So many thoughts and these knots inside my chest. Dear Jing, thanks leh.. Thanks for always being there. Talking to you makes me feel so much better. Maybe it's a thing of misery loves company (not that we are miserable, but I just feel so lost. And God turning 26, aren't I supposed to know a thing or two about life by now. I still feel like a baby, I guess even if it's knowing that someone is as lost as you--makes the night feel less dark.)
I know it's silly, but I always feel fine until you call, then I feel sad and lonely after we put down the phone. All these little concerns like phone bills and time differences. (Go back into our self-indulgent, sentimental mode) Why? Why can't we just meet up at East Coast Beach and head to Kenny Roger's for mac cheese?
On the phone, I always get caught up with complaining, complaining about life, about age, about everything that stresses me out-- this country, school rejections, insecurities, relationships. We say goodnight and then we hang up, then I realize I forget to tell you how thankful I am. I know, I know, you say: don't say thanks--too weird--that's not how we used to be when we hang out. But I forget how blessed I am. And then I feel so small and far away. I don't care who curses technology and claim that it is diminishing real-life relationships--I am so thankful for it.
You know, you are right leh. Nothing can ever replace secondary school friends. They are a special group of people. And I still stand by what i say, even though I am so many miles away, even though I haven't seen all of you or talked to you or even emailed you. It still feels like this is one thing that will never change. We'll always be friends. And how cheesy to say that now, but remember our favorite song that year we graduated? "As our lives change, come whatever, we will still be friends forever." And I believe that. I know, we are idealistic people, me and you. But I believe in a lot of things. If what they mean by growing up is to give up all these beliefs, I would much rather hang on to them and be labeled a child. Because to me, they are what matters.
All right, no more mushy talk about friendships. But I miss all of you. And you are all in my thoughts tonight. I hope all of you are happy this very moment. (Even if you are not, I'm still here. And chances are, I'm just as lost as you are.)
By: Nippy | Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 1:20 PM | | 
God, I feel so old everytime I go snooping around on facebook. It's terrible. Everyone around me is getting engaged (back in S'pore at least) and I feel so so so damn old. Everyone is settling down and starting families. It's such a queer feeling. Wow, there is a lot social pressure and I'm feeling it across an ocean. These are the moments when I'm so glad that I'm not living in S'pore anymore. I'm happy for all of you, my dear friends, don't get me wrong, it's just so stressful because I can't even imagine that possibility--not at all. Not at all.
By: Nippy | Monday, April 26, 2010 at 7:30 AM | |
Why does school application have to be such a nightmare? It's so frustrating, and so far I haven't had a very good impression of S.F State.(This is one of the schools I applied to, they seem like a so-so school with incompetent bureaucrats.
I am still waiting to hear from two more schools and honestly, I have been wondering about the whole thing. If I do go to school, I'll be in debt and it scares me to think that I will be taking a program that is far from practical and doesn't guarantee a career and that I will have to pay off a huge loan for. Besides, I don't really think that one has to go to school to learn how to write well. There are lots of mediocre writers out there and most of them have been at a M.F.A program, so really I don't know how much value two years at school would add. I mean, I am a mediocre writer too, but if going to school and going into a serious debt is not going to help me improve much, then why even do it? All I will be getting is debt.
Just finished Woolf's
The Years. I felt that she was a tad too ambitious in wanting to capture lives throughout the years with little glimpses, but she never betrays her vision of life as made up of these moments--insignificant perhaps, but full. THe scope and demand of the novel was a little too much, but I think her glimpses gives this lovely surface quality--and a deep sense that life is fleeting. Towards the end, it had gotten slightly long and I know she struggled hard with the ending, because she talked about it in her diary, but I thought the last three pages beautiful and moving in the way simple moments are moving. So I guess she accomplishes it, but Woolf has a tendency to get too philosophical and there were moments when I really thought--all right move on with it--I get it, you're philosophizing about life, people and moments. One also gets a sense that it's her speaking through her characters so often that they sometimes become unconvincing. It's like seeing the thinness of the mask of the characters and starting to see Virigina's nose sticking out. But that is why I love Woolf--she is unapologetic, even when she philosophizes and she makes fun of her philosophizing characters. She is at heart sentimental but she never lets her sentimentality get in the way of her writing. I think the best writing is unsentimental, even if at heart the writer is.
I am reading the memoir by my creative writing teacher here at City College. It was just released this month. It seems interesting so far, but already there were a few awkward descriptions. (Why am i so critical) Damn, I don't quite like myself sometimes. But I think Louise's faults are the faults of a poet, she loves pretty language too much and she beautifies and sentimentalize too much. IT is from the point of view of a child, but I think that a writer always needs to restrain on prettifying proses. There is something too sentimental about the opening of the book so far. To be fair, it is her life story. But I think it is the writer's job not to force nostalgia or sentimentality on readers but to create a setting where such an emotion is possible for readers to offer up, but that process has to come from the reader. I think that is one of the biggest challenge of writing. All the writer can do is prompt, she can't state, or overdo the sentiments. In a way, I feel that she may have the language of a poet, very beautiful, but she lacks the instinct of a fiction writer who knows when not to make pretty and when to write with the dull thud. Sometimes I wonder if that is the reason why male writers are more recognized. Perhaps, it is because they practise that restraint in writing? Come to think of it, all my favorite female writers never sentimentalize, not in the writing. There is a nice strong masculine quality to Woolf's writing. I wonder if that kind of restraint and mystery is missing in Louise's work that is why I am less enthusiastic than I should be.
By: Nippy | Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:26 AM | |
Most people feel more liberated, in control and empowered as they mature, I don't.
Being in a relationship is overhyped.
Taking naps in the afternoons makes me feel like a child.
I love leaving the windows open on a hot day.
Sometimes, words dwindle away, and all I am left with is a full-stop.
Simple sentences are the loveliest existential statements.
By: Nippy | Monday, April 19, 2010 at 3:11 PM | |
If I don't get accepted,
maybe I should work on a cruise
or
settle in a new place, say, Oregon
There's the possibility of living with L, but don't know if that's a bad idea
should I consider going to school in HK?
There's that visit to UK, I'm planning
maybe
find something new, or someone interesting
Perhaps I can look for something lost in a historical place
do nothing
but write all day
that would be a luxury I can't afford
finally quit my job
and
feel the urgency of my savings trickling away
or wait
like I've always done for so many years
keep waiting for the opportune moment to do something crazy
while my courage and my youth ebbs away.
By: Nippy | Saturday, April 17, 2010 at 2:10 PM | |
Hate grammar lessons. Don't think it helps my writing. Still no letter. Anxious.
By: Nippy | Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 1:32 PM | |
I am supposed to be writing a history essay on Geronimo,but am stuck, so I thought I'd drop a note to myself. Finished Joyce's
Dubliners, of the collection I especially like "The Dead" and "An Encounter". Joyce is really very good at capturing sounds, especially in his dialogues, one character sounds distinctly different from another. Also, he is really quite excellent in rendering scenes. Woolf is very good at capturing light and shadow on things and their colours, so is Joyce. Sometimes, I think that great writers have the eyes of an artist, only presented in language. They paint a vivid scene. The very last scene is "The Dead" was such a surprise and revelation, it was so moving and came so suddenly, I thought it was very fantastic and impressive. Joyce uses songs and sounds to create atmosphere. Woolf likes to interrupt her characters' speeches with thoughts. Good writers, I guess, have a good ear for sound, but also great visual memory and imagination.
I like how impressive and revelatory the last scene of The Dead is, but at the same time, I much prefer that obscure, lighthearted ending in An Encounter. I think that we tend to think that Great art must be sombre and give one a sense of mortality. We expect great works to move us. But I think, even little pieces full of lightness can be fantastic. Beethoven is not necessarily greater than Bach, although I'm sure alot of people think so, at least on a sub-conscious level.
Although this is so obvious, I have never thought of this before today--that what we call classics was once very contemporary. All that talk about opera, house parties, horses carriages were contemporary things for Joyce and Woolf. This just makes me feel that the lot of snobbery going on now in relation to contemporary literature is wrong-headed. Great writers, of course, have always been very educated on classics that preceded them but they have always been very true to their own time, written about concerns relevant to who they are in time. I think today, people scorn contemporary writers. I don't think what so many academics and old snobs call as the death of literature and the deterioration of language is true. Language changes. And it is the writer's job to capture that language of their own time to make sense of it. There is very little point in trying to emulate Woolf or Joyce. What we need to do is to use our own voice--even if it's less fancy and sophisticated and to make it our own.
By: Nippy | at 7:18 AM | |
Old singers mature like gold wines in late afternoon.
By: Nippy | Monday, April 12, 2010 at 1:59 PM | |
Virginia Woolf's
The Years is very cinematic. It reads like a film. There are establishing shot-like passages at the beginning of every chapter. The effect is quite stunning, just an omniscient observation of a world in detail and beautifully rendered, then close ups into characters. She has a great knack for entering into the thoughts of one character to another seamlessly, but the problem is that one often gets lost in the moving train of thoughts, several times I had to backtrack to see whose head I had entered. Her world is one constantly in flux, a beautiful fluid world, with constant movements.
I have thoughts of writing a funny story. I recently had a discussion with Lee, most of the movies he thinks are awesome, I thought pretentious. I hate films that take themselves so seriously. I'm not sure what my take of this on books are yet. Seems like most of the writers I like do have a sense of humor-yes even Virginia Woolf.
By: Nippy | Friday, April 09, 2010 at 3:41 AM | |
Oh Grief, read my stuff again! They're horrible!!! Cringe* What the hell was I thinking? Sentimental, and just self-conscious and URGh!!
Much rather think about Baker's beach--and the naked old men. Suntanning, exhibiting their flabbiness and prune-like skin. I like them for their naturalistic attitude--who cares. Some Chinese girl sitting on the rock--shading her faces, worried about the U.V rays no doubt. I like the old men better--who cares if they look bad. They are sincere, they flaunt what they got and what they don't.
Hate my writing!
Something's wrong because I'm now unimpressed by a lot of things, and the problem is that my own stuff isn't that great--shit. I don't want arrogance--that's just pigheadedness.
Think of something happy-- oh yes at the CCSF library two of favorite writers share a shelf--makes me smile. Virignia Woolf and P.G Wodehouse.
Some old guy in an oversized T-shirt talked to me for fifteen minutes until I realized he was wearing nothing on the bottom.
By: Nippy | Wednesday, April 07, 2010 at 10:09 AM | |
I had some thoughts last night, but got too tired and went to sleep instead of writing here. I thought of the fact that so many writing books here in the U.s stress the simple and direct. Realism is very much more popular here than in Singapore or in the writers from U.K. I also wondered about the surface vs entering into character's minds. I have become so conscious of that--going into characters thought seems out of mode now--is it merely an American convention--where actions are supposed to portray the thought? Or is it a time period thing--are we in general less interested in psychology than the modernists? I wonder, somehow the whole idea of giving character's thoughts seems slightly cheesy--like a little childish perhaps?
I also thought of the whole idea of sex--it is everywhere in books, if you know how to look.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, April 06, 2010 at 8:23 AM | |
Talking to one of the customers at J&J and was telling her how I thought it strange that we get Easter day off but not New Year's Day. She seemed slightly offended. She exclaimed "Well, it's Easter." Pardon, but I didn't know that it was such a big deal--it is after all a religious holiday. I thought the U.S proposed the separation of state and religion a long time ago--Everytime I study history, it seem to suggest that all that high sounding documentation in the past is always far from the reality on the ground level. Living here for the past --what--three a half years has convinced me that the U.S is at heart very religious--still extremely protestant centered in its view. The history of isolationism and the long history of cowboys riding out to the untamed West still lives on in how the people in this country thinks this place should be run. And this obnoxious self-centered, self important view can really get on my nerves. Many people here are still so ignorant; the problem though is that they don't think they are ignorant about the rest of the world, while they go around with this out-dated view of the rest of the world. "Asia is backward in its outlook" "Europe is feudalistic" --still colour many people's opinion. Strange isn't it--for the supposedly leftist, forward, modern city of S.F, the company I work for that is stationed right here in the city still deems Easter one of its major holidays. So we get Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter off. Holidays say a lot about what a country, or in this case, a company see as important, not only in that it is what they celebrate but where they stand and who they see themselves as. I think this says a lot, and I am surprised at what this tells me. Or maybe it is my reaction I should be surprised at. America is basically conservative and religious. That really is the heart of this country and God forbids anyone challenge that tradition, and not to mention the fact that they see themselves as having the god given right to go around meddling in other people's affairs. Self-righteous and self important still seems to be the view of the day. And Easter is just the tip of the surface condition hiding all that molten hormone raging under this proclaimed great nation.
By: Nippy | Monday, April 05, 2010 at 4:22 AM | |
I'm now nearing the end of Virginia Woolf's diary. I'm now in 1940, she talks about the war, about the fear and the attempt to carry on with everyday life. So strange. So strange to read about the apple blossoms in the garden while they talk about air raids and fear of bombing. Stranger still. The book has only a few more pages to the end. yet, there is no sense to that. That is the strangest and the most disturbing feel. Perhaps, it is a reflection of life--we take it one day at a time never knowing it will end, never thinking, brooding over it. It is strange, because Virginia Woolf chose to take her own life, yet that element of choice, one feels about suicide is absolutely absent in these last few entries and its been bugging me, eating at me. I haven't gotten to the end, but there is no trace of her discussion of death or even terror. She talks about her life, her work with bravery, determination. Is it a front? Are we such unaware creatures--that we will not know the day, the hour we decide to take our own life if we do? This changes my view on suicide completely. I'm beginning to think it is a deep subconscious desire, but it is mostly founded on a whim.
By: Nippy | Friday, April 02, 2010 at 3:26 PM | |
An echo, an echo and echo
our lives
patterns
of repetition
the same mistakes
the same hope
the same expectation
yet again
yet again
yet again
By: Nippy | Thursday, April 01, 2010 at 2:30 PM | |
Wanted to write this morning after a long break from writing. But ended up wasting time on emails and facebook. After paying my bills online, I'm now too muddled to write. So I thought I'd drop a note here instead, just so to keep myself writing. My sister has gone to Las Vegas with her boyfriend, and the one week break I was planning is now looking like it will just be another lazy week. Had some thoughts lately. Thought of thin walls and a lace curtain lit from within with a soft yellow light. Thought of several story ideas, but none of them very developed yet. Finished Madame Bovary and am planning to read more classic works. First James Joyce, then maybe some VIrginia Woolf. I am quite sick of the American realists that I've been quite into the past years, but their terse language and taut stories are getting a little much. Maybe it is time for some indulgent experimentalists. I usually don't do well with fancy writers, but let's see. I once read somewhere that one had to mature before one can appreciate James Joyce. I remember reading Finnegans wake when I was nineteen, twenty? Didn't get the thing at all and returned it to the library. I'm going to try Ulysses this time, and we'll see. Maybe it is simply a matter of taste. I am reading Joyce's Dubliners and liking it very much though. Perhaps, I just a more conventional turn of mind when it comes to storytelling? I don't know, there's still so much I have to learn about myself. And the elusive thing called voice--I'm pretty sure I don't have it yet.
By: Nippy | at 1:35 AM | |
