I mean I want to see

A: See that mosquito bite? That’s the most intimate a living thing’s been with me for some time.

*

A: The ones that dug me most were arrogant, idealistic, existential, and sometimes insane. One told me that he couldn’t sleep for thinking of me. Another one couldn’t eat, and then asked me: “that life is good and worthwhile, despite the bitterness at times, is Sartre, or Camus?” I did not understand.
B: That’s just bad grammar.
A: And someone wrote to me in earnestness — and while sober! — “Three passions have governed my life: The longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.” From now on I only want to date scientists, engineers and accountants.
B: Not Buddha?
A: Actually he was quoting Bertrand Russell.

TO be glad and young, and aware of life, and see it teeming — herons in the trees by the water’s edge, swallows seven storeys high and their long loose looping flight, a monk on the road with an open smile, what bristles on trees. How strangers came seeking shelter. The smell of rain and letting it pitter-patter pepper us, roads downhill and hurtling by without a care. A series of stops and starts, and we come to a part of someone’s narrative. A wanderer/warrior/wordsmith, laying out a line from life to life. Modulations and talk of change, and how one step leads to another, and how crossings come to be. Tide water bringing in the sea.

THERE’S cutting out masses of irrelevance, and clearing, sharpening and making the good phrases shine. There’s opening up and sharing more, and finding gems of comments. There’s beginning again after losing hope of the heights for too long.

From a friend: “Sometimes, because of a great shock – and the pain that follows – we split off a part of the self. We do it so part of us can escape. But the self that remains remembers what has been lost.”

Sometimes we need people who help us look for the missing part of the soul and show it how to return.

READING Karmic Traces by Weinberger again (saw it on Minz’s desk today) and I cannot say enough times how much I like his books — such pleasure!

I’d been walking along the Singapore River and it rained, and I’d forgotten what it felt like to be that open to wind and rain and beauty, and I could feel life seeping back into the crevices of my body and mind that I had completely written off as dead or dormant.

There’s also 北岛’s poetry, which YL alerted me to when we were talking of Weinberger:

零度以上的风景

是鹞鹰教会歌声游泳 是歌声追溯那最初的风
我们交换欢乐的碎片 从不同的方向进入家庭

是父亲确认了黑暗 是黑暗通向经典的闪电
哭泣之门砰然关闭 回声在追赶它的叫喊

是笔在绝望中开花 是花反抗着必然的旅程
是爱的光线醒来 照亮零度以上的风景

走吧

走吧，落叶吹进深谷，歌声却没有归宿。
走吧，冰上的月光，已从河面上溢出。
走吧，眼睛望着同一片天空，心敲击着暮色的鼓。
走吧，我们没有失去记忆，我们去寻找生命的湖。
走吧，路呵路，飘满了红罂粟。

FINALLY, an Olympic medal for Singapore after 48 years — and our 2nd of all time. I think we should have a public holiday.

*

(Whiny phone conversation)

A: Well, I love you. Remember that and you’ll get through life.
B: Yes I love you too. With oodles of whipped cream and lashings of fun.
A: Oh, marry me, darling.
B: Well I say love will come to you. And because I say these words they’ll come true.

*

C: Your task is to find me a good kisser.
D (geek sort): Are there measurable indicators? What are your kpis?
C: A good kiss is like a poem. You can’t have kpis for that.
D: Ok. Find me a poem that you want your kisser to be equivalent to then.
C: I got one.

OUT running tonight to Madonna’s Confessions On A Dance Floor, after a good meal out at Duxton — I love the area, the company was good, and we laughed much — and thinking how great it is to be out moving to sweaty dance music that’s like adrenaline on tap.

It’s not been all smooth along the journey so far, but there is still hope, an open heart coupled with open eyes and reasoned optimism. I don’t think I can lose this kind of deep joy that means living well, being open and being responsive and sensitive and willing to take risks still.

Try this typographic dating game: “She takes you to a Paris bistro with velvet walls and white tablecloths. She silences your nervous chatter by pressing an index finger gently against your lips….”

*

A: So we got defeated by the scrabble aunties at the work-place tournament.
B: Oh? Aunties?
A: Yes, they know all the obscure two-letter words! But my friend said that they probably didn’t know the meaning of what they put down.
B: Heh.
A: So he asked one of them: “Do you know how to put that word in a sentence?” She was very indignant and said: “There’s no need for me to know that.”

Image © Jean-Baptiste Mondino from here

I LOVE this photo.

THINGS people successfully acted out during a Taboo game in which we tried to mime the words — Dalmatian, TV manual, duck, divide (including pretending to saw her body into two). Unsuccessful: VW, retail therapy, roadshow.

Image © here

孔子有云：“有朋自远方来，不亦悦乎”。 中国更有举世闻名的俗谚“四海之内皆兄弟”。中华民族源远流长的好客传统，积淀深厚的礼仪文明，在理解、参与、举办奥运会的过程中，注入了诸如重在参与、竞争合作、文明交融、共同梦想等崭新的时代元素。

8月8日，巍然屹立于世界东方的北京，拉开了第二十九届2008北京奥运会的大幕，祥云圣火，越燃越旺，扮靓了中国，点亮了世界。盛大、欢快和隆重的开幕式，一展中国人民的风采。中华民族的悠久历史，灿烂的文化，当代中国改革开放的显著成就和男女老少的兴高采烈，犹如一部奥林匹克运动的伟大颂歌，在世界各地唱响，让各种肤色的人得以传播和分享。

就是喜欢奥运会，有梦想，有希望，有眼泪，有汗水。

● 吴瑞光

近日回新加坡探亲，有幸参观了有心人和社团，在国家图书馆举办的《承前启后，继往开来：陈嘉庚与李光前》事迹展览会。欣见这个展览会在社会上引起了良好的反响，《交流站》也连续发表了多篇讨论文章，我看了之后，也有一些感想。

　　陈嘉庚和李光前两位先生是上个世纪初期和中期，对新加坡有极大贡献的华社领袖。陈嘉庚创办的是华文小学和中学，但所培养的人才，却是服务于整个新加坡社会。李光前乐施好善，他成立的“李氏基金”，长期以来，都不分种族、宗教，为本地民间文化、教育、慈善和公众团体，提供资助。

　　先贤对社会的贡献，除了看得到的，还有无形的，如“取诸社会，用诸社会”，“爱国爱民”和“扶贫济困”的精神，这是社会文化的底蕴和国家的宝贵财富。一个国家或民族的长久富强兴盛，光靠经济实力是维持不了的。只有文化底蕴深厚的国家，才能有强大的凝聚力量，把各族人民团结在一起，形成一种深厚的、自豪的多民族国家认同。

　　新加坡是一个只有43年历史的年轻国家，但是其多元种族——华、巫、印、欧，都有着深厚的文化底蕴。综合展览各民族先驱人物的历史事迹，有助我国文化底蕴的积累，凝聚国家的认同。只有经济和文化都全面发展，我国才能屹立于世界民族国家之林。

　　李显龙总理在展览会开幕礼上致词，号召新加坡年轻一代，要向陈嘉庚与李光前先贤学习。照理说，政府首脑如此重视这个展览会，政府机构应该积极跟随，特别是作为展览期长达半年的展览场地——国家文化重镇的国家图书馆，应该有一些积极的措施来吸引新加坡人前往参观学习才对。但是笔者前往参观看到，展览会开幕日过后，会展门可罗雀，冷冷清清。国家图书馆的大门入口，有其他的宣传海报，但是却找不到一块有关这个展览会的介绍和指引。

　　我想，办展览会，花费了很多的人力、物力，但是很少人去参观、学习，就无法达到预期的效果。我建议国家图书馆可在大门入口附近的显眼之处，对这个展览会做些宣传介绍和通路指引，相信可以吸引更多参观者。

　　其次，国家图书馆是否可以联合教育部和学校组织中、小学的学生，甚至大学生，利用课余或假期时间，有计划地安排他们参观这个展览会，并派讲解员重点介绍和讲解，让学生们为新加坡有这样的贤哲而自豪，并从他们的奋斗、献身和为社会人群服务的崇高品德中，学习到本国的文化传统和祖先留下来的良好的价值观，打造新一代的新加坡人。

(zaobao.com)

READING a Dorothy Sayers biography:

“By training I am, more or less, a scholar; by vocation I am a writer of stories and plays. Now, for a person of that training and equipment there is only one unforgivable sin — I mean, literally unforgivable, in that it will end by rotting away one’s sense of right and wrong, and that is the falsification of one’s “proper truth”. You may murder your mother and commit adultery five nights a week and still keep a living conscience. But if once you begin to distort facts, or to write things for any purpose other than that of telling such truth as you know, or to affect emotions you do not possess — then you will begin to slip and slide into illusion and into a living Hell, because you will be destroying the only instrument by which you make contact with reality. But it is very difficult — I cannot tell you how difficult it is, or how insidiously all the good in the world, as well as all the evil, conspires to push you into betrayal.”

“…men and women may turn to lust in sheer boredom and discontent, trying to find in it some stimulus that is not provided by the drab discomfort of their mental and physical surroundings. When that is the csae, stern rebukes and restrictions are worse than useless. It is as though one were to endeavour to cure anaemia by bleeding; it only reduces further an already impoverished vitality.”

“Well, well — the prizes all go to the women who “play their cards well” — but if they can only be won in that way, I would rather lose the game.”

And also reading Jhumpa Lahiri, whom Jo, Nancy and YL recommended. Very elegant short stories, and I’m getting started on her novel The Namesake.

*

From Billy Collin’s Nightclub

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

*

Try this “ethicability” test on ethics — I like the neat “social conscience”, “principled conscience” and “rule compliance” grouping, and it tells me I’m an angel.