Crisp

Right after we saw "The Naked Civil Servant" in the Esplanade library - the first (I freely confess) I heard of Quentin Crisp - I found his New York diaries at a secondhand bookshop in Tampines Mall, of all places. It is titled Resident Alien and was shelved under "serious/classic literature", which I think Crisp may have appreciated. Now that I've finished his New York account, can we get the video? If nothing else, it stars John Hurt.

Observations at ROM

I was there promptly at 10.45 am on a Saturday morning, a time at which (like so many others) all right-minded persons should be in bed, and ROM was crammed with people. Some couples nonchalantly in jeans but most in a rehearsal of bridal wear - muted white or pink dresses for the women and dark suits for the men - and all surrounded by a clutch of relatives and friends, most of whom looked hot and uncomfortable. We saw one white-clad woman stretchered into an ambulance.

After gathering everyone we were ushered into the waiting room, which in every way resembled an airport departure lounge - the same sense of imminent departure deadened by the long waiting time, the same suppressed excitement, the same awkwardness. There were groups of bridal parties standing in corners talking and taking photographs. A plasma TV showing what was probably an MCYS video on the joys of marriage. Signs around the room which said "Silence Please, Solemnization in Progress". There were three - meeting rooms? - in which one could be married, and they all had names: Love, Cherish and Joy. (I read "Cherish" as "Chastity" at first, assuming that it had to be a noun.) A loudspeaker announced the names of the next couple to be married: "Will Mr X and Miss Y please go to love."

Love itself was as bare as a senior civil servant's office. The presiding officer (registrar?) sat behind a large desk. The bridal couple sat/stood in front of her, and the witnesses sat at her left. A rostrum and a few mismatched settees were backed up against the other walls for the guests. The presiding officer read out her lines - matrimony in any religion, she said, was the union of ONE man and ONE woman (with clear emphasis on the number). The couple exchanged vows taken straight from the Christian service, except with all mention of God expunged and updated for the young and modern. "With this ring, I marry you." What happened to "I thee wed", which sounds better, even if only because of the burden of history of that phrase? If the Registry of Marriage, a Statutory Board of a secular government, had to appropriate the words of the Christian service, it could at least keep them in their old-fashioned beauty.

But there was a grace to the exchange of vows, which cannot be suppressed by unlovely surroundings or ungraceful words - especially mine. I think if anyone will they will be happy together, which seems to be no little achievement.

In passing

Saturday we got DVDs and ice-cream and curled up in front of the TV. Watched the Singapore Short Story Project, which was as bad as it sounds, and The World According To Garp, which was beautifully scripted, acted and directed. Life and death and growing up after the war and the pity of it all. Why haven't our artists mastered subtlety of form or thought or emotion? But I'll not throw stones. Sunday was lunch and shopping with Fay and then a picnic at the Botanic Gardens with bread and cheese and duck rilette and tapenade and hummus and wine and brownies and Scrabble and star-gazing. Su-Lin says it better. Aren't you proud of us for actually having a picnic? Either Monday or Tuesday had powerpoint slides (this will continue for the rest of the week) and half of "Some Came Running". Only Dean Martin can drink tea in white underwear and a grey hat and still look debonair. Tuesday lunch had fish and chips down Riverside Walk and more chocolate than good for anyone at Ricciotti. Let's go back there some day and get shamelessly drunk on wine and chocolate. On Wednesday XZ skived the Life Theatre Awards (or some suchlike) and we got oysters and attempted to get a drink at the Mitre. The doors were thrown open to the night and the lights on but there was no-one at the bar, so we ventured into the backroom and past the clutter of furniture and newspapers and magazines to the room at the far end. Dithered in front of the closed door - we could hear the radio and someone rustling around - and knocked only to have it opened by an European-looking man without a shirt. Er the bar? He: I don't work here. Exit left, sans drink. On Thursday we found Arab-ish cafes and the best ginger tea in town (in Little India, at any rate) and then I went home to look at powerpoint slides. Now it's Friday and there was beer and the second half of "Some Came Running". That's more TV/video than I've watched in a while - probably since the run of Woody Allen movies back in New York. That was two years ago but seems like a year ago - I've completely lost 2004. The days merge ineluctably into each other - and this is an effort to distinguish and preserve some part of them. Call it writing practice and don't ask what the practice is for.

Time Check (2)

It's the story that counts. No use telling me this isn't a story, or not the same story. I know you've fulfilled everything you promised, you love me, we sleep till noon and we spend the rest of the day eating, the food is superb, I don't deny that. But I worry about the future. In the story the boat disappears one day over the horizon, just disappears, and it doesn't say what happens then. On the island that is. It's the animals I'm afraid of, they weren't part of the bargain, in fact you didn't mention them, they may transform themselves back into men. Am I really immortal, does the sun care, when you leave will you give me back the words? Don't evade, don't pretend you won't leave after all; you leave in the story and the story is ruthless.

- Margaret Atwood, from the "Circe" poems

There are reasons why I'm sleeping alone tonight, not all of which I want to think through. At least it's clear space for a while, and I may be glad of it in time to come. I found an old entry which said I believed that one should give and hazard all - and it is a sign of age or common sense or some hardening of the emotional fibres - that I am afraid, for no discernible reason, for the first time I can remember in recent years, to do so, just like that. You give me what you can, with an easy, careless generosity, but my limits are so much more easily breached. Is it enough, will it be enough, do I want it to be enough, to just take the beauty of these days, as gently as we can, and lift them high above the debris of everyday life? Am I truly immortal, does the sun care, when you leave will you give me back the words? How much will you leave behind when your boat disappears over the horizon, what am I hoping to be left with?

Time check

Dinner with my family at Fatty Weng's tonight and it's been a while since I did anything with my family, as my parents are acutely aware of. My dad said they brought us to such places (like Fatty Weng's) so we can pass them on to the next generation. My mom said that the last time they went to Fatty Weng's was before I was born. And what a long time ago that was! I said. Oh yes, said my brother.

So suddenly it's March and how has your year been? I should be doing all kinds of useful things and organising my time and finances, but what I am going to do is go curl up in bed with a book. At least, at least - I looked through my blog entries for March 03 and March 04, and at least they're not exactly the same. Do you remember Sumiko Tan's column last Sunday (I think it was last Sunday), when she said that if a woman isn't married by 35, she should give up? There was a bit when she said that it was probably time to stop being a girl and grow up (my words, not hers) once one was past one's early 30s - it was simply not becoming to go on flirting with the world and giggling after cute guys once one was in one's late 30s. A few days later Steve showed me an IHT article which said that Japanese women were dressing like girls - in frilly blouses and long shapeless skirts and little cotton socks. According to some Japanese fashion critic, this is the virginal look. The article had an interview with a woman in her early thirties, who said that she enjoyed such clothes as they were "cute and comfortable" and would feel like she had stopped being a girl once she stopped being able to fit into such clothes.

(You should read the IHT article just for its preposterousness. Some Japanese fashion critic describes the popularity of the virginal look thus: "The Tokyo virgin is well-read, knowledgeable and sophisticated. She chooses to insulate herself in her own spiritual world. Virginity for her is less an issue of sexuality than a state of mind, and she strives to remain unsullied and pure no matter what her sexual experiences may be." Doesn't that remind you of the re-virginity movement in the American South? It's enough to make one want to run out and buy a miniskirt, fishnets and 6-inch stiletto heels.)

At 30 I'll probably feel exactly like the guys from "Sideways" and think that my life has marked one long forgettable boredom, but for now - preserve me from a future of pickled girlhood. Steve pointed out that if one didn't get married and have children and one's days are likely to be much the same, through one's 20s, 30s, 40s...Isn't that depressing? The only more depressing thing is being exactly the same person through one's 20s, 30s, 40s...if nothing else, at least let this year be different.

Viabs

An architect's wet-cement dream.

Why one should read the papers

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone . . . but they've always worked for me," he once wrote.

Also: "Hunter S. Thompson, who killed himself last week in his house in Woody Creek, near Aspen, Colorado, was a high-strung, thin-skinned, programmatically dissipated workaholic, inveterately suspicious of authority, perpetually worried that his best days were behind him, and unable to deal with the attention and success that he scrambled and sweated for many years to achieve. In other words, he was a magazine writer."