"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!

'Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.

'I am sorry,' said Frodo. 'But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.

'You have not seen him,' Gandalf broke in.

'No, and I don't want to,' said Frodo. 'I can't understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all these horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.'

'Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

*

My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the Pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least."

- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R Tolkien

Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

Angelica: What happens when we die?

Virginia: What happens? [pause] We return to the place that we came from.

Angelica: I don't remember where I came from.

Virginia: Nor do I.

Angelica:...She looks smaller

Virginia: Yes, that's one of the things that happens. You look smaller.

Angelica:But so peaceful...

- The Hours

"Why do I always have to sit next to the exes? Is this some kind of a hint, sweetheart? Anyway, shouldn't the exes have a table of their own, where they can all ex together in ex-quisite agony?"

- Sally Lester in The Hours

{ Would you be angry if I died? }

*

If you died?

*

{ Who is this party for? }

*

What do you mean who is it for? Why are you asking? What are you trying 

to say?

*

{ I am not trying to say anything.  I'm saying I think I'm only staying alive 

to satisfy you. }

*

So that is it we do. That is what people do - they stay alive for each other.

- The Hours

"I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything is all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now."

- The Hours

i just keep coming back to The Hours, over and over and over and over and over and over again.

"And when I saw those places, walked by them and reached out to touch where my fingers had once touched before, I felt parts of me were still in those places. I felt that I somehow had left a piece of myself there, maybe like we all do, and I continue to leave pieces everywhere I go. It’s strange to think about yourself haunting places you’ve once spent moments or minutes or hours of your life at but I think it’s true. Somehow parts of ourselves stay there in the soil or in the stone. They say it’s so easy to miss someone once they’re gone well maybe it’s just as easy to miss yourself."

- kelsey from pigmenting

tonight, Lykke Li

keep us safe until the night; what happens next then? what happens when night falls? wouldn't it be better to keep us safe day and night? but no one can do that, can they? 

yesterday, the night before tomorrow. 

so hard to cast away the night when so much of me has moved forward, yet so much of me dwells there still. it is like a tiny, tiny pond, a subterranean, miniscule pond of unknowable depth, submerged within a clear, wavering stream that's struggling to trickle forth. 

"All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density."

- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami 

venice, november 2012

"... so if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy.' 

'Unhappy? Why's that?'

'Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it. The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a deserted island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last for ever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best as we could. In the end, it didn't work."

*

"Every now and then, as I walked along I would stop, turn and heave a deep sigh for no particular reason. I felt as though I had arrived on a planet where the gravity was a little different. Yes, of course, I told myself, feeling sad: I was in the outside world now."

- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami 

"Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once."

- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

an amalgam of tawny chartreuse, bordeaux red, faded kiwi green and a beguiling dark emerald tote with gold flecks on the lettering. colour and texture speaks most to me these days.

i'm outside my favourite store in Singapore - SUPERMAMA. everything about SUPERMAMA is so lovingly curated - from its subtle fresh grass scent, to the inconspicuous animal figurines leading the explorer up the stairs to a domain of light, plants and a quiet, joyful beauty, to white-painted doors repositioned as tables; everything within the store sits patiently in their individual corners, awaiting discovery.

i'm very glad SUPERMAMA came about, because prior to their arrival, Singapore was kinda lacking in such a space. there are some other stores i could think of that have similar philosophies, but none that specialises in the gamut of objects SUPERMAMA stocks - stationary made of aged brass, papery bags with the cutest mushroom prints, lamps of stitched golden leather and the most beautifully crafted homeware that makes me insane with the desire to have a space of my own some day just simply so that i can finally take some of these pieces home with me.

*

the floppy bucket hat is from A.P.C. a few seasons ago and i got it at a heavily slashed price. i could never afford it otherwise - or think it to be worth the original, bloated price. but ever since it arrived in the store, i'd eye it up every day and plonk it on, imagining the day i'd liberate it from the cold, insouciant stand it rested on.

it's the closest i could get to one of my favourite collections from Burberry Prorsum - the spring 2009 season.

Burberry Prorsum Spring/Summer 2009

everything is right up my alley. the fabrics that look so delicately diaphanous and crinkled - how utterly inviting for a lover to run his fingers along the garment's imperfect irregularities - which perhaps mirrors that of the individual clothed in it? perhaps only a lover could notice, for he has slowly been granted the desired proximity.

clothing is a form of armour to me. perhaps the reason why i adore hats so much is the slight sense of completion they grant to me. i like the idea of having my eyes partially obscured. for others, like Ms.Wintour, the device they turn to would be sunglasses - "At this point they've become...really, armor." 

it took me a very long time to come from having my shirts all fully buttoned up right up the uppermost button to relaxing and actually leaving one undone - occasionally. i didn't feel complete, nearly vulnerable when a sliver of flesh could peek through. most of the time, being buttoned all the way up is part of a look but it also says stiff, stifling, behind imprisoning glass doors. 

so.. i don't really know where i'm going with this, but what i'm quite clear on is that i'd like to move in the direction of thisisnaive's Tommy. her grasp on the small and beautiful things in life - be it food, architecture, fabrics, furniture, lighting - tells you that beauty doesn't have to be glaringly obvious in order for it to exist. i feel the same, only as time shifts, i find the same philosophy slowly growing on me with regards to my manner and take on dressing. this is something i think that has always eluded fashion - it resides in the nuances and idiosyncrasies of an individual's style. 

ZUKO: This city is a prison. I don't want to make a life here.

IROH: Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not.

— Tim Hedrick, Avatar: The Last Airbender

saw this on dear jieqiang's wall. he's a gem <3

"Once, long ago, when I was still young, when the memories were far more vivid than they are now, I often tried to write about her. But I couldn't produce a line. I knew that if that first line would come, the rest would pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happen.

Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start - the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless. Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her.

I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade.

Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed."

- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami 

"... my memory has grown increasingly dim, and I have already forgotten any number of things. Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?"

- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

"All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.

And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. She did not know herself what it was. It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.

And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for ever. She craved for -. When he was there, she felt complete, she was sufficient, whole. For the rest of time she was established on the sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any common maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering or contempt."

Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence 

elan, elan

"A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop."

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino 

Plangent

O come, in any way you want,

In morning sunlight fooling in the leaves

Or in thick bouts of rain that soak my head

         Because of what the darkness said

Or come, though far too slowly for my eye to see,

Like a dark hair that fades to gray

Come with the wind that wraps my house 

Or winter light that slants upon a page

         Because the beast is stirring in its cage

Or come in raw and ragged smells

Of gumleaves dangling down at noon

Or in the undertow of love

When she's away

         Because a night creeps through the day

Come as you used to, years ago,

When I first fell for you

In the deep calm of an autumn morning

Beginning with the cooing of a dove

         Because of love, the lightest love

Or if that's not your way these days

Because of me, because

Of something dead in me,

Come like a jagged knife into my gut

         Because your touch will surely cut

Come any way you want 

But come

- Kevin Hart, Flame Tree: Selected Poems

The people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping… 

something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene.

— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

- The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

"I kind of really wish I had a lover to wash away this loneliness. There’s very different types of loneliness — the kind that you need friends for, the kind that you need someone you know, the kind where you’re in a crowded room, and the kind where you want someone who knows you, inseams and soul, and will kiss your lips, and smile, and tell you that they love you.

I mostly feel the last one, or two."

via cicatricose

Dumbledore:

"And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing.

That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

I want to love you softly, inscribing poems into the corners of your arms. You will be the books on dusty shelves, once forgotten and now found. I want to love you softly until the sun blinds our eyes and all we are left with is the braille on our skin. We will lick our lips and taste the salt of the ocean and feel the thunder in our bones. There will be words spilling from our mouths like raindrops and we will laugh because the storm is really inside of us. But first, I want to love you softly.

kelsey of pigmenting

a little something i chanced upon while leafing through Supermama's scrapbook.

who knows who wrote it and who answered? who knows indeed? i should like to think of two wonderful characters communing, separated by mere Time but living in the same beautiful idea. where one ends, the other is taken up..

always.

Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. 

"After all this time?"

"Always."

via orangette 

on the stairs she paused and said to Sebastian: "I wonder if we're right. Bringing him back, I mean. He looked so happy. Oh Sebastian, he looked so happy..." 

"As George Green, you mean?" 

"Yes. Are you sure we're right?" 

"Yes, I'm pretty sure. It can't be right for anyone to be in that unnatural sort of state."

"I suppose it is unnatural. The queer thing is he looked so normal and commonplace. And happy - that's what I can't get over, Sebastian - happy... none of us are very happy, are we?" 

He couldn't answer that.

- Giant's Bread, Agatha Christie

"He was grief-stricken but happy. His husband was his in death as he had never been in life, and with his easy power of making things as he wished them to be, he began to weave a convincing romance of his wonderfully happy married life."

- Giant's Bread, Agatha Christie.

i've changed the identities from his and hers to entirely his and his. forgive me Ms.Christie.

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. 

They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”

- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

“We became acquainted with starry skies the girls had gazed at while camping years before, and the boredom of summers traipsing from back yard to front to back again, and even a certain indefinable smell that arose from toilets on rainy nights, which the girls called "sewery." 


We knew what it felt like to see a boy with his shirt off, and why it made Lux write the name Kevin in purple Magic Marker all over her three-ring binder and even on her bras and panties, and we understood her rage coming home one day to find that Mrs. Lisbon had soaked her things in Clorox, bleaching all the "Kevins" out. 


We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. 


We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled
to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. 


We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. 


We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.” 

- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

“Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory; dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.”

- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

this is perhaps how i feel these days. or perhaps it was already there all along and only became more pronounced over the years. i dont understand why this anxiety grabs hold of me when the occasion for conversation comes around. it seems to victimize everyone. there comes a point in the conversation where the fear sets in and i work feverishly to find a topic.. just in case. like a score card i have to slot into memory banks to caution against the looming, awkward break.

it happens with everyone, even with people i'm very fond of and am pleased to run into. it goes something like this :

"HEY! LONG TIME NO SEE!"

"OMG HI!"

"how are you?!"

"oh i'm not doing much these days, army you know... what about you?"

"it feels like you've been in army forever! i'm blah blah blah"

i smile. a brittle smile. 

and i can't think of anything else to say. once the pleasantries are over there's a pause. a very pregnant pause. too audible to ignore. and once you try again, the cracks are obvious and a flimsy coat of effort just falls flat. i try very hard to keep that awkwardness at bay but the more i try the more it rears up.

i am genuinely pleased to see the person - the spark flares, incandescent initially but sputters and stutters its way into a slow, feeble death. the other person is perhaps left confused, memories of good times, jovial times swirl up but are dissipated by the faltering reception they've encountered. it's come to the point where i'm afraid to be left alone with most people. even in camp, i actively ensure that i do not end up doing my duty with another individual. i'll trade, barter, sweet talk others, angling it just so that i either end up alone or there's company. i hope no one notices. but inevitably, even the newcomers recede away from me and i know i'm the one building up the Impenetrable Zone, ever so steadily. three people's fine. just not two. 

even with writing i'm struggling. recently i had the opportunity to read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. and his writing was so alluring, executed with such precision, that i'm left in a stupor, as if i myself had been in love with the Lisbon sisters. perhaps i am trying to see if i can effect a semblance to his style but it is not even a pale shadow of Mr.Eugenides'. 

i just told nick that i don't think i even know how it feels like to be romantic anymore. it's being gnawed out of me, the bit that concocts the ingredients a heart needs to go on.

now i am so out of touch with something so pleasant and simple that i wonder what we had to talk about at all. i wonder if i can even fill up ten minutes worth of talk time now let alone five hours.

it has yet to abate. 

but my resolve is starting to. 

Undesirable No.1: Michelle Harper.

via streetfsn

They say if two

souls are too similar,
they are doomed to
live a life apart.


They say
parallel lines
will never meet.


But i don't mind
running forever beside
a line like mine.


Besides, it's
all a matter of
perspective.


If we stand at the beginning
and look forward,
two parallel lines do
meet after all -
in the distant future.


I don't mind
running forever
towards that distant future,
side by side
with a line like mine.


At least we will never diverge, Diana Rahim

"Prudie had a bit of lipstick on her teeth, or else it was wine. Jocelyn wanted to lean across and wipe it off with a napkin, the way she did when Sahara needed tidying. But she restrained herself; Prudie didn’t belong to her. 


The fire sculpted Prudie’s face, left the hollows of her cheeks hollow, brightened her deep-set eyes. She wasn’t pretty like Allegra, but she was attractive in an interesting way. She drew your eye."


- The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler

"Life and reading are not separate activities. The distinction is false (as it is when Yeats imagines a choice between "perfection of the life, or of the work"). When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic."


Julian Barnes, my life as a bibliophile 

Keep - Sharon Van Etten

Keep still so I can find you at your whim.
Breathe slowly so I can breathe with you.

Leave me alone, 
We all want to feel at home.
Find me sleeping, 
My inner dialogue's a drone.
Keep... 

Don't cry for me, 
I can't either.
I can't weep.
Remember these moments, 
They're all we have 
And all I can keep.
Caught in a lie I want 
You to keep me to yourself.

Keep running deep under my skin I want to shed.
Don't keep it in keep it on the thinnest of all threads-
And I won't break you, no, no... 

*

for Gigi and Jiankai.

i cannot honestly say that i knew Jiankai all that well. the number of times we've hung out could probably be counted with the fingers on my hands. but he was markedly different from Gigi's former boyfriends - more studious, more quiet, more serious, more intent on helping Gigi stay on the stable path. i last saw him on the Tuesday before he died. we were having a birthday dinner for Van at Saveur. i hadn't expect Jiankai to be amongst our number, but there he was, clad in a intricately patterned cardigan. he told me he got it from Bangkok when i admired it. all throughout our dinner, Gigi and Jiankai were loving, but never overtly blatant or in your face about it. when i ordered the foie gras, she consulted him, but he demurred. each action was gentle and considerate, you could see it.

i'll remember that we were all about to dive into the citrus-based dessert but jokingly held back for Jiankai to snap a shot of it so he could upload it onto Instagram. he was always the photographer on the occasions that he joined us. i dont know if he ever got round to uploading that photo but i'll remember that he was there with us that night. i don't know if you were unhappy or troubled, Jiankai - you seemed the picture of the devoting partner ever ready to place a steadying hand around Gigi, and i'm truly sorry if i was too dense or inattentive to pick up on it.

but you were there, on monday morning, when i had to go back to camp. the irrevocable fact that you were gone, gone - it wandered round my head bitterly, round and round. i don't know why, but it kicked in harder on monday morning than on saturday, when we first heard the news, disbelieving, or on sunday night, when we attended the funeral.

it seemed the world ought to be suspended. one never thinks such matters would ever occur. it was something to read about in the papers, to sympathise from afar, to mull over temporarily. with one flip of the page, the news goes on to the next tragedy occurring in Uganda, in Somalia, in some far away place that while occupying the same planet, seemed alien and sequestered, contained to that very page.

i found myself fretting over what to wear to your funeral, Jiankai, if you can comprehend that. i was having difficulty in finding something black to wear. while i was trying on clothes, the thought came suddenly - WHAT WAS I DOING?

after all, what were clothes compared to a permanent absence of someone you knew? a person was dead, was irretrievably gone, gone to where no one really knew - how could i still function normally, still ascribe meaning to such mundane matters?

even now, i am unable to cry. perhaps it's because i do not know you well enough, Jiankai. i don't get the chance to know you anymore, except perhaps through Gigi, who has started to share with us more anecdotes of the times you two spent together, of your habits, your tics. it is a filtered knowledge we've gained about you, that is true, and i do not think we will ever get to know the entire truth. perhaps you would not have wished us to know either. but thank you for being kind to Gigi, for loving her. in return, we got to accept your friendship, brief as it was. i do not know of your musical tastes, though i could probably hazard a guess or two, but i hope you like the song. it came through the night we  first knew, entitled "Track 2". i was desperate to uncover the name, and when i eventually unearthed the name and googled the lyrics, it seemed suitable. i'm sorry i can't give you more, but whenever i hear this song, i will hold it to your name.

please, rest in peace and do not worry, we will take care of Gigi in your stead. i hope you are happy and free on the other side. there's not much else to be said, but thank you for extending a hand of friendship to me.

unfurling

nicky, by ban

you are the silence in between 
what i thought and what i said

no light, no light - Florence + the Machine

everything is wrong. i am well aware of my severe limitations. i am just particularly in love with the lines that nick presented; the hands have it all - as a child's when asleep, a tender, unbridled innocence unfurling, the unconscious seeking another. the heather gray sweater falling away, permitting a bashful sliver of skin to permeate. the ruffled hair, the untameable brow. it's one of my favourite photos of nick shot by ban.

every time i think i'm done, he reels me in.

"The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him.

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage."

1984, George Orwell

"Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man."


a quote from Aung San Suu Kyi in Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin

"We got to see how truly unimaginative our suburb was, everything laid out on a grid whose bland uniformity the trees had hidden, and the old ruses of differentiated architectural styles lost their power of make us feel unique. The Kriegers' Tudor, the Buells' French colonial, the Bucks' imitation Frank Lloyd Wright - all just baking roofs."

the virgin suicides, jeffrey eugenides

"... and for a time the tree stood blighted, trying to raise its stunted arms, a creature clubbed mute, only its sudden voicelessness making us realize it had been speaking all along."

the virgin suicides, jeffrey eugenides

Whisper of the Heart is my favourite Studio Ghibli film. It's all too easy to get swept up by the story line - Shizuku Tsukishima is a junior high school student who is an avid reader and regular visitor to the library. Checking her books' record cards, she discovers that a boy named Amasawa Seiji has been borrowing the exact same books prior to her. Intrigued, she attempts to put a face to this boy. She does meet the boy under fairy tale-like circumstances eventually. Her family is largely scholastic; her father works at the library while her mother appears to have suspended working in order to study for a Masters degree. In such an environment, Shizuku is mostly left to her own devices.


While Hayao Miyazaki may not have directed it (Yoshifumi Kondo does the honors here), he wrote the screenplay. The attention to seemingly mundane, quotidian details is astounding - insects flying around an overhead lamp, sounds of a summer's cicada, Shizuku pulling out a snack to munch on while writing determinedly... like I said, seemingly insignificant details that are automatically, blindly swallowed without absorbing for most of us when going about our daily business. All the more reason to marvel at Studio Ghibli's devotion to these minute details when it could have been so much easier to do away with them.

The portrayal of life in a suburban Tokyo town was also very well conceived. Yet again, such mundane activities as grocery shopping, meal times, commuting on the train, interaction with neighbours, school teachers, friend's parents - were discreetly carried out without being blatant in the least. As such the story flows with a natural charm that envelopes one into suburban Tokyo: past the flashier touristy bits, the fashions, the hyper-ness of TOKYO!!!!; this is what it must be like to live there. 

I guess the main reason why I love Whisper of the Heart so much was the literary theme and its connotations. Shizuku, aged perhaps thirteen or fourteen, finds herself envying Seiji for having a clear goal in life to work towards. She is, in her own words, living from day to day. It is evident that she has a way with words but she's lacking in a sense of direction, like so many of us are. Eventually, Seiji's grandfather provides the right amount of nudging and Shizuku pens her first novel. A rough draft to be sure, but it is a story complete with lovingly thought out characters and a blossoming plot. I wish the same could happen for myself.

The idea of meeting your love through books is an eternal fantasy for most of us who regard books as lifelines. Of course, discovering his name through paper record cards is even sweeter. I'm glad I'm old enough to remember these paper record cards that library books used to come with. We used to have them when I was in primary school but now everything's just an efficient scan-and-go. It harks back to an earlier era of musty old libraries and frowning, disapproving librarians manually stamping your books - the sentimental romantics in us lap it up all the more.

While the cynics may sneer at the romanticism and unlikely "perfectness" of the colliding circumstances - Seiji is an aspiring violin craftsman who yearns to learn the esoteric trade in a small town in Cremona, Italy, his grandfather owns an emporium selling delightfully surreal antiques, each of which seems to promise magical tales and adventures - Whisper of the Heart is a mature story which never overdoes the maudlin. In such scenes as the one where Seiji tries valiantly to cycle up a very steep hill with Shizuku seated, instead of clutching onto Seiji, she immediately dismounts and in a turnabout, she aids him by pushing the bicycle from behind.

I'm terrible at reviewing. I think this girl says it a lot better:

"I was Shizuku when I was fourteen. I’m still Shizuku in a lot of ways. I respect Ghibli’s other heroines for different reasons and they are all strong in their own ways, but Shizuku is the one I personally relate to best. Partially because her problems and difficulties are very much grounded in the real world. Even when her friends are telling her she’s gifted and smart she’s dissatisfied with herself. I can relate with that.  

The entire film is a wonderful depiction of adolescence. She’s real. She is the embodiment of a fourteen year old girl trying to figure out how she can fit into the big picture. I have always struggled with trying to find the ‘gem’ within myself. Her discovery that writing is a process — not a miracle — was a revelation for me as well as her. I have lived in a cloud of self doubt from the time I was old enough to understand what grades were. 

Not to mention the relationship between Seiji and Shizuku in that film was so beautifully developed. It was trusting and natural and naive. It was a beautiful film because it didn’t mix the world of adulthood in with the reality of being fourteen and yet it is still relatable to me as an ‘adult’.   It was just a film that spoke to me, and helped my personal development."