since I was not bewitched in adolescence and brought to love
I cannot believe it has been a whole month since I last posted. In other words, I have been single for nearly a month now. (To the person who tagged "I smell love in the air", damn you) This journey of incomprehensible grief has been tiring: obsessing over the past sickens me now, and all imagined futures refuse to shed their feathers. I am once again suspended in some kind of brutal limbo that the coward in me wishes I could sleep away. Perhaps, it is as Jervis has said, in spite of everything, I've truly fallen in love with you, sunshine, but you have grown cold. I've packed my bags for a while now, and I leave with too many words unspoken: but perhaps, sleeping dogs should be left to lie. Do I wish I could have done it over, done it better, not done it at all? I won't pretend: Yes, I do. But I cant unfry an egg, so I must take the lessons that come with it and emerge.
I am slowly crawling back into life and all its wonders - how can one not?
Sorrow is so consuming I've forgotten that 2008 has gained me a wealth of experience, love and beyond. Life has found me, now I have to suck the marrow out of it.
Tuesday 30 December 2008
Sunday 30 November 2008
On romance
- he enviably reminds one of Peter Pan, indulges in women, wine and song ( and I'm not even using clichés) though he has both feet planted firmly onto the ground. He's unassuming, kindhearted, intelligent, loves art, and a fantastic lover. I am continually surprised that he is actually not bad looking (he protests, he thinks he's "very hamsome"). For all of five, six (?) glorious weeks, we shared a dizzying, immediate attraction. I was growing convinced that I had tripped into something possibly, possibly special, but the circumstances are proving difficult for us to carry on. He's a decade older, and being in a relationship with a mere 19 year old is, as he expresses, absolutely unpractical. I think my heart is breaking (only just) a little. It's probably futile, and too late, to regret the investments I made (now likely lost). It would be a lie to say there were no warnings, there were plenty; still, I should be upset with his apparently false kisses, but I can't bring myself to be. How do you blame him, who dreams of a real, beautiful future? I am fine, though.
We are holding on to a kind of limbo, but I'm not sure for how much longer. I am giving him space to sort his issues out, because I think that's how he ticks. On my end, though, I am left to play the reactionary role - I must wait for his decision, which doesn't seem fair at first, but the alternative is more unfair: a relationship with an unwilling, unsure and unfulfilled party. I am being most rational, but it still hurts (only just) a little.
We are holding on to a kind of limbo, but I'm not sure for how much longer. I am giving him space to sort his issues out, because I think that's how he ticks. On my end, though, I am left to play the reactionary role - I must wait for his decision, which doesn't seem fair at first, but the alternative is more unfair: a relationship with an unwilling, unsure and unfulfilled party. I am being most rational, but it still hurts (only just) a little.
Monday 3 November 2008
Camden Town
Camden Town boasts streets and streets of markets, but unlike Portobello Market, things here are affordable. The magic is of a different kind, and the people here shout, 'if we can't be rich, let's just be weird.'
This pub sits at the mouth of Camden Town, swallowing spent shoppers, completing the intoxication. It claims to be the largest in the world, and I promise you that I have no photo of the interior of this pub shows that they're shitting you not.
For the record, while we were at Horse Tunnel Market, a beautifully calm voice (framed by the most lullaby-like siren I have ever heard) came over the speakers urging everyone to evacuate the building 'due to an emergency'. I laughed, and Mdm Enid Blyton at the antique ornament stand laughed back. And then she stopped, "Fuck honey, this is for real" - and that was the last I saw of her.
I can't believe she swore.
This pub sits at the mouth of Camden Town, swallowing spent shoppers, completing the intoxication. It claims to be the largest in the world, and I promise you that I have no photo of the interior of this pub shows that they're shitting you not.
For the record, while we were at Horse Tunnel Market, a beautifully calm voice (framed by the most lullaby-like siren I have ever heard) came over the speakers urging everyone to evacuate the building 'due to an emergency'. I laughed, and Mdm Enid Blyton at the antique ornament stand laughed back. And then she stopped, "Fuck honey, this is for real" - and that was the last I saw of her.
I can't believe she swore.
Sunday 2 November 2008
Saturday 25 October 2008
'Tis not hereafter
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
from the tirelessly re-read, Twelfth Night
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
from the tirelessly re-read, Twelfth Night
London Calling
The Strand from the Waterloo Bridge. Sunday, 19 Oct 08
Denmark Street, Friday, 24 Oct 08
At the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Windmill Street, Friday, 24 Oct 08
I am properly falling in love with London now, the place where bodies found under trains cause but minor disruptions to the Westminister crowd, where strays provide shelter to homeless people, where museums that hold the most famous paintings of all time are in turn hosted by bright graffiti, where free runners boast among men with stiff black coats, where houses are old and people are new, where rivers are proper divides and bridges real roads, where Europe is a playground park and Asia is indoors, where stony actors bump into laughing stockbrokers on the Tube, where everyone reads The London Paper on the tube and leaves them like seats for the next man in the bowler hat.
It is humbling and small to be a Londoner, to stand as a speck on the Waterloo Bridge knowing that the embers on your cigarette (not that I smoke) cannot burn more brightly than the stream of headlights both overhead and underground. If you stop to breathe, the crowd will walk through you, but on the The London Paper tomorrow, on the page titled "London Love", you know you'll find a two-lined poem asking to meet the sad raven-haired girl who stood still last night, and you will wonder just how many people will answer to this London's call.
And I know you don't care for London, and it does not inspire your dreams. But London is where I am, where (I now know) you will never be.
Monday 20 October 2008
Saturday 18 October 2008
And then I knew I was my own misery
"Shit, I'm the only Chinese in this freaking competition," I told my new teammate, surveying the 60-team debate tornament.
"Yeah, and I'm the only tall guy with blue eyes and brown hair."
What a wonderful world.
"Yeah, and I'm the only tall guy with blue eyes and brown hair."
What a wonderful world.
Wednesday 15 October 2008
An exercise in contextualisation
“Can see not? Can see not?”
KS’s raised chin was a poor substitute for the conventional pointing finger – now too deep within his orange Crumpler bag to be of any use.
“No.”
It was mildly exasperating sometimes to be with KS. Every muscle in his body seemed to be dedicated to a different activity. He never walked. He had to run, jump, skip, stride. And talk about three hundred different things at the same time. Now he was talking about the laksa he had for lunch.
“KS! Where is it!”
“Aiyah. You very lousy leh. We’re almost there – now can you see it?”
A temple of red and gold emerged from the thick of Kensington Gardens. Fortified by gates of scarlet rings, guarded by statues of the four main continents, on a dais of white stone steps, there sat the gold likeness of Prince Albert, reclining in a dome that promised to extend to the heavens. That was the measure of a Queen’s royal love.
“Damn cool. You know the story not? Prince Albert was the husband of Queen Victoria. They loved each other a lot. Like, a damned lot: they had eight children –“
“Why is their having eight children a measure of their love –“
KS silenced me with a glance and ruffled back into his theatrics. “Prince Albert died really young. When he died, the Queen very sad, so she built this thing for him. Cool right?”
He lowered himself into a squat and squinted up at the monumental love, dropping his customary social flippancy for a moment. I sat next to him, and in that moment, we held a woman’s immeasurable grief between our two shoulders.
“When my Ah Pa died, my Ma put a chicken out.”
“Oh, KS…”
My sympathy was shorted by the rudely modern sound of a digital shutter closing in my face. KS smiled softly behind the small camera he held up.
“Okay kid. I’m going. Got to work.” He was up on his feet again. The romance of history was truly past. He pulled out a tie from his bag that seemed to hold all the wonders of the world and ran it around his collar.
“Don’t so sad leh. You’ll learn to love your new home. Maybe you’ll be like me – don’t wanna go back.”
“Habitat.” I corrected. Not home. But KS’s newly oiled Clarks were skipping along the pavement. I watched as his receding figure was stopped by an American – no, Frenchman – all Caucasians looked like – who asked for directions to Gloucester Road.
“Gloucester? Right, take the left turn at the second junction from this way. Walk straight ahead and it should be just beyond the Zambian Embassy house. Did you get that?” KS clipped.
The man smiled his thanks, and the boy whom I grew up with in an island far away picked himself up a little taller and walked on into the streets of London.
KS’s raised chin was a poor substitute for the conventional pointing finger – now too deep within his orange Crumpler bag to be of any use.
“No.”
It was mildly exasperating sometimes to be with KS. Every muscle in his body seemed to be dedicated to a different activity. He never walked. He had to run, jump, skip, stride. And talk about three hundred different things at the same time. Now he was talking about the laksa he had for lunch.
“KS! Where is it!”
“Aiyah. You very lousy leh. We’re almost there – now can you see it?”
A temple of red and gold emerged from the thick of Kensington Gardens. Fortified by gates of scarlet rings, guarded by statues of the four main continents, on a dais of white stone steps, there sat the gold likeness of Prince Albert, reclining in a dome that promised to extend to the heavens. That was the measure of a Queen’s royal love.
“Damn cool. You know the story not? Prince Albert was the husband of Queen Victoria. They loved each other a lot. Like, a damned lot: they had eight children –“
“Why is their having eight children a measure of their love –“
KS silenced me with a glance and ruffled back into his theatrics. “Prince Albert died really young. When he died, the Queen very sad, so she built this thing for him. Cool right?”
He lowered himself into a squat and squinted up at the monumental love, dropping his customary social flippancy for a moment. I sat next to him, and in that moment, we held a woman’s immeasurable grief between our two shoulders.
“When my Ah Pa died, my Ma put a chicken out.”
“Oh, KS…”
My sympathy was shorted by the rudely modern sound of a digital shutter closing in my face. KS smiled softly behind the small camera he held up.
“Okay kid. I’m going. Got to work.” He was up on his feet again. The romance of history was truly past. He pulled out a tie from his bag that seemed to hold all the wonders of the world and ran it around his collar.
“Don’t so sad leh. You’ll learn to love your new home. Maybe you’ll be like me – don’t wanna go back.”
“Habitat.” I corrected. Not home. But KS’s newly oiled Clarks were skipping along the pavement. I watched as his receding figure was stopped by an American – no, Frenchman – all Caucasians looked like – who asked for directions to Gloucester Road.
“Gloucester? Right, take the left turn at the second junction from this way. Walk straight ahead and it should be just beyond the Zambian Embassy house. Did you get that?” KS clipped.
The man smiled his thanks, and the boy whom I grew up with in an island far away picked himself up a little taller and walked on into the streets of London.
Sunday 5 October 2008
Soho
Soho is a wonderful place filled with people from the fringe, high on the chimney smoke of commercial giants that makes real the illusionary possibility of success. Prices are high, men and women are cheap, and the lights are unfazed by the English rain.
20th Century Fox offices
Bloomsbury Headquarters
Paul McCartney's recording studio
No. 54 Dean Street, where Big Brother believes Karl Marx once put up.
Second hand (art)bookshop.
Ever wondered?
Saturday 20 September 2008
Love is Portobello on a Weekend Morning
Portobello Market
begins here
begins here
The people of Portobello
You look wonderful, I told her, may I take your photo? And she smiled.
He sang American Pie with a voice that went straight through my heart.
The most beautiful stranger I've ever met.
Viagra, Pot, Paris, London
(The Good Fairy is a rabbit hole to jewellery wonderland.)
Of course, no trip to Portobello should be without the frivolous Notting Hill fanatic chase (but I was on business... for the Hugh Grant Appreciation Club). I couldnt tell which was The Blue Door, so I took a photo of every blue door I could find..
This has to be it. The Blue Door. Who am I to argue with a sign?
But I secretly wish it could've been this one. Right where we began, only I didn't see it at first. Sign says: " Secret Beer Garden @ the Rear. Come snog in safety, they'll never know!"
Signing off,
your comrade
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