lifetime

Outside, snow is falling fast oh fast. And here i am, ensconced in my completely adequate apartment, listening to Max Richter and reading Michael Ignatieff and thinking, i could spend a lifetime doing this.
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practice

The idea just occurred to me today: i really should be using this blog to do more ambitious writing than what i've been doing lately. i should use it to do what i used to do with the blue blog: ie, to practise writing. i'm thinking, daily vignettes or meditations on things. Something more crafted, more artful.
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The nice thing about having your own little personal space on the Internet is that you can shape it in whatever way you want. So now this blog is shape-shifting again. Change is the only constant, etc etc.
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blindsided

i don't usually feel homesick when i'm away from Singapore. In fact, if i'm not mistaken, i've never actually felt homesick for Singapore before. i might vehemently dislike the place i'm in, but i've never actually missed Singapore. At most, i miss the food. But even then, i just never get it as bad as some other people seem to.
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But today, watching a film about an autistic high-school math geek set in England and Taipei, i think i was blindsided by nostalgia. What exactly is it that i miss? City life in Asia, i guess, and teaching young math-and-science geeks. And the England of my memory, from my undergrad days. But that was a long, long time ago.
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what the living do

That feeling when you read a good, intelligent book, and you think, Oh C would have liked this! i wonder what he would have thought... And at the exact same moment you remember that C is no longer around. And when you see some lame trying-to-be-funny-and-CMI internet post and you find yourself wondering what C would have said, and you realise that you have no idea what C would have said because you just don't have his wit, but you know that whatever he might have said would have been actually funny, and whipsmart and snarky and all those wonderful things you used to love about his mind. And you realise, Gosh. I miss him.
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What The Living Do
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Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
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waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through
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the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,
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I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
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I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
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What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.
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But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep
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for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.
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a mind at work

" ... it is really something in life to be utterly disabused about human motive, venality, capacity for double-crossing, and yet still come to work every day, trying to get something done."
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(Michael Ignatieff)
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i first came upon Ignatieff last year, while trying to help Brilliant Young Mind with his intellectual crisis. (i don't think i helped ... )
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A friend recently recommended his work to me -- and i've gone back to look him up again. All i can say is, i'm quite enamoured. Poor guy, though. If his recent writing is anything to go by, he seems quite thoroughly disillusioned. i think anyone who believes in the fundamental goodness of human nature is almost certain to meet with disappointment and disillusionment, sooner or later. Probably better sooner rather than later.
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my new author photo

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two thoughts

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Precision is the first cousin of nuance. Or maybe they are siblings. Whichever. In any case, this could possibly explain why i've always gotten along better with scientists than artists. In The Third School, my budding-scientist teenage students respected precision and a careful accounting of the facts. It's difficult to slide into hasty generalisations when your concern is with getting the facts right -- and it is in this concern that nuance finds a strong bastion in our current hysterical, tunnel-visioned times ... ...
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2)
It's very very difficult to be a thinking person and not also find it almost impossible to talk about Singapore in any kind of adequate way. It's such a mindbogglingly unique place. (i suppose to some extent one can say that most / all countries: but if you think about Singapore in terms of its size, i really don't think there are too many places around the world that are so small and for which it's almost impossible to find any analogues anywhere else.)
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A good friend recently commented that Singapore has become my 'hobby-horse' -- with all the criticism that the term implies. He is not wrong, by the way -- Singapore is my current hobby-horse. (My reply to him, though, was that it is my home.) But, as hobby-horses go, i think it's sufficiently fascinating to warrant my attention -- so long as my vision doesn't narrow so much as to be unable to see anything else.
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geeking out

That exhilarating feeling when you meet a teacher who's not just brilliant, but who you know will hold you to the highest standards -- AND who tells his students on the very first class that being a writer is a good excuse for 'geeking out'.
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That equally exhilarating feeling when you've just received a wonderful reading list of titles on various assorted things you want to learn about, from friends who are quite undeniably experts on said assorted things; and when looking up excerpts posted on Google Books confirms that these books are indeed very well-written -- and when you realise that you actually will have time to read these books as part of the research you're doing for your book project ...
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In short, i am one exhilarated geek.
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dissonance

So i've finally discovered Scriabin. Seriously, i think that getting that bluetooth speaker was the best unnecessary decision (in the sense that a bluetooth speaker is far from an absolute necessity) i've made since coming here to the US. My quality of life has gone up 10 times since i bought it just over a month ago.
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Need to find more interesting slightly dissonant music to listen to. The Baroque, Classical, and even Romantic composers can get a bit too boringly harmonious sometimes. i know this has been going on for some time -- years, since at least the start of this blog -- my search for dissonant yet listenable music. Maybe it's a metaphor for my life.
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this year

This year, i want to be more focused on the work i'm here to do, on the life i'm hoping to build -- and, ultimately, the life that i believe God calls me to live. This means that i'm going to walk my own way even if that means walking away from those who don't share my path. (Which i've kinda been doing anyway, all these years -- it's just that in a new environment, walking alone when one doesn't already have a community of people whom one has known for yonks carries its own risks ...)
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In this, i'm taking inspiration from Brilliant Young Mind -- who seemed aloof and sometimes isolated, but perhaps he was only doing what he knew he had to do for himself, and choosing the things that fit in with what he wanted for his life.
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In other news, i've just discovered Bach's solo violin sonatas, and violinist Christian Tetzlaff. What it it about Bach's music for solo string instruments? How is it possible for a single lyric line to sound so rich, so varied, so polyvocal?
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