raphael rampage

it's been a while since i last had the temptation to write; perhaps because i have been relatively happy. and happiness is a state ill-disposed to reflection due to a general state of contentment. and contentment does not dig deeper beneath the surface, because it is on the surface of life on which she glides with ease. which is why, i think, so many poems sound so absolutely wretched. there is a perverse link between literature and dark emotions.

that does not mean i am unhappy now, i am just inspired by uhm. vacancy. sitting inside my 'painting and national identity' class this afternoon, with words and concepts drifting aloft, snippets of the renaissance, shakespeare, canonical, old masters: leonardo da vinci, michelangelo and raphael- all these distant ghosts fleeting their eras and casting their eerie shadows thousands of years behind them, my mind just drifted and i thought about the rain outside.

rain falls in layers; it divides the landscape into separable layers of foreground, middle ground and back ground; its like a white veil that blots out the distance with increasing opacity. it is a gentle whitewash, wrapping trees and buildings alike with frail, brittle draperies. yet even as it obscures, it tempts the eye onward, behind the forbidden veil, behind the mesh in pristine seduction
toward oblivion,
where the eye sees no more.

-

then in how technology works i rediscovered a new word, one which erik used as well: heuristically. "stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation" a mode of questioning which provokes individual thought and curiosity. and the reason why school is often considered so bland is because it provides too many presupposed 'answers' to questions we don't even ask. its like pouring fuel into a tank that's capped

here was where i got interrupted : and here is where i continue

yeah! i like my tutor cos he makes us think, cos he's inquisitive, and cos he's just slightly on the edge of subversiveness. quote of the week,
"who CARES about site? Every time architects are given an assignment, they pop up on the site with their cameras and snap away, and create pretty panoramic views of the site and BOOM architecture happens. That is the most ridiculous thing ever. Well fine, there are times when the site can be interesting and provoking, but at other times it can be just plain boring."

"Why must we 'express' the nature of a material? Isn't that such a weird concept? I mean, as humans we like to cover ourselves up; no one goes around without clothes with the desire to 'express' his inherent nature. Why must the material be 'honoured'? What kind of weird concept is that?"
-
just now i spoke to my p6 student from cathigh over gmail chat. haha. he is so funny. but also very snotty, typical gep kid.

me: haha. learn to enjoy school! at least canteen food is cheap

kai.boh: but lousy. noodles

kai.boh: is just water and noodles

9:09 PM oh yeah and chilli

me: haha there ARE other stalls like the rice stall

kai.boh: canteen food tastes mostly like water without chilli

rice

rice is hard

9:10 PM me: you're a growing boy

its okay

kai.boh: it might as well have been rice ball

and the mainstream are totally philistine

yeah right

9:11 PM must i be subjected to endless streams of vulgarities on the stairs?

even the teachers side with the mainstream

me: if they're philistine what does it make you? haha

kai.boh: david.

9:15 PM kai.boh: we replaced the word philistine with mainstream

kai.boh: so a sentence could be like this:

Tobby is utterly mainstream

it can also be an adjective

me: oh dear. that isnt very nice

kai.boh: Don't do ur work like a mainstream

or a verb

James, dun mainstream around and help me with the SS Project

9:16 PM me: thats how gep-ers become known as intellectual snobs, you know

kai.boh: that's a joke

only tobby does that

and he is

undeniably

a snob.

kai.boh: do u remember joshua

everybody calls him fatso koh

and he deserves it

always irritating other people

and jeremy koo is always with him

9:24 PM i think joshua is a freight carrier

he carries jermys in between rolls of fat

ABSOLUTELY BRUTAL, that boy. but oh so funny. hahah. i dont condone it of course, i play the didactic role of teacher quite well, dont worry. (im banking on the chance that they dont google their names and discover this site by random coincidence.)

and here is where i think about waking up at 730am tomorrow
here is where i stifle a whine
( I DONT WHINE.)
here is where i wonder if i should read harry potter before i sleep
here is where i stop postulating..
here is where pillows deflate

update of a life

the throne! moniza n shuying n i were working on. i love it. n royston who went to visit.

yiting n i :)

alexius and i being spastic like our tree, hahah. he's off in the US now. no wait, he's on the wretched plane

absolutely adorable christabelle and edlyn, my youngest cousins

feels like a weight has been lifted off
when the curtain falls there is a sudden clarity
the frozen postures of the dancers thaw, their icy stillness dissolves
and life is breathed into them again,
as natural light falls through the crack in the ceiling

been thinking about comprehension:
i just need to know things, to understand them,
to pick objects up and handle them, to fidget and figure their mechanisms
what makes that sound? what does it feel like?
like i used to when i was a child-
knocking my mother's nailpolish lacquer on the ground
until it cracked and its colour spilt open
until my parents had to keep every ornament on the shelves so i would not
knock all of them over in my effort to fathom them.
---

here is where i stop being cryptic:
been receiving many complaints.
hahaha.
school has started, and i like my studio well and good so far. all very nice people
ive yet to meet my french tutor, i wonder about his accent, and how to pronounce his surname
wonder how he looks like n if he's the type of tutor we'll all love on first impression
cos first impressions count
and i realise i comfort eat quite a lot. like when im really sian or tired i'd walk over to
the happy machine and either get 1. chilli tapioca chips 2. chocolate 3. ribena

module clash is bugging me abit, but God said "do not worry about tomorrow, for today has enough trouble of its own" amen to that. you have no idea. so... if at worst i only have 4 modules to take, so be it. so be it. if he brings me to it, he will bring me through it- usp requirements, a good semester, doing well in the modules, completing whatever is required of me excellently

"excellent". a new favourite word. on top of "yeah, correct" which gerry tells me is my habitual phrase. when i was in the bus today, there was an aki student talking about life in NUS to two exchange students. i don't know which year he's in, im guessing year 3. he said,
" i don't like the NUS education system because it doesn't allow you to be creative. Too many deadlines, so rushed."
but i was secretly disagreeing vehemently, because isn't creativity the creation of solutions to problems? And problems all innately have a 'deadline' because of their need to be resolved- pressure drives creativity, and the challenge of creativity does not occur in a timeless vacuum. In fact, any solution which is too delayed ceases to be appropriate or effective, and ceases to be a solution. Anyone can solve problems given infinite time, but it is within fixed time boundaries that creativity and ingenious solutions are necessitated. Without the timeline, what is creativity? there is no such thing. God made the world in 6 days. hahaha. and the 7th day for rest, which i shall succumb to now. thank You thank You.

humdrumtitlesthatdontmakesense

she sits by the window
in silent repose
the minutes crawl by, each dripping second
the static flow of thought
flow frozen, like piercing icicles
cracking through the mind
into the tender flesh of the conscience.

things and thoughts flash
mercilessly
she stands stricken
by the weight of such speed
and the threat of losing such depth over the flatness of time.
the acceleration of emotion and fleeting ghosts of
recent happenings rendering her even more still,
fixated in a wax figurine pose of composure
the quiet eye of a storm.

did she say something amiss?
and while each fresh layer of muse
accumulate, they dull the senses
to numb sore ulcers of wretched guilt
something she shouldn't have said
something he shouldn't have done
something she should have considered;
something other than this negation
than this void.

curiosity and memory breed a longing
to excavate another's mind, to open locked doors
although she does not hold the keys;
no she does not have heart enough
to hold an apology,
which if unmeant, would unfurl and be laid bare
like stripped grave cloths;
empty in its sallow stench of death
no the memories must be preserved,
lest they be marred by the musty trivialities of ritual
polite words meant to be said which hold nothing
and silence prevails- its loud, insolent voice shouting volumes
across the distance.

so icicles stop their creeping
they ought not fracture the pristine, glassy affront
which keeps things together
thought is kept from cracking her placid expression
like shards wrapped in velvet bags
she's holding it together
whatever it takes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
is there ever a line you cross?
to the other side
that cancels out the former
things cool and fade until they reach an equilibrium
like icecubes in a room or hot coffee losing steam
an equilibrium
that is tasteless and colourless
until you don't feel it anymore
a neutral distance
that loses you a friend?

just-a-space-filler

feels like i haven't blogged in some time.
cos life has been monotonous, i mean,
unless you wanna hear about the intricate
processes of making rock-looking paper, or
making paper look rocky-
first you feel it on your fingers, the wet gooey warm globs of churned
mache, glistening with starch, and you dab it in gollobs
onto crumpled waxy AIA paper (collected in truckloads from
Singapore's Recycling Plant, very useful place: expanded megaversion of
what RAG is all about ie. A Dump.) and then you wait for the muck to dry
and resemble what is hopefully your pretty, tough, mental image
of rock, and if it doesn't dry fast enough you make a stand and tie
a hairdryer to it such that it becomes a rockdryer (and that must be the ultimate
ambition of every hairdryer that ever lived!) and if the hairdryer creates wind which
causes the AIA paper to flap undesirably, you swap the dryer with an infra-red
lamp which heats up the whole rockcave while you squat inside it trying to
add more papier mache, and feel like you're being roasted in the redlightdistrict.

AH, now you see what a wonderful conversationist rag has made of me!
i'm sure by now all of you are sitting right up in your seats with
eyes wide open and minds intrigued by the amazingly
wondrous feat of making rock out of paper look sufficiently rock-like, yet
also rockingly reveals the papery roots from which it sprang, such that
the rag judges SHALL KNOW that it is WE who have resurrected the potential
of paper and caused paper to be not just paper, but well,
Rock.

---


what a load of rubbish. just 8 days more, felicia. you can survive that. then.. school starts. i couldn't get one of the science modules i wanted from USP, which was rather unfortunate. God, please, show me another i can take.!

anyway i like the Singapore River, even though its arguably not much of one because its so small. but it is proportionate to our nation in terms of square metres, and its size doesn't make it any less of a river. And even if the cobbled path beneath your feet changes over time, and the river is no longer clouded with a myriad of boats eking out a living, and the languages heard along its banks find themselves translated into a hundred different tongues over time, its native language remains. That it remains a confluence and a conduit, that it gathers the waters into one body, just as it gathers groups of people that are prone to scatter Babel like over the face of the land onto its banks, that it, in a strange way, connects, even as it glints quietly, unassumingly, imperceptibly, through the subtle shadows of nightfall.