father & son

 it's one of those days where I feel so angry but have no one to blame except myself.

a day where thought holes beckon you to fall into, it's so easy - one thing leads to another and suddenly every thought that pops into your head is tinged with negativity, pessimism. 

why can I not be more open? more comfortable?

when I feel uncomfortable - why is my instinct to flight, to run away? Why can't I stay in the position? 

Like yesterday, I asked someone over. I don't even really like them very much, physically that is, I don't feel much of a spark. What a strange thing, because really they are completely fine. Like, they're a nice person. And interesting. But I don't find them physically attractive, except when they send me nudes. And then I have an interest because it speaks to a sexual appetite that I always regret taking cues from. 

And they wanted to have a photoshoot with me, and I don't know why but that made me feel so uncomfortable about myself. Like, I don't feel very good about my body or my face or anything, and being photographed by someone whom I've only met once, that didn't feel good to me. Still, I hemmed and hawed, expressed my doubts, but eventually said yes because it's cool and something I'd be interested in doing.

Yet, I don't feel comfortable having him in my bedroom, which is my own intimate space. where I feel most myself, and most free. And I feel fraudulent sort of indicating interest with him yet feeling like I don't want anything to do with him. I don't even know where it all stems from? It's awful. 

I'm stressed!  I'm probably overthinking things!

AAhahaAHAHAHaaaaaAAAAAAAh

two slow dancer

its the time of night, where my synapses are so slow to react that my brain starts to interpret sound as slower than what it actually is. do you know what i mean?

like sonically, im listening to two slow dancers, cause its a mitski kinda night. and i know the tempo of this song, i know its a slow song, but its like my brain said to my ears okay now interpret everything at 0.75x speed, you know?

im so tired. i feel at once like i ought to rise to the occasion and apply for university - fling myself unequivocally into investing in my own future. i mean, it's my future - so why am i so unexcited by any of it?

i know applications are but a means to an end, but i am struggling to see the potential in that end, i am struggling to really get excited. granted, that may be because my brain can't process anything or that it's 4.42am, and i just tried to do sat practice math and completely flunked the test. but, still. its not easy to get excited about university for me. maybe i will soon.

 i wanted to write a post about the body, but i'll do that tomorrow.

august wilson

Was it like a red carpet unrolling? Was that a scary moment?
No, it kept me safe, in the sense that I was never finished. I never had to worry about what my next play was going to be and come up with an idea. I would just pick a decade and go: Okay, the ’60s—and I would think about stuff from the ’60s. Because I hadn’t finished, I was never scared about anything, it was just: Okay, let’s move on to the next one. It was all one work, and I hadn’t finished, so I couldn’t stop and rest on my laurels or be satisfied or wonder about where it’s gone. I didn’t know what was going to happen in the play, I just started with a line of dialogue or with a feeling. I work like this—in collages. I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff I spread it out and look at it and figure out how to use it. You get enough stuff and you start to build the scene and you don’t know where the scene’s going, and you don’t have any idea what’s going to follow after that.

But once you get the first scene done (or it might be the fourth scene in the play), then you can sort of begin to see other possibilities. Just like working in collages, you shift it around and organize it: This doesn’t go here; that speech doesn’t really belong to that person, it belongs to this person. So, very much like Romare Bearden, you move your stuff around on the pages until you have a composition that satisfies you, that expresses the idea of something and then—bingo—you have a play.

AND

And we managed to stay alive. I mean because, shoot, we make do and can do.
Well, it’s the community. You can’t survive by yourself. Look at the Eskimos. They live a very harsh life up there, and in order to survive they have to be a community. They have to share everything, even share their wives, because there’s no way you can survive by yourself in that harsh environment. In order to survive you need a community of people who can support you. And we’ve always been those people that rise up in the face of adversity. And a lot of times it’s the power of song that will get you through whatever situation. I’ve found that black Americans, whenever their back is pressed against the wall, so to speak, they always go to an interior light that connects to this African spiritual strength. They ultimately, in whatever way it comes out, sing a song, because when the old folks sing, “Everything’s gonna be all right…” it was all right—that’s what made it all right. They braced up under whatever the conditions were and managed to survive them and move forward to the next experience. The more experience you have of survival and the more adversity, the stronger you become. Jane Hirshfield, who’s a poet, said in one of her poems: “Flesh grows back across a wound more strong than the simple, untested surface before.” It’s a test; the flesh grows across the wound and is stronger than it was before, because you have managed to survive the test.

are two of my favorite segments of this wondrous interview - or really, conversation, between Suzan Lori Parks & August Wilson. 

https://www.americantheatre.org/2005/11/01/the-light-in-august-wilson-a-career-a-century-a-lifetime/

balik kampung "review"

from my goodreads:

Balik Kampung - "return to village" - a phrase that's existed in the aural landscape of my life since I was little. In many ways, returning to Singapore after being abroad is difficult. There is disconnect, there is confusion about what building a home means, and whether the country I find myself moving through is still that - my home? This is something I struggled with coming home on my breaks from school, and though there was normally a period of adjustment, I always found it funny how as soon as I'd begun to adjust to life here, it was a sure sign that I was a few days away from leaving again - it was one of those quirks I felt life played for me, one I had to smile and take. Coming home again for National Service, I knew it would be the case that I'd be leaving again anytime soon, and settling into Singapore has taken time and genuine concerted effort. It's not just about going out, doing things, meeting friends: it's about the way you approach those things, a mindset. It's unlearning my distaste for things in Singapore that weren't westernized, teaching myself to untangle a view of interesting from my ideas of Western society. Examining and reinterpreting an aesthetic sensibility that I didn't even know was being dictated to me. All this and much more is required to look at this place with brand new eyes. One of my favorite ways to see has been through my commitment to reading Singaporean literature. And in this way, Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, has not disappointed.

What a veritable delight, a smorgasbord of gifts, that this book leaves its reader. It's funny - in one of the author's notes, where they detail their connection to the place they've written about, they write how funny it is to them to gander to the East Coast of Singapore and feel like they are in a completely different world. I have often felt the same way too - how small Singapore is and yet how many places have I never laid my feet in? Luckily for me, this book helps me do some of the work of exploring a country I've spent most of my life living in. It provides a map of Singapore - and then generously fills in every contour, every space, with characters, who have rich emotional interior lives: they have hopes, dreams, thoughts, irritations, loves, and more. I so thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, not only because reading short stories always leaves me amazed by the talent of writers to assemble something so simple and concise, but packed with so much depth. Thinking back now, I can recall such delight I took in reading of wonderful idiosyncratic characters, so specific, so believable, that they jump off the page. I think this is the blessing of reading local literature: they help me to take what I regard as mundane in my brain, and they make it important. They take something as simple as the clouds rolling by and make it beautiful - teaching me to make it beautiful too. It's the depictions of Singapore in it's earlier days, the descriptions of playgrounds, kitchens, libraries, all these spaces so familiar to me; and filling them with the magic of imagination. I can't stress enough how fulfilled I feel reading this book. Reading it brings up so much for me to ponder and reflect on: my relationship to our helper at home, how integral a part of my family she is, and how anguished I'd be if she left, yet acknowledging that she came into our home in order to support her own family overseas. This is just one example of the way this book has made me think deeply about my life here and the country I inhabit.

These stories ache with longing, with struggle, with hardship - but also an understanding that this is what living is all about, and they give Singaporeans the space to be; to live their lives just the way they already are. I am so thankful to live a life with them in it. In reading this I am returning to my village, happy to be going back.