wait, they don't love you like i love you

- Maps, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Florence and the Machine - Never Let Me Go

and it's peaceful in the deep, the deep, the deep

cement kisses

"Judging by the looks on the faces of the people around him, Nicholas must have been fun to have around. But the reason why he was fun to have around... was that he was contrived and extraordinary. I began to wonder how much energy it took to be contrived and extraordinary all the time, and if he did possess that energy, where it came from."

*
"People were amused whenever Nicholas flaunted his exaggerated mannerisms. However, in his rare moments of reservedness or sombreness, when his effeminacy would still show but in a muted and natural way, the people around him would withdraw coolly. Perhaps this was because it only occurred to them during these moments, that what they had witnessed all this while was not merely a show or a joke, but an outward manifestation of something that was truly innate and deep-seated.

Then they would think of all the implications of his inclination, judgement would be passed and they would recoil.

I sensed that Nicholas was aware of this, and that was why he behaved the way he did. Sadly, the only way he could gain acceptance was as a jester or as something novel and intriguing. Hence ironically, the more abnormal he was, the easier he got along with others."

*

"Sometimes, I wish I could just pull out my soul from within me and just hang it somewhere for a while.. It aches so much that I just need to be relieved of my soul for a while."

- Peculiar Chris, Johann S.Lee

three moments when i was truly taken by the book, especially the last; quite a thought - as if a soul was a garment to be aired in the proverbial closet?

a gnarled inebriation

Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this, there was something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorceehood. Even her walk changed from a safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes.

She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims. What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her. An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. It was this that grew inside her..

*

On the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, everyone was a little wary of her. They sensed somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, made little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best of just Let Her Be.

On other days, she had deep dimples when she smiled.

Sometimes she was the most beautiful woman that Estha and Rahel had ever seen. And sometimes she wasn't.


- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

two beautiful girls told me how they loved The God of Small Things, and now, more than a year later, when it came to my turn to get acquainted with the book, they've somehow gotten detached from my life. the first made the decision to disappear from everyone. the other, too many factors eroded our friendship. it became gnarled. something to put away and not think about the luminous beauty it once held.

i really would like to meet Nicolette once more. there was something unfathomable about her - i doubt i could ever reach it but she was special.

*

Vick took out Keng Yang's guitar and strummed a few ditties on it. we were in camp and it was a dreary Sunday afternoon, rainy, gray, the kind best spent in bed with a book or a flick, ensconced in your blanket which is pulled up just right. so yeah, he tried to teach me the opening notes of this song which i can't recall right now. damn i never knew how difficult it was to even begin, everyone always make playing the guitar look so effortless. i couldn't even get the positioning of my fingers right, let alone make any sense of chords and what not. i think it runs in the immediate family, none of us has ever displayed the slightest affinity for musical instruments or singing. tragic.

"a liquid ache". i'm quite enthralled by the phrase; it inhabits within us all i think. inebriating.

Vick

"Twenty years. Let us measure it in stacks of photographs, in school fees, in shared meals, in the mellow delights of the connubial bed, in hard times shared, in the gnarled-ness of wistaria.

Let us measure it in trust, too heavy to weigh an ounce."

- An Equal Music, Vikram Seth

finally got around to An Equal Music. it's about this violinist, love, classical music, loads of Schuberts, Mozarts, Chopins - you'd think i'd be a complete sucker for such a heady theme (and usually you'd be spot on) but Vikram Seth's style is just a tad too maudlin, too sickly overwrought, even for me.

but as with the opera theme in Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, it's quite fascinating to learn more about classical music. i'm gonna pass the book to Vick, he's a cellist - it turns out he played in the chinese orchestra together with Rei during high school.

a person's countenance can be so unreliable sometimes. but then again, the best part probably lies in finding what's beneath that countenance. cello, cellist. delicate inflections for something so.. unwieldy? but then again, i'm no cellist, who am i to intrude upon a musician and his instrument?

crown of fronds

last night, i dreamt that we were moving to Japan. it was this place by the river, calling to mind of Clarke Quay actually, and the apartment had so many rooms, i had two for myself.

it was so rushed; our house here in my beloved Tanah Merah had already been sold and i had no say in anything.  for all of my fascination with Japan, i found myself in tears.

their faces appeared, serried together, all at once. no, i would not, could not bear the thought of being so far away from these faces. each face represents a multitude of memories, emotions, idiosyncrasies - they couldn't be traded for the magic villages of wonderland, Japan.