all there's left to do is run

MRS LINTOTT: Didn't you try for Cambridge?
HECTOR: Oxford.
I was brought up in the West Riding. I wanted
somewhere new. That is to say old. So long as it was old
I didn't mind where I went.
MRS LINTOTT: Durham was good in that respect.
HECTOR: Sheffield wasn't.
Cloisters, ancient libraries...I was confusing learning
with the smell of cold stone. If I had gone to Oxford I'd
probably never have worked out the difference.

--Alan Bennett, The History Boys


i am in the first singapore infantry regiment's parade square, washing a sprawling piece of dirty tentage when i receive a call on my handphone. my father's voice, soft and knowing: 'jian yang? you've just won an unconditional place at somerville college, oxford...' silver bullets, and answers. i spent the last day of 2009 in camp drinking apple soda and leering at pictures of hannah montana in a bikini. when the final minute fizzled and died it took forty more for the reception on my phone to kick in and release the floodgates on the happy new year messages; how apt. nothing has ended, it only waits to begin. but amid a bad year, the worst year, fracturing and wrenching, finally, i have done something right, when this is all over i have somewhere to go. this is the last year.

i walked up the stairs considerably perturbed. where would i discover the answer to my problem? it was then that i walked straight into ping kan. what were the odds, in this crowded canteen! 'hello, ping kan!' i said. 'hello jian yang' said ping kan. i took ping kan aside and said, 'ping kan, can i ask you a question?' his dark face lit up with interest. 'yes jian yang,' he said. i looked him in the face and asked, 'ping kan, what is the difference between teh and teh o? does teh o mean tea, black?' ping kan looked a bit surprised. he said, 'i don't know... i only order teh bing. wait. wait i ask my friend for you.' he walked away and asked some of his friends who were sitting down while i thought dreamily about white milk swirls in tan-coloured tea. oh, milk tea! how sweet your flavour! how dignified your aspect! ping kan came back and said 'teh o is milk tea.' i doubted this. 'hmm... do you really think so? you see right, teh o... it's teh o, you see, the o, like a zero, wouldn't you agree that implies a sort of, a kind of absence of something, like milk?' ping kan said glumly, 'i don't know.'

we stood there, puzzling over this for some time.

all this time there had been a group of boys seated around the table nearest to us. one of them looked over at me briefly and made to open his mouth. i looked at him quizzically. 'teh o is tea without milk. or tea black, lah.' ah! enlightenment! i turned to ping kan and summarised: 'so milk tea is just milk tea, and teh o is tea black! just what i thought.' ping kan laughed, and agreed. 'we are not singaporean enough. ha ha ha! ha.' one of the other boys seated around the table added helpfully: 'it's not pronounced teh "o", it's pronounced teh "awrh".' i looked at him, and stroked my chin sagely. 'indeed,' i said. the boys looked at us strangely, like we had suddenly sprouted long, green ears.

ping kan and i walked towards the drinks stall, our conundrum cracked at last. 'jian yang,' ping kan said, 'later at the parade i must take army photo with you. even though i never win silver bayonet i get to go into the award winners special room! ha ha! because my friend asked me to go.' i concurred that i would indeed like to take army photo with ping kan. we bought our drinks. the auntie gave me my teh o in a transparent plastic bag. the pride i felt that i could distinguish this fine beverage from its subtly different cousin! 'bye, jian yang!' said ping kan. 'bye, ping kan!' i said. it was evening. outside near the parade square, i could hear the national anthem start to play.

today: slept from one to eleven. stumbled about in haze for a few hours; slept, again, from one to six. yesterday: must have slept something like thirteen, fourteen hours, amanda palmer a crazed operatic shooting star smeared across the murky dark of slumber. losing time, unquestionably; these days falling to my bed that has some inevitable gravitational magnetism, sick, terse, irritable, not feeling well so might as well sleep it off. neither sad nor warranting any of that standard clunky emotional introspection; apt somehow. office hours that i purchased for a protracted lie march on mindlessly while we play pinball and outdated arcade machines using their gaudy flashing lights to try and burn something permanent onto the fluid shifting surface of our consciousness. always thinking interminably of all the girls even the ones we didn't know too well who had to go without us who had to leave a generation of (ex) boy friends wrenched by distance to stare mutely at the pieces of their lives only reassembling in what will seem like a geological age. meanwhile i am cavalier and say oh i am blowing this joint or what do you mean reservist? mccarthy's blood meridian sketches onto the matrix of my imagination an endless sunscorched desert baptised by vile pyres of blooddrenched scalps with invisible cities and silk in the wings and i wander and navigate this timeless purgatory until something will please make sense.

Sand as far as the eye can see, between the last hills and the sea - the sea - in the cold air of an afternoon almost past, and blessed by the wind that always blows from the north.
The beach. And the sea.
It could be perfection- an image for divine eyes- a world that happens, that is all, the mute existence of land and water, a work perfectly accomplished, truth- truth - but once again it is the redeeming grain of a man that jams the mechanism of that paradise, a trifle capable on its own of suspending all that great apparatus of inexorable truth, a mere nothing, but one planted in the sand, an imperceptible tear in the surface of that sacred icon, a minuscule exception come to rest on the perfection of that boundless beach. From afar he would be no more than a black dot: amid nothingness, the nothing of a man and a painter's easel.
The easel is anchored by slender cords to four stones placed on the sand. It sways imperceptibly in the wind that always blows from the north. The man is wearing waders and a large fisherman's jacket. He is standing, facing the sea, twirling a slim paintbrush between his fingers. On the easel, a canvas.
He is like a sentinel- this you must realise - standing there to defend that part of the world from the silent invasion of perfection, a small crack that fragments that spectacular stage set of being. As it is always like this, you need only the glimmer of a man to wound the repose of that which would otherwise be a split second away from becoming truth, but instead immediately becomes suspense and doubt once more, because of the simple and infinite power of that man, who is a slit, a chink, a small doorway through which return a flood of stories and the enormous inventory of what could be, an infinite gash, a marvelous wound, a path made of thousands of steps where nothing can be true anymore but everything will be- just as the steps are of that woman who, wrapped up in a purple cloak, her head covered, is pacing the beach with measured tread, skirting the backwash of the sea, her feet tracing furrows from right to left across what is by then the lost perfection of the great picture, consuming the distance that separates her from the man until she comes to within a few paces of him, and then right beside him, where it takes nothing to pause and silently look on.
The man does not even turn. He continues staring out at the sea. Silence. From time to time he dips the brush in a copper cup and makes a few light strokes on the canvas. In their wake the bristles of the brush leave a shadow of the palest obscurity that the wind immediately dries, bringing the pristine white back to the surface. Water. In the copper cup there is only water. And on the canvas, nothing. Nothing that may be seen.
The north wind blows as it always does, and the woman pulls her purple cloak closer around her.
"Plasson, you have been working for days and days down here. Why do you carry all these colours around with you if you do not have the courage to use them?"
This seems to wake him up. This hits home. He turns to observe the woman's face. And when he speaks, it is not to reply.
"Please, do not move," he says.
Then he brings the brush up to the woman's face, hesitates a moment, rests it on her lips, and slowly runs it from one corner of her mouth to the other. The bristles come away tinged with carmine. He looks at them, dips them ever so slightly in the water, and looks up once more toward the sea. On the woman's lips there lingers the hint of a taste that obliges her to think "sea water, this man is painting the sea with the sea" - and it is a thought that brings a shiver.
For some time now she has already turned around, and is already pacing measuredly back along the immense beach, her steps a mathematical rosary, when the wind brushes the canvas to dry a puff of rosy light, left to float unadorned amid the white. You could stay for hours looking at that sea, and that sky, and everything, but you would find nothing of that colour. Nothing that may be seen.
The tide, in those parts, comes in before night falls. Just before. The water surrounds the man and his easel, it clutches them, slowly but with precision, they stay there, the one and the other, impassable, like a miniature island, or a wreck with two heads.
Plasson, the painter.
Every evening a boat comes to pick him up, just before sunset, when the water has already reached his heart. This is the way he wants it. he boards the boat, stows away the easel and all, and allows himself to be taken home.
The sentinel goes away. His duty done.
Danger averted. Against the sunset the icon that has again failed to become sacred fades away. All because of that manikin and his paintbrushes. And now that he has gone, time has run out. The dark suspends everything. There is nothing that can, in the dark, become true.  
                    

                                                                                                        -- Alessandro Baricco, Ocean Sea



i purchased the packet of straws from the convenience store (seventy five cents) to circumvent the problem that had been plaguing me for some time now. this problem being that when you put ice cubes in a cup of drink - whatever it may be, fruit juice, soda, water - and attempt to sip the ice cubes crowd towards the rim of the cup, not only adhering to your lips with an unpleasant icy sensation but also restricting the flow of the liquid into your mouth. solution: straw. in this case the beverage of choice was a cup of milk; of course the cartons of milk are already kept cold by the fridge but i felt that i needed to drink something colder. so i scooped some ice into a cup and poured the milk into it and stuck a straw inside and then lounged around in my cool, dark room, drinking iced milk. and i felt inexplicably happy when i did that, as i always do when i satisfy one of my weird desires, sudden urges or cravings for things to be a certain way, where i would become enamoured with an image or a picture of an idea or a taste that would occupy the history of the snapshots of my life. and this time it was a tall, glass of chilled milk, not cold milk, or cool milk, but necessarily chilled, and yes it wasn't enough because all i could manage was a red mug and it wasn't even all that tall. i once told karen that i really wanted a nice set of transparent glasses, like juice glasses to drink from, and she bought a set of six of them for me, and i was happy and would invent excuses to pour all manner of things into them even when i wasn't thirsty; purple cloudy mangosteen juice, caramel-coloured fizzy cola, or even just simple clear water, and they would always be cold, deliciously cold, and i would go into a room and turn off the lights just so i could enjoy my drink from a glass, and they would always taste better, or fresher somehow. and i figured that even if it made no sense i should chase these strange urges, to drink chilled milk, or to take sips from cool glasses; and another time it happened was on a cruise ship, hong chen had asked me, and it was great, this cruise ship, a giant behemoth of a vessel, and i spent the night wandering the pathways of the ship amid the crimson carpeting and the dim light, and it was night time, and i suddenly felt it, an imperative, like a bell chiming, quiet, insistent: i would like to go out onto the deck, and have a frosty can of coke. and so i did, even though it cost me six dollars and thirty cents, (to quench a thirst...), walked out into the sea breeze and leaned on the railings and drank my soda as i looked out on the dark waters.

and so i didn't know where and when it began, this yen for an elsewhere, this perpetual sense of displacement. i talked to edward and told him how i would wander the restaurants and the movie theaters of town alone like a maiden specter, and tried to express to him how this was so important to me, this solitude, this freedom, the melodious silence in my own head, and he looked at me, child-like, and said, oh, is that so important to you? then he said, simply: but i am afraid of being alone. and i thought about that, and i realised, that is not what i meant; it is different, because i am with myself, and in memories i can summon whoever i wish to see or remember and they will never become tiresome, or less beautiful than i want them to be. and so that is not what i meant. but maybe i am afraid of loneliness, too. when i speak of leaving and change it is an other, a place better and somehow different, where the sin and shame of my life would leak out, unnoticed, to evaporate without clamour, to make myself anew, cleansed of fear and hatred and fatigue, and that is worth so much that i once said that i could leave everyone that i had ever met here behind and not regret it, as if i were jettisoning incidental ballast in order to reach a misty shore in the distance. and the islandfolk would try to tell me, with their vision made narrow by comfort and habit, that it was the same there, that the grass was the same shade of green, that it might be worse, that people get shot over there, all of which i could disperse as the white noise made by the blissfully ignorant, but i was still struck by the core of it, the freezing black insinuation that this be all there ever was, the dust and the pain and foiled hope, a cannonade of unending blows that would ultimately breach the mildewed corridors of my wasted heart. and i thought: no. this will not stand; there is one life and i have the power to mold it, to scream my desire into something tangible, wings, escape tunnels, time machines - i will wait, i may lose sight of things, i might be worn and battered and dismantled. but i will have my freedom.

i want to remember the velvety red curtains, and the expensive looking wooden stage, and the rows and rows of plush seats that curved along the sides, like a real theatre. and the workshop downstairs, too, can't forget that, where we painted the rectangular flats that made up our set, (i dirtied every pair of my tan school uniform with stains) and sweated with the exertion of sawing and hammering nails and carrying props and chairs up the winding staircases. backstage, the two sweet and shy girls from ares who helped out with costumes (on the last day, giggling, they pressed a farewell piece of candy into my hand and ran away) and po linn reminding me to bring my red file onstage. and i want to remember lecture theatre five, always lecture theatre five, where i would stretch myself out over the long brown desks and listen to jingwei bounce about the room and darrell say hilarious, exuberant things, his good-boy fringe flopping all over his forehead. and shang da galumphing everywhere devouring the scenery and olivia, so composed, so quiet, so still, and melo thinking it's all rather brutal, darling. do you remember these things, months on? do you remember rehearsals at rachel's house, gushing over yvonne's programs, do you remember our posters all over the school (glenn: this is photoshopped lah jian yang! kylie: if you actually looked like that i would marry you!!!). and do you remember the last days, tense, the air taut with all the beautiful possibilities of success and applause, when we sat in the empty drama centre, addicted to our scripts? it was another in-between-place, that drama centre, when we would clock in as soon as lessons ended (by then an irrelevant haze) and leave, exhausted, late in the night, leaving our props silent in the darkness, the lines we'd spoken during the countless tech runs wafting about in the air onstage, and the white styrofoam cartons of the sweet-and-sour lemon chicken rice (lunch, dinner, lunch, dinner, plastic spoons and forks...) piling up in the green rubbish bins. it was a strange kind of peace, that place, in those few days, where we annihilated past worries, concern, and anxieties; what were these things to the leviathan facing us on opening night? and we will never feel it again, standing on the brightly lit stage with only the drawn curtain to separate us from the faint whispering that grew into a distinct murmur, and finally into the impatient buzz that was to be our audience. never feel the laughter washing over us in waves of warmth, the reward when we got things right, when we hit each note just as we were supposed to, or in ways we never thought we could. and we did it so many times.

when things are taken away what we have left is hope, and when that will not serve, memory stands in for sustenance. true; it is easier now - i have wriggled myself into a place relatively untouched by the army's foulest practices, and when i leave camp every day i am unbelievably thankful. but now life is so strange. a half-life, stitched together in patches; where joy was once cool wind, trickling water, and thoughts of flight, now all i look forward to are oily fish and chips, chunky kit-kat bars, and feeding endless twenty cent coins into an outdated arcade machine. in the specialists' mess and the canteens around camp my friends and i eat, and drink, and talk of things, faint-things, absent-things, transparent-things; how else would we fill the vacancies in our minds and the unending silence of massive, relentless interval? i could wear a watch now, if i wanted to, indifferent: the hours slide off me like some forlorn drizzle. so it is into the past i have retreated; where i cut a cleaner, clearer outline - where colours are brighter, and the sky is nearer. 

"Where will we go?"
"Florida," Chase Buell said.
"Cool," said Lux. "Florida."
A minute later, we heard a car door alarm shut in the garage. A few of us recall hearing the faint strains of a popular song drifting through the night, which told us she was playing the radio. We waited. We weren't sure where the other girls were. We could hear sounds of packing upstairs, a closet door opening, a suitcase jangling bedsprings. Feet moved above and below. Something was being dragged across the basement floor. Though the nature of the sounds eluded us, a precision surrounded them; every movement seemed exact, part of an elaborate escape plan. We understood that we were only pawns in this strategy, useful for a time, but this didn't lessen our exhilaration. The knowledge welled in us that we would soon be in the car with the girls, driving them out of our green neighborhood and into the pure, free desolation of back roads we didn't even know yet. We played paper, scissors, rock to see who would go along, who would stay behind. And all the while the sense that the girls would soon join us filled us with a quiet happiness. Who knew how accustomed we might get to those sounds? Of elastic satin suitcase pockets snapping closed? Of jewelry rattling? Of the hunchback foot-dragging sound of the girls carrying suitcases down an anonymous corridor? Unknown roads took shape in our minds. We saw ourselves cutting swathes through cattails, freshwater inlets, old boatyards. At some gas station we would ask for the ladies' room key because the girls would be too shy. We would play the radio with the windows open.


                                                                                                           -- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

'you charge hourly?' i suppose my sonorous english is out of place in this seedy hotel lobby, because the old guy at the desk is momentarily stunned, but recovers to mutter: fifteen for one hour. twenty for two. i turn to look questioningly at the girl beside me - she says, twenty for two. i pay, and chuckle when i hand him my green identity card. i am passed an airconditioning remote control - presumably the clientele here cannot be trusted, or profits don't bring in enough funds for one in every room - and we enter the lift. the moment we reach the second floor, i hear a woman moan twice, long, loud, and urgent, and i suddenly imagine the curve of a girl's back, arched and sensuous. i look at my companion excitedly, and we stand frozen, attentive, in the tight corner just outside the lift, stilling our breathing to try and catch the sounds of people fucking through the thin walls; the two of us are not here for sex but to gape at its shadows, like children at a night safari, where a mewl could be a tiger, a copse could be a jungle - i hear shuffling, and taut scrunched up noises that could be sudden intakes of breath, and i think wildly of slinky red coverlets and muscle heaving with desire. later, after we ransack our sordid room in vain for condoms, i lie on the cheap bed and try to sleep in my jeans and too-tight shirt while she watches television. i try to wish myself here, to really be a nineteen year old lying on a bed that must harbour the invisible stains of a thousand trysts in some by-the-hour hotel in a redlight district somewhere in the world, a pitstop in the middle of an adventure, a low point in the journey perhaps, but on a journey nonetheless, and it works for a while as i focus on the fading ceiling paint or the cracks in the small bathtub. it dawns on me that for some time now i have been running- running as fast as i can, long past that point where fatigue matters, running so fast that almost everyone and everything has become a blur, but i am also waiting, and it is only here that this makes sense, that i can be so desperately kinetic and unbearably stationary, all at the same time.

Eva. Because her name is a synonym for temptation: what treads nearer to the core of man? Because her soul swims in her eyes. Because I dream of creeping through the velvet folds to her room, where I let myself in, hum her a tune so - so - so softly, she stands with her naked feet on mine, her ear to my heart and we waltz like string-puppets. After that kiss, she says, 'Vous embrassez comme un poisson rouge!' and in moonlit mirrors we fall in love with our youth and beauty. Because all my life, sophisticated, idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I'm terra incognita, and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow-grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart and couldn't tell C-major from a sergeant-major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man - his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music - but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blow-hole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance 'beauty', yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.


                                                                                                     -- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas


evening at east coast park. left yarn, alfred, terrance, and magic cards one and a half hours earlier than i should've cause my brother said bicycle shops close at eight. i walk along the beach, taking in sights; the almost-gone sun and the risen moon's indigo lamp (set on low) shades shapeless sand and depthless stirring water; up and down the long curve of the coast ahead of me, fishermen have mounted their rods vertical into the ground, hooks dangling in the air marked by little capsules of glow-in-the-dark-green, a long string of scattered suspended illumination, like hastily arranged christmas tree bulbs, marking the boundary between land and sea. facing the breeze far out beyond the beach i see a massive line of countless boats, tankers, cruise ships, each an independent constellation of twinkling, winking light, combining to make a grand belt studded with clusters of chaotic luminescence that god himself must have wrapped around this fishbowl of an island. i think of the time i pressed my face against the cold cabin window on my flight to heathrow as it passed over arabia; looking down, i saw the skeletons of cities imprinted in the brown earth, their bones made of broad highways turned thin by distance, their joints marked by some faint street lamp or highpowered incandescence, all pinpricks at altitude. is it not a marvel that something as huge and teeming as a middle eastern city could be contained within my tiny aeroplane window? i breathed mist onto the glass, fogging up the image. back on the beach, staring at the artificial stars populated just above sea level, i had a brief fantasy that like some childhood fable i could step out onto the immense mass of black water and some path would emerge to accomodate my cheap blue-and-white sports shoes; perhaps the moonlight would smoothen the rippling currents, would provide some ground beneath my feet. i would then walk across the sea, unnoticed, shedding my former self like a carapace, and finally find the lights that were once so far out of reach.

as i ambled past couples huddled together and children wading through the shallows i began to hope that there would be some order to this beauty; that this other world i had suddenly stumbled upon that was so removed from everything i had known for so long would come to claim me. how could it leave me behind? it was so immense; so many possibilities and promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness blossomed in the calm night air as i walked on the beach, wearing a thin t shirt and bermudas (of my choosing!), the ethereal opening pulses of such great heights whispering in my ear - every inch the free man. how could i be here now but in time so callously near be yanked back into that colourless complex of grit and tedium to be mummified into green? it seemed utterly compelling to me at that moment that any design or driving force in life was what we made of it; events could occur one way or the other and any jot of sense behind it would be merely accidental. i think of jeremy, calm and detached in his existential angst. i think about love (my mending heart), truth (cruel these months), justice (where are you now?), fate (can't hold my breath for much longer). even the gorgeous epigraph above is not what it seems. no matter. inevitable pain and realism make for a dreary partnership. we take whatever brief flashes we are afforded. i meet up with claire, polinn, shibao, and cycle through the night, four roman candles flickering in the dark.

i am bent double over the ground, my clenched fists embedded into the soil, and it is as if the scattered parts of the weakness within my body aggregated and waged revolt: my mouth opens of its own accord, and spills this bilge all over the leafy forest floor: i can't do it, oh god, i can't do it, i can't do it. but it is easy sitting here, now, in airconditioning and comfort to dismiss my despair; then, at the halfway mark in my twenty eight kilometre graduation march, it is a truth to me, an unwelcome reality that seeped its way past my defenses and made itself a robust home that weighed down my limbs and my will. route marches were never a challenge; they were tiresome, they were tedious, they were boring, but they were mere rock walls to be chipped away at that would ultimately fall, not something that could defeat me. but today, something different has happened, for during the one hour lunch rest point my body has contracted something that is not mere fatigue; i run to the latrine point and crouch over the vegetation, retching and retching and retching but nothing will come, and my body refuses to cool down even though my shirt is off. i am sick, and eleven kilometres remain unmarched, and the combat load which the broadness of my shoulders has always disdained is mutating into atlas' burden. it was a hot day, even my psychotic commanders are giving us allowances, to roll up our sleeves, to unbutton our shirts, to wear our jockey caps instead of our helmets. we start off from the rest point, one hour rest is not enough, i am so scared i can't make it, the world spins around me like some crazy panoramic slot machine and a river of bile ricochets about in my gut.

i have never experienced such panic or fear or utter defeat that this fever or whatever insane ailment brought upon me. it was some creeping, almighty heat that inched across my skin and my neck and scorched my bones so that every movement i made i felt would be my collapsing last. the day gets hotter, and surely there can be no place like this in singapore, when did this desert emerge, o hazy unending dirt paths and sun-gilded tall grass and not a speckle of shade in sight? the glare is obscene. i am slowly growing delirious, for real, i try to think of the things i used to dream of on route marches to keep me occupied, faces of pretty girls i know, i try to work my way down from there (heh heh heh) but even these...  indelible images shimmer and disintegrate in the heat, i try to remember speeches of the characters i'd played on stage, i can't, the words don't come. i giggle, involuntarily, and a line from a poem of karen's cackles its way through my addled head: all afternoon we turn in the silent space, clothed in heat. i think of the afternoons i spent melded to the floor of my room, paralysed by the temperature, and of what small beer that was to this. imagine that some vile black flame has melted the connections between your brain and the rest of your body, so that when you try to send commands, to move, simple things like looking from left to right, the impulses are waylaid. at lunch i tried to chew my food but i couldn't, i just couldn't, i watched with some detached wonder as large chunks of rice grains fell out of my slack jaw and onto my heaving abdomen, and whenever i drank water while my feet stamped out their infernal rhythm into the sand some of it would trickle out from my lips and make its shameful way down my shirt. i would have crumpled but the terrain afforded no shade for me to crumple into. is this how they make you continue; put a man in front, to the left, the right, behind you, marching, so that there is nothing to do but to go on? i am wondering through a gauzy blurred haze if, tonight, in a few hours, in coolness and comfort, i will remember any of this, if, that is enough, to make me fight, make me fight the injunctions that scream, you can't do it, you are sick, live to fight another day, fall out now, you can't do it, this is too much, too much. the answer comes later, when i'm lying on the floor near the medic during a break point, giving myself a sponge bath, preparing to give up. i open my mouth to say, 'i would like to fall out', but then my platoon commander strolls over, intones 'mind over matter' with a smirk, and looks at me. 'are you continuing?' i glare straight back at him, and in proper control of speech for the first time in hours, find the strength to go on: 'yes, i am.'

so heat exhaustion seems to be the only adventure i am having these days. and what are all of you doing? matriculation is the order of the day, is it not; all those forms that promise so much more than meeting your dietary requirements if you read between the lines, applications for visas, late-night researching on where you're going that's more thorough than any paper you've ever done before. i won't hide it, i'm jealous, i think about what i could be doing now if, at the end of my two years' stay in boston, my father had decided to stay on in the states. i think of this chinese-american jian yang sometimes, whether he'd be messed up in all the ways i'm messed up, whether he'd be cool in all the ways i'm cool. but jealousy aside, i hope you will make it, not just make it, i hope you will be happy, and if you are looking, i hope you find what you are looking for. now is the time, whether you are going overseas or not, because really, university is another country, isn't it? you have the freedom now, the power i so sorely lack, promise me you will wield it, whoever you are, whatever your parents told you, whatever you stopped yourself from doing because you were scared, no one is watching you now, there is precious little time left. you must do this, you must shake your dreams from the stuff they were made on, and trap them into reality. for my part once i am unshackled i swear on everything that is holy i will take wing, i will get lost on the road, i will light fireworks in a field, i will find sex unabashed and love requited, i will find the stars and the sea. but for now it is up to you to show me the meaning of flight. 

We crawled into our hut and feel uneasily asleep, never forgetting that we must keep our heels against our buttocks, always aware of the mites and flies in the sand. I woke up in absolute darkness. I could feel the branches at my side and the damp at my back, and Lucille asleep against me, but I could see nothing. Remembering that Lucille had crawled in behind me, and that she crouched between me and the door, I scrambled out through the roof and over the wall into darkness no less absolute. There was no moon. In fact, there appeared to be no sky. Apart from the steady shimmering of the lake and the rush of the woods, there were singular, isolated lake sounds, placeless and disembodied, and very near my ears, like sounds in a dream. There were lisps and titters, and the sounds of stealthy approach- the sense of a disturbing intention, its enacting inexplicably deferred. "Lucille," I said. I could hear her stand up through the roof. "What time do you think it is?" We could not guess. Coyotes cried, and owls, and hawks, and loons.
It was so dark that creatures came down to the water within a few feet of us. We could not see what they were. Lucille began to throw stones at them. "They're supposed to be able to smell us," she grumbled. For a while she sang "Mockingbird Hill," and then she sat down beside me in our ruined stronghold, never still, never accepting that all our human boundaries were overrun.
Lucille would tell this story differently. She would say I feel asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones. Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. The nerves and the brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away, the curve of the back and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable. Say that my mother was as tall as a man, and that she sometimes set me on her shoulders, so that I could splash my hands in the cold leaves above our heads. Say that my grandmother sang in her throat while she sat on her bed and we laced up her big black shoes. Such details are merely accidental. Who could know but us? And since their thoughts were bent upon other ghosts than ours, other darknesses than we had seen, why must we be left, the survivors picking among flotsam, among the small, unnoticed, unvalued clutter that was all that remained when they vanished, that only catastrophe made notable? Darkness is the only solvent. When it was dark, despite Lucille's pacing and whistling, and despite what must have been dreams (since even Sylvie came to haunt me), it seemed to me that there need not be relic, remnant, margin, residue, memento, bequest, memory, thought, track, or trace, if only the darkness could be perfect and permanent.


                                                                          -- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping


i woke up, today i slept for ten hours. it was raining. i felt remade, it felt like my body had been drenched in light. i sat awhile, unmoving, suffused with peace, there was some strange silence except for the watering of earth outside. i wished for this to last, even as the thought that it would not encroached, like a growing dark corner in my mind. oddly it occurred to me: is this what praying feels like? regina asks: if i kiss you where it's sore, will you feel better? (better, better, better) i make my mind up that i will not gather dust, i will emerge unharmed. when this is all over i must be happy. i have waited for so long now.

VIOLA
Most sweet lady, --
OLIVIA
A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it.
Where lies your text?
VIOLA
In Orsino's bosom.
OLIVIA
In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?
VIOLA
To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.
OLIVIA
O, I have read it: it is heresy. Have you no more to say?
VIOLA
Good madam, let me see your face.
OLIVIA
Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate
with my face? You are now out of your text: but
we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.
Look you, sir, such a one I was this present: is't
not well done?
VIOLA
Excellently done, if God did all.
OLIVIA
'Tis in grain, sir; 'twill endure wind and weather.
VIOLA
'Tis nature truly blent, whose red and white
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy.
OLIVIA
O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give
out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be
inventoried, and every particle and utensil
labelled to my will: as, item, two lips,
indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to
them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were
you sent hither to praise me?
VIOLA
I see what you are, you are too proud;
But, if you were the devil, you are fair.
My lord and master loves you: O, such love
Could be but recompensed, though you were crown'd
The nonpareil of beauty!
OLIVIA
How does he love me?
VIOLA
With adorations, fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
OLIVIA
Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him:
Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth:
In voices well divulged, free, learn'd and valiant;
And in dimension and the shape of nature
A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him;
He might have took his answer long ago.
VIOLA
If I did love you in my master's flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense;
I would not understand it.
OLIVIA
Why, what would you?
VIOLA
Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me!
OLIVIA
You might do much.
What is your parentage?
VIOLA
Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:
I am a gentleman.
OLIVIA 
Get you to your lord;
I cannot love him: let him send no more;
Unless, perchance, you come to me again,
To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well:
I thank you for your pains: spend this for me.
VIOLA
I am no fee'd post, lady; keep your purse:
My master, not myself, lacks recompense.
Love makes his heart of flint that you shall love;
And let your fervour, like my master's, be
Placed in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.

                                                                         -- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

on the way back from fort canning i am thinking about possibilities when i step into a cab, and the taxi driver starts to talk to me in chinese: have you eaten? yes, i say, and we take off into the night. i wonder, once again, what he must think of this young man in his expensive white shirt, languid (in his shirtsleeves). however it is my hair, not my dress, that he notices: are you serving national service, now? still in basic? yes, one and a half months in. he says, last time, the food was made by recruits, and if you didn't eat any, it was your problem! he laughs, and i laugh together with him. we exchange the comparisons - third generation soldier to second generation or first - it is customary, and i am bored, looking out the window, offering terse and polite replies, already thinking of my rationed hours and how to spend them. then he says: what have you studied? a-level. not bad, a-level. after army, i guess you'll go to university? sometimes, parents can't afford to pay for university. i had three sons - they're about thirty, forty now, all married, so the load is off my back. but i am telling you about things that happened a long time ago. my oldest son had very good grades, and he wanted to go to polytechnic, to study a three year degree course. but i could not pay for him to go, i drove a lorry, we had no money, i could not pay for him. so he went to the airforce, and he signed a bond with the government,  three years course at polytechnic, and six years in the airforce. and my second eldest son, he wanted to study a degree course, but i could not pay for him. because i could not pay for him, he went to the ministry of education, and signed a bond with them, they would pay for his university education, and he would be bonded to them for six years. he has been a teacher for over ten years now. back in the army, he needed money, so he went to his officer, and he said, can i teach tuition on the side? and the officer said, ok, sure, you leave camp at five, you go teach your tuition, and then you come back in by twelve. i am silent upon hearing this. the driver says, your parents can pay for you to go to university? yes, i say, i am very lucky. you must work hard, he says. and i say: i will.

I have known Ethel Png for 25 years now, ever since, at the age of fourteen, we were caned for wearing pink socks to school. It was 1966, the Western world was in turmoil, the Beatles were in the ascendant, and we were still in an environment where wearing pink socks was a major transgression. "I'm dying here," Ethel wailed to me more than once.
Not long after, her family, then one of the richest in Singapore, sent her to the United States to study. It was never clear what exactly she was studying, but she wound up in California, in the company of millions of assorted freaks, and began to "go wild", as her distraught mother put it to my mother. Ethel showed me photographs of herself back then, a small, even tiny figure, buried under an avalanche of hair that stopped somewhere around her kneecaps, and clad in exaggerated bell-bottoms a mile wide. She looked like Yoko Ono on a very bad day. Other photographs showed her sitting in a ring of similarly garbed people, all smoking joints. You could tell they were joints, because everybody had this fogged-out, loopy and yet perfectly ecstatic look on their faces. These pictures, which she stupidly sent back, threw her family into a tailspin and, in a fit of moralistic frenzy, they cut off her funds in attempt to make her return. Instead, she started cultivating marijuana in her back yard in order to make a living, got busted, and languished in custody for a month, until her arresting officer, who was smitten with her, posted bail, after which they took off to Woodstock for the festival, of which she didn't remember a single thing. She did Woodstock, she did the lot: pot, junk, LSD, transcendental meditation, yoga, Zen, yoghurt etc...
In 1972 her father was declared a bankrupt, the family money petered out, and Ethel was back in Singapore with an Eurasian baby christened Rainforest Peace Png, whom she called Rain. She said the father (her arresting officer) was a louse and a fascist who supported Nixon and she never wanted to see him again. Ethel's mother took one look at Rain, checked for signs of a wedding ring on her daughter's finger, found none, and promptly had hysterics. Ethel's father committed suicide, consumed with shame at the collapse of his business. Her mother eventually retired to a small house in Katong with the faithful family retainer, leaving Ethel with a mountain of debts and relatives who treated her like a pariah.
Meanwhile, my life continued its slow and enervating course. I read law at the local university, I had one or two boyfriends, nothing serious - earnest, steady boys who wore glasses. My parents went on being respectable, resfusing to go mad or spectacularly bankrupt.. Even though Ethel's life was clearly a mess, I could never see her without feeling a pang of envy: how could one person monopolise all the excitement rationed out on this island?
Ethel took a look at her situation and decided it was serious: she had an illegitimate son and no money. So she decided to put her Californian experience to some use: she started a health food shop. At that time, everybody thought she was making a mistake. They told her meat-guzzling, oil-slurping Singaporeans would stay away in droves, and they did, at first, but Ethel refused to admit defeat. A committed vegetarian herself, she wrote articles, pamphlets, appeared on TV,gave talks; at one time, it was impossible to avoid Ethel's face or voice, expounding on the benefits of lentils to the digestive system. Ethel's Healthy Living stopped being a mere curiousity shop as she began to see some return on her investment.
The only problem was that for years she never abandoned her uncompromising hippie lifestyle: she never stopped smoking pot, for example, which, in the anti-drug hysteria then prevailing, led to her arrest (again), but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Magnanimously, she invited the investigating officers around for a vegetarian cook-out at her place; several of them, seduced by the great chilli stringbean recipe, no doubt, later became her lovers.
I thought she was completely mad and told her so.
"Darling, I've given up worrying what people think of me," she said. "You should try it - it gives you a marvellous sense of release."
But I knew I never would.



                                                       -- Claire Tham, Saving the Rainforest

i first encountered claire tham at a rehearsal for how the other half loves; someone had carelessly thrown the slim, compact little volume entitled 'fascist rock' on the front row bench in lt5 and i was drawn to the cover's bizarre font and peculiar colouring. i picked it up ('hey!!!!! that's mine!!!!! sucker!!!!!' guess who), began to read, and quickly found myself hooked to her crystalline prose, unpretentious air (what hwee hwee tan could learn from this woman would fill several warehouses) but most of all the brilliantly engineered miasma of surrealism and ennui that floated around her short stories (not so immediately evident in the extract; if i could muster the patience to quote entire stories, i would do so: effected not by piece but as a whole): they never ended with any point or flourish or cleverly built up denouement; it was instead as if, in less than thirty pages, without any reference to angst or trappedness or claustrophobia, she would - in a endless variety of faces and names and situations that somehow seemed connected - build the singaporean experience, write the singaporean story.

perhaps i am being narrow: the third last page of 'saving the rainforest and other assorted stories' notes that claire tham was educated at the convent of the holy infant jesus, hwa chong junior college (i found her, one lazy afternoon, on mr miles' wall: black-and-white, cheery, then just a schoolgirl, just like grace, just like li-ann) and oxford, where she read law. no, i decide; i am as singaporean as anyone else, bourgeios or no: a nation cannot be split down the middle, neatly, (as, tiresomely, we are wont) into two 'groups' of people; it is a seething mass, a misshapen, shambling horror, whose cacophony of discordant voices will take your cosmopolitan and your heartlander and tell them to go fuck themselves. and so i find kinship in this strange, unsung author; taught by the same men, walked the same halls - and it seems that we have - just a bit - more than that in common.

the sky overhead is gunmetal grey at seven am and i am standing with hong chen and tai boon at the basketball courts in nie, and i have just fluffed five simple shots (180 deg to the basket) in a row. abc, loser pays for breakfast. remembering the weeks preceding my flight is like peering through a cracked, stained window to steal glimpses of the goings on of the house within; i feel like i'm on the outside, everything is both blurry and fragmented. a flash: we are being driven by hong chen down bukit timah road, and i am watching the needle on the speedometer inch its way past 100 kmh, 110kmh, 120kmh ... it is early in the morning and there are very few cars on the road, but i feel my throat close and my chest clench. hong chen says, there are no cars on the road, man, relax! i dare to look: 140km and climbing; my vision starts to tremble as the car accelerates. tai boon says, you're gonna get us all killed. hong chen says, it's a straight road, man, there are no turns, no cars, it's perfectly safe! did i tell you guys about the time i was driving down here and suddenly two cars pulled up alongside me, neck to neck, and zoomed ahead? it was like in a hollywood movie! tai boon asks, what did you do then? hong chen says, i floored it, duh. i got to like 180kmh before i had to stop; i overtook one of the cars, you know! another flash: the mahjong tiles are like white jade, cool to my fingers, gentle clinking soft on my ears as i build and rearrange palisades and fortresses. chuang yang's apartment is a timeless capsule to the four of us; north wind, east wind, south wind; flowers, centipedes, exasperation, exultation, and the clatter of poker chips. we can go for six, seven, eight hours without realising it. and this is what the start of my nineteen was about; being between greater things, and so content to spend my time gambling, playing basketball and racing down the roads that used to take us to school.

the trip from changi to heathrow passes in a flash. sitting in a dark, shadowy cabin and being fed meals on a tray that look like rations turns what is an ordeal for most people into an adventure for me, and i have more than enough adrenaline and excitement to last thirteen hours. the united kingdom isn't just temperature cold, i realised, it even looks cold; my first glimpses of the country are on the train from the airport to paddington railway station, and i see miles and miles of stark, rigid trees and dusty looking brick buildings in muted colours (grey, dirty brown, dirty grey...). it is quite beautiful, but in an icy, distant way. paddington station, on the other hand, seems to me like a rowling creation; immense and chaotic, with trains and kiosks scattered all over the place, and i am quite overwhelmed. but the first moment of beauty in this holiday comes when i step onto the station platform; i realise that when i exhale, i can see my breath condense in the air. it only occurs to me right then - yes, i am off that island, i am here, in england, where the weather is delicious and yes, even the weather is almost uplifting.

the next few days are not as idyllic, however - cut to the core by the harsh wind, cold, and disoriented, i quickly fall ill and spend a lot of my time staggering around in a grumpy stupor. even arrival in the city of the dreaming spires is spoiled slightly for me; it all seems rather old and mildewed to my fever-addled head. but karen is kind to me, and takes me places a tourist would normally not get to go; i sneak into the exam schools building (closed to the public) and attend a history lecture on the carolingian franks, and quickly am able to wander around the town's olden buildings with some sense of wonder. what strikes me most about the place is its sense of incredible age; this place is so old, it has such history, i kept finding myself thinking, and whenever i ventured into a church or a chapel i was struck by how solemn, grand, and most of all, at peace they were. but the real magic started last night, when siewch and her boyfriend invited karen and me to keble formal dinner. we meet siewch and christopher outside the dining hall, near the gates: it's like a castle, i realised, with dim lights and aged crenellation everywhere, living here must be like living in a castle. how do you find oxford so far, siewch asks me, and i say, it's very nice, it's very old. it's very quaint. christopher asks me, did you just say the 'q' word?, with mock exasperation. quaint? yes, i did, i say, what's wrong with that? don't say that word, he says, it's terrible, it's what americans use to describe little english villages. i laugh, and say, okay, and we walk into the dining hall, and my breath is taken away - a ceiling so tall it must brush the heavens and rows and rows of wooden tables adorned with candles giving a warm glow and paintings of severe old men on the walls. i cannot get over this beauty; suddenly, someone raps the table really hard and we all stand to say grace. my meagre writing cannot do it justice; i can scarcely believe that i am eating roast potatoes and talking about ligers and microwave accidents amidst all this majesty. later, we walk the streets, pass through graveyards, down narrow roads, past modern science research buildings and chinese takeouts and cafes, and we have ice cream, and we talk.

but now i am in london. we are in the museum of london; karen, lisabel, and her boyfriend (who, in karen's words, 'looks like an indian prince who has just decided to slum it for a while') run around the panoply of exhibits looking for statues in goofy poses to imitate. i am in london, and every street is an incredible wealth of light and fashion and magic: absolutely overrun with food of all cuisines and priceranges, we pass cafes and bistros and fastfood joints and chicken restaurants and chinese places... i am in london, and as i go down the escalator in the underground the posters for west end theatre scream out at me: wicked, billy elliott, madame de sade, hairspray, the lion king. i walk past university college london's psychology building and suddenly laugh out loud as i bite into an original glazed krispy kreme, it's so good. as we traipse around leicester square in circles, looking for chinatown, grumbling contentedly (i want coke, says lisabel. i want some dessert! says karen) passing the west end theatres with their glitzy lights and loud advertisements i feel unabashedly young and alive, i feel as if my whole life is laid in front of me; i've found it, now i can love it, i can live it, and i want to take this sparkling city and see everything it has to offer.

THOMASINA: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
SEPTIMUS: No.
THOMASINA: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
SEPTIMUS: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it forever. This is known as free will or self-determination. (He picks up the tortoise and moves it a few inches as though it had strayed, on top of some loose papers, and admonishes it.) Sit!
THOMASINA: Septimus, do you think God is a Newtonian?
SEPTIMUS: An Etonian? Almost certainly, I'm afraid. We must ask your brother to make it his first enquiry.
THOMASINA: No, Septimus, a Newtonian. Septimus! Am I the first person to have thought of this?
SEPTIMUS: No.
THOMASINA: I have not said yet.
SEPTIMUS: 'If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton's law of motion, what becomes of free will?'
THOMASINA: No.
SEPTIMUS: God's will.
THOMASINA: No.
SEPTIMUS: Sin.
THOMASINA: (derisively) No!
SEPTIMUS: Very well.
THOMASINA: If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.
SEPTIMUS: (pause) Yes. (pause) Yes, as far as I know, you are the first person to have thought of this. (Pause. With an effort) In the margin of his copy of Arithmetica, Fermat wrote that he had discovered a wonderful proof of his theorem but, the margin being too narrow for his purpose, did not have room to write it down. The note was found after his death, and from that day to this-
THOMASINA: Oh! I see now! The answer is perfectly obvious.
SEPTIMUS: This time you may have overreached yourself.

                                                                               -- Tom Stoppard, Arcadia


it was cold in december. in the months following i found warmth, in new places, with new people.  the light in the little arts academy rehearsal room was harsh, but i became accustomed to it as we worked under its glare for hours and hours, twisting our voices, wringing emotion, learning to shout, learning to scream, learning to be sultry, finding parts of humanity in ourselves that weren't there before. we tried to sleep on the cool, firm wooden floors. we tried to find new angles to view our bodies in the wall-length mirror. and long after the air-conditioning had been turned off at nine pm, we tried to ignite sparks in the stale room. we tried to set our play on fire. we; praveeta, in her majesty. smoky, tawny salima. gregory, a right ray of sunshine. gwyneth, compressed. hellenic claire. and most of the time we didn't succeed but sometimes we did; and that was good. and there was much else that was good about rehearsals that i remember in little pockets of my memory; it is glaring in the rehearsal rooms but the corridors of the little arts academy at night are elongated spaces of shadowed peace; i can stand against the dark green walls and bathe in the silence, bathe in the solitude. in here no one can reach me; no clatter or discordance can shatter my peace as i sit quietly on a red stool in the pantry, sipping tom yam warmth, the spices and the sustenance turning my heart into a hearth; in here it is all things to me, it is part of what i had been looking for, all this while.

but we are quick to move. once we are in the theatre i move in the strangest places; empty, silent hallways with flickering lights (on. off. on. off) - an endless series of waiting rooms - digital clocks on the wall with numbers that glow luminous red in the darkness. backstage; the back alley of the universe, all cold blue light and strange angles and objects and shadow. i half expect to see constellations etched on the palely lit midnight walls. i am seated at a table, a ghostly table, almost out of nowhere; on the table there are many things. a green champagne bottle. a half-eaten bagel on a china plate. boxes with tufts of unidentifable cloth sticking out. a pen and a green notebook. my glasses, taken off and on again and again. i am vaguely aware of figures in dark clothing whispering calmly into headphones. i am vaguely aware that outside, someone is talking. who is talking? there is a slight buzz, a faint electricity, a strange electricity that can only be made by several hundred people waiting and watching all at once. ah, i know who was talking now; it is catherine, and the lights outside plunge us into pitch, and i get up from my chair and walk out and suddenly i am old. it is the loneliest feeling in the world to be on stage, did you know that; there is no one else with you, you are so alone. i am scared, and cold, and ill. 'let x equal all the quantities of x. let x equal the cold. it is cold in december.' i am shivering, and breathing hard and fast, and i am cold, for real, i am so cold. the tears warm my eyes up but not much else. the lights slowly dim. the applause comes from so far away. i stride backstage. it is as if i had done something a very long time ago in a faraway place and now the memory of my deed is returning. i feel like a phantasm, i feel emptied, i feel obliterated.

theatresque presents:

threesome: a triple bill for charity
directed by claire soon, gwyneth teo, and hsuan te

three fat virgins unassembled by ovidia yu
starring claire soon, ng chu ting, praveeta thayalan, salima nadira mafoot moss simon

love, food and babies by verena tay
starring melissa lim, hoh jian yang, leon lau, ho ray-shio, leong yi-ming, rachel au-yong, claire soon

proof by david auburn (winner of the pulitzer prize for drama 2001)
starring gregory alva ng, hoh jian yang, salima nadira mafoot moss simon, praveeta thayalan

february 20th (next friday) and 21st (next saturday) at the republic polytechnic cultural centre studio (5 minutes walk from woodlands MRT)
tickets at $12, flowers sold in the foyer
doors open at 7pm - show runs for about two and a half to three hours
all proceeds go to the business times budding artists' fund (http://baf.sg/index.php)

comment here for tickets, email theatresque@gmail.com, or call me at 97899390
we're good. don't miss out

today, a silver bullet in the mail. a question, an offer; an answer.

december is film month. i watched nick&norah's infinite playlist, elizabeth, garden state, children of men, the silence of the lambs, the 40 year old virgin, the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford. i made a long film list to watch, it's got, like, 50 points on it, i guess i could finish it before the month is out; i'll probably watch orange county and monster's ball tonight. i don't know, i think maybe watching films has always been bad for me, i downloaded bertolucci's the dreamers when i was 14 and watched it, perpetually naked eva green, masturbation, gratuitous sex and all, and i imagine owning the dvd of a movie since i was 12 that featured a song called 'uncle fucker' probably had some influence on the development of my present speech patterns. but more importantly i guess films more than anything shaped my desire to get out of singapore as quickly as possible;  i guess everybody will laugh at me for this but those years of celluloid greenery and the open road really took me in, i still believe that in america, things will be different. i suppose that's why i have incredible patience for movies about teenagers or early twenty-somethings, you know, low-budget languorously shot movies that get by on smart scripts and a target audience that goes to the movies a lot, they sort of act like a window into an alternate universe where i'm living in america, maybe that's what my life would be like. and so yesterday i took the train from my house down to bukit gombak to play badminton with some old friends and i stared out the window of the mrt as it passed by industrial districts and hdb flats and canals and felt sad, because i won't be released on parole for at least another two years. and that's why, most of all, films are bad for me, because they remind me of what i'm missing, and will be missing, while i'm wearing combat fatigues, shooting at ghost soldiers, accomplishing phantom objectives. my whole goddamn life i've been looking forward to things instead of looking at the things around me and i always miss the beautiful things in the here and now, the chances, the opportunities, and then i always act like a jerk, and realise later, and then it's too late to say, jian yang what the fuck are you doing? what the fuck am i doing, do i want to not know what the fuck i'm doing for two years?

but, you know, no matter how bad it is for me, it's what i do, it's a habit, a need, an addiction. i guess i do all kinds of things that are bad for me, but i guess there are always some good reasons to counterweigh the bad, or i wouldn't keep doing them, would i? i eat all kinds of crazy unhealthy shit but i realised today that food is the way i remember things; food is my best searchlight into the murk of the years before i turned into an adolescent. does anyone remember being given milk regularly when they were a kid back in primary school? i can't remember the exact initiative, or whether it was discontinued, but i remember vividly being made to line up in that old nanyang campus near serene centre and hoping for the brown carton instead of the blue one, because the original flavoured milk never tasted nice since it wasn't chilled. so: primary school, looking forward to milk - once a week? or was it every day? or, another: on the primary school basketball team i was basically the worst player in the whole team, being lazy, nervous, a terrible shooter, and worst of all, short. (now i'm just lazy, nervous, and a terrible shooter.) and so when i was 11 and 12 i would watch my friends fight for their lives on the court while i would warm the bench and keep score on the whiteboards; but still, it was exciting, it was the closest i would get to being on tour, because we had to travel to all the primary schools around the country in a bus to play against their teams. and i would go to their canteens and sample the different selections of snacks, or buy the staples (those joined-up seaweed packets, the 40-cent rectangular cuttlefish satchets with the fish motif...) and one of my most vivid memories would be sitting with hong chen and chuang yang on the bench of one of the schools, eating some animal-shaped crackers that were sort of hollow on the inside, they came in a long, thin packet with red designs, i think they cost 30 cents. the crackers were dusted liberally with msg so i loved them as a kid; i tried them again recently and i love them still. and when i remember the crackers i start to remember other things; the few (disastrous) times i was allowed to go on court, the close matches (few), the thrashings (many), and how whether it was one or the other, i would never be good enough. there are other things, too, i guess, little fragments too disjointed for me to place in any year or age - left alone by my mother so she can play badminton in toa payoh stadium, somewhere in time, i am a little child wandering around with nothing to do until i find a canteen that sells my favourite brand of instant noodles (myojo, tom yam flavour) - and so i while the afternoon away, eating happily. or at the badminton courts at nie, where i pester my parents for coins to use the vending machines; i would refuse to swallow my skittles one by one so that i could construct huge masses of the squashed-together candies with my tongue, and take the sugary rainbow rock out of my mouth to marvel at it, i would wander around the green (hockey? street soccer?) court and drink pocari sweat out of small paper milo cups. i can go even further back; maris stella kindergarten, i don't remember much except the milk and ritz crackers at tea time, little mushed up biscuit bits just hangin' out on the rims of the orange cups. so, i dunno, i guess i'll go on eating unhealthy crap, because if all i remember about shit is unhealthy crap, i must really like unhealthy crap.

when the clock hits five i put my pen down, and stare straight ahead into space. amidst the anticlimax of post-exam administration - please raise your hand if you wish to write down your name and index number, please tightly tie your sheets of paper together - i think only of nothing. my cognition leaks back, trickle by drop, as one of the invigilators (weedy and effete) makes some inexplicable complaint, forgetting to say the magic words: 'you are now free to go'. as slow and unsure applause clatters from the back of the hall while he puts down the mic, i wonder how much was rehearsed; i feel no spontaneous urge to cheer. it is hard to describe my feelings as i weave my way through the chairs and tables and groups of excited and relieved students  - some mixture of exhaustion and irritation? i just want to get out of there. like clockwork i move to the basketball court - thank god there are people i know playing! for once i don't have to shoot alone and pretend i'm having fun. with every rebound and drive i obliterate much of what i have let into my body and mind reluctantly, like unwelcome guests - today i'm clearing these gypsies out of town. as i freeze time in midair (contract abs and kick outwards) to reach under a defender's arm i realise, slightly giddily, half an hour late, that i'm done, gone, it's really finished. yet the triumph seems slightly absurd to dwell on while standing here with the dusty, hard basketball in my hands, darting around the washed-out colours of hwachong's court (faded blue, faded green, faded red...) - realising the answer scripts i would always bring down to the court to fret over seemed small, out of place, insignificant once out of the harsh light of the exam room and under the warm sun: floppy, delicate little things, translucent, white moth's-wings decorated with tiny blue trails, dangling by a thread.

so the year has finally wound down. the night starts here, the night starts here

i'm standing just outside my house next to the fig tree, watching my indian neighbours play with sparklers by the drain near the carpark. they've lined the corridor and steps outside my house with little oil lamps and rose petals, ending in a big flower pattern on the landing. the crackling is the closest we can get to fireworks, here, and i feel calmed, all of a sudden. this afternoon, just after lunch, i gave in and had another cup, two sachets of brown sugar, and a pepsi for good measure. by 4pm my heart was exploding and my thoughts were unspeakable; i don't seem to be sufficiently acquainted with consequences. i burned four hours worrying, but i'm okay now; there's a world, outside, it's got celebration, it's got decoration, and i'm being stupid trying to slow it down.

the girls send out mass messages and emails; we'll get through this together, jiayou, it's the last lap, after this, we can all celebrate. i could hug them for their kindness - they mean it, every word, to every one. the boys are different; today i'm asked about the exchange rate, about the balance of payments, about islamic nationalist parties. we say things like, how was your interview, when is your interview, was it difficult? if we remember to, we offer a terse 'good luck'. i picture scores of muttering young men, unshorn, killing time nervously together in a waiting room before some insurmountable hurdle. i capture this here because when this is all over, i hope it will be banished far from my mind, never to come back.

as we drive past nus my mother says to me, this is not a nice place, it looks like a factory. i didn't enjoy my three years here. always people hogging the restricted books in the library. and the photocopying, always with the photocopying, always people making so many copies, because they'd study like, history, you know, so they have to make a lot of readings. make so many copies, then end up never using. it's just being kiasu. make so many copies for what? i listened to her, and didn't know the answer. i'd been using the nus library so much these days, and even now the floor of my room is littered with stacks and stacks of photocopied black-and-white sheets, with headers like 'human rights and regional order', 'narrow histories: lee kuan yew and dr mahathir', 'the singapore academy of law journal'. i must have burned at least three cashcards, and at least as many hours making these slight mountains of paper. as my mother spoke i had a sudden image of myself, three or four years from now, hunched over a photocopier, sneezing on the stale air of the library, still dirty-looking, still perpetually tired, with nothing to look forward to but a musty dorm room and eight thick readings for a test next week, maybe a quick respite in a basketball game or a good meal (relief worn out, jian yang, worn out from over-use), maybe still confounded by all the girls too inexplicable to love, maybe still waiting for things to change, and so on. and so on. there. a living nightmare. what i'm afraid of, it's not a physical place, so it might even follow me, wherever i go.

one of the side effects of a caffeine overdose is depression. well, okay, you know how some people hold their liquor, i can't hold my caffeine, two cups is enough to send me over the edge, the world looks so much sadder now, i've only just had one this time. is coffee supposed to taste like almonds? okay, maybe i'm not depressed. i'm too old for that now. it's more like, oppressive inertia. isn't that ironic? i wanted to work all night.