the only life you could save

i like to think this poem precedes the previous entry...ziz, kristy, shang, astro, jolene, regina, john loh (any more?) who have gone overseas for their tertiary studies...

for you :)

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,

though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late enough,

and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen branches

and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly recognized

as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do the only thing you could do

-determined to save

the only life you could save.

~ mary oliver ~dream work

2 former students...doing law in london

i remember them for different reasons.

shang chatted non-stop when he visited the college library back in 2000. amused me with his highly articulate, somewhat stubborn relentless pursuit of knowledge and stinging critique of singapore's education system. he knew what he was in for though he was only 16 then. one of my finest students who kept discussions going even though the entire class was dead like a mortuary. incidentally, shang always topped gp and escaped certain execution when he admitted writing close to 10 pages on the possibility of the 3rd world war in the a-levels gp exam. obtained a rare distinction for that innocent stunt. his intellectual passion must have got him away. he applied for law , got rejected twice but grew to understand he will never be happy with ntu's mass com. he would not settle for less. fought one more time and entered law on his third try. now tackling comparative legal studies on an exchange programme in London. his blog http://shangjun.blogspot.com/ details his journey.

i know he's happy :)

aziz didn't quite fit into his arts class. some judged that he was arrogant. but none knew he was diving into in a zillion community involvement projects which were not even accredited by the college. like me, he loved the outdoors and mastered rock-climbing, diving, mountain trekking and other height-defying stunts straight after his As. never knew him well till we met up for drinks and runs separately after the exams. discovered he was a much misunderstood soul who was far too mature for his peers. ziz was the top arts student that year but still, did not manage to get a place in law (what is wrong with our law faculty?!?). well, he just left for better shores, this time to UCL (ironically better ranked, i was told!) for legal studies. he said he will change. i know that will be (delightfully) inevitable. and it is good.

2 lawyers in the making....and many many others whose lives i've been privileged to share and know. having taught them was only a fraction of the story. .. being a part of their formative search helps me experience a deeper sense of pride for what what they will eventually discover in another land... letting themselves be found along the way.

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again; and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business..

t.s eliot: east coker

regional animalities

the above title came from a paper which was featured in Focas (2007); a forum on contemporary art and society. many papers presented in this journal catered to issues and topics dealing with the role of fauna and its socio-political representations in asian societies. it took a leap of faith to turn back the clock and recall the exact period my association with animals first began...it started with keeping pets which took on an insatiable pace whenever i have enough place or space to call my own...

these are among the various spendid (exotic, for want of a better word) creatures i've kept as pets since i was a child...i could have been a low-brow curator if i had my way. you'll never catch me alive with goldfish or guppies...i think they lack personality. the ones who have left the deepest impression...

any dogs will do (feral, pedigree, mongrel), an uncommon cat, soft-balled rabbits, incestuous hamsters, tiny white mice, earthy earthworms, vegan beetles, temperamental lungfish, wasteful piranhas, bloated electric catfish, stunning swamp eel, albino african clawed frogs, siamese fighting fish, elegant water stick insects, paddling water boatman, mandarin salamander, japanese newts, chirpy budgies, arrogant mynah, bright golden oriole, praying mantis, grey doves, bullfrogs, red crabs, adaptable mudskippers (mine lived on fresh water for over a month!), slimy caecilians, and tens of hundreds of other aquarium fish species...except for each of my dogs, it never struck me to record a picture of them each time they arrive, live, die or go away (my first hamster is still listed in the missing rodents list since 1984!)...

other wild ambitious hopes have since colonised my dreams-

volunteering at the zoo rekindles my deep-seated interest (from young) to further explore the lives and habitats of animals. if there is a way to understand our animal archetypes, i wonder what will our choice of favourite animals reveal about the aspirations, values or personalities we live by? manatees, sloth, giraffes and hippos are among my favourites so far. common traits; slow, languid, gentle unless provoked (except manatees). selective of the company they keep, they value their solitude and don't quite believe in taking life on the fast lane.. i caught the sloth for the first time during practice training at the zoo last weekend. it came so close the divisons parted and i saw it up close...tussling with the malayan flying foxes in their eager jostle for long beans, bananas, carrots and fruits...inexplicable moves... and i was in awe.

a poem by w.s merwin celebrates this sacred kinship witnessed that day.

witness

I want to tell what the forests were like

I will have to speak

in a forgotten language