October 25, 2008 • 1:49 pm 2
He is the true spirit of rebellion- I am my own person, you let go of me, you have no right to control me, you cannot emotionally hold me down, you cannot guilt me, you cannot make me do anything that I don’t want to do. I suffer the consequences, not you.
Filed under: daily grind
October 23, 2008 • 8:59 am 0
Would you prefer going through the motions, performing whatever task you have at hand with ease, or- OR- is it hell more meaningful to kick and struggle, fail and lose heart, and then hopefully, hopefully, sometimes see to fruitation the things you want to do?
Clearly I stand for one side and feel its searing wisdom everyday.
I think I have a couple of these things on my plate right now, these whatyoucallem the ‘right things to do’. And it seems I am going to make them permanent fixtures in my life right now. Right, I hear you encourage, I must believe they must be good for me, that is why I do things I don’t like.
In the movie My Blueberry Nights, Norah Jones’s character meets a broken-hearted cop in a bar as she moonlights as the barmaid. One day she suggests he stops the destructive drinking and this man pours out a bunch of casino chips. Evertime I give in to the drink, he tells her, I pick up one chip. This chip, he says, was for when I lasted 90 days. And so on. There were enough chips to make a small-time player happy. In other words, there were many chips that bore testimony to his will, or the lack of it. The look of his face then, you know he tried too many times, to want to try again.
If there is anything I don’t want- more than the things I don’t want to do, its those damn chips.
Filed under: daily grind
October 3, 2008 • 2:38 am 2
Its 2:30 am in the morning. I thought it was a good idea to wake up and write- after lying awake for some time to the rain hitting hard on this window. It is an attic window- and captures the sound of rain in quite an interesting way. This particular rain, this Yorkshire rain on this attic window of a student hostel, reminds me of another rain, a Nepalese rain on the zinc roofing of a brick and motar house. And both rains in their intensity is perhaps not too unlike the Singaporean rainforest rain back home against my condominum window panes. The nice thing about hearing rain in the midst of your sleep is that you feel safe- warm and safe. The elements might be raging outside, the covers of your shelter are getting absolutely battered for your sake, for your posterity, but you rest still, dry and secure in many chambers of your bed. I have never identified much with the homeless. Perhaps now when I see them, I shall recall the rainy nights.
Just rain, and I have collected so many different kinds over the last four years. Australian rain is generally not unlike the UKian rain in daylight, either like threads of water in spring, or like icy stones in winter. How I waited for the hail then. Perhaps it was my romanticisng nature. How I imagined the hail, scrutinsed the whites of my sunlight to determine afore-imagined hail. Hail is truly magnificent, when it does happen. But just regular rain has its touch of class as well. In Melbourne, the morning showers that visit just before I step out of the apartments are the best, they leave the walking pavements shiny, Nature’s way of loving you.
And of course the rain of the slippery hillsides in Sunaula Bazar. How dusk ends and night falls and the rain persists. How midnight owls call and farm mice scurry to the sound of the thunderous rain because- it can only be like that- on a zinc roof. No poetic pitter-patter when it rains in Dhading, Nepal. Only glorious rainfall. My favorite memories of the rain is how it made their lives humble and graceful, that when it rains you know that their lives are self-preserving, and meaningful. My imposing Hajur-ama never rushes when the rain does, she bids her time, as if her age commands the rain to respect her- she walks home slowly barefooted, sometimes buffaloes in tow, sometimes a water container on her hips. If her walk could sing, it would be, Let it rain, let it rain, be it. Rain in the villages trigger a whole new set of chores that need to be dismantled- the greens earlier sunned, have to be collected, the freshly laundered colors on washing lines have to be folded away, the goats have to be chased into their sheds, the dirty pots and pans should all go out for a free wash. Rain in Nepal is the grit of life.
Coming to hear this rain in the early steeples of this morning in yet another foreign land, at age 23 is a gratifying experience for me. Perhaps because I am pleased to have accumulated my varied rain-wise experiences thus far. I acknowledge they aren’t miserly experiences for a 23 year old. And I am further excited about what more rain-filled experiences lie in store for me- 33, 43, 53. (Honestly, I don’t mean that. I have an inability to think too far. At the most, I can visualise rain up till age 30). At age 23, I am here in the shire of York, sussing out my sister’s spanking new degree waiting to happen. The prospects of her dormitory life, her young and rest presumptous nineteen-twenty-year-old friends and her idealistic academic discourse is making me green with envy. My own undergraduate days linger in the corridors of my mind- In times of rain, be it in bliss or bitterness.
For the horizons now, it is fit that I give justice to the home-grown rains of Singapore. Beyond feeling frustrated that I can move nowhere, beyond feeling like I am hiding away from the rest of my world, I need to be similarly inspired by the rain and live, properly, by it.
