June 2003

Zust Zoking - 6/8/2003





You must be pretty strange to try to speak like that, with your teeth in a deranged line-up against that thick slab tongue. You try to make the sounds without moving the wind that clutters your mouth and makes everything sound high-strung. If you did it once, you'd be able to try again, but this time without the help of the Sun. You see he took a holiday the day you came around and now you're stuck in between the noon and the plus one. When you hear crying, pray for the bottomless child whose mother is risen from the slave ship's hour and the waving feted clouds signal to you that the trees waiting for the hanging to be done - the leaves waiting for the reaching to be over and we run for cover because the starships crashing into the moonlight hour and the sparkles are hurting our eyes o'er and o'er here and there and in old everywhere we say and swear the dress you're wearing is a refund from the box beneath the stair-case. I would love you better if O'd seen you more often rather than merely recognise the dark sound of a creaking door open when the late night twinkle of mosquitoes sounds like the drone of a heart beating with the flesh of life in its wing-span. They often come near with sounds that half-awakened spiders creep away from. They often come near to dress your ceek bone in sweat and saliva - that your long forgotten spittle from when you were little. I would have loved you better if from the time we were born to the time that is now you'd sat patiently and let him hit you repeatedly with the brown belt cover and the brass open buckle and felt the violence prick your conscience like the pin drop that makes these night sounds diminish and drop and feel like the felt covers under which we snuggle and try to hide from the night sounds of the creaking stairs and the crying stars and the frightened moon and the broken sun. We fleece the clouds for the clods of a better day. Tomorrow perhaps, we'll have our way.

So when I hear crying I pray for the child whose mother is grieving over the lost opportunities and the screeching cats provide the solemn overture for a final Mass that cannot be left unspoken. If lines were to be unbroken and the circle his course run, then surely my breath is a mere token, of all the left undone.





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How Often - 6/11/2003





Does one try to persist in the memory of the Other, an hour after the death, all greif is swept aside like the dust that accumulates for years in the silent corner gets sucked up by the vacuum of the moment. You cried with he passed away and tried never to recall how those hurting barbs would rear their prickly pokey points and come crashing down like a throny crown O lord show me the way as we go down into the valley of ashes, the slim pits of today compare with the carbon dates and racist hate and furies flying with the Fates of despair. Describe to me an emotion and I'll make it personal, give it shape, hew from the abstract a living stone to colour and protect you all the days of my life and we'll run into the waters before the waters cover the sea, that's right, ride with the tumble-down seaweed brown - but you must move away from the allusions that persist as sound - words become nouns that objectify meaning and make concrete the heartbeats bearing only the trace of waste and gravity. How long how long before the frowns of yesterday take their toil on the foreheads of tomorrow, when the wigs and false teeth fail their duty of concealing all that the past robs us of. We try to remember time and it slips past us like a school boy on tip toe sniggling past the teacher who he's sure doesn't remember his name because it was so long ago- You taught me once in a memory - you taught me once history - but now I can only remember the dull ache of forgetting what year it was when Phil the Second took over the Spanish crown was it even spain in the land where the they call fire caldara - is it even right to claim that sight of lace and satin - all the conventions of grouped lexis falling like an impenetrable cloud - and I'm away that I've used the word like four no just now five times now - even though I thought that I'd try to avoid the simplest of similes craft and sullen art combine to rob me of what otherwise would be Words only Words. You mouth them as the Prince of denmark struts his stuff on the stage if there were a quote to remember you should try to remember words only words - so easy you can recall it at the needle drop at the dropping of a hat words only words - and I seem to smell the heat of a summer's day indeed there is no cultural pretension here for indeed it was a summer's day and the rambling goes on its way as we stand in the sun to watch the swaying players make their presence felt on the stage the last moments before the curtains (but wait - the globe is transparent - they have no curtains) come down and tell us of a seaman found - drowned, clutching clumps of hair like seaweed brown, left open in the sun scorched beach - oh the rhyming leads me to peach I swear it - but its all fast forward and reversed time when you play it out in your mind. I will not go down under the ground because Bobby Dylan has got the worst sound. And I will not go down under to die- when I pray to my God - Adonai - Eloi Eloi Lama -Sabac... - I cannot recall the sounds now - they've drifted past somehow.





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Today - 6/13/2003





I will write badly. As if I had a choice, nothing interesting seems to strike me anymore. Perhaps I'm genuinely becoming strange, eccentric or just plain weird. You no, weirdness is just a pose you carry off so that people who you don't want to talk to won't talk to you. But lately I think I've become genuinely weird. Then again, that awareness may be an indication that I'm actually quite normal and am not weird. Then again, that whole normal/weird complex is a false dialectic manufactured by society's elites who want to cordon off a space for themselves where they reign supreme in their definition of normalcy. Of course I don't mean this merely in terms of a particular society but as a historical-global phenomenon. We've come to regard outspokeness, "balanced views", SMILING to STRANGERS, constructive comments, encouragement and extrovertedness (I'm sure you get the picture) as norms which socially integrated people fulfill perfectly well. Anyway I'm itchy now - so I can't write properly. Thought stutters, half-broken, synapses slipping. Perhaps it is easier to mix yourself in a mode of free form thought than to actually try to work out something intelligible - which is the point of socially accepted discourse. If you've bothered to think about it, perhaps the stream of unconsciousness (?) entries that have recently plagued this page are an attempt at resistance. yes perhaps - that's it. Writing as a kind of therapy - writing to resist the conditionals and conventions of the communicative act. A recourse to discourse perhaps - merely bumming off the puns to regain a certain vitality that I've always associated to language - yes that's right - de-territorialising language - or allowing language to no longer surface only in the strictures of ordained discourse - a "groundless language" (foucault).

Back to basics. I catch myself. Creeing in thought - eccentric moments of wanting to hit someone else awfully hard. Eccentric moments of scratching an imagined itch. Eccentric moments of actually bursting into a lyric or two that has been playing in my head. Eccentric moments of talking out loud to myself. Eccentric moments of prolonging silence when in conversation just so the other person will feel uncomfortable. How strange one becomes, wrapped up in this bubble wrap of books and strange dylanesque. Eccentric moments of trying to recount strange details and hoarding irrelevant information tidbits that only the blue popinjays on a shampoo bottle would recognise.

you know when I was a kid they had this children's programme that had these strange HUGE muppet like chracters - it was called the GREAT SPACE COASTER I think. I wonder if I remember correctly. But there was this character in it - called Gary. But he wasn't human. No he was Gary Gnu. If you don't know what a Gnu is go find out. Anyway I had a schoolmate how used to call me Gary Gnu. Like only the two of us ever made reference to that reference. and like I met him last year - he's a banker now - and like the most natural thing in the world - "Hey Gnu" ... i remember these strange things when after school I sat straight in front of that old black white box TV cabinet - TV only started after 6 pm then and watched these strange prancings. Yes I remember - Gary Gnu was the news reader on that programme - read the news in a silly manner I believe. If anyone has information that might tell me more about Gary Gnu - I haven't searched the Web - maybe in some alternate space - there, is Gary Gnu - reading the news like all Good Gnus (that's right - another line from the prgramme) should.

I am haunted by these black and white pixilations that normally remain white noise. Only in moments of strange clarity, I sense the immediacy of memory and who I have been is jolted, sharp into focus. Lay it down carefully. Whose voice speaks quietly?







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[É÷÷\]

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hahaha.. interesting entry..

-Gabriel

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Mr Lim, i miss you.

Eileen (2D2K) [sugaraddict]

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yea how interesting... [j.O.n. E≤]

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this is probably one of those few entries I have any idea at all of what you're talking about. [NiceShorts]

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=) [public_prosecutor]

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http://briansworld.nova.org/

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finally, somethin direct n easily understandable.......keep it up!

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i watched "far from heaven" n i really hated the way tt woman talked. standard polite answers for every conversation but tt was how her community worked anyway. this gave me a different view on "talking"... what's it for anyway...

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Today I - 6/16/2003







will write conventionally.

7.02 am - need the loo. Late nights do not condition your bladder to store fluid for uninterrupted snoozes into mid-morning. The siezure of sleep is broken.

7.30 am - start thinking about the work I need to do before I'm through with the day. Sigh.

8 am plus? Still lying in bed but unable to work out the purpose of thought ...

8.30 am - get up and brush up. yes that's term I've used for a long time. Brushing Up. Upstrokes only I suppose. But that's all redundant now that I use an Oral B Electric toothbrush. Which has an interesting history. When I went back to the army for the second time after NUS, I had pretty nice Officers working the same office - of course they were nice - they were about my age and had been to NUS at the same time as me ... anyway there was a particular chap who used to drive us out for lunch in his nice car ... and he gave me the Oral B Electric Brush as an ORD present ... with the advice, "Next time you in school, after lunch, when all the other teachers use normal toothbrush to brush their teeth - you can take out your Electric Tooth Brush and laugh at them!" I haven't brushed my teeth in school yet, much less with an Electric Toothbrush. But I suppose if you really want someone to think about you everyday - by them an Electric toothbrush for a present ...

8.31 am- yes i'm done - the Brush ran out of battery and I thought it would be silly to try to use it like a regular toothbrush ... sigh ... keep forgetting to charge the thing. Never mind will brush extra long tonight .... Growing up with both your parents as dental surgeons, NOT brushing your teeth is like major rebellion. Up to JC, I lived in fear of being caught not brushing my teeth ... and I religiously did so. Of course the army meant less time for everything and brushing one's teeth became kinda optional on occasion when I discovered that not brushing my teeth didn't mean they would all fall out ... hmmm quite a shift in mindsets for me. Anyway I'm supposedly blessed with enzymes in my saliva that prevent tooth decay - don't have a single filling in spite of my tardy (these days) brush habits.

9 am - Start work on some stuff. Hard-going. Terrible job organising my thoughts. Much rather read but this has to be done. Get at least a page down. Decide to work on the mechanical bits (the bibliography instead. Am rather pleased to see quite a number of books I've looked at ... One doesn't get a sense of the amount we actually imbibe until we list things out ...

The rest of the day help an auntie fill out a damn long survey form Ambi Pure Air stuff - never heard of it "Oh you're a teacher, no wonder you're so patient in helping me fill out this survey - tennis - lunch of two crispy pratas in Upper thomson - scrounging around for a space to sit and read in orchard and almost having a nervous breakdown in the middle to Taka when the dual forces of wanting to be in crowd and not being able to conceal the sense that disorder is robbing my sense of identity from a distinct purposefulness cave in on me. I want to scream for a moment then laugh at myself a half chuckle. Finger a CD - coltrane's Ascension for a good ten minutes before putting it down and hopping onto an Express 502 sleeping along with the bobbing of a cranky suspension - play scales and finger exercises - eat dinner - play with isabelle - listen to some DYLAN - read a page of delany - realise that I need to do some work - and end up writing a diary entry ...

I just go walking in the rain, when I hear breath, strong like an easy fantasy


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yea...i luv walking in the rain the heavier the better..esp in thunderstorm..gives me a very relaxed feeling [j.O.n. E≤]

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