everything

am also glad i made the decision to return home during the summer break. i have received so many opportunites to touch base with relationships that matter to me, the circles of goodwill and support that continue to see me through every phase of my journey. being apart has taught me to be much more present to the 'moments', conscious that i waste precious energy brooding about the past and imagining a hollow formless future. and there have been more than a handful of perfect moments to savor, in the days to come. i'm alive, simple as it is...alive to sense, see and to feel. the element of self-care is there even though there will be some days when i have to sit through the dryness and own the feeling it brings. still, feelings pass, and are passing. to you who have taught me to be present and be conscious of how life and how splendid a simple day or moment can be...thank you!

my family. for giving and sharing. every blessing. everything.

to ken, ed, karen, sam, greg, cons, john; macritchie runs, $7 Filipino meals, bumboats and car-rides, cloister-chats, cosy silence shared...you are next to family.

boon, keong, cj, pete, chris&cons, shari, rena, hele, seth, viv, rockies; the food-booze, THAT new-year's eve trip to (???), bollywood veges, hiking up changi point, chasing sunsets & strobe lights, our walks down the lawn cemetery...another flight to nowhere, teochew steamed fish and great goose meat. porridge with rockets. notes on a simple life. celibate days. marry?!?! what marriage?!?!?!

sister chris, canossian community and kids & staff at Beyond FSC...opportunities to know i can live with much less, teach like i've never done before. and find rest in your childhood dreams.

04a02 and lit class of 2005 , 03A04, 06s11, 06a02...for insisting. for remembering. reliving. faithful. gratitude and thanksgiving from me too.

ziz and kieran...running and movie mates...the art lessons that freed me. one single day made whole.

colleagues and friends...nik, den, lai kuan, lok and lin...fish balls, egg tarts and drunken chicks. mud pies and mozarella slings. wait for my pay-cheque. i'll be back!

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.








Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

t.s eliot: 'east coker'

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

i meet you again, straight out of evening. your smile a quiet betrayal of what i'm too tired to tell from within. today, i sketch and try to paint away what will come to revisit me. the senses tell of your returning. a past and longheld kindness i once touched, driving up, to seek me.

i imposed the distance. certain that i've stamped a clumsy closure to you. you tell of old words spoken from a house of stone. i remember the warm light in my room pursuing a darkness that waited on, for a distant dawn.

whenever i get lonesome, i look into my heart. i can always and still, find you hanging out there. i have never forgotten. sometimes when i am feeling sad, or just downright despondent, i think of you placing your hands upon my head and blessing me. it always helps. always. you are right about memories. every letter becomes a flight of words i once learnt to sail on.

i become a stranger to my instincts.
no more wish to begin journeys with you.
----------------------------

READING BABEL


The cinema attendant asked customers if they were watching "Bar-bell" and promptly invited them to the right hall. This film must be worth a weight of meaning if the pronunciation merits as such. one associates the biblical image of babel to signify the unifying language cell as having fallen apart, and disintegrated into other diverse soundscapes that emerge to populate distant lands. the oral geography of cultures and tongues. similar to the multicultural hybrids in film. the screen transmutes a mangled strand of stories. the director's cut nips, snips and tucks each setting, invigorating and surrounding them with sonic lines. the language of face, faith and restless footfalls running the arid dustlands in morocco, and only to find themselves seduced and tied to spanish tapestries in mexico. a sudden hijack of fate. to bilocate halfway round the world, locked in embrace, almost contained, within a cold japanese skyscraper.

language communicates. it also isolates. some are stripped of words. others bravely articulate a half-spoken truth. a few intoxicate the body with new beliefs. its
soul empty like cavity. we skin away its
many-sexed words,
re-energising our syntax and tone.

the chaste and stained origins

a disserter's searing silence

interrogated and
turned
over and over

her loss of faith

replayed in these reels
in the heat of night

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

eric khoo's 12 Storeys and Be With Me
and roytan tan's 4.30. filmic yearnings for connection.
we hear about loss and fatigue long before we learn to sense them.
it is easier to feel than speak about them at times.

language and naked modernity





dislocation & communion

rewording our

disenchantment...

an ancient blessing ,
disarming the manners

that mask our desolate depths.

everything, everyday
while on leave :(





i munch on fresh chilli for most meals, making the best of it since they cost so much in melbourne. lunch consists of brown porridge with green spinach and salmon steamed by the side. life slows to a crawl and i learn to please the palate with a dose of green, red, metallic colours tucked in bowl. the paper continues to fulfil my addiction for news. i miss teaching somewhat, those keen eyes browse the pages for rock-solid content or eclectic concepts for use in stagnant classrooms. i continue to cut them as my mind sees fit. it hasn't slowed down. will snip on knowledge in whatever form it takes. quiet on the outside. insistent and restless within.

when all is done, the kitchen keeps silent even as the noon sun is stalking. ready to maul the temperate morning.








mynahs on the peak. near the rims of gombak stadium. an audience to sunrise. a few gather, some choose to fly away. drawing us to notions of freedom (or is it choice?). an uneven flight guides the day.

















symmetry everywhere. lines, grills, fences and rails. in ascension. in direction. rationality & objectivity. tracing sensibilities in geometry. my one constant childhood fantasy. one line. one life. you wish life was that certain sometimes.

january ending...


con's wedding and our longtime reunion...my first time as host and i did well...hehe...more post-party drinks and another trip to ubin, this time, just for chris!




nie gang...we laughed the good old days away and continued to %$&&&*(#$ our cob-webbed tutors who continue to exist in the far end of that galaxy...cara, anton and ma did the usual unglam thing...spotted a cool waxing poster of some warton chio-bu with sprigs of armpit hair all splattered on the wall. wa lau eh!!! we had to pose and to raise the stakes higher....i did the directing instead. i would have opted for something more malicious still. some kinds of hair, cheerful as they look, deserved to be shaved completely and plucked to nothingness like tow gay.


try okinawan at tanglin shopping mall...bittergourd sushi with delicate slabs of sashimi wedged between, the bitterness becomes almost tangy in taste. a heavy-duty load of anti-oxidants wrapped in rice paper. the eatery proudly boasts of okinawans being known for their longevity, based on the meals they eat. much of the menu is written in japanese too. we also kissed and chewed up the most delicious piece of ox cheek ever (or was it tongue???). a loyal stream of jap expatriates stepping in; a sure sign of culinary goodness being served here. on a previous trip to another restaurant in great world- top shell filled with superior stock stacked on a mini-hotplate of blue flames which kept the dish warm and looking cool...i poached the shell home. its next life: a raw piece of installation art in the humble washroom. christianed 'pacific'- faithful to its origins.



my birthday came a little early this year. shari and karen did a bluff. asked me to accompany them for a tattoo. we left after mass...went to some block in toh yi, was told the practitioner operated from his home. we climbed the stairs and knocked the door. an indian lady with a cryptic smile on her face opened the door, with candlelight in tow...it was dark inside and my mind was half-racing to second guess the other career of this mysterious tattoo artist...entered and saw curtains with shadows behind them...felt dark and creepy within...and gapowwow................. they emerged, sung a broken-jinggly and half-rung birthday song for me....the person was none other than john rozario's maid who acted as the gatekeeper! for a moment, i had my attention all on shari, wondering where the tattoo would be...she even picked a design for me..a clump of celtic trees...should i?

Love is so short,

forgetting is so long

pablo neruda (1904-1973)

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

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire...

the winding light, the universe.

And I,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

translated by alastair reid

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

to other letters and pictures:

vine & branches, novena church (1989 - 1994)

catholic students' society, nus (1995-1999)

and years, like shadows,
fall away...

the pile lies on the floor, a collection of xmas, birthday and goodwill cards, a stash of letters, the yellowed lines and scripts detailing how we write our lives by hand before the age of the internet, one tracing the years all the way back to 1992.

i wanted to clear my drawers during the holidays. unknown to me, i had collapsed these years into one drawer, having sorted the letters and cards i wanted to keep a long time ago. this time i was disposing more of them again. empty postcards collected from serial continental trips abroad, unused, unsent. a near-fetish for travel & place- a useless tribute to places where you merely visited but never quite lived in.

a stock of letters from my platoon mates signalled out for attention. i now could backtrack and revisit the past. the winding nonsensical notes we wrote to another, complaining about post-bmt unit life and wondering in a very raw way, where our lives would go, or (are) going. there are a several lines that tug the conscience. and i sometimes wonder why we haven't found the time to keep our lines open, clear and stable. perhaps we were too young, too impetuous to hurry by, confident that our common experiences in bmt would eventually pull us through, for many seasons to come. we were wrong. so awfully wrong. everyone was eager to change, some quite rapidly, convinced that ns was merely an utter waste of time, a temporary stop for other roads ahead in exploring and revising other values, beliefs and outlook to small and big futures as yet unseen and unheard. we thought we could answer these frightful questions by doing; imagining and chasing gals, streetwear, clubs, other communities. and into religion and university. one thought he was heading home to family, while others wanted a complete break from God, whatever that word meant, then. several embraced new faiths, two landed instant careers and a handful eventually drove or flew away to some fashionable distant place. what we really longed for was stability, a pinch of luck, and some vague notion for an ambition we had not even begun to craft for ourselves.

among the lot are 2 whom i want to be in touch again. to anil and weiyong, if you happen to chance upon this blog by some rare twist of grace or fate, let me know. i hope we meet again. you were / are my best buddies in the army. it's been almost 15 years since we last booked out of nee soon camp together, sharing a cab to cck before feasting on simple home-cooked fare at humble Hans. we didn't even know much of ourselves then. but the familiar tug and raunchy jokes helped us to sail thru' some of the toughest and most amazing times we felt in green...mass pt, soc, night range...mess tins and night snacks...area cleaning.

there are somethings, some persons in life you can't put away, no matter how hard you try.

a splash of rainlight-
traversing pulau ubin 20 jan 07

it was my third trip to ubin since i returned. and always, gladly taken with no regrets in sight, despite the long distance travelled from west to east. it was an unusual reunion of sorts, with 3 former students from 03 and one from 04 batch tagging along. they clicked in unison, having shared common woes with their subjects as well as jolly entanglements with the same tutors. yours' truly. they hit on many topics from the start, complemented by an unusual blend of energies and personalities fit for any summer camp: annie and her electric ability to receive, deflect and retort hidden barbs and teases from the rest and her simultaneous tendency to demand the most exclusive and harmless dose of attention from all of us. there's gungho piow who is perfectly at home with herself, never giving up her individuality no matter how unglam the stalks and seeds might have done to her enigmatic purple-streaked hair. maybel and her messanic overtures who will always reserve a quiet blessing for everything that turned dull, dirty and sour. we regaled with fond old stories of college days: annie still berates me for the nasty comments and grades which i splashed on her essays while ziz chomps on mee siam serenely, possibly critiquing and deconstructing our inane mindsets and self-depreciating humour from the side.

we did everything that made Survivor a series to be scoffed at: ploughed through blotches of mud, annie writhing in pain as her Birkenstocks got drenched in double-blows of saltwater and clay as we cycled past flooded pits, shoreline and always in rain. we also peeked into abandoned shrines and haunted houses, remotely thrilled by the many alternative histories the island offered to passing spirits. we even chewed on lallang stalks after running out of creative energy for photoshoots. spotted 2 rare hornbills in flight. 2 unlucky grasshoppers were ambushed and tossed to the enemy, as we witnessed, nat-geog style, the sharp jaws and elegant legs of a golden-web spider stalking, piercing and chaining the hapless prey in coils of web. everyone. raptured by sheer silence of raw wonder.

these people made me laugh in the rain. we made each other a keepsake much more memorable than the schoolday memories we used to define our moments by. and they were the same folks whose essays i marked, stomped and slashed...only to see them grow into self-confident, bold and delightfully open individuals who take pleasure in exploring rustic roads, pockets of green mangroves and other ghostsongs of the jungle...the same people who forge easy conversations with ubin islanders conversant in dialect. they wanted to move inward, daring to see deep into things- the dying lores and practice of kampung living and etiquette.

i stand aside, smile and instinctively know that i am proud of them; joyful in their company...moved by their effort to touch base over the years, helping me to rewrite my life, and inspiring me to map these moments on the open field as a further blessing, a special song to sing on rainy days, remembering with fondness, the relational gifts...the hours my vocation is giving me.

walks and sightings ...
a wayside flower and petals on a dirt road

i wonder sometimes if an online journal faithfully helps to record one's actual thoughts and feelings. been known to so many necessitates some kind of 'distancing.' we watch every verb and noun being written and ensures a little private space remains. our actual selves are only known to a select few whom we allow into our interior space. my closest friends have no need for blogs since our friendships are always marked by a deep regard for respect, mutuality and freedom. If there is a blog at all, it comes through in words and gestures sometimes even in silence; a noonday ride, a run in the park, bbq, some overseas trip, a dive or a walk by the beach...even a casual homecooked lunch, cosy dinners and the occasional sleepover does wonders to nurturing relationship.

over the years, we have been witness to more funerals, weddings and departure-calls any age group has known. karen, myself and ed have helped out and sung on countless occasions, first to liwei who left his fraternity at the close of his medical studies, then to fr frank, gloria, and my cousin. i remember matthew, charmaine and kevin who passed away at significant stages of our lives, from jc years right to the edge of young adulthood. i remember viv's parents who hosted so many of our gatherings during our teenage years. there was friar roderick whose death left the biggest gap in my life; i was not quite able to find another spiritual director as candid and honest as him, who taught us to be gentle with our failings and be open in meeting God at every turn, nook and cranny of our lives. and to my dog bobby, whom i cradled as he whined to his last breath, shocked yet surrendering to the gentle hold of his master who had to make a decision to end his suffering. i was 24 then and remember being most rational in wanting to put him down only to be swept apart by my feelings like a child who just lost his closest and most faithful friend from the age of 10. ed stood aside and allowed me to crash.

have officiated as best man for about 5 weddings by now (6th upcoming), honoured by the trust my buddies placed in me and also the opportunity to part-take in the special sense of joy and pride in being there for them. departure-calls were more bearable. they remind me how time passes ever so quickly. greg and ed entered religious life here while michael left for the philippines to be a missionary. karen served briefly in wellington. on the academic front, kenneth to brisbane and north carolina for his masters and PhD, cons to sydney for her Msc. in all, life has returned full circle and the lot of us are back here in singapore having celebrated con's wedding most recently. we meet less often now, each busy with their own lives but move on assured that we'll always be in touch and pick up where we left off. that is how secure the relationships have been. we miss mike and greg most but meet in the eucharist each time mass is celebrated.

there is a flowering weed by the side of canossian convent where i pop by each weds and fri to help sr chris in volunteer work. it sits by a garbage dump, oblivious to the junk and waste neatly scattered around it. the plant blooms at its own pace, unassuming, unaffected by the mixed flow of hectic and quiet movements intruding its surroundings. are we able to will our spiritual lives in that direction? a certain posture, a certain outlook. not chasing, not haggling or attempting to control large chunks of our destiny which seems to seep by, with no end in sight. instead, i turned inwards into appreciating what i already have, within. i climbed the monastery's stairs that afternoon, delighting in the unconscious harmony of my joints, with my hands casually grasping the rails, my feet gingerly avoiding the wet groud which ah sim had just cleaned and mopped over. i felt grateful that i could walk and not take it for granted, in a very real way. for a while, while seated in the chapel, i was equally amazed by the deep spectrum of colours splashed on bukit timah hill. the same can be seen outside high-rise flats in my estate. orange and sunset-reds stirred into whorls of cloud. i can see. and that form of seeing became another stream of knowledge. arriving unexpected, unknown, unseen. i was keenly aware my eyes, my hands, my legs, the joints and nerves made everything work and the spirit and soul of me that helped me to feel and see. a full sense of awareness. no clinging nor holding back but simply available to the moment, to the present. however big or incomplete the gaps i may be feeling within me that hour, seem to dissolve into white space. i was simply there. and alive. and free.

the scattered petals are taken from sungei buloh. death in its final glory, a final descent of beauty on trodden ground. i don't normally take notice of flowers, being cumbered by the silly post-pubescent notion of their feminine attributes. however, i did so for these stretch of days. freed from the weary strings of immaturity traced all the way to the insensitive so-called macho-chunko age of 80s. becoming free and open enough to let my senses do the judging, and the spirit, in discerning. the scales have long fallen. i just did not have the time and the quiet courage to admit as it should.

free rolling days

it's almost been a month since i returned. haven't been able to land a part-time job since my tenure is so short for any serious commitment. the focus has been a mixture of sorts trying to balance and add some degree of relevance and use for these unspent hours...

1. had the pleasure of clearing old junk and many unmentionable cobby products from Canossian convent. one storeroom became sunny again after 3 hours of real sorting and chunking. glad to receive sr chris' hospitality and openness. joined nuns and fellow volunteers for their home-cooked lunch. i learnt to listen to rain on days when it came. there are kernels of dignity to be found in simple household chores: margaret washing the dishes, brenda answering calls and ah sim faithfully sweeping the corridors of leaves and dust accumulating everyday. the convent at merbok crescent holds many fond memories for me. the chapel overlooks bt timah hill. the silence is alluring and keeps you centered on what really matters at the close of each day. i saw sr chris attending to one elderly nun the other day at lunch. her memory is failing and she regales in past wonders and present constraints which find little anchor in our minds. yet there was gentle tending in the way they made sure morsels of food are carefully placed on her plate. plenty of patience and easy laughter to accompany her back to some distant past. and staying there. her story becoming real. disease and frailty taking flight in face of care.

2. browsing the day separately, with seng and ziz. seng and i visited sungei buloh nature reserve and checked out several abandoned fish farms on the western end of the island. i am quite convinced i'll be living on this part of the island for good. born and bred on seabreeze and having a vision of sweeping lallang grass and fields before me for as long as i could remember. we saw several rogue species of snakehead prowling by the pond and captured the coodling sounds of waterhen as they stalked among the weeds for prey. yesterday, ziz and i ran and hiked more than 10km from macritchie reservoir to the treetop walk. amid pockets of silence were heartfelt sharings about our views toward islam, women and girls, men and friendship, fundamentalism, love, life, growth and loss. heavy topics that seemed to take lighter weight given the backdrop of green shades and pools of quiet water which marked every boundary of the reserve. it's rare to embark on such journeys with valued friends like them; one whose friendship was recently restored after a year of hiatus and the other, a former student whom i established a rare intellectual and spiritual kinship with, after that fateful day-run and a witness of prayer in falling rain.

3. also a note of thanks to karen, shari, ken, helena and john who popped by from nowhere and took me to new places to reclaim parts of ourselves we wanted to bury due our busy demonic schedules and momentary fatigue...karen for volunteering opportunities at Beyond, sticking 8000 labels and knowing first-hand the strain of every production-worker whose work i often take for granted...shari for your pick of new clothes to revision my ageing collection, prepping me for the teaching months ahead...ken for that delightful dinner at ikea and our fondness for oak-brown wood and john who took me to spca only to be stunned into silence by the sadness there. and to you, helena, for your flavourful bowls of rocket salad and teochew mueh, warming the home and stories we shared...