Between Forgetting and Clinging To
Yong Shu Hoong
Why do I not keep journals? Because I am convinced
if the memories are worth preserving, I can easily
stall their fading. But lately I've started to wonder
if my mind could last that long. I begin shadowing
my father for symptoms. Even his father, at 90,
could not be indicted with memory loss. Perhaps
the curse of amnesia does not run in this family.
What's worse is the incapacity to forget - how it takes
three days to wring out all thoughts of work
while touring volcanoes. Or perhaps never -
wretched episodes from history clinging to me
like sand and humidity. I remember the glee expunging
files from diskettes, cloning emptiness until I'm left
with a bounty of space itching to be reassembled.
But in real life, I continue hoarding every shard...
until the stars and clouds haul me in, to where
I stand with pieces of rhymes and dreams in orbit,
utterly lost over what I should fling to flames.
----
1. Wow - that must be a nice capstone to months of studying for IBO. But of course that metaphor isn't quite enough; these are people who won't settle for stasis.
2.
words
Arthur Yap
words have sometimes a way of stilling themselves
& then, no, we have a way of stilling words
in a way to still ourselves:
a choice of being still
& quiet to be still.
words need people to fill their blanks,
quick eye-flicks across the page:
a page of contained dimensions
housing a pharynx
that, from edge to edge,
is still,
still as a minute glottal sphinx.
-
I have a huge problem with being concise. Funny how I have so much to say about a span of two years - by comparison, my stint here seems pretty normal. No, what strikes me about it is not its normalcy, but how much of an ordeal it was. Not to say that it was a horrible two years of pain and suffering (it wasn't - friends, young and old, and the occasional fruition of effort do make the slogging worth it) - but a large lesson that taught me much. (But did I learn?)
When you're able to write about something, you can probably come to terms with it. Still its memory for ever. I'm a bit too greedy, I guess, trying to reflect about everything? Yet to settle for less seems reductive. There's a slight difference between that and being discretionary, I suppose. Perfectionism is an annoying trait when you don't have the means to grasp your goals.
3. The #1 reason why the F+TCM blog was started was to ask ourselves if we could find
one thing to remember, to cherish?, every day amidst the tedium of studying. We'd consider that to be quite a blessing. Well we aren't staying there every day (or at least I'm not - sigh I'd much rather do so actually. Needa focus!) so it isn't really the photojournal that I dreamt it to be, but finding
one thing to
share or be
thankful about is a close approximation.
Also, we get bored with studying
sometimes.
4. I think I sorely need the reassurance that whatever effort I'm pouring in isn't going to waste. (Especially if it's on other people?) Or, at least, I need to be magnanimous enough to learn from my mistakes. I guess the two things I am extremely bad at are coming to terms with things and avoiding their reprise...
and I am too easily intimidated by the thought of work. Need to learn to chill and take things one step at a time. Not just in acads, but in larger projects that aren't just about me.
One sunset at a time, Prelims is coming!! I haven't sat down to work towards something big in ages (since chem, I suppose) - for all the grumbling we have against As, it is a rite of passage, I suppose.
Let's see how tomorrow goes :P
5. I should start an MSWord poetry anthology! Like a personal one in which I amass swathes of poetry I've enjoyed. In fact I need to start curating loads of things: insights on my lit texts, GP..."The man who has no memory makes one out of paper." (Littoc) I'm not a one-hit reader, unfortunately...
6. Arthur Yap's antho "A Space of City Trees" is familiar ground - the poet plays with syntax a fair bit not unlike Cummings, but his major achievement is in striking metaphors that paint and limn in words. Which is every poet's job, I suppose. A little like some strands of photog, where you make the commonplace unfamiliar or exciting again. Or that you spotlight something small and not commonly thought about, in a new sheen. and Yong Shu Hoong's antho "From within the Marrow" has this conversational yet searchingly contemplative tone that can smith out foreign landscapes / familiar scenarios and use them to expound on some emotion or thought. Not easy if you tend to inadvertently alienate your reader - great writers should draw readers into the story world rather than leave them out of it. (the poem up there is hardly his best - it's just what I happened to think about)
The most loved poems aren't just the ones with clever craft; they're also the ones which you can relate to. Like you've found someone who knows what you're thinking and completes your sentences for you!
in the quiet of the night
Arthur Yap
in the quiet of the night
when alert ears pulse sound
i can hear again the words,
the poet i was earlier reading:
he is one person i understand fully.
i understand he is a poet
& i understand his poetry.
i even understand my own knowledge
of this privacy which is public literary study.
the words will move on more swiftly
than tomorrow will be now. & i will
know, in reading again,
i do not know him
or any other, or myself, or that any poetry
is the public transaction that it must be.
& it must be private ultimately.
6. That’s why families are so important. Other people walk out the door and they’re gone!
Extend that to friends, and the statement retains its validity, to me at least. You know you'll see them again; or even if you don't, you've known them, which is a consolation.
7. Time does heal some scrapes - I wrote a longer post yesterday while trying to finish my RIJ documentation with the same lack of inhibition, but alas. Now, one night later, I think: it's not that all bad...
8. I cannot resist! One more:
when last seen
Arthur Yap
three things he said & her reply
rang with domestic despair.
there he lurked, practicising his cruelty.
too suddenly her sadness overwhelmed
&, behind familiar things, a new keen
hate & that, subsiding, erased
her sadness. her regret & shame
seemed to flow through her fingers;
the prepared vegetables definitely tasted
too oily; her snakes-&-ladders emotions
the chequered dishcloth. three times the drain gurgled
& her request rang with clarity.
there he lurked, practicising his plumbing.
the snakes & ladders slithered down,
carrot ends & chillie seeds & onion roots.
as he got up she threw the dishcloth,
his face the draughtsboard. she saw distinctly
a softening of his features &, stepping forward,
shed all her tears into the sink.
9. Gonna leave this poem on the windowsill of my mind like a votive candle that whispers, in morse flickers, a silent communion with its own depthless reflections on black glass.
[...]
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
10. Speaking of candles, here is one passage that shows Forster at work! (still haven't quite warmed up to the story, but his stylistic capacities have long been proven). I suspect it to be thematically important; clutching at literary straws here, perhaps. One-third through now!
They are dark caves. Even when they open towards the sun, very little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular chamber. There is little to see, and no eye to see it, until the visitor arrives for his five minutes, and strikes a match. Immediately another flame rises in the depths of the rock and moves towards the surface like an imprisoned spirit: the walls of the circular chamber have been most marvellously polished. The two flames approach and strive to unite, but cannot, because one of them breathes air, the other stone. A mirror inlaid with lovely colours divides the lovers, delicate stars of pink and grey interpose, exquisite nebulae, shadings fainter than the tail of a comet or the midday moon, all the evanescent life of the granite, only here visible. Fists and fingers thrust above the advancing soil — here at last is their skin, finer than any covering acquired by the animals, smoother than windless water, more voluptuous than love. The radiance increases, the flames touch one another, kiss, expire. The cave is dark again, like all the caves.
11. The more I use WP the more enamoured I am with its cleaner layout and fonts. Hmm I might jump ship if this intensifies :P As per point #5 I'd welcome an enticing outlet to curate memories and readings in.
