malaysia tak boleh

So, Singapore's just beaten Malaysia 3-0 in some football game, and the Malaysians are in grief. This amazing letter to the forum page of some Malaysian newspaper has been making the rounds on Facebook. i LOVE the (il)logic. :)
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beauty is not enough

Something i've been thinking about recently. Not in any rigorous enough way -- perhaps 'musing' would be a better word. But i've been thinking about how limited art becomes when artists -- especially Christian artists -- pursue lyrical beauty as their top priority, when they seek to aestheticise life by papering over the cracks and trying too hard to find redemption lurking in every dark corner. Maybe sometimes, ugly needs to be shown for exactly what it is.
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Next writing challenge - to write well about ugliness, without trivialising / sentimentalising it, yet without sinking into despair like so much contemporary art. And, if i manage that one, then i can start trying to write well about joy.
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crazier and more of it

This poem has made it to these pages before... But heck. My blog, so i decide what goes on it, and how often. :)

Here's an interesting article on the poem's political background.
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Snow
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The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
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World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
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And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
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(Louis MacNeice)
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lost fire

Talking to the older folks who grew up in the pre-Independence years, i can't help but feel how much has been lost in Singapore's journey towards first-world-nationhood. Wait. Hear me out. No: i do not want to be living in some Southeast Asian commie state; and if the choice was really as stark as we've been told it is, i quite prefer our democratic system of governance... such as it is. And of course i can understand the choices our leaders made.
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But -- the cost of that progress! i cannot imagine a similar idealism among our youth today; heck, i cannot even imagine a similar idealism among my generation. How bland we are now, as a nation, as a society, compared to our predecessors who built this country. Is there anything we believe in enough to make the sacrifices they made -- to put our careers at risk, go to jail, go into exile...
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Again, hear me out. i am not idealising idealism. Goodness knows unbridled idealism has done more than enough damage throughout history. But some idealism, i think, is necessary to make life ... worth living. Yes. Worth living. This is a value judgement, i know that. A normative statement, empirically unproveable. But surely, we have to believe in something if life is to be anything more than a drag from day to day, taking care of me and at most mine as well. There has to be something to aspire to, something to dream towards, something, dare i say, that we'd be willing to give our lives to, if not for.
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These stories i'm hearing from the older folks: the question they ask in all but words is: What to make of a diminished thing?
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recovering joy

The other day, i got off at the wrong MRT stop because i'd been so engrossed in a book i was reading (The Future of Ice, Gretel Ehrlich). It took me a while to realise what had happened. And in the last week or so, i've been staying up late into the wee hours of the morning, pursuing the narrative of Eshkol Nevo's Homesick, and now savouring the poetic insights of Patricia Hampl's Virgin Time.
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Such joy - to lose yourself in a book. It's been so many years since i've tasted it.
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there will be music

Just discovered a new poet. Rest in peace, Jack.
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A Brief for the Defense
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Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
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(Jack Gilbert)
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osmosis

So i've just finished reading the novel by Eshkol Nevo that i bought because i opened it at the page where one of the characters is talking about his Fear Of The Urge To Jump. 'Osmosis'. That's the Hebrew title. The English title is 'Homesick'. It's the first novel i've read in years that
1) is not primarily about harrowing, heart-rending loss, even though loss, actual or imminent, colours every single one of its pages;  and
2) is more than 250 pages long.
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What a strange title for a book. i can see why they changed it to 'Homesick' for the English edition - it's so much more sellable than some weird reference to a chemical / biological process that a lot of people, including me before i read this book, probably don't even understand clearly. i think it's something to do with the novel's concern with movement, change, things moving away from or towards equilibrium, barriers being put up or taken down.
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Reading it, i can't help but feel once again -- for the millionth time in these few weeks -- what sheltered, placid lives we lead in Singapore. No, i'm not saying that i want to live in a society where suicide bombings and police roadblocks are the order of the day. But i'm wondering if there are conditions in which the human spirit cannot help but shrink a little, in which the mind stands in danger of becoming, God forbid, petty. When life gets too safe, too comfortable, too easy. How 'Brave New World', i know.
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Now i have to go find a novel written by a Palestinian writer ...
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SWF 2012

Singapore Writers Festival 2012 - personal highlights.
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1) Workshop with Boey Kim Cheng ('The Poetry of Memory') - the poet who started everything for me all those years ago.
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2) Panel discussion on 'Peace and Reconciliation Through Literature'
Khalil (Algerian political cartoonist, now living in the US); Izzeldin Abuelaish (Palestinian doctor and writer - three of his daughters were killed during the Gaza War, and his response was a book called 'I Shall Not Hate'); Eshkol Nevo (Israeli novelist - grandson of Israel's 3rd Prime Minister, who led Israel during the Six Day War). What a potent cocktail of personal and familial histories...
Moderated by: Asad Latif (who did a wonderful job with a very tough assignment)
With intermittent bemusement courtesy of a very vocal and distraught audience member.
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This is the first time i've been in a public forum where things got so intense. i wonder if i should be thankful or regretful that we don't get such intensities erupting here in placid Singapore. At least, not usually.
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And. In another of those strange serendipitous events that keep happening in my life..... How often does one pick up a book by an author one has just heard speaking, only to open it at a page which deals with something that one has written about and published not too long ago? (So of course one has to buy the book, and tell the author about it.)

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Exhibit A: from 'Homesick' by Eshkol Nevo
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'Do you know that I have a thing about heights? I don't think so. Big surprise, right? There are things you still don't know about me, even after seven years of friendship. It's not exactly a fear of heights, more like the desire to jump. Every time I'm standing in a high place (like on the balcony of your old apartment in Ramat Gan) I get this strong desire to jump. Not to float. Not to fly. To jump and crash. I remember the first time it happened. It was in Italy. My mother and I went up the Tower of Pisa, and on the seventh floor (the Tower is built like a wedding cake, every floor is a layer that you can walk on), I suddenly had the urge. There was no railing. Or barricade. I could've taken three steps forward and found myself in the air. I was so scared I might do it that I flattened myself against the wall and pressed my hands against the concrete. I remembeb the cold feel of the stone. My mother was pestering me to get going: there are two more floors, she said. I told her I couldn't move. What do you mean, you can't move? she asked and came over to me. I can't, I repeated. I knew for sure that if I moved, I'd jump. There was a small commotion. Tourists pointed at us. A Japanese guy took pictures. Finally, they had to bring two security people to peel me off the wall and drag me downstairs.
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From that day on, everyone in my family knew that I had a fear of heights, and I went along with the diagnosis even though I knew I had no fear, just the strong desire to jump.
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Weird, huh? Just doesn't make sense, does it? After all, I love life and never, not even during the worst parts of basic training, not even after Adi and I split up, did I ever have thoughts like that.
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I'll be damned if I understand it. Psychology probably has a name for it, right?'
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Exhibit B: from 'Eight Life Drawings' (published in QLRS Oct 2012)
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'I have always had a secret phobia of leaning against parapets on tall buildings, or standing at open windows without window grilles. In my mind, I cannot shake the thought that my body would, without any volition on my part, start climbing over the parapet on its own accord and fling itself towards the ground below. The feeling is so strong sometimes that I have to back away from the ledge, put some distance between my body and the fate that it should fear. '

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Eshkol Nevo seemed so happy to be just talking about his writing, talking about this Fear Of The Urge To Jump - apart from the Palestinian issue. i wonder what it must be like, to constantly feel the weight of history burdening your writing in that way. Singaporeans complain about having nothing weighty enough to write about - but i can totally imagine being a Middle Eastern writer and just wishing to be released from that burden of responsibility, at least once in a while.
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From what i saw during the talk today, and in spite of its optimistic title - peace and reconciliation are nowhere on the horizon in the mess of the Middle East situation, whether in literature, or anywhere else.
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rain on car windows

i live in a beautiful city. Take away the crowds, and it'd be perfect. Especially in November and December, when the monsoons come and every afternoon is rain. i've always wanted to write a poem about evening rain on car windows - the way the city lights shimmer through the glass, the streetlamps' warm orange glow diffused in the cold cocoon of the car's interior. Perhaps someday, i will find the words.
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little ironies

Is it just me - or is there something very strange about our Land Transport Authority boasting about how much soil it had to remove from the site of the Botanic Gardens MRT station in order to get the station built? (192 900 cubic metres, or 77 Olympic-sized swimming pools...)
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