Archive for January, 2012
Off The Wall
The wall I was talking about? It’s still there. Oh, I’m not fenced in. Yet. But I must admit I am editing my thoughts and ideas even as they come in, like acquaintances through my front door, invited, but suddenly screened in the hallway just as they’ve taken off their shoes. I look them up… Read More ›
Days Are Numbers
I’ve got Alan Parsons Project playing in my ears because I have to admit, that after writing a marathon of posts with last month’s 23 and 15 this month when I used to average 9 on a good month, I am finally hitting a wall. And APP’s sound is nostalgic and somehow inspiring enough to… Read More ›
On Reading, Books, and Kim Basinger
I am such a slow reader these days that I wish I were Kim Basinger. To be exact, when she played My Stepmother Is An Alien (1988). There’s this scene in the movie where she runs her fingertips over the spines of books over Dan Aykroyd’s fireplace. She pauses, fingertips over a Shakespeare anthology and… Read More ›
Dragon Chow
We’re our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves. — Tom Robbins, modern American author Today was Day Two of the Lunar New Year, which in Singapore usually means a second day in a food marathon for the Chinese. In a bid to rescue ourselves from… Read More ›
A Chinese New Year Memory
Each Chinese New Year the four of us, my parents, my brother, and I, would drive to my grandfather’s Serangoon Gardens house in Walmer Drive. My mother’s father lived in a semi-detached one-storey cottage with my grandmother and a dachshund named Gretel. There, we would meet familiar aunts, uncles, cousins, eat pineapple tarts, drink F&N… Read More ›
Light
Most people think that shadows follow, precede, or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories. –Elie Wiesel, writer, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate (b. 1928) The shadow of a word Is its opposite The shadow of an idea always bigger The shadow of a… Read More ›
On Sweetness
Definition: Old English. swete ”pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings. What does it mean when we say someone is sweet? One who is sweet is one who is charming, caring and thoughtful in speech and actions without being conscious of it at all. Like when the ten-year-old takes a sip from his cup of cold water… Read More ›
Walking in the Rain
Let the rain kiss you Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops Let the rain sing you a lullaby The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk The rain makes running pools in the gutter The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the… Read More ›
Realism, or The Line Between
In this excerpt from a short story by renowned fantasist Peter S Beagle called Professor Gottesman and the Rhinoceros, a Swiss-born professor of philosophy brings his niece to the zoo and finds himself being spoken to by an Indian rhinoceros. “Professor, it was indeed I who spoke. Come and talk to me, if you please.”… Read More ›
Beauty Is Evocative of Something Else
“Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.” — Stendhal, French 19th century writer
