“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

Alan Bennett, from Le Historie Boys

Absolutely, Alan Bennett. Once, Samy was reading Kureishi to me after a very long ago poetry workshop (KATTYSUTRA) at Emily Hill, and we were walking past the homogenous frying smells of Long John Silvers…

She whips out a pristine library book and starts reading in a conspiratorial voice. The words are blurred, and the plot is lost, but one startling image comes to mind. There is a schoolgirl, in a dark blue pinafore, whose slender arms are a raceless shade. Bare-faced and lecherous she is standing in front of a bench and across from an onlooking man. The onlooker is unimportant for it is his eyes that we see through, but the girl… The bench is low, uniform brown wood laid across uniform brown wood. There is a saucer of milk laid out to cool in the open air. The girl, she is looking the onlooker straight in the eye, and without batting a lash she lifts up her skirt. She is bare. And then, as casual as day, she sits in it, in the saucer of milk, soaking.

…OH MY GOD KUREISHI. Scandal scandal scandal.

Moving to Simei soon. Gonna miss Bedokay. 8(

part i.

"Tough."
A breath
that catches on the throat
choking the whiskey sour
that was kept warm in his pocket;

there is little sympathy that spills
from his eyes —
more pills from his fists
for the pigeons in the park.

While the adhans call people in for mosque,
his Sabbath mornings are spent at the cemeteries,
lurking paganly.
Both prophets
were pessimistic about his future.

There is a quiet purple stalk bending over a grave.
Hearing him pass she turns upwards,
and he nods slightly,
chewing
on the greening edges of her hope.

"Maybe I should take a wife,"
he considers,
loose singlet shifting
in the whisper of leftover prayer.

A list of possibilities form
but all that runs through
his cagey heart is:
"Tidak mau, tidak mau, tidak mau."

Every bird is a migrant bird,
and the old man counts his years
in new walking sticks,
and hangovers.

1. adhans – Muslim call to prayer
2. tidak mau – bahasa melayu for do not want

Deer,

do wander past the animals drinking

dappled at the watering hole,

join them in their tethered dance

of instinct upon instinct,

watch the world around flash

with stars at the back of your eyes

when you look up at the sun,

taking my hand in your teeth.

I have this deep suspicion that my stepmother is very stupid. Very stupid and very evil.

These past couple of weeks post-Korea & its city quaintness have been spent mellowing out at home, with only the recently christened Bryce Balaselvan aka my coin-operated boy for company (Balaselvan, and sometimes Siew Fang Pi, due to his Chennai- Chinese roots.) I colour my afternoons with Julia Nunes and Judas Priest, and my nights with fits of night cycling & fighting with my folks, and my mornings with tuition and existential crises & swims. Never ever have I ever had no reason to be happy, but am anyway.

I know what I need to do to solve this growing rift between my parents—mediate. Again. But more clevererly this time, using simple familiar words and promises, being honest.

My poor brother, being incredibly tanned from all the soccer in the sun, has fallen for the same marketing spiel they plaster everywhere—WHITENING LOTIONS, FAIR & LOVELY & even more radiant than the last cream you tried! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH. He’s claimed my Nivea moisturizers as his own and is desperately trying to rub them in every night… Gullible’s Island ahoy!

I’ve watched: Trainspotting Classic 8D Ewan McGregor diving into the toilet bowl for his opium suppositories made my day.

American Psycho Regardless of being terribly adapted, it was just a bad movie! Ugh these over-ambitious 90s directors.

Scarface C**ks**king M*****f*****rs! *takes break to snort some coke*

Requiem For A Dream Power soundtrack la, srsly, power. And I never thought I’d start using that adjective, but this requires it.

Wilde Finally, Stephen Fry in snarky Oscar glory.

The Science of Sleep Adorable. Gondry & his mis en scene, seeding the genre of introverts’ love stories—anything held private can be beautiful.

Black Books Season 2 O, Bill Bailey!

The Proposal the usual cheese…

countless Nevermind the Buzzcocks eps

several Curb Your Enthusiasm eps :D hilarious. Thanks, Wash.

Do what nao, I’m going to ask. Hope.

I leave for a while, a little scared. Sparkling Korea calls, and I pick up the phone and hear breathing noises.

But other than that! Updates. On having found funny little friends who baby me & take care of me, who are so fulla life and culture and ridiculous craptalk that you cannot help but love them slowly, one by one. Cloves & laughter & neverending nights. To the Godfather 8D

Also, the closure of The Fever. THANK THE LORD ALMIGHTY, it was so tiring to struggle through a script noone understood, to watch crap rehearsal after crap rehearsal and try to restructure them as tactfully as possible. I learnt A LOT espesh from noorlina, who is …brilliance in the disguise of shrill chinese lady.

Library stint is also over, so now I have means & I have time 8D

Am very tempted to relief teach. Sick of tuition. Eyeing the secondary school at the other end of my carpark. Mmm. Now might be a good time, considering most relief teachers will be back in school, and I only start in late August.

FAREWELL FOR NAO! (wish me luccckkkk, if you know what i mean )

“I have reached a sublime depth of tiredness, that is has conferred a dignity on my selfish isolation and I don’t feel the least bit ashamed for it all.”

Rabindranath Tagore.

I have alll this time to myself, and I still haven’t found the quiet. The library still has stuff for me to do, roles to play.

I think Korea’s on. For the sparkling part of it anyway. & the poetic Irishman. Don’t laugh.

Sebab saya shotgun = cbawesome la.

But I can’t love you any other way, I don’t know how.

Don’t tell me I’m being influenced by Ayn Rand’s premature objectivism spiel or I’m being a blockhead/man, but why do people let disagreements affect them so much? Like in casual conversation, if a person has an opposing point of view or two hundred, why is it so displeasing to them if two people function and think differently on a particular topic, especially when their disagreement is of no consequence outside of their own relations? Okay, so the person doesn’t respond the way they expected. Maybe their expectations were naive! Alright, so they went away feeling like they didn’t find their freaking lost twin or something. Are we all slaves to the freaking ‘only connect’?! Is that all we want—for people to agree with us all the time and be agreeable and be yesmen? Would that soothe some crappy ego somewhere? I say bring it the fck on.

Also, the more time I spend in alone in the library, the harder I have to try not to hate people on sight. Just people. In general. On trains and busstops and library users and staff members. I end up being very snide and unkind to people I actually like, which is the last thing I want! Thursday was maybe the rare occasion where I actually succeeded in being kind and having a decent conversation about, amongst other topics, Irish authors, Islam, Kim Jong Il and sperm. But now it’s a little discoloured. Pah. Of course it is. Of course of course, why didn’t I see it. “I don’t trust you either.”

But okay. I’m terribly grumpy right now. I go, plskthx. And leave you with a pretteh song to cheer you up. Am tempted to get accepted to Princeton just to stalk the adorable Jewish tenor. But it’s kinda of a hassle, you know. Stalking and all. 8D

Some notes while watching them classics decompose in front of my eyes:

1) Just got back from the loo after washing hands like I have OCD and I don’t care. There was some woman from the nearby office in one of the other cubicles, peeing away, when suddenly, she sighs. The most orgasmic miasmic fantastic breath of relief, it was so loud.  And oh my lord, WHAT was she doing in there?! In the midst of peeing too. Who does that? I will find out who that sigher was, and what was so relieving. I’ve got to. It’s not the receptionist, but was it the guidance counselor? Or the Dean *_*

2) Milan Kundera’s Immortality feels like an accurate desciption of a life of everyday ban mien, youtube & reading.

3) I read the Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Time & The Business Time …OUT OF GUILT. No one else reads them.

3) Ben Folds is hidden brilliance.

4) When people steal the TV away from you, resort to AL PACINO IN SCARFACE. Well, not call everybody a mothereffin c***s****er. You know what I mean.

5) I’m still laughing over the Epiphany submission of Cunning Face Powder 8D s&m, this is too funny. She’s exhausted her primary school vocab list. Honestly, what reference does the title evoke?!