la dolce vita

i fell in love with Italia the first time i set foot on the place. No, waitaminit, make that the second time i set foot on the place. The first time was late one Spring evening in 1997, in the port city of Bari somewhere in the south - it felt dark, dangerous, and downright dodgy, and it probably was, considering the sort of place the Italian south is - and the only reason i was there was because my madcap friends and i could not get direct air tickets to Greece, and were desperate enough to fly into Bari on some cheap Alitalia flight, stay one night, and then take two ferries (one of them overnight) from Bari to our dream destination, the Greek isle of Corfu. That was one hellava escapade. But that's a story for another day.

Ah, the wonderful folly of youth! :)

So the second time i set foot on Italy was in the summer of 1998 with another group of people - this time, the company was not so great, but perhaps more on that some other time. The place itself, though, was intoxicating. It must have been that heady combination of youthful freedom, blueblueblue skies, cool mornings and sunlit tiles in quiet cathedral squares - and, of course, gelato, gelato, and more gelato. i loved almost everything about the land of Michelangelo, Dante, and Puccini - the beauty of its people, the lilting expressiveness of their language, the richness of its culture. i promised myself i would go back.

Well, i like to think i keep my promises. So this time i went back, with a bunch of people in some ways every bit as wonderful as the people i first saw the place with (and that is possibly the greatest compliment i can pay anyone, so treasure it, those of you who are reading this!) and it remains as lovely as i remember it - even seen through adult eyes and with the entire experience coloured by adult responsibilities. It's no wonder that this is the land that invented the concept of la dolce vita - the sweet life. With so much beauty brimming from every corner, it would almost be a sacrilege if it had not.

Of course, all is probably not as rosy as it appears. With its political future still hanging in the balance after the recent elections, and after being officially ranked the worst-performing EU country, la vita Italiano is clearly not as dolce as Italians may like tourists to believe. And for all its laid-back charm, there is a dark underbelly to Italian society that is apparent even in prosperous Milan (and no, i am not alluding to La Famiglia). i remember watching with something approaching surprise as a gypsy pushed his way across the road at a Milanese traffic junction to thrust his begging hands into a random car window. Such things only happened in third-world countries, i had thought, and i certainly haven't seen anything like that happening in Singapore. It looks like Italy is the kind of country that is fun to visit, but not quite so fun to actually live in.

But of course, there are so many other things that i saw and liked about Italy that i cannot imagine seeing in Singapore either. Spontaneous smiles and greetings from townspeople to random tourists, appreciative audiences as those same random tourists suddenly burst into song in the middle of the street - the very genuine warmth and friendliness of the locals there is so different from the brusque indifference one is likely to encounter on our little patch of earth here in Southeast Asia.

i am glad to have had the chance to return to this place that i have loved so much ever since my first, erm sorry, make that, my second visit there. The next time i go back, i want to have learned something of its language and culture - so that i can actually share, just a little, in la dolce vita.

Medium-term goal:
To take up and complete a course in Italian once i'm done with the present job and go back to school.

Long-term goal:
To return to Italy, hopefully in good company again, for an extended holiday in which i will explore the entire country, from North to South, and go off the beaten track and do things like take cooking classes and go trekking and horse-riding along quiet mountain tracks - and then write about it.

Heh. This is my new promise to meself. Now i have promises to keep. And miles to go before i sleep. And miles to go before i sleep. :)
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airplane poems

Another favourite obsession of the spoilt-yuppie poets of our little island:

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In Transit

...between our arrivals and our
Departures, it is a strangely
guiltless territory.

- Extract from 'Proem: Country Between Lines'
by Marne L. Kilates


With my wife in her usual high-altitude slump,
seat-belt fastened, the cabin lights dimmed
and bad comedy on the movie channel, I slip
into what one poet has termed the blameless country
of air travel. I've ploughed through several novels
this way, unperturbed, felt the heart-surge
when a particularly rousing phrase of Beethoven's
coincides with the exact moment of take-off. Sometimes
the peace is so rare I wave off free champagne,
and in Economy the meals are never worth missing
the view for: sunset over the Grand Canyon, or the Pacific
flowing like silk brocade. Now we enter the sphere
of maps, a world abstracted and solid all at once.
As settlements snuggle up to rivers, and paddyfields
play endless checkers on terraced hillsides, there's
space enough for long thoughts, wispy musings.
Do clouds, for instance, discharge their burdens in relief,
or do they, in their secret hearts, dream of the fallen?
And which is the life we regret, what was left behind
or the one to which we hurl at 800 km/h? Only
at such giddy velocities might we savour the wonder
of stasis, how the earth's rotation keeps us easily
in place. Just as, if we knew the true evanescence
of a second, it would stop us in our tracks -
with indecision, if not physics. Yes, even in seat 34A,
risking thrombosis, with barely enough room to clap,
there's time to ponder unseen forces, the invisible
lift beneath all our wings, only the first
human century with this luxury of boredom.
If the flight were any longer we'd resort to art.
Plot new routes to godhead. No surprise the Pyramids
(just visible beneath cloud-cover on your left)
had tombs built like departure lounges, since
many of us too would opt to go to ground
this way - with such conducted ease, to the sound
of our preferred music in the company of strangers.
How good to set off so eager, yet unhurried, to arrive
watched for, and welcomed at the gates.

(Alvin Pang)
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the divine realm of barbelo

Erm.

Well. All i can say is, i so agree with Adam Gopnik that i'm glad the Jesus of the canonical Gospels is not some sniggering smirking alien from the planet of barbelo.

easter musings

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The Prayer of St Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
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Whatever else you think of the Easter story, you must admit that it makes a real page-turner. Perhaps not the way it's been written in the Gospels - because the Gospels were not written to be page-turners. But if you just look at the plot elements, it's got all the makings of a good Hollywood movie. Celebrity, prophecy, angst, betrayal, courtroom drama, torture (lots of fodder there for human rights activists), a public execution (call in Amnesty International!), lots of blood and gore, weeping women, an earthquake, an eclipse, then tomb raiders (or so the rumours went), numerous mysterious appearances in locked rooms and the like, forgiveness and reconciliation, and finally a dramatic ascent into the heavens, much like a balloon (as CS Lewis put it), or, for us 21st century readers, as if He had been beamed up by Scotty himself for an intergalactic holiday on the Starship Enterprise.

Forgive me. i am being flippant.

Seriously, though. The heart of the Easter story lies in the miraculous recovery of hope from the depths of despair, in the returning of love for hatred, pardon for injury, in doubt turning to faith ("My Lord and my God!"), in sadness turning inexplicably into joy.

Go read it if you're curious. At the very least you'll be treated to one heck of a good story.
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terribly white

Cyclamen

They are terribly white.
There is snow on the ground,
And a moon on the snow at night.
The sky is cut by the winter light.
Yet I, who have all these things in ken,
Am struck to the heart
By the chiselled white
Of this handful of cyclamen.

('Michael Field')


i was reminded of this old favourite today as i was walking past the old National Museum, next to what used to be the Stamford Road library. It's been so long since i've actually looked at the building that it was almost with a shock that i realised how beautiful it is. The whole building has been restored and repainted, and the facade is now a lovely gleaming white, its clean lines offset by silvery grey, and the whole looking stately, clean-cut, chiselled.

But what i like most about the building was something i'm don't even know the architectural term for, so i shall use something from the field that i love and know: clarity. i love clean lines - whether in architecture or in writing. (i think the only thing in which clean lines don't appeal much is music. i'm a sappy Romantic musically - gimme my Sturm Und Drang, my moody Rachmaninov.) i love lines so clean they could cut through ice.

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All this reminds me of that bit in Possession by A.S. Byatt in which Roland and Maud talk about their mutual love of clean white sheets:

......'Sometimes I feel,' said Roland carefully, 'that the best state is to be without desire. When I really look at myself - '
.......'If you have a self -'
.......'At my life, at the way it is - what i really want is to - to have nothing. An empty clean bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked. Some of that has to do with - my personal circumstances. But some of it is general. I think.'
......'I know what you mean. No, that's a feeble thing to say. It's a much more powerful coincidence than that. That's what I think about, when I'm alone. How good it would be to have nothing. How good it would be to desire nothing. And the same image. An empty bed in an empty room. White.'

All i can say is, much as i share those sentiments about crisp clean white cotton sheets, i disagree with the larger generalisation, that it would be good to desire nothing. i've been there, done that - it ain't nice. Not nice at all. Not to desire anything, not to want anything, not to have any dreams - i think that signals the loss of something so fundamentally human that to be without it would be a kind of living death.


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za bor poetry

Sometime last year i realised that most of my favourite writers are men. Kinda surprising, actually, how long that particular insight took me.

In 2nd year uni, i was more or less forced to take a seminar in 20th century women's writing: you know, Sylvia Plath, Angela Carter, Jean Rhys, all the usual suspects. (This was because my first and second choice seminars were all booked up by the time i turned up to sign up for my courses - a full 15 minutes after sign-ups were open. Don't ever believe anyone who tells you that kiasu-ism is native only to Singapore.) And i found the whole experience an absolute torture. It wasn't the tutor or my coursemates - though they didn't do much to add to the experience either - it was the writing. So overtly emotional, with everything spilling all over the place in the most.... indecorous manner. So whiney, so complaining, with such a narrow range of concerns that i felt a sense of claustrophobia whenever i made myself read it. (Me being the conscientious student that i was, i felt compelled to read everything that was assigned for class - whether i liked it or not. i wonder now if that was the best way of spending my university life. i was a Lit student, for crying out loud. Perhaps i should have acted the typical Lit student, and just junked the required reading and gone with what i was interested in. Whatever.)

Anyway, of course i realise that my blogs are rather claustrophobic. Sigh - it's back to the pot and the kettle again.

Anyway, here's a poem by a za bor that i was reminded of after seeing it again on XW's blog:


Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

(Carol Ann Duffy)


i like this because of its restraint. And because it paints such a yearning, melancholic word-picture of the gift of grace.
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