rest

good that the year is ending soon. am well rested. never felt so ready for the year ahead. it could have been due to my recent backpacking trip. there are times when a new surge of awareness emerges from within, a momentary freedom from a life of self-imposed constraint and regiment. the temptation is to move on, thinking that all came by chance or even by fate. i struggle to recognise the presence and lordship of Christ in the middle of all these tides and movements in life.

i pray still each afternoon or night when i fall down to sleep. grateful that the sinews of my body work in accordance to the dreams and journeys on the sky and ground. there are quiet leaps made, to the quick comfort of a forgotten childhood. sometimes, i can only look back in wonder on the years of loss and bereavment that mark my schooldays. there is a deferred sense of arrival in all this. an awkward space between a fresh discovery and the old nostalgic need to steal home a stolen dream.

i no longer feel alot for terms like year-end 'resolutions' or the 'happiness' wished for, on a year that has yet to be lived. there is only one stark and unsentimental truth to all this hapless pondering: that life has little meaning apart from the relationships we forge with ourselves and others. there is also a deep spirit to our common bond, an awareness that may wound or redeem us in the same instance. this opens up a road we may choose to take on or ignore...the risk that comes from our giving as. opposed to the safety felt in holding back or being wary of our actual needs

before december

07...december twenty-fifth

sitting in a room facing the last patters of rain. the sky is dusted in orange orche, the last marks of monsoon dusk settling quietly into place. i look at my old entries and now, they suddenly appear thick, foggy and strange. much has changed. you sense the newfound space between the best of friends. some fall away. others walked ahead. i stood by a grove of white trees as they blossom into prayer; leaves of song uncovering other pathways, marking the distance between a wounded needy world and a needed sheltered cave.

a cluster of ashen dreams dissipates, in various intermitten memories, by years & batch, on the fire by the beach. the heaps are ready to be blown by the untested freedom found in wind. high above, a bright arc of night grows more inviting by the hour, making visions arrive, divided. it felled that old forest of dreams, making fresh light pour in.

i renew the native in me. someone not seen in a lifetime. rarely spoken. someone emerges from the valley.

someone yet to see.

and all this while, i never once forget how my father called my name, always in that still, insistent voice. i have never been lost yet i was found again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


...may another year of care and meaning be found inside u, this christmas...thanks for making this year so complete for me.

when 2 short years pass u by....o6s11

Love is so short...

forgetting is so long.

pablo neruda

end of term...the closure of another year in school. i am reminded that any given time in my life is but a season.

i met s11 during the first half of may 2006 and saw them again in mid 2007...in between this span of time, i've seen some leaving the class while others stayed behind and worked the hard way. jc life is too short, with little time given to foster and nurture what matters most: relationships and inner growth. like many, they felt the brunt.

their vague affection for each other amid the snapping politics... remained even though the class gradually dwindled in size. still, i remember our early days in com lab 2, where lesson can leap anywhere from the intoxicating science of the x-men to the deathly detached sense of collective silence on capital punishment...

s11. somewhat boisterious in jc 1 but grew tired in faith as the terms rolled into year two. something else kept the class special and you are remembered for that always. i will always remember well your goodwill on the night so many of you turned up to say goodbye as i left for study overseas...the kind notes and jersey you sent to cheer me on cold and boring days alone in melbourne. the reunion we had again last july and the sacred ties and notes that made us one in that darkened room on our last day at school. you took the step to make your feelings known and helped all to recognise all that we have failed to value and forgive.

reconciliations are rare in the experience of most students during college life since time is so short. still, i take pride in being part of your renewal, your forgiveness, your letting go as we wrapped up 2 very intense, yet distant and significant years in the time u have known one another...

i hope your friendships remain and continue to grow in the many years to come...

* * *

thank u too for being and wanting to be...

a very special part of my teaching journey...

a clear and shining light...

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you thread on my dreams.

william butler yeats (1865-1939)

missed, missing...i.m

i.m.
blackie (1982-1995)
bobby (1983-1998)

"For awhile, reading your lines, i ran
on your trail so well i could never be lost.
And sometimes when you turned,
i was already there,
your very best friend."
william stafford

"i wanted this from you-
laughter... a child turning
into a boy, at ease
in the spring light, with friends...

i wanted this for you..."

andrienne rich

dogtots

2 excerpts from baudelaire's paris spleen, in which the poet records the affinity of a full & broken life shared with the city's strays ; wandering emblems of many forgotten lives...the receptive necessity that trails the urban experience of loss, and blesses it with soul...

we don't get much of these sights in singapore though many are also contained in several animal shelters here. one only needs to step out into cities like bangkok or phnom penh to see stray dogs wandering the city lanes in search of food and shelter...tough tramps of an improvished life that largely depend on its buddhist economy for sustenance and the will to survive.

"I know nothing more disquieting that the mute eloquence of those supplicating eyes that contain at once, for the sensitive man who knows how to read them, so much humility and so much reproach. He finds there something close to the depth of complicated feeling one sees in the tear-filled eyes of a dog being beaten."

"Away academic muse! I have no need of that pedantic old prude. I invoke the friendly, urban, living muse to help me sing of good dogs, poor dogs, mangy dogs, the dog everyone kicks aside because they are diseased and flea-bitten, except the poor man whose companions they are, and the poet who looks upon them with a brotherly eye...I sing the poor dog, the many dog, the homelss, roving dog, the circus dog...the luckless dogs whether it is those who wander alone through the winding ravines of huge cities or those who, with their blinking and spiritual eyes, have said to the abandoned man: "Take me with you, and out of our joint misery perhaps we can make a kind of happiness."

smiling thru' the winding cracks

the a-levels begin next week. you see the spiral in some of them. they do not seem as worried as you. some gladly smile through the winding cracks.

i sometimes wonder what goes on in the minds of students as they prepare for their exams. the nerves set in and there were many times when i felt more panic than them. but there also comes a time of quiet detachment as i allow each to take their path, and own their learning in ways they best know how: to be discriminate in using the methods taught, to watch and keep close vigilover the pits that loom ahead. plan well and avoid booby-traps. interpret within easy grasp and push an argument, through... with perfect teenage not kiddy clarity. avoid sweeping statements in the mind. bolster observations with modern evidence and ultimately, to write with focus, empathy and wisdom, knowing the sensitivity we all seek in our lives might shine in the sensible lines you are committed to write.

all the best, dear good students as you set sail on the rough winds ahead. be smooth in your flight. don't crash the rocks! always write with dignity and dogged persistence in the same thorough ways we've trained ourselves to live and to be.

i'll see you again, sometime... on that distant shore ahead...

Thought-Work by john o'donohue

Off course from the frail music sought by the words

And the path that always claims the journey,

In the pursuit of a more oblique rhythm,

Creating mostly its own geography,

The mind is an old crow

Who knows only to gather dead twigs,

Then take them back to its vacancy

Between the branches of a vacant tree

And entwine them around the emptiness

With silence and unfailing patience

Until what was fallen, withered and lost

Is now set to the fill with dreams as a nest.

to s11...

we wrote our stories together and held them in a book. i brought them thousands of miles with me, to remember each one of you. now the journey turns full circle and once again, i find you there. the same sparkle that drew me to you, the innocence kept.

these days are worth more than memory, beyond the fond sentiments we had. we claim back that morning, that circle we shared. we had a beginning and it goes on without end. this hour seals back the blessings gained: forgiveness and faith, renewal and grace. those missed and missing moments are filled again with the song of our names as we we run towards our journey's end...

chinese flavours: L journey w s22

learning journey with s22....food and ethnicity, chinatown: includes a 7(?) course meal in a traditional hakka restaurant, a peek into a family run pastry shop where intimacy rolls out in more ways than one. the personal touch we taste in food. the sun basking on sweet breadcrumbs, bits still stuck on my flu-blown nose. our long march down sunny alleyways awashed in scents of tea-leaves, lychees, cold crabs, tendons, sea cucumbers and wildflowers. the street aromas waffing our assumptions. murking the meanings of being chinese. being one never became as delicious as today. food and identity. slurp...burp... time again to salivate.

p/s: special thanks to diana chua for leading our nose all the way...

reunion with the stars

my star wars legacy. capital ships embodying a partial self. now bequeathed to my cousin. i revisited them today, fingered the wings, turrents and landing pads- tie-fighters, bombers, interceptors, imperial star cruisers, x-wing, and the solo's millenium falcon...befuddled by the glory that lay before me. the cool and secret life of things.

more marvel

time off from marking and seasonal bloodbaths on those scripts. a different blood war thrives on these shelves. i could spend up to an hour re-arranging them. doc strange fights mysterio while sasquatch and thor work their best muscles and trash the sentinel to the core. bullseye and spidey meet again and unlikely tag teams in the form of capt A vs mr sinister while maestro meets his deformed humanity through the man-thing. other peak battles are coming to a store near u. stay tuned.

night study programme: when consultations become our consolation

i try to keep peace as a mass of information runs riot in my mind. concepts, constructs, jargons and paragraphs of expected knowledge and other ways of knowing are disassembled before me. my teacher does the finetuning. we students, the reorganising. a word is trimmed to perfection as a phrase is worded then mined. we chisel each sentence toward some argumentation, that perhaps technological progress may relieve but can never resolve poverty. i dunno how answering this question may make me a better human being but i need to push on and get my notes right. we feel a different kind of poverty tonight as the sun sets to an oncoming darkness. we gaze ahead and look to our newfound peace, a faint beacon hidden within our skies.

there is pride gained through intellectual achievement. but my heart is now tuned to waiting. for hot lumps of canteen croissants where i can munch with my pal and 'cher, squeeze our stupid cheeks and grab a needed pix for memory; simple us, delightiing. rediscovering the joy of being...that was in the morning...

ten years from now...

times spent with s22.

i remember this picture, taken many years ago. the class was our kingdom. the board, our battle maps. testing the limits of our reading, securing the facts that bring us peace. we toy with wonder in the middle of a sterile afternoon. kept alive by laughter and the unknowing love that honours these spaces and sets us free...

organic moments: L. journey w s03

a short season of learning journeys are back again. brief respites post-prelim blues.

organic, countryside philosophy given to 06S03 (Bollywood Veggies) ...alot more focus on grasslands, tastebuds and wild fingers this time. one class of food and we find a greater palate for knowledge. another class of herbs, a cup of nature and the palmprints of ivysingh to swap, zap and slap the office of state doctrines away.

it is in hours like these that everyday philosophy gets discussed outside the classroom. we sometimes wonder how much of everything will stay long after the wierd exams are over. back to roots, back to nature. sense and intuition. touch, wait and see. learning. teaching.

red pods of banana flowers fall. collect pools of noon rain. sealed.

placed and homed to make other tables glow.

under crimson skies

i never knew there were such bright sunsets to see on college grounds. it's near end-september. no more storms ahead. mood slows down and another of night's lighting begins. the walk grows silent by the hour. i've learnt to befriend closures. repacking the dreams we had, the ideals we bore. the disappointments shared. there is time to say goodbye. sometime soon, it will become real, forever. for good.