My manuscript is a mess, I don't really want to look at it tonight. So I escaped here--I realize I tend to do that, I will blog when I don't feel like looking at my messy story. It is a quick fix for my desire to write.
Went to the park across from Lee's place because he wanted to try out his new bellows on his camera. We were hunting for insects, but the sky was too overcast for a good macro-lens picture. We found some wild black berries instead. They were lovely except for a few super tart ones. Haha I asked him if he had to choose between super sweet or super tart for a girlfriend which would he choose. He gave a very typical male answer. You guys can surely guess.
I just showed my sister an excerpt from Planet Earth the BBC nature series. I am not kidding, I am quoting directly from it--so hilarious:
"Female asses are mysterious creatures. They come and go as they please and much of their behavior seems unfathomable to an outsider." WAhahaha right? I mean who wrote that? I know, I know, those donkey creatures are probably called wild asses, but still...hahaha
On my way home, a sign to a cocktail bar said "Bottom's up." Does that even make sense for you guys? Bottom's up?
By: Nippy | Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 4:17 PM | | 
I'm a freaking weirdo that's what I am.
I would love to use that as my biographical notes, but I don't have the guts. Always afraid to insult (even myself)--that's my problem.
By: Nippy | Friday, July 30, 2010 at 4:56 PM | |
My Japanese friend told me something funny today. She said, as we sat out back in the garden section of a cafe, "Usually, the third boyfriend is the best one to marry." I laughed. It was funny, but there was something tragic about my response. I didn't know if I laughed because I believed her, or if I laughed because i found what she said ridiculous. The first thing I thought of was my parents.
My sister and I asked them so many times how they met, and they always had a different version of the story. But the definitive version was that of them meeting at a train station. Stranded waiting for a friend and a brother, my father and mother struck up a conversation with just enough information so that my mother thought it strange that her name and my father's name has opposite meanings, and so that my father found out that my mother worked at a bank close to his place. And the rest is history. Neither of them had ex boy/girl friends.
Sometimes, I think that I don't know the difference between holding on and giving up. I do that so much every single day that I don't know what the difference is, and if that difference even is significant. I always feel that giving up on a relationship is abandonment. Am I an optimist who believes that everything can be worked out, so I should hang on , or am I a pessimist who is afraid that I won't find someone else who would understand and tolerate me? I don't know the answer.
You're never afraid of being alone until you are with someone. It seems paradoxical but it really is simple. I just get used to having someone around, and things feel funny when they are gone. Just like my sister would be leaving, just like how things always have to change.
I don't know. I am just someone who hates changes perhaps. I guess, the problem is that I never know if the change would be for the better or for the worse. I need security and the full guaruntee, but I will never get that. It's always a gamble, and i have never been much of a gambler ever.
By: Nippy | Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 4:26 PM | |
One of the joys of life--discovering great writers. I came across Martin Amis while wandering at the Marina library during my break at work. Just now, on the train, I couldn't stop reading. I had to stand aside to finish the story before I could get on with getting home. That's what great stories do to me. I want to be able to write like that.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 2:13 PM | |
Li, Thanks for your email... It made me laugh. Those crazy days... I'll never forget them. The wishing tree. You know I always wondered what it was like when they cut it down, all those coins falling from the sky. It must have been strange. Or maybe they didn't even notice. AH days were really something else altogether.
Those memories are always the most vivid. The ugly old stadium, the ugly green shorts we wore. My rusty buttons--because I was too lazy to remove them when I put the uniform into the washing machine. You know, I used to hate uniforms, but it gives that memory a special significance. I can still picture all of us in uniform.
The komodo dragon that appears whenever it rains.
The way the entire world is grey and muffled when it rains, and all our heads are on the table nodding off for Mr Poh's math class.
St john's marching: Lup Lup Lup Right! Wahaha....
WhenI come back, let's all go back to AH. I wonder if the old stadium is still there. Sometimes, I wish people would stop upgrading and renovating the buildings. Old things retain special memories...Oh, I miss those days and the young me.
By: Nippy | at 3:04 AM | |
You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been. It was instant knowledge of sexual relationship or it was nothing. That too I knew before I experienced it.
Marguerite Duras, The Lover, p19
Reading
The Lover, lovely feminine prose that I would never be able to write. Had to annotate this quote. For me, it leapt off right the page; I knew it was truth. Not just for Duras, but it was a personal truth. I always know from the first glance, and attraction is not something actively done. It's a meeting of polar energies of some kind.
I always remember the first glance.
I once asked my sister, how can you not know you like someone? She said quite simply, they start off as friends. But that is an impossiblity for me. Whether someone will be a friend or something other, is always determined, for me, at the first glance.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 3:25 AM | |
The cats are in heat. I can hear them outside my window--their yowls. Strange that I should get nostalgic to that. Haha. I still remember that excuse letter Chunhui wrote to Mr Poh about her not being able to sleep due to the cats' mating season. It had Chunhui's mum signature, Mr Poh gave a strange look, but said nothing.
I don't know what I'm trying to write about right now, there really is no point that I'm trying to make, other than the fact that cats are mating outside, and I'm lonely.
Sometimes I get this way.
It nothing as grand as Peublo Neruda's feelings of exile in his poems, nor as beautiful as the desolation in The Little Prince. It's just a mild blue, something that will pass soon enough. But there are days like this, when the night is so quiet, and then there are the cats, and the world seems so big, and still. Then there's me, and I feel small. Tiny like a grain of sand.
The cats have stopped now. And it is so quiet again. My dad is talking to my sister in the other room, I hear only their muffled chatter. But there is still silence. And it has a texture, like grains in old black and white photos.
I don't know what I need. I just hear that hiss of a world outside my window, even with the curtains closed, there is this
life. And somewhere in the bushes cats are coupling.
By: Nippy | Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 1:23 PM | |
Sitting at lee's computer, with the curtains parted. Outside, what sounds like static, low sparkly fireworks, and the loud pops that sound like gun shots. It's a quiet fourth of july.
Tomorrow, I'm going to go to Irvine with my sister. After living together for 23 years, my sister is leaving. She says it's temporary but still, it's going to be strange, so quiet around the house.
It's getting chilly again--it never gets truly summery over here. Sometimes, I miss sweating in the noon day sun.
From here I can see the bay, it's blue and grey, just a tinge of pale rose. Right now, I'm eating eggs with runny yolk that Lee made.
It's a strange thing I'm feeling right now, a strange mix of calm happiness and a vague sense of loss. And somewhere across the bay, purple, green, red and gold fireworks fizzle and spark.
By: Nippy | Monday, July 05, 2010 at 11:42 AM | |
2nd Yosemite visit in two months. I didn't stay in the camp ground this time and it made such a lot of difference. I am of the opinion that nature cannot be truly appreciated in the comfort of a queen sized bed, cable T.V, mini fridge, microwave, stove and deck chairs. It has to be smoke fire, hard ground and thin tents and shared bathroom. There seems to be a inverse relationship between how comfortable the accommodation and the depth of the experience. But that is just my opinion.
Yes, I am very opinionated. I think Coach--the handbag brand--is utterly stupid and disgusting. On my way back from Yosemite back to the city, we stopped by the outlet mall. People were rushing, grabbing handfuls of Coach handbags. Boyfriends were holding three, four, five of those handbags, while excited girlfriends went from one Coach shelf to the next. It was honestly quite nauseating. Of course, I was no saint myself. I simply seated myself outside on a bench while my girlfriends shopped. I simply succumbed to the thing called Nintendo D.S.
This is not the first time I've noticed this, but I am not a very girly girl. And the lengths and extremes people go, and the money they spend on these things puzzle me. Well, as long as they are happy I guess. But if you ask me, I don't think these things are important.
Life too short for me to waste my time on shoes and handbags and looking good. Pointless video games, however, is another matter. I am, of course, perfectly happy to waste my life on that. (Hypocrite)
By: Nippy | Sunday, July 04, 2010 at 3:31 PM | |
