I mean I want to see

The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause
For the years I shall have in the long green grass
Are yours and yours and yours.

– Leo Marks

Cryptographer Leo Marks wrote many poems used later used by agents, the most famous being the one he gave to the agent Violette Szabo the poignant The Life That I Have, which gained popularity when it was used in the 1958 film about her, Carve Her Name With Pride. It is believed that Marks wrote the poem about a girlfriend, Ruth Hambro, who was killed in an air crash in Canada.

*

Facebook wall exchange

Friend A on Friend B’s wall:

Rorschach!!!!!! - “Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children”

Friend B replies to Friend A:

“Beneath me, this awful office, it screams like an abbatoir full of retarded co-workers”

I’m thinking dude, I hope you’ve checked who’s on your facebook list before putting these things online.

*

A on her baby: I’m not bringing her to the crocodile farm. She looks like a small chicken.

WHEN you first learn Chinese calligraphy you spend years studying and writing in the style of famous calligraphers. There are many stories of obsessive-compulsive calligraphers, such as the one who wrote by a pond in his compound and turned the whole pond black from washing the ink off his brush. Emotional freedom, the integrity and special quality of one’s own work — these are not first things, but final things. Only the patient and the diligent, as well as the inspired, get there.

Swimming, reading, taking notes, watched Winter’s Tale, the usual volunteer stuff, goodbye brunches and dinners and drinks, two birthdays to celebrate, spa. Calligraphy too, I do want to take part in a competition by the end of the year, just for the experience. Also watched some movies, and I’m wrung out after rereading His Dark Materials trilogy — the ending just kills me.

Thinking of the “three achievements” question they asked: What would I say now? Building skills: for teaching, writing, academia — also HAVE to get a better grasp of French grammar. What’s worth having is worth working for.

*

Families of sound

The letters are divided into two general classes, vowels and consonants.

A vowel forms a perfect sound when uttered alone. A consonant cannot be perfectly uttered till joined to a vowel.

The vowels are a, e, i, o, u and sometimes w and y. All the other letters are consonants.

(W or y is called a consonant when it precedes a vowel heard in the same syllable, as in wine, twine, whine. In all other cases these letters are vowels, as in newly, dewy, and eyebrow.)

The consonants are divided into semivowels and mutes.

A semivowel is a consonant that can be imperfectly sounded without a vowel so that at the end of a syllable its sound may be protracted, as in l, n, z, as in al, an, az.

Four of the semivowels � l, m, n, and r � are termed liquids, on account of the fluency of their sounds.

Four others � v, w, y, and z � are likewise more vocal than the aspirates.

A mute is a consonant that cannot be sounded at all without a vowel, and which at the end of a syllable suddenly stops the breath, as k, p, t, in ak, ap, at.

The mutes are eight: b, d, k, p, q, t, and c and g hard. Three of these� k, q, and c hard � sound exactly alike. B, d, and g hard stop the voice less suddenly than the rest.

The line

A one foot line is called a monometer.
A two foot line is called a dimeter.
A three foot line is called a trimeter.
A four foot line is called a tetrameter.
A five foot line is called a pentameter; most people have heard of iambic pentameter.
A six foot line is called a hexameter.
A seven foot line is called a heptameter.
An eight foot line is called a octometer.

Metrical feet and symbols

- iamb = a light stress followed by a heavy stress
When I have FEARS that I may CEASE to BE

- trochee = a heavy stress followed by a light stress
MARy HAD a LITtle LAMB; its FLEECE was WHITE as SNOW
DOUble DOUble TOIL and TROUble

- dactyl = a heavy stress followed by two light stresses
“FORward, the LIGHT Brigade!”
WAS there a MAN dismay’d?
NOT tho’ the SOLdier knew
Someone had blunder’d: (This line is different.)
THEIR’S not to MAKE reply,
THEIR’S not to REAson why,
THEIR’S but to DO and die:

- anapest = two light stresses followed by a heavy stress
The AsSYRian came DOWN like a WOLF on the FOLD
And his Cohorts were GLEAMing in PURple and GOLD.

- spondee = two equal stresses
This meter is rare; it tends to be used more for emphasis in poems that feature some other meter. See line 4 from the dactyl example.

*

Pentamenter:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art —

Tetrameter:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Whose woods these are I think I know

Tetrameter: sense of quickness, spareness, agitation, which is not evoked in the five-foot lines.
Pentameter: most nearly matches the breath capacity of speakers, and is the line most free from special effect. It fits without stress, makes a full phrase, and leaves little breath at the end.

Tetra-tri, used by Emily Dickinson, is the stanza form of the Protestant hymn. A tetrameter, agitating in itself, begins the piece. The tension is increased by cutting the length of line 2 by a foot and also by concluding the phrase begun in line one within this shorter span. The repetition can evoke claustrophobia, a sense of ritual, a sense of terrible formality.

True rhyme
Masculine rhyme — single stressed syllable
Off/slant rhyme — down/noon
Feminine rhyme — words of more than one syllable that end with a light stress eg buckle/knuckle

WATCHED The Departed, which is based on one of my favourite movies, and it’s that same gripping play on that basic bedrock of stories — identity.

*

I do love Michael Dirda. Am dipping into a book of his essays now — from Classrooms and Their Discontents:

“We want our kids to score high on standardised tests, but we pay only lip service to real learning. Where past cultures hoped young people would grow up to become heroes or philosophers or saints or gentlemen, we merely hope that Blair or Hakim will get into Harvard, marry well, make a lot of money, and live behind a gate in Georgetown. As our goals are superficial, so we look upon knowledge not as its own end but as simply a step toward a law degree or the means to a Mercedes…

Children learn best what they love. We have all been amazed at ten-year-olds who can recite the batting average of every player in the American League or who can discuss and compare minor details in the various Star Trek series. The good teacher needs to inspire love for his subject; then all the rest will follow: children will learn the facts willingly, will read the books eagerly, because they will find them irresistible.

Easily enough said. But how can this be done, and done thirty times over in a classroom of sophomore English? There is only one way: the teacher must herself display such love for English that, like the nous of Neoplatonist creation, that love will overflow and enter into her pupils. Or at least a few of them. A true teacher, as the classicist William Arrowsmith maintained, embodies the subject he teaches: that is, a humanist should be learned, admirable and humane; a mathematician ought to think clearly, display joyfulness in the very chalk strokes he makes in inscribing an equation on the blackboard. A teacher should be a living advertisement for his or her subject.

To encourage this process, we need to make a profound change in our society’s attitude toward secondary school teachers. Teaching must again be regarded as a desirable and admirable profession. How can you love a subject if you have been tacitly taught to despise its advocate? We need to pay better salaries, attract top undergraduates to the field, and honour teachers in our community. T.S. Eliot once wrote that he had worked in a bank for many tiring hours, six days a week, but that by comparison with his stint as a schoolmaster, banking was one long vacation. Our education system will remain mediocre until parents, especially well-to-do, successful parents, urge their brightest children to become high school math and history teachers…”

WE’D a talk in the taxi about typefaces, and MZ mentioned Bembo, which I will try to procure. Both of us use Garamond quite a lot — the typeface on this blog’s Garamond, by the way.

*

Have reserved Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era. Am so excited!!

*

* Taking a picture of this truly scary map of the human body on feet at a foot reflexology shop. It had eyes and ears. Then walking past another shop with feet on its barber’s pole.
* Gossiping over pedicures, and P. saw the dress I was wearing on pages 30 and 43 of her women’s magazine. Time to buy 4D — the lucky number is 3043.
* exchanging stories of massacres of the English language, then I saw a sign and said: “Howl of the moon”. P: “Yvonne, it’s howl *at* the moon.”
* Ramen at Noodle House Ken, a nice little hole in the wall.
* Mont Blanc, macaroons, and strawberry shortcake at Canele’s.
* gawking over umbrellas (hello….one cost $400) at Taka. P: “Is there a camera hidden in this thing?”
* trying all sorts of food in the food basement, from durian chips, to the most yummy chocolate covered crisps from Royce, and then having ice-cream and talking about men.

P and I have an easy and bubbling kind of friendship. Very great fun. I also love her stories.

*

* Talking of security and ministers at a wedding dinner and death by garoupa
* “We should have two sections, like the smoking and non-smoking sections. Sharksfin, and no sharksfin.”

AND she is tired of yong tau foo (five veggies one tofu) for lunch and dinner every day, she says forlornly.

I feel like the boy in Lettres d’Amour 0 a 10:

le menu est toujours identique: de la soupe. la soupe se digere bien, fait grandir et assure une nuit paisable, a condition qu’il n’y ait ni sel ni poivre.

And so it goes. I’ve been eating this for about three weeks, and I need occasional breaks from the monotony (hello omu rice! lo mai kai! fish & chips! oily chicken rice! kaya toast! fried chicken! roast. beef. sandwiches with thinly-sliced beautifully-streaked meat.) to keep going. But yong tau foo does give you the most nutrition for your buck, and I try to vary the veggies and shrooms I put into the bowl.

And so I scrutinise the edibles on my desk and find cashews, green tea, miso soup packets, green apples, three coins of dark chocolate from Royce, a hacks sweet, and decide to eat a chocolate.

Right then. Frugal habits and hard work and savings and burger flipping. I want to be fed.

*

Had a good lunch with L, an old housemate from Iffley Road, with watercress soup and dimsum, and talking of Sapa and travelling and old times and Croatia, and how we’d go to Tescos and my room was full of this particular kind of chocolate snack in blue buckets from Marks and Sparks. Facebook *is* good for getting back in touch with people who’ve slipped out of your lives.

*

Things to look forward to:

* P’s all-girls birthday celebration with pedicure, chocolate-eating, ramen, talking about men, laughing over stories, browsing in shops.
* Winter’s Tale!!
* Sunday brunch at Summer Pavillion with the APs…mmm. Crystal skin dumplings, rich sauces over braised meat. Bamboo gardens seen from high glass windows.

A: I was just sitting there basking in the sun and producing oxygen.
B: ….huh?
A: Breathing. Producing oxygen.
B: *Plants* produce oxygen in the sun. *You* produce carbon dioxide when you breathe.
A: Oh.
B (pained look of shock): Oh my God.

*

Took bus 167 from Raffles Hotel, I love it when the bus passes by the Padang, then sweeps past the curve of the bridges near the Fullerton, to the Raffles Place and Tanjong Pagar area. When K was visiting I made him take that bus after we’d spent some time at my favourite tea place on Seah Street to go down to the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station for Malaysian food at Singaporean prices, then walked up to Chinatown.

Oh people, do come and visit me! I love showing folks around town.

*

Walked into Borders armed with vouchers and bought Anne Fadiman for a gift, and Michael Dirda. Then met an engineer/finance friend for drinks/dinner, and he asked: “Why do you want to buy a book about a guy writing about books?” :) Also tales of jumping onto buses when they slow down to go over humps in Delhi, and how we should have been born into wealth. As it is you shall probably find me tottering in Orchard Road underpass with two books in my arms, madly shaking a cup in your face.

*

I have to define my areas of interests, then fill in the gaps and develop the apparatus for serious work. Poems: frantically memorising now to make up the quota for the week. And looking upon Tolstoy but sticking to my Jonathan Carrolls for now.

To A, half-jokingly: I want you to behave. You didn’t behave at all the last time. I was very embarrassed. I would say mortified. I would say humiliated.
A: The older I get, the more I’m of the mind that there’s so much crap you can’t control in life already, there’s no reason whatsoever to put up with crap you don’t have to put up with.
B: You’re right. Next time we just leave and they can just sit there and wave their pitchforks.

A: Bring them out to meet me!
B: Yeah, actually that’s a good idea. The equivalent of meeting the dragon. See if they can survive all your insolent snickering, your deliberate rudeness, your monstrous flamboyance and assorted weird tics.
A: Yes, rawr.
B: But don’t strain yourself. That could be dangerous in your old age.

C: He’s going to Prague and will study philosophy and meet a beautiful poet who will become the love of his life.
A: I sense a hint of envy. Or is it bitterness?

*

Between us we had a very good meal with

* Mezze plate
* Rocket Salad
* Lamb shank
* Sea bass
* Lasagne
* Stuffed portobello mushrooms
* Panna cotta
* Selection of gelato

*

Am so fortunate in friendships.

*

D: When I go out I’m always afraid I’ll crash into a pregnant woman.
B: What?? What do you do? Why are you afraid you’ll come back as a pregnant woman?
D: Darling. I said *crash into*.

medieval

beowulf
chaucer: troilus and criseyde, canterbury tales
sir gawain and the green knight
l angland: piers plowman. (B text)
the croxton play of the sacrament, everyman, the york creation, crucifixion, harrowing of hell, last judgement.
julian of norwich: a revelation of divine love

renaissance

wyatt: poems
spenser: faerie queene
sidney: astrophil and stella
marlowe: jew of malta
shakespeare: richard 3
winter’s tale
(R) merchant of venice
a&c
hamlet
as you like it
venus and adonis
herbert: the temple
donne: songs and sonnets
marvell: poems
milton: paradise lost , samson agonistes
jonson: poems, the alchemist

up to 1790

dryden: all for love
pope: dunciad
wycherley: country wife
swift: poems
richardson: pamela
sterne: tristram shandy
defoe: roxana
johnson: vanity of human wishes, life of savage
gray: elegy.

to 1900

blake: marriage of heaven and hell
wordsworth: prelude 1805 version, preface to lyrical ballads
byron: manfred
coleridge: biographia literaria (selected chapters)
keats: odes, letters
austen: sense
eliot: mill on the floss
dickens: our mutual friend
c bronte: villette
tennyson: poems
browning: poems
hopkins: poems
wilde: importance of being earnest

british and world lit since 1900

hardy: return of native
conrad: secret agent
yeats: poems
joyce: portrait of the artist
shaw: pygmalion
lawrence: women in love
t.s. eliot: poems
auden: poems
woolf: the waves
beckett: krapp’s last tape
coetzee: disgrace
rushdie: east west
ishiguro: artist of the floating world
stoppard: travesties
churchill: cloud nine

american lit to 1900

bradstreet: poems
franklin: autobiography
emerson: essays
thoreau: walden
hawthorne: the marble faun
whitman: poems
melville: moby dick
douglass: narrative of the life of frederick douglass
dickinson: poems

since 1900

james: the ambassadors
faulkner: as i lay dying
stein: tender buttons
wharton: house of mirth
pound: pisan cantos
frost: poems
stevens: poems
hemingway: short stories
bishop: poems
plath: poems
wright: native son
o’neill: iceman cometh
pynchon: crying of lot 49
merrill: book of ephraim
kushner: angels in america

Photo as requested by Anais

SO I have this pair of shoes, covered with pleated silk fabric in the richest purples and browns on white, that I always get complimented on, but they KILL my feet. Am just nursing the dozen blisters and wounds I got — I didn’t know wounds from blisters could go so deep into the flesh — it’s different when you’re driven everywhere and when you’re a public transport hoi polloi like me and have to walk everywhere. Ah well.

TO ASK the big questions, of why I want to go to grad school. To begin again, is it worth it? I’m good enough to pass courses and write little reflections — but my anthills are here and there are the pyramids there. Read books, mull, write something in response. I suppose I’m not bad at doing that, but so are lots of people. To write papers that get As in the course of marking, that’s not difficult. To really be good, to say anything worthwhile, that’s a different matter altogether.

But words, stories, reading, patterns, writing — they take a great deal out of me, then give so much back. It’s a wild, extravagant, beautiful love. Intoxicating and at the same time at the very ground of who I am, these lifelines, lifetimes of words. And these writers, scholars whose minds I borrow to see with, they’ve been bright lights, balcony people, sight and solace.

And I think of it in this manner — these writers I love have given a book to me, how I can write back to them? The gift they have given us, which we pass on to those around us, was fashioned out of their lives. So I want to write back to those who most made me want to write, whose work I most love to read. And I want to make it as good as I can, and this gives me the intellectual muscle and wing I need.

*

So I wailed to a friend, I’ll be at least 35 when I’m done, and he said: “So what? You’ll be 35 anyway.” Which shut me up.

Send words of encouragement my way, darlings? It’s hard being isolated from sources of academic support.

*

I adore old friends like B, we went to eat ramen at Nanten today on a rainy day, and talked of sporting movies and how he got his girl and my various escapades. He’s such a genuinely good person, as are my other dear guy friends D and H, for instance, who are funny, stoic, solid, who carry their side of the conversation with ease and sly wit and good humour, who may be quiet workers at time and not flashy conversationalists, but are *stellar* in terms of character and are strongminded folk. That’s why I went on the warpath when an expat friend put Singaporean men down.

*

And in that same vein how I love these bookish, brave, sparkling-firefly girlfriends of mine: It’s amazing how I’ve managed to make good friends via reading and writing blogs. :) And I know that these will be always friends, people who will stay with you down the road, for decades ahead. Knowing that puts courage in my liquor.

*

And people! I *exhort* you: Log on to NLB’s e-resources if you haven’t already! I’m very pleased with the range of the journals we get access to. From Poetry magazine and scholarly journals to FT and Economist and even Vogue and Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan! All searchable!

1. What three meals from your past would you like to eat again?
2. What two objects would you like to possess again?
3. What is the one act in your life you wish you could take back or erase?
4. What one person would you like to see again?
5. What one experience do you wish you could repeat?

They’re exactly the kinds of questions that would stir up memory.

*

Vincent had a number of sweet quirks, one of them being a lingering desire to be a good A student. Years ago he had assigned himself the task of reading five classic novels a year. Often when they were together he carried some weighty tome that he was attempting to slog his way through like an explorer hacking his way through thick jungle vines with a machete. But this novel was his nemesis. In the time she had known him, Ettrich had tried to read it three times with no success. Once he even threw a copy out a train window as they were arriving in Salzburg station. He looked at her and said, “I *will* read it. Just not today.”

And here it was again. She never understood why he didn’t just give up on Stendhal and read something else, but that kind of curious tenacity was Vincent too.

*

After Hoffmann:

A: I was wondering why she was pinned under the trash can cover with a giant needle.
B: It’s supposed to be the needle of the turntable record. It’s supposed to symbolise her death due to music.
A: Ah. Oh dear.
B: At least they didn’t crush her under the spinning wheel.

Taken by D. a long time ago

SPENT the most fun afternoon driving around Seletar Camp! An adventure complete with thunderstorms, and moving road barricades, and this most quaint bar where the lot of us sat at a table with a map. Then it was off to see Hoffmann, which I enjoyed.

Things to do: Read Winter’s Tale, and memorise speeches eg

A cause more promising
Than a wild dedication of yourselves
To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain
To miseries enough; no hope to help you,
But as you shake off one to take another;
Nothing so certain as your anchors, who
Do their best office, if they can but stay you
Where you’ll be loath to be: besides you know
Prosperity’s the very bond of love,
Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together
Affliction alters.

*

Despite all the ups and downs and occasional loneliness and temptations (thank goodness for friends who help me steer myself away from certain notions), I’m still very happy. I believe, fundamentally, that life is good. Life is my friend! I’m in love with it and with the doves of its soul. The glorious windhover bits and the patient elephant parts of it, too. Renewal, surprise, magic — these are the gifts of love. And it feels so *good* to be in love with life again.

La texture, la densit�, les couleurs de cet amour, tout �a je ne sais pas le dire. Ni rien des feux fous, des sourires des rires et des larmes, des jeux, des surprises, de l��merveillement. A tout �a et � beaucoup plus que tout �a pas un mot ne convient.

*

We talked of abuse the other night, after this disturbing Times article

(One in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in �sexy or revealing clothes in public�, according to the findings of a survey released today.

A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is �nagging or constantly moaning at him�.)

– REALLY. WTF —

and someone was describing the usual signs of child abuse, and in another conversation with E we were talking of “balcony” and “basement” folks, about how to help haul people up who can’t even begin to see hope in life, much less love it — first you must know your boundaries, I said, and not be stretched beyond what you can offer, and not think you’re God and take on too much responsibility. Then you’re just there cheering them on, with open hand and open heart, putting judgment aside. Pray as hard as you can, and remember this:

To pray “God, please help my neighbour cope with her financial problems”, or “God, do something about the homeless in the inner city” is the approach of a theist, not a Christian. God has chosen to express love and grace in the world through those of us who embody Christ.

As a journalist I see this principle at work in inspiring ways. While writing this book I have made trips to several different countries. I visited a church in South Africa, 35,000 members strong, which runs outreach programmes including a prison ministry, a hospital and a rehabilitation farm for addicts. In the same city I visited a woman who recruits volunteers to come in daily and act as surrogate mothers to children afflicted with AIDS. Two months later I travelled to Nepal where I met with health workers from fifteen nations who serve under a mission specialising in leprosy work. Historically, most of the major advances in leprosy treatment have come from Christian missionaries — mainly because they were the only ones willing to treat the dreaded disease….

I learned that many begin with a crisis of faith, indeed a crisis of prayer. God, why don’t you do something about the homeless families in Roanoke…or the AIDS orphans in Johannesburg? Don’t they break your heart? Inevitably, there followed a prayer echoing the one prayed by Bob Pierce, founder of the global charity World Vision: “Lord, may my heart be broken by what breaks your heart.” Those who responded became the answers to their own prayers.

I’ve been with some folk who’re in dark places, and there’s just this determination to be a balcony person for them, to know when I should be there, unspeaking and unprodding and empathising, and when I should pull as hard as I can, or ask questions that may help us see a bit better.

*

Now to work. The problem with me is I’m good at what I do, and clever — but not good enough and not brilliant and not hardworking. What I can do is to change the hardworking bit and go head down and plough on, and try again and again, and do what I want to do (write, teach) to the best of my abilities.

And I do not want regrets, just brilliant, tender memories when I’m old and full of sleep.

To do:
- *focus*: and what’s worth learning in the first place is worth learning well. Eg calligraphy, languages — do not hu tou she wei.

Mem list for the week —

Auden (21 February 1907 � 29 September 1973)
Lay your sleeping head, my love
Law like love

Dickinson (1830-1886)
Dear March — Come in —

Wendy Cope
Bloody men are like bloody buses

*

OK man, low-lying fruit since I’ve not memorised a single one and it’s Wednesday March 18.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

— William Carlos Williams

“Life is too interesting to choose suffering.”

Full speed ahead, hopes ahoy, heart filled like a sail with reasonable optimism and a belief that the gods were fundamentally benevolent, no matter where she was.

*

Unexpectedly, a moment came when, handing over the leash, both people let their guards down. They looked at each other with a frank mixture of love, resentment, and yearning that was immense. Both of them turned quickly away.

*

This pizza’s called the Titanic. There’re so many toppings on it that you sink after eating it.

*

She didn’t want to think about him now but that was almost impossible. Joy, real joy, comes so rarely in life that we mourn the death of it a long time. In the beginning of their relationship she said to him: “Where have you *been*? Where have you been all this time? It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for years, but now I can finally let it out.”

…She was at the age where she knew her chances of finding someone who sent both her heart and her hopes off the scale were rare. But then, one day in the library, there he was.

*

Anytime we discover someone who shares our obsessions, they become a kind of instant amigo.

*

Or that Ling was in love with her and, as a result, had studied her the way ardent church scholars study obscure religious texts.

…”I would really like it if you told me some more about yourself. You’ve said almost nothing, you know. Was that on purpose?”

She shrugged.

Vincent was not going to let her off with that. “Come on — you’ve got to tell me something.”

“My father is a doctor.”

He waited. After some more silent time passed she looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “That was something.”

“Yes — your father’s occupation. But what I want to know is about you.”

“All right, here’s something: When I was a girl I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I was very good back then and was accepted into the ballet school of the Vienna Staatsoper. That’s where I met Flora. We were students there together.

“But I wasn’t good enough and in dancing you know that by the time you’re about fourteen or fifteen. I was good but not good enough. So I stopped and transferred to the American International School here because my parents wanted me to learn English.

“It’s been that way with a lot of my life. I’m good at some things but never good enough. Never special.” She said it without anger or regret. She was simply stating a fact. Vincent was touched by both her candour and the fact that she saw herself in this uncomplimentary light.

He knew women like she was describing, but none of them had ever admitted to what Isabelle just had. Because all of these others were attractive too, people gave them much more credit than they deserved for what they’d actually accomplished. Oh such a pretty woman dances/paints/writes? Then her work *must* be good. But it wasn’t. In truth it was rarely good. In truth, here was only another (good-looking) wannabe trying to be or create something interesting but failing.

*

brilliant, wondrous memories of life.

*

Leni rarely talked about herself because she was shy, secretive, and at heart didn’t think she was a particularly interesting person. But she talked about herself a lot that day to Flannery. She talked at the cafe and more when they were sitting in the Volksgarten afterward. He asked questions that were personal but never out of line or prying. Compelling questions, ones that made her consider carefully before answering, although they were about her and they way she felt or saw things. It felt as if she were looking at herself in a new kind of mirror — one that showed her angles she hadn’t seen before.

*

Another time they might have had a rewarding relationship. But there are people we meet in life that miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not.

*

The problem with Flora was too often she took off in the worst possible direction with any new piece of information. Told it to the wrong people, or blabbed about it to others when it should have remained secret. She did this only because she was so happy and excited for you, but too often her enthusiasm had caused big problems. Or she would ask intimate embarrassing questions, the answers to which were either none of her business or ones you weren’t ready to give yet.

*

The problem was Simon Haden possessed a quality few males do. It was an instinctive thing that most of the men who had it didn’t even know was there. Yet it was the most formidable part of their arsenal: they made you feel totally comfortable when you were together with them. On the street, in bed, having lunch, having sex, having a lugh, a walk or whatever — it didn’t matter. You breathed normally with them. You didn’t feel the need to put on airs or puff out your chest or pretend to be someone you weren’t. Yes, this fellow wanted to be in your pants, but he also wanted to be in your head and hang around together sharing the day. You felt that whenever you were with him. You were certain that you were exactly where he wanted to be at that moment. The things you said or did genuinely interested him.

*

“I had a teacher in high school who used to talk about a truth mirror. He told us to imagine a mirror that when you look in it, it shows you the absolute truth about who you are — both the good and the bad. It was like God — it knew everything about you and wouldn’t lie. He asked how many of us would want to try it. Not many raised their hands.”

THAT’S the word that I’ve forgotten! That’s been bugging me for ages!

IN PLATO’S Phaedrus, Socrates tells a story about the invention of writing, in which the Egyptian god Thoth shows his written characters to another god, Ammon, who rebukes him: “This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their momories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember themselves.” There were stories and songs — and songs that told stories — long before there was any writing, and they were kept alive not in libraries, but through a cycle of reciting, listening, memorising, and reciting anew. Each language drew on its own resources of sound structure for the aural patterns — the kinds of rhythm and repetition of sounds, words, phrases, and kinds of phrase — that made spoken poetry sound very different from ordinary discourse and, in particular, easier to commit to memory. But even after almost three millenia of written literature, poetry retains its appeal to the ear as well as to the eye; to hear a poem read aloud by someone who understands it, and who wishes to share that understanding with someone else, can be a crucial experience, instructing the silently reading eye ever thereafter to hear what it is seeing. Better yet is reading aloud that way oneself.

So the goal is to memorise three poems a week, I know a number by heart already due to school days on the MRT, but I can do much more.

Finished memorising Kubla Khan last week, I used to be able to recite only the first chunk. This week:

- Witches bits in Macbeth (So fun, the double double toil and trouble bits.)
- Because I could not stop for death
- Elizabeth Bishop, Sonnet
- The quality of mercy is not strain’d

*

Read:
- Scoop

Reading:
- Guns, Germs And Steel (very engrossing so far)
- Inheritance Of Loss

To read:
- War And Peace (It’s one of my “hall of shame” haven’t-read-yet books)
- Catch-22
- The Grapes Of Wrath

To find
- The Ethics Of Memory

*

A.

In the time they had lived together, one of the things Ben taught her was that whenever you are upset, cook something delicious and difficult to prepare. Even if you end up giving it away or throwing it in the trash after you have finished, the effort and mental concentration required to make it will make take your mind off the problem for a while. She’d watched him do this twice. Both times he emerged from the kitchen with a marvelous meal and a more peaceful heart. The food tasted great, but what she revered was Ben’s way of resolving difficult personal issues. German loved physical work. She loved using her hands. She loved being with a man who, instead of brooding or sulking, put his hands to work when he was troubled to make something fine and worthwhile.

from The Ghost In Love

B.

From something I wrote a long time ago: “He is clever, funny, sharp-witted and heart-stoppingly perceptive. He can be difficult and even harsh with those he loves, but his anger is a storm which quickly passes.

“And what I admire most is his gift � unusual in one so clever � a generous kindness towards his friends. He does not judge his friends on intellect. Like the naturally intellgent, he does not put a high value on such things. Instead, he looks for other qualities which he values more: a capacity for happiness, a particular skill which he can encourage and admire, an enjoyment of life which he can share. And once he has found these things in a friend, he will not easily lose them.”

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, but my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it then. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, the path is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

- Carlos Castaneda

Image � Jeana Sohn

“If you want to see what someone is about, you look at what people do. What they say is how they want to be seen.”

- David Fincher

“Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”

- Julius Erving

IT’S so exciting to have life open up! Of course there’s fear at the end of the bond, I’ve become comfortable, and it’s scary to start anew again. But I’m hungry, and I’m bright, and there will be good challenges ahead. Life has been, and will be, an interesting journey.

You can determine what your future holds based on how much time and energy you spend working on yourself now. Find out what it is you want, and go after it as if your life depends on it. Because it does.

I can confidently say I’m happy again, and the next step is to get that same ravenous hunger back, a focus not born from greed or insecurities but from a need to grow and challenge myself and reach my fullest potential. Everything that has happened has provided me with opportunities, and I want to have the inner strength to take full advantage of them, to take full responsibility for my choices and my life.

I want to write. I want to teach. I want to do both to the best of my abilities. I want healthy, happy relationships, and to grow. I want to honour all my commitments with integrity. I want to be of service. That’s not so complicated.

*

Monitoring my portfolio — I’m nibbling away but will be keeping quite a lot of liquidity — thank goodness I only have a couple of hundred shares of Citi left. One share is now worth less than the price of an egg prata.

A is finishing up a speech on an art exhibition and the giving away of prizes and cultural exchange.

B: What about this? Art is a kind of illness. Giacomo Puccini.
A: Hahahahah, I better not say that. This is at the prize giving ceremony. 30 parents are going to walk away saying: The xxx ambassador said our kids are ill!

B: I know! I know! Exchange is creation. Muriel Rukeyser.
A: How do you pronounce her name?
B: Dunno
A: Er, then it can’t go in a speech.

*

I love the Willow Pattern story.