*Fleeting...

Monday, 26 May 2008
12.22am

I am confused. I am confused. Did I say I was confused.
I must be.

In the past few days. My head has been a blur. A Blur.aBlur….

Fleeting memories having been slipping past me. Like water in my hands. I have been waking up a lot throughout the night and the day. Maybe because the sun rises too early and sets too late in Spring/Summer that I can no longer accurately guage time passing. Or maybe its just that I haven’t been sleeping well at all.

I use to like playing Dovorák, Debussy and Chopin on the piano. My dog’s name is Chopin. Debussy’s daughter’s name was Chou Chou. That’s what Viv told me when she passed me Shunji Iwai’s ‘All about Lilly Chou Chou’ and that sentence has kinda just stuck in my head ever since. I never finished watching the DVD because it made me nauseous but Debussy’s daughter’s name was Chou Chou. Debussy’s daughter’s name was Chou Chou. Debussy’s daughter’s name was Chou Chou….

In my awake/sleep mode I’ve been dreaming about tasting a bottle of Chateau de Verger 2004 Beujolais again that I had at the The Pig's Ear. In my dream it is at the tip of my tongue but I can’t grasp the taste. How painful.

I just bought a copy of Takeshi Miike’s ‘Ichi the Killer’ for Viv. Not because I like Takeshi Miike but because I love watching Tadanobu Asano. I have every single DVD with Tadanobu Asano in it except ‘The Picnic’ and the soon to be released epic 'The Mongol' , where he acts as Genghis Khan. ‘Ichi The Killer’ must be the most teeth-ghashingly violent and stomach churning movie I have watched, but I think Viv would like it. She’s a real special one….

Tonight, I just bought a cake online for my mum. She’s not really into violent movies.

I think Taka Hirose is the coolest modern bass guitar player around. He built his own bass. How cool is that?

I’ve been trying to search for an old Yano Maki album. Something that brings back painful yet tender memories for me.

My hair has grown long again. Too long for spring and summer I think. I should cut it again.

I am confused. Am I confusing you? But I aready told you I was confused.

I just started reading Jean-Dominuque Bauby’s ‘The Diving-Bell and the The Butterfly’. It was a gift from Viv after we went to watch the movie and I told her how much I would like a copy of the script. In simple terms, it is about the ex-editor of French Elle magazine who suffered a massive stroke which ended up paralyzing his whole body except his left eye. He wrote the entire book letter by letter with a person translating each alphabet letter by letter with an approving wink of his left eye. In a passage he talks about the last time he saw his father before his stroke.

I remember the last time I saw my mum. I held her briefly at the airport in February. It seems like such a long time ago now. Every time I go home. She appears to have aged. Her eyes seem to protrude more and more from her sockets and emanciated frame. I can see her capillaries through her now translucent and delicate skin. If I dig deeper into my memories, I use to remember that she had jet black hair. Even into her 50s. But now, with the fatigue of age, I can see all the whites. I can remember lying beside her and watching her during her afternoon naps. I have never had a habit of afternoon naps, but I liked to lie there right beside her watching her on afternoons when it was too hot and humid to do anything but lie still. I can remember her scent, her faint moisturizer and the ever comforting feel of your mother beside you. Mostly I remember how gentle and kind my mother was.

Happy Birthday Mum. Sometimes. I miss you. Very much.

On Player_Sumidare_On Yano Maki’s 'Live your Life’

Live

Friday, 16 May 2008
12.17am

What is the best thing to say to someone who is dying? Get well soon? It’ll be ok? Not in the case of say terminal liver failure. I guess not.

On Friday evening, I was out with my friends J, D and M. I broached this subject of our mortality and religion. I’d just finished Ma Jian’s ‘Red Dust’ a few days before while lying around in the park. In it, there was a passage about the people in a little village called Jinuo that Ma Jian had passed on his journey through China.

The Jinuo custom allows members of the same clan to fall in love but not marry. When the time comes for a clan couple to separate, they exchange gifts with each other as pledges of undying love. These gifts are taken with them to their marital homes. When the clan lovers die, they carry these gifts to the mythical 9 crossroads, meet up once again and travel together to the underworld where they can finally marry each other. For the Jinuo, husbands and wives in this world are merely companions and true life begins in the afterlife.

I told them I thought this was a really cool idea. Basically, this life has nothing to do with love or truth but is a mere completion of an existential path. And in that sense it wasn’t so different from Christian religion where one’s life is a constant preparation for glory of afterlife in heaven.

On another level there is Buddhism which speaks only about how human desires are a source of pain and we must try to transcend these emotions by almost removing our sub consciousness and consequentially, ourselves from the present.

I asked my friends what was better. Constantly gearing ourselves towards the future or thinking only of the present?

Their unified answer was the present. What mattered to them was the present only. The future was something they hardly romanticized too deeply about.

The moment itself is what we should try to capture. These moments obviously become the past at some point in time but if we didn’t capture that moment or allow it to capture us in the first place, it’ll be like carrying no gifts to the mythical 9 crossroads.

I’m generally a cautious person who thinks a lot about the future. In that sense, I’ve never realized the moments that passed were beautiful till it was too late. When me and my best friend climbed to the roof top of our school and watched the orange sun set into the sea on an air-con condenser filled roof, I didn’t realize till years later that that was such a latent memory to me.

Mostly, I’m just scared because there were many instances when I let that moment take control of me and then felt utterly helpless and out of control afterwards. Many years ago, I was standing on a crowded train on my way back home. There was a man standing opposite me who possessed the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen. My memory tells me he was very pleasant looking, but it was his hands that reeled me in hopelessly like a fish struggling in a net. His hands were large but well proportion between the palms and the fingers. They weren't too smooth and lined with the veins that people get only through time and pain. It was like stories were written on his hand and I was trying to read them. I had my eyes fixated on those hands the whole journey. At some point, this stranger began to notice the spell he’d cast on me and he started moving his hands. My eyes followed those hands and we continued this cat and mouse game till I had to get off the train. I don’t remember the face clearly, but I remember the hands and most importantly, I remember the moment where I could almost feel his hands on me, on my face and down my neck,my shoulders... like having your eyes closed in an open field and the wind gently whispering pass your ears…..just like the moment on that roof top.

A few years back, I met someone. Even before we became friends, I knew in an instant something omni-potent had overtaken me. I’ve never been romantic enough to believe in love at first sight, but on hindsight, it was in that moment that I knew things would never be the same. I regret my fear restrained me from acting on that moment because years later, I realized I never stopped feeling the same way about this person deep down inside of me. Now, even though I recognize those moments. The older I become, the fear of acting at a moment still stops me from capturing.

That Friday night, at the end of this debate about the present, I looked around. He was standing a few metres away from me. The face I’d seen somewhere in February when I’d gone home to take my Architects licensing interview and was browsing around an exhibition at URA. He was an Architect on a video being interviewed about new generation Architects in Singapore. I sat there and watched the entire interview. He spoke in a calm, measured tone and motioned his hand once in a while to enforce his point. His tone was so gentle and collected. Some people have that special something inside them that soothes me.

I was trying to recall if this person standing a few metres away from me was the same person. I couldn’t be sure about the face, but I was trying hard to recall the moment that soothed me.

There was something about the way he held his glass. He held it so casually between his thumb and middle finger. It hung so naturally off his finger tips, his left arm, his shoulders….He looked like he was relaxed and having a genuinely nice conversation with his mates. Occasionally he brought his glass to his mouth or laughed out.

I still couldn’t tell if this was him, but I thought WTF.WTF!?!. I asked D if he thought the group was from the creative line and he thought so too. But gutless as I was, I shoved my name card to D and asked him to do the dirty work before I left. I’m not sure exactly what D said to glass-in-hand but I didn’t think too much about what happened after that.

Funny thing…2 days ago I got an email and it began with ‘This is a shot in the dark……’

Shoot me please.

Between,what do you say to someone who is dying? You tell them how much you love them. Right now…

On Player_Feeling the Moment_By Feeder