if you read every word of this, in full contemplation of its beauty, you will be the better for it.

Your Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

Pablo Neruda

on the brainnumbing trainrides with woozy eyes and a slow mind, these days, i read not many words. reading poetry is like listening to music in your mind. i would only wish i could say them aloud in spanish for it sounds so romantic in its foreign-ness. reading neruda and listening to stina nordenstam in the same day over and over again equates to a very numbing (only numb? no other synonyms? bah to me, i can do no better than 'numb') feeling that pervades your system. it's a sort of detoxifying numbness that tries to contemplate what cannot be contemplated. but instead of going bah it gets more poetic. so poetic it's wordless i say. anyway tonight i wish for the radio in the morning to play ipod-ad-like upbeat tunes to fuel me for a morning run and then "i will burst out and run like a maniac to the stadium to the throb of the music peltering on me, snashing into me and finally in a motion of catharsis lift me up and i could be born again as the week begins" [to quote my own words tis' hilarious] and then i'll read neruda on the train again and listen to stina n. the whole day and get drunk on the aforementioned feeilng when i get home tomorrow. ha.

somehow today's evening run to the stadium didn't seem as exciting. i blame it on having ran in the morning too, and on being quite absolutely tired out this week. gotta be a good girl and be in bed early. smugness in people, that's a turn off. and when we are pissed for silly reasons, we can't bang doors. we can't do many things but, i suppose that is alright. i'm learning how to be a less affected person. my bad temper is a horror cos it springs out like a wild cat from a bush and it's like a tempest. sometimes i just want to indulge in anger, maybe for silly reasons. but it's better not to.

mushrooms in good cream sauces and pouched egg in gourmet bread double americano and strawberry shortcake of fluffy texture and non-cheap cream. walks in the mall replicate memories of walks by the playground back then.
come on ya'll, let's all be free.

hazy dazy week the eyes they see the world through a cloud. finally after the morning showers thwarted morning run plans today i finally got to blast away in the music in the black alightening in the morning. denise the funkiest fac cap is back in town shopping in the late hours with minute black bag. char siew boy acknowledged recognision of his beloved customers. sobs he even knew where they regulary sat to tuck into marvellously-prepared food. also, get rid of the cloud and try to love the light and make it a focused and ambitious and exciting and genuine and hardworking something.

ran to the stadium
ran 14 rounds, a bit of walking
ran back

carharsis in action.

mod-dish, mod-dish. scrunched up like a ball in me as the music [the raveonettes, mazzy star and random sweet bits] swirls around me. i could be in an mtv. i wanted to go out, doll up a bit but i got lazy. afternoons at home leave me in a state of exaggerated lathergic limbo. something is thus lurking beneath the depths and it could be sinister or super duper trippy, like maybe i could sew a skirt with my pretty green chinese patterned silk cloth but i don't feel very tailorish. read, maybe] it's not dark enough. be lured not by hmv, by kino, by topshop and all. padlock myself in the unsatisfying too-bright room until the sun starts to fall and then i will burst out and run like a maniac to the stadium to the throb of the music peltering on me, snashing into me and finally in a motion of catharsis lift me up and i could be born again as the week begins.

narrating does a lethargic girl some good. so here i go, me and my storeyteller instincts conjure up the moments of yesterday when the trumpeter and i went around town in a very gay mood; the man he sprang a suprise movie on me and we hadn't watch a movie for a long time cos money was going into the australia-will-be-way-cool fund and what does your heart say when during a random movie moment the guy reaches for your hand and plants a prince charming type kiss on it in the tenderest of touches? [it could be very wong kar wai, i kid you not] oh the heart skips and stops a beat and the nerves trigger a secret silly grin on her face in the dark. end of story byebye i'm going to read a book.

so the little sister and i watched 'in the mood for love' last night. wong kar wai is master of bittersweet nuances, the unspeakable moments and ideas and the intangibles that are both painfully intimate and overwhelmingly massive in its contemplation, that every human being can come to feel the same feelings and all that kind of thing. haunting and ok i have to go to hong kong to steal some of the essence of the film; it's all in my head but that's ok.

upon drinking bundaberry's 'naturally brewed to be better' ginger beer from a bottle, i proceed to think about how i would like to go bangkok, also, indiana where second sis is now at some toxicology conference (way cool, i just like how indianna sounds) and how i would like to be, superwoman, pleasethankyou. insane running urges, dutifully semi-satiated by the ginger beer and new bedsheet (oh the commfort is almost fluid, it almost diffuses into my pores)as well as music in a dimly lit room, and looking foward to tomorrow's (rain not, sky be clear, dark be longer)run and (do you playact in the water while you do many laps? that's a lot of time to think about a lot of things) swim. come on you rocket on.

tarantino and csi

disney and c.s. lewis

johnny depp and roald dahl and tim burton

the pink panther [ for mancini's music - who is the evil doer who has held on to my pp cd since tsd days? ]the whole cd is so breakfast at tiffany's. oh wait. ha he wrote the music for that movie too.

the thing is, i'm in a hiatus of sorts. eugenides has to be writing another book or else i can't cure my book cravings. you see, i'm what they call (actually i just invented this) a serial book binge-er. when i was high on george eliot i read all her books one after another; the same thing happened with dotoevesky, and then balzac (excepted when i was thwarted by the library that didn't contain any and my pauperish state disallowed me to pay for new books). now, problem is, eugenides only has two books! horror of horrors! how do i go on feeding this cold craving that begins with gingerly selecting a book off the library shelf without thinking beforehand the consequences. why am i so dramatic? i should be going to bed now. tomorrow the weather had better be good because i've got to fix another endorphin addiction. tsk to the watery bombardments though actually i like the cold. i only dislike wet feet.

"emotions, in my experience, arn't covered by single words. i don't believe in "sadness", "joy", or "regret". maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. i'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, germanic traincar constructions like, say "the happiness that attends disaster." or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." i'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on my aging family" connects with "the excitment of getting a room with a mini-bar." i've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that i've entered my story, i need them more than ever. ..from here on in, everything i'll tell you is coloured by the subjective experience of being part of events. here's where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. already the world feels heavier, now i'm a part of it..."

"biology gives you a brain. life turns it into a mind"

eugenides had better be writing anothe book now. he is such a good storyteller - there now, 'good' is so understated but any other word would complicate it. he's simply good. it's all dreamy, theatrical, simple, profound, curiousity-inducing, and frightful all at once. now i want to go to detroit, and to greece. a good book makes me want to go to the described destinations - san diego lured by 'the thrills' and russia - coerced by dotoevsky. maybe i'm in the cathartic realm now. i'm flying in my brains now. sleep tonight will be tinged with ismene tearing her hair out for antigone smoking weed in 60s bellbottoms singing john lennon songs remembering the secret culture of being a greek in asia minor. see, the greeks have their parthenon, the romans have their colosseum, the chinese have their paper-inventing ancestors buried in the great wall and etc etc etc. how magnificent and overwhelming to be along the line of such greatness, such agedness, such history. it's like royalty somewhat; it's in the very blood of them all. being singaporean, i have none of this earthly bond that links me back to such cultural seepage.

anyway, really, 'middlesex' is fantastic reading. it killed me really.

my double scoop gelato in cold vancouver 2003. double expresso and strawberry champagne


smalleyesbigpicture
for my too cool normading pals.

the trumpeter aka the original penguin dude and i had lunch at our secret hawker-style chicken rice niche in town and then we drove to haagan daaz at holland v to go over our australia itinary with my very happy planner boyfriend. this time we were wiser and shared four scoops - tiramisu, macademia nut, rum rasin and bailey's irish cream with chocolate sprinkles, strawberry sauce topping and walnuts. very smooth texture, their ice cream. everything tastes smooth - even the crunch of the walnuts. ice cream in winter in melbourne!!! i love eating ice cream when the weather is cold. it's more exciting this way and the ice-cream-ness is magnified in the sensitive weather. so now i'm thinking of my australia trip playlist. it's very vital and can't be chosen with nonchalance because sometime down the road when i'll remember what a fun time i've had had, it's like an mtv, the music comes with it as the aural wallpaper.

so yes they are going to play KOC in a future episode and they played ash on a previous episode as stated on their playlist. very good, very good.

i'm really enjoying the book. and partly because i feel a thrill of association back to days studying greek theatre, when eugenides peppers his storytelling with deux ex machina or dionysus. they are like my friends from the past, these words and phrases. met the brother for swimming where we blast through forty laps and had dinner later.

embodiment of competence. one please.

on vesak day i'm going to meet some friends i havent seen in twelve years! imagine that. i have a good feeling i'm going to quite like eugenide's quite engaging book. it's so far been a deja vu of amy tan and graham swift with eugenides's virgin suicides tone potpourri-ed together. an impropmtu date resulted in the favourite charsiew rice and candy empire as destination in mind. this week hasn't been so good. i've only ran twice. i shall resume the brilliance of last week for the coming week and to start it all, i'm going to try to do lots in the morning. you know the pulse of an addiction gaining on you when you recall the estactic feel of a run when a catchy tune plays on the radio. i wish i could listen to music while swimming too. the trumpeter and i are doing very well on our australia trip planning. i think it is a very good thing when even sitting silently in the car i feel so blessed and loved. we had some nostalgic funloving-commentary-type listening to michael learns to rock. and why not that was a fun era. the oc is such a nice show. the music - brilliance. nada surf and all. if they start playing beulah or KOC i will just cry with happiness. seth cohen - classic. he's the rory parallel you know. and it's trashy somewhat but it's quite real somewhat too and at least it's done well. i mean nothing can make up for how they schedule gilmore girls on tv in such a terribly destructive way but this should do for now. they shouldn't play mazzy star on lush radio. it's not for the masses.i want it all to myself...

current fav. piece of clothing is a magnificent dark mod blue with scrunched singlet arms and old-school stitching and bronze dangly bits. my poor clothing vocabulary is to blame for the funny description. but, it is, in brief, a very delectable piece of clothing.

so i chanced upon a softcover version of 'middlesex' by Jeffery Eugenides. i hope it is good. it has to be. and music really is what gets me going in the morning. missed a run today but i'll wake up and do a longer one at 6am. running with music is like running in the rain, the soundscape alters the landscape into a semi-dreamscape.

and there are these gaps, the in between hollowed out years when some friends were closer to others than to you and you're envious that their friends experienced something you didn't. like a baby's first step to a parent. you realise how friendship can be very possessive. it's very bittersweet like that.

garden state. must watch this hols. absolutely must.

when you die you take nothing with you. but there is much love to give when one is alive. unconditional love. back to the bible.

i've just finished the book. ended in tears, mine. sigh. autobiographies of kindred spirits and fantastically fascinating beings are wonderful to digest but very pathos-inducing when they die tragically. stupid ted hughes. now is to get 'birthday letters' to see what he has to say.

m.y. choy: stop! or i'll freeze! ahahahahaha.

a certain consistency is required to form a habit. so i tried. quite glad. after doing twenty laps on monday with the family, i was able to wake up every morning this week to go running before work, some 2.6km some 4km. running before the sun rises is much more enjoyable - the area feels less yishun-like and more like my own concocted world especially shrouded in a film of music i feel i'm breaking through. to continue with my everlasting downsizing project means to continue this throughout may and maybe eat less chocolate and other evil things. which reminds me about what hit me yesterday at the funeral service. suddenly all my [occassional] obsessions about things which need less obsessing about seemed like a silly joke. accepting death is a struggle for me - but i realise yet again the solution is not digging a hole and hiding in it but to go back and seek the maker. the most seemingly cliched phrases are the truest and hardest to achieve. so for me this month, what about a time of stripbare of nonessentials? mental and physical detox and making my spiritual seeking parallel to my running - becoming a habit, and more of course. suddenly all my embarassing whinings about my school work shamed me. for everyone, for everything thus give thanks. and it really is about the heart of worship. life is short. seek God. give love. to dramatise my [un]woes less and be a very good girl.

am nearing the end of the wonderful thick book. soon stupid ted will go off affairing and plath will kill herself. reading about her raving about ted makes me want to go read up his poems and books and plays, to get his perspective too.

new postcard from borders! so pretty. 'the cat that walked by himself' (ref. to rudyard kipling)

i am currently reading sylvia plath's 'letters home'. for those who only know her for her poems and the bleakness they embody, her diaries and letters do describe extreme joy and much encouragement. maybe it's because of this parallel in the academic route. something i read in the shadows awhile ago made me tear, for sure it's written ages ago but it dut up my fears. it's the sort of letter ee jie might write to me 'cept we don't meet that much anymore.

from 'letters home'. to warren her brother:

...my wings need to be tried. o iracus...but listen: i want you to have some idea of your potential. it is great. like me, when you're good (as a person, versatilely), you're very very vood, and when you're bad, you need rehabilitation; ergo: we both have a great deal of growing (maturing) to do, and it is by our relationships with other people (after all, what is life but people) that we will grow to ripe stature. in other words, the self-examinations that are induced by our problems and disappointments in relation to others are paradoxically the best incentives to growth and change we have. and it does take guts to grow and change, especially when your horizon is lighted up by what looks like the very best of good things..what i am rambling around and trying to say is this, how much i think you have to work with and how much i want you t have the sure, positive, creative feeling of the one or two men i'm lucky to know: that your security and love of life doesn't depend on the presence of another, but only on yourself, your chosen work, and your developing identity. then you can safely choose to enrich your life by marrying another person, and not, as e e cummings says, until. ...i want you to grow to a certainty of your identity...which will never ask for another court of appeal but your own conscience..."

but while plath is very much about the power of self, for me it aught to be surrender to God isn't it? i guess, it's because the academic route for me cannot just be 'something to get over and done with' to enter the work force. it's very much in my head my mind my heart and i have to get as much from it intensely as much as it gives to me, seeps into my pores and give me many flashes of renewing, as a person, as a being. and it is very much my own actions that give me oppotunities for me to appreciate this education i have and not be jealous of what and where others are studying. it's just that when metaphors and the discovery of a new word in a brillant oxford dictionary gives you more kicks then struggling over structures, the doubts come like waves. but i must not give in, for there are things i do appreciate in this course and so i shall hang on to them. and i shall try my best to be a very very good student, first of all which starts with having the confidence and secondly to be as hardworking as i possibly can.

last night mingyao and i went to the airport to send his french collegues off. he's going to france to visit greg next year so i must be determined to save up so i can go to. i do so want to do a europe trip. reading about bren's recent paris trip has stirred up the wanderlust in me again. i mean, it's always there. these days it's so hot even swimming is unbearable so i'm hiding behind curtains in the shadows after this morn's swim with the family.

psychedelic sounds.for cool shady indoors. it's a friendly city sound too actually.