Grandma's Funeral (version 2)
The house was a two-storeyed house along a crackly and sandy tar road. It faced a dingy coffee shop and an abandoned construction shed, where a lonesome thin tree, leafless and bare, quietly waved a faltering branch. The tree would be gone soon. Like smoke. Like ashes.
An old dying fence separated our house from the neighbours’, as creepers and vines sprawled all over, strangling and entangling it, causing it to lean and bend. Uncle and Cousin had parked their motorbikes and van at the porch. The family dog, Boxy or Brownie as I used to call him, lazed in the sweltering heat with half-opened eyes, oblivious to the flies buzzing around him. Two ghostly white lanterns swayed lightly above the doorway -- someone from this house was dead.
A narrow walkway surrounded the house. To the right of the porch, dripping wet laundry hung from thin bamboo poles. An old stone well, damp and overgrown with moss and algae, rested behind the laundry area. To the left, Uncle had piled dusty gunny sacks, junk metal, rubber hoses, and deflated tyres. The back of the house was crammed with broken buckets, tubs, wooden boxes, old woks, and crates of used glass bottles. Pigeons and crows scattered themselves on the weathered roof, while the drain was crawling with centipedes and black ants. 'Remember to pay your respects to Grandma,' Father said. I nodded, but remained silent. A feeling of dread and impending despair filled the air.
Inside, the aunties and cousins folded joss papers in quiet gloom. No one lifted a head when we entered. An unearthly smell of incense filled the hall, as thin clouds of smoke drifted like spirits in the shadowy darkness. The stiff wooden coffin was placed in the centre, right in front of the alter, which was then covered with large pieces of crisp red papers.
Without a word, I lit the joss sticks and paid my respects. Dad went alone to the kitchen while I helped the rest fold the joss papers. 'Hi,' Cousin Yun broke the silence at last. It was a restrained sob, and her red eyes averted my gaze. I could only forge a wistful smile.
We folded the joss papers beside the wooden staircase. If one had walked straight to the kitchen and turned left, one would see a slightly ajar door, leading to a tiny poorly-ventilated room. This was where Grandma slept and died. The room was cluttered with decade-old furniture and worn-out mattresses. It smelled of medicated ointment and urine. Grandma's prayer beads were strewn about in disarray. An old radio was moaning in a monotonous drone, 'Namu-Amida-Butsu, Namu-Amida-Butsu...' repeating itself in an endless cycle, as one would mourn for the dead. However, it was perhaps Grandma's only source of comfort and solace when she was still alive.
As I carelessly folded the joss papers, I tried to conjure memories of Grandma in my mind. I tried very hard, but nothing came. I could not even imagine her face clearly. Were her spectacle rims golden or silver? Did she wear a bangle on her right wrist, or on her left? All these I could not remember. To me, Grandma was only a kindly old lady, with a gentle smile, bending over a plump and aged body, dressed in a floral blue shirt and black pants.
(... ...)
***
Evening came. 'Come and eat,' Grandma would call out when she was still alive, and the children would flock to the dinner table and gather. But the laughter and gaiety was gone; it was replaced by a sombre silence. We had all grown anyway. We were no longer children. 'Eat,' Auntie said gravely when she passed the bowls of rice around. She had prepared a table full of food for dinner -- a dull-looking pomphret steamed with plums and ginger, a half-cooked white chicken oozing with blood, poorly-chopped slices of roast duck, a dish of preserved vegetables, fishball soup with thin lettuce slices, and a pot of fat pork braised in oily soy sauce. I stuffed myself with the white rice and plain water.
After dinner, Auntie Hun's sons and daughters came over. Their loud voices and boisterous laughter filled the hall. 'Where's the mahjong table?' Ah Leong asked as he put aside a can of beer. 'We'll stay up till dawn to accompany Grandma.' Ah Hong, who had recently won in a pageant, sashayed across the hall in a tight black T-shirt that clung snugly to her curvaceous figure. 'It's sad that Grandma died,' she remarked casually after offering her joss sticks. Then she purred a 'hi' to my mum, sank herself into an old sofa's welcoming embrace, and switched on the television. Soon, the hall was drowned in the noise of clattering mahjong tiles, tossing chips and drunken voices. Right next to Grandma's coffin.
Grandma's funeral (a draft, or perhaps just a sketch)
Grandmother passed away one night.
That morning, I left college early, and returned home and did an expressive self-portrait in oils. By afternoon, I was in Uncle’s place in Johor.
The house was a two-storeyed house along a crackly and sandy tar road. It faced a dingy coffee shop and an abandoned construction shed, where a lonesome thin tree, leafless and bare, quietly waved a faltering branch. Behind the main entrance was a small porch where Uncle and Cousin had parked their motorbikes and van. The family dog, Boxy or Brownie as I used to call him, was lazing in the sweltering heat with half-opened eyes, oblivious to the flies buzzing around him while two ghostly white lanterns swayed lightly above the doorway. A narrow walkway surrounded the house. To the right of the porch, dripping wet laundry hung from thin bamboo poles supported by unsteady rusty stands. An old stone well, damp and overgrown with moss and fungi, rested behind the laundry area. To the left, Uncle had piled up his dusty gunny sacks, junk metal, rubber hoses, and deflated tyres, while the back of the house was crammed with broken buckets and tubs, wooden boxes, old woks, and crates of used glass bottles. The drain was crawling with centipedes and black ants. An old dying fence separated our house from the neighbours’, as creepers and vines sprawled all over, strangling and entangling it, causing it to lean and bend. As I slowly entered the house, pigeons and crows scattered themselves on the weathered roof. They were cooing and crowing to dilapidation and death, as a feeling of dread and impending despair filled the air.
For a moment, as I stepped into the hall, the world suddenly hushed to a deathly silence. The hall was dark and gloomy, and filled with the unearthly smell of smoke and incense. The wooden coffin was placed in the center of the hall, right in front of the altar, which was then covered with large pieces of stiff red papers.
(... ...)
The Old Cabinet
Many years ago, we had an old cabinet. It stood quietly in the shared bedroom (Dad and myself – we shared the bedroom); its legs rested on the ugly green floor tiles and its back almost leaning against the dirty cream-white walls. It was a sturdy old cabinet, about five feet in height, of a light viridian brown colour, and coated with a thin layer of wood varnish. It had one large shelf on top and two smaller shelves below. The shelves had sliding glass panes. Beside the two smaller shelves, there were three drawers, one with a lock and the other two without.
One day, while cleaning the shelf, Mum removed a glass pane from the top shelf in an effort to wipe it. As Mum was wiping the glass pane, a lizard suddenly appeared from beneath the cabinet, and, momentarily startled by the lizard, she loosened her hands for a second, and the glass pane fell and broke into pieces. After the careless incident, Dad removed the other glass pane from the top shelf. The cabinet looked somewhat awkward or incomplete since then.
In those days, Dad used to have a lot of things on top of the cabinet. There were friends’ name cards (but he never contacted most of these friends, neither did they contact him), medicine bottles, court letters (Dad was an illegal hawker), and Dad’s favourite picture of Brother when Brother was a year old. The picture was framed in a yellow plastic frame. When Brother left home a few years back, Dad was so upset he smashed the picture with a hammer and threw it away.
Dad also occupied the large shelf with other things. He collected crystals, scissors, nail clippers, knives (yes, knives), old photographs (most of these were black and white) and other curios, such as wooden carpenter pencils, Taoist and Buddhist talismans, and fishing lines (Dad was probably a good fisher when he was young). However, when the cabinet was still around, I never understood that objects have their stories and past to tell.
The cabinet also contained some of Brother’s belongings; these were left behind after he had left home. There was a chocolate box containing his old bus passes, a few fake Harley Davidson handkerchiefs, and stickers of ninjas and skulls. An old postcard from Bendemeer Secondary School dated back to 1993 read: your child has not been in school for seven days. Those were days of family violence, and the cabinet contained these memories. Every time I picked up the postcard, Dad’s beatings and Brother’s yelling replayed in my mind like a flashback movie, although I was the only one who could hear the voices in the quiet room.
The locked drawer belonged to Mum. It contained needles and rolls of thread of different thickness and colours. Mum used to have sharp eyes and soft fingers. She was once a beautiful and lively lady, then a dutiful and conforming wife, but now what is left of her is a jaded and forlorn ageing woman resigned to her fate. She also kept a few very old song books in there. In very recent years, she still sang some of these songs to my niece, who was with us for a while, but had left for China a year ago.
The other two drawers belonged to me. The act of opening and closing the drawers drew me into a world of memories and untold stories contained in various memorabilia. These stories and memories changed as I added new things or removed old ones. I used to keep stamps and old chewing gum wrappers and conceal love letters. New Year cards came and went with each New Year; cards and letters came and went as friends did the same. I kept cassette tapes and lyrics of heartfelt love songs. All these things are gone now.
It was exactly two years ago, when we decided to sell the house. ‘Come, help me chop the cabinet into smaller pieces,’ Mum said. I used screwdrivers to pry the pieces of wood apart and hammered them loose. Then, I emptied the drawers of their contents and removed them, after which I carried the wooden planks and drawers downstairs to discard them. All that remained of the cabinet was its bottom half; a hollow wooden box with four legs, like an empty shell. It was quite heavy, and because it was a rather bulky piece of furniture, Mum and I had to carry it to the bin compound. I imagined it being shoved into the incinerator -- a large angry fire engulfing it as thick black billowing smoke continued to rise, the fire consuming the cabinet with all its memories and family histories, reducing them to ashes that flew about in the dry wind, and finally to nothing.
(805 words)
How can I
...write a bestseller so that I can live on for the next 30 years?....
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I have a terrible longing to disappear.....
Some things...
Who am I? Artist, teacher, or writer? All or none? I would love to be just a human being; a man of no title.
One day, my student will ask me, so where is all this leading to? All these great books, great ideas, great ambitions...what have I achieved? Nothing. But he who has ears, let him hear, and watch.
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Finished 'Beauty and Sadness' by Kawabata and 'The Setting Sun' by Osamu Dazai...
Let me talk a bit about Dazai. Basically, his two masterworks are 'The Setting Sun' and 'No Longer Human', each as suicidal as the other. It is no wonder that he commited suicide after the two novels.
Basically he has a fundamental problem, which is pride (the original sin according to the Bible).
'What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realises that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger...'
And thus his characters give up to drinking, debaunchery and suicide, glorifying human weakness as the quality of being truly human.
If only he had learnt from the bible or the Buddha, he would have been a much happier person...
Nonetheless, 'The Setting Sun' and 'No Longer Human' are short but very powerful texts. Not recommended for the easily-depressed or suicidal.
rushed crap...
In those days, I was everything.
I was the boulevard artist. I drank expensive coffee and tea, and ate expensive cakes in cafes. I sat in Olio Dome and sketched as if I were an Impressionist in the French cafes, listening to jazz or retro tunes as I drew and wrote. I thought I was going to write an art manifesto that would change the world. I read deep and profound poems and novels, far too early for my understanding, but I could not help it because I was everything. I knew everyone, but no one knew me. I visited the Art Museum every other week when I could. I knew the telephone numbers to all the galleries. I knew how large the space in every gallery was. I knew which gallery was running which exhibition from when to when. I wrote poems and contemplated on art at the then Victoria Food Court (which is replaced by something else now). I did paintings of pain, pain, pain, pain, pain…
I was the great art producer and art teacher. I taught art in cafes and construction sites. We painted and drew, and played with the soil and sand and sticks and stones, and the unwanted scraps in the construction sites, and walked through open fields like adventurers. We took long bus rides as if we were traveling in our homeland for the first time. We talked to trees, observed strangers, listened to alternative music and behaved as if we were the most sublime underground artists in the world. I knew everything about modern art, yet had a preference for Romantic oils and British watercolours.
I was the geographer too. I read National Geographic, read widely on physical geography, pretended to study the weather, and drew the river cross-section which I even exhibited during my first exhibition. I brought everything out, from markers to files to transparencies to expensive books. I took pictures, walked through the graveyards in the evening, and discussed profound ideas over dinner and coffee with friends.
I was the urban urchin. I wrote Chinese poems at Boat Quay till 2 a.m. in the morning while drinking alcoholic coffee and listening to music. I brought along Brian’s tripod and camera, and I took photographs of beautiful passing women, the neon lights, bright lights, colourful lights, giddying and dizzying lights that swirled at 4 a.m. in the morning. I talked to the river and sang to it and listened to it, contemplating on history and love. They sold $6 roti-john at 4 a.m. in the morning, but every single cent was worth it as they were very generous with the eggs and onions, and the sweet-and-spicy gravy was simply tasty.
In those days, I thought about death and despair. Godfather and Grandmother passed away while I studied Buddhism and Christianity.
In those days, I was lonely. Home was a rainy shelter, and I wanted a place of my own. Brother was in Detention Barracks while I was in college. I wanted a road of my own, and dreams of my own. I was going to conquer the world. I spent lonely Christmases on my living room sofa with books by Dickens or Bronte sisters, while friends were caroling or dining and giving presents to one another. I wrote poems for myself and everyone while looking at my sad paintings and listening to the rain.
In those days, I fell in love. Every other morning I woke up feeling as a poet would, looking at everything through green or purple lenses. I hurried along my paths of life, and floated in dreams and waters. I crossed the shores of love divided by seas of deep emotions, and drowned my sorrows in rain water and beer. I loved J------ and M------, the two most beautiful girls in college, and perhaps had a crush on C------ too. I loved without complaint or regret, and imagined fallen leaves to be red blushes of love in autumn air. When the November rain and leaves started to fall, my loneliness was everything and all. I thought of promises of forever spoken by artists and poets, and the girls in my life that came and went. When the tidal waters beat and fell, and the leaves departed as December was over, I was only your passing dream, while you were my everlasting and eternity.
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Went to watch 'Sympathy for Lady Vegeance'. I didn't like it at all, though it is quite an arthouse kind of film. I'm not into black humour or surrealism or violence. Didn't like the female lead much either.
***
Currently reading Yasunari Kawabata' s'Beauty and sadness'. Kawabata is the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Because sadness seems more beautiful than joy,
..then solitude must be more beautiful than company/companionship.
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Writing is discipline.
***
I went to Dr Ho's place again. His new artworks are interesting, but not terrific. I still like his painting of the cathedral and the abstract piece.
Students who do not understand me always think that when I make comments as such, the subtext is 'I am the best artist in the world', when what I really mean is they need to have a clear sense of what kind of standards there are out there in the world, instead of being complacent with that miserable bit of knowledge they have in their proverbial well. It applies to both English and Art. Unless one can take six steps back from one's work and say, 'I think the drawing/painting is really sublime', or read one's own writing and say 'the modern can surpass the old; this is better than
Wuthering Heights', one really should just think of oneself as nothing, or less than nothing. How many can live up to such expectations, or qualify to be called a master? How many, except for Huang Binhong and Li Keran, can write on their scrolls that 'indeed, the modern surpassed the old?' In fact, I would even go so far as to claim that anyone who has not honed his craft for more than five years should not call himself a practitioner of the craft at all. Garcia Marquez deleted more words than he published. Virginia Woolf pondered for the exact word for days and even weeks. Turner and Picasso were born geniuses, but they went far beyond their talent and reached great heights through intensive labour. Corot said it 'only took forty years of hard work'. Degas and Braque did their work quietly without seeking recognition. The great Huang Binhong only had his first solo exhibition at eighty-eight, even though he had several group exhibitions before.
Dr Ho and I talked a bit about the Singapore Art Show..but well, if you've read my earlier entries, I'd rather not talk about it again...it's insipid, uninspiring, dull...the list goes on...
forecasting next year
A pointless exercise, but let me indulge.
I'll be selling my soul to teaching. No more life. No more art...
I've successfully driven my HOD up the wall. Fatal start for teaching.
***
Anyway, went to Ubin today for hiking. Loved the scenery! Managed to do a really simple sketch.
Mt darlings..where will they be in four years' time? Where will *I* be in four years' time?
rehashing old stuff that might be useful
1.
An artist is first a human being like everyone else, with anxieties, insecurities, problems, fears etc. I am first a human being, then an artist.
Joseph Beuys is right when he says everyone is an artist. Perhaps it should be ‘everyone can be an artist’. We need to demystify the artist because knowledge is transparent and open to criticism. Art is no longer ‘high culture’ in current times. The artist is just like everyone else, except he does creative work.
Art is an expression of one’s thoughts, feelings, and knowledge. The journey of art is about finding one’s own voice. One must study traditions and art history, as well as penetrate into life and nature.
2.
Art is not easy. Having struggled for years, I am still as one finding my way in the dark. I am still as one finding my way out of the desert, which may take forty years.
I have yet understood drawing and painting, and there are still conceptual art, installation art, new media art, and postmodern art in general.
Nevertheless, I also agree with Joseph Beuys when he says ‘One should not question if something has been done in intellectual or art history…’ I have forgotten the latter part of the statement, but I believe it has something to do with expression or truth or reality.
3.
One must be open to new ideas and knowledge.
Art problematises. Art does not offer solutions.
New knowledge or expression does not arise from a vacuum. It is founded on old knowledge and traditions. Then, one internalizes the old knowledge, combines it with one’s feelings, prior knowledge and experiences, and generates new knowledge and expression.
In this time, what we should do now is to assimilate and internalize. We must critically examine what has been done, and arrive at our modes of expression.
4.
Thinking and doing must develop together. Thoughts without actions are mere ideas in the air, like castles in the air. Action without thought is like a factory line.
Eventually, everything is about new ways of doing and seeing things.
My table
Just a sentence, yet to develop into anything...(for Aneesha)
***
My table, buried beneath a flood of loose papers, scattered letters, unmarked scripts, unused worksheets, outdated timetables, overdued deadlines, piled and unfiled circulars (some in scraps and tatters) and loose notes spilling over the edges (sometimes onto the floor with fallen paper-clips and staples), is a messy table resembling the post-World-War rubble.
you might have been here...
but I have added new stuff..
http://community.webshots.com/album/476323769bDcfsb
Lovestruck, lovelorn, or nothing?
Aubrey
by Bread
album: Guitar Man (1992)
And Aubrey was her name,
A not so very ordinary girl or name.
But who's to blame?
For a love that wouldn't bloom
For the hearts that never played in tune.
Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing,
Take away the words that rhyme it doesn't mean a thing.
And Aubrey was her name.
We tripped the light and danced together to the moon,
But where was June?
No it never came around.
If it did it never made a sound,
Maybe I was absent or was listening to fast,
Catching all the words, but then the meaning going past,
But God I miss the girl,
And I'd go a thousand times around the world just to be
Closer to her than to me.
And Aubrey was her name,
I never knew her, but I loved her just the same,
I loved her name.
Wish that I had found the way
And the reasons that would make her stay.
I have learned to lead a life apart from all the rest.
If I can't have the one I want, I'll do without the best.
But how I miss the girl
And I'd go a million times around the world just to say
She had been mine for a day.
*** ***
I especially love the last three lines, but here I am, cold as water, plain as ice...
grey world
For a whole group of people...
A path of solitude.
A path of annihilation.
A path leading to the end.
I can live without more things than you imagine. Don't waste my time.
check this out!
http://community.webshots.com/user/loksinLook for folder that says 'students' art'.
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Nostalgia seems like a nice and timeless theme to explore for art...
I should be marking, so I shan't ramble much today.
I feel
rotten..whatever.
***
Recalling how many Saturday mornings were spent
Walking alone in the rain
Thinking of how I missed the forlorn days
I search the diary pages in vain
I wore a pair of worn-out shoes and a sad face
The canal and trees were still the same
I found my way to your address
And posted the envelope with your name
The crows were talking across the roads and street lamps
The sweeper was sweeping leaves and crushed refreshment cans
Our youth was spent struggling with growing pains
And it would end even if the pains don't end
Recalling how I sang the new song I learnt
As I sat on the roadside step
Watching the neighbourhood cats amuse themselves
With a fallen rusty bicycle chain
... ...
Some lines to amuse myself...
***
I need to become a better teacher...
None
At twenty-five, a developing teacher, aspiring to be a writer and a good artist.
I went CD-hunting today. After going to many places, I finally found a copy of Wang Jie's new CD which I bought at an impossible price of $27, with very low expectations of his singing since we all know he croaks more than he sings nowadays. Let's see...There are actually a handful of nice songs in the album, but he rendered them somewhat poorly. If I had his kind of voice, I'm sure I would have sung them better. Anyway, some of the songs are so bad I think I really sound better in every literal sense of the word. That kind of sound should not have been heard anywhere outside the recording studio. Nevertheless, because my expectations of the album was so low, I wasn't at all disappointed at all when I tried it. At least the two or three listenable songs were not too bad. Perhaps I can add them to my KTV repertoire.
That's the latest excitement anyway.
I've been thinking of where I'm going from here. I do not really hate classroom teaching that much (in fact, the Express classes are lovely)...but with CCAs and all the admin work, and the meetings and the NT kids, teaching is not really my cup of tea.
The truth is, I see myself as someone who creates. I see myself doing many drawings and paintings and writings...but for all practical purposes, I need to keep my teaching job. I cannot rely on art or writing for a living. In addition, I don't see how anyone can live on creative work anymore.
I would love to read or re-read the following to become a good writer:
1) Strange Pilgrims by Garcia Marquez
2) Collected Stories by Garcia Marquez
3) The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Garcia Marquez
4) News of a Kidnapping by Garcia Marquez
5) Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
6) Don Quixote translated by Gregory Rabassa
7) Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto
8) Self Portraits (?) by Osamu Dazai
9) The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje
10) Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
11) Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
... ...
The great Li Keran once said, 'He who is below forty years old should have a ten or twenty year plan for his creative work.'
I shall heed his advice.
Hopefully, one day, I can be say the same as he did: 'The East has dawned.'
Die-hard fan looking forward to...
Dave Wang's new album, 'Awake'. Never mind he can't sing now... after all, I grew up with his songs...
Ramblings...
I don't mean to sound like sour grapes, but if any of you had been to SMU to look at the Open Section Art by new artists for the Singapore Art Show, you would be glad that my works are not there. For a start, the venue is about 80% completed (i.e. parts of it is still under construction). Next, some of the works are seriously questionable, if not dubious. There was one painting that I thought even my kids could have done better. There was only one memorable painting there, and two familiar names (Nicola and Tang Ling Na...quite established young artists whose works are respectable). Apparently even P-10 or Joon Kiat didn't even give a damn about the whole event. One huge painting on the theme of nature was poorly and unprofessionally executed. It might be considered a good piece by my school's standards, but certainly not for professional artists. Reminds me of my work some years back. Even some of the presentation was not professional. To summarise, after going there, I am glad my works were not chosen.
Fish Leong's new song, 'Road', is not bad. (Better than the supposed hit 'Silkroad') Quite moving and meaningful.
To write or not to write...that is the question.
After some encouragement from Zhu, I think I shall write. He actually thought my command of language is okay...The way I see my writings is this: I have many issues and stories, and I think I do know how to tell stories well...I just lack the proper words to tell the stories.
Give me eleven more years...hopefully I can publish a book of short stories...
Check this out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://community.webshots.com/user/loksinAfter 4.30 p.m.
my student's work...potential writer?
A tall, slim girl, sixteen, with serious brown eyes and a mass of long curly black hair which her friends called raven was staring dreamily out of her window. Eliza, her chin proped on her clasped hands and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over her neighbour's house like a mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain graduate was doing wonderful work, inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.
It was a warm gaudy Sunday morning early in October, Eliza Tan sat at the breakfast table with her parents. Her mother was reading the women's page of the morning paper while her father pored through the editorial section. There were dandelions in the center of the table and linen mats under each plate; the eletric coffee pot that was bought at a junk sale exactly four years ago, gleamed in a ray of morning sunlight. It was a peaceful scene, apparently no different from any other Saturday morning at the Tans', but this morning there was a difference, invisible but real. This morning Eliza was plotting.
Outside, she heard the rasp of a dry leaf scudding along the road. The sound meant the season was changing and she intended to make her life change with it. That was what made the end of secondary school interesting- the possibility that this time things could be different. Spotless new JC uniforms, a change of locker patners, a new boy across the aisle in English class, even the lovely breeze, crisp and shining - all these things could make a big difference in her mundane life. Straight after a quick and hurried breakfast, Eliza ran to the telephone and punched her friend's number, trembling with excitment, her hand shook as she held the cordless violet phone to her pointy ears. " Gina, tomorrow is our last day being in Secondary four! I know I'm going to be missing all our classmates terribly but I can't help feeling a twinge of excitement going to National JC. Thank god we'll be in the same classes again", Eliza exclaimed. The phone glued to her ear, she babbled on," I don't what I would do if we hadn't been posted to the same school. Of course we'll be the youngest in the school and I guess it'll feel very different from being in the top form where we were extremely dominering and knew everyone in the school."
The rest of the day was spent day dreaming about JC, a new chapter in her life, an empty, untouched white page that was waiting to be filled in. What will the new school be like? In Cresent, where she was the tennis team captain, everyone had looked at her in awe and admiration- the wonderful, powerful captain- but now she would probably be looking at others in the same way.
For the first time in her entire life, Eliza was extremely eager to get to school early. Grabbing the buttered toast her mum had prepared, she rushed out of the old brick house. Looking at the beautiful nature around her, Eliza thought that each day was becomming more golden and more spellbound. The sun shone and the sky was a clear shade of light blue. The oranges were ripening. Violets and iris bloomed in October. The weird plants beside on her neighbour's door step put forth scarlet leaves. At the same time the spreading grayish green acacia tree that over hung the two-storey house began to burst with buds, clusters of tiny greenish- yellow balls. As Eliza stood under the tall plants and looked up at the acacia tree, she felt like Alice in Wonderland after she had drunk from the bottle labeled Drink Me and found everything different. Yes, Singapore was a magic place.
Eliza, for the first time in her four years she had been in the school, looked at Cresent Secondary School through different eyes. She stopped to stand and stare at the rusty old iron school gates; it would be her last time walking through them as a secondary school student. And the palm trees just outside school- how could she have ever thought those trees with their ragged dirty petticoats old dead fronds was exciting to behold? Eliza began to recall the little things she had done with Gina; the mischeveous pranks she had pulled off on teachers, the days on which she had bribed the school guard to cut her slack and let her in school when she was late with out complaining to the discipline mistress. Cresent contained her joyous laughter, all her tears, pain, misery and delight. Gazing at her beloved school for the last time before she went in, she turned around to see Gina putting a reassuring, comforting arm on her shoulders. Eliza appreciated Gina's silent sympathy, but she found being in a situation that called for sympathy hard to take. She was miserable in silence. Who ever thought the last day of school could be soo painful and could bring back soo many memories.
Eliza felt as though a page of girlhood has been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, pain and gladness.
***
All comments welcome. By the way, she's Sec 1 Express going on to Sec 2.
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Sze Yung is back from Japan, with Miki Imai's 'Ivory II'!!!!!!! Honestly, the CD is more for the cover than the songs. Of course, track 7 ('short-sleeve' or 'half-sleeve') itself is worth the price too. It's a vintage or classic CD for collection. Classic vintage or vintage classic --- whatever.
Was on the topic of writing. I mentioned about reading Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, the Bible...Bertrand Russell, the other spiritual texts, the famous poetry etc etc. Must one really read so much in order to write well? For now, my answer is yes. Let's put it this way.
My first belief in writing: all good writers are by default good readers. If only I've read my Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Trollope, Dickens, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Eliot, Yeats, Frost, Plath etc etc, I'm sure I would be a *MUCH* better writer writing better stuff than the kind of thirty-five cents writing I'm producing now. On the Japanese map alone, there are the great Tanizaki, Mishima, Soseki, Dazai, Oe, Kawabata etc. to be read (know these masters before we move on to Banana Yoshimoto or even Murakami). In Latin America, Garcia Marquez, Isabelle Allende, and Llosa. Former Russia: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, as well as Nabokov.
There are at least a hundred other great writers I can list...
Myself now? My many volumes are collecting dust...my recent three books being Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' (this woman is seriously deranged), Tanizaki's greatest classic 'The Makioka Sisters', and Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot'. I simply have no time!
To top it off, I revived an interest in the Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau etc.) I spent $11 buying a pocket version of Thoreau because 'Walden' is too bulky to carry around. It is now one of my pocket Bibles.
Okay...apparently I've strayed off topic. Anyway, good writers must have kaleidoscopic knowledge. (Brian made me think of Italo Calvino for a start) Good writers can create a world out of their texts. If Ireland were to disappear because of an earthquake, we can construct it out of Joyce's 'Ulysses'. If South America were to disappear because of a whirlwind, we can construct it out of Garcia Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. If certain cities of Japan were to disappear for whatever reason, we can construct them out of Tanizaki's 'Makioka Sisters' or Kawabata's 'Snow Country'...do we have anything that we may call a Singaporean novel? It would be too ambitious. I strongly believe it will not happen in my lifetime. Someone to write a novel with full knowledge of our colonial past, our War and Post-war years, our independence, our industrialisation years and our cosmopolitan years, all encapsulated in a kaleidoscopic novel with full flavour of the rich living at Holland Village with haute couture and cafe culture and the poor living in Whampoa Drive with pasar-malam and kopi-tiam culture, with the different registers of language from the elite's standard English to the down-to-earth singlish. There must be a mish-mash of community clubs, aunties, prata, coffee, char-kway, popiah, bengs and lians, KTV, sushi, Citilink mall and many more....
But again, that is an over-ambitious writer's dream. One should be content if one can be the next Arthur Yap or Catherine Lim...no...Catherine Lim should stick to short stories...Tan Hwee Hwee's 'Mammon Inc' is the closest to the Singaporean novel, but let's hope we can have something better than that.
Let me however be honest on this: concerning art, I'm not so Singaporean. I think the Po-Mo (postmodern) culture has opened the floodgates to allow almost anything to be called art. My belief is that the world is still more global than local (though we are trying to be localised in one way or another, whether naturally or in a contrived manner)...and my philosophy now is to assimilate and select. To assimilate blindly is to ape. Besides, I'm more of a universalist where art is concerned, since art is a universal language.
Oh wow...I've blabbered so long here...time for a shower...and some quiet time for myself before going to sleep and to awake too soon and prepare for yet another long hectic day....
Who am I?
At twenty-five, I'm a teacher. I'm also someone who draws and paints, and someone who reads and writes.
Give me time. Time is of the essence.
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It's a pity that a lot of posts I used to have on writing were deleted on impulse, especially when I'm trying to nurture (and hopefully inspire) my sec 1 girl to write. I must have lost at least a few hundred words in those posts I deleted. I must try to rewrite a really good one some time. (Something like 'Notes on writing'....though of course, I must hopefully have produced some decent writing by then)
Anyway, I showed my CT my old writings, 'Holidays' and 'The Dusty New House'...she read it and looked at me with unspeakable sadness. I guess she must have felt a bit depressed by the writings, but I did not tell her that I'm past those phases now.
For now, I only wish that my star writer Aneesha would grow slowly and steadily.
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There seems to be some problem with my blog...the formatting has gone all wrong, but as far as I can post, I shan't let it bother me too much. I had made quite a few serious blunders in teaching, but I think I shall save them for some other time and be less whiny so as not to turn my blog into a ventilating space.
I went to see the Tapies exhibition today. The video was informative and good, but the works were largely disappointing. I'm very certain he has much better works, except they are all in some other important galleries and collections round the world.
I love books, music and art. I'm so glad to find a lot of joy and meaning in these things, without which I think I'd be an empty vessel. I'd be less than nothing. Le Couple's music lifted my spirits as I was marking in the staff room today. I simply have no time to read or draw now. I wish I have time to think about my short stories or writings.
Perhaps I should really just ignore all the silly administrative stuff and beauracracies for a while, and start to seriously write or draw...
