Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Good Day!



Today was a good day with mascarpone cheesecake.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Palpable

Regardless of how every relationship turns out, I really enjoy the beauty of the pictures of the stage of the relationship where the seed of love has just started budding. That sense of hope, that sense of the possibility of forever ...... for me, love is most palpable in those moments.


Cinque Terre, June 2009

Monday, June 20, 2011

Heroism

I once fantasised about writing a fantasy novel. I use the word "fantasy" because I don't want to constrain it - i would love for it to have the widest realm of magic and illusion as possible. I finished two science (?) fiction/ fantasy books of the best kind lately. The hero reminds me a lot of Hamlet, and often highlights that the hardest battles are often within yourself.

I love fantasy novels, especially their sweeping epic arcs and seemingly endless trilogies, preludes, epilogues set in a universe that is constantly expanding. I love how people set their own rules in each worlds, and the best kind of fantasy novels break away from conventional tropes or even better, use conventional tropes (heroes, quest, etc) in the greatest of heartfelt ways.

Maybe, just like my love for fairytales, I am in love with Heroism. I am in love with the idea of our better selves. I don't deny that novels can be pretty heavy-handed - some people, types, seem to be eternally relegated to sideline roles while the heroes are often "reluctant" and yet unable to resist their "destinies". I do want to kick the hero or heroines at times, but in the end, we laugh and cry and enjoy this journey of self knowledge. For we understand that we are our own worst monsters.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Freedom & Anonymity




Today's my last day of leave. I came back to Singapore yesterday, all tired up, but loved by my parents. It was rather amusing unpacking my luggage and compartmentalising them - a little like separating the groceries or dissecting a body. This is the lungs, the stomach... my heart.

I understood a little more of the nature of the anonymity I sought and enjoyed in Seoul. Does one loses one's identity when he or she goes to a foreign land? I can't answer the question of whether we have an instrinsic essential nature within us, but I think what gave me that freedom of anonymity is that we lose the usual external factors constraining or even elevating us. There are no ties that bind. It leaves us both vulnerable and yet completely free to be as hedonistic or altruistic as we would like to be. Pleasure seeking beings, so to speak.

There is no place calling out to me in a foreign land. I've no home, no workplace, no destination that I need to be. I do not belong. I am only a tourist. There are places tailored for tourists but they do not necessarily call out my name. For I have no name. There is no struggle between all the places (home, friends, work, pleasure) that call out for us.

The anonymity was wonderful. But, I have to admit, I missed the struggle. Even typing this now, I can already hear the beckon of all the places I "belong" to - all the places I need to go. All the people I love and missed.

I'm back. The person and the identity.

Friday, June 3, 2011

A Holiday

Finally, my holiday is arriving. Dreadfully, I fell sick mid-week. Still, I can sense already that things are falling into place. The books I ordered to read on my trip, arrived today (!), despite worries that they will never reach in time. I just have to finish another assignment and I'll be off, at least, guilt-free.

I honestly don't know what I envision for this trip. Of course, every time someone asks me about it, I smile all gleeful (and in all sincerity too) that I'm going to do that and that and that, yes that too! I think, most of all, I just want to be anonymous. Anonymous in the way you can only be in a city that does not know you.

It's as if I could give myself a new first name. Or maybe three names! Or be nameless. Have you ever had the feeling - sitting somewhere, a cafe, a bridge, a garden, anywhere really, and you feel really content, and you close your eyes and secretly wish the world would pass you by -- leaving you behind? Not forever of course. Just a little while. Enough time to savour a cup of tea.

I'm glad I'm going with my sister. We have the kind of relationship where we don't keep secrets, but it's not like we know all of each other's secrets - we simply don't bother to pry. Maybe it's the kind of feeling where you know someone too well, that all these secrets, whatever things she has put on along the years, makes no difference at all. Everyone always thinks she is the older one, and I'm all the younger for it.

The World's Future

When we think of the world's future, we always mean the destination it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now; it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve, constantly changing direction.

- Wittgenstein, Culture and Value