It's ANOTHER weird universe!!!!

A Friday off

2012-01-14T08:39:00.003+08:00

I've forgotten how nice it is to have a day off on a weekday. It was so lovely today, feels like a summer day even though we're supposed to be in the middle of winter. Had planned to take the L train to the zoo, but Lee got so sore that I wanted to go on my own without him, so I ended by just walking at the beach.

The sand was all glittery and a strange dark grey. Quite magical. I later realized with all the charred remains of trunks of pine that that dark grey sand is the remain of ashes from burnt Christmas trees. Wondered if those sparkling things come from resin from the trees. Lee would know, but he's at work. Then there were these strange birds-like miniature seagulls pecking at the receding surf, for microbes maybe? Because when I took a peek to see what they were feasting on, all I saw were sea foam and bubbles.

Found paper thin shells of crabs, dead days maybe weeks. They were blown about by the sea wind. Found a wounded bee struggling on the wet sand. Didn't help it, because I had made up my mind that I was not to take anything from the shore today, and was to only be a spectator.

Then walked home along the perimeter of the zoo and around the lake. It was only 2pm but the shadows were already slanted like it was four, they were purplish and blue too. Saw and smelt the Eucalyptus trees that are Lee's favorite. In the afternoon light all the leaves were glowing translucent, except for the Eucalyptus leaves that were silver blades. Got sentimental and wanted to write a poem for/about Lee, but then the feeling passed and has evaporated since. Thought of Jamba juice instead.

Found pussywillow, wild ones along the lake. Thought of the ones we used to buy in Singapore for Chinese New Year and the reddish brown husks that duck would peel impatient for them to bloom their fuzzy blossoms.

Got so tired by the walking that I had to sit. Watched two blue birds flirt. Got home after 3 hours of walking, am contemplating the bed. Outside, someone is washing dishes in one of the houses, I can hear the sound of plates stacking, glass clinking to the disappearing daylight. A perfect way to end this lovely day.

Strolling along Lake Merced, Boxing Day

2011-12-28T04:18:00.001+08:00

Winter must be a great time for bird watching. With the branches so bare, the birds are so exposed.

Reversing our Roles

2011-11-21T05:54:00.004+08:00

Went to send my parents off at the airport yesterday. They are going down to L.A for a cousin's wedding. And there I was standing at the departure gate watching them leave for a short 1hr plus domestic flight watching them as they make their way through the long lines at custom and then the security check, suddenly feeling emotional, watching the two of them, each a luggage in hand. Suddenly feeling protective of them, like they are the children, and I the parent. Suddenly realizing that they have grown older, or perhaps, it is I who have grown older, and now they are the ones who need to be taken care of.

Suddenly understanding that filial piety is not a responsibility that is based on obligation, it is a responsibility that springs from tenderness. It is something that I didn't understand when I was younger, but it is something that I do now. It comes with seeing your parents' vulnerability. It comes with standing at the departure gate of the airport, feeling a worry eat at you as your parents struggle with their carry-ons, negotiate with the custom officer, realizing that this scene is a familiar one, time and time again, years ago, it is just that now, the roles are reversed.

November darkness

2011-11-15T13:22:00.005+08:00

It gets dark very early now. By five pm, the sky already looks like an eight o'clock sky. When I got off work today, my co-workers and I had to stumble around to get to the door. We were musing that the TransAmerica pyramid looked so pretty all lit up. I like it when it gets dark like this when I get off work, because I know, Christmas is around the corner. It is lovely, this cold darkness, it is what I've always associated with excitement. It is always around this time of the year when I feel that fluttering in my chest like something is about to happen, the air smells different, the nights always feel more quiet, and expectant. In contrast the short days with the glaring white light of the sun now angled so close to the northern hemisphere feels uneasy, and in my mum's words "is like a searchlight." There is something strange about this light that burns the eyes, but not the skin.

But the nights, they are spectacular. I feel lucky just to sit in the light of my room, knowing that this darkness is so still outside. Even the reflection on the glass seems especially black and glossy, like warm dark water I could dive into. Coming home, I saw my neighbor, a little boy (of six perhaps?), peeking out the window, at nothing, just looking at the darkness. I couldn't see his backlit face, but I guessed that his expression was one of astonishment. Because, this November darkness is quite lovely.

And now, to listen to These days by Nico with a cup of hot tea..Ah...

2011-10-22T13:58:00.002+08:00

好怀念童年的时光. 每當我看到龍貓的片段,都很懷念.

I just finished reading Five Skies

2011-10-19T14:34:00.002+08:00

by Ron Carlson, and thought of something that Graham Greene said in the introduction of his short story collection. I have a lousy memory and am too lazy to dig up the actual quote, so if you will have to do with a poor summary of what he said. What he said, or at least, what I remember him saying was that there are short story writers and novelist. He happens to be latter, and just because a novelist occasional writes him short stories it does not make him a short story writer and vice versa.

Five Skies was a long short story. At least, that is the impression I had. I can't tell you how I bored I was reading the book. About one third into the book, I knew how the story would end, and indeed, it ended predictably. The clear trajectory, the structure of the book as a series of scenes/snippets felt like a short story that was dragged out. It didn't feel like a novel.

I always have this argument with Lee. He would literally tell me that the definition of novels, novellas and short stories are based on their number of pages. I think it stupid, and still do.

I felt as if I had read a very long and very unsatisfying story in Five Skies. The structure of the climax being very close to the end that works quite well in short stories didn't really work for me. Of course the fact that I've been bored for a long time didn't help. This made me wonder about what makes a novel satisfying for me, and how that is different when I'm reading a short story.

For me, I feel part of the joy of reading a novel, is getting lost in it. Not really knowing where one is being led, and then after all that getting lost, arriving at an ending that is unexpected (It has to be unexpected) but yet feels so right (that is the mystery of it that I can't quite explain), the ending needs to be like a kind of recognition. It is really a bit like getting lost and then being found again. Or like meeting someone, forgetting someone and then finding that same person again--recognizable yet changed. Does it all sound strange enough yet?

Because I can't decided which is worse. An odd disappointing ending that is unexpected (in the wrong kind of way) that really juts out and cheapens the entire thing, or an expected ending that fits so well with the entire set up that it just confirms the long drawn out boredom, that afterall, there is nothing more to discover. It is all there along, everything planted, neat and controlled, and utimately very fake.

Sweet Dreams are made of these

2011-10-13T13:43:00.002+08:00

Woke up the other day from a dream where I was making out with a dog--one of those big dogs and it had cataract and was blind in one eye. I was looking into its white eyeball while we were making out. I smelt dog breath in the dream. I felt weird all day. it was like that one time I dreamt I ate a spoonful of raw salt and my tongue felt swollen all day. I swear I tasted the raw salt. I still remember that awful sensation.

The places our dreams take us. Thank god for them though. Because of dreams, I now know what it feels like to have eaten a spoonful of salt and to have made out with a dog.

Gunter Grass-the literary magician

2011-09-23T01:12:00.002+08:00

Gunter Grass's THE TIN DRUM is just an amazing amazing read. I'm not done with it yet, but every chapter feels like a tiny journey, and the voice of the narrator is such a joy to read, every line is like a fiesta. It is like watching an amazing linguistic acrobatic performance. He takes you to great heights and strange places, and offers a unique and unforgettable view of the world as this strange, grotesque, magical place. I realized this about really amazing writers, they have this hynoptic hold on you page after page after page. And their voice lingers, and your view of the world you are in is colored by it, so that after reading a chapter of THE TIN DRUM on BART, when walking through the Stockton tunnel to work, and on seeing the black magnetic tape of a tape casette strung all along the handrail of the tunnel, I felt this incredible joy. They looked just like silvery black streamers, dancing in the currents of exhuast fumes that flows through that tunnel, and against the wet, dirty, and balck concrete ground, they were a celebration of something, I couldn't put my finger on it what. Even the homeless man I saw on my way to work, using a rusty razor blade to remove fungus growth on his feet, attains this strange magical property.

Ah...that's what great writing does to you.

Today

2011-09-22T00:54:00.001+08:00

After sending Li off to the USA hostel where she will be picked up by a bus to Yosemite, I walked to work. Up three steep blocks up up up hill, past the Grace Cathedral and the Fairmont Hotel, there standing at the highest point, I could see the bay—blue green in the sun, and the thin layer of fog floating above that glimmering blue, and the mountain standing above it, looking like it is a mountain in the clouds.

Today, is going to be a good day.

Five years

2011-09-20T06:44:00.004+08:00

What is it liking meeting an old friend again after five years to find that you and I have both changed? I don’t know. It is a complicated question, and the response is equally complicated. Five years is a long time. It is half a decade. The time passed and the experiences that happen over the course of time cannot be so easily captured in a meeting again. It is not a caricature of two people running towards each other embracing. Time has not stood still, and our experiences have shaped each of us in unique ways. Things never fall neatly together, like jigsaw puzzles made to fit. You realize old compatibility that drew you two together may be quite strained, or that opinions that didn’t seem to differ that much (differences no bigger than a tiny crack) had over the time widened to a gulf.

Then what? Where do things stand for old friends. Old friends; New people. I don’t know. I guess like all things, it is a matter of getting to know some one once again. It is to try to remove assumptions or presumptions that you understand someone, because no one truly does. We all travel alone, our paths (like in that old poem by Robert Frost we love) diverge and we go on our own way. Meeting again, sometimes we find that we have come closer than before or farther away. We may find ourselves standing under the same tree or across the river from each other.

But all this is another fact of life, like how people come together and are separated. Like how things grow and die, or how things are built up destroyed and built up again. It is not sadness or even estrangement I feel. It is this very quiet acceptance that I am different now and you are too, but it is also that wonderful understanding that no matter how far away you are (across a river or over a mountain) I still recognize you my old friend. I still do.

2011-09-15T03:20:00.004+08:00

You'll realize (or at least I did some time ago) that it is never the beautiful philosophical deep thoughts that characterize everyday life. It is always the petty. The incredibly petty. And the little irritations. Believe me, I have murderous rage against these petty irritations. I detest my boss right now. I really do. Cheap bastard.

Five Dollars

2011-09-14T05:57:00.003+08:00

I almost cried just now. I'm serious, but I'm glad I didn't. Went to the UPS store inside Fairmont hotel after rolling the trolley with that big package uphill and was told that dropping off any package inside a hotel cost $5. It wasn't only because I was taking into factor my cheap boss who would get pissed over the $5, but the fact that it was just plain unfair. Why should I, after rolling that heavy ass box uphill pay you snobby Chinese fatso sitting in your air-conditioned office $5 for doing nothing. He told me, "all UPS stores located inside hotels charge $5 for drop off because these UPS stores only serve hotel guests" and that the next closest UPS store is 4 blocks down on Mason and Sutter. Inside, lounging in the lobby are all these rich white people having their afternoon glass of wine. I rolled the trolley one block stood at the top of the steep hill on Mason and California and looked down. It was a steep decline. I would have to go downhill 4 blocks with the heavy box on the roller cart. I tested the weight of the box by taking three small steps. It was so heavy, I would have rolled downhill if I was stupid enough to take the UPS asshole's advice "It's good exercise for you." He had said it with an ironic smile.

To top it all off, some asshole in a nice expensive car was trying to get into the hotel and stopping for a pesdestrian with a heavy box and clumsy cart was just too much to ask of him. I was sweating and struggling with the cart and box and really I would have cried. But there, just one block away was a UPS truck. I managed to roll the cart downhill and got to the UPS truck just as the driver was starting the engine. I asked him, my voice already trembling from the frustration and the urge to cry if he would be so kind to let me drop off the box with him, when he nodded, I almost cried again.

Well, what is the moral of this story? Not much other than the fact that rich people live in an entire different world. Or maybe the same world but on a different plane. Just now, I had felt so poor, so indignant and for inexplicable reasons, so humiliated. It is ultimately a matter of $5. It is $5 I was asked to pay for a service no different than anywhere else, but it is $5 to pay for not being priviledged. I think, that was what sucked the most. It is $5 to pay for not being rich enough to live inside a Fancy hotel to use the service of a UPS store no different than any other. If it is not for the kindness of the UPS driver, I really would have started to cry. Sometimes, that is all that makes the world tolerable.

2011-09-02T14:34:00.001+08:00

My last argument with Lee began with his saying: The U.S did not lose the Vietnam war. The U.S withdrew. North Vietnam did not win the Vietnam war. They successfully defended themselves.

Arriving at the last page

2011-08-31T03:40:00.009+08:00

I have always felt that when I get to the last page of a book, it is like arriving at a destination of sorts. From that very first sentence to that very last, there is a kind of movement, a kind of journeying and when reading a very good book, I feel that I've travelled somewhere, that I've been changed somehow.

That said, sometimes, a book that I've enjoyed all the way through just disappoints at the end. I have to say, I was sorely disappointed when I got to the end of Travels with my Aunt. Something rang false in that ending for me. I didn't trust the point of view of the character by the end.

Sometimes, the contrary is true for me. A classmate of mine in a writing class whose work I admire wrote an article on a book he liked, Desperate Characters, that I happened to read. I hated the book he recommended from the first awkward sentence. The only reason I kept reading it was because my classmate's admiration of the book was so passionate and because I trust his taste (not that I actually know the guy that well, but I like his writing, and I trust that his has informed taste). There were so many moments when I wanted to throw my hands up in exasperation. I didn't like the way the writer wrote. Clumsily formal in my opinion, and at times the dialogues were so awkward that I felt as if I was in the hands of someone who didn't know how to speak like a regular person. And yet, by the very end, I was blown away. That is always the best experience for me. Arriving at the last page to find that I have arrived somewhere completely unexpected, but that feels so so right. I find myself re-reading the book to find out how that can happen. How is it possible that I hate a book for the blocks that make it up (awkward clumsy prose in my opinion that makes me think that the writer must most certainly be constipated when writing) and yet love the place it brings me to by the end. It is like being on a reluctant trip and hating every moment of it, until one realizes in a strange illuminating moment that it has been a good trip after all, and one has arrived at a good place.

That is why I love books and why I love reading. Sometimes, it is just pure magic.

Listening to Bossa Nova

2011-08-28T14:58:00.002+08:00

Because my friend from Singapore sent me a Joao Gilberto Youtube video, I've been listening to bossa novas.
Bossa Novas make me feel rich. Don't ask me why.
I feel like I'm sitting in a little roadside cafe with the summer sun on my skin, sipping from a small cup of coffee, with a bubbly glass of champagne gathering dew on the table where a cigar sits on top of a porcelain ashtray, and I'm waiting for someone to turn up, as I watching Mopeds sputter by on cobblestoned pavements.

Crazy, I know, but this is the place bossa novas bring me to.

2011-08-20T06:36:00.002+08:00

Got another rejection letter. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm just wasting my time.

Traveling with Graham Greene

2011-08-15T12:55:00.007+08:00

Reading Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene. Greene is fuckin' brilliant. I swear. I'm reading his stuff on the train and I find myself dog earring every other page. Some of the stuff is some good, I want to slap myself on the knee and jump up and down and grab the person next to me and say "Can you believe this? You've got to read what this guys wrote here. Incredible."

This was one of my favorites:

pg 52: "One of the few remarks of age which I noticed in my aunt was her readiness to abandon one anecdote while it was yet unfinished for another. Her conversation was rather like an American magazine where you have to pursue a story, skipping from page twenty to page ninety-eight and turning over all kinds of subjects in between: childhood delinquency, some novel cocktail recipes, the love life of a film star, and even quite a different fiction to the one so abruptly interrupted."

Fucking brilliant!

Then there's this:

pg 97: "When a train pulls into a great city I am reminded for the closing moments of an overture. All rural and urban themes of our long journey were picked up again: a factory was followed by a meadow, a patch of autostrada by a country road, a gas-works by a modern church:the houses began to tread on each other's heels, advertisements for Fiat cars swarmed closer together, the conductor who had brought breakfast passed, working intensely down the corridor to rouse some important passenger, the last fields were squeezed out and at last there were only houses, houses, houses, and Milano, flashed the signs, Milano."

Oh God! Oh God! How awesome to read this. I will follow Greene anywhere with writing like that, he'll make even journeying into the pits of hell a god-damn song, tralalala-ing on his way down.

On the news today

2011-08-05T08:11:00.002+08:00

I think there is something really wonderful and romantic about the idea of learning about artic ice movement through studying ancient driftwood.

Extract from: Arctic 'tipping point' may not be reachedBy Matt McGrath, Science reporter, BBC World Service

Dr Svend Funder from the Natural History Museum of Denmark led several expeditions to inhospitable regions of Northern Greenland. On these frozen shores the Danish team noticed several pieces of ancient driftwood. They concluded that it could be an important method of unlocking the secrets of the ancient ice.

"Driftwood cannot float across the water, it has to be ferried across the ocean on ice, and this voyage takes several years, which means that driftwood is actually a signal of multi-year sea ice in the ocean and it is this ice that is at risk at the moment" said Dr Funder.

Carbon dating was used to determine the age of the wood. And figuring out its origins also yielded important information.

"It's so lovely that drift wood from Siberia is mainly larch and from North America is mainly spruce. So if we see there was more larch or spruce we can see that the wind system had changed and in some periods there was little spruce and in other periods there was lots," he said.

Something I came across said by Oscar Wilde that made me pause to think

2011-08-02T03:41:00.001+08:00

"The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions—one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true."

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/08/110808crat_atlarge_ross#ixzz1To9jys9F

True Grit

2011-07-29T05:13:00.002+08:00

Reading Charles Portis's True Grit. Such an awesome read. I loved the movie and I love the book. I'm so excited. I also checked out Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle, but even Roddy Doyle can't draw me away from True Grit. Just reading the opening chapter, my heart was thumping like crazy.

Although I can't be sure yet at this point, but I think I might have found a new favorite author!

Duck,

2011-07-26T08:23:00.005+08:00

Duck, if you're reading this, just want you to know that I really miss you. You're probably flying across the Pacific Ocean right now. You said that you'll sleep on the plane, but really, I know you'll just be watching in-flight movies. I always play it quite cool when people leave, saw you made a face through the window, at the security check out. Daddy was making a comment about how you made a "bian zui lian" (duck face?) Haha. We miss you already. Not that I'm cool, but just that I hate the drama. But a year passes by in no time, and I'm sure you'll have so much fun you won't miss us (too much). Hope this year for you will be full of wonderful adventures you can share with us. We love you and we know that this year will be an amazing one for you.

Good luck duck, take care of yourself. (I would have sent you an email, but I think you'll be surprised to find this here when the mood strikes you to visit my blog.)
Ay, send me the link to your blog you'll be keeping for your year in Japan ok?

See you soon. Talk to you sooner.

what I miss

2011-07-20T14:19:00.002+08:00

You know, I don't know what it is, but the older I get, the less I feel inclined to talk about any idea of truth. I have no big theories about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. No really, is it tiredness? I don't know. All I know is that I hate insincerity, whatever form it may come in--the worst is when people try to play it off as art. Whatever. Philosophy is fine, as long as you keep it to yourself. I have no interest in hearing how deep this thing you're trying to create is. I detest it. I would much rather read something genuine and poorly written than well crafted pretentious shit.

This might be able to explain why I can't much stand independent films with no sense of humor, (and boy there are so many of them out there). It gets to a point when I would read a synopsis or see a poster and cringe. There is something strangely disturbing about people who take themselves and their creation too seriously. It is always fishy to me when people talk about what they are trying to say. Their message. Their artistic statement. Their philosophy. Their world view. All bullshit. I sometimes wish people would shut up, shut up and be still.

I wonder if it has to do with being in the U.S, everyone is always endlessly talking talking talking about something, most of the time themselves. But everyone is obsessed with self exhibition nowadays, how else can we explain the popularity of Facebook? I don't want to sound like that angry bitter person who came to speak in our art class during J.C. I remember him so clearly. He went on and on and on about how we are all being manipulated by the media, and how everything, everything is contaminated. I remember telling Jane, getting just as worked up as the speaker--that if he hated the entire society so much why doesn't he just go live in a cave. The ironic thing was that he is a graphic designer, so what else does he do but get paid by all these businesses who are trying to manipulate people into buying their goods & services. That makes him a hypocrite. The world is crawling with them, but nowhere are they are pronounced and as in the "art scene."

I don't hate artists/musicians/poets/writers. I just hate it when they forget that the highest calling is not that of art. Not in my opinion at least, the highest calling of course is to live, fully and honestly and genuinely without all this silly front and dressing up. Recently, I saw a video of a secondary school mate who is now a composer. Her music, I can't speak too much of, because she went on and on so much about what she was trying to do with her music. I asked myself very honestly afterwards if my gut reaction of disgust was not founded on envy. It honestly wasn't.

Sometimes, what I miss are the simple afternoons those summer days when I was six and we spend the day at my grandparents' house. Where their black rotary phone is an object of fascination. When joy was the taste of condense milk on white bread. When my neighbor's sun flowers heads high against the blue of the sky was sheer happiness. Ecstasy and fear used to come in through me unmediated. I think it is in the sate of innocence that we experience most intensely, and it is the very thing I am always after. It is never thoughts or ideas I am after, it is always a sensation. A sensation so pure it brings me right back to being a child spreading out newspaper on the floor, watching grandmother dry orange peel in the sun, feeling their stiff barks, their mouldy smells, and feeling like this moment would live forever, feeling like I have been touched by something. It is always innocence I miss. And every time I come in touch with art, I long for this direct and intense experience, but always run right up against a wall of people talking, talking, talking.

Wodehouse and Adams

2011-07-09T15:31:00.004+08:00

Of all the fine writers I've read, there is no one that I have such strange longing to talk to as Douglas Adams. He talks about life, his art with such humanity and humor. I believe humor is humanity at its best. I've already mentioned it before once, somewhere, that I think all the wonderful writers I love have a great sense of humor. So I was pleasantly surprised on this Friday night after an exhausting night with Lee(ah-hem), to find a short passage, an introduction actually, Douglas Adams had written for Sunset at Blandings by P.G Wodehouse. I am not surprised that Douglas Adams holds Wodehouse in such high esteem, as fellow comedic, in my opinion, comedic geniuses--both of them. But I was moved too, that Adams talks about comedy as high art--and indeed it is. Comedy is sublime. I have always always felt such gratitude to writers/film-makers who can make me laugh. It is a joy unsurpassed by any other enjoyment, for me at least. It elevates me, Puts me in places life doesn't usually want to let me be in, and for a space of several pages, sometimes the length of entire books, I laugh, I am happy, I forget.

Adams describes the world in Sunset at Blandings as a pre-fall paradise and says this, "Of Course, Wodehouse never burdened himself with the task of justifying the ways of God to Man, but only of making Man, for a few hours at a time, inextinguishably happy."
I am indeed inextinguishably happy, sublimely so. Thank you P.G Wodehouse and Douglas Adams. For all the joys, always. The pleasure is all mine. Thank you.

Santa Cruz and other miscellaneous things

2011-07-07T12:55:00.002+08:00

I will stop comparing myself to others. Yes, they have better techniques, and an enviable use of language. Mine comes out slightly awkward sometimes, but it is my own aesthetics and I will hone it. I will listen to my own sense of what is true for me. Why worry about the others? They will do their best, and I will do mine.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT... (how many times do you have to blog about the same thing? Why can't you just be cool about it, instead of harping on this? Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.)

I drove to Santa Cruz over the 4th July weekend. First time I got so scared on a ride, I teared. I din't even cry on that triple loop that went upside down in Syndey, but I cried on the giant dipper at the beach boardwalk. OK, I didn't actually cry, I just teared. Those wooden roller coasters are scary, and that ride was too long in my opinion. It was 1:57(I think) minutes, way too long for a roller coaster ride. Torturous.

And we did argue on our way back, and I actually cried at the wheel--tsk tsk, so dangerous thinking back, The worse combination(lethal): Being a girl, being Asian, being emotional and freaking out on the freeway. I was so angry I swore that I wouldn't travel with Lee again.

The crazy thing of course is that now he is back at Santa Cruz again--invitation of his family. Strange isn't it?

sickness

2011-06-29T09:58:00.003+08:00

I've been having this horrible gnawing pain in my stomach for the past five days. Might have to take a blood test tomorrow to see if it might be a case of stomach ulcer. Weird. Don't know what happened. I still think it was the subway foot long I had. Lee was just commenting on how much I've been eating. And truly, I've been quite a glutton these past five months. Maybe this is just my body's way of trying to balance itself. That's my theory anyway, that my body tends to do that--I'll be eating/snacking like there's no tomorrow, and be in the pink of health and then I'll get sick, really sick.

Strange things happen when I'm sick. I start getting homesick laying in bed. I thought of LengKong Tiga, and the rainy season just around Christmas time. The air would smell different, and I would wake up and go downstairs and the tiles would be cool under my feet. It is the one time of the year, I don't mind an overcast sky, and I'll think of gingerbread. I suddenly just miss Singapore and all those Christmas I spent there. Best Christmases of my life. Somehow, having you guys during the holiday season always just makes Christmas more special. And then, there's also screaming out the window with my sister right at midnight.

OK.ok. I guess that's what sickness does, this strong bout of homesickness and nostalgia. But I do miss home, you know. LengKong Tiga comes the closest to home. Afterall, I did live there for 12 years. 12 years. Where will I be in 12 years?

The play tonight

2011-06-24T13:53:00.002+08:00

At the S.F. Playhouse, in the restroom cubicle where the flush was problematic, was a note on the toilet tank that said: Hold handle down with vigor and intent. (so I did just that. Someone should have seen my impressive performance. I deserve a Tony.)

Summer!

2011-06-21T11:58:00.002+08:00

HOt hot hot in San Francisco, and I can't stop listening to "Beatrice" by Cohen Hartman and the bone machine. God, Cohen Hartman is so so so cute. I want get myself a goofy musician to squeeze the air out of! Lock him in a cage and feed him hamster food. (Is this fantasy getting out of hand yet?)

I'm going to go to Santa Cruz with Lee over the July 4th holiday. He's such a kid. But I'm super excited (hope you are too Lee, you better be..)

wading into the waves

2011-06-18T00:43:00.002+08:00

Viriginia Woolf, whatever I said before about your writing being pretentious, I take it all back. I've always read on the BART and I have never missed my stop before. It is only your writing that can do that to me--make me miss my stop, make me unable to extract myself, make me feel like I'm being dragged along, pulled under,or at times floating along the currents. Your writing does that to me, make me feel like I've step into a living body of water. Currents, undercurrents, hot, cool...all of that. It feels alive.

I take it all back.

Ah-Hem Wilhelm

2011-06-16T11:55:00.004+08:00

No offense to psychologists and psychology majors, but I was telling my mum the other day how I feel that psychology is really B.S not grounded in any kind of real scientific evidence and is all bollock theories. Today, through a Kate Bush music video, I happen to read up about Wilhelm Reich--credited as one of the most radical psychologist of the 20th century, the guy is quite insane.

I mean, seriously, the founders of psychology are a bunch of loonies. Colorful and interesting nonetheless, but boy, they are barking mad, how can anyone really take their theories seriously, really? Really? I mean Freud and Jung are crackpots. Weirdos.

Honestly, if this entire school/field is reading the thoughts and theories of mad men and taking them seriously, I don't know what this says about people who pay good money just to go talk to these people. Who is more mad?

fantasizing about somewhere else

2011-06-15T07:30:00.005+08:00

So I have been thinking of visiting Cambodia again when I come back to Singapore this year. Today, I found this article http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20110610-cambodia-off-the-beaten-track on BBC.

Want to watch sunrise at Angkor Wat again, this time with better company. Anyone want to join me?

Roddy Doyle, I Love you!

2011-06-09T00:37:00.003+08:00

This morning, before leaving for work, I had to choose. Pick one book to bring with me to read on the train--because I love reading two/three books at a time. I have simultaneously started reading The Waves by Virginia Woolf--it has always been on my to-read list and The Committments by Roddy Doyle. It is probably a very bad pairing. I have always enjoyed reading Viriginia Woolf, but The Waves is especially challenging, found myself drifting off yesterday on the train. That sometimes happen, the words kind of float by. Then there is the boisterous and super super funny book by Roddy Doyle. I hesitated for only 5 seconds and went with Doyle instead.

Honest to god, it is a gift to be able to make someone laugh. I was smiling like a bloody fool all the way to work because of the book. Smiling to myself, waving to the doorman outside to Hilton, feeling just grand.

The Committments is mostly in dialogue, but they are just so damn well written. I can hear them loud and clear, and they tell me exactly what I need to know about these characters. There is no blinder/distance. I feel like I am right there. It is intimate, funny, and just pure sincerity. In contrast, Woolf's writing seemed stand-offish, inaccessible and at times a little (do I dare say this?) pretentious. (ok I did it). I'm sure Woolf will redeem herself and blow me away like she always does. But for now, I am happy having Roddy Doyle accommpany me on my way to work and home. Roddy Doyle, I love you!

sigh. sigh again.

2011-06-07T08:43:00.002+08:00

Reading Jhumpa Lahiri's essay in the New Yorker on her becoming a writer almost made me cry (only almost, but still...) I hate and envy how she can talk about her journey and her writing with such clarity, humanity, and so so beautifully. Oh yes, I'm just a real spiteful mean-spirited thing (Lee, you are so right, but I've been so good. I don't talk/moan about it to you anymore now do I? At least, I make a concerted effort not to, every time the thought bubbles up--that black evil bubble). But I do envy that. When will I ever be able to write nearly as well? Will I ever?

Things to try out

2011-06-01T03:45:00.003+08:00

Been reading Edith Wharton, and I would like to try out her story structures that are usually divided into 3 little sections. They are usually 3 scenes that she sections into parts. Will do that once I have a story idea.

Also, the story with no dialogue. And the story with only one character.... So exciting!

That feeling

2011-05-30T05:38:00.005+08:00

I like Sundays because it is so quiet. Not just in the house, but the entire neighborhood. It is like everyone is napping, the entire world, hypnotized by the blue sky and sun. I told Lee that I will go hiking at the place by my house, but it is so lovely to be lazy, to not do anything. There is beauty inside the house too, a sleepy kind of beauty. I washed the dishes and cleaned up my room after the mess of manuscripts that I left in a pile on the floor. I always feel slightly depressed at the end of a semester. Lee tells me I don't know how to say goodbye. It's true. I'm terrible at it, and am always too sentimental. I starting missing these strangers. It is so strange and silly.

Over the past few days, I have been thinking about one manuscript in class in particular. I couldn't understand why I felt nothing when everyone else in class talked about how moved they were--is there something wrong with me? Perhaps. Perhaps for me, the problem is the same one I sometimes find when reading poems--the language is already so packed with emotions that it just leaves me no space to feel. Sometimes, that is why I don't like prose that is too rich in emotion. In fact, I think I am drawn to prose that has a lack of emotion, that asks me to bring to it the emotion. Don't know if I am making much sense. For me, it is always about a feeling. The best kind of stories leave an intense emotional response, a strong feeling which I can't quite put my finger on. Sometimes I cry from the impact of this feeling. It is not one feeling in itself. It is the feeling of coming so close to something but not quite getting it. I've tried explaining this to Lee once, but it just came out all silly and nonsensical. I'm always after that feeling. And just the day before, I found it in Edith Wharton's The Muse's Tragedy. I was elated. Yes! I discovered a writer I like, only to be disappointed by the story that followed. Maybe it is just a rarity. I wonder if Edith Wharton knew that that story was an especially powerful one? How wonderful if one day I too can create something that someone else would think: What is this feeling that I am feeling and how should I put my finger on it? And why can't I stop shaking?

American Pastoral

2011-05-28T02:10:00.005+08:00

Just finished American Pastoral. So I was surprised by the ending. I was expecting to be surprised but not in the same way. On the cover,or on the "acclaims" page one of the critics mentioned something along the line that Roth is compassionate to his characters. I agree to some sense, but not totally. When I got to the end, the first thing I thought was: This guy is a freaking literary terrorist. He functions like Merry does in the story, I have never read anything where a writer so lovingly and attentively build up these characters and their world with such care and detail only to bring them down with such glee in the end. He was joyingfully destroying his characters. I don't quite understand why though? It is tragically comical, or comically tragic or both, but I don't understand why he has to do that? Why are we in the point of view of a character who is laughing at this family at the end of the book? Roth was extremely cruel in my opinion. The narrator of the story makes this quite clear in the opening and I have never forgotten that the whole thing is a re-creation of this person by the writer narrator, but still, I don't understand the point of the book? Why this crazy manic ending? Don't understand, and I doubt I will. Besides, I believe that Roth is trying to write a tragedy here (in the classic Greek sense of it--fatal flaw and fall from greatness all that), which I have always found slightly..how shall I put it..I've always felt this form of tragedy really wicked and dark. Because it doesn't really cause readers to share pain, it is a displacement of it. I end up thinking: sure am glad as hell, I'm not that guy. Wow. That's crazy. Poor guy. Glad it's not me. There is something gleeful in this kind of tragedy and I'm just not a fan of. You tsk tsk at Othello. You tsk tsk at the Swede.

Still, it is admirable how Roth is able to move through time. He is a master at it. Flashback and back again. Flashback within flashbacks. Flashbacks after flashbacks.

Reading on BART

2011-05-25T04:04:00.005+08:00

Reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral because the classmate whose writing I admire and whom I kind of have a crush on mentioned that it is his favorite book. I'm 80% through the book and I can't help but feel distaste for it. I'm hoping that things will change in the last section of the book, that will surprise me, but currently, it reads like a super political, very very pro-American (urgh!!) book, bursting with the glorious American ideals--and an older generation's angst against the changes that have been taking place in America.

How Pro-America can an American novel get? I'm just really hoping the ending would surprise me....please. I am hoping that I will be proven wrong, (I want to be wrong) because other than that, it is exceptionally written. Well, I find out when I get to the end. Shouldn't be too long now...

So the world didn't end.

2011-05-24T08:04:00.003+08:00

Maybe in a few days, people would stop talking about "rapture". The word turns me on, and always makes me think of sex. Getting raptured on the plane, raptured on the street, raptured in church, raptured in the bathroom... ok ok ok...

It is just strange when I hear people talking about religious rapture... For me, at least, it is very strange.

2011-05-22T14:58:00.004+08:00

I really should delete this blog some day. It is so silly (and how embarrassing, if someone else reads this without my knowing--everything is so laughable. They'd think: Who is this ridiculous human being?). But oh well.... who really cares? Not me.

I hate crazy white old men

2011-05-22T14:46:00.004+08:00

I'm fucking crazy!! I swear. I'm crazy crazy crazy!!! And I wish I was a guy, then I won't be such an emotional thing and I can mess people up real bad when I want to. Beat them to a pulp! (hahaha--the joy just thinking of it). Lee thinks I'll make a really shitty man--I agree, (weak, crying all the time, and wanting to resort to violence) but still. I want to be able to beat someone up, or at least give the impression that I can, so crazy, white, old, assholes won't come picking on me!

Hahaha...If only I was a man, I'll beat the asshole till he begs for mercy---yeah...wouldn't that be nice...

Singapore

2011-05-10T05:33:00.003+08:00

Reading about the Singapore elections, from far away and after the fact. Is it apathy? I can't quite say. I've always been someone apolitical, because I had never cared. I don't know if it is the cycnic in me that views it all as a strange bizarre showcase that ultimately jsut rings empty. You know, the case of: the same differences? Singaporeans are celebrating, and rightly so, for more voices in the parliament. Maybe this is what the rootlessness my sister talks about comes in. I don't have a home, and I don't care about governments. It doesn't matter where, I just can't get riled up, I don't get excited.

Again, I wish I was in the midst of all that excitement, I wish I cared more. In the duration of the few weeks leading up to the election, I received an email from an acquintance asking me, nay, beckoning me to take a stand. Not that she was insincere in anyway, she was in fact truly and deeply involved in what she believes in and asks of me to do the same. Then the question sets in, what do I believe in? I believe in lots of things, but politics is not one of them.

It has always struck me as strangely pretentious, all this talk about politics, building a better future and all that stuff--it feels like a show. You gain people's favor and then you do whatever the fuck you want once in power. I feel that the whole idea of democracy is pretty much a pretty lie. People believe they have a say, but really you give them a choice between shit sandwich A and shit sandwich B, and they are happy to pick one. They are happy just to have a say. Perhaps, it is reassuring to know that the country is going to hell, and one is partly responsible for the shape it takes.

I know how this post is coming off--strangely bitter and cynical--but I don't believe that anything true that one can believe in can be made public like that(in the case of politics) and still remain sincere. When one person does something because she believes in the justification of that act, it is drastically different than one person broadcasting what she believes should be done and asking others to follow her.

Perhaps, in this sense, I am truly anti-authoritarian. It is the classic case of don't tell me what to do, and what future I should be building. But when it comes to things I truly believe in, they are not quite so tangible and they don't take the shape of a seeable vision of the future through someone else's eyes. It is purely private and within that space, I struggle daily to find the right words for all these things I believe in. And it can't be captured in catch phrases and castles in the air of something big promised. Nothing is promised, it is worked for day after day. And I can get angered by all the false political slogans and dirty political scandals, but at the end of the day, I don't believe that politics is the way to freedom--whatever the hell this word is really suppose to mean.

2011-04-23T15:58:00.001+08:00

Too excited to sleep. It is Randy Newmans' music still buzzing in my head. It is the fact that it is Friday night and I have just revised my short story--which I really shouldn't have done, because now I feel out of touch with the other story. Hopefully, it'll find its way back after a while.

Maybe just another Randy Newman song, and another read of my short story, then I will settle in for the night.

I know what you're going to say: I told you so

2011-04-15T11:34:00.004+08:00

My classmate in the intermediate fiction writing class is so amazingly attentive to the craft of writing. It gives me the thrills reading the red marks he left on my page on how to tighten my sentences and how to strengthen my writing. I wish he was my editor.He's techniquely centered, and I just know in my guts that one day I am going to see his books on bookshelves. I just know it. (the jealousy)

Ok. Lee, you are right. I might have a little sorta crush on this classmate in the intermediate fiction writing class.... Oh boy..

I must be mad

2011-04-07T00:18:00.002+08:00

I just got to work and boy. the drama. It's in moments like this I really hate working in Chinatown. So. What happened was this. I was hungry, so I went to get myself an eggtart at a Chinatown bakery for breakfast. It should have been a simple affair. But S.F Chinatown is really a hell hole for ruthless old people who whack people with canes, are genearally grouchy and malevolent overall.
So I was in line. Behind me were several more people. These two old women came in and just started to stand in front of me. I told them. Hey. There's a line. please line up. The one closest to me ignored me and simple stood there. Ok. So I gave up and just let them be. That really should have been the end of the story. But then I guess she felt embarrassed or whatever-shamed. She started to utter bad stuff about me. What a bitch. So young but already a bitch. whatever. That kind of thing. I wanted to just walk away. She's old I mean, with a cane. But then, I just went mad and I walked back to her and said. Hey. Were you trying to tell me something? Because I've always hated it when people talk behind my back. She must have been shocked, or frightened, because then she started to rail about it loudly int the streets. I still had to walk away in the end, because there really was no point to it. Not like it would have changed anything worthwhile anyway. But after the initial anger faded, I felt (can I say this and not get stoned) good. I mean really good. You know, I should have felt bad and all that stuff telling an old woman off, but really, I don't know that it reflects very well on me. But hey, I felt bloody good. Come on grouchy, queue cutting evil old women. I'm not afraid of you. But really, if it can be helped, I'm just going to eat breakfast at home before coming out to work in the future.

Sunday

2011-04-04T05:46:00.001+08:00

Drove myself to Fort Fungston, Listening to "Death by Electro" sent by a dear friend, reading Shakespeare, did my laundry. All Sundays should be this perfect.

2011-04-02T13:50:00.001+08:00

FUCK. This guy in my intermediate fiction class's story is so good. I fucking hate him!

Such joy

2011-03-23T08:28:00.003+08:00

First time reading Grace Paley---powerful stuff. Joy and trembling. Going to hop over to the library after work and check out her short story collection and Charles Baxter too (for class).

In the midst of a San Francisco storm

2011-03-20T15:19:00.002+08:00

"They are gone now. Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone. Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses. No avatar, no scion, no vestige of that people remains. On the lips of the strange race that now dwells there their names are myth, legend, dust. "--pg246 The Orchard Keeper

The last paragraph of Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Orchard Keeper. Breath-taking not simply because of the aptness of leaving the readers with a landscape--which is a big part of the book. But notice the cadence of this last paragraph. It is like music.

They are gone now. (simple sentence) Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone (a motif of doubles: "Fled, banished" forms a pair, as does "in death or exile" followed by "lost, undone.") Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses. (This is a mix construction still in pairs of double, but the sentence is of three parts which foreshadows the sentence that would follow) No avatar, no scion, no vestige of that people remains. (motif of threes.) On the lips of the strange race that now dwells there their names are myth, legend, dust.

I'm in the mood for love (and other 50s music)

2011-03-19T14:07:00.003+08:00

Jo Stafford's voice makes me wet. I don't know why everyone loves the 60s music, the classy 50s was so much better (in my opinion at least). Feeling lazy tonight. Much rather listen to old songs than to look at my story.

2011-03-16T13:04:00.001+08:00

Stop feeling intimidated by others and sorry for yourself! Start writing and keep on going!!

2011-03-14T06:46:00.004+08:00

Just saw a footage on the Tsunami in Japan. I don't remember feeling so frightened in such a long time. I must have been getting complacent. What it must feel like to be in the midst of such a rude reminder of how fragile our lives are, and everything we work so hard to build around ourselves, how all that is really nothing in a larger scheme of things. We are really nothing more than this: small temporal beings--what is worth saying in the face of all this? And what can I say really about what is happening across the ocean?

I just feel blessed that today, I can still sit on my bed, in front of my laptop and watch disaster somewhere else in the safety of a screen. With the wonderful knowledge that my family is safe and everyone around me whom I love is all right.

pg 76

2011-03-09T15:30:00.004+08:00

At page 76. Sometimes writing feels like this long stretch of road with no end in sight, and you feel the stitches in your side and you think, Damn it, where is the finishing line. Only it's worse. you know where the finishing line is, you just have to build your own path there. It's so hard paving my way one word at a time.

No Country for Old Men

2011-02-27T11:11:00.003+08:00

Finished No Country for Old Men--strangely dissatisfied with the ending. It felt disconnected. I love the book so much, but I felt that McCarthy's ending was slightly tacked on. In itself, the ending is brilliant and suddenly puts the title of the book into perspective but in relation to the rest of the book, it feels weak and powerless, and like it has lost its heart.

This answers my previous question on why the need for the monologue of the sheriff, it gave the book a kind of balance in the beginning and served as the emotional foundation--but by the end it just felt like ranting of a sad nostalgic old man--nostalgic for a past--perhaps simpler and more decent. It's not that the longing for the decent past was not apparent in the beginning, but it served as a balance to the kind of violence and the high action plot that was unfolding.

When the violence and the plot is gone--all we are left with is the sad old narrator--it actually diminishes its meaning and its impact. Frankly it felt a little too indulgent to me, given how lean the rest of the book has been. It was just unforgiving all the way through the story until it suddenly became a sentimental remonstration on the state of the country--and the sadness of the older generation.

I feel that a whole chunk of that could have been taken and the book would still have been great--but what do I know--afterall, I do not feel the sadness of McCarthy's generation--perhaps the end would have brought tears to my eyes if I was of his time, but who knows. Afterall, I can only read as who I am and McCarthy writes as who he is. But one can't help but see some truth in McCarthy's coments--this is indeed no country for old men, but I don't know if there ever is one anywhere in this world.

2011-02-25T11:35:00.001+08:00

They say that it will snow tomorrow. In San Francisco, can you guys imagine? I'm so excited. I've never seen real snow before--the kind that comes down from the sky!! I'm so excited. But then, knowing how accurate weather predictions are, it probably wouldn't happen, but still. Snow in San francisco...wouldn't that be something...

whiner alert

2011-02-23T04:02:00.003+08:00

Num Num! I don't know when you'll ev-an-tually read this, but I don't make you out to sound so terrible do I? You are right, I do sound like a sad whiner on this blog, so I will make it a point to also blog when things are good and write happy entries instead of making this a moping ground. Although I have to say that it is hard because I tend to write here only when I'm feeling down. Most other times, I'm out doing things or writing my other story, but when I'm in a bad mood. This place is the first place I turn to to indulge in my sadness. (squeezing tears out)

Anyway, I will make sure not to only have passing Mr-Johnson notes on you, and try to write about the good times as well as the bad. Although, I'm sure you already know this about me, I'm forgetful of the good things much more quickly than I hang on to the bad...But still, I will make a mental note. No more Mr Johnson notes on Lee, and hey write some happy entries once in a while!

Keeping the faith

2011-02-20T14:43:00.003+08:00

Tonight, I don't have the heart to write. The story I've been working on is shit. Honestly. 72 pages of crap, and I have completely no idea where it is going. And I feel so lonely. I've always felt that I don't have a stable emotional core. My sister was just telling me about it this morning--about people who would suddenly lose touch of an image of themselves. I just thank the greater powers for the people around me who are stable. I cling to them like creepers and try to get support from them.

Talking to my mum the other day, I told her that sometimes I can understand why people would want to kill themselves. She agreed. I am like her in that way, our tendency is to fall into depression. But I am always thankful for the people around me. I find it strange and contradictory how I pride myself on loving solitude, but am in actuality so weak emotionally. But I will never kill myself, that is just too damn easy. Death is cheap. It is in living that we are called to the true test of our faith.

I have come to realize that so many things I once valued are cheap. Talent for example is bull. There is no such thing really. I wish I didn't grow up on a diet that fed me this illusion. Love at first sight is another. I don't believe in either one of these things. Recently, I saw a review for McCathy's works. One of them said something along the line of : McCarthy is born to write. This is bull. I wish people would stop sprouting nonsense like that. It is more hard work and passion than anything else. I wish people would stop talking about talent--for God's sake. There is no such thing. Passion, yes. Talent. No.

And love at first sight--don't even make me laugh. There are people I have felt genuine connection to from the very beginning. But that feeling is not to be mistaken for love. Love. It is not something that springs on you like a thunderbolt. It is also hard work. It grows day after day. I have always felt that love is like a tug of war. It takes the effort of two. The moment one person lets go, that is pretty much the end. And I am willing to work for it. I am willing to give what it takes. Love is not a straight path. But I will follow it whereever it leads me.

This is pretty much what I've come to learn--that anything that matters in life, anything, will call for your hard work. It will ask you to give. And I will give all that I've got, even if it's not nearly good enough. I will give it. Because this is what I have come to believe--that anything that is worth anything comes with a price, but that price is always something that you can give. If it matters enough you will give. You just have to open your heart and give it. So I will keep writing my 72 pages of crap.

I don't even hope that something good will come of it. Because to me it is worth it. It is worth 72 pages of crap. It is worth it.

Writing Lessons at Borders

2011-02-18T14:51:00.003+08:00

Borders announced their bankruptcy today. And as if to rub it in, I ended up going there and sitting down reading their brand new books for free while waiting for Lee. Me and the countless others I saw sitting around reading are probably the reason for Borders' tanking.

Got through another 100 pages of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy--such precise, power and gripping writing. These amazing characters that literally seized my breath. I love Cormac McCarthy, but I hate him.

I learnt the power of cutting and economy. Cut out all that is not important to the story. McCarthy is never afraid to do these bold skips--things don't necessarily have to transit smoothly from scene to scene. It actually makes the story gripping.

His writing and storytellling is so tight.

I wish I could write like McCarthy, but I never will. I know this because we were walking on Market street when I saw a dead rat, I squealed. I admire the raw and viscous grittiness of McCarthy's world, but I am too much of a priss really to write like him.

Writing lessons on BART

2011-02-17T09:13:00.003+08:00

Reading the Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy, and if there's one thing McCarthy has taught me is his bold cuts from character to character. He is not afraid of doing a bold cut that moves from one point of view to another. This kind of quick cutting has a kind of dynamicism perfect for his kind of story, and it is very very cinematic. But of course, one would necessarily write in the third person for this to make sense. Can this be done in the first person and not be cheesy? I don't know, but I don't like the idea because what it risks is what I want to talk about next--a kind of unity, consistency that keeps the world of a book genuine and tight.

I have been turning this thought over and over in my head: That all the best novels have this consistency, a kind of unity of artistic logic. It is the unity of a kind of world presented by the writer. It is the unity of a fictional world--for Cormac McCarthy it is a kind of unstated violence and a ravished sense of life--beautiful but violent--throbbing beneath the surface in the world of his fiction. Even the beauty described in the story is violent. It is the tone, but it is more than that, it is the heart that the fictional world is founded on.

For example:

" In spring the mountain went violent green, billowing low under the sky. It never came slowly. One morning it would just suddenly be there and the air rank with the smell of it.

Or this:

"He had found some peaches, although the orchard went to ruin twenty years before when the fruit had come so thick and no one to pick it that at night the overborne brnaches cracking sounded in the valley like distant storms raging. The old man remembered it that way, for he was a lover of storms."

2011-02-16T13:10:00.002+08:00

Elephant

To see an elephant in your dream, indicates that you need to be more patient or more understanding of others. Or perhaps there is a memory that you are holding on to for too long. You need to let go of the past. The elephant is also a symbol of power, strength, faithfulness and intellect. Alternatively, the elephant's introverted personality may be a reflection of your own personality. In particular, if you see a white elephant, then it symbolizes royalty.

To dream that you are riding an elephant, indicates that you are in control of your unconscious and aspects that you were once afraid of.

To dream that you are afraid of the elephant, suggests that there is an enormous problem that you are afraid to confront.

To dream that you are an elephant, suggests that you need to make your opinions and views known. You need to be more vocal and voice your ideas. Express yourself. Alternatively, dreaming that you are an elephant may be reflective of your conservative views. The elephant is the symbol of the United States Republican party. Perhaps you are sharing the same views as the Republican party.

The last line is random.

But seriously,

I have been distrubed by my dream last night.

I dreamt of wild elephants on a boat. I put them in a bottle and was trying to keep all the bottles from hitting one another and breaking in a shopping cart.

When I picked up the bottle with the elephants inside, I realized I had killed them by filling the bottle with water. I was so afraid I dropped the bottle into the sea.

Weird. But I'm still disturbed.

Elephants. Since when are you the new elevators.

Serendipity

2011-02-10T11:13:00.003+08:00

I was walking to the Powell Bart station with my co-worker when I heard someone exclaim: OH SHIT!
I turned around and there was a bum holding a bill, I couldn't see how much it was, but he was going: HELL YEAH! Bum joy. I love it.

Two joys

2011-02-06T01:27:00.008+08:00

Yesterday was interesting, because two things happened to me that I haven't experienced in the longest. The first was the quiet sense of contentment, of feeling love for a place. For the four years since I've been here, I have very rare felt love for the city. It is dynamic, it is interesting, but never the gentle feeling of beauty that sometimes washes over me as I stand on the balcony in Kembagang watching the sunset, feeling the warm tiles cool from the afternoon heat on my bare feet, watching the tree tops glow like flames, and hearing the birds call as I listen to the stir frying of the woks of my neighbor, watching the distant lighted windows of homes I have wondered about. I truly loved Lengkong Tiga, and I truly loved the city as I looked out from my balcony.

But I have never felt love for San Francisco. There is just a numb association. Nothing in the city moved me in the slightest, until yesterday. I was walking on California street after work. The sky was setting. It is that clear blue that fades into a dark blue and then black. It is my favorite hour of the day, just as the first lights are lit. It was not cold, but breezy. I was walking to meet up with Lee for a movie on Van Ness. I walked up hill, past the Farimount hotel--grand and imposing. Between two tall buildings, the blue sky stuck out like a cut out, and there was a lone star framed inside the narrow strait. And there was Grace Cathedral. I took a detour and went inside. I saw the picture of John Donne, lighted candles, and the giant domed arches that made me think of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When I went outside again, I was on a hilltop overlooking the entire bay and the bridge and the lights twinkling in the distance looked just like candle lit offerings. It was just one of those rare moments, when I feel connected to the city, to the random strangers on the streets. For that half an hour I was happy.

Then, Lee was late.

The story is familiar from that point on, but that is not a rarity, so I won't discuss it here. But the movie we watched, Blue Valentine made me cry so much that I had a headache by the end, and had to sit in the bathroom for five minutes until I could compose myself again. This has only happened to me one other time. It was in Singapore, watching a movie adapted from one of Murakami's stories, and I hid in the bathroom and cried before I went out. Yikang, the friend whom I was with, suspected nothing.

Perhaps I will talk about what the movie made me think, made me feel, so other time. But for now, I just want to bask in these two grand feelings that I haven't had in while. Being moved by the world around me. Being touched by someone else's creation and feeling joy in just being alive.

Perhaps, I will go jogging today.

Candy--decadence and passion

2011-02-02T01:42:00.004+08:00

Browsing in the library led me to a translated version of Mian Mian's candy. The book put me into a depressed state. Mian Mian's prose is the kind of prose that is wild, dark, and sexy--it stems from her wild experiences as a youth--it has a dark seductive quality to it that deeply attracts me but makes me feel like shit because I know I can never write that way. I am just not that kind of writer and I do not have such experiences. Nor do I have the wild passionate emotional center of the reckless who throws all caution to the wind. I can only write about the ordinary.

It made me realize I have grown old without the madness of reckless love, not that I would have chosen otherwise. I am who I am, and I will remain true to my past. But if a writer can only write the way he/she can, then perhaps I moan not being mad enough when I was younger. It is silly of me, I know. Both my sister and Lee says so.

Yes, the book is immature, the wild experiences thoughtless and stupid. The voice of the narrator is of one who understands nothing about love, but everything about obsession, manipulation and other intense emotions of being young and wild. But it is nonetheless beautiful--it is the bruised kind of beauty I will never know because that is not who I am. I cannot live without consequences. I do not believe in that kind of life. I do not believe in that kind of world.

But there are people who live dangerously and recklessly and love the same way. And I envy that.

Perhaps, my calling then, is to live the way I do, to love the way I do. Because after all, there is more to passion than bursts of madness, of intensity. Passion can also be gentle, it can also run deep, it can also be the quiet constant that powers the person I am and all that I believe in.

Shifting

2011-01-30T11:10:00.003+08:00

I have been looking at Facebook and suddenly am so conscious of how much time has passed and how old I am getting. In everyone's photo album are wedding pictures, a family friend whom I have always felt is a little girl is now writing insightful and mature thoughts on the meaning of education in her final year in college. Where did all these time go? And how do I feel about these five years that have passed me by ever since I left the small sunny island on the equator?

The feelings I have are complex, and are hard to articulate. These is a nagging sense of sadness, at the things I have missed. Somehow I feel that these five years have been a blur and a blank, I feel that instead of moving forward, I have been stationary, on a still sea with my sails unfurled waiting for the next monsoon wind, and I have been waiting five years.

When I look at all these changes from my friends' lives and watch them all one by one step into next exciting phases--building their own homes, chasing after their dreams, or even exploring the world, I feel the nagging sense of fear that has seeped into me since my move. I have lost so much of the old confidence I had when I was younger, and with nothing to show for or to explain this mysterious loss.

I feel a sense of loss, of time, of myself, of possibilities. I feel that instead of exploring, I have been growing inward into myself these past five years. I don't know if it has to do with uprooting myself, or just an innate cowardice that has to do with my own personality, but I feel so afraid these days. Of things invisible and hard to explain. Have I lost my idealism? Perhaps, but it is not that which I mourn. I have lost the best years of my life and the lives of those around me in this inexplicable stillness called adaptation. Yes, moving is a kind of freedom, but there is also a deep sense of isolation. I feel like that guy in Cast away who was stranded on an island and have lost all sense of time. Living days inside of himself and returning to catch a glimpse of the ghost world he has missed in his years of isolation.

Perhaps even time is communal. Perhaps, it is because I no longer have others around me that I no longer follow their direction and growth. I told my co-workers the other day, how glad I am that I no longer have to suffer the same kind of social pressure in Asia now that I am here, but the social pressure is also where one finds the strength to push ahead. Because your friend has become a mother and has shown the way, you know you will be ok when your time comes. One feels a social bond and a kind of confidence that is found in those around you.

I miss that sense of community. I grew up with these people, and I miss them. I have this fear that when I return to witness their big moments, I will be an outsider. Perhaps that is why exile is such a fearful thing--to be torn from this community by force. What I have missed is more than this concept of home, it is this knowledge of the lives of those around me, and the confidence that arise out of shared experiences.

Mostly, I feel alone. Sometimes I rejoice in that, because I am safe from critical eyes and set time tables for maturity, but in moments like this, I feel my loss deeply.

Perhaps, it will always be a case of "what if". What if I had never moved.. But the answer will always be silence, just like the way my heart resounds now when I think of how the road will branch from here, and how I will only move further and further away from those memories that still ground me when I think of home, when I think of friends, and when I think of my youth and the confidence I once feel in a future I know now that I am only ever unsure of, like a shifting ground of sand.

Writing lesson in Borders

2011-01-29T01:43:00.003+08:00

I read the first 99 pages of No Country for Old Men in Borders yesterday while waiting for Lee for a movie we never watched. The book was a little hard to get into at first because I couldn't visualize what was happening very well. I think it has to do with the description of action being inexact or vague or it could be a case of me not understand certain vocabularies, but once I can visualize the whole landscape, and once dialogue begins, it was just so riveting.

McCarthy has a way of crafting these amazing scenes. It is the landscape. It is the way people talk. It is the grit, the sparseness, the blood and the gore.

It cuts to the bone of language and storytelling. And he has these jump scenes in his story that goes from one character in place to another without confusing the readers.

The book is also framed by a kind of internal monologue by the voice of a Texan sheriff. Italicized, readers hear the thoughts and voice of a law enforcer. I was wondering why McCarthy did it. It seemed a little sentimental at times. But it also seems to me that it grounds the book emotionally. So that readers are placed on the side of the average man who abides by law watching the voilent and at times horrific scenes of saveage butchery occur. It speaks to me as a reader, and I guess it makes some of the violence tolerable and even gives it some kind of meaning.

But that is just my guess. And I will have to finish the book to conclude. Besides, I will need to read it a second time. But more on that later. For now, work.

Twilight in Seattle

2011-01-25T01:42:00.003+08:00

I'm in Seattle right now, waiting for the Japanese friend I'm travelling with to wake up. Seattle is a charming and quaint city. I've never been to England, but I picture that Seattle looks a little like English suburbs. Like San Francisco, Seattle is surrounded by water and is a maritime city. The bay sits on its outer rim and walking along the pier, I had a feeling that I never left San Francisco.

When I talked to Lee last night he asked me how I was enjoying my stay in the city and I told him "it is not quite..."trying to find the right words and he finished it off for me "exotic as you think?" I guess that it is just another American city and I had expected a change of scenery. But it is a very beautiful city and walking along the streets downtown, there are moments when I feel that I have gone back to Hong Kong, and by the bay overlooking the port of Seattle, I feel as if I'm back in Singapore except for the cold, it is something I can almost believe in. Homesickness always comes with traveling--it is a kind of bitter sweet freedom. One always thinks of home on one's journey, or the abstract idea of one.

At night, at the modest hotel my friend and I are staying in, I watched the Twilight movie (yes the vampire movie) and it made me realize something. I can see the appeal of the movie. I have never read the book, so I can't quite discuss the writing. But the movie, the movie..it was gripping. It was literally hard to stop watching the film. It made me once again think of story construction. If a writer can get a reader to wonder what would happen next to such a degree, they will stick with even the silliest dialogues and crappiest special effects.

Besides, I can understand why young girls love the books and movies. The whole idea of a supernatural forbidden love eternal, and an invisible protector. What is more erotic than the idea that there is a kind of love when one's very physical existence is threatened. I suppose it is romantic and erotic, to love so strong and so deep, and even unto death, to believe that love is all powerful.

Of course it is silliness, and anyone who has been in a relationship understands that love is more than that or perhaps in ways less than that. But I didn't want to write about love, I wanted to write about storytelling.

I think Shakespeare understood what Twilight movies captured--there are things that people enjoyreading, watching: scandals, sensationalized drama, love unfulfiled, revenge, murder, insanity, and as tacky as it sounds, I think some deep part of us crave this kind of stories. Call it escapsism or immaturity, but I can see why something as "terrible" as Twilight can be enjoyable. Maybe I should read those books to find out what made it so effective. I'll consider it.

2011-01-20T11:10:00.002+08:00

Why are bosses such A-holes? It is a universal truth in life that the main difference that divides a boss from a worker is that one is an A-hole and is proud of it, and the other works for the A-hole.

I was in a such a bad mood today after work that when a black cat crossed my path on my way home, I actually chased it down. I don't know what it is if it is not a sign of madness.

It was the last straw. Poor cat, because it picked a bad time to cross the road. A bit of bad luck for it, I say. Yeah. Yeah. Karma. I know, I was not so sorry as I thought it funny. I really am going slightly mad...

"Why would a hat frighten anyone?"

2011-01-17T14:48:00.002+08:00

Elegant simplicity is so hard to achieve.

There is a kind of see-through clarity and sincerity. A kind of X-ray vision striping everything away, but in such a way that there is more beneath the surface than one expects--just like the boa constrictor in "My Drawing Number One" in The Little Prince.

Just the way you are

2011-01-13T13:52:00.000+08:00

Billy Joel, I will marry you for writing this song.

Don't go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don't imagine you're too familiar
And I don't see you anymore
I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times
I'll take you just the way you are

Don't go trying some new fashion
Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care

I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.

I said I love you and that's forever
And this I promise from the heart
I could not love you any better
I love you just the way you are.

Lit Grit

2011-01-10T07:08:00.003+08:00

Charles McColl Portis 's True Grit is on my to-read list. (Excellent, excellent film by the Coen brothers.) As is, Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.
I have resisted classic adventure stories for the longest time. Never wanted to read Journey to the Center of the Earth, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and etc.. But I am currently reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and it is one of the best stories I have read in a long time. Every single character in the first 12 chapters has been so colorfully illustrated through Melville's words. I can picture everything. From the cow slipping on fish head on the beach to the boarding house lady demanding Queequeg's harpoon.

It's been so long since a book has been this exciting for me. I look forward to a year of exploring the masculine, the gritty and the adventurous in literature. From hunting whales to Westerns, I want to experience this same blood throbbing excitement this year in books.

Seashell chocolate

2011-01-05T12:12:00.005+08:00

I'm telling you I'm addicted to those damn things. Once it gets dark, at around 7pm, I start craving those buggers really bad. It's like I'm morphing into a Mr Seashell Chocolate Edward Hyde. And the only cure: some other unhealthy snack.

2011 resolutions

2011-01-02T06:12:00.001+08:00

One: Finish my story.
Two: Travel more.

Of Mice and Men

2010-12-30T14:27:00.003+08:00

Reading really great works of literature, sometimes really get me down. It makes me ashamed of my own writing. I wonder how long before I can produce something even minutely as good. So I finished Steinbeck's of Mice and Men. I read it in one sitting at the Westfield mall to the sound of a crazy homeless black guy chanting about a "cuban truck carrying very very dangerous stuff." It is amazing how writing can transport me to places and scenes. I cried at the end of book, who cares if it was in public, my tears are well deserved for the amazing writing Steinbeck produced. For me, reading is a spiritual activity. It just feels so grand at the end of a good book, it is like I have seen into the heart of an invisible something that powers life. I can't even explain this without making it sound cheesy. But those moments that linger at the end of a great book makes me feel like I have seen something noble and beautiful, and there is a goodness in life. Of course, it is written by human hand, and is far from perfect, in fact there will always be flaws in any work of literature, but the flaws too seem full of light.

I remember arguing with Lee once, about the value of reading. He claims reading is merely another avenue for entertainment, but I argued otherwise. Reading for me will always be more than entertainment. He claimed that reading only offers pleasure and no real value in learning. What can one learn from reading stories anyway, they are not real, simply made up figments of someone's imagination. But for me, stories are much more, much much more. It is the one true place experience, emotions, visions, creation, existence all come together. Sometimes, I feel that I am only truly alive in the presence of stories. That is why I want to write. Because I feel that I am alive when I write, and everytime I read something good, I believe in the world I inhabit, that even with all the evil and darkness, there is meaning for all this, as elusive as it is, and there is nothing I believe in as strongly as this.

Then after the wave of wonder passes, I ask myself, how is it done? How did Steinbeck create this amazing experience for me using nothing more than words?

Symmetry

There is a symmetry in the construction of the story. It opens at night by a river, it closes at night by a river. A harmless old dog is shot at the bck fo the head half way through, a harmless man is also shot at the end of the story. I'm beginning to understand the rhyming action that my writing instructor talked about, and its power.

Repetition

There is something about repetition that increase intensity and heightens suspense. Words are repeated, almost word for word to show how much something means for a character. Images are repeated, the theme of tending rabbits open and closes the book.

Pattern

Unlike what most people say about surprises and suspense, most great stories actually already has the ending in the opening. My writing instructor once said that good writers teach readers how to read them in the first page of a book. In the same way, the ending is embedded in the opening, so that even though one is surprised at the end, one is still prepared and doesn't feel cheated. It is the reason why ending the story with "And I woke up to find it was all a dream" is a cheap trick.

Fulfilment

Not fulfilling what your readers desire for your characters can be an amazing kind of fulfilment if that is the effect the writer wants to achieve. As much as people want a happily-ever-after, and as much satisfaction as happy endings can give, sometimes the sad endings can carry power far beyond a happy one. It is not true that all stories need to end sadly to have power, but it must ring true to the tale. Cinderella would not be better if her step sister's ploy worked and became queen, but Steinbeck's story would also not be better if everyone got their wish. Every story creates its own world, and the ending need to be true to that world.

Steinbeck, whereever you are now. I am grateful.

Christmas day

2010-12-26T05:26:00.002+08:00

It is Christmas today. Lee is away at San Jose with his family, my sister is out with Jerry at little hot pot and it is rainy and grey outside. And I love it. The greyness, the silence. I'm listening to gloomy music to the sound of the rain outside. Ahhhhh..... So peaceful.

Christmas time

2010-12-23T01:46:00.001+08:00

is here again. Another year, hope all you have a great Christmas. I miss you all so dearly. Merry X'mas guys.

The one thing I miss

2010-12-13T14:54:00.004+08:00

I will always remember the conversation I had with Sim once. I asked her how is life in a relationship different from life as a single, and she said, " Being in a relationship has its ups and down. You'll feel happier, but you'll also feel sadder." And three years into the relationship, I couldn't agree more. I have been happy and sad in turn, but there will always be one thing that I miss, solitude. It is a state of mind more than anything. And being with someone makes it elusive. Everytime I see something amazing, I want to tell someone, everytime I think of something interesting, I pick up the phone and call him. Or I find myself giving more attention to spending time with him than doing things just for myself. And I miss it so much. I remember how I would just decide to go to East Coast and hop on my bike and ride all the way to the beach.

I don't know if it's the nature of the relationship I'm in, but I miss that kind of freedom. Being with someone automatically means all plans and activities include their participation. And I do enjoy Lee's company, but there is nothing as free and spiritual as just being by yourself looking out to the sea or watching sunrise, or even taking a train in silence.

Over the last weekend, I took the Cal-train down to San Jose to visit Lee's family. We planned to get on the same train but from different stations, and for the few stations before Lee got on, I was watching the Christmas lights twinkling in the distance to the churning of the wheels of the train on tracks. The lights, the silence was peaceful, and I realized it was the solitude I missed. Then I wondered what was worse, a lonely life without the enrichment of romance but full of the spiritual ripeness of solitude, or a life arich with love but without those moments of time to be by yourself. And it was clear that I find the latter intolerable. If I had to pick, I would rather live a life without romance, but have the richness of solitude. All the poets I admire write from the central core of solitude. And it is from there that I beleive depth springs. And I miss it so much.

I want to take a walk by myself, or travel somewhere on my own. Love as wonderful as all it is, with all its blessings and gifts of companionship still lacks that one thing that I always miss--the gift of solitude. I find that it is the most peaceful state of mind--to not have to think of anyone else, but just you and the moment, and whatever the world around you has to offer. It is an awareness of yourself, and no one else is there to distract. And that peace that comes with it, comes form a deep source, and it goes a long long way.

Oh, Lee.

2010-12-10T06:08:00.003+08:00

Last night, I had an erotic dream involving a guy I know from the writing lab and who I've always had a crush on, but whom I think is a little too young for me. And Lee is just the cutest. I told him about the dream. After I told him about my dream, I expected him to be angry, but he told me. "Your dream made me horny." I couldn't stop laughing.

Writing lessons on BART

2010-12-08T01:58:00.002+08:00

Graham Greene's The Comedian was so captivating, I had to stand by Union square on my way to work to finish the chapter before continuing on my way. The old dictum that plot drives interest is not true. It is not what happens plot-wise that had me so engaged. I didn't really care if someone was going to die or not, or what was going to happen next. I wanted to know if Martha slept with Jones after all or not.

Here Greene is a genius. He keeps it ambigious throughout. Nothing was truly revealed only hinted at, and even that a reader can't be sure points to anything at all. The best thing about Greene's characters is that they lie and tell the truth, but one never truly knows when--that ambiguity drives my curiosity to such a pitch that I couldn't stop reading.

His chacarcters live. They are unpredictable. They have various motives, they change without warning. They have memories, guilt, remorse, and honor. They are heros and villains in turn.

I have so much to write about Greene, but it iwll have to wait, because I have to get back to work for now.

Sentimentality

2010-12-05T15:22:00.002+08:00

That is my great sin. But no more dwelling on sad thoughts tonight, I feel old and tired enough. Don't feel like theorizing, or even writing. Just so damn tired. But yesterday, on the train, there was a little boy, staring at the uni-cycle locked up by the train door. He kept asking whose it was and if he could have it. When the owner of the unicycle revealed himself, he asked him: "Do you ride it? Are you disabled?" And the man replied, "no I just walk around with it." the joke was lost on the boy, but the boy asked, "Did you fall down a lot?" "yeah. "The man said and rolled up his trousers to show his scar on his left leg. THen just before the train got to the 16th street station, the man said to the boy, " Look out the window later. I will ride this for you, for one second." The doors opened and the man got off. And true to his words jumped onto his unicycle and rode for a short second before his disappeared. But that smile of joy and wonder on the little boy's face didn't fade for a long time. I was smiling, as were everyone else on that train. But later even as the boy to continued to smile and squabble with his brother, I felt incredibly old. It is in moments like this that I feel that i have lost my innocence. That bold, fearlessness of the world as a safe and perfect place full of curiosities fades in time. And in that moment I wish that I lost all of my cycnicism and that I can trust with an open heart and love fearlessly. And I wished I had the bravery of the very young, and the honesty and courage to trust, to love, to ask questions and to find joy in the simplest of things.

Greene

2010-11-21T16:21:00.003+08:00

Graham Greene is a f****ing genius! I'm in awe and in envy. His pages are packed with little bits of wisdom, tenderness, strength, humor and crudeness all wrapped together. Damn I wish I could write like this.

" 'Vegetarianism isn't only a question of diet, Mr Brown. It touches life at many points. It we really eliminated acidity from the human body we would eliminate passion.'

'Then the world would stop.'

He reproved me gently, "I didnt' say love,' and I felt a curious sense of shame. Cynicism is cheap--you can buy it at any Monoprx store--it's built into all poor-quality goods."

The Comedians, Graham Greene, pg 21

Due Date, Story, and Structure

2010-11-12T01:44:00.002+08:00

Just watched the new comedy movie "Due Date" with Lee last night. So disappointed. All hype and hot air. It wasn't because the situations weren't funny, it is because there was no structure to the story. It really felt like a number of funny situations were thought out and then dumped onto a road trip setting. But the story had no gravity, no center. So it was loose and made no impact.

Made me think of my own story, it is exactly the same, I am afraid it lacks structure and a central impetus to make the readers want to turn the page. A series of events is not enough to keep someone interested, not for long.

Fall into Winter

2010-11-08T13:39:00.003+08:00

I've been feeling depressed and grouchy lately. Just got into a fight with Lee. Me, exclaiming he is unfocused. He, saying that I am working at a glacier pace for my goals. I guess it is the weather. When it gets cold and grey like this, I get sad so easily. Crying in bed for no real reason, not anything even worth mentioning. But my sadness is just passing blues, of no real substance. I decided to get myself chocolate, which always helps, and went for a walk.

Today, it was the end of Daylight Saving Time here in the U.S, and the days get dark so early now. On my way to the BART station, I saw migratory birds leaving. I once read somewhere that scientists believe that it is not the temperature that alerts birds that it is time to move to the warmer South, instead it is the amount of sunlight. As the days get darker earlier and there is less and less sun, even the birds have taken off. As I watched those birds in the sky, standing there gawking on the pavement like an idiot, I saw a piece of rainbow, barely visible, like an illusion out of the grey rain clouds. And when I turned around to look back home, the sky was a brilliant red, like it was on fire. And then I felt better.

Birds will fly half way around the globe when sunlight on one hemisphere fades, and rainbows will appear almost magically on the darkest of days, the sun still sets bringing with it its fiery brilliance to bring light to abother side of the world. And I'm just a passer by, who is lucky enough to stumble upon all these beauty. So why should I be sad, when I'm lucky like that?

Writing Lessons on BART

2010-11-05T08:52:00.005+08:00

"She kept her clothes on more and more. I noticed that. She came into the bathroom, once, she never dreamed of knocking, she hadn't got a stitch on. Me neither, I was just drying off after my bath. There we both were, captured in the mirror, me young and slim and trim and tender, she vast, sagging, wrinkled, quivering. I couldn't help but giggle. I shouldn't have. I could have slapped myself, afterwards. But I couldn't take that giggle back.

'That's all very well, Dora.' she said, 'but one fine day, you'll wake up and find you're old and ugly, just like me.'

Then she cackled. I'd never even thought that, years back, she might have been pretty. She cackled and she cackled. All the same, she went to get a dressing gown before she came back to have her wee and there was a coolness between us, after that, lasted for months."

--Angela Carter, Wise Children, pg 94

Characters: Do not spare your characters or let them off the hook too easily, this is one thing that really great writers taught me. Writers must not be weak and give in to glorifying or excusing characters, because a reader will always see through that. The best writers put their characters up to the light. Every flaw and strength exposed. If that character is worth any salt, he can withstand the reader’s judgment. This is not an issue of morality on the writer's part, but one of the integrity of story and character. We don't trust characters when all we see is their strength. In turn, we will lose trust in the writer too. For this, the writer has to trust that the reader is willing to forgive. This is one of the best things about literature and stories, it appeals to the readers' magnanimity and their willingness to follow you wherever you want to lead them. If they are giving up their common sense to follow you, they want you to bring them places worth going, and they trust that you won't short change them for purpose of censoring or false righteousness on the parts of characters.

Technique: Sentence structure. "There we both were, captured in the mirror, me young and slim and trim and tender, she vast, sagging, wrinkled, quivering." Amazing, amazing sentence. Reads a poem. And the meaning is revealed in the structure.

Nov 2nd

2010-11-03T01:56:00.004+08:00

Think writing lessons on BART may be paused for the time being. I'm reading Angela Carter's Wise Children, a really fun and riotous read after Ondaatje's quiet, poetic prose. But I'm reading it for the first time and usually on the first reading, I read for the enjoyment and get carried away by the story. I will read it again, and do more writing lessons on it.

But meanwhile, the GIANTS won the world series last night. Not like I'm a fan or even understand the game, and I like how the entire city celebrates. That history class long time ago "Sports and History" was right. Sports is about communities. It brings people together. I like the sound of far off fireworks and happy cheers resounding from lit windows. I like the cars honking on the streets and the people responding with whoops of cheering.

Writing Lessons on BART

2010-10-28T14:16:00.003+08:00

The end of the English Patient, and I cannot stop shaking. So beautiful an ending...

....People fall in love with her. She still remembers the lines of poems the Englishman read out loud to her from his commonplace book. She is a woman I don't know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life.
And so Hanna moves and her face turns and in a regret she lowers her hair. Her shoulder touches the edge of a cup and a glass dislodges. Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkled at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.

--The English Patient, p302

So the book ends. This way. Each grows old apart, in two worlds.

Implosion of time and space: This is one of the most beautiful thing that Ondaatje does time and again. He takes bold leaps across place and time. The first time I read this passage, I had to read it again... because it was confusing. But then one realizes that he has compressed distance, not time, in this last passage. A glass falls in Canada, and a fork is picked up in India. Wow. I really can't find the words to discuss this any more other than the fact that it is an act of genius to compress distance like this.

There has been many other occasions when Ondaatje compresses time. but this time, this is rare, this compressing of distance. The time is unified. It is simultanoues, it is the distance that is imploded. Two characters, two places, two incidents, linked only by the will of the writer, and this compression carried through by the weight of the entire book that came before it.

I can't talk anymore. Whatever else I say is futile. It is too beautiful to dissect. I just wish I can write like that too.

Writing Lessons on BART

2010-10-26T10:29:00.005+08:00

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.
She returned to her husband.
From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.

--The English Patient

Quotation marks: The Absence or presence of quotation marks. Quotation marks give emphasis. There is an immediacy and a very strong sense of hearing it immediately. Right there and then. The lack of it gives a feeling of distance, mutedness, like volume turned down.

The difference between the two sentences below is that of a sense of distance and volume.

I wish you had called me back, she said, I would have gone with you.

"I wish you had called me back", she said, "I would have gone with you."

It is amazing what a difference something as small as a quotation mark would make to a passage. The lovely passage I quoted, once again from The English Patient, The last sentence Ondaatje chose not to use quotation marks:

From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.

Writing Lessons on BART

2010-10-21T14:56:00.002+08:00

I've been dying to write this all day. Finally found the time.

Flashbacks: A writer can do amazing things with time. Even more amazing then what a director can do with movies on screen. And all of this simply depends on something as simple as grammar. That is why if I ever have children in the future, I will teach them to love grammar. I wish I had learnt this earlier, that they are not just rules, they are tools. They are things a writer can use as part of his storytelling arsenal. Study, for example, the passage below from The English Patient.

A few months later he had escaped to Italy, had packed the shadows of his teacher into a knapsack, the way he had seen the green-clothed boy at the Hippodrome do it on his first leave during Christmas. Lord Suffolk and Miss Morden had offered to take him to an English play. He had selected Peter Pan, and they, wordless, acquiesced and went with him to a screaming child-full show. There were such shadows of memory with him when he lay in his tent with Hana in the small hill town in Italy.
--The English Patient, pg 197

Astonishing. In this short paragraph, that is actually only made up of three sentences, Ondaatje takes us "a few months later" the 'he had escaped" tells us that we are still in a flashback even though we are told a few months later Kip went to Italy. Then in the same sentence, we get a flashback within a flashback, to the green-clothed boy he once saw at Christmas. from there we go into the play. And the last sentence brings us back to the present as he lay in his tent with Hana at the Italian villa.

In three sentences, we have travelled so much in time and so seamlessly. That is the amazing thing with sentences and grammar. You can't do a time shift in a single scene in a movie, but this can be accomplished in a sentence.

What's even more amazing, is that writing allows the writer to move into the future, something that would not make sense in a movie. But which I will talk about some other time, because I'm tired.

Technique: The Key is to have a strong anchor in time first. The anchor in time is the Tent with Hana in the Italian villa. ONdaatje often returns to that throughout his novel. That is the base from which past memories and future fates springs. It is the temporal space he has chosen to set his story. And he needs to return to it.

But grammar tells us everything else. "Had seen" "had offered" "had selected" tells me how far into the past we are launching into as readers.

Ondaatje doesn't strictly follow grammatic rules. Notice the last sentence. "There were such shadows of memory with him as he lay in his tent..." "were" is used with "lay" in the same sentence.
This is my own theory, but I think it creates a sense of something before both in the past and happening in front of our eyes. A strange mix of something that has already happened but captured in an old video perhaps?

Want vs Need

2010-10-18T13:47:00.004+08:00

Sigh. Even though I always long for a poetic, imaginative and romantic lover, I'm beginning to think that what I truly need is someone literal, factual, and simply indestructible (like Lee). How can I describe it? I have the hands and the temper of a child. Lee is like tupperware--practical, unbreakable. I guess this is not a very flattering description of him. But he is simply immune to my destructive tempers. Maybe I should resign myself to this fact. I dream of the delicate; I fantasize about it too much, but only someone as stoic, as unmovable like Lee can tolerate me. Sometimes it annoys me. I wish Lee wasn't such a block of stone. I just can't budge him, I rave and scream, but he just stands still until I get tired and nestle in the face of rock in exhaustion.

Frustration

2010-10-15T14:17:00.002+08:00

It is so much easier to read and dissect, than to write and build.

I am thoroughly frustrated with my own writing.

Writing Lessons on BART

2010-10-15T00:36:00.003+08:00

Today I only got through one short section, but I learnt...

Revealing character: There is nothing more effective in revealing characters than through what other people say about them. Take the following section from The English Patient, for example. This short section tells more about these characters than pages and pages of descriptions. There is nothing quite powerful as nicknames, and what people say about the other characters. Best if it is revealed casually.

"Who was your teacher?"
"An Englishman in Woolrich. He was considered eccentric."
"The best kind of teacher. That must have been Lord Suffolk. Did you meet Miss Morden?"
"Yes."
...."What was he like, Kip?"
"He worked in Scientific Research. He was head of an experimental unit. Miss Morden, his secretary, was always with him, and his chauffeur, Mr Fred Harts. Miss Morden would take notes, which he dictated as he worked on a bomb, while Mr Harts helped with the instruments. He was a brilliant man. They were called the Holy Trinity. They were blown up, all three of them, in 1941. At Erith."
The English Patient, pg 177-178

I am so impressed by the amount of information packed into this short little dialogue. We know not only who these people are, but we know their relationship. We know what people thought of them. "The Holy Trinity" is just pure genius.

Technique: The last sentence of the above passage is especially powerful. Punctuation is the key. Notice the pacing and pause. They were blown up, all three of them, in 1941. At Erith. The punctuation tells me how this sentence ws said and where the emphasis is. The "At Erith." is especially poignant. An almost unimportant detail, less important than being blown up, but emphasized so it tells me the state of the character's emotion as he says it.

Writing lessons on BART

2010-10-14T04:44:00.002+08:00

All good writers leave tips on writing. They discuss the act through their works and sometimes directly in the stories.

Point of View:

"Glued into the book--giving himself only the voice of the watcher, the listener, the 'he'." --The English Patient p 172

The third person voice creates distance and places the reader in the position of the listener. Ondaatje experiments with this movement with reader's distance. Occasionally putting us in the first person voice, occasionally throwing us off with the third. I found one section slightly jarring. It is a matter of personal taste, but I am not one for challenging my readers with such movements. The hand of the writer is too obvious. Perhaps this comes from Ondaatje's background as a poet? the effect, I feel, is akin to watching an experimental film. One can be in awe of technique, or one can be in awe of story. I don't think both can be achieved. I think of all the great experimental writers, story is not a strong hold in their works--it is the beauty of their language, their structure or other such technical things. From here, I would like to suggest that perhaps, there is a slight bias in the literary world. Experiment also seems to receive higher merit than story.

Technique: Framing shifting sections. Even with the constantly moving time and places and nararative points of views, there is still a solid frame to ground that movement. Before launching into this experimental shifting spot in the novel. Ondaatje has also set up a solid frame of the villa and the solid characters to surround the faceless English patient whose memory we would dip into. And he reminds us where we are constantly. So perhaps, we can say, that the more shifts, the greater the experiment, the more solid framing we need?

If I were braver...

2010-10-12T14:05:00.003+08:00

Found this on Wikipedia on the last passage of Joyce's Ulysses, Molly Bloom's soliloquy:

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

I haven't read it yet. I'm not kidding, I'm really afraid of reading it. I am intimidated by a book. Seriously.

Writing Lessons on BART

2010-10-09T01:15:00.007+08:00

Today I learnt...

Suspense: Is a diversion of a dramatic sequence of events. A dramatic event is split up. In The English Patient, the sapper is defusing a bomb, then the camera switches to a different scene: Hana brings a mirror to her patient. This is something that movies have already learnt. There is always a missing segment. It heightens the suspense, because readers do not know what happens, although they anticipate that something would happen. So a good writer makes a reader wait, distract them with a trick, then bringing their attention back to the drama, the stakes already raised. So they do not see the drama unfold, but rather is thrown right into it. So then, the art of suspense is to divert, and return in the moment right before the hieght of drama.

Technique: The long sentence, linked by commas, pushes the sentence along, heightening suspense,pulsing with one's quickening hearbeat, leaving a feeling of breathless excitement, a feeling of catching up to a run away action. A short setence creates emphasis. If used in conjuction, it can heighten suspense on a sentence level, making your readers' eyes do catch up in a long sentence, followed by a sudden break, like an exclamation point, or a crash upon a rock by the waves.

Writing lessons on BART

2010-10-08T04:49:00.004+08:00

What I thought about today, reading The English Patient

Narrative: There are limitations to the first person narrative that I am using. It is exceptionally hard to show the character from a different angle. Say from another character's eyes. It is like switching the camera. The effect is quite wonderful, but it takes more delving into the other characters. It is amazing how well Ondaatje knows everyone of his characters. So it is a payoff. The first person narrative, what it allows though is commentary. What seems really cheesy in third person narrative and would read like rhetoric is acceptable in the first person narrative. I guess what I mean to say is that the first person is allowed to make judgments and commentaries about his world view. This becomes very strange in a thrid person narrative. Even the best writers, have trouble I believe stating a character's worldview in third person, because it is at these moments, that the reader is so aware of being spoken to by a writer. Those valuable thoughts, perceptions,and observations about the world clearly come from the writer, and for a moment, the reader feels that he is being talked to. Or worse, talked down to.

Technique: Technically, I also notice the pause. There is also a pause at the end of a section, that feels close to how one would feel at the end of an excellent short story. A sense of completion, a coming to an end of sorts. But in a novel, every section gives this kind of a punctuation. Not logically but emotionally. The event occuring may be broken into two sections and is logically the same section, but emotionally, the breaking off into a new section is like a kind of emotional turn.
It is this kind of turning that is sustained and threaded throughout a good novel.
The art then, is not just learning how to tell a good story, but also learning how and when to pause.

A tuesday like any others

2010-10-06T15:21:00.003+08:00

Haven't been writing. Inspiration--dry.
Reading THe English Patient again.
I will never be able to write like that
am convinced, there must be visions. I wait for those moments. I tear up because those words can only come from visions
I wait for those moments that thread a book together.
In awe of floating tenses
now past, now present, now future

I found out last night

2010-10-02T03:05:00.003+08:00

I made Lee upset last night.

I met up with my Japanese friend and we went to a really nice little Mexican restaurant. After dinner, we were both bored and didn't want to go home. We walked to the cinema to check out the movie selection but nothing interested us. So we wandered around, looking for some place with live music where we can get a drink. We stumbled on a blues bar, where they were playing live blues and went in.

The music already started and the place was packed, so my friend and I settled down on the high stools at the bar. My friend got herself red wine and I choose something sweet with little alcohol content, being such a lightweight. We sat there watching the band. Perhaps, it was the darkness, the blue, red, yellow, pink stage lights and the mirrors. Perhaps, it was the drink I had, Or perhaps it was the sensual music, I don't know. But for some reason, I just didn't feel quite grounded in reality.

It was a small jazz bar, the really intimate kind where you can see those on stage clearly just as they can see you. I was looking at the middle age bassist. He was not handsome, not exactly, but very very attractive, in the way mature and experienced men were. He was wearing a light blue shirt, unbuttoned in a causal way. And he was sweating, the entire band was, I could see in the colored lights.

My friend and I were just chilling at the bar, enjoying the music. Until intermission, the band members stopped playing and went for a break. The bassist came over to the bar and sat down next to me. I thought he was cute and smiled at him, which was very wrong in hindsight, because bars are not places where you can smile innocently at someone. A smile becomes an invitation to who knows what? Anyway, he got his beer and left.

A couple of times I actually looked around for the guy. One time our eyes met, and then I knew that whatever I did, and will do from that point on, would not really be that innocent, and something could possibly happen and that possibility was very exciting.

He came back to the bar after talking to his friend. He was old, not some young guy. He was already thinning on the top, but it was very easy to tell that he had been very handsome when he was young, and part of that quiet charm was still there. And he was silent, (always a killling point for me, I can't help being attracted to the quiet guy), and in the midst of his loudmouth jazz members, that was so I can't-even-explain-now.

He sat next to me, smiled at me, and made a passing comment about something irrelevant. I smiled back at him. I felt right then, that if he invited me to anything, I would accept. The sheer weight of possibility was such an exciting and dangerous thing.

But I left before the end. I must still have some sense in me left.

The thing though, was that I was not drunk. I was not.

It has happened before, my desire for adventure and this falling away of the old and the rising of possiblities and my pushing for something I myself wasn't sure I wanted. Was it the setting? Is it something in me that is dark, and hiding during the day? I just thought, how easy, how easy it is for something to happen. All it takes is a couple of glances, and not-so-inocent smiles in a dark place with live music and drinks.

I'm not pretty. Glasses, geeky hairstyle, sitting in the back. I said nothing. All I did was smile, and was open. But I would have been willing--which is very wrong and very dangerous, and which now I am very painfully aware of. I want bad things sometimes. I have a dark destructive part in me that every so often rears its ugly head, and reminds me that it is still there.

And you don't need to be pretty, you just need to be willing and foolish.

I told Lee later, because I was shaken. This was not something that would happen to me, not imaginable. My point is not that the guy was necessarily interested in me ( I don't really care about that), but that I was willing to go somewhere, and do something dangerous. If I was asked, I most probably would have said yes.

I don't believe that I am attractive. I am not the kind of girl that can have guys falling at their feet, but I am the kind of girls who might say yes to the worst of things if the circumstances are right. I just thank heavens that those circumstances are rare, and I still have some sense in me.

I told Lee, which was, of course, another big mistake. He freaked out. And reasonably so, if he told me he was at a bar and would have followed some girl home if asked, I would too. He said he need to be wary of me, and questioned if I am really to be trusted.

I still feel that the answer is yes, afterall, I went home, didn't I? Nothing happened.

But, I also found out about myself. That it is not hard to turn into that girl who followed some stranger home. And it was not the first time I had wanted to. But I never did.

So what am I really? The good girl who went home? Or am I the girl who wanted an invitation and would have said yes? It is not so hard to turn from one into another. And I'm not moralizing, or judging, but it is easy. Oh it's so easy.

That chalet when we were 15.(or was it 16)

2010-09-30T09:58:00.004+08:00

Hey guys, I got published. Only on an online journal, but I am excited.
Below is the link for the online journal.

34th Parallel online journal Issue 12--click here

If you guys want to read it, give me feedback ok? I'm sure all of you will find something in the story familiar. Thanks for the memories. I turn them into stories because they are so wonderful and precious.

Freudian slip

2010-09-28T12:49:00.000+08:00

I wonder what Freud would say to the fact that I constantly confuse the words: Freud and Fraud.

Sunday

2010-09-27T05:20:00.002+08:00

Sitting in Lee's big leather chair, listening to him snore at two in the afternoon. The sun is roasting outside, I can feel the heat even with the curtains drawn. I'm lazily bored. I wish I was out swimming, or sitting in a shade reading a book. Instead, I'm cooped up at home waiting for Lee to wake up. Is it bad that I think of other people, other places, other possibilities when I'm sitting here in Lee's room typing away?

I love Lee, but it is in still and silent moments like these that I'm certain: this is not the kind of life I want. Not in the long run.

I want to get me a cute Korean guy

2010-09-23T12:18:00.005+08:00

Oh yes, Sim, saw your posted video. Korean guys are so damn hot! (except for Lee's weirdo Korean roommate who pees with the door open every time.) I want to learn Korean just to go to Korea to get a cute Korean boy.

New Updates

2010-09-14T11:35:00.003+08:00

Nothing is ever truly new. And my updates aren't really updates. So perhaps, I should call it old ramblings on new things.

My manuscript got returned in the mail the other day. The editor says: The premise of your story intrigued me, but the writing is a little flat and doesn't texturize anything. Go deeper--the story feels very much on the surface.

I was thankful for feedback. Finally someone said something, but disappointed. Not because the editor thinks it flat, but because I had intended for it to read that way. I was glad that he said it was "very much on the surface" because i was trying for that. But his feedback just made me realize that it just might not work at all. My attempt at flatness. The part when he says" It doesn't texturize anything" tells me that my writing failed. That is of all things the most important, I think that i am missing.

Watched Royal Tenenbaums again last night. Realized: Yes, Wes Anderson's dialogue is flat with awkward comedic pauses, but visually it is so rich with texture. That dissonance creates an interesting irony between the sparseness of the spoken and the richness of what's on screen. And this is something that is unique to the film medium. I don't know how a writer can do the same. You can't have a flat style and have the text bursting with details and texture. Or can you? Is it possible to have the text read very sparse and flat and yet, give a fully textured and unique world full of details? How?

I don't know.. still trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, it was my first day at work. It's going to be nine to five, five day weeks for me from now on. I'm happy in a way, but knowing myself, the routine will eventually be wearing me down. But hey, we all need to make a living. I just hope I'll still be able to write at the end of the day. I never want to lose that.

While the sun is shining and the sky is blue outside,

2010-09-11T09:19:00.003+08:00

I'm beginning to learn to love Greene's writing.

'"How did you know he was dead?"
It was a foolish police man's question, unworthy of the man who read Pascal, unworthy also of the man who so strangely loved his wife. You cannot love without intuition.'
Pg 18. The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

Indeed, you cannot love without intuition.