When the reservoir runs dry

Sometimes, it happens. And I tell myself, “All in good time. For now, though, just suck thumb and get on with it”.

Impossibly tired, what with 2 hours’ sleep the night before (insomnia sucks monkey balls) and 6 work-related deadlines, 2 personal ones and a suffocatinng sense of… whatchamacallit, ennui? dread? I don’t know. And I don’t have the energy to analyse it, much less second-guess my gut.

But surprisingly, in spite of being so mired in the thick of everything else, I’m still maintaining a tenacious streak of clarity that drives me on, like locomotion. Eeriely, it reminds me of school days, and that bumfuck Sheares Theatre fiasco, hauntingly so.

Of Bacchanalia and Costumery

So Halloween came and went, and boy, did we get ourselves into very debauched behavior.

Tsk – though somehow, in all honesty, it did feel good to relive those heady days where daily concerns and normalcy took a willing backseat to baser instincts.

That said, I’d have report that maturity has left its mark for good — and try as I might, I’d probably never revisit that particular stage of my life ever again: there’s simply far too much at stake.

Shadows from your past life

Every now and then, the things you do and the words you say unknowingly ignite a crushing wave of deja vu so rich and precise, it leaves you momentarily paralysed, shakened to the core. And the ground beneath your feet begins to quake.

At various points in my life, I was a writer, translator, fish farmer, intern, client services. Some of these industries overlap, and others don’t. I’ve always made it a point to leave behind the past with each stage of the journey traversed, but more and more, I’ve discovered that it’s next to impossible trying to discard the vestigial shards thorougly and completely. Sometimes it haunts. Sometimes, it comforts. When you move on to something new and unchartered, you inevitably learn to walk the walk, and talk the talk. Slowly, as you sink into your second skin, you forget what you were once capable of, you forget the patterns you’re all too liable to fall back into, you forget the masks you’ve carelessly chucked in the closet. These triumphs, regrets and passions… how easily they were won and lost.

And all it takes is a trigger for everything to tumble out in disarray. Today, I’m transported back to the fine fey days when I wrote/translated concentratively on technology, and little else. Tomorrow, who knows? Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Long Copy Is Dead

It’s official – long copy is dead. The art of persuasion no longer hinges on a most precise and deliberate arrangement of words, painstakingly crafted to sway and woo the careful consumer by means of meter, rhyme, imagery and subtlety. Instead, it’s been replaced by a most pernicious destruction of systemic proportions — the vile bullet point, whose very existence is grossly symptomatic of how feckless and vacuous the human race has become.

So without further ado — since really, if you can’t beat them, join ‘em — here’s a list of reasons why superlicious civility is no longer the way to go:

• People are stupid
• Common sense is now uncommon
• We no longer question when we ought to
• We’re too eager to acquiesce when faced with authoritarian pressure
• We’ve stopped organising, filtering and making sense of a deluge of conflicting information just because it takes way too much effort.
• We live to be spoonfed
• We’ve lost the capacity for imagination and wonderment
• We panicked for absolutely no reason at all, and consequently lose control of the situation.
• We no longer take pride in our work, we no longer strive for the right to individual expression, we’re content to remain as unfeeling workers in a rigourous assembly line.
• People are stupid
• People are lazy
• People are stupid, stupid, fuckin’ stupid.

And you wonder why I chew peoples’ heads off when the occasion calls for it. Cheebye.

the peekture whore returns

Hat day at the office — nicked it from my hip traffic, and donned it on for a darlie shot

girls’ night out after Hat Day. More peektures from this stirring rendevous, when J. beams us the rest.

Our identifying shot for our Soul to Soul entry sometime last year. Note the very alarming eyebags — we were up for the past 24 hours, scurrying around Singapore for various shots.

The RJ bandkids, not so young anymore — but a little older, and a little wiser — minus one.

Exactly the reason why I’m where I am. Doesn’t explain Alma’s though — any takers?

My little friend and I. She’s a wonderful musician.

Finally… a blast from the past. When I was a cute 18, with floppy hair and looking very very studious with them wireframe glasses on. Lim Jia and I did up the board — and cutting them stencils for the damned flowers was quite a bitch. Clearly, it was the era of Austin Powers, can’t you tell?

blue woman

blue woman black dress red hair
sing a lively lullabye; soothe
the long slow tones, sublime as ether.

maybe i don’t

maybe i don’t or maybe
i do without well as the lull.
the barges ebb into furrowed grit.
there, a ship, shuddering into dock
to sink into anchor, slime-slotted,
gasping like the warm gills of
gutted trout, rusting into dusk.
unsatisfactory dreams, unhook
this line from the eye of the tongue
and strangle these upturned feet,
they serve little purpose
except to exit without mercied grace.
maybe i don’t, or maybe i shan’t
choke on these cloistered comparts
if this feeling be first, brimming, burst.

Contrivance

Song of the fucking day:

• Rachael Yamagata – Worn Me Down

Not quite how I’m feeling, but tweak the bleedin’ lyrics somewhat, and voila! The amalgation of annoyance, irritation, frustration, impotence, and all that negativity that never had names appointed for each discombobulation, for they’re all too fuckin’ nebulous to be plucked into some semblence of real meaning.

Maybe I’m a fuckin’ sucker who really should have stuffed it down the throat and choke on it. Would it help if I were to calcify everything, and watch them turn petrified into cold, unyielding stones?

Always, the consequences we wilfully blind ourselves with every impossible situation we engineer and contrive. And most ironically, I tell myself even now, that fuckin’ tomorrow will be better, and everything will be okay.

Fuckwit.

occlusion

in learning to be indifferent
you shave slivers off from the chambers
and inter them in a moist, warm urn.
slowly reclaiming what was said
from the sandbars of memory,
sweeping into a vast, barbed net.
with a shuddering heave,
you twist your body into a snivelling
caricature of a parenthesis,
and cast this fetal load into the cool waters
of forgetfulness, as if to unburden and unroot.
but the heart, inflamed and weak,
occludes itself from gracious institution,
to expire in preference of flawed marble flesh.

Not farthest removed

Perhaps we are only able to love
when the other is farthest removed from our humanity:
guileless, worshipful, artless, an acquiescing narrative
whose plot we reign as partial gods, to appoint at will –
pulling and tugging at invisible puppet strings
with peculiar condescension, pride and conceit,
marvelling at the multitudes of even and uneven
harmonics on a tune played courtly on a pianoforte.

Such is the role when we play as master;

Still I pray you acquit of this particular cruelty,
corded like cuffs to disguise an unhappy abrasion,
lean into this unsatisfactory appeal:
draw a drop cloth over this vexing circumstance.
I tire of this inconsiderate gut undulating into
singular silence. My countenance is wan.
Though you are the most honorable estate,
enterprised reverently and with unrefuted deference,
I am but the wild pastures that nest your gardens,
conplementary, adjacent to your stern humanity,

not farthest removed
but just as worthy —

Though you may never perceive anything extraordinary in them,
these wildlings whoop and dance in the ink of twilight,
undeceiving and wanting like these words —

these words, so carefully put together,
were once carefully purloined from the wretchedness of others.