hey girl, remember when i took this picture? we were doing the whole traveller-tourist-pretend-thang at boat quay, on a remotely coldcold pseudo-winter night after theatreworks' dramatised readings at that old rice building. i caught you at a moment when you travelled to the other world of secret hearts and much happiness. frozen moments in pictures dont quite lie, especially when you were being caught unawares. dont fear, go forth my monologueress. trust the heart because rationalizing dont do shitbang when you want an authentic non-farcical reality for yourself.

whilst reunion dinners are a-going, the streets of chinatown reeks of much emptiness, save for tourists. armed with my camera, tristram shandy, $15 and a good pair of energizerwalkingbunny legs, i trooped round corners like club st, amoy st, ann siang hill, tanjong pagar and joined the crowd amidst the chinatown fiesta at night.

***
desiring the magic whilst a-slogging to work. kudos to the unseen heroes who clean up after our mess.



esoteric shophouses in even-more-esoteric lanes.



my view from the almost vacant kopitiam where i rested, with the book, herbal tea and terrible teh-ping. Operation Stranger was in the air - the fullness of Possibilities.



the dawn of the new night.



eve of cny. quiet empty lanes. you can even dance in peace.



hy and i, as cogs in the wheels of Festivities.



sepia-tinted Past.



bak kwa and i, go very nicely together.

***

guess who's back in the house?

that House-Invader literally killed Operation Stranger. there goes my new year plans. but for all this, welcome back.

honestly, i like. verymanymanymuch more than anything else. *smilessmiles*

you dope, i will smack you. and hide your glasses.

i believe in days like these.



home-funky-fization days always start with fantabulous food ala spaghetti/mishmash salad/yoghurt/fruit juice and surfing cartoons and mtvs with my teddiebear monologue-ress jasminder


followed by loads of nua-ing, existing in parallel universes sidebyside


and trigger-happy-ing with talking shrek pussie-in-boots


and cozying up with a book,laptop and chocolatewafers between us


and daddytime manymany lately, just the both of us. Daddy always comes with Dinner.


and what is daddytime without introducing him to your world of trigger-happiness on your way to more food


and what is daddytime without him buying 'necessities' which poor,struggling students cannot afford. coming back home with this baby blades of mine to flyflyfly.


days like these, i wanna spend with many many, and my new baby blades.

good days to to remind us to be good for goodness' sake.

• waking up fresh n early for school (M-rare, but getting used to)
• breakfast by mummy + frenchtoast (rare)
• shakespearing-yourself and knowing you've done ur work (wow)
• class + lunch with zhen (old-is-gold moment, i like)
• china-esque lunch - authentic dumplings in biz canteen (i chinagirl)
• sharing a blueberry cheesecake AND brownie b/w us girls
• having jared join us (Operation Stranger)
• sharing yet another warm choc cake
• dinner + homemovie 'elf' with daddy (wow)

on days like these -

love, hope, peace, - all come together. everything comes together in all its purity and wholesomeness. on days like these, everything is so good you would want to believe that all the good things, whatever 'good' might mean to you, would remain.

i feel like i need the ah-lian side of me to emerge. to hurhur-why-like-that-one-ah and then next day total amnesia - feels shiok to be a dumb blonde, aint it, to be a total airhead. Keatsian 'negative capability' with a twist. this need for triviality, to dismiss things as they come and go, to say oh-well-so-be-it and compound it into a pulp and throw it into the rubbish bin.

too many deaths by caused by intensity. im always too serious for my own good in just about everything.
not going school tom. i wanna dig holes in the ground.

***

ser-rie's sms to me -

'hey when u find a fish check whether its fresh or not ok. be careful with ur heart. esp since its v precious.'

oh you. enjoy denmark my dear girl. Operation Stranger will kick off for you with a Big Bang. and keep those stories for me.

everyone's going everywhere. jen zhen tarn shoobs, they're all gonna go on Operation Europe after graduation this june. its 5 grand, so maybe not for me.

i live vicariously, knowing that most of my loved ones are scattered all over the globe.
denmark, uk, france, india, australia.
i even took 2 modules this sem that has all to do with India (hi gecko girl!). its a strange feeling when the lecturer talks and im staring real hard at the map, trying to find goa and imagine how this part of the region can be sucked in a weird timezone of the 1960s, retaining their hippie culture and wondering whether gecko knows about this place. when i watch french movies i think of tarn and shoobs in france and french men and amelie poulain and be glad there is this thing as poetic realism. yes yes its all slivers of the imagination, all preconceived notions and sketchy ideas of my vision of the world. ive not travelled much, but there's always google. when in doubt, google it.

restlesss restless. new cultures, food, people. i thrive on displacement. ive never one to feel home sick before, even since young.maybe cos ive never quite developed a singular sense of attachment to any physical place. this sounds like tara/gecko talking.

seeking to be an urban nomad.
i carry hearts in my heart though i walk so very far.

shock shock horror horror.
gulp.

stay in india, please, dont come back.
i would die with much embarrasment.
other than that, that was

Hotness personified.
this is Shyness speaking.
dont call.

she eats up her words, pukes it out back again and is well - whatever well might mean.
pleading temporary insanity when the [phantom] Muse visit - must be the late nights.
the mode of normalcy is mediocre but for once - must be good.
good for whom? - she remembers.

iamsorry.

***

Operation Stranger-in-all-its-Strangeness has commenced.
hopefully it does not stand to be a self-defeating one, further confounding the ____ .

the multiplicity of experience - according to the modernists ie: Joyce, Woolf.
i like.

every night she stays up with killer eyebags not wanting to sleep - calling out her love song for a vampire, saving up coins to purchase that ride on the ferris-wheel of the Imagination, snatching slivers of neon-coloured dissonance in thin air and willing them to corporealize themselves on paper.

i would take my courage in together with this intensity which manifests itself as restlessness. who you afraid the big bad wolf? i would wolf you down with my ravenous hunger and disjointed thoughts. who you afraid to pry? i would claim you as mine break thresholds but cowards,cowards, they abound. catch you me alone and i would claim. careful now so back off youthemthey, bearing down intrusively those lights down on me. come only if you wont burn yourself with this intensity. or do you bide your time waiting to experience the layers of her onion-like skin, seeing if it's safe?

this is the angst which makes her glow in all its strangeness. someone once said she had a lot of shit in that head of hers. funny it becomes so attractive now to some. it becomes a political act to confer upon one the status of [an unwanted] rebel/strayer [as opposed to a stayer for she stays not for many], justifying that the personal is always political. the personal only becomes political if you confer upon it intended meanings for your own life so as to get away with shit that you dare not commit. your own personal safety-net with that nod-nod-yes-yes-yes! social significance. you can now wag your tail, good dog.

others, they gasp aloud - streams of her consciousness welling pass them like an affront to their conscience and vision of life. you're off-tangent. off-centre. just Off, complete Singaporeans lip-synching in unison. i would like to see you turn to me with frozen lips. see you pucker up those lips of yours in return for mine, your own set of containment policy. derive meanings from these w-o-r-d-s shall you? - not, for finally i write not denying myself - commit not intentional fallacy, this is not a fable, neither is this allegorical. the personal remains and you go away still not knowing much of those Disney-rides in mine.

***

exactly two years ago, i remember writing an entry just for you. knowing you on christmas in 2003- you picked styrofoam off my hair - an entirely innocent gesture. i was glad for that.

i was going through one-and-a-half

fa
ces

and you had no space in

-between-

you were that Nice Stranger.

and i was mean, stoic and half-empty mind you, and certainly not half-full.
perhaps its the same ole' story two years on - she's come full-circle, whilst you were gone.

but this time, she'll welcome you back - not being the wreck that she was (and this necessitates a diversion; is it considered a betrayal to the memory of one's past if one is able to the transcend supposed grief?), able to see you for who you are without reality being mediated by mirrors and reflected images.

welcome back home, my friend, and i might just visit you in holland/aus when Operation Wanderlust kicks in.

***

my love affair with the Written Word - Your Written Words. the words you wrote. past sms-es take on significances reverberating far beyond simple beep beeps. the simulacrum of History recording itself with the click of a button. how easy, in the paranoia of losing me, to click Send (hurry, hurry, or she might just go away like she always said she would. no fear, my love, wallflowers are the living dead) to air your words to me, your written words of 'no' and 'i will not kill the love we have because of the hate i harbor'. killed it, you did, and hate, did you in. technology allows one to swallow one's words. you can just press Delete, forgetting ever that Send was the immediate option.

***

'words words words, even if it does not send me to my grave, words shall still mark my tombstone - Hamlet. a macabre line that got us a lil excited'

sms by Fir, 23/9/05

parents are off to batam, and its just bro n i- except tt he's home infrequently so its just me. no dull droning of the tv, no blasting muzak, no human conversations echoing thru the walls - just complete silence the way i would like it, with the space to roam about the house with the freedom to plop my books at the dining table, to have my dinners at ten and muesli at twelve. and stockloads of milk + fruits. it gets magical at night, this piercing stillness. Sublime Solitude.

a toast to my own place in the near future - with or without a partner.

reminds me of once when ju and i rented that room in that house way back in acjc, when we had to stretch my $200 pocket money - staying up to do our own laundry, cooking days worth of food so we could reheat them, having loads of green bean soup so we wont go hungry, that routine of going to school and coming back to that rented room straight to nap then pia, coming home once every two weeks. and then there was kent ridge hostel in uni - supperssuppers, the staying up late in the rooms of other hostelites.

but nothing beats having your own place.

***

i will not have you tick me against a checklist - filling me into your preconceived categories of how Your Ideal Woman/Perfect Mate should be and compare me with the notes you garner from that checklist.

for i exist in proportions beyond what you can seemingly grasp of me - for nothing is ever one thing.

***

I dreamt of your sweet embrace, encircling me like how you would encircle Life.

Funny how it is that you managed to enter these dreams of mine, when in reality all that embraces is your smile - skipping past imagined conversations straight into the sublime intimacies of the soul.

Imaginings of your being, because your existence never really quite existed in my life - only glimmers of it, sporadically existing parallel to that of mine but never quite meeting at a common juncture, encapsulated in its entirety in that smile of yours.

Your smile - that signifier for the deep recesses of the hidden treasures between two souls.

In reality, it was an embrace that Never Was.

***

never marry a poet/writer/dreamer/actor/artist.