moments like these

After a class discussion about the impact of globalisation on Singapore:
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Student: One step closer to migration!
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Teacher: It's worse elsewhere.
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#winoreddy
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In other news, why do i have this bad feeling that we're gonna end up with a Trump presidency?
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decluttering

There's way too much Stuff in my life. Too many books, knick-knacks, things i never use yet have kept for years. The plan for the end-of-the-year holidays is to do a radical decluttering. The last time i tried that was two years ago: i cleared out / gave away almost 10 trash bags worth of Stuff. This time round i'm determined to clear out even more. All the Stuff that i keep for their sentimental value, but don't even look at anyway (so... what sentimental value???): all this has to go. There's just no room in my life, my mind, my heart, for all this clutter anymore.
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i want to live with as little as i can live with. A clean, zen space. And to thereafter live a clean, zen life. i've already cut down so much on the Stuff i buy in recent years -- for some reason i seem to be very happy getting by with a lot less Stuff than most other people around me. And now there is an added incentive: to do my part (however minuscule) against the over-consumption that is eating up our Earth. Because at the rate we're going, we're all so totally going to hell in a handbasket.
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percolating ...

More on feeling this need to move on artistically ...
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When you re-read a piece of writing that you used to love, by a writer you used to love, and find yourself feeling, not just bored, but in fact rather suffocated by the sentiments it expresses, you know that you really really have moved on, in your thinking and interests. And you know that you've changed as well, in ways that you may not yet understand but which are significant and real nonetheless.
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It's interesting -- the feeling that there are all these thoughts and ideas and things to say percolating somewhere in the ether of the as-yet-unsaid. From my very limited experience so far, what this usually leads to is a not-too-bad-if-i-may-say-so-myself piece of writing on whatever it is that's been percolating, usually bringing everything together in some pleasantly unexpected manner.
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What's needed now, is time and space. Which i don't have at the moment. Perhaps the frustration will enrich the brew ...
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life lessons

This has been the year of Learning Important Life Lessons (mostly from observing other people crash and burn -- which, according to my dad, is the ideal kind of education, where you learn from other people's mistakes instead of having to make them for yourself). Know yourself, your capabilities and limitations. Do not make promises you cannot keep. Stay humble, and in touch with reality. Be honest. Let your Yes be Yes, and your No be No. (Something a certain Jesus of Nazareth said around 2000 years ago ... and still true today.) Again, do not, i repeat, do not, make promises you cannot keep. Best to be open and upfront -- honest -- right from the start, rather than leading people on or trying to appear more noble, more capable, than you possibly can be. (cf. Germany's disastrous immigration policies, among other smaller-scale disasters.)
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Know thyself. Be honest. Be humble. Have a true sense of your real place in the world.
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Clearly i need to write a novel about this. (i think it might  be called King Lear. Yes. Unabashedly a Lear fan. i think it might be the greatest thing ever written in the English language.)
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make it new

That moment when you read your own old work that you used to think was very good -- and you still do think it's good, but at the same time it's so over and so yesterday and you feel like you've so been-there-done-that-bought-the-t-shirt -- is when you know it's time to move on, to start over, to once again make it new.
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forgetfulness

It's amazing how much one can forget. i want to write a poem about forgetfulness and loss now but damn i have to do real work.
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Damn the electric fence! Damn the electric fence!
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jonathan franzen

If a reviewer were ever to write this about my work, i think, i'd die a happy woman.
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The quality that drives people crazy about [her] is the same quality that makes [her writing] remarkable, which is [her] ruthless, tenacious honesty, [her] refusal to write the world as we wish it would be, and to engage instead as truthfully as [she] can with this transcendently weird business of our existence together on earth. In the end that’s far more valuable, both in literary terms and in human ones, than any declaration of solidarity could be.
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(from this article on Jonathan Franzen)
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not nobler, just there

For some reason i've always liked this poem. i'm not sure exactly why -- some of it seems a bit cliched to my mind, rather waffly. But i like it anyway. Maybe it's to do with the just-there-ness of it. Just to be alive, and there. No more, no less.
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Sea Canes
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Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.
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Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk
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on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion
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of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.
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The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger
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that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing canes
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brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.
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hubris

The older i get, the more i treasure people who are humble enough to know and acknowledge their limits, and to admit their mistakes and apologise for them. Because people who don't know their limits often overestimate themselves, and make promises to others based on those overestimates that they then routinely break. Of course they never apologise for those broken promises, because they are, of course, never wrong in their own estimation. And never being wrong means that you never have to try to be better.
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The ancient Greeks called it hubris. Back in school when we first studied tragedies both Greek and Shakespearean, i didn't quite understand what the big deal was about hubris. What made pride different from other, perhaps more immediately harmful or dangerous flaws, like a bad temper, or greed?
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The answer, it seems to me, is that pride prevents us from seeing our other flaws, from admitting our mistakes and, yes, sins, (i consciously try to avoid using that word, mostly because i think it's acquired so much baggage over the years that people cannot hear it without reacting badly, but in this case, it's exactly the word i mean). It prevents us from making amends and becoming better people. It is what allows for the perpetuation of wrong and evil in this world.
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Hubris in the Greek tragedy sense also suggests delusion: a disconnection from reality or the feeling that the normal rules don't apply to oneself. In the Greek tragedies, it is this aspect of hubris that almost inevitably causes the hero's downfall -- that sense that he can do whatever he likes without having to face the normal consequences, because he is somehow above those normal consequences, equal to the gods, and somehow superhuman. Of course, once the gods decide to punish these pretenders to divinity, the consequences are also always much worse than the 'normal' consequences that they thought they were exempted from in the first place.
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People with hubris don't have to be nasty people. In fact, they can often be very charming -- one of the most egotistic people i know is also one of the most charming, and people often let her off the hook for things that they wouldn't excuse so easily in others, simply because of her charm. i think anyone who's ever worked for a very charismatic boss who also won't take advice or heed warnings and is out of touch with reality, would know exactly what i'm talking about.
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