alice

art by Audrey Kawasaki

It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice

I disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There's a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass on the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby all I can think of is Alice

Arithmetic arithmetock
Turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

There's only Alice

-- Tom Waits

I felt like Hamlet,

looking in from the wings; part of the play, yet not. Railing against uncertainty, I questioned my identity.

Who am I? To them? To her? To her as to them? To them as to her? Who am I indeed, to play my part when I knew not what part I had to play?

----
Words do not fail us. We fail ourselves in not knowing how best to use words: to turn a phrase, to craft a sentence; to write, to speak - to convey meaning.

I knew not how to say the right things; I knew not how to ask the right questions.

And even if I did, I could never bring myself to utter the right words.

This alone, I know.

[fin]

what made me realise

I was Doing It Wrong:

More than anything, friends. Both close and distant. Even ones that I never knew I had. To a select few: I needed - and still need - space for solitude, and time to heal. But in my bid to get away, I've wronged you immeasurably. I can't ever apologise enough for that.

I am particularly grateful for the following: everyone who wrote to me; the time I've had to write; my LAWR class, who made my laugh when I didn't know how to; Shermon, who eked inappropriate jokes out of me in the library; 07S06R, for always being the class that never let me down; a chirpy, fringed horror who made me feel better by babbling inanities at me; a beautiful sketch of the Enterpise-D, given to me in what must be the sweetest gesture I've known for some time; a link to a song with lyrics which, at once meant so little, yet so much to me.
The moment of clarity came when I realised that I'd worn the wrong pair of shoes to school - my dad's. He hadn't worn it for a year. It made a most peculiar racket when I started walking. This was a problem in the library. I had to walk sideways - like a crab - or not walk at all. Come mid-afternoon, I hobbled out of the library with half a mind to head for home and changing out of the shoes. I slipped one shoe off - and discovered that the insides of the shoe had completely melted around my socks.

I felt patently silly. I think I laughed out loud.

Here I was, outraged and depressed over an absurdity - the absurd loss of a remarkable life - yet Life had its own ideas, and threw me another - a facetious and utterly silly one this time.

I don't know exactly what point it is I am trying to make, but it goes something like this: that life is so fundamentally absurd that the best we can do is laugh these absurdities - of all kinds - away. To take them into stride. We are better than the most absurd of all that gets thrown in our way.

Stephen Fry draws a comparison between depression and the rain that falls when we least welcome it; it rains hardest when one is cold and utterly miserable. One can't do anything about the weather, as is likewise with feelings - you can't not feel the way you do. But you can always find an umbrella - and sit it out. And it will be sunny one day. And when it is - I will take full advantage of it.

To do otherwise would be a disservice to myself; to do otherwise would be a disservice to my friends. And most of all, to do otherwise would be a disservice to her.

And I don't think I could ever live with that.

how do you preserve a memory?

art by Chris Appelhans

Not with the stilted craft of a taxidermist. Trapped within a menagerie of his own creation, he works under the glass-eyed stares of his beasts - the more perfectly preserved, the greater the impression of artifice. No semblance can come from depravity.

Nor with proclamations and monuments and squares; the impersonal vulgarises the personal. No monument is truly eternal, nor its grandiose designs, fidelity.

But as with loam in weathered hands - grasped not too gently, as to let its substance scatter to the winds; nor crushed too tightly, that violence be done to its essence, and render its being unworthy - packed into the earth as sustenance for life, come the new dawn: a blossoming of affection, a spring of remembrance; for every memory that needs be, only in new life can we see.

[fin]

----
previously: on emotions

nightingale: the forest closes 'round you

----
I built my house beside the wood
So I could hear you singing
And it was sweet and it was good
And love was all beginning

Fare thee well my nightingale
'Twas long ago I found you
Now all your songs of beauty fail
The forest closes 'round you

The sun goes down behind a veil
'Tis now that you would call me
So rest in peace my nightingale
Beneath your branch of holly

Fare thee well my nightingale
I lived but to be near you
Tho' you are singing somewhere still
I can no longer hear you

-- Leonard Cohen, Nightingale


[fin]

in memoriam: there but for the grace of you go I

art by Niko Geyer

Dear Mingwei:

So it goes; I guess this must be goodbye. I've always wanted to say it properly, but now I never will.

It doesn't feel real. I wish that this were simply a badly written scene, in which we need not play. But wishes count for nothing, don't they?

As much as I am writing this for myself, I write in memory of you. A person is defined by the people whom he has shared meaning with; you are who I was to you, as much as I am who you are to me. If others may know you better for who you were upon reading this, then I have honoured your memory.

You were easily the most remarkable person I have ever known. You were conversant about literature, theatre and philosophy; you excelled in science; you played Halo, loved the Beatles (with reservations), and enthused about Brit Comedy and Star Wars. Had you wanted to, as a black-belt in Karate, you could probably have beaten me up! Much as you were, there were some things that you weren't. Chief amongst them, you were always abashed about not being much of musician. Undeterred by not being able to play the piano as well as you wished to, last I knew, you were taking saxophone lessons. What became of that?

But this isn't about who you were. This is about who you were - and are - to me. And believe me when I say that I would be far for the worse had it not been for you.

You came into my life when it was at it lowest. I had just been conscripted, and having been the worst kind of student since secondary school, I had done poorly in the A-levels - to no one's surprise. Having abandoned my dreams of being a musician, I was without direction in life. With my closest friends stuck in training, I had no one to turn to for company that mattered - until you became more to me than "that classmate" - you were a friend I could actually Talk to. What struck me was that you treated me like an equal - not that the others didn't - but you spoke to me with such sincerity that I was always assured that we could have a conversation in the truest sense of the word; we could have an exchange of views and emotions, entirely on each others' merits. And more than that, I could speak to you as who I wasn't at that time - a confident individual.

You challenged me. You shared almost all my interests, but you were different in that you excelled in them. In so many words - I wanted to be like you; you set a standard for learning - for being - which I have since aspired to. My interests were sired elsewhere, but for the first time in my life, I felt the thirst of intellectual pursuit, and more than that, I wanted to live life to its fullest. I was in control of my life for the very first time. But if I were truly captain of my soul and master of my destiny, you helped steer. You knew me too well; you revealed my alleged interest for medicine as false; I then aspired to read Law, and have never since looked back. You convinced me to re-sit all my papers; I did - in my pride, without the help you offered - and achieved top marks. And finally, you declared that you enjoyed my company as much I did yours; I was then, for an ephemeral moment, to live all the happiest moments of my life by your side.

Yet you were an angel flying too close to the ground. We parted in acrimony, despite initial pledges of goodwill. It was entirely my fault - but I could not come to terms with letting you go. It was one of the most difficult things I had to do - just as it is now, under different circumstances. I last spoke to you over the phone about a year ago, telling you that I had gotten a place in NUS Law. I was going for the next best thing: a place in the city of dreaming spires. I never succeeded. I suppose I'll never fulfill that promise made to you by the waterfront - to finally meet up with you in the UK.

On promises never to be fulfilled - further back in time, before you first left for Cambridge, you said: "Maybe when we're grown up, we'll meet and have a laugh over this." We won't.

It so happens that you are perhaps the closest person I've ever known to pass on. The next closest - well, my maternal grandmother, perhaps. But I've never felt this way before. There is no frustration, no anger, no raging storm of emotions - just a damp hollowness, and the occasional chill that rends every fibre of my being. I am an atheist - as you were, proudly - but never have I so refused to believe that someone such as you does not deserve better after death.

But so it goes.

And God knows, if it matters at all - I still love you.

----
I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls.

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.

And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.
----

[fin]