In Continuum.

Old Neighbor Ben



Old neighbor Ben lived upstairs, just two floors up and on the adjacent end of the story. I wonder how old neighbor Ben is doing right now, if he crawled out of his bashful skin and finally into a real man who wouldn't follow in the shadows of others, a man who doesn't take comfort in the chest of his mother. It's been almost fifteen years I suppose, since I last saw him and I remember the last day of our meeting at the lift lobby, with the little gift that he gave me still sitting comfortably in my desk drawer. I wonder how old neighbor Ben is, as I looked from my balcony to the block across and saw those two little boys sharing a can of soft drinks. Yeah I wonder where you are Ben, I wonder where you are.

It's been raining in the afternoon these days, which might have been why my sister came back from her chalet stay over at Sentosa without a hint of excitement. Usually, she'd be raving about how fun the experience was five inches from my ears and then storming out of the room due to my lack of enthusiasm. But this time she came home and collapsed into her bed, and remained in that same position ever since yesterday morning. I am guessing that the rain must have plagued their carefully planned trip to the sunny island in the South, but it's not like anybody could've predicted the weather. After all, a wet beach is only second worse to a crowded beach, and I'm sure the sensation of having twenty odd people squeezed into a tiny chalet wasn't a good one.

Whatever the case may be, there I was sitting on my table in the middle of the afternoon staring out into the rain again. Just idling, staring and thinking about nothing. In the opposite block there was a kid in red sleeveless shirt kicking a soccer ball in the balcony, and was soon joined by a kid in white with a can of soft drinks. They started a little soccer game on the miniature soccer court, taking turns to be the goal-keeper and eventually ended up with their legs dangling out of the railings and feeling the rain upon their youthful skin while sharing a can of soft drinks.

Those two boys reminded me of myself and Ben, in the days when school was more like an activity of the day like brushing our teeth or having lunch than an obligation. School was just something our parents asked us to go without telling us why initially like church, and we found ourselves always sitting next to each other in the classrooms. But before I go on about the stories of Ben and I in school, allow me to tell you a little something about Ben.

The two families moved to Singapore together from Taiwan in 1990, and coincidentally they bought the house on the 21st floor while mine on the 19th. Ben has an older sister whose English name I forgot, and she hit it off with my sister right away while I joined them in their fun and games. Ben was a shy boy, always taking comfort in his mother's chest because of some sort of misfortune that involved his toy cars or dinosaurs. His love for toys were in Barbie dolls I remember, in a Barbie doll with black and white striped shirt and jeans. He used to hug her while rolling around in the carpet, and the three other kids called her his girlfriend. And as expected, he dashed down the corridor into his mother's arms, crying while the other kids laughed our heads off about his strange obsession with a piece of plastic. Sure, the girls toyed around with the dolls in fake doll houses, but at least they never fell for a Barbie doll.

Somehow, Ben opened up to this Taiwanese boy living downstairs soon enough, and we found ourselves always hanging out together because our mothers were good friends. I remember how they would dump us in the toys section to look after one another while they would go off somewhere else to shop. But to say "look after one another" wasn't really accurate, since Ben was mortally afraid of everything in this world. He shadowed me throughout the period of time we were friends, and after some time it got rather irritating.

In school, Ben followed me around everywhere, and I honestly wonder how he pulled through the days when we were in different classes. I was in 1D and he was in 1B I think, and he used to dash to me right after the recess bell. The bell cued his session of shadowing me, and my friends started to question if I knew about the boy who followed me everywhere on the playground. There was an incident whereby the zip in Ben's pants got stuck and his little wee-wee was showing. For some reason he wasn't wearing any underwear, and to prevent any embarrassment he trailed me all the way back to my classroom, all the while trying to tug the zip upwards. But of course, nobody saw anything wrong with this weird boy following me around, since I was the better boy in English and everybody knew Ben's reputation as being bashful and shy.

His only friend in Singapore was me, and the only true neighbor I had was him. We would hang around on the balcony and just stare at the great big world under our feet, dangling them over the railings and tasting the rain. In the past, the area around my house wasn't all that built up yet, and right behind our house was a giant grass field where we flew our kites. We were the best of friends, even though he irritated me with his constant following in school. But at home, we were more than neighbors and two boys from the same country in an uncharted territory.

To me, he was the reminder that the old life still lingered, that there wasn't anything to fear in this new country with his existence just upstairs. I missed the old life I had in Taiwan, and I constantly wondered - even as a kid - what happened to my old red-tiled house and the German Shepard that we had as a pet. But Ben was always there, hugging the Barbie doll and being a great friend. So it was a shock and a saddening thing when his family told ours that they were moving back to Taiwan, unable to adapt to the life in Singapore. Our family survived until now, their family didn't, and after a letter or two we lost all forms of communications to life's ceaseless flow.

I felt the soft fur with the broad surface of my right thumb, the plastic eyes still stared back at me, haunting yet dead. It has been in the same green plastic basket in my drawer for the past fifteen years or so, and the fur still felt soft to my fingertips. I remember the day when they were about to leave the country, there we were at the lift lobby with his eyes blood-shot and a trail of mucus from his nose, hanging. He has been crying, while pulling his luggage by himself to the lift door. He handed me the gift that he bought for me, and told me that it was made from real rabbit fur. It was a little badge in the shape of a panda's head, and the eyes stared back at me, reminding me of Ben in the earlier days of our meeting when he used to look at the sisters and myself, playing while he stayed out of the way.

So the panda not only reminds me of Ben, but also the life I had with Ben when everything was just simple - eat, play, school, sleep. It was a fun life, and seeing those kids from the opposite block doing the same thing as we did fifteen years ago, told me that at least I still have the memory to savage upon. Wherever you are Ben, you do take care. It is a wild world out there, hope you moved out from somebody's shadows. Remember the kid that dangled his legs over the railings with you, remember me this way.

Narcissism

A little something I made for Lynette. Played around with the program and voila! Designing is in the blood indeed. I like this piece, I hope you do too Lynette.

Grace's Birthday Party

A little advice to anybody who decides to hold a birthday party in the future. If you want to save cost and intends to hold a party at home instead of booking a recreation room of some kind at a condominium near your place, please do remember to have air-conditioning in your house or at least have a bunch of fans blasting the people attending the party, especially with a screwed up weather like Singapore, you never know when a party-goer is going to pass out due to heat exhaustion. Thank you for heeding my advice, and I wish you an advanced happy birthday.

Anyway, so Grace's party was awesome, save for the heat, the heat and the heat. I found myself outside her gates numerous times just breathing in fresh air, because even inside the house it felt like an oven, with just one fan in the corner of the venue blasting away, it was perhaps the hottest party I have ever been to, and it is not even because of the ladies, how sad. But other than that, I had a lot of fun just catching up with a bunch of friends and feeling rather awkward being amongst a whole lot of other people we didn't know.

The party was supposed to start at 630pm, but when we came at 7 it was still rather empty. Soon enough, hordes of strangers - or friends of friend - swarmed into the house and we found the spaces between tables to get narrower and narrower. I remember a thing Dudley said during Jane's party in January, was the need of alcohol in a situation whereby there are many groups of people and they aren't interacting with each other. The thing to do, is to place a bottle of alcoholic drink on each table and soon enough, everybody will be friends instantaneously. It's like a man from New York and a man from say, Afghanistan. If the both of them drinks, they are friends. No questions asked.

But you can't find it at a Christian family's birthday, nothing against the religion. It's just the way it is, you won't be able to find alcohol here, just a lot of fruit punch. I assure you though, that although you cannot get the same social effects as alcohol, you can achieve the same state of high with fruit punch, given enough quantity. Here I am blogging about the party an hour after midnight and feeling tipsy. So you see, it is not exactly about the beverage, but the atmosphere.

I had a lot of fun catching up with friends and just making fun of one another. When they asked about my relationship, I told them that I am happily available, which made the fact that majority of the crowd were girls very tempting. But of course, I was focused on only my friends and the strange faces meant little to me really. I was just glad that they were there to keep my mind off things, for once in one night. Just out there knowing that there are more than one sort of love in this world - the ones from the friends you've held on to so dear. I love my friends, and I am glad that I have a whole bunch of them. It's comforting to know that there is a very large cushion of friends to fall back on in times of need. It feels safe, really. And safe is good.

Cayman Islands



Through the alleyways to cool off in the shadows
Then into the street following the water
There's a bearded man paddling in his canoe
Looks as if he has come all the way from the cayman islands

These canals, it seems, they all go in circles
Places look the same, and we're the only difference
The wind is in your hair, it's covering my view
I'm holding on to you, on a bike we've hired until tomorrow

If only they could see, if only they had been here
They would understand, how someone could have chosen
To go the length I've gone, to spend just one day riding
Holding on to you, I never thought it would be this clear

Oasis



There was a party last night, last night
Cigarettes and empty bottles, empty bottles
Better open up this window, this window
Need some air to clear my head, clear my head

This must be the sixth or seventh time I have visited this page. This must be how a writer's block feels like, because before this line and the one above appeared I've been staring at this little white box for the past couple of hours, on and off. The little cursor just kept blinking towards the top left of the box, begging me to type something - anything.

I started with some gibberish and was deleted after about two minutes into it. That was followed by an attempt to finally start on that little idea of mine in my head, but was later swept under a rug because nothing felt right. It is a common understanding that when it comes to a writer's block, no one should try to force anything out of your head. It's lie squeezing milk out of a rock in the middle of a desert. I'd rather take my time to find a cow somewhere in the wilderness. But seriously speaking, if there is a portal into my head it'd look something like that following.

Imagine yourself, strolling in the Sahara with every excruciating step screaming with pain, because the ground is sixty Degrees Celsius and even with a pair of shoes, your skin is peeling off with every step you take up the sand dune. Nothing all around, just the endless mounts of sand and an occasional shrub here and there, almost mocking your inability to survive in the burning wilderness while there they are, digging deep into the grounds and tapping hidden water chambers. The leaves curve to the wind into a smile, and you extinguish it with a hard stamp on the plant. Cursing, you move on.

Alone in these strange beds
I think that I've traveled enough
Poetry and Aeroplanes
I am tired of waiting for love

Over the crest of the dune, there is a shadow in the distance, sitting at the bottom of the slope. It must be a mirage of some kind, it can't be a man. It just can't be! But there I am, sitting at the bottom of a slope with an opened notebook and a rock on top of it. Through the binding rings, a black pen is stuck and obviously untouched, for not a single word has been written on the blank page at all. You are just happy to see me you managed to say through your dry broken lips, and you asked me if I have any water to spare.

"No, but there is an oasis just over the next dune. It's pretty big, you can't miss it." I replied.

Puzzled, you stared at me wide-eyed, doubting my words. But there it is, just above the crest of the next dune, you can see the top of a coconut tree swaying lazily in the wind. Turning your gaze back at me, you are wondering if I am a mad man of sorts, because there I am in the middle of the desert under the scorching hot sun, with my lips cracked and burning and the skin on my face peeling off here and there like a badly scratched sofa while the oasis just sat above the next rise. You ask me if I am going crazy, if I need some water in the oasis to clear my head.

"No, I'm not crazy." I replied. "Going to be, maybe."

"What?"

"Let me explain something to you. That oasis over there is called 'Writer's Paradise'. That is where writers go to for ideas and inspirations. A sip from the lake and you will hear voices in your head, telling you of the greatest stories ever told. Eat a mouthful of those fruits hanging from trees and it will do the same to you. But no ink will flow in this magical oasis, no papers will bear the words. The only way to write is to get out of the oasis, to where I am now. You cannot write in the 'Writer's Paradise', but only to be inspired. The real writing happens out here in the desert, and my ideas have run out. This is what they call a writer's block, an inspirational dry-spell. I'm not sure if you are following."

"So why don't you go back?"

"I'm tired," I replied. "Awfully tired."

Tend to fall asleep in the fast lane, in the fast lane
Sometimes sinking low in the high life, in the high life
No more happy songs of heartbreak, oh' heartbreak
Or playing white knight misunderstood, misunderstood

The truth is dear readers, heartbreak induces writing. That is the truth if you ask any writers. It is infinitely easier to write when you are in the pits of depression. At least for me, words just tend to flow from the fissures and wounds upon the heart, surging out from the gaps in torrents sometimes. Thus, the entries in March and the end of February is choked with rather melancholic entries, simply because those were rather hard times for me to bear. There was a dilemma between blogging and not blogging. Blogging would make me hate myself for whining so much about the same issue, and not blogging would threaten my own emotional health.

I am wondering if my writing life - for now - is over. With the healing of one's heart, there is an inevitable period of absolute stagnant in one's world of creative writing. At least that's the case for me all the time, when the well of inspirations dry up and you just feel that everything you write is like the dead plant that you just stepped on a few paragraphs ago, or the carcass of a dead lizard in the corner. Maybe the dead tree in the distance just over the other sand dune. Everything you are writing just feels like an object of the desert and not the oasis itself, and like a human being under the merciless sun, you just feel like giving up altogether.

This is probably how you are feeling right now Kenzie, this is what if feels like to not have the drive to blog anymore. Like you said, this might just be a temporary thing, but right now there is the urge to blog but haven't the material or the motivation to do so. Just burning my ass on the scorching hot sun and waiting for an absolution, perhaps. Waiting for something to strike me, or another heartbreak. Who knows?

Alone in these strange streets
I think that I've walked them enough
Poetry and Aeroplanes
I am tired of waiting for love

But for now, not even Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel will save me now. It must be a sort of disappointment to my reader's, to write rather trashy posts these days. But then again, I'm not going to compromise the quality of my material for the sake of continued readership. It's like a basketball or soccer playing, retiring at the peak of his career. At least people will remember him for his glory days and not his sunset years. I need another heavy drink, or a really painful heartbreak. Or love even, though I'm sure that is not going to happen anytime soon.

I'm just not ready for that, yet. For now, how about a little stroll through the cool waters? Forget about the writer's block, and forget about the dry-spell. Let's take a walk, let's take a walk with me...



Another night I lie awake
In woken dreams of faith and fate
Hope my love don't come too late
Hope my love don't come too late

Alone in these strange streets
I think that I've walked them enough
Poetry and Aeroplanes
I am tired of waiting for love

Broken Swing



All I do is sleep all day, and think of you
A memory of the cushion life I'm clinging to
The image of a mutual one, our haven
The sombre chords of our song, the fading

There was a smell of warm summer rain in the air, hinting the coming of the undesired season. I've never liked summer, but the coldness of lingering winter in the spring. Of course, you don't get very distinct seasonal changes here in Singapore, but this is as good as it gets I guess. The warm summer rain, the comfortable breezes and the sound of insects nesting within the branches and the twigs. I got onto the bus with a smile upon my face for a weight lifted off, the first day of the rest of my life. It wasn't great, but good. And good is...well, liberating.

The rain came and go in the afternoon, replaced soon by the coming of the evening sun. I remember the moist smell in the air, the way the tarmac ground glittered under the sun after the heavy rain, imagining myself falling asleep under a giant umbrella on the beach, breathing the salty air of nature and relief. That was how I felt as I got onto the bus back from Gardens today, occupying that little seat of mine at the back of the bus, reminded only of happy memories and an optimistic future - which is rare these days.

I watched as the cellphone slowly slipped out of the girl's hands as her body rocked gently to the motion of the bus. She swayed so slightly from side to side, occasionally hitting the window to her left but never budged. She was soundly asleep, and on the empty bus there were only the two of us, with a few other passengers towards the front. She must have been tired from the long day, her thick upper eyelashes enclosed themselves with the row below, forming a tight grasp like a handshake. The breathing was loud, though not nearly a snore, and I could hear it from across the aisle. I wonder if she missed her stop, or if she was quietly counting the stops to her home. But never mind all those, never mind everything. We are all tired aren't we? We are all tired. Me too, but not today. Not today.

Love is no big truth
Driven by our genes, we are simple selfish beings
A symphony that's you
Joyously awaking the ignorant and sleeping

I have made up my mind, some time between the moment I handed up my documents and the first step out of the Office of Admission. I made up my mind about the other side of the leaf, to turn myself over and face a brand new side. However momentary it might be, everyday has the potential to be the first day of the rest of my life, and I don't intend to see tomorrow or the day after to be any different. Especially with the little note my Corinna so kindly gave to me, reminded me of the little thing called 'hope' in life through the clear plastic in my wallet.

Oh, look at those students crowded at the bus stop. Brown-uniformed, they reminded me of myself three years ago on the same kind of weekday afternoon, eager to go home. All oozing with energy and passions, eager to make something out of life, make something out of anything. The sunlight broke through the canopy of leaves above as I made my way down the sidewalk back home. Filtered through the leaves, the sun made little patches of light on the concrete floor, like little glittering puddles of collected rainwater. With every step I took, I almost expected them to splatter upwards into a brilliant display of glistering lights. But there they remained, swaying gently in all directions to the crown of green above, lazily into the fading afternoon. The first day is looking good, I tell myself. Very good, indeed.

I remember the Swallow Lady telling me something about mural painting around the neighborhood by students from my school. So there they were, two girls under a HDB block, one standing on a wooden stool, painting a mural on the white pillar under the void deck. There she was bending low, carefully scratching the colors onto the wall, crafting the part of a picture which I couldn't make out. But it was a beginning for sure, the way the two of them were injecting new life into this boring old community surrounded my house. Too many familiar things around me these days, changes are certainly welcomed. I almost went up to the girls and thanked them for their efforts to make some changes, but was in an awful hurry to get home. But I smiled, as their attentive bodies disappeared around the corner as I hurried down the road. New colors, very nice. Very nice indeed.

Passion and its brother hate, they come and go
Could easily be made to stay for longer though
Many people play this game so willingly
Do I have to be like them, or be lonely?

Then, it came to me. I remember it used to be a sandy playground, only to be replaced by one of those ugly ones with rubber flooring. Nobody ever plays in this new playground really, and there was once when I saw a young boy sunning his blanket there on one of the monkey bars.

I stopped in front of the playground in the middle of the pavement, just staring at the way it was covered in dead leaves, as if nobody has tended to the playground for ages. The blue paint from the bars were peeled off, revealing the brownish-red interior, rusty away in the air. The bridge in the middle was covered with dead leaves, and so were the metal benches on the edges of the playground as well as the swing. The swing, swung in the wind back and forth, as if an invisible body was sitting on it, pondering about something while it's legs pushed towards the ground to make the swing go backwards and forwards. The creaky sound of the rusty chains could be heard even under the sound of the cars rushing by to my right, and there it was with the left side of the rubber seat on the ground, broken. One of the chains was broken, and it hung lazily upon the other good chain, and I wondered if anybody is going to fix it. Would somebody fix the broken swing, anybody?

If Heaven is as they say, a place in your life when you were the happiest lived over and over again like a spoiled gramophone, I'd choose the nights at the playground. I don't remember a single time of argument there, no tears fell and no doubts in our minds at all. I remember the times at the playground, we were genuinely happy weren't we? I haven't the courage to look back at the old entries and make sure, but if my memory serves me right, we were. Now that the playground - our playground - is covered in layers of dead leaves, it was as if somebody was hinting to me, to bury the issue underground once and for all. Somebody could come and sweep away the leaves, paint the bars blue again. But nobody will come and fix the swing, and the chain will always remain broken.

So there it shall remain, under the leaves. I hope this is it, the beginning of the end. I have no idea how long this optimism in me will last. But for as much as it is worth, I am glad that on some days, I still have the capacity to feel this way, even despite the sight of a broken swing - a broken me. There is hope still I truly believe. If not in you, in somebody. Maybe I should run back to the girls painting the murals tomorrow. Who knows? Anybody is a potential now. Sure, I'm might not be ready for love just yet, but nobody can stop me from feeling mesmerized. Not you, not anybody.

Love is no big truth
Driven by our genes, we are simple selfish beings
A symphony that's you
Joyously awaking the ignorant and sleeping

I'll never need it again, not again, not again...

Casablanca



The following is the reason why, after sixty-five years, this film remains one of the best films of all time. I saw it for the first time today, and was utterly impressed. This movie defines the term 'Classic', and this is exactly why.

Rick," Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you're getting on that plane with Victor where you belong."
Ilsa," But Richard, no. I..."
Rick," Now, you've got to listen to me! You have any idea what you'd have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we'd both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn't that true, Louie?"
Captain Renault," I'm afraid Major Strasser would insist."
Ilsa," You're saying this only to make me go."
Rick," I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
Ilsa," But what about us?"
Rick," We'll always have Paris. We didn't have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night."
Ilsa," When I said I would never leave you."
Rick," And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid."

--- Casablanca (1942)

Children Of Men



The big three during this year's Oscars: Babel, Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men. Reason being, all three movies were directed by Mexican directors Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón respectively. All the attentions were all these three directors because it was the first time in Oscary history, to have the films made by three Mexican directors to be nominated in the same year for their separate films. And of course, due to the hype around the films and being the movie freak that I am, I was desperate to watch all three films. Besides, there were raving reviews about all three of them, so why not?

Babel was a gigantic disappointment. The only thing worse than a bad movie is a disappointing one, and this movie gave justice to that statement. A brief review here from me to the people who have yet to watch this. Babel is the last part of a sort of trilogy which began with Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Different movies, different stories, different characters, but same themes. I have yet to watch Amores Perros, but I am a huge fan of 21 Grams. With the reviews online about Babel, I was more than just excited to catch it in January. And I was rather disappointed by the film because it felt a little too long to be telling a simple story. I felt the messages didn't come through as well as 21 Grams, and to be honest I wasn't able to engage myself in the story at all.

Pan's Labyrinth was yet another disappointment because of all the perfect reviews online. By perfect I mean a ten upon ten review from all around, and everybody was crazy about it. So I watched the movie and - like Babel - was really disappointed as well. I understand that the movie was never meant to be a full-blown, pure fantasy movie because of the war elements injected into the story, and how the director chose the fantasy elements only as a supplementary aid to the plot and themes itself. But the three tasks that the main actress was supposed to go through were poorly laid out before the audience I felt, and between the tasks there weren't any logical explanations as to their relations, nor were there any sense involved in some of the scenes. I felt the fantasy and war elements of the movie canceled each other out and thus, was greatly compromised. Besides, I thought the acting of the actress playing Ofelia was awfully poor. She didn't look scared enough during the meeting with the monsters, nor did she look terrified enough when her mother died. Basically, just a sub-standard performance from all around. A rather bland movie experience.

Luckily, there is Children of Men. So everybody who shares the same sentiments with me as the two movies above should rejoice in Alfonso Cuarón's great efforts in this movie. I won't say this movie blew me away to be honest, but it was an interesting take on the future, and Alfonso Cuarón successfully transported us into that imaginary world of 2027. His efforts were subtle and yet powerful, all shown through the gritty setup and the camera work, brilliantly played out on screen.

Children of Men tells of the world in the future. In 2027, the youngest human being was shot outside a bar after his refusal to sign an autograph. The youngest person in the world was 18 years old when he died, and the news shocked the world - for no child has been born for the past 18 years, and the last days of the human race were at hand. No hopes in the streets on London where the story is set, and the world sank into chaos and madness.

But amidst the lack of hope, the protagonist Theo - was contacted by his ex-wife Julian and discovered that the 'terrorist' organization headed by her found a girl named Kee, who was miraculously pregnant. So the whole story basically revolves around trying to get the girl out of harm's way into a scientific research group called the Human Project, where the baby could be taken care of and the hope of mankind can be rekindled.

Alfonso Cuarón tells the story at a leisurely yet tight pace, with every scene carefully planned out and literally choreographed. There are scenes which will move you to the edge of your seats, so tensed that you start to clench your fist and sweat in your palms. For example, the scene when the five passengers meet a bunch of rebels in the forest was brilliantly shot, and not to mention the escape of Theo and Kee from the terrorists when their car couldn't be started. Those were very tensed scenes, and kudos to Alfonso Cuarón for bringing that across so effectively.

Now, the cinematography. The cinematographers were clearly robbed for this year's Oscars. I didn't understand why my friends over in the States were so frustrated with that category until I saw this movie myself. Personally, I have never seen a movie which uses extremely long single-take shots so many times in a movie. Basically, a one-take shot would mean a single shot on the subject in the frame, and the scene will happen without any forms of editing while the actors are still playing out their roles and the actions happening. One of these scenes lasted for a whooping twelve minutes, and I can only imagine the amount of planning and choreography involved in such a scene. I swear, this is definitely some kind of a break through in cinematography and like I said, blindly robbed.

This is not a happy movie, despite the emphasis on hope. This movie is bleak, because it tells us that the future is not a very pleasant place to live in, to look forward to. Everything from the tone of the film, to the screenplay and down to the texture of the film tells us that the story is not a happy one. But amidst unhappiness, there is a little light of hope always, even till the very end when the ending is sort of ambiguous and unknown. We don't exactly know what happens at the very end, or if their efforts throughout the movie was fruitful. But I guess the main point of the movie was to tell us to have hope, because without hope there is zilch - nothing.

This movie is probably the redeeming movie out of the three Mexican-made films. Like I said, I wasn't blown away by the film, but it intrigued me from the beginning till the end, and I must say that it must be one of the best films of 2006. Though not HIGHLY recommended, do check it out if you have the time.

The Artist

A work of impulse. Do forgive me. I remember when I wrote this, I was in a rather shaky state, trying too hard and too little at the same time, however contradictory that might have sounded. But I thought, I needed something of myself on this blog from that period of time. So here you go, good or bad, honestly speaking I don't even care.

I drew an arch tonight
I drew an arch across the sky
To distinguish your side of the world from mine
Just so it is easier to say goodbye

I drew a man tonight
I drew a man falling from the sky
Saw him as he fell through his own broken pride
The bloody mess ensued kind of looked like mine

Because in my dream country there is no life
No laughing children dancing in the rye

So I painted a canvas, a canvas with you
I painted a canvas, I colored me blue
I drew a horse and in the corner a tree
I called this painting "My Ultimate Make-believe"

I drew a heart tonight
I drew a heart across the sky
Tore it up into a million pieces
Left them scattered to wither and die

Because in my dream country there is no life
No laughing children dancing in the rye

So I painted a canvas, a canvas with you
I painted a canvas, pretentiously beautiful
I drew a bird and in the corner that's me
Still together, I called this the "Delusional Dream"

The artist took a peek at the coral riff
Decided to throw himself over the cliff
So much for the palettes and the paints and the brushes and everything
Because in them I never truly believed

So I burnt the canvas, the canvas with you
So I burnt the canvas, the canvas with you
That very same one that I colored me blue
So I burnt the canvas, the canvas with you

Rambling Spree

(Be warned. Ramblings ensue!)



Cheers darlin'
Here's to you and your lover boy
Cheers darlin'
I got years to wait around for you

A little thing about performing on stage I read once from John Mayer had me smiling before the computer screen, secretly cursing under my breath for the truth he spoke. He mentioned that before he became famous, he used to play guitar in his bedroom and imagine himself on a stage. But once he got famous, he would imagine himself in his bedroom while performing on stage. To be honest - as embarrassing as it may be - I do that all the time in my bedroom with the door to my room locked and the atmosphere adjusted to feel like a bar or lounge of some kind.

With the yellow lamp turned on and the window closed, I would sit in the middle of the road and imagine the ground before my feet falling away, and stretching out before my eyes where the bed should be would be the rows of audience. Everybody watched and anticipated, silence resonated through the concert hall as they waited for the first note of the next song. That is how I picture myself usually, being all narcissistic and vain. It is one of those childhood dreams I guess, so I guess there is no harm fantasizing about it. Cheap thrills, we are all guilty of it.

Cheers darlin'
I've got your wedding bells in my ear
Cheers darlin'
You give me three cigarettes to smoke my tears away

But tonight was a little different, as I sat in my room alone after dinner and the lights turned out. I was there in the middle of the room again with the lamp turned on, the same routine as usual right before a series of songs I intend to play and sing. But this time, instead of rows and rows of people I imagined myself in the corner of a bar alone with my guitar, the lights dimmed for my performance and the spotlight on me. Probably my first show or the second, so I was obviously nervous just sitting there on the high stool as the customers of the bar scrutinized me from below.

Smoke swirled from the tips of the cigarettes, the smell of alcohol thick in the air. Everybody turned their chairs towards me, legs crossed and obviously not interested with what I had to play or sing. But since the night was young and they had nothing to lose, I was saved from being yanked off the stage and kicked into the back alley. So I cleared my throat for the very last time and adjusted my pick as it trembled in my hands. Cold sweat formed on my palms but I turned them away from the audience, afraid that their vulture-like eyes would catch that hint of nervousness, the fear of myself messing up the set. "Here we go..." I mumbled, and started playing.

And I die when you mention his name
And I lied, I should have kissed you
When we were running the reins

Tonight, it was a good imaginary show. I kept on playing and playing, and sang my hearts out for the first time in a long time. I forgot when was the last time I sang those heartbreaking songs and actually meant every single word of it. I forgot when was the last time I smiled despite the throbbing pain at the tips of every finger. But the adrenaline rush was there, playing songs after songs like there is no tomorrow. My invisible audience cheered in the imaginary bar, the cups half full with alcohol raised up high in the air as I bowed to the crowd. Satisfied, I took my leave from the stage and back into my room - reality.

As I am typing this entry, the tips of my fingers are still aching. Guess I got to get a tub of hot water later to soak my fingers until they prune. But it felt so great, just shouting out every word of every line even if they went out of key sometimes. Songs that you wouldn't usually sing for it's cheesy heartbreaking lyrics suddenly made so much sense, and inside your mind as you are singing those lyrics out loud, you are also going "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!" Because they are all making perfect sense now, why haven't I realize it before?

What am I darlin'?
A whisper in your ear?
A piece of your cake?
What am I, darlin?
The boy you can fear?
Or your biggest mistake?

I was just talking to Kenzie about cliche. This is how the word 'cliche' changes from a negative thing, to a positive thing, then back to a really negative thing in one's life. Before a relationship, you listen to love songs and you feel those hair at the back of your neck standing. Those are probably signs of cliche, very obvious and easy to spot. Every word from a - say, Lionel Ritchie - love song would stab you with stupidity and you worry about the death of so many million brain cells.

Then of course, you fall in love and you are all lovey-dovey. You find that "Hey, maybe cliche isn't such a bad thing after all!" Of course it is not such a bad thing you numb nut, that's because you've been swept off your feet. People always say that it is good to be swept off your feet, but they seldom imagine what comes after being swept off: You land face flat on the ground breaking your nose and getting a concussion in your head, thus ridding you of any rational judgments.

Cheers darlin'
Here's to you and your lover man
Cheers darlin'
I just hang around and eat from a can

You break up, and there are a few stages to a break up. You break up, you break down, then you feel fed up, then pissed off. Numbness ensues, but before that happens you have to go through all those stages, and being pissed off usually causes you to start cursing popular cliches. Songs with lines like "I'm gonna love you forever" or "How do I live without you" or "Because you loved me". You start to run your penknife over the faces of Jessica Simpson, Leanne Rimes and Celine Dion because they sang those songs and they are making you feel like crap with their public display of cliche. Yes, that is how cliche transforms from one state to another. Brilliant, isn't it? Like a bloody amoeba and as useless too.

Cheers darlin'
I got a ribbon of green on my guitar
Cheers darlin'
I got a beauty queen
To sit not very far from me

Suddenly, A Storm





Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream...

A scene in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I particularly loved, was when Joel planned to hide Clementine from the Lacuna Inc. crew in a memory where she never existed, so that she will not be erased from his memory. So there they were on his couch figuring out how to go about doing it, when Joel recalled a random memory of himself as a kid hiding under a metal tin roof, and the thundering skies above raining down upon everything else. Row, Row, Row Your Boat started playing in the background as little Joel stretched out his hand into the falling rain from the tin roof above, and catching the droplets with his tongue.

Then it started to rain in the living room, Clementine puts a book on her head as a sort of shelter. It worked! She yelled, as Joel crawled underneath his kitchen table and took shelter. The old bicycle that he used to ride appeared, the water gathering in small pools upon the triangular seat, and all around the house the furnitures slowly got soaked with this sudden downpour. That is one of my favorite scene in the movie, one of the most interesting and original one I have ever seen too.

This morning, my mere three hours of sleep was rudely interrupted with the sound of doors slamming shut all around the house. The air-conditioning was turned on, so I must not have noticed the storm outside my bedroom window. I woke up startled, staring around the darkened room and checked the clock. 7.09 AM, what a lovely time of the day to start raining, especially when you haven't got anything else to do for the next couple of hours. So I turned off the air conditioning and through the gap between the window and the sill, I smelled the salty taste of rain faintly. Too faint, but enough to put a smile on my face as I hummed the nursery rhyme under my breath.

I remember as a child, my uncle used to tell me stories about his voyages on cruisers and destroyers that fascinated me. I admired my uncle, and I still do for his dry humor and intelligence. In fact, he might be the smartest I know. But there is a fine line between a genius and the insane, and sometimes my uncle can be a bit of the latter.

He told me of his adventurous venture into the heart of a hurricane once, driving down to the beach and facing the wrath of nature alone in his raincoat. As he weaved the story with his words, I conjured a fantastical image of this man in a yellow raincoat, braving the storm with his chest held up high, and cursing the heavens at the same time. Of course, my uncle did none of those ridiculous and almost blasphemous things. But stand in the storm in a raincoat he did, and he was so very proud of it while my aunt dismissed his actions as a mere form of stupidity rather than bravery.

So whenever it rains, there is always an overwhelming urge to dash out of the house in a raincoat, just to see how it is like to be beaten dumb by the pouring rain. I have never walked in the rain in a raincoat before, always under the shelter of an umbrella. As foolish as my uncle was, at least he dared to experience and he did it. And as for me, I dream about doing such foolish things in the comfort of my bed in the early hours of the morning, finding not the courage and the raincoat to run out into the blistering cold.

Nonetheless, I still admire the beauty of the rain. There is something therapeutic, just listening to the sound of the rain against the window, like a dozen fingers tapping against the surface, or the way everything turns into a blurry white and gray in the distance, a giant wet veil over the rest of the world. It is as if somebody created this giant bubble of sorts to separate my home to everything else, and this is where we shall live for the rest of our lives - or at least as long as the rain lasts. My mother and I talked about it in the morning about how long the rain would last. She was hopeful that it would stop by ten in the morning, while I secretly hoped for it to last for a week, or even two weeks. Never mind the flooding and the mud flows. Just let it rain down upon the world.

As I type this entry, the world has returned to it's original state - the boring state. Nothing is special about the view outside my window anymore, not even the sound coming through it. Just the sound of the cars below and the occasional horns of impatience. The tapping fingers were gone, and the singing wind vanished with the clouds. I wonder when the next wave of storm is going to come, the next morning I am going to wake up feeling mesmerized.

I might not run out into the rain to brave mother nature in my raincoat, but at least in the safety of my room, I can admire the same kind of beauty too. But someday, you'll see. Someday, I shall run into the rain with my clothes on like a mad man, then tap dance in the rain like there is no tomorrow. Just you wait world, just you wait.

Death Of A Canary



Donald Kaufman," Listen, I need a cool way to kill people. Don't worry, for my script."
Charlie Kaufman," I don't know that kind of stuff."
Donald Kaufman," Oh, come on, man, please? You're the genius."
Charlie Kaufman," Here you go. The killer's a literature professor. He cuts off little chunks from his victims' bodies until they die. He calls himself 'The Deconstructionist'."

--- Adaptation (2002)

There was a boy with bland features but subtly adorable, silky hair atop his youthful head and red veins visible through his fragile white skin. He spoke not a single word even at the age of two, and his family gradually started to question one by one if the ear-piercing screams that echoed down the halls two years earlier were merely a practical joke pulled by this mute child, to see his parents' faces once they discover their precious son's inability to utter a single word.

Laconic in nature, the boy had interest in many different things in life. As if his mother's womb was the doorway to a completely different dimension, everything that moved and remained stationary were objects of much fascination and intrigue. He roamed the house and explored every corner with the tips of his fingers and the look of innocence in his eyes. The way the dog ran around in circles in the lawn, the way the sun felt so cold after being filtered through the stained glass doors, the way the blankets would resemble the mountain or the clouds outside his bedroom window, and the way the birds fluttered their wings in the skies in the evening, returning home to their nests in the horizon beyond the crest of the hill. Always, with much curiosity he watched, touched and learned. The dog too, stared back at the boy with equal curiosity, but with unmatched desire to boost his knowledge, for the boy was eager to learn more and more from this strange, alien world.

Until his second birthday, the boy uttered no words that cheered his parents. Like his desire to understand this uncharted territory, his midnight brawls and tears never seem to run out. Always waking up in the middle of the night and banging his palms on the side of the metal cradle, begging for milk or the change of his diapers. His parents were worried, but ignorance of the young boy overwhelmed him, always looking to new objects in the house to put in his mouth or ponder over with his eyes.

The mistake was made by the family when they brought back a canary, placed in a wooden cage with a small sliding door to the side. This strange creature captured the attention of the boy, as it fluttered it's wings in the cage and almost always had a look of hopelessness in it's eyes. As if it was calling out for help to the fellow birds flying away over the crest of the hill behind the house, the canary always looked in that same direction but made no sound. Like the speechlessness that plagued the boy even at the delayed age of two and a half, there seemed to be a communion between the boy and the canary, the silent understanding between the two living things of the hatred of the wooden cage - the love for freedom.

Everyday, the boy looked into the cage and saw the sadness in the canary's eyes. Chained to the wooden bar in the cage, it had nowhere to go but the little space within, not even big enough for it to spread out it's wings. Restricted, confined and captured, this animal was no longer a bird that flew in the sky, but merely a bird and no more. The love for this caged animal grew within the boy, and the temptation to touch it's smooth white feathers overwhelmed it. In fact, the love grew so great that the boy wanted to hold the bird in his hands and keep the bird for himself - forever. It was an innocent love, but a perverse love nonetheless. So one day, he decided to set the bird free in the same innocent and perverse manner.

His tiny fingers fitted through the space between the wooden bars, and into the cage they stretched. Love was written all over his fingers and face, overflowing the brink of his heart like water running from a tap into a cup. He tried to grab the canary, but reacting to it's natural instincts it shunned away from the boy's grasping fingers. If the boy could speak, he would've said something like," Don't run away little bird, I am trying to love you!" But he remained quiet, almost too quiet for the canary's comfort. It went hysterical in the cage, fluttered about here and there and always missing the tips if the boy's fingers by an inch or two.

Finally, the boy managed to pinch the feathers of the canary, and tried to drag it towards the door. But the canary struggled free every time it happened, and this process went on and on until at the bottom of the cage where the newspaper and the bird droppings were, were stained also with white feathers tipped with blood. The boy was pulling off the feathers of the canary by accident, knowing only in his mind that he wanted to love the bird, to set the bird free. But why are you bleeding birdie, I am only trying to love you - to set you free!

The feathers stuck to the sweat on the boy's palm, the canary laid motionless at the bottom of the cage - dead. He poked the canary a few times, with the feather snowing down upon the body like a winter he never witnessed before, as the empty stare of the canary stared back at the boy. He was confused, for he knew little to none about the mortality of living things. The canary was dead, killed under the innocent hands of the boy who only wanted to love it with all his heart. Killed, under the loving hands of the boy, the irony that ensued the attempt to love. For isn't it true, that the path to hell is paved solely by the good intentions?

So the death of the canary remained in the back of the boy's memories and was forgotten until years later. But the desire remained, to set the canary free with his love. Still, he desired for the bird to fly far far and away from the wooden cage, but under the same touch of love he committed murder. He wonder if the canary understood his intentions, he wonder if the canary forgave his actions. So is it the boy's fault to like, to love, to desire and to eventually - though unintentionally - kill? Love drove the boy, and love drove him over the edge.

The boy grew up, and the boy is me. I don't remember myself doing that when I was a kid, but through the words of my parents I think I did. I don't remember the incident, but I do remember the canary - dead and lifeless, killed and murdered. I saw this weak relation between the two incidents, for even though it has been years, the intentions are the same: I only wanted to love. But to hurt was another matter altogether. I merely, wanted to love.

But is it the fault of the boy, or the canary which shunned away from his love so? He wouldn't know - I wouldn't know - for the canary laid dead amongst her own pile of bird droppings and old newspapers, and the boy grew up and grew numb. Harshness of life, the absolution of death. The person at fault, doesn't matter anymore, for the death of a heart cued the end of a staged show.

Adaptation: Salute to Charlie Kaufman





For some reason, I think I am cursed. I am still very much looking for Memento and Amores Perros, and all the man at the HMV counter could tell me was "Sold out". When asked about when the stocks would come in, he told me something about three to four weeks. "You told me that three to four weeks ago." He was silent for a while, until I left him at the counter, bewildered.

The truth is, DVD rental never came across my mind under yesterday night at Serangoon Gardens when I thought to myself," Why not?" So there it was, sitting amongst the other movies: Adaptation. I was overjoyed, and along with it I borrowed Brick, 28 Days Later and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Anyway, imagine yourself tasked as a screenwriter to adapt a book about flowers. Not an animation about talking flowers, or man-eating flowers from the amazonian jungles. A movie very simply about flowers, orchids to be exact. You are supposed to tell the audience everything they need to know about flowers in two hours, and about the men who steal flowers from nature reserves, and that's it. No, this is not supposed to be a documentary, but a motion picture. What if you are in Charlie Kaufman's shoes, what are you going to do? What are you going to do, when you know that even geniuses fail?

I have always idolized Charlie Kaufman as a writer. It is a pity that he doesn't write books, or I would've bought everything. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, two brilliant pieces of screenplays and storytelling, all by the hands of Charlie Kaufman. Ever since I saw his movie for the first time, I was desperate to know just how he crafted his stories, and how originality in Hollywood is synonymous with this man's name. Adaptation was the only movie of his I haven't saw, and I was desperate to find it.

Like I said, adapting a book about flowers, how is that even possible? The level of difficulty might not be the same as adapting the whole Bible into a two hour movie, or adapting the dictionary or thesaurus. There is no way that you can film a movie about flowers, and expect it to sell at the theaters. You can always argue that cinema is not all about the money and the glamor, but your movies - or art - still has to appeal, right?

Charlie Kaufman - the screenwriter - fell into what we writers call a Writer's Block. He was desperate to adapt the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean - which is a real book by the way - because he loved the book. But like I said, adapting a book about flowers without adding in car chases, nudity, explosions and the whole Hollywood shebang, that's impossible. So this is where Charlie Kaufman's genius sets in.

He decided to write a story about the difficulties he faced while adapting this book into a screenplay. So instead of adapting the book itself, he wrote a screenplay about how he wasn't able to ADAPT the book into a screenplay. To add on to his brilliance, he made up a fantastical twin brother of himself in the movie and called him Donald Kaufman, and then showed how they adapted the story together.

To make this movie even more amazing, the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar with both Charlie and Donald Kaufman when Donald Kaufman doesn't even exist. Do you guys understand what I am talking about here? This is storytelling at it's very best, this is artistry at it's peak and most of all, this is the definition of brilliance.

Awe-struck, dumbfounded, are just some of the words I managed to describe myself while watching the movie. This man actually wrote himself into the script and created a fictional ending with a non-fictional beginning. How is that even humanly possible? But that's Charlie Kaufman's genius, this is what he did with the screenplay of Adaptation, and the beauty is that this movie is about so much more than just the process of him adapting a book.

It was an insight to a writer's life, an insight to Charlie's own life and the way he self-depreciates(Like all writers), and about flowers, sadness, depression and hope. All of those written into a one hundred odd page screenplay, and this is screenwriting at best. Charlie Kaufman is exactly why I want to be a writer, and a writer I aspire to be. Of course, I'm probably not going to tell myself that I am old, fat, ugly and bald anytime soon like himself, but in terms of originality, this man has whatever it takes, to blow the minds of every person in the theater.

And the whole chunk above, is merely about how great the screenplay is. I'm not even at the other aspects yet. I'm not sure why The Pianist won the Best Adapted Screenplay for that year's Oscars, since the second half of the movie didn't have much words to begin with. But still, I think Charlie Kaufman's the genius in writing of our time. Count on him for utter brilliance and originality. This man is disgustingly brilliant, it makes me sick - in a good way.

Sick Cycle Carousel





If shame had a face I think it would kind of look like mine
If it had a home would it be my eyes
Would you believe me if I said I'm tired of this
Well here we go now one more time

'cause i tried to climb your steps
I tried to chase you down
I tried to see how low I can get down to the ground
I tried to earn my way
I tried to tame this mind
You better believe that I tried to beat this

So when will this end
It goes on and on
Over and over and over again
Keep spinning around I know that it won't stop
Till I step down from this for good

I never thought I'd end up here
Never thought I'd be standing where I am
I guess I kind of thought it would be easier than this
I guess i was wrong now one more time

Cause I tried to climb your steps
I tried to chase you down
I tried to see how low I can get down to the ground
And i tried to earn my way
I tried to change this mind
You better believe that I tried to beat this,

So when will this end
It goes on and on
Over and over and over again
Keep spinning around I know that it won't stop
Till I step down from this

Sick cycle carousel, this is a sick cycle, yeah
Sick cycle carousel
This is a sick cycle yeah

So when will this end
It goes on and on
Over and over and over again
Keep spinning around I know that it won't stop
Till I step down from this for good

When will this end
It goes on and on
Over and over and over again
Keep spinning around I know that it won't stop
Till I step down from this for good

Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel
Sick cycle carousel

Painted Silver

To understand the mind of a person who likes to vandalize walls in an escalator, you should give up. Because there isn't a practical way for you to do that. Personally, looking at the deep carvings on the walls of the escalator while going home or traveling out, confuses me. I wonder what tempted those people to use their car keys or loose change to scratch vulgarities or random lines on the beautiful stainless steel wall. It is not like they have an issue with the management board of the condominium, or that they write anything worthy of public acknowledgment.

There are other ways to vent your frustrations about life really, or to leave your mark in the public domain. Every time I get into the lift and have my attention fixed on those graffiti, I imagine the faces of those idiots scratching the marks on the wall, with a smile in their faces and taking frequent peeks at the camera above, hoping that the security guards wouldn't notice them. I feel like punching at those imaginary figures, strangling them and then stuffing the keys or the loose change up their butts. But that's not going to happen, and the security guard who catches me doing that at the guard house through the monitor is going to be very disturbed, for sure.

Running my fingers over the scratched marks, feeling the depressions and fissures on the walls as the lift travels slowly down, reminded me about scars that never heal. Emotional ones don't, though more often than not, they don't hurt anymore. But they will always be there, jutting out of your heart like a sore thumb, waving banners lined with neon lights, blinking vigorously. That is how those scratches and marks are like to me when I enter the lift, they take away the attention of everything else and catches my attention, however much I want to take it away from them. They remind me of my own scars, and even the wounds that are still healing, still roughly stitched up by my own hands with the remnants of blood still in between my finger nails. I am healing and in repair, I am not together but I am getting there.

Today, the most miraculous thing happened. All right, perhaps I am exaggerating the observation, but for once the lift did not remind me of my heart, and the scratches were not there to remind me of the scars within. They were not there anymore, painted over in silver paint. Covered, the walls look strange now, no longer having the old shine to it, replacing those a dull ugly glow. But the scratches were gone, they were indeed!

So there I stood in the middle of it all, the four walls on all sides making me claustrophobic. I just returned from a brief dinner with Ahmad a while ago, good old Indian food down at Serangoon Gardens, under the raging rainclouds up above our heads, with lightnings shooting through the towering gray masses overhead and dead leaves fluttering through the air like a dozen brown butterflies, spiraling downwards into the paths of pedestrians and cars, borne away by the wind and into the darkening skies. I filmed a part of the scene with my cellphone, and took a couple of pictures while waiting for Ahmad. I must have looked like a tourist back then, but I didn't care. I got my time out of the prison for a while, and the air outside smelled fabulous.

I walked home in the rain again, and I didn't know why. It was just a slight drizzle, the voice of Damien Rice playing in my head as I avoided the low hanging trees on the road back home. The chilly drops of water ran down my neck and into my shirt, but as ticklish as it was, I felt refreshed. The storm was over, and through all darkness there will be light, always.

That was how felt in the lift that represented my heart, and the old scratches on the wall like the wounds of distant past. No matter how deep they reach into the core, no matter how ugly these emotional scars are, there will always be a can of silver paint for me to cover everything up. Sure, the wash of paint might not make the walls more beautiful, nor will it restore the beauty that it once possessed. But at least it did cover up the wounds and the scars, and that is all that matters. The lift was my heart, and the vandalisms were the emotional turmoil that I've been through. But like the silver paint, the love from everybody else managed to cover up these flaws, and here I am thanking everybody who gave a shit, who tried and loved.

Fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, the lift slowly rose in the shaft. Renewed and refreshed, I was ready to face the rest of the world. Broken heart mended, old scars healed, I am ready to fall all over again. This might sound too optimistic for my own good, or too idealistic. But a bit of it doesn't hurt, at least not as much as what I have already been through. Too much optimism hurts only the pride, and not the heart.

Seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth. The lift - my heart - rose in the dark shaft, the cables jolting to a sudden stop. The doors opened, the last of the day's sunlight streamed into the narrow space inside. There I was, before the gate and on the door mat, smiling and mumbling to myself under my breath...

..."I'm home."

At A Writer's Crossroads

A writer's life is a lonely one, they say. There was a writer's convention last year, some time in October I believe at the National Library which I attended, and instead of a real convention - which sounds like an exhibition of sorts in a massive scale - it was merely a corner of the cafe divided out from the rest, decorated with a table and a few chairs and a pile of books in the corner of the table. Basically, a bunch of local budding writers came together and published a book of short stories, and they were there to publicize the book and at the same time, talk about how it is like being a local writer.

I was dismayed, because I was expecting more insights to being a local writer, getting my stories recognized and published, and not exactly about how you should join some competition and write ten thousand words within a month as a sort of challenge. I mean, that takes the whole vibe of writing a story away doesn't it? You don't write because you want to challenge yourself and see if you can write a certain amount of words within a certain period of time. You write not because you want to say something, but because you have something to say. And that competition they promoted went totally against that idea. So I was rather disappointed that I left the 'convention', knowing nothing more than I already do.

But to look on the bright side, at least I had the rest of the way home to ponder over the phrase "A writer's life is a lonely one". They probably pictured themselves sitting in front of the computer with the cursor blinking, with nothing coming out from the left of the cursor for the past three hours. Or the smell of the glass of alcohol right next to you, the smoke from the ash tray drifting into the air, the last of your third pack of cigarettes, in a dark room of a dark house with nobody around for you to talk to. That's the common misconception of a writer's life, and I totally disagree with it.

Imagine yourself now in a bar, drinking at the bar table and sneering at the bartender because not only is he not good looking, he looks bad. Besides all that, the words coming out from his mouth are so condescending you feel like buying a glass of anything just to pour it on his face. There you are in a bar feeling like the world is about to crash down upon your head all alone, and the bartender is there yakking away just how bad his own life has been. This is not about comparing yourself to an Afghan kid when it comes to just how hungry you are. This is about your life, and right now your life feels like shit.

Then all of a sudden, a guy from nowhere takes a seat next to you and buys you a drink. After a minute or two of introductions, you guys strike up a good chat, and then he introduces himself as a writer. That is the kind of writer I want to be, the kind who is not confined to the little space in front of the computer but out there talking to people and constantly absorbing new inspirations and ideas. Of course, when it comes to an inspirational dry spell, it can get very frustrating and lonely. But nobody said that you should dwell on those emotions.

My father once had a talk with me about my career. He said that books don't turn into money as readily as oil. He is a businessman that deals with oil, the import and the export of it in Singapore. His family is a family of workaholics, they never seem to stop working for money. Like I probably mentioned before, the children in his family started carrying oil barrels while they were eighteen, and have been in the family business ever since. They don't have a very high education, but they sure know how to talk their way into getting their clients to buy or sell their oil. That's what they do best, and just because I am sharing the same last name, I am supposed to have the same genes and and attitude as well.

He told me to take over his business, since his retirement age is nearing. Something about giving up writing for a change and get right down and dirty with the money. But right in his face, I told him that I'd rather write with an empty stomach than to earn money with an empty head. Of course, that comment was retaliated with just how much knowledge you need to possess in the negotiation of a deal. I retorted, saying that I wasn't talking about those, but the passion involved. If I don't have the passion involved in the work I do, I'd feel like a robot along an assembly line, doing things as ordered and never on my own free will. He was disappointed of course, but as much as I understood where he was coming from, I declined his offer. Money is nice, but writing is nicer.

Now, here comes the problem. I don't see the books that I write flying off the shelves in bookstores. I don't imagine my name hitting any sort of bestseller's list, or having anything more than three stars on any book review anywhere. The fact is, that there aren't a lot of stories that haven't been written a million times over. Of course, all stories are based on seven basic arches, but I'm sure if I publish a story, somebody is going to tell me "It's great, but somebody wrote it before. Sorry".

This is how the crossroads look like, one with a sign pointing to a dozen different directions. Worse off, they don't even have words on the signs, but a bunch of question marks for me to fill. There isn't a clear road ahead of me, to tell me that by going this way you will start a writing career, successful or not. Sure there is the passion and the interest, but when practicality sets in I start to doubt myself. How far can your book go, with a local market that is this small? But of course, books are probably a better shot at world fame really. Like I always say, it is easier to be known to the rest of the world with the book you write than the songs you sing or the movies you film. Books travel further than the other mediums, and not restricted to any markets really. Of course, I am hoping that is not the idealistic side of me doing the typing.

So I am keeping my hopes up, and hopefully one day I might be able to make the beginning of a story and the end meet in a satisfactory way. You know how writers are, we always look back on our works a few months later and read it with distaste. It's just like how actors hate to see their own performances on screen, it's probably the same feeling. I hate to read my works and then a few months later, notice how incoherent everything seems. There is a self-depreciating quality inside of me that no compliments will be good enough to eradicate.

Despite all those, I still appreciate the encouragements and the kind words from friends, though not from family. My parents probably won't understand much that I am typing here, and my sister doesn't know the existence of this blog. Even if she does, she probably cannot care less about what her brother is going through, to be honest. These words propel me ever forward, even if the signs on the crossroads read like that: ???. The fact is, armed with interest and passion, there isn't a way that will end with a dead one. Every path then becomes an opportunity, and even if I don't end up writing for a living, I shall live by my writings.

Escapism


Alone on a train aimless in wonder
An outdated map crumbled in my pocket
But I didn't care where I was going
'Cause they're all different names for the same place.

Nobody is at home now, only me. Me, alone in this comfortable prison cell, no chains to my legs and bars, no locked doors or carvings on the wall, counting down the days to the prisoner's release. I wonder if there is a prison in this world, for the willing and the voluntary. There must be such a place, a place in everybody's heads. We all have walls built around our hearts, bars on the window and locked doors with lost keys. Even in the most familiar and comfortable place such as your own home, you can't help the feeling bursting at the seams, the urge to break out and run away.

The urge grows with every passing minute, the way I can count the number of tiles along the corridor, from the start of it to the door to the bathroom(Eighteen). This is definitely a sign, showing that you've been in the same place for too long. So the bags and suitcases in the storeroom becomes alluring all of a sudden, the emptiness of them seems to be calling out to you, to fill them up with clothes and other necessities for a long trip away from this country, this prison, this life. The zips opened making them look like decapitated heads, with their mouths gaping opened begging to be filled with something, anything. Where would I go from here? Where would I go from here?

I picture myself grabbing the luggages while nobody is at home, and packing them with clothes for the warm and the cold. Then stuffing the remaining space with books, my notebook, and other daily necessities like toothbrush and toothpaste. Oh, the goodbye note. Don't forget the goodbye note. I would tear a page out of my notebook and write a brief letter about why I left the house all of a sudden, write where I am going and when I shall return just so that my mother wouldn't call the police. Yes, the goodbye letter. How could I have forgotten about that?

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun
And I knew no words to share with anyone
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed
And all the different names for the same thing

Then head towards the nearest ATM to draw out enough money and have them changed to US dollars. Head down to the airport and pick a random country to go to, and then go. I can picture myself sitting in the airport's waiting room, surrounded by strangers. Strangers knowing where they are going, strangers knowing where they are heading. I'd be the only person there, a coat in my hands and not knowing how the country is going to be like the moment I alight. Hot or cold at this time of the year? Will I be robbed the moment I step out of the airport? Will be shot, killed or worse?

But the idea of an adventure is too desirable, too tempting. Into the rural places of the world, to the highlands and the deep jungles, to experience a life completely different from the one I gotten so used to. The suffocating life, the walls around your heart closes in with every passing night until the column of air above your head isn't enough to breathe anymore.

I am probably too idealistic for my own good, and perhaps need a reality check. Somebody slap me with a giant baseball bat, or shake some sense into me just so that I'm not going to pack up and leave the moment I click on the word 'Publish'. Just leave everything, leave it all. Take a stroll in the wilderness, then fall asleep in the green fields alone with somebody around, the somebody being nobody. To fall asleep under a great tree with a big crown above, sheep grazing in the nearby field. Somebody slap me, please.

But I am still here in my room, before the computer, my mother and sister returned home. I am still here, breathing the same air, drinking the same sorrows, suffocating just as slow. I need alcohol, alcohol of any kind. Like a friend of mine posted on his blog," Alcohol is not only for heartbreaks. It's just a vice". I just need to get away from this place, anywhere.

After all, be it an untamed wilderness, be it a tree for me to sleep under, be it a green grassy field with sheep or a bottle of whiskey in the middle of the night. I guess all these things are merely different names for the same thing: Escape.

There are different names for the same things
There are different names for the same things...