their core components and using negative space as a measure of distance between objects - and had to consciously make an effort to apply lessons learnt in class to the exercise. A useful alternative when in the beginning stages of grasping negative space is to use white pencil on black paper. The mind holds many preconceived notions of form and figure which we need to discard to transcend the linear, reductionist method of form recognition that works for everyday life but not necessarily for unlocking truth of form in figures and objects.

I will not bore with a full recount of all my lessons. Suffice to say, if I am not getting sufficient intellectual stimulation from my work in the conventional sense, I am at least deriving some sense of fulfilment in the practice of art. There is a joy in recognising relationships that we take for granted - relationships that are really necessary for our continual navigation in life.

Digressing a bit here but someone recommended Imogen Heap's new album to me and I have had no cause for regret. A song stood out for obvious reasons to people who know me. I'll just be a little self-indulgent and post the lyrics here:

First the Earth was flat
But it fattened up when we didn't fall off
Now we spin laps around the Sun
Oh the gods lost 2-1
The host of Heaven pointed out to us from lightyears away
We're surrounded by a billion galaxies

Things are not always, things are not always how they seem
will you be ready (will you be ready?)

The interim of life has got you tiptoed and pinning all your hopes on the top dog of dreams
You're not alone in this
The pollyfilla way looks strong in the weakness of the gaps

Things are not always, things are not always how they seem
They don't turn out always, don't quite turn out always how we think
Will we be ready (will we be ready?)

I'm dying to know what's in your head
I'm dying to know how it all got in there
I'm dying to know, to help make some sense of it all
I'm dying to know, tell me is it my fault?

I care about you darling
and I care about you
cause I care about you more than anyone else

Things are not always, things are not always how they seem
They don't turn out always, don't quite turn out always how we think
Will we be ready?

I wish I didn't care. I really do.

C'est tout.