The Conviction of Things Not Seen.

Hmmmm that was strangely reassuring, to see the title of my previous post. Perhaps that's what I need so sorely.

Let's backtrack here, kinda.

One of the fears every writer has must be that, one day, words will fail you. The perpetual terror that suddenly your sentences don't work anymore; that the words you string together turn out to be just that. Because one of the fears everyone must have is that, one day, we'll realize that we've never quite been able to make ourselves understood. Never fully; and especially never by the ones we most desperately wanted and needed to.

It's a fear present (and most inconvenient) at every (possibly) significant moment - from drafting a speech to a simple message on a birthday card, from innocent conversations to the heartfelt, the terrifying letters. What if my message, the core of what I'm trying to say, does not convey itself fully to the intended? For someone to whom so much is predicated on words... that is a most frightful thought indeed.

And on the subject of fear.. Far be it from me to try and dissect that topic here, less to offer up this simple observation, or even query if you will. Let us first look at what we fear, then why we fear, before we figure out the how. Because how is important, that's how we move on. Perhaps of far greater importance, too, is who. Not who I fear, but who I fear for. Someone who's worth being frightened for! Then everything else makes a sudden, sort of sense.

And isn't that, kinda, what we've been looking for all this while?

The Assurance of Things Hoped For.

Well here goes. Some things you have got to fight for. Life isn't easy, it never was, and it sure never will be. I used to imagine that life gets easier as you grow up - that past the awkward stages of adolescence things just fall in place somehow; that having navigated safely (or perhaps even not so safely) down the long and winding and twisted path that youth presents we'd find ourselves on the straight and narrow; that maturity could and would be wielded like some enchanted tree branch and decisions would be clear and come easy.

Well, I'm coming to discover that's not what maturity was meant for. We fight it out and we grow and we learn and we survive and we move on - not so that we can fall back one day, stand easy, pretend the battle is done. No. Maturity means we're better equipped, with the lessons of battles past, to deal with the present, to prepare for the future. Decisions get harder - not the other way round; they impact more people, more.

Well, "nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard." But we have faith. Imperfect faith, to be sure - but in the One who is perfectly faithful.

Blessed Resurrection Sunday all!

Had We More Courage.

            And on your tongue
was the whisper of the wings

                      of the dreams
                      of the life
of the life we could
  have had

     had we loved more
          had we more courage
               had we let ourselves


we let ourselves


                           down.

At Least Icarus Flew.

______________________________

Icarus!
    Flew toward
        the indifferent sun

Ecstasy!
    Even as he fell
        toward the uncaring ground.

______________________________


So yesterday this super dubious whatsapp message was circulating around re: the moon from 10-11pm being visible in 12 different colours or something, and that formed the basis for that last post. For whatever reason, "The Jade Rabbit Feasts on Green Cheese" is now my favourite title of them all, even as I'm still wondering what that was all about. Poems (or attempted poems!) are the strangest things of all.

"Icarus" here, at least, I know why. Of course, the story of Icarus is at heart supposedly an allegory on hubris. But perhaps it is a mere tale on the dangers of getting lost in the moment, of forgetting where or even who you are. That is the origin of Icarus, after all. It is about daring to dream of escape; it is about actually trying to.

What do the actual consequences matter?

Except that they do. They really do. I feel like I'm treading on dangerous ground at times. Only sometimes I'm not sure whether I even care or not. It's so easy to lose myself in flight. And yet. A duty of care, a responsibility to be better than this. It's not just about me anymore, is it?

It's terrifying to think about all the things that could go wrong, exhilarating to think about what could go right. So God help me, I gotta navigate my way through these shoals on either side and emerge safely somehow. Well, safety perhaps isn't the right word here - there are going to be risks I have to take too. What a crazy state of delirium indeed.

Hurtling blindfolded into the great unknown, and I wouldn't have it any other way. This is the real world. This is me in God's playground. And He's holding on to me.

Alright, time for bed. Operation: BodyClock Reset begins now.

The Jade Rabbit Feasts On Green Cheese.

The moon they say will
be seen in twelve
different colours tonight

Once in a hundred
and eighty-four years
O!
Wonder!

let the moon reflect that
life is a many-splendoured thing
as Chang-e flits across her face
as the Jade Rabbit nibbles on green cheese

let the lonely moon reflect that
lonely as she is
love goes beyond distance
love goes beyond colour
love goes beyond desire
love goes beyond hope and tears and laughter and
fear and sorrow and understanding

let the lonely distant many-coloured moon tonight
reflect our light
let us teach her what it means to live
let us teach her what it means to love.

When I Am Not This Hunchback That You See.

So, a hundred thousand years after hearing Jeff Buckley's rendition of Hallelujah on House, today I finally listen to Leonard Cohen for the first time - after a circuitous journey only the internet and youtube comments and sidebars can offer. Good stuff.

I've also just embarked on Ministry of Moral Panic by local writer Amanda Lee Koe, and am supremely excited to resume it - only it doesn't feel fair to read it while in a distracted frame of mind, as I am now. It's so Singaporean in such a natural way, I'm not sure how else to put it. Probably once I'm done I'll be able to accurately dish out the hyperbole, but for now I can only say how pleased I am with such wonderfully crafted short stories. Definitely a writer to get excited about! Good stuff.

-

Okay so I wrote all that sometime in December but never found the time to finish it. 2 months on I can safely say that Ministry of Moral Panic was truly excellent and a debut unlike any other. Hope for local talent after all!

Anyway. First CNY back home in years and boy does it feel good. Despite the snacking. Especially the snacking. I don't even know anymore pineapple tarts confuse me. How can something so bad feel so good? Or vice versa. I don't even know, man.. Wanted to go for a run right this morning but decided to turn on my laptop instead - story of life indeed. Rumour has it kueh bangkits don't just go on their own and disappear from tummies and love handles, but I'm willing to live with that possbility apparently! You gotta love this season. So soon after 1st jan too, you can literally hear the sound of a million resolutions breaking... Well that got dark fast!

So the actual reason I was gonna write today was to explain, perhaps, my last story. It didn't actually start off as one per se, I had to come up with some sorta narrative to stitch together all these different thoughts. Origin: Reading Murakami's Kafka on the Shore on the MRT to work one fine morning - I felt inspired to type out a couple of drafts on my phone, pretty much all those passages in italics, which in my book constitutes a pretty productive morning huh. Think it took all of 40mins, so that was pretty inspired I think. Not to mention how surprised I myself am by the result.

I had no idea what to do with these fragments, so one fateful night I decided to piece them together - imperfectly probably - and see what the result could be. As with all my other stories, I didn't quite know what to make of it after writing it. A bit ragged, maybe. A tad unpolished and choppy, maybe. But as with all the rest too, I don't think there's any way for me to make any changes anymore. What's done is done, I guess. And every time I read it again I'm not sure what I was thinking while I wrote that, what I was trying to achieve, who I was trying to speak to. Apart from myself, that is.

I didn't write the story about someone. I did write the story for someone. I hope it worked. Funny, how that is sometimes, maybe cause I'm not sure what I'm trying to achieve either. 2nd story I've written that wasn't just for myself - it makes writing that much of a scarier process too. And quite uncharacteristically too, and I'm still not sure why I did, I even posted it on fb to largely positive reaction, of which I am very appreciative. Apart from some strange and probably unnecessary comparison to 50 shades.....

I guess maybe it's cause I know by now I really am not writing for anyone's approval or reception, that the audience is not that important a part of the process maybe. Something about the integrity of why I do what I do, not quite sure how else to put it. But if it might mean something to someone else too, then why not? I finally know for sure I'm not writing for other people's eyes, so I'm comfortable now to let people read these stories. Cause it doesn't really matter to me anymore.

Well, rather long spiel on writing huh. I guess we can leave it at that. Life is no joke btw. You think things are going pretty smoothly and you've kinda had most of it figured out, the planning stage is over!, and it's a mere matter of details and execution, and then suddenly bam!. It's ridiculous. And exciting. But ridiculous nonetheless.

To the anon who commented on Release Horse, maybe Like the Moon was a bit more dy-like huh haha. A tad extreme, perhaps... Anyway that's all folks!

And She Looks Like The Moon.

Q: And do you think this, all this, lasts forever?

A: No, and if it does it should not. Nothing that is this beautiful should be made to last. Life without death is a tragedy; eternal art not art at all.

A: Yes, and if it doesn't it should. If even this degrades, decays, then of what use is hope? I could not bear to live in a world where all beauty eventually dies, where beauty, indeed, is contingent on transience.

I get on the train, and you are there, waiting for me. You smile as I sit down opposite you, and I remember the day we met all those years ago. The day I met the 99% perfect girl; the day I fell in love; the day everything started; the day it all started to end.

I knew as soon as I saw you: here is a girl as close to 100% as I'm ever likely to get. Should I have waited for that 100%, I will never know.

Of course we ended up disappointing each other. No surprise. How could we not, when we were so afraid of revealing what we want? (What we want what we really really want.) Somehow we made that 1% out to be so much more than it really was - it grew and it grew until there was a rift between us neither of us knew how to bridge. Was it because everything else was so perfect that we couldn't help but focus on what wasn't?

I look across at you. All I see now is the 99% I overlooked because of the 1%.

How did it happen, when did we grow up all of a sudden? Where was the line, how did we cross it? Without warning, without fanfare. What a shame! Do you remember the smell of rain, the whisper of the wind?

Your smile fades. You look out the window. Silence.

But you were always like the moon to me. As you went so did my desire ebb and flow, as I tried my hardest to keep up with you. But no matter how hard I tried I never got any closer to you; no matter how hard I try a part of you will always remain hidden from me.

We speed past the seaside. Oh! That is where we were once, on that beach, happy. You lay against my chest as you scoop up handfuls of sand and allow them to run through your fingers. Do you remember? The picnic mat beneath us, the future before us. We used to talk, once. We used to love, once.

And beneath our love, our happiness, flowed that steady undercurrent of sadness. Do you remember how sad we were? Like something that could only be seen out of the corner of your eyes. Lurking, always, at the edges of our happiness. It was not loss, no - it was the memory of loss. That every second I spent with you was another second gone, lost forever like so much sand in the wind.

Your side profile still turned towards me, I remember the day I went through your diary. Why, I will never know. And I will never forgive myself. "And love was a language he never learnt to speak. He had to pick it up and piece it together wherever he could. And slowly, but surely, he began to understand. Just the tiniest bits at first, but slowly, and surely, he began to be fluent in love. But who can say, even as he was learning to listen, learning to speak, how much had been lost between the cracks, how much love had flowed past him, incomprehensible? They say you never step in the same river twice. So too love. He could not receive the love I gave him, and it will never be the same again."

Didn't you feel like you were drowning, desperately trying to grab on to anything that felt real to you? That's what falling in love felt like to me. Or maybe it was like wandering in a desert. I'm parched, desperate for a sip of water, and I stumble upon an oasis I'm never sure is not a mirage. I gulp it all down, hungrily, filling myself to the point of bursting. Maybe cause I thought it was real; maybe cause I was afraid it wasn't. When you're at breaking point what do you care about the difference between reality and illusion anyway?

I turn to look out the window, too. There it was, the scene from the day we met. I glance back at you but of course you were gone too. What do I care about the difference between reality and illusion anyway? The train speeds on; we arrive at our next memory. I think of all the things I've said, all the things I never said. How could love have turned out to be the greatest barrier of all?

All the messages we sent each other were the perfectly preserved records of our imperfect love. Another chance for us to get things wrong again. Love: the perfect desire for the imperfect. But we confuse the imperfect object with the perfect and like two trains speeding away in the night we miss each other by inches, perfectly engineered imperfection. And we are breathless from the speed, the proximity. We want to reach out; we dare not.

In the distance, we hear the sound of two trains - a collision.