numb

This numbness that i'm feeling whenever things don't go according to plan is starting to worry me. The first time it happened, i'd thought that it simply meant that i didn't care very much about the original plan in the first place. But this latest plan-gone-awry is something i had been pinning my hopes on. To feel ... nothing ... beyond a numb disappointment. Either is a sign that i've attained a level of zen beyond anything i'd ever even wanted, or it's something more worrying that i don't want to contemplate right now.
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Edit:
i suppose numb disappointment is a valid feeling in itself ... So it would be wrong to say i'm feeling nothing...
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....... (2)

Just realised that one of the passengers on the Air Asia plane was my former student from 10 years ago.
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They've started the search and recover operations -- bodies and pieces of wreckage have been found.
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Life is so frighteningly unpredictable.
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......

Another missing plane, and again, a Malaysian airline. Don't know what to say, really. It's been such a terrible year for aviation.
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the gift of the magi

Oops ...!

Christmas thoughts

i'm not sure that i'm having particularly merry-Christmassy thoughts this Christmas, really. Because what i'm thinking is that Christ had a really tough life from start to finish, and that life is difficult and complicated and everyone has their problems and baggage. And yet, there is the faith that God is in there somewhere -- a faith that i won't, can't, let go of, because i have seen that it's true.
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Not particularly deep thoughts. But true nonetheless.
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word of the day

Supple. What a lovely word, in sound and meaning. i've just read a review which praised Boey Kim Cheng's writing for being 'supple'. i can't think of a better compliment -- whether the context is writing, or just life in general.
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december rain

Finally -- we're getting real end-of-the-year weather. The quiet steady monsoon rains that were more-or-less an everyday occurrence in the Novembers and Decembers of my childhood are back, for today, and hopefully longer. It's been an unseasonably dry December, and the blazing hot days, much as they were good for getting out and about and just generally doing stuff outside the house, were just not what i was expecting and looking forward to, this December of all Decembers, when i'm looking back and looking forward, working towards what will hopefully, if things work out, be The Next Big Thing in The Life Journey (note Important-Sounding Capital Letters).
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It's been good. Decluttering, i've found, is a way to sort through the Stuff from the past, to remember where one has been, to see how one has arrived at the place where one now stands, and to choose what to keep and what to discard for the road ahead. i needed to do this, i think. And i don't think i could have done this at any other time. Certainly not in the Decembers from the last few years.
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Such a quiet, peaceful, even contemplative, December, this time round. However long this lasts, i'm grateful.
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savour-some

Really. Robert MacFarlane's writing. So sensuously delicious. It's been a long long long long time since i've read prose like this. And, perhaps even more significantly, it's been a long long long long time since i've read prose like this and been able to enjoy it. For years now, i've only been able to take in arctic writing -- cold, austere, the beauty of ice queens. MacFarlane's work is so wonderfully textured, so alive to the external world while being utterly self-aware, so full of unexpected images that delight at every turn -- the linguistic equivalent of a ripe cherry-tomato exploding in the mouth, the feel of the cold juice-burst always a surprise no matter how long anticipated.
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Glory be.
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landscape & the human heart

i think i've found a new writerly idol. Not in the mad impassioned almost-irrational way i was obsessed with Coetzee; nor in the awed-by-the-luminous way i loved (and still love) Marilynne Robinson; and not in the i-want-to-live-and-write-like-he-did way i fell for Alistair MacLeod's short stories.
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i think the thing about Robert MacFarlane's work is that he has been, is still, asking the same questions i've been asking in my own work for the last 2 or 3 years. There's a sense of familiarity in the encounter, a sense that this writer is someone i can have a dialogue with, while at the same time admiring his writing and knowing it will be a long time before i even come close to writing like him. It's like meeting a fellow pilgrim with more knowledge of the way.
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It's a slow kind of discovery -- because MacFarlane's writing demands attention and time; and also because i'm thinking through his take on things while i'm reading it, trying to see what his insights would mean for me as a Singaporean writing about place. But in that slowness is a pleasure -- the pleasure of taking time, of not rushing ahead of what is. i've started with his second book -- The Wild Places -- and i can't (but know i must) wait to start on the rest.
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PS:
It need not be said, of course, that the one thing all 4 writers have in common is their precise and passionate attention to the craft of writing -- the choice of each word, the shaping of each sentence. Absolutely gorgeous stuff.
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decluttering

It's possible to live with very little, to live in a way contrary to the consumerist mindset which tells us that we must have more, more, more. i'm clearing out Stuff now from years ago -- mostly things like old lecture notes, books that i no longer want. There are also things that people gave me that i never got round to using, that i will never use. And it occurred to me that, actually, i could quite easily discard, say, between 1/3 to 2/3 of the things i own right now, and never actually miss them. Not that i'm a spendthrift by any measure. It's just that i think people really don't need very much stuff to get by. Most of it just takes up space. And is a waste of resources.
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i guess it's also that i am so tired of clutter, and of holding on to things that are no longer working or useful or relevant for me. If i could, i'd throw almost everything away. Just for a zen-like space, a tabula rasa, an emptiness in which to start again.
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