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."

Addenda

[1] Typo of the week: a member of the public (i.e. one of the unwashed masses) wrote to the PM asking him to "tamper justice with kindness".

My other favourite is something I found in a government report, explaining that the Government must "exercise a judgemental call".

Incidentally, my department just bought everyone a grammar book (Plain Words by Ernest Gowers) before we degenerated from incoherence into a complete and entire illiteracy.

[2] You know the Robert Herrick poem that starts "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"? It's called "To a Virgin, to make the most of time" or some suchlike. They do this thing in my office where everytime you start your computer, a powerpoint slide pops up with reminders, exhortations, warnings, grammar tips (forsooth), and cheery inspirational messages. A couple of days ago it was the Herrick poem.

Notes

In no particular order:

[1] Watch "Sideways" while it only shows a possible doom and not a current predicament. There's this fantastic moment where the two friends are sitting on the beach talking.

Miles (grade-school English teacher and unpublished - and apparently unpublishable - writer): Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. I'm a thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.
Jack (actor who did a successful day-time soap once and now does ads): See? Right there. Just what you just said. That is beautiful. 'A smudge of excrement... surging out to sea.'
Miles: Yeah.
Jack: I could never write that.
Miles: Neither could I, actually. I think it's Bukowski.

At which point someone sitting behind us in the audience says, Who's Bukowski?

[2] Addy, Jianyi, a couple of their friends and I tried to watch "La Jetee" at the Arts House. They screened the first 15 minutes or so to a muted undertone of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", stopped the film to try and turn off the house music, tore the film (on loan from the Alliance Francaise, thus worsening relations between the two countries), attempted to repair it with sticky tape, started the film from the beginning, gave up when the tape jammed in the projector, and apologised profusely.

[3] Wine Network at Dempsey Road with Julian, Addy and Jianyi, which was rather nice, even if at the back of beyond. What we need to do is go to the Mitre (you remember the creepy derelict hotel bar place?) to balance out the yuppies and the expats.

[4] Carried a bamboo (courtesy of Steve) back on the train and was stared at by a number of kids. Passed by a couple of joggers on the way back to my house, one of whom said to the other, "Quite expensive to get bamboo poles nowadays, must go chop it down yourself..."

[5] Shin Gee's getting married. Have I said this already? I'm told this is the first wave of marriages. Brace yourself.

[6] Lee sends this, and I can only offer it to all of you:

i read a great story about a factory worker who used to tape a poem in front of his machine where he worked. his job was repetitive and mindless and so he would just read the poem in front of him all day long and attempt to memorize it. eventually, his boss called him in and said, "look, you're a good kid and this is probably the first time you've been fired, but don't take it too hard. you're smart and you'll find a good job. but i couldn't have you here. everyone else here looks angry while they work and you just walk around with that goofy smile on your face. it creeps us out. good luck."

Interviews/essays this time

Reading about Rexroth, I want to learn Japanese. Oh yes and Chinese too.

Eliot Weinberger writes about Rexroth at his death. And on Rexroth, Chinese poetry and the American imagination. (Maybe I'll just read Weinberger instead.) Somewhere on the site are Rexroth's readings of his poems accompanied by a jazz band.

There's not enough time, what with faffing and reading Pratchett, not to mention the office. I tried the whole gainful employment thing and found myself, to no-one's surprise, amazingly incompetent at it; can I stop now?

More Rexroth

Found Rexroth poems on the net. This one's for you, if you read this, if you like.

When We With Sappho



“. . . about the cool water
the wind sounds through sprays
of apple, and from the quivering leaves
slumber pours down . . .”

We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
Orchard of a decayed New England farm,
Summer in our hair, and the smell
Of summer in our twined bodies,
Summer in our mouths, and summer
In the luminous, fragmentary words
Of this dead Greek woman.
Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
Your grace is as beautiful as sleep.
You move against me like a wave
That moves in sleep.
Your body spreads across my brain
Like a bird filled summer;
Not like a body, not like a separate thing,
But like a nimbus that hovers
Over every other thing in all the world.
Lean back. You are beautiful,
As beautiful as the folding
Of your hands in sleep.

We have grown old in the afternoon.
Here in our orchard we are as old
As she is now, wherever dissipate
In that distant sea her gleaming dust
Flashes in the wave crest
Or stains the murex shell.
All about us the old farm subsides
Into the honey bearing chaos of high summer.
In those far islands the temples
Have fallen away, and the marble
Is the color of wild honey.
There is nothing left of the gardens
That were once about them, of the fat
Turf marked with cloven hooves.
Only the sea grass struggles
Over the crumbled stone,
Over the splintered steps,
Only the blue and yellow
Of the sea, and the cliffs
Red in the distance across the bay.
Lean back.
Her memory has passed to our lips now.
Our kisses fall through summer’s chaos
In our own breasts and thighs.

Gold colossal domes of cumulus cloud
Lift over the undulant, sibilant forest.
The air presses against the earth.
Thunder breaks over the mountains.
Far off, over the Adirondacks,
Lightning quivers, almost invisible
In the bright sky, violet against
The grey, deep shadows of the bellied clouds.
The sweet virile hair of thunder storms
Brushes over the swelling horizon.
Take off your shoes and stockings.
I will kiss your sweet legs and feet
As they lie half buried in the tangle
Of rank scented midsummer flowers.
Take off your clothes. I will press
Your summer honeyed flesh into the hot
Soil, into the crushed, acrid herbage
Of midsummer. Let your body sink
Like honey through the hot
Granular fingers of summer.

Rest. Wait. We have enough for a while.
Kiss me with your mouth
Wet and ragged, your mouth that tastes
Of my own flesh. Read to me again
The twisting music of that language
That is of all others, itself a work of art.
Read again those isolate, poignant words
Saved by ancient grammarians
To illustrate the conjugations
And declensions of the more ancient dead.
Lean back in the curve of my body,
Press your bruised shoulders against
The damp hair of my body.
Kiss me again. Think, sweet linguist,
In this world the ablative is impossible.
No other one will help us here.
We must help ourselves to each other.
The wind walks slowly away from the storm;
Veers on the wooded crests; sounds
In the valleys. Here we are isolate,
One with the other; and beyond
This orchard lies isolation,
The isolation of all the world.
Never let anything intrude
On the isolation of this day,
These words, isolate on dead tongues,
This orchard, hidden from fact and history,
These shadows, blended in the summer light,
Together isolate beyond the world’s reciprocity.

Do not talk any more. Do not speak.
Do not break silence until
We are weary of each other.
Let our fingers run like steel
Carving the contours of our bodies’ gold.
Do not speak. My face sinks
In the clotted summer of your hair.
The sound of the bees stops.
Stillness falls like a cloud.
Be still. Let your body fall away
Into the awe filled silence
Of the fulfilled summer —
Back, back, infinitely away —
Our lips weak, faint with stillness.

See. The sun has fallen away.
Now there are amber
Long lights on the shattered
Boles of the ancient apple trees.
Our bodies move to each other
As bodies move in sleep;
At once filled and exhausted,
As the summer moves to autumn,
As we, with Sappho, move towards death.
My eyelids sink toward sleep in the hot
Autumn of your uncoiled hair.
Your body moves in my arms
On the verge of sleep;
And it is as though I held
In my arms the bird filled
Evening sky of summer.

- Kenneth Rexroth

The Advantages of Learning

I am a man with no ambitions
And few friends, wholly incapable
Of making a living, growing no
Younger, fugitive from some just doom.
Lonely, ill-clothed, what does it matter?
At midnight I make myself a jug
Of hot white wine and cardamon seeds.
In a torn grey robe and old beret,
I sit in the cold writing poems,
Drawing nudes on the crooked margins,
Copulating with sixteen year old
Nymphomaniacs of my imagination.

- Kenneth Rexroth

Signs of age

My god, it's "Ice Ice Baby" on the radio now!

And how old are we again?

Pretty pictures

Hubble telescope images.

New York, New York

"...the mark of a city worth living in is that there are never enough places to park".

Making books

Me: I've been reading and re-reading Diana Athill's Instead of a Letter and now I'm inspired. I want to work in publishing.
WN: Why?
Me: To be part of making a book!
WN: You can be a stapler.

[why this need for explanation?]

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/Mud poems.

Howl's Moving Castle

I haven't read the book, but the movie's not worthy of Diana Wynne Jones (from what I have read), or Hayao Miyazaki (so I'm told). It's cute in parts but Miyazaki gives up on the plot halfway and brings the movie to a soppy ending in tears and laughter and sunshine and happily ever after.

Measuring worth

Focus on the Family is coordinating a "Worth Waiting For" project - getting kids (alright; young people) to pledge abstinence from pre-marital sex by wearing red-and-white bands. The red stands for true love and the white for purity.

Focus on the Family: "it's a message that young people love to have and love to embrace but it's just giving them the opportunity to embrace that hey, they can be empowered to save sex until after marriage and there are individuals worth waiting for."

[My modesty, the jewel in my dower? This campaign seems misconceived - isn't the important thing is to treat others with consideration and generosity and respect (and, yes, love, if you can manage it), rather than whether or not you go to bed with them? To simply say, stay away from sex! is too easy. Besides, as Diane Athill says - the tenderness between bodies may be restricted, but it is real, and if sex teaches you to think about a person other than yourself, then that's no bad thing.]

Breathing space (2)

I don't think one should repeat quotations. Nonetheless - from Anne Carson's Plainwater -

In the city of Burgos lies El Cid himself - beside Ximena he rests in an eternal conversation. Beneath the transept of Burgos Cathedral they have lain since 1921, and before that, in a burial place in the city from the year 1835, and previously, seven hundred years in the monastery of San Pedro outside the city walls. By now, she must know every word he is going to say. Yet she kisses his mouth and the eyes of his face, she kisses his hands, his truth, his marrow. What is the conversation of lovers? Compared with ordinary talk, it is as bread to stones. ...

There is no question I covet that conversation. There is no question I am someone starving. There is no question I am making this journey to find out what that appetite is. And I see him free of it, as if he had simply crossed to the other side of a bridge, I see desire set free in him like some ray of mysterious light. Now tell me the truth, would you cross that bridge if you came to it? And where, if you made the grave choice to give up bread, would it take you? You see what I fear.