foggy morning

 yes, a fogginess. one that has persisted for almost this whole semester, and I am so conscious of my measurement of time by the school calendar. 

i imagine it is like a dot of concentrated ink, while the rest of the diluted colours and textures fade into insignificance. a moment of climatic intensity enough to stop the earth's orbit short and refuse Time into mythology. no, not Love. I've moved past this nebulous concept and reserved it for more luminescent moments. but i think, the meeting of two beings, in all their complexity; a willing undertaking of mutual reckoning and recognition. a striking awareness of the human hope and insecurity. 

indeed, to experience such and to lose it - as it must have its season -, is to rediscover Time again. questioning what it means for each break of day and fall of night, each task and responsibility of this point of life. is to have new vocabulary and imagery etched into the mind's archives, to describe every subsequent thing in the language that has been so tinged with the life force of another. 

so forgive me, if i am living in a fog. i don't quite know who i am seeking forgiveness from. but i believe that with time the fog will clear, even if just enough to see the path in front of me. the words will learn to reconcile, the heart will loosen its grip on the past. and i will be my new person, not fearing nor regretting, only being what Nature is.

 there's an aimlessness that wafts in and around me, one that I've never quite experienced before. i think if it is conviction that has faded, try to pinpoint whatever it was that made it all okay.

up and out

 Dear you,

it's 4:36am and I have slept for about 3.5 hours. But my mind flips and tosses over so many thoughts. I suppose it might be because of the sheer amount of stimuli I received yesterday - a whole afternoon of dance camp (1.5h of Jazzfunk and Dancehall, back to back), and a wonderful night with my tusduh mates in our Halloween makeup. I think about Dawn; I recently got to eating a spontaneous lunch with her (Sodexo's Halloween Lunch - nubbad but my burger was cold :')) and was so taken by her. I'd never properly spoken to her before but we'd always known of each other's existence. I think once last year I complimented her shirt and we are in the same Intro to the Philosophy of Art class. During lunch, she spoke about a bar that she liked, about trusting time and your growth along with it such that you will naturally move on from things that cease to be useful or have meaning from your life. It was nice. The kind of open-hearted release of thoughts you know have been brooded upon and been in marination. That kind of introspection. I'd like to get to know her more! In some ways I'd like emulate her too! Idk. She's a really good dancer, and I saw her help take videos and photos for dance camp. And there was that sort of you could say transcendent movement (in the Existentialist sense) that she exhibited which spurs the same aspiration in me. 

Yes - that's it - that transcendent movement. An aspiration that I suppose I've always had, and which has been encouraged by my environment. Qiutong working on her resin cast of faces (ok many of Ivan's face), Sunwoo drawing almost everyday and creating a website to sell his art and learning how to stick-and-poke. Düny's forward-thinking, her looking at houses and comparing prices, looking at semester abroad opportunities and considering her options. Sofie's becoming a vocal coach, literally counting the number of roles she could audition for as a queer female, confronting her lecturer about typecasting. Tammie's achieving the Dean's list! Ivan and Lea applying for the NUS Museum Internship...

All these things. And I realise I seek less for the achievements than that general hope to surpass myself, and also just to have a 'firmer grasp on things'. I don't know how to best explain it, but I do realise that many things I do simply to pass the motions, to get it done. But I'd like start to in some ways do it 'right', to consider the art and science behind each thing more. Whether it's the way I chop vegetables and cut a melon, the way I make coffee (I want to make better coffee for myself), the way I approach what happens in school and what I learn, knowing the names and how best to care for my plant babies. I want to be able to answer people more confidently, to be more sure that I have processed and considered these things before, and to put across my views on them with assurance of their validity. There's definitely been progress in that since the last year, and my conversations with friends have been proof of that. But the hope to continue still stands.

I have also been thinking about my past few weeks as being some of immanence (deviating from the full definition in Existentialism but similar concept). They have been necessary and part of my process of healing. But I think there's a fire in my heart that is slowly growing again, burning and seeking. 

xx

'the last word'

 who are you when you cease to be who you thought you were? and so maybe what one is is never transfixed, ever in motion, and we can never expect ourselves of anything.

 I am still trying to find my words. But i have none left to say

you have hurt me beyond measure

& i can only hope that in time you'll understand

because i'm spent, trying to verify myself to you.

 I am still trying to find my words. You see, you had taken them away for a while. You had me breathless, reckless, led by the heart and sprung off by impulse. Within that small month and a half, when I did write, the dimness kissed my skin in the same way you do, and I wrote about you- your lips and your hands around my waist. There was no need for words, only you. And the things more complicated and which I thought about as I navigated your whirlpool of a mind, I didn't know quite how to write about either. So words were left on the back-burner   while I was all over you.

Even now, the act still occurs to me as unnecessary. If I do not have you to hold I know the curves of each letter do not either. You are a wisp of purple and blue light dancing with the dust, an enigma that is of my own more than anything. Although I know you too are a complex creature whose habits and tendencies I've only managed to prod and observe the surface of. 

It is already murky there. Ashy and littered with solid things, stubborn and unbudging. I had a sense of that by the third time we met. I say the third time although I can't remember what was the third time or what we did or where we went -SQ that's it-. Maybe not so precisely the third time but nonetheless a sense that accumulated in strength from early on. I felt it: first, the particles that disturbed the course - the apparent red flags I should've heeded. But that was when I realised that that quality did not diminish my adoration. I was not a mere hopeless romantic with a constructed ideal. I was aware of the ways you limped but I still thought you wonderful. The parts of you that my theorising self was averse to did not repulse me. I wonder if it was hope that smoothed its rough surface. Hope appears to reveal its strength more and more as time goes by. 

Aug 20

loneliness blurs so many lines--
do you need me for me, and I, you for you?
or are we just two bodies looking for some warmth
and kisses in places long neglected?

a step sideways

recent thoughts have been a series of folding and unfolding, a step forward- no a step sideways. the stirring of online activity over the murder of George Floyd has prompted a lot of this; has pushed an intense critical eye on myself, my beliefs, prejudices, and actions. Or the lack thereof.

today's yoga session (i'm on Day 23): "where attention goes, energy flows." i turn that over in my mind, and am wholly unsatisfied with the largely inward-looking tendency of mine. i recognise a lot of selfishness, concern over public opinion (as much as i cheat myself into thinking i don't hold regard for), concern over a certain aesthetic. it is in my position of privilege that i am able to do so, and at the same time i remind myself not to take that for all it is. that privilege not necessarily translates only to gratitude but makes space for that much more action, indignation, and reflection.

i have a long, long way to go, and i don't presume to have any conclusions nor answers.

xx

https://www.coeval-magazine.com/coeval/christopher-doyle
https://medium.com/@miniflixTV/the-curious-case-study-of-christopher-doyle-c4ccbb805b2e

there's nothing to say now

so we just take pictures.

A reincarnation cycle in which you remember everything about your previous lives.

––– Once, on foot, I crossed the borders of what are now continents. In the vast expanse it was just land, and my sights could unfurl like an unending carpet. 

When the land began to break up and inch away from each other, I was a flower on the precipice overlooking the ocean, blown in the wind that swept across the landscape to breathe a giant 'shush'.

As the trenches deepened and the mountains grew taller, I was a nomad traversing the ridges and indents that would come to be filled with water. I started off with hooves for my daily travel, far and wide with nothing much to reach, contented with the exploration. But as time did its work my skin shrivelled up and by then I'd reached India.

There, I laid dormant a long time. The world had more faces to recognise and more progress to make, and I settled an agreement to keep me in the cocoon until it was ready for me again.

I don't know how much time had passed; time was not important. But when another earthquake shook hard enough as to break the shell open, I understood. Born into a chaos, suspended by the waves, I touched the tips of islands and was borne away again. By this time I was wondering what is was that I was supposed to arrive at; making circles about the globe, the crashing of the waves became anything but second-nature and was quite difficult to bear, and I was hoping to find some respite on the steadiness of sand.

Through a force of will I found myself washed up on the beach, where I reached outwards and into, and wrapped my roots in between the granules. Here, I learned to reach toward the heavens for satiation, and before long was aware of my being so erect. To extend was one of my conditions, although it never left, a particular nature to lay with the landscape, to never have been recognised nor sought. To tower so near the sun was also to threaten my tresses, and one by one they turned yellow, curled inwards, and relieved themselves of my rough and hard centre.

I hear them eating away at me. The dampness reached my bones and the termites made me their home. They made streaks on my surface, complicated pathways eaten away and trodden on, but I had learnt of duty and made songs of my hollowing out in order to hold this house upright. The inhabitants observed well, collected material to be my replacement, and finally I could collapse to release the melodies I'd written.

Time was awfully pertinent now. I had thought it alright to have left it there, or gone into one of those comatic cocoons again for an indefinite period. After all, I could still hear the incessant termites and the footsteps-- theirs or mine I couldn't be sure. But this time I was sent into the wind, whirling and uncontainable, a tangle of dandelion fluff and wishes latched onto my skin. For so long I'd sought a landing place, to cease to be so porous and fragile, to give their wishes at least a hope of germination. I did, eventually. And once I'd settled the dreams into the soil and had myself grown into maturity, I was cast away yet again by another gust of wind, another child of dreams. So I went on as such, as the bearer of closed eyes and crossed fingers, of hopes that stemmed from so distant a place but which were all mine, keeping me dizzy and afloat.

Until one day I reached the soil and did not rise again. I was of the earth and of its will, barely conscious but with bated breath I awaited its next decision for me. Ins and outs of contentment and impatience, and I remember being something one day and then back again the next. I imagine Time was a series of lines and grooves, when I was nothing and something, just like those heartbeat monitors except the record of an entire human life is only like a single mountain on that vast unending expanse–––  

Thanks Rachel for your prompt! Was challenging but so fun :) xx

Write about a stranger you met on your Europe trip! and if they taught you anything.

It occurred to me only months after, fairly recently, that perhaps the blooms on her blouse and my dress had something to do with our coming together. 

It was the day of a Neo-Nazi demonstration in Halle, Germany, and I was leaving the city to be safe, following the cautions of my friends and fellow volunteers. Right as I was walking into the train station I passed by a crowded parking area, as well as a man with an eyepatch on his left eye and a poster, a caricature of Angela Merkel and some German words I did not recognise. I repeated over and over to myself to look straight ahead and feign indifference, which faltered when a group of policemen started walking towards me, all we-mean-business -- the man had gotten into a little tiff with someone just behind me. 

I was still a little shaken when I stood in front of the ticketing machine, and I was not expecting a voice directed at me, a slew of German. I turned and was relieved to see a white-haired lady with a kind face.

"UH, ze kein deutsch"

broken german - "I don't speak German"

She seemed amused that yet, I replied in German. I muttered an apology and she understood. Excitable, this old lady, and she made me feel so at ease. She explained in English, an airiness to her voice, as if not at all bogged down by whatever it is that our voices nowadays sound weighed down by, that she had bought a pair of tickets (it was cheaper with some sort of bundle I think) and was looking to let me have the extra for a lower price. A fantastic coincidence it was that we were both going to the Leipzig city centre, and I agreed before she promptly held my arm and we walked towards the train platform together, her lugging her little suitcase. She asked me the usual: where I was from, what I was doing in Halle... I told her about the volunteering that I was doing, teaching English at a small education centre supporting refugees in Halle, and she told me about how she used to be a teacher. 

We were no short of things to talk about. Christa was travelling all around Germany for the fun of it, she can't sit with her back to the direction of train travel and she offered me some nuts from a little ziplock bag while I offered her some of my raspberries. She showed me on the map where she lived (I have forgotten :(), told me about the places she had visited thus far in her adventure around her homeland, and I showed her the pictures I took when I was in Munich just before I came to Leipzig. We exchanged phone numbers so that I could Whatsapp her some of the pictures she liked. And till today, she still texts me to wish me well on special occasions, Christmas, New Years. Christa types in German, and I google translate her texts and my responses, although sometimes I give up and use English.

We spent half of the day together. After having some free drinks at a VIP area of the train station (Christa is a member and she let me in! cheap thrills.), we visited the Marktplatz, the church that was unfortunately closed for renovation, walked the shopping streets where I looked at some shirts and she very confidently said she preferred the yellow one. We decided on what we should visit by dropping by tourist shops and looking through the photographs on the postcards. I looked to google maps for directions, she asked shopkeepers. She had trouble walking, and we linked arms the whole way, and stopped to sit when she needed to. My favourite pictures I took of her include her taking pictures of postcards (y not save the $$) and her joy after buying a bratwurst sausage to eat:

We were chomping on chewing gum when she led me into a department store, fished out her comb, and took advantage of the mirror of a jewelry display. She also stole a few spritzes of some tester perfume. I just laughed, got a spritz too, and not long after we split paths to go see the things we each wanted to see.

A different kind of sentimentality... not a resistance to split ways but foremost a sort of contentment with having met at all. She filled my heart that day and continues to. She, kind of like Peter whom I met in Switzerland, revealed to me a deep sense of dissatisfaction with what is familiar and known, a courage and light-heartedness that comes with a blatant and sincere undertaking to explore one's own country and to do so at her pace, so fully assured. For her to be able to say; I don't know where I'm going next, when I'm leaving, what I'll see. Just to take the breaks when her legs bother her, to buy a big yummy sausage when she fancies it, and to use a department store's resources at will. Her feet had a heaviness that barely seemed to weigh her down, and when I think of her my heart feels light enough as to sway, as if it still remembers her airy voice and gentle laughter.

I was thinking about her one day, and looked through our pictures. I remember her stopping by a flower shop in the train station and her saying how much she loves flowers. Then, looking at the pictures, I realised and couldn't help but think 

and how much I love flowers too.

Thank you Naila for your prompt and for helping me make a space here for Christa. xx

il pleut

je le sens

l'eau, le vent et la quiétude

je ne savais pas que je l'attendais

it rains

i feel it

the water, the wind and the quietude

i didn't know i was waiting for it

-

Hero.

A unique ability to position ourselves among the masses, to identify contrast and to ponder our place in this world; they say that this has been conferred to the human race alone. So it comes as no surprise that as we attempt to discern our outline we look outward, and it turns out that more often than not what we come to be is a series of what we have wanted to be, in varying extents of success. What we have seen in others, qualities that somehow draw us in because of a burning recognition of our own lack, an attraction to brighter and better, an innocent tender voice calling out - "that's what I want to be when I grow up".

Only growing up is an endless journey, and along the way we change our minds and the destination accumulates nuance. That is not to say that we have not achieved, have fallen behind on chasing after the zip and zoom of that red cape, all that might and glory. For in the chase we have learnt to pave our own path, have learnt of our own strengths and weaknesses, perhaps have gotten pulled in the direction of another beautiful prospect and superpower. 

But what are we to say when the red cape falls and we are startlingly aware of the human behind the mask? Of their own transience, their own susceptibility to the whims of fate -- where does that leave us? I like to think along the idea of how no force is created nor destroyed. Even when the hero has been lost we continue hurtling in their direction, breathe in what they have expended, and our horizon will always have theirs, somehow. We pick up pieces that we most adore and keep them in our pockets. They are memories and emblems of 'what I want to be when I grow up', that timeless journey.

I always wonder what they'd think; those whose fairy dust I have collected and mixed in with mine. I always wonder how I could possibly put into words their influence, their eternal etching on my skin; but it is precisely because it has been so intertwined in the web of who I am that it has become quite ineffable. So I settle with the hope that knowing and remembering them in my heart is sufficient; to speak their name when I act in their memory, to share with others the pieces of them I so love.

To ponder our place in this world, to be so aware of our mosaic whole, is to both be threatened by our brokenness, and be reassured that there'd always be a place. For another piece no matter what shape and size, for more love or for more strength in pain.

Thank you Tharsh for your prompt. xx

Loneliness.

Where the doves refuse to land and where your hand, extended, cups around nothingness.



I hear the piano played from beyond my window. The neighbourhood has been cast in night but each note fills and wanes, and I am made aware of my solitary outline, listening in to another life.
I thought I could meet it halfway, my solitude. I thought I'd come to terms with it being simply the way it is; a default, an origin, as well as destiny predetermined. Have braced myself for the impact of concrete on my falling, for exclamations only I would hear, and most times it passes by without as much as a whimper and a gathering of my parts in a determination that "this is just how it is". So my threads learn to intertwine around each other and convince themselves that they are all they need.

But around each corner there stands a figure that changes form every time, and I barely recognise it until it makes me realise my soles pressed to the cold floor, and only air against my back. It stays and lingers, pretends to disappear only to resurface again. I wonder what it looks for. So transient a thing yet so immense a consequence, for under its weight my convictions unravel. And the work I've attempted at reconciling my flesh to my own frame, and not to yearn to sink into somebody else's, becomes futile. The re-emerging terror plays hopscotch on the knots I've tied and picks at the threads so they begin to fray, draws circles on my empty patches. So I play the game and hug my knees, hoping to appease hope.

Thank you Gary for the prompt. xx

Thank you Leanne for the prompt on loss/distance. xx

Day 28/ The Isolation Journals: What Worth

Write about a time when your bravery or curiosity was stronger than your fear. If it moves you, dance it out.

When I was finally settling my feet on the grounds of my dreams I wrote this poem. For I recognised myself that I had chosen a difficult route, and I remember asking myself then (as I still do now), if I could ever turn the other way and save myself the trouble. And then and all the times nowadays my answer remains the same.


Untitled. 22 June 2018. Written on the back of a makisan order sheet, on a bus ride home.

But would you let yourself do that?
You will fear,
you will fracture under your own weight,
your protruding veins as reminders.
But you wouldn't.
You wouldn't give up-- you couldn't.
Because you know deep down that there is hope.
That there is a slice of possibility that you could be made for something beyond yourself.
That your heart will never be satisfied with half-heartedness
No, you will dance till your soles are worn through
You will work till you are soaked in sweat 
And your eyes will never stop yearning to see more
Your mind never stopping in its hope of creating
I told you, and you know it,
The part which hurts most is what keeps you alive.

Day 27/ The Isolation Journals: Thin Places

Day 27 - Jordan Kisner
The title of my book, Thin Places, comes from a notion in Celtic mythology that the distance between our world and the next is never more than three feet (i.e. just a little more than an arm's reach away). There are "thin places" where that distance shrinks and then vanishes, where you can glimpse some other world or way of being for a brief moment. Often, "thin places" are literal places, geographical locations that feel holy or otherworldly, but you could also imagine these kinds of thresholds popping up anywhere: in a hospital room, in a bar, in your apartment, in your relationship, in you. A thin place may also be a moment, a time when you were briefly suspended between a world/life that you knew and something totally new, different, awesome, frightening.

Your prompt for today:

Describe a “thin place” or threshold you’ve encountered. It could be a location, an experience, a relationship, a period of time. Describe it in as much concrete detail as you can: what did you see, smell, feel with your hands? How did it make you feel? Who else was there? What led you there? What did you do? What happened afterward? Did anything change? It may feel hard to describe—that's ok! Ineffable experiences are the hardest to describe. Get weird!

The only 'thin place' that I can really think of at this moment I've already previously written about (Day 13), when I'd suffered a brain infection and woken up in hospital, stayed there for a week, and for that week and about one more after that I was in a realm where the suffering in the world could not for a second hold down my hopes and dreams. But since I've already described that, that which I don't suppose I can ever find a contemporary, I thought I'd share some of the things I've learnt about something related to this concept of 'thin places', one which is rooted in Japanese culture and beliefs.

The Japanese believe in this thing called 'ma', most concisely but also most inadequately described as an 'empty space-time'. In space, it is a hollow three-dimensional area, measured by length, width and the typical and practical notions of how to quantify space. But in space, 'ma' is also a viewer's imposition of his perspective and his experience on that area. It contains a supposition of things that could fill it, and thus fills the hollow with potential. In this way as well, space and time are not mutually independent. A space is defined by a time and vice-versa. And with the supposition of a viewer to situate an object or happening in an empty space is also to collapse his past, present and future into the 'hollow' space-time unit. 'Ma' thus transcends the three-dimensional world that we know of, and enters a spiritual world, a world of no time or all time, a world of no worlds for it spreads across and intermingles boundaries. In the Shinto religion, the 'kami' or spirits that they worship are just an ineffable; uncontainable, unpredictable, and unrecognisable. They are believed to appear and disappear, and throughout many Japanese customs is the arrangement of the 3D world to suit these elements of the no-world. To create spaces suitable for the temporary presence of the kami, for forces of the transcendent and enlightenment. Homes, gardens, seemingly random places of worship delineated with the belief that they are sacred places of 'ma' where kami appear. The language itself embodies this belief, albeit more obscurely. Not linear, but upward and outward, strokes that are themselves matter as well as delineations of emptiness between them, and in my view, also creating pathways of sorts, a maze of many beginnings, turns, and ends. 

How fascinating, isn't it? 

Day 26/ The Isolation Journals: Apart, Together

What’s a memory of a collective ritual, inherited or invented, that was meaningful or formative to some part of your identity? Write about it. Who was there? What was the activity? What were the words that were used? What time of year was it? How did it make you feel? And years later, how might it have shaped you?

Dinners at home. With its unspoken conventions that my family and I tread lightly on, for we have never really thought ourselves to hold traditions particularly close but nonetheless, dinner, has come to be its own little mark in the day. The best kind is when Yeema's food is available that night, and we un-stack the tiers of the tiffin carrier to savoury and saucy wonders, pour the soup out into a bowl and settle in front of the TV. More often than not my sister and I hand the remote to our mother because she has adopted a (annoying) habit of disapproving things that we watch. That said, she does have a good taste in movies. 

It is a nice congregation when we are usually all dispersed and doing our own thing. I think inherently my mother and I prefer to work on our own, coming together only for deep conversations or when my mum needs help with how to use Zoom or Powerpoint. My sister has a rich social life and she hangs out with her friends a lot. But at dinner we come together in a mutual unveiling of the veneer of indifference, and there is a collective sense of gratitude in being together.

I'm glad I'm home now more than usual to be present for dinner. 

Day 25/ The Isolation Journals: Objectif

Choose a photograph—maybe you took it, maybe you’re in it, maybe you cut it out of magazine just because it delighted your eye: the point is, the image doesn’t have to be beautiful or good, but you saved it for a reason, right? It means something to you. 

Your job is not to describe the picture. You can—but the point is to let it take you somewhere. How does the photograph make you feel? What does it make you remember? What’s your relationship to the people or place in the picture? And, whether or not you know them, does a story come to mind? If you don’t remember when the photo was taken, that’s fine: let yourself conjecture. What do you imagine happened the moment before or after the click? What might you know about the past or future that the photographer or subject does not? Who isn’t in the picture? What’s just outside the frame, in space or time? If you could, what would you ask the photographer (or subject) now, a day, a month, a decade since the moment held in the frame? Tell us what you believe or fantasize, beginning or ending with the moment that the photo was captured.

And—here’s a bonus: Now that you’ve written about a photo you possess, one you can look at any old time, write about the one you wish had been taken; if only that moment had been captured—but it wasn’t. In this case, with this photo that doesn’t exist—describe it in living color. (Unless, of course, it’s black and white.)

She looks at her hands and briefly pats a section of her fringe against her forehead. The camera man murmurs a preparatory instruction, and she hesitates at what gait to adopt, looks into the lens, slackens the muscles on the inner corners of her eyebrows, allows her cupid's bow to grow taut, her upper lip arching upward only at the sides, and her cheeks swell as the skin around her nose pulls outwards like her heart always does, although that uncontained capacity for love does not appear in her eyes like it does when she laughs. When she really laughs. When even in dark pupils one can see an embrace that swirls like yin and yang, when the musical tone of happiness and things undiscovered leaves her lips and lets itself be glimpsed for just a moment, to only those who pay attention, to only those who extend their fingers to the dew on the grass and believes in lives once lived and places of true origin. 

She has given me many things. The first which were perceived even by distant relatives were her eyes, etched onto my face as an eternal blessing, as the brutal and beautiful instrument with which I'd see. Eyes... eyes that were meant for much laughter as well as many tears. Eyes whose trail inland towards the temples cupped both sunlight and rain, gets eroded and deepened, was itself a distinctive stroke in the scripture which bodies become. 

I know the mechanisms to bring about the exact smile in this image. Know how the indent under the eyes feel, the curvature of the lower lid, a placement unconsciously created and habituated. A result of some sort of inner tug-of-war against absolute outpouring and well-measured guardedness, a kind of resignation that settles in the middle but gazes always in the direction of hope and affection. 

In French, another word for lens is 'objectif', suggesting truth and impartiality.

Day 24/ The Isolation Journals: Breath

Because breathing is essential for life, it touches every part of our existence. What does it mean to you to breathe? When was the last time you really noticed your breath? What were you doing? Was there ever a time when you realized you had taken your breath for granted?

It is no revelation, the debate between me and my lungs. When life decided to have me in the world I emerged toes first, upside down–– from the onset gravity decided to make oxygen quite valuable. The memory of tracing the scar on my mother's lower abdomen is as blurry as the impact asthma had on me in my childhood, although I seem to have a natural inclination towards the taste and exhaust of an inhaler, being I suppose, especially fresh, particularly relieving, even life-giving. 

The condition magically disappeared, and I was able to live asthma-free. That said I always have an inkling that the frame of the ribcage, the muscles about the heart, and the susceptibility of the lungs to the essential respiratory element was defective from the start and always will be. I still can't breathe fully, sometimes just to feel like I'm getting remotely enough air I grind my molars together and strain my sternum upward. Sometimes it's true; that this is a result of poor posture and bad habits. Other times, those are only supposable aggravations to the fundamentally flawed system.

Such difficulty is often alleviated by a run or a deep yoga practice. I began properly loving running since about 13 or 14 years old, about a year into the slew of teenage pressure on appearance, and as I met Sidney whom I ran with every weekend. As the secondary school workload got tough and body image ideals persisted, I ran more to alleviate the stress. I ran rounds around my school in the early mornings, loved the blue tone cast by the rising sun, and the wind of dawn chilliness through my hair and into my nostrils. When I run, there is less the perception of breathing being hard because well, breathing does get hard. To heave and puff are uncomfortable yes, sometimes dreadful, but that often clears my pathways, is finally enough aggression for the air to be pushed through my lungs. 

As for yoga, I'd only recently started practicing regularly and intentionally. Instead of spurring my body forward in bursts, yoga opens me up; sends my muscles reaching outwards before quivering and delivering an exhale, forces the blood to travel to the tippy points of the parts I rarely reach for and with that coaxes my heart to pump a little harder, smoother, with the caress like that of human hands around a newly born kitten. 

As the world struggles against a terrifying threat towards that which we thought was our own, embedded in some biological right to the individual, I pray that they receive the respite that I feel when I can expel so deep an exhale I feel the weight lifted off my temples. I pray that they'd trust their heart, their lungs, their ribcage, their muscles, and all the tiny networks of lifelines that course through the flesh. I pray that they'd emerge, even if feet first, and that when they walk out of the doors of that terror they'd still remember the tightness around their chest and with me, sigh at the privilege of being able to breathe. 

Day 23/ The Isolation Journals: Hibiscus Neighbourhood

Meditate on places. If you’re working on fiction, perhaps choose places from that fictional world. The easiest might be your childhood home, but it could be: a restaurant, a street, a parking lot, a ferry station, a borrowed home in the Catskills where it rained for three days or a stranger’s glass penthouse where you once did too many drugs. Write down any images, details, or words that come to mind. Don’t worry about complete sentences. Don’t worry about describing the place as much as describing what it felt like.

This isn’t research, or even a place to collect lines of dialogue or turns of story. It is simply to remember, to feel out for a tender spot, search your own memories for the surprising detail, the “punctum,” which Barthes defined as, “the accident which pricks me.”

Roundabouts to clay-made happiness

tadpoles at 7 

(and at 16)

Training wheels to the fear of falling

(ripened to haphazardness, powdered over self-illusion).

The floor plan

rooms with no designation

Mama, 你对我失望吗？

Hair like the flowers she so liked

White ones that hung downward like fairy bells

It was where I learned to cry hiding my face
Feigning sleep

Choked so much on the humidity my nose bled

My nose always bled

It was where I recognised the taste of iron

and not of chilli padi

Mama did not tell me

Yeye, 我还记得你的微笑。

Grief never leaves,

makes your body home.

I still love fantasies

and flowers;

On the other side of the river

a little further inland

I moved in synchrony to the sound of drums

and held my aunt's hand as she wept

sliding each bead, one after the next

ah mi tuo fo ah mi tuo fo ah mi tuo fo-

Six four four two four four

I made my first yahoo account here.

Screamed till I was hoarse

Quack! Meow!

kicks and flings to avoid the shower.

Millipedes just past the backyard

Falling into the drain

You loved me, didn't you?

Ran right over

I miss a possibility

Locked in the bathroom

I stole a birthday gift

and other things

I save my chicken wing

falling, avoiding a cockroach in the dark.

I cast aside with strokes on my hand.

(I am just as confused a girl

just as feeling

just as hurting)

my body is home

Yi Cheong used to bring me around the neighbourhoods to pick flowers.

There were some that were poisonous,

and some that were purple, yellow,

some pink hibiscus.

A tone of sepia

mixed of memory and the setting sun

past the flowers, she rode her bike away

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Romania. 1975.

Madrid. 1933.

Untitled. Tamil Nadu, India. 1950.

Day 22/ The Isolation Journals: Untitled

Think of a story that’s keeping you stuck—it might be a story about a friend or family member, a co-worker, or even yourself (some version of “I’m not loveable” or “I can’t trust people” or ‘Nothing ever works out for me,” etc.). Now imagine the story from the point of view of every other “character” in the story. How would they tell it? How would their version of the same event differ from yours? What can you see now that you weren’t willing or able to before? How does including their points of view add complexity and nuance to the storytelling? How does taking responsibility for your role in the story make the story far more interesting and compelling to the reader?

Draft 1. Untitled. 

notes

jane.2 always sinks into her seat more than jane. less 'upright' and 'presentable'.

Lights on. There is a sofa and an armchair angled towards each other in Centre Stage, the typical setting of a therapist's office. Jane and therapist are already seated. Downstage right, making a diagonal from the armchair, is therapist.2 is seated, and downstage left, Jane.2.

Therapist: Hello Jane. It's very nice to meet you. I just want to start off with the usual reassurance that I am committed to your privacy and comfort, and everything that you express in this room will be confined to just us two. If you ever have even a moment of doubt or discomfort please let me know immediately and we'll work through it together - okay? [Jane smiles briefly, nods. Therapist smiles warmly and adopts a lighter tone] Okay, so how are you today! Everything going fine in school? Finals went okay?

Jane: Yes! Um, I'm um,

Jane.2: Finals was shit.

Jane: um yea school has been tough, finals was quite shit too... I thought I would be okay leaving two days for my essay but I always think it's okay until I realise it's not, but I managed to scrape something together and submitted it at 2358! [nods head]

Therapist: [follows in head nodding] ahh great right on time! [awkward silence with their simultaneous head nodding] 

Therapist.2: She's just warming up, it always starts like that. 

Therapist: So, how did you feel after submitting it? Did you feel relieved? Or, or more anxious? 

[Jane.2 light on. Jane and Jane.2 simultaneously make to put down their cup.]

Jane.2: [-brief- looks uncomfortable, tucks her hair behind her ear, tugs at her earlobe]

[Jane.2 lights off]

Jane: I was really relieved, at least I got it over with. Um, but I also definitely felt anxious, I think it was some of the leftover stress from the process of rushing through it and submitting...

Therapist: Yes, yes I get that. That's a very normal reaction. I hope you found ways to cope with that though, did it eventually fade?

Therapist.2: We underestimate how school can be a real tell-tale sign of the emotional space of a person. There's a lot of stress that they are usually under, .... [therapist.2 continues 'talking' even as therapist.2 lights go off]

Jane.2: [a little whiny] why are we talking about school...

Jane: [gets noticeably more restless] I guess so, yea it usually just goes away after a while...

Therapist: Ahh yes I'm glad. It shouldn't stay with you more than that night, or at least the day after. [Therapist becomes more aware of Jane's restlessness. Therapist.2, thinking face] Holding on to that tension can be quite hard to bear as more pressure mounts.

Jane: Yea...

Therapist: Yea?

Jane: Yea...

Therapist: Is there something else that you want to talk about?

Jane.2: I don't know.../

Jane: No, not really... [pause, therapist looks in concern]/ I just... don't know where to start./

Jane.2: [makes odd movements with her tongue, mouth. discomfort.]

Jane: Sometimes I --- and then it just gets --- really, so --- That's what's --- I don't know it's been --- 

[Both therapists nod in genuine understanding.]

Therapist.2: I want to understand where this rope stems from. She thinks that it is self-imposed but I also have a feeling that it comes from something that legitimately limits her...

Jane.2: [dips her fingertips into the paint her cup and smears it over her lips]

Therapist.2: poses a little trauma that she unwillingly keeps revisiting.

Jane: [piecy, breaks- in between words, hard to articulate] I guess I feel it the most when I am - reaching- for something. I've always been overachieving- but - at the same time- there's this --- 

Jane.2: [begins pulling out the fabric from her mouth, with resistance. knocks cup over on the floor, paint spills]

Jane: I really [begins touching her chin and lips, smearing paint that is on her fingertips] believe that I might be able to --- it ---

Therapist.2: Yes, she's blaming it on herself and really thinking that it's an unhealthy habit of hers but her mention of her [Jane.2 stands up, begins to sing the ABCs and drowns out Therapist.2. When Therapist.2 finishes air-talking Jane.2 sticks her fingers into her mouth, drowning herself out.]

Therapist: I see... Jane, I just want to know a little more about your [Jane.2 removes fingers, continues singing, drowns out Therapist while Jane simultaneously runs over to Therapist.2 tears up paper and crushes it, stuffing them into Therapist.2's mouth.] Was it ever --

Jane.2: NO! [runs off-stage] / 

Jane: YES! NO! I don't know...  [as Therapist.2 calmly removes paper from her mouth]

Therapist.2: It's a bit too quick to draw absolute conclusions. [brief pause as Jane.2 runs across upstage with colourful fabric she'd pulled out her mouth. Runs back to Jane and ties it over her mouth.] But this was a really good session that allowed me to get to know some of the feelings, troubles that are on the top of Jane's mind.

Therapist: Mm that's okay... You know what? [brief pause as Jane.2 grabs a pail of crushed paper, tinsel and confetti and throws everything in the air. Grabs the pail, turn it over and does a drumroll. Looks intently at Therapist.] It took a lot of bravery to tell me what you have today, and I hope you won't just dismiss that. [Both Janes dip hands into cup of paint, streak paint over ears] I hope that you'll come next week and continue our discussion because I really can't do much only knowing you for a short while. [Jane smiles and nods]

[Therapists and Janes stand up.]

Therapist: I'll see you next week then! 

Jane: Okay! Thank you!

[Janes turn to leave.]

Therapist.2: [smiles proudly] A great start. 

[Janes look back. Jane.2 runs back, grabs the Director's clapper, positions it readily and claps it loud. Lights off.] 

END.

if only we knew of the people who might be lying awake, hitting their heads in hopes of submission, those thinking about us. only me?

Day 21/ The Isolation Journals: In The Body

Take a few deep breaths. Ground yourself in your body. Bring your attention to your sternum and your hands. Your legs and feet. Do you feel electricity? If so, where? Do you feel warmth or coolness? How is your heart? If you’re experiencing an emotion, where does it show up in the body? What color, what shape does it take? 

Enter into your body as much as you can and then write about the experience—what you noticed, what you encountered, what you learned.

Dear Ruthie,

Thank you for the prompt; in many ways I empathise with your experience and have myself been ruminating on our personal relationships with our bodies. I take a breath in, never really a breath deep enough, and feel a tightness lining my upper back joining my sternum-- it takes a little wrestle for the air to flow in. It took an incident a few weeks ago to really draw it back to my consciousness; when a simple sneeze found me grimacing a few moments later, trying to figure out how I had never been aware of this particular muscle that clung round the bone shaped like an 'L' (how ironic) in my upper back. It was not a superficial strain, it was a muscle that ran deeper and almost disconcerted me with how close it came to the core, that which I somehow thought inaccessible and thus was in someway protected, one of the few things about my physical body that was buffered from impact. I correct my posture, pull my hips inward and my shoulders backward, do a twist to the left,, to the right, and hear the dull cracks of my spine and the relief released through my throat. For the next three days I could barely look over my right shoulder or do a 360º rotation of my head without holding my breath and even tearing up. On the third day I walked out into my neighbourhood, deserted hawker centres, cordoned-off playgrounds and all, hoping that a TCM clinic was an essential service and able to offer me some assistance. I do this a lot; make circular motions with one of my feet, it is now creating sweeps over the toes of its companion; sometimes I think it is a subconscious self-reassurance, but could simply be a random habit that takes a certain detachment from the usual preoccupations to recognise. Unfortunately the venture was to no avail, and by that point I was ready to give up on any possible thing, compulsory essay or not, that required me to be sitting upright. My mother insisted I visit the regular doctor and I silently reproved myself for resisting her the days before. 

Turns out it was an "acute strain" of my trapezius muscle, likely caused by days in front of the computer (necessary with the recent classes online) which caused tightness and spasming in my back, and which was aggravated by something as harmless as a sneeze. So imposed on my attention was the complete submission we have to our bodies. It is both what grants and what denies, and I imagine it has to be a pretty complex, powerful thing to be able to be largely giving in to whatever it is that we put it under.  It was tempting to be hateful, critical of my body for not putting up a good enough fight against The Sneeze, for making me go through so much pain, for disallowing me concentration on my work. But it was difficult to maintain such a grudge because of the knowledge that I don't have the best posture (although I've been trying to correct it!!!), and all the masseur/masseuse can ever say while straining his/her knuckles into my back is "you're so tight!". 

I tuck my hips in again, this time standing with my laptop propped on two boxes and two Game of Thrones books. I try to grasp on to the relief that the past hour of Deep Stretch Yoga with Adriene has done for me, recognise that my breaths are that much less laboured, that there is less gravity on the two bricks that have become of my shoulders, that my lower back has less of that uncomfortable incongruent-need-to-crackstretchpull-feeling. I take a big gulp of water and remember its importance, the bright satiation it brings to my mouth. It will probably take a while and a lot more self-discipline than I dare to acknowledge to release my body from the habits and pre-existing conditions it was born into which have unfortunately warranted pain and physical fragility. But one thing that I think has been an essential step in the right direction is the simple recognition of its necessity. More than ever I am conscious of the unforeseen weight of my habits, my cramming and holding my body in far too odd positions in far too long a time, and this awareness manifests in my mind sometimes as "how much pressure is actually exerted on you right now by air and you have no idea?!" or more recently Nietzsche's almost personal attack on me -- "But you do not comprehend this? You are incapable of seeing something that required two thousand years to achieve victory [irrelevant - elle][omg irrelevant in this context SO relevant to Nietzsche that is super important please i admire Nietzsche's w-][literally you're just doing this to yourself- elle]?-- There is nothing to wonder at in that: all protracted things are hard to see, to see whole." And so it dawns brighter on me that there are so many things that seem natural, seem 'alright', simply because I could have done them, lived with them for so long a time. My awareness grows and sensations stand out to me, almost seem to cock a challenging eyebrow, develop a larynx and linguistic abilities and question "am I supposed to be here? am I really?" But knowing me, I can see the threat of this wavering awareness, impetus to so much potential, being muffled by the million new interests, duties and goals to come. At least I have written it all out, spent a good enough time trying to tuck in my hips and push my shoulders back wHilE writing this out, and I hope this might be a physical reminder enough for me to do yoga every once in a while, to use my massage ball often (when I do get it, is Decathlon an essential service?), and to appreciate my body enough to make sacrifices in whatever way so as to heal it.

Thanks again for the prompt, Ruthie. Writing has always been about more than just its content.
Love,
elle



P.S. (mostly just for myself)
Sometimes I get so tight and incongruent-need-to-crackstretchpull-feeling that I desperately crave a deep crackstretchpull that I can only imagine to be like in one of those carwash machines that the evil step-sisters in 'A Cinderella Story' go through. It looks like it really gets in there.

So yes, here's for a laugh and a little less gentle warning that elle, you don't want to end up like them.