I was on the tram earlier in the evening, and a man with striking features beneath a pair of dark-rimmed glasses sat across from me. He is about his 30s and has collar brown wavy hair. I noticed him straightaway while waiting for the tram because he had an intense gaze and I could literally feel it, even in the colorful dark of Brunswick Street.
So when he sat across me, my body tensed for a bit. Fazed, I pulled out my subject reader and started to thumb through it, looking for the correct page. As I did that, I could feel his stare. He was looking sideways at my page. The subject was ‘Writing Scripts’. I bristled myself as I imagined myself to be taken for a student playwright. Do I look the part? I tried to slouch in artistic nochalence.
I imagined him accessing my intellectual capacity. Messy outfit, tick. Fobby (FOB=Fresh off Boat) Asian, cross. Fashionable bimbotic boots, cross. I finally found the page and it read ‘Writing the beginning’ on one side, and on the next page it was subtitled, ‘Expositions’. Techicality. Phew. I was relieved. At least the stranger would not think of me as a daft uni student. ‘Exposition’ sounds academic enough. ‘Exposition’ sounds like I have a reason to be attending Uni (Maybe I am a daft Uni student- but that’s not the point). I adjusted my posture and tried to enter the world of ‘representational exposition’ on page 76.
Interestingly- representational exposition means drama that acknowleges its own form, but denies it to get its message across. Characters are realistic and behave in-character, not acknowleging the presence of an audience. I am a character. I like my audience. Strangers are good audience. They never linger for too long in your life. You are a multitude of characters, you are facets, and they are never certain which one you exactly are. Everytime I enter a tram, I play a character. Sometimes I replay the same character, sometimes i experiment with new ones. There are no rules.
Some people dont bother to get into character. Some people enter trams and make their characters invisible. They become lifeless dolls, hanging onto rails and sit facing front, with blank looks on their faces. Upon reaching their stop XX, their characters slip back neatly into the previously vacant bodies. The acquire the twitch, and they straighten up. Their eyes blink alert, and they assume themselves once more.
The man plays a character for me too. He is the philosopy professor I read about in Amanda Lorey’s novel- Philosopher’s Doll. He was rethinking the chaos theory on the tram when he fixed his gaze randomly onto me. Then a commotion took place at the back of the tram and he shifted his attention. Shortly after, the tram pulled up at his stop and he abruptly twitched, and got off.
Goodbye, stranger.
Filed under: daily grind
July 26, 2006 • 6:07 am 0
Kid’s Republic
Hauled off coolhunter- this is a children’s bookstore in beijing. Its great retail marketing to posh parents…and candyland for their children for sure- but as if kids arent enough confused already?
I remember the times I spent in the community library when I was young. The library was the first legitimate place to go with friends for a day out at age 10. The library which stocked Ramona, Little Star, Baby-Sitters, Sweet Valley Sagas, Nancy Drew Notebooks, Little Sister Karen- yes I’m very much a connoisseur of girly fiction at age 10.
The library with its shelves not meant for kids of 130 centimetres tall. But that’s alright, climbing for that book on the highest shelf is satisfying. Satisfying is also the manual stamp of the librarian’s wordy chop, on a little flyaway cheque on the front page.
Even more satisfying is hauling all twelve books (the combined book quota of 3 library cards in the family) into the book bag before three smuttisfied kids head off for a fast food lunch and snap cutsey neoprint pictures to remember the outing by.
Filed under: comment