Feeling kind of awkward

about having to begin school again in several days time. Not being one who loves the hustle and bustle of being busy (or at least the external fidgeting that is often mistaken for work) I have put myself up to being busy in terms of reading books and watching movies. Brought a whole load of DVDs and Videos back from Australia - stuff you can't get here, or stuff that was cheaper there - and have been watching like two videos a day and reading. Books? Yup I only managed to bring back one - with Borders and Kino and Amazon - there's practically nothing you can't get here that you can get in Australia (UK bookstores on the otherhand stock much more interesting stuff). So I only managed to return with a "banned-in-Singapore" book - Rushdie's The Satanic Verses which is quite a book I must read for it begins with my namesake - Gabriel - (my name in real life is an Americanism of it apparently - this fact being handed down by my mother, though I have never found corroborating evidence).

So I've been watching movies: watched "Chungking Express" - with the fabulous Faye, "Seven" with the brooding Brad, "The Seven samurai" which Miss Tan objected to for all the grunting and screeching that's supposed to pass for intensity of Japanese emotions and "CentreStage", which is really not bad.

"Chungking Express" was the Wong Kar Wai Movie I wanted to watch before watching anything else he did because of its urban sensibility, mundaneness and hip editing. I'm glad I did too cause now I've got some angle to approach his other work. The edition I got my hands on was also quite good cause it has Quintin(?) Tarantino talking about the movie and other Wong Kar Wai stuff. Will try to watch "Days of being Wild" and "Ashes of Time" next.

LOTR - watched it twice in two days and have been re-reading parts of the novel. Love the names - wouldn't mind naming my kid Arwen - so exotic and can be used for both Hes and Shes. Nice long opening vowel sound rounded by the "w" and the softer second vowel. Can sound Chinese enough also (Ah1 Wen3) if the need arises.

Books - Just finished a Delany book - Stars in my pocket like grains of sand (SPGS)- which was intellectually very demanding (perhaps the my brain is turning flabby). Delany is perhaps the most difficult sci-Fi writer around(along with Neal Stephenson?), being very insistent on consciously weaving Lit Crit theory into his novels. For eg, he had factions in SPGS named "the Sygn" and "the Family". It isn't obvious but the references to structuralism and Freud are in-built in those namings. Further, he really pushes the boundaries of what is culturally acceptable in his Sci Fi. In SPGS, he has humans living with evelmi (which are, to put it crudely a kind of scientient flying lizard), and having relations (yes, sexual as well). From tasting tongues to speaking with multiple tongues (at the same time) to all sorts of strange sexual couplings, Delany writes a dense and complex fable of DIFFERENCE. Even gender is broken down for in Delany's world, everyone is called a WOMAN/SHE and you become MALE or FEMALE only in a specific cultural situation. So some pretty mind boggling stuff.

Question is how far does one go reading this without becoming perverse, distorted or arbitrary? At least there is the distancing glass of Theory.

Haven't been productive in writing lately. Maybe it's being overwelmed by all that has gone before. Ironically, reading a good book is the worst way to be inspired to write. You realise that so many words have gone on before you have even conceived of thought, so much more precise and vivid than you could ever think of ... and the fact is many of those words will never see the light of day.

The solution: Read a bad book.

Visiting the wilderness

Just got back from Tasmania and Sydney. Liked tasmania a lot more. The highlight of the trip was "walking" around Cradle Mountain.

Walking is a term we who live in city-state use to refer to short visits to the toilet, strolling down a shopping mall or that hurried spurt to catch a bus. The "walks" at Cradle Mountain were not quite walks in that sense ... more like hikes and treks I think. Anyway I was already mentally prepared for this as I had learnt on my honeymoon last year that a "walk" isn't "a walk" (I had said to Ms Tan early one morning at the Lake District - Let's go for a walk - and we ending up "walking" for five hours, scrambling up rocks and navigating streams etc ...)

So on the first night we were there (Ms Tan, my mom, a friend and myself) we went for a "walk" around Dove lake which sits at the foot of Cradle Mountain. It's supposed to be one of the most famous and beautiful walks in the world and was thoroughly enjoyable. The vegetation was unique and at every point of the walk you would just catch a spetacular view of the lake. It was drizzling and about 7 pm so the mist was coming in as well, enhancing the whole atmosphere. The walk was a leisurely 6km circuit round the lake so peaceful and scenic you felt you didn't need to think a lot more about running in the rat race.

The next day we went back to Cradle Mountain and attempted a more challenging "walk". This one involved some pretty demanding rock climbing ... yes we did scramble on all fours at points. But my mom who turned 60 on that day amazingly completed the walk and made it to this high point called Marion's Lookout (they have names fro everything ...) Going down was less tiring but really quite treacherous. Being a sun filled day we got an excellent view of Cradle Mountain and the Lake. We walked for four hours plus so it was quite a good workout as well. Would have liked to negotiate Cradle Mountain itself - a 7 hour trek - but didn't have the time or right company.

Was highly impressed by all these middle aged - old people (all Caucasian) trekking with camp equipment and REALLY HEAVY packs. They were planning to walk for several days in the mountains. Really admire their daring.

Anyway - left really thinking about how the beauty of the landscape transforms an individual's view of life. If you live amongst the immenisty of nature - you'll see things in a very different perspective. The pace of life slows down - how fast you walk doesn't really matter cause the immensity of the landscape swallows up speed. Maybe I'll try to study at the U of Tasmania ... sometime in the receding future ...

Re-visiting the last thing

you wrote ...

"The row of people diminishes when I try to picture you. I find mirrored in my mind the tension of sky sand and the expanse that consumes words. You've moved apart, an image white sheeted on the bleached sand. Even skimming rocks on the surface of the sea is a foiled attempt at attention for they sink faster than they skip."

You re-write

Breaking out of their strict rows, the people on the beach now fan out according to their willingness to engage the surf. It rolls in inconsistently, sometimes surprising the beach combers with its knee high lurches. Like scavengers, we take what we can of seashells, assorted pieces of broken coral and broken glass made smooth, only to scatter up the beach when the surf washes in. But the sun is ever consistent, heat beating down without respite. I find mirrored in my mind the tension of sea sky sand and the expansive heat that consumes words. Moving apart, you become an image white sheeted on the bleached sand. In the distance I make out your hazy outline and for a moment I think you a mirage. As waves of heat blur your outline, I grasp at making the picture of you stay in my mind. But there I only find the contradictions of sea sky and sand, of depths, surfaces and infiniteness.

Even skimming rocks on the surface of the sea is a foiled attempt at attention for the rocks sink faster than they skip. Momentarily distracted by the vividness of physical activity, I hardly notice that you've drifted back and now stand beside me. You laugh as the rock plops again into the surf but I do not catch exact the moment when your grin becomes a smile.

Am Currently Listening to

"Urban Hymns" by the Verve. And am taking a cue from the guitar sounds: how do you translate them into writing?
"Nick McCabe's playing relied heavily on delay and chorus doubling effects to build up a formidable wall of sound."

So how does one write a "formidable wall of words?" I take a cue from Dylan Thomas - that Welsh poet who spun out language madly ... and was madly in love with words ...

In Country Sleep

Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear,
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.

Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn
Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
And prince of ice
To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise
In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,

Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed
And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.
From the broomed witch's spume you are shielded by fern
And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.
Lie fast and soothed,
Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood.
Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern

Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell
Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves

Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.
Sanctum sanctorum the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most

For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood
Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you

Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house
In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch
And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four
Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch,
Cool in your vows.
Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pouncing boughs
Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure

And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn,
This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks
In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls
Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks
The waters shorn.
This night and each night since the falling star you were born,
Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls,

As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides
Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the wind-
Milled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands
Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged
Apple seed glides,
And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides,
As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.

Dylan Thomas

And if you read that out loud - the formidable wall of words!

Then you read what you wrote and try

to find some shape. Try it on for size. Write in personality. This is the crafting?

The wind-tossed dune beach is dry and the seagulls have turned into albatrosses across the stony ground. But up close they still scavange for food in the the discarded cans and cups and shrouded paper bags and pink plastic strings and pick on open eyed insects breaking into view. Looking hard, they peck at the insects, sending them scurrying. We carefully laugh at the seabirds trying to keep ourselves decorous in front of each other.

The breakwater on which we sit is worn . The slime from the algae ushers in the waves that ride relentless on its rock surface. Here, there is no respite from the unforgiving sun and the flat rocks reflect the heat like a glass. Made from the ocean's spray, chiselled by the forces of god, the rock surfaces stall the inevitable eroding when water meets land.

I try to keep you amused by claiming that it takes skill in choosing rocks flat enough to skim.

"They skim well even on the waves."

The row of people diminishes when I try to picture you. I find mirrored in my mind the tension of sky sand and the expanse that consumes words. You've moved apart, an image white sheeted on the bleached sand. Even skimming rocks on the surface of the sea is a foiled attempt at attention for they sink faster than they skip.

And so I try to make sense of each skimming now sinking rock. I tell myself that they speak of a lost moment that once launched, tries for words becoming almost meaningful. But unlike rocks, these words thrown out in the breeze will not sink. They catch the wind like flaunted flags strung out in embarrassing silence.

"Look here, this one skips."

Your grin almost becomes a smile but I never get to see it.

Held out in the sun, words lose they fluidity becoming baked, like mud accumulating at the foot of the breakwater. When the tide is low, the slime hardens, thickens and sets. The glances of emotion become fossilised and there is no longer the ambiguity of misread signals.

But by the sea every slight gesture and utterance is a moment not yet set. Before you turn around, before you exchange your grin for a smile, before the hours lengthen into days: by the sea, I imagine rocks skim the surf.

Just type and strings of words will out

from your belly flow like an unending torrent that seeks its way in a parched and barren land. Old men say that quiet seeks quiet and the only refuge for the broken man is the shelter from the shade of the unforgiving sun. But the aged speak from experience. From loss of love and life, from disappointment and disllusionment. Just write and from the flicking of your wrists and fingers you will find the stream of consciousness starts to define itself - organising strings from streams, links from modes, modules from chunks and areas from spaces. Only stop when you need to break the flow that grows too meanancing for your fingers to control. Only pause when you need to fulfil the physiological needs of the flesh and the body and the whims of ordinary living. But them just write and find the voices within rise within, rise from whence they once found hidden meaning. From the innermost belly - forth comes - comes forth, what froths other than milk than has been churned up and bubbled up and screamed up in a long tall Cup?

Instead of pen and paper - just write - electronic specks a multitude of calculations turning thought into alogrithmic pulse - making thought permanent, reducible, binary. Zero One Zero is the choice of the age when nothing else is the colour but a shading of black and white. I use the backspace too much. I should just let aqll the weroors stand in nakedn unabshement - how difficult then would translated thought be to read. Just write. The first draft is alsways written from the heart then youy go through it with the mercilessness of the pen to erase that which you are too afraid will show your inadequacies and trnaspeacrnesies ot thought. Tjust Write and see twhan will appeare on the screen as an experiencementi nthe free forme space out speed tyrping and all that beomes liquisd turns solid agains as you pause to try to gains some sense of where all this ois oging.

The ultimate novel of our times - is written in the thoughtlessnessof the machine. the faster it moves the more the pages get written. Written in the thoughtless ness of speed and movement. Writtten in the imponderables that evade even the spirit. What remains is translating that novel into space into language into constested ground. No novel should exist beyond the reach of argument of critique of evaluation.

Sometimes when I gather ideas about you I find a sob choke in the throat. UNable to continue with more than one thought at a time I blind myself from thought I specialise in the art of staring blankly. In sleep, I no longer dream for the imaginative life has been crowded out by the repetition of cautiousness. In life, I am crowded out by flab and physical exhaustion. When I gather ideas about you I find it impossible to coutn as my muse your image in my minds eye. All the moments that we've talked about art and life and what it's all about seems to diminish when I try to replace the vague sense of your presence. Does art merely come from the flesh - the tingling when you are near? Are artist able with that strange premonition to cultivate a senselessness so that the moment of creation becomes the sense rather than merely mapping the sense? All the ailments associated with the deranged must finally accumulate in a recepticle - and that may be the artist. Was Jackson Pollack mad or a Genius? Drip Drip Drip paint over the sheet - invention 2 in gradiant schemes - titles longer and more eventful than spolches or paint. Who will eat with me? Who will drink a glass of coke? Who will persist no matter what? Who will read read and read again?

And the surfs' up and beach is dry and the seagulls have turned into albatrosses across the stony ground. Nothing takes root save the discarded cans and cups and shrouded paper bags and pink plastic strings and jaded open eyed insects breaking into view. Rocks are flat on sides. Made from the ocean's spray, chiselled by the forces of god - they skim well even in the tide. The row of people diminishes when I try to picture you. But even skimming rocks on the surface is a foiled attempt for they bounce off. And so each skimming rock speaks of a lost moment that launched out into a potential moment of words nearly becoming meaningful. Merely translates into a failed attempt at disclosure. Conversations that lead on are supposed to tell more and no hide away. But being led on by emotion first it becomes impossible to speak your mind isn't it? For how much do you dare to break out into the open? Unlike the rockss, these missle launches will not sink but float like flaunted flags to catch the breeze and hang stagnant in the air. Like rocks skimming the surf - turbulence not the glassy sea - roar - skim shot through with foam and the impossiblity of the attempt amuses all. One solitary mudskipper is all that on a rock tried to launch himself into the sun. He ran awhile on the dryness before the algae and slippery surfaces tempted him too high up. Apart from the sea, he could no longer with gleeful skip make himself master of the muddy domain. Strayed awhile from the sea, into the domain of the sun, he become positioned for the sun's rays. When mud is baked dry all emotion is solidified and there is no longer the fluidity, the space, the ambiguity,for the wrong signals to be productive. But by the sea- every wrong signal ramifies in meaning - expands in significance, affords emotional investment that is never worth it. By the sea - all things are.