S

I'm really glad I got the chance to know S, for us to be friends, real friends, and for our souls to get to know each other. S has one of the most beautiful souls. She always inspires me to become something better . I on the other hand, remind her she is only human, although I always suspect she is half angel.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that girls love their clutches.

Comes out in Fall!

From www.katespadeloveaffair.com

these braille on my skin

"At night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its face
against mine."

- Rumi: The Book of Love

How long does it take for a person to become a memory? When we were younger, people always said time would wash away everything. With the passage of time, these feelings that you feel: happiness, hurt, sadness, anger... will fade. Just as pencil marks disappear on the letters we wrote as children. Just as paper turns yellow, so too will these feelings.

But it isn't true. Any small key to the past causes the whole heart to jerk, as if it happened only a second ago, as if no time has passed. Perhaps there is no immunity to feelings. We like to think that we mellow, but the things that makes us what we are - what we laugh and cry about, is still the same. And those things that caused us to laugh and cry in the past, still do, still do.

Oh, to realise, that one will never outgrow sorrow. That everything that has ever moved my heart, has been etched into my skin. These strings of braille, invisible to the eye, but alive again with just a brush on my skin. A prick of a finger. How long does it take for a person to become a memory? An instant. How long does it take for memories to stop hurting?

Maybe we'll know the answer one day. If we outgrew the trees, if we outgrew the moon.

bread crumbs

S has a bird for a heart. Me, I'm not sure - I've always felt more like Gretel, always throwing bread crumbs, thinking they will lead me home. Gretel was never really upset the birds ate her breadcrumbs, she never really wanted to go back to that old place - she just needed the birds to eat up her last line of dependence, so she could finally be set free.

Orange Lady with the Dog

This morning, while I was walking to the train station, I noticed a lady in an orange shirt sitting on a wooden platform with a dog lounging lazily, almost regally, next to her. She was a maid. I always feel slightly bad at objectifying people - conscious of how labels capture something recognisable so instantaneously and yet is the very thing that prevents us from seeing people the way they truly are.

She was on the phone. I felt it immediately in that moment. The dog was her escape.

The Instant Comfort Pocket Book

Extremely tempted to get this:



Kim Welling at Esty: http://www.etsy.com/people/kimslittlemonsters?ref=ls_profile

A Uniform of Sunshine

I had a really lovely day today. I bought several things to hide away in the shelf next to my bed. It's called my "happy stash".

If possible, I would like to dress like this everyday:


from Anthropologie

Beautiful

Japan

I have no idea why many people think I'm atheist. I'm not. I believe God exists. I think too often people associate being non-religious with being non-spiritual. They don't necessarily coincide. I have this feeling that God is crying as well. I don't really understand the things that happen in this world and why events happen the way they do - I don't always think everything necessarily follows a "plan"... although I do believe in fate, destiny and karma. I think sometimes we get what we don't deserve, and it's not about whether one ultimately gets their just desserts (the concept of heaven), but that life each day is a precious gift and never an entitlement.

I believe that one can live doubting the actions of everyone around them, or just thrive in the inherent goodness that lives in your heart as we all go out in search of truth. God bless Japan and everyone in this world.

The Adjustment Bureau/ Ripples

Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the world's waters when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores.

- Howards End by E.M. Forster

We watched the Adjustment Bureau last night as part of my Mum's early birthday celebration. The quote above reminds me a lot about the essence of the movie. It hardly bears any resemblance to the short story it traces it roots from, Phillip K Dick's "The Adjustment Team". The Adjustment Bureau had rather "blah" reviews when it came out in Singapore but I really enjoyed the movie. I suppose it depends on what expectations you have when you walked into the show - I walked in hoping for a romantic movie with thriller elements, but Dad walked in hoping for an action movie with random eye candy. Dad was sorely disappointed.

Dance

I wonder if there are non-sleazy dance places. I don't want to be in the midst of a drunk orgy. I want the kind of dance places we see in movies when we were young and they have real musicians. I want to be able to see the sky and have the stars and moon as my audience. Once, in Holland, we played a cd we bought from street musicians in Paris, and played it in His room. And we danced. It's not that I cannot do it in Singapore, but dance, the best kind of dances, is in the moment... it's improvisation.

Still, my feet shall not be deterred.

Lunch with R

Today, I had the most wondrous lunch with R. Who would have thought the ever sophisticated R could be a kindred spirit with the ever messy me? We shared secret dreams and our most treasured memories of children books. We talked of princesses and dragons, of heroes and heroines, of love and self sacrifice, of nobility and chivalry. It was a lunch that fed the malnourished child in me, and allowed me to dream that much more.

Can I ask you a question?

Yesterday, I was walking back from Raffles Place, crossing the bridge across Boat Quay, when four extremely young girls in dark blue pinafores bounced in front of me and cried, "Can I ask you a question?" I smiled as I looked at their light blue workbook, my answers would be penciled into the column "First Singaporean" next to the column "First Tourist". They proceeded to introduce themselves to me and then tried to exchange names with each other, although they are of the age where their names are sewn onto the top right side of their pinafores. Could they see the girl in me that was once as young as them?

So they asked me the typical educational tour questions - what I thought about Boat Quay, etc, helpfully providing me with model answers to questions I've never thought about ("How can Boat Quay be improved?"). When we finished, they snapped a quick picture of me (I'm sure with my mouth wide open), thanked me and started running away in their white sneakers with a speed best described as youthful exuberance.

They started shouting with glee, "Let's ask that Tai Tai next!"

Oh, to be so young again, is one thought. Another is to buy white sneakers.

A Happy Birthday Balloon

Yesterday, a little blonde girl in a bright orange dress was playing with her deflating glitzy happy birthday cake balloon. She kept pushing it upwards so it would float a little longer. It was adorable and we shared secret smiles. All this happened at the train terminal... trains come and go, just like your years, little girl, don't ever forget your balloon and your ability to make things fly.

To live

I think it's much easier to live life "not caring". It's the people, like us, that struggle. Because we care too much. We cannot stand living just the status quo. We say things we shouldn't, we do the things we wish we didn't. Oh to live a life without care - Oh to live without caring, Oh, to live, to live, to live.

Every day, I live wanting less material things, so I will faster reach the day when I can say "Heck it" and run away with my lover and be gypsies.

Run Away

I told Him that the only thing that seem to change in my life these days are my clothes and the food I ate. Where is the meaning? He told me I was the purpose in life and his emotional support. It's ok, he'll say, I'll support you, you can take the sabbaticals you need to travel and to write. I'm like a really tired doll these days but he always sit next to me, patient. I don't think I deserve him but he tells me he doesn't deserve me. Well, then we deserve each other, dear. Always.

Help Complex

I think I have this strange need to help unhappy people. I think this need is ridiculous and also kind of insulting to people - because who am I to pretend to be the authority on happiness? I think this also explains why I love the idea of matchmaking people - but then who am I to say that people need to be attached to be happy? Because they don't. And, so I always have to strangle myself back into subservience - Sit, C, Sit! People don't need your help to be happy.

Toy Story 3

We watched Toy Story 3 this afternoon. Finally. I think I subconsciously run away from movies I've been dying to watch because I'm afraid they would disappoint me. The possibility of something great living out there is always more comforting for me than the disappointment of a have-been. Toy Story 3 was amazing. It made me cry, it made me think, it made me laugh. It made me want to hug the person I could calmly face the impending doom of an incinerator.

Lots of things went through my head during the movie, but I think what struck me most was the elusiveness of a happy ending. The problem with sequels is when the original movie ended on a perfect note - it is not just a happy ending, the dramatic conflict of the movie, the problem, has been resolved and there can be no more organic development from it. It's easy for superhero movies, perhaps, just introduce a new villian, the same problem with bigger dimensions (and better technology) - but that's all very superficial and audience don't return because they are cheated of emotional growth. For example, movies like Aladdin and Mulan, the beauty of the original movie was the growth the Hero/Heroine went through - and whether he or she actually achieved success was not as important as the self knowledge he or she gained. The problem with a sequel is that it often artificially creates a "conflict" where the hero/heroine is knocked from his/her successful plateau and has to come back as the "underdog" again. Often, this is unconvincing as in order for the hero/heroine to be knocked down his or her plateau, he or she becomes a character we don't recognise - forgetting all the lessons he or she learned in the original movie.

I don't want sequels that start on a clean slate, the very fact it is a sequel demands it respect the original slate. I think that's where Toy Story 3 really gets it right - the conflict naturally arises from the passage of growth the Toy Owner, Andy, goes through. We all know what it means when someone says "you have outgrown your toys", but what happen to the toys who would never outgrow anyone? I think as we grow older, we learn about the fragility of happy "endings". There is no ending, every point of perfect happiness is just a pitstop, a mere dot, in our unravelling line of journey. The happiness that Andy shared with his toys in his childhood cannot be permanent - it is something wistfully captured in a photograph, no one, not even the toys, wants Andy to be permanently a child, it is in the crafting out of a new happiness for everyone that captures my breath and attention in Toy Story 3. It is scary to depend on someone for your happiness, it takes trust and it takes the courage to get hurt. This trust and vulnerability will not always be repaid. However, as always, the choice is always yours, to follow Andy to college, to go to a childcare centre, to go to the attic, to stay with your friends, to jump out of the window with a parachute to the great unknown.

Funnily enough, maybe all one needs, toy or human, is a hand to hold onto. Children may be forgetful of the toys they once loved, we may be forgetful of the loves in our childhood. So I'm thankful, when something comes along, knock me off my perch and forces me to remember some precious original lessons.

Tissue

E declined my tissue as he didn't use 2 ply tissue. I said I got it from the blind man down the street. He took the tissue.

Language Lesson, 1976 by Heather McHugh

When Americans say a man
takes liberties, they mean

he's gone too far. In Philadelphia today I saw
a kid on a leash look mom-ward

and announce his fondest wish: one
bicentennial burger, hold

the relish. Hold is forget,
in American.

On the courts of Philadephia
the rich prepare

to serve, to fault. The language is a game as well,
in which love can mean nothing,

doubletalk mean lie. I'm saying
doubletalk with me. I'm saying

go so far the customs are untold.
Make nothing without words,

and let me be
the one you never hold.

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes

Language is a skin. I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

Charlotte Brontë by Jane Eyre

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

No Return

When we say I love asking for nothing in return, do we really mean what we say? In the context of relationships, clearly our love is a mutual exchange. Even if we don't give or receive the same things, there is an inherent reciprocity. However, I believe such love exists - love asking for nothing in return. It may not be romantic, it may be something purer and unable to be classified - some amorphous genuine feeling and longing... where it is enough to give, even in a vacuum, because it is something inside of you that needs to be given. The kind of love that needs no recognition, has no goodbyes, no form, no shape, cannot be carried, cannot be remembered - existing only for those few moments, as if life itself has come alive, and fading just as unobtrusively into nothingness.

Forgotten Dialects of the Heart by Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

Jean Paul Satre - No Exit

"One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else."