ONE of the greatest pleasures I know is sitting down under a golden light with a bag of Pepperidge Farm soft-baked dark-chocolate-chunk cookies and a mug of fragrant jasmine tea, with a book open in front of me and music on the radio. Mmm.
In Hippie-dweeb University it used to be those giant Meeting Street Cafe cookies, and in University of Geeks it was Ben’s Cookies from the covered market. Oh how I love the right cookie to go with the right tea.
“I want you to follow where your dreams lead you. I want that more than I can say. And when you chase them down, you’ll chase them as much for me as for yourself. Don’t let anything stop you from going where you need to go, from doing what you need to do.”
“My lantern’s a moon
My candle’s a star
I travel by night
I wander afar.”
“You can find me in darkness but never in light.
I am present in daytime but absent at night.
In the deepest of shadows, I hide in plain sight.”
“Three lives have I.
Gentle enough to soothe the skin,
Light enough to caress the sky,
Hard enough to crack the rocks.
What am I?”
“Four men sat down to play,
They played all night ’till break of day.
They played for gold and not for fun
With separate scores for everyone.
When they came to square accounts,
They all had made quite fair amounts.
Can you the paradox explain,
If no one lost, how could all gain?”
“Come a riddle, come a riddle,
Come a rote-tote-tote;
A wee, wee man, in a red, red coat,
A staff in his hand, and a bone in his throat;
Come a riddle, come a riddle,
Come a rote-tote-tote.”
“Often talked of, never seen,
Ever coming, never been,
Daily looked for, never here,
Still approaching, coming near.
Thousands for its visit wait
But alas for their fate,
Tho’ they expect me to appear,
They will never find me here.”
*
One more city/author pair to add: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh.
A GOOD repository of Chinese poetry.
杨牧
招魂
——给二十世纪的中国诗人
霜花满衣，一只孤雁冷冷地飞过
古渡的吹箫人立着——回东方来
梦里一声鼓，醒时一句钟
李候的迷失者啊
你的鲜血自荒塚里泛滥而来
让明日的枯骨长埋雪地
纸钱在残碑废塔前飞着
撩拔墓穴流出来幽古的芬芳
霜花落在吹箫人的脸上啊
清明早过，谁在坟山外打着七彩的阳伞？
那是簇拥而过的晚云
九月的红蓼草在河岸上开着凄凉和寂寞
犹记得长安城里豪雨的午后
雷纹商嵌的香炉
袅袅飞升的篆烟
春草绿上了你默默的石阶
雨停之后，就是你亘古的安睡
你梦着龙，梦着风，你梦着麒麟
无边落木，随霜花以俱下
回东方来，季候的迷失者啊
歌台舞谢锁着两千年吴越的美学
当细雨掩去你浪人的归路
你苍白的吹箫人啊
山海寂寂，长江东流如昔
1962
READING the papers of Dr Pasuk Phongpaichit. (Strong pang of wanting to be back in the Academy again, tempered with trying to write my application essays.)
And Sebald, so elegant and meditative, a weighty author and an erudite one but never heavy. An Audenesque sort, a spell-maker, a magician.
Would like to read some Emmanuel Carrère and Annie Ernaux.
Memorising the dates that I really should have at my fingertips: Tang (618–907), Song (960-1279), Victorian (1839-1901) etc. Going through Sima Qian texts from my college Classical Chinese class — death by dictionary.
Little secrets to happiness: homemade Chinese dumplings, lapis sagu, roast duck drumsticks, cheap Cold Storage sushi at night, sips of jasmine tea, polar puffs, cottage pies, four leaves, congee with dried scallops, heizhima hu, ya kun, taupok with kway chap, samosas, murg tikka, caramelised onions, Katong laksa, tangyuan with peanut fillings, Rochor douhua, goreng pisang, honey on toast, pulut hitam and yam paste with gingko nuts and pumpkin, curry puffs, granita, oyster omelette, nonya bak zhang, crabs steamed and dipped in tangerine sauce, water chestnut kueh, black pepper venison, saffron rice, red ruby with rich coconut cream. (Incentive to visit me in Singaland, no? I promise I’ll take you all around Joo Chiat and Bencoolen and Changi Village, Serangoon Road and Geylang lorongs to feast.)
Also: the headiness of potted white jasmine, the salt tang near the Singapore River, ever-handy L’eau d’Issey, masala tea, steaming coffee brewed in long cotton socks.
Speaking of food, here’s a funny segment on the correct usage of chopsticks. And this clip on origami is quite hilarious too.
Image © Le Thanh Son
BOYS and girls, I exhort you to read The Rings of Saturn by Sebald.
*
J. wrote: “I can’t stand for that now after the love and friendship I’ve known, which so many of you have taught me. As my friend so rapturously described: those who are as sparklingly intelligent and intellectual as they are warm and kind and grounded, who know just when to push me to laugh and let go and find perspective and when just to offer a kind, reassuring ear and shoulder. Those who accept you as you are and do not judge, who love you for the person you are and also for the person you want to be, rather than the one they want you to be.”
M.:”What’s a heart for if you can’t give it away?”
“You know you’re good, and good enough. You know it’s worthwhile. Go on!”
Thank you, you know who you are.
Doing more, thinking less.
Much fun and laughter at Lagnaa, reading Eavan Boland and Tang poetry at Kino (I love the sense of space, of looking out across a broad landscape, in many of the old Chinese poems. If I’m to make a living out of comparative literature I’d better brush up my classical Chinese), Arab Street at night, enjoying the eye-candy and being a general magpie at the make-up counters, sewing books — booklets, to be more accurate.
And isn’t that exciting? That I can make my future out of comparative literature. Those days when I learnt German just to read Rilke and Kant. It seems so much closer now that I can buy. myself. out of the bond.
One day I’ll be back in university, and in the meantime there’s reading and beginning, haltingly, to write again.
*
Time And Violence
by Eavan Boland
The evening was the same as any other.
I came out and stood on the step.
The suburb was closed in the weatherof an early spring and the shallow tips
and washed-out yellows of narcissi
resisted dusk. And crocuses and snowdrops.I stood there and felt the melancholy
of growing older in such a season,
when all I could be certain of was simplyin this time of fragrance and refrain,
whatever else might flower before the fruit,
and be renewed, I would not. Not again.A car splashed by in the twilight.
Peat smoke stayed in the windless
air overhead and I might have missed it:a presence. Suddenly. In the very place
where I would stand in other dusks, and look
to pick out my child from the distance,was a shepherdess, her smile cracked,
her arm injured from the mantelpieces
and pastorals where she posed with her crook.Then I turned and saw in the spaces
of the night sky constellations appear,
one by one, over roof-tops and houses,and Cassiopeia trapped: stabbed where
her thigh met her groin and her hand
her glittering wrist, with the pin-point of a star.And by the road where rain made standing
pools of water underneath cherry trees,
and blossoms swam on their images,was a mermaid with invented tresses,
her breasts printed with the salt of it and all
the desolation of the North Sea in her face.I went nearer. They were disappearing.
Dusk had turned to night but in the air –
did I imagine it? — a voice was saying:This is what language did to us. Here
is the wound, the silence, the wretchedness
of tides and hillsides and stars wherewe languish in a grammar of sighs,
in the high-minded search for euphony,
in the midnight rhetoric of poesie.We cannot sweat here. Our skin is icy.
We cannot breed here. Our wombs are empty.
Help us to escape youth and beauty.Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in.
What a lovely song that J. sent some time back. And Carla Bruni looks absolutely exquisite.
Tout le monde a une seule vie qui passe,
Mais tout le monde ne s’en souvient pas,
J’en vois qui la plient et même qui la cassent,
Et j’en vois qui ne la voient même pas,
Et j’en vois qui ne la voient même pas.
*
“每天把自己归零、重新开始”
什么是归零：归零就是问自己，假如现在重新开始，如果一直将累积下来的好与坏包装在身上，会让自己变得很沉重，我宁愿做最单纯的自己。归零心态就是把自己心灵里的一切清空、把已经拥有的一切剥除、一切归于零的心态。我会怎么做？我会有怎样有效的行动？归零并不意味着和过去彻底决裂，而是告诫自己要做好创新和超越的准备。
古诗有云：“宠辱不惊，看庭前花开花落；去留无意，望天上云卷云舒”。 生死在天，流水无痕。生亦乐，死勿悲。心如海阔天空，顺其自然。那就是平和的、知足的、豁达的、宽容的、乐观的、实实在在的心境。
看将来不看过去，时刻把自己放在时代的时速表里来正确审视自己，定位自己，然后继续下去。不为自己曾有的辉煌所累，不为“有经验的昨天”所困，而把自己的每天，每年都当成人生的新起点，不断地向前迈进。
对过去的客观冷静看待。也就是要正确认识过去与现在与未来的关系。过去的荣誉与挫折都已成为过去，如果不能时时准备归零，就会受荣誉所累，躺在光环里，停滞不前，不进则退；如果不能时时准备归零，就会受挫折影响，挫伤锐气，影响了现在，而现在在未来看来又成为挫折的过去，那将陷入一种恶性循环。这是任何人都不想看到的。所以，时时归零，太阳每天都是新的，即使昨天阴雨绵绵，今天依然可以阳光灿烂。
对现在的珍惜。其实无论现在你的工作是什么，你都能学到东西，都会有所收获。只有对工作抱有珍惜的态度对待，我们才会不那么自以为是，才会从工作中学会别人没有看到的东西。凡事要以积极的心态对待，不等待，不埋怨，不消极，事事尽心，事事尽力。