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.

c-dra Deviantart

CaffeTylo Deviantart

Day 20/ The Isolation Journals: By Gravity

Look back on the past few weeks and consider what has felt momentous for you. What have you let go of, surrendered, only to learn from? Has anything felt fated, or fallen into place? Write from the depths of that knowing. Of trusting the signs. Explain what you’ve witnessed in yourself. What tiny revolution have you faced?

I have been putting this one off; have probably opened the email and re-read the prompt at least thrice in the past 5 days and each time I have thought it an unfortunate obligation if I wrote in a time where I felt nothing much sank, made indents in me; where there was nothing much to feel, much of importance to learn, much less anything that "felt fated".

Only that the rain fell like snow, and met with my feelings as if two lovers reuniting on a highway road after years. Although not exactly either, the rain has always seemed like a companion, a force that coincides and corresponds, but each time I meet it with fresh recognition, -dare I say- delight. The few videos I watched on psychics and their exchange with the dead planted the idea that rain might just be an instrument for communication, and that someone was on the other side, or upper side, sending me a sign, some comfort. I wonder who it is, I wonder if it is all of them. 

Only this, I had the idea to write- just rain. But since clearing my mind beyond the concepts of convergent evolution, non-synonymous substitutions; master/slave morality, thinking, consciousness and conscience; since last night I have let transient weighty thoughts filter through and linger more poignantly. I recall the slices of reflection that I have had over the past couple of days, the ones that wiggle through for just a second then disintegrate:

Nietzsche's evil is the life of delusion. Arendt's is the lack in thinking, in a more nuanced, specific sense of the term. Nietzsche both promotes and exemplifies the process of recognising and disassembling the Tetris wall man has around himself. Arendt says that there might be a wall but in the process of analysing it, even when you'd thought you'd disassemble it, you'd find that you'll put pieces back, take a few out, put a few of those back. "the business of thinking is like the veil of Penelope: it undoes every morning what it had finished the night before." The Truman Show was a reflective lens, a show within a show within my supposed reality that could just be a show. The question posed was: what do I know? But this is not a question unfamiliar, I have been asking this question so much, more a self-derogatory challenge rather than a philosophical and societal consideration. Maybe nobody knows at all -- what made you believe that you had to know? Your wildest supposedly most stupid ideas could be for all the world, the right, the wrong that leads to the right, the idea worth more ideas... I think that was my answer.

The world spins around the web and you stay relevant and there is the illusion of knowing, of being connected, of good friendship and tight relations. But to be relevant for yourself, such a win that'd be for yourself.



So some things I have surrendered or at least loosened grip on.

Day 19/ The Isolation Journals: Fan Goes Off

Write about a time when you (or your character) experienced something that may be a common human event (for example: scratching an itch, sneezing, petting an animal, etc.), with concrete language that brings the experience to life. Try using all of the senses in order to avoid cliché.

I feel it all bubble up, catch in my throat and strain my breathing. It's buzzing, buzzing, my mind; something chases after me but I don't know which direction it is coming from. A flick drawn from inside reaches me down to puncture the button of the fan -off-/'pock!'. It's blades slowzdzdzdzd and come to a stop --- 

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The silence flows in, draws a line from ear to ear, starts to reach into the corners of my skull. At first I am alarmed, but then quickly calmed. I am looking out my window to cast my sights on the landscape, far and wide and green: Gimel, Switzerland. Le Petit Bochet. I miss its silence; miss its steadiness, like how a feather slowly glides midair before it naturally comes to rest. I was the feather in suspension then, there. 

Day 18/ The Isolation Journals: Book Orchard

Make a short list of texts from your past, even better if you can select particular passages or moments that meant something to you. Without necessarily revisiting the book (you can do that later), start writing about your relationship to it, in narrative terms. When did you read it? What was your life at the time? Write a scene of your reading it, replete with all the ways it made you feel. Then, consider why you needed it at that particular time. Follow it from there—feeling free to depart from the text.

I don't remember much; the stories drift away. Typically I am only left with a feeling, a magnetic force towards the binded pages that demand, every time, spring cleaning or for selling, that I will keep this particular book. That it once made me cry, that it planted a seed in my mind, and I don't know where in the orchard to locate this plant but I know that it is there, feeding my soil for more.


my less-than-representative list (attributed to poor memory)
- The 'Rainbow Magic' series (about fairies and their powers - love em.)
- A few of Jean Ure's books, but particularly 'Ice Lolly'
- 'I am David' by Anne Holme
- 'Prisoner of Tehran' by Marina Nemat
- The Harry Potter Series
- 'White Oleander' by Janet Fitch
- Haruki Murakami's novels <3
- 'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding
texts of my nearer-past omitted

Day 17/ The Isolation Journals: The Handbook of the Lady

Pick out a poetic form and give it a try.

the sestina
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3)


My floor fan buzzes, my mind kind of blanks
Ann Patchett who is this lady
Maybe one day I'll be enough well read
There are so many things to achieve
To be; scientist, artist, someone you can't forget
I like to watch the waves-- they seem okay with waves alone.

Past the fields, at the end of the creek, she lives alone.
If you tried looking again you'd only find blanks
Blanks to the dotted lines, soon you will forget
Unless somehow you chance upon a solitary lady
With only sugar to acquire and cupcakes to achieve
And occasionally, only occasionally, who allows herself to read

Once upon a time and worlds unimaginable, only will she read
Only about misfits of three fingers and outcasts and those abandoned alone.
Not ready yet for Einstein or Picasso; Achieve, achieve
____, ____
She wishes for alphabets only, this lady
Stirs in her soup to happily forget

What was her name again? You forget
Did you not ask or had you not read
The handbook of the lady
Who wandered the forest alone
(Now you know!) Whose sentences littered blanks
Who only had cupcakes to achieve

How much she could achieve
You think, if only she tried and did not forget
If she spoke less in blanks
With less fantasy to read
A lady of her sort should not loiter, not to mention alone
How dangerous, how unbefitting a lady

No name, The lady
She watches the water flow over her feet, nothing to achieve
Worse is the chatter, better she is alone
How happy although she still tries to forget
Not so much regret but in peace! can't she read
Without voices in her head she tries to fire into blanks

Soon she exists alone and ceases to be the lady
No blanks, not even to 'achieve'
Soon you forget and she can finally read

Day 16/ The Isolation Journals: Post-Phone Call

Call someone you haven’t spoken to in some time. Ask what their days and weeks of isolation, or essential work have been like. What is a moment that has been significant for them in recent weeks? Try to understand why that moment in particular. What did it show them about themselves or their families or their coworkers? How did an emotion—a first gut response, like anger—evolve and reveal itself to be something else altogether, like fear?
 
Then, write a journal entry inspired by that conversation. Explore what stepping out of your own experience and into someone else’s brought up, maybe even clarified, for you. What was unexpected? Did it evoke a significant moment from your own life over these past weeks? How has your understanding of that moment changed? 


This afternoon I spontaneously asked my junior college theatre teacher if I could give her a call and so spent the next hour and six minutes speaking to her. It's been a few months, and we talked about some of the changes that have been ongoing because of the COVID circuit breaker. The classes have all gone online just like mine have, and they still have civics classes?! over Zoom. She told me about some funny instances when students would be brushing their teeth in front of the camera, or when her little one would Zoom-bomb the session. I was also concerned for my theatre studies and drama juniors and how their practical exam prep was going, given that now they don't have the physical time and space to rehearse and obtain critique. It must have been hard for Ms Lim, having to discuss with the higher ups about postponing exams and all that. And I told her that we're really lucky to have her, and I really meant it.

It was not so much my conversation with her (we also talked about my tattoos and I updated her about my TSD batchmates) but just a general realisation washing over me, the realisation that I have very much been sheltered from the effects of COVID, but also that I never know if (touch wood) we might be exposed to the virus and have our lives at risk. It's a scary thought to have- we never really know when something pivotal might happen and in this moment we can really only hold our breath while saying and doing all that we can to express our love and concern for each other... extraordinary times indeed.

Day 15/ The Isolation Journals: wow u dumb af

What’s the funniest thing that happened to you last year? Write a paragraph from the point of view of an inanimate object that bore witness to it. Could be your hat. Could be your wedding ring, a streetlamp or the plant in the corner of the bar. Use as much sensory/sensual language as possible to describe the memory from that object’s perspective.


Look- I know you are full of love. Trust me, you don't know how touched I was that you watered me every - okay every other day. I admit, at first I was confused but then I realised you genuinely thought I was real and needed water like any other plant. Yes, it was not your fault that you bought us all together in a nice emerald pot and let my brother, who was actually real, wilt and die. And yes, I could almost feel the pride emitting from you when you saw that hey! at least one of them is still alive! and looking pretty darn well indeed! So it was fine that my synthetic leaves got a nice wash every once in a while if watering me and being so convinced of my aliveness gave you that much joy and reassurance of your green fingers, pale as they are. So I know, I know you really love me...

But did you really have to?!

I can't believe you were so unbudging in your love and faith in me that it had to taking Snipping. My BEAUTIFUL GREEN TRESSES OFF MY HEAD and not only that but also PUTTING THEM IN YOUR MOUTH to test if I was real! Do you know what amputation feels like? I know no actual liquid runs through my system but just because you can't see something like blood does not mean there is no physical pain! I watched in horror when your friends leaned in close to me, felt me up all over - violating my body and denying me my dignity, asking you: "Elle, are you sure it is real?"
In that moment I just thought fine, it's okay if you see me as I am. I'll just get less frequent showers.
But no, it was that hard to believe, and you said no! I was real!
And then it was all out of a nightmare; I heard them rustle through your drawers and fish out a gigantic pair of scissors. Its slicing through the air I can still hear in my sleep, the light glistening off its two fatal blades. I tried to scream but it was no use - they took off two, three of my little leaves and as if that was not horrific and excruciating enough, each of you put one in your mouth!

What the heck?!? Are you children out of your minds?!!

I was barely conscious at that point. The pain that was shooting through my entire body was too much to handle, not to mention the mere thought of my body parts in your disgusting filthy orifices. But can you imagine, the indignity that came with seeing all you monsters burst into laughter?

"IT'S FAAAKKKEEEE"

Of course I'm fake you dumbshit you didn't have to eat me to find out!!!

Day 14/ The Isolation Journals: A Love Note to Myself

Write a love note to yourself. Write it from someone else’s point of view. It can be a real person or a made-up person. Start with the line: Dear [your name], If you could see what I see, you’d see that you are ______. 

Write about what they see in you, what they find beautiful. I call this practice “In the Voice of Someone Who Loves You.”


Dear Elle,

If you could see what I see, you'd see that you are .
Because first and foremost if I said anymore than that your synapses would be at the ready against any possible ounce of hyperbole or 'over'-crediting. So you can be anything that you want, and I will abstain from any one of those adjectives that you'd find yourself able to pick apart in your mind and deem only letters of the alphabet, devoid of any meaning. Because as of today you still fear being held, evade being understood as much as you yearn for it - so be what you want. I don't know what you are today; you could be lovely, disastrous, kind, impatient, bubbly, silent, open, confused. Today you could be Elle, Li Ling, her, who, what. She, he, they, it might read this today and indulge, or skip over it to whatever previous entry. I don't claim to have any idea. 

I can only say for certain that no matter your form that I will love you, and that is not too much. That you have not imposed this on me but I have chosen so because I believe that regardless what you are, that you are worth it. And allow those last two words to pass over you if you find them difficult to swallow for reasons I might have mentioned above. Call it just me then, blind or too good, up to you.
Regardless.

Love,
Anonymous

i wonder if you miss me like i miss you

Day 13/ The Isolation Journals: A New Beginning

I invite you to reflect on a new beginning that was meaningful for you. You might think about a literal beginning: new job, relationship, state of being (pre-child to parent, singledom to marriage). You might think about a new conviction, habit, or a crucial choice you made: when you decided to stop apologizing all the time, that summer you actually started meditating, or the day you stopped drinking. Tell the story of your new beginning. What did it make room for? Why was it important? How did your new beginning lead you to where you are today?


I've never written about this before; I've written about my time at the hospital, have written to Quincy, an elderly lady whom I shared a 4-bed ward with, I've written to my family and friends, important people, about my hopes and dreams I never want to forget. But I'd never written about the experience of 'emerging' itself. It was almost as literal as a new beginning, a new life could be. My mum likes to describe it in these few ways: "like some screws, some wiring got replaced or renewed", "a new person", and then she'd say as an after-comment "my angel, a sage". 

I was 16 and what I thought was just a really bad flu found me waking up in a hospital bed. It took about 3-4 days for the doctors to figure out what was wrong with me, add to that a MRI scan (made me really excited), and an injection into the base of my back to extract my spinal fluid. And then they found it- I had a brain infection, 'meningoencephalitis' as a result of a bacterial infection. I was also badly overdosed with meds from my neighbourhood doctor. I don't go there anymore. 

Anyway, I can barely explain the state that I was in during my 7 days in the hospital, and even for about 2 weeks after getting discharged. I woke up weak, yes. After all it was a near death experience, my mum said I had to be brought into the resuscitation room. But after that it was like I had a completely altered perspective to  e v e r y t h i n g. I could look around my hospital ward and thoughts completely uncalled for would burst into my consciousness. I remember feeling very sad, I was struck by the things I was seeing. Like them reeling Quincy out of the ward in the middle of the night - she had problems with her heart or lungs I can't remember. Like all the families coming into visit, the sullenness that filled the room. I felt these things overwhelmingly, in unprecedented clarity. But it was also like I didn't hold on to them. They came, lingered as poignant as they were for a while, and then flew away. I didn't forget that these sadness-inducing things existed, the sadness that was potentially paralysing just dispersed without becoming apathy, because when I reached such realisations again the sadness would return and the cycle continued. In the moments in between, when the sadness was not there, boy I shot to the moon. Everything was new and exciting. When I was pushed on the wheelchair to take my MRI scan it was the best fun of my life. I felt the draft of air through my hair, liked going through the hospital corridors, saw the MRI scan contraption and heard the music they played while I was in there and it was wonderful. My friends and teachers came and visited me, my sister watched an episode Keeping Up with the Kardashians with me. Each feeling that arrived was iridescent and glittering, thoughts I had never accessed before I plunged into.

So that was when I started writing poems, quite ferociously. I wrote them all in the notes on my phone, and I don't remember having ever been into writing poetry that way before. I felt deeply, put it all down as best as I could. When I got discharged and rested at home, I continued writing. I wrote that poem to Quincy, that 7-page letter to some of the most important people in my life with none of the vulnerability that I feel today in writing my heart out to someone. I told my mum that one day I want to have a book of poems published and I would donate some of my proceeds to charity and I found and saved a bunch of organisations I wanted to help. I meant it, I had no doubt that it would happen one day. When my mum told me that she had friends who could publish my book I cried right then and there, and she gave me a big hug. The weight of the world barely exerted itself on me then. My memory of it is blurred but I remember that- that I genuinely believed that there could be no obstacle formidable enough that could stop me from my heart's desires. 

I had an inkling that quality would not be one to stay. It was one of the things I wrote in my letter, the letter. I haven't read it in years but I think I appealed to them to help me remember. To remind me of my unstoppability, the boundlessness of my ambition, the depth of my wonder and feeling. And yes, it didn't stay. My ambition is often threatened by fear, and time has hardened the edges of the tender faculty of feeling. But I don't think it has all been washed away... I fear but I still dream, and I work hard in the name of those dreams. I am a little more cynical, but I still can't help myself sometimes, from feeling 'too much'- a statement that the me then wouldn't have conceived of, but still. And I have kept the activity and almost instinctual love for poetry and writing. In some ways I think that experience had plunged me into the world of words without a floatie... I went all for it with no particular aim or audience. It was just for me, just for beauty. 

So it was like a new beginning. In an almost supernatural, magical sense of the phrase. I will look back to that experience as an endless source of hope and happiness, a reminder to myself for the capacity of uninhibited love and courage, of inspiration and fresh air. A new beginning that lingers on clichés, of emerging on the surface with an enormous breath, where the rays of light did not refract and it was all so clear.

Response to Discussion Post for Literature and Humanities 2 Module, on Sonny Liew's "The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye".


Hi YQ!

Thank you for posting and stirring my imagination on how it was in the past during our parent's childhood. I often reflect on how my childhood was like, the days when I had no phone or computer. I had a lot of encounters with little animals and insects and I thought I'd share some with you :)
My family and I also used to return to Malaysia more often and our neighbourhood had a little playground, and the streets were so spacious you could run and run. One of my favourite past times was of arming myself with a net, the ones with the rudimentary long stick, and I would run around catching butterflies with my cousin! Even the tiny grey ones that were a common sight everywhere- I didn't really need the big net for those ones though, sometimes I used my hands to cup around them, or if I was feeling radical and confident I peered as they landed on the grass or flowers and pounced by picking them up by their wings!
Back here in Singapore, my aunty's house has a massive field beyond her backyard. When I was younger I used to walk up the pavement right beside the field in the evenings -- that was always the time when little red millipedes would come out. There were so many of them! I remember so vividly. I loved picking them up and putting them in a little tupperware. They had the defence mechanism of curling into a swirl when they feel threatened and I remember thinking how fascinating it was. I would keep them for a day or two and then I'd release them back to the field. Simple pleasures <3


Nowadays, I pick up random bugs and love to watch them crawl all over my hand. I used to think I was quite weird for liking it, my friends say sometimes when they see bugs they think of me. But remembering these moments I had when I was younger, it kind of makes sense. And I only hope that the children of today won't lose what I would call a fundamental and instinctive curiosity for nature and wildlife- no matter how much technology advances and becomes so pervasive. Just like how I think Charlie Chan Hock Chye appeals to us to hold fast to our creativity and our own opinions, to preserve our own no matter how many HDB buildings ascend and cast shadows over us, no matter how formidable the figures are against our such freedom. To just keep drawing. xx

Day 12/ The Isolation Journals: Blessing

Write about your blessings. About what it was like to wake up today, about the people you love, about the songs that have lifted your spirits. Write about the wind in the trees, or of rebirth in spring, or of freedom. Write about whatever gives you life, which—especially in troubled times, we remember—is so precious.

I feel the sky on my tongue

A matte silky baby blue,

The fields stretching far far in front of me

Behind, all around.

The grass a shade of green I'd construct from a colour wheel,

brushing my calves I could get

lost

the word has never brought such contentment before.

I remember the feeling,

Chugging upward on the edge of the world

It is like the trees knew it had to make an entrance

had been somehow pruned in tempo and placement.

Well-educated, cultivated trees

because when the time came their canopy held on for just a second long enough

as if it had to first contract in its grandeur

before it burst into view--

the beautiful magical mountains

ice-capped like glitter 

throwing all of itself at us, sending wisps of fairydust and secrets of the universe into the air

proclaiming "this is me!"

drink and feast and fill yourselves up

catch onto your audible awed inhales

feel everything in your body rise up and lean towards me

your arms stretch forward to grasp the banisters

tears that well outwards to reach the atmosphere

and finally threatened by gravity.

Just like that three seconds pass 

and our hearts contract we heave quick breaths and the moment dissolves like cotton candy.

My eyes tear away from the scene 

I turn to the old man sitting across me

and momentously we know that that was divinity we had witnessed

that we both had cried out and fell to our knees with the world looking over us.

Day 11 / The Isolation Journals

Reflect on a moment where you did something that left you feeling nourished and sated. Where hours passed, yet you didn’t even know it. When you were right where you needed to be. Maybe it’s a memory of spending time with a loved one, or a long discarded childhood activity—dancing, drawing, shooting hoops in the driveway. Maybe it’s a more recent hobby—kneading sourdough or, like me, making elaborate cheese plates. Write about this experience. Write about being nourished and what it means to you.

Those paper box birthday cards.

Layer 1: Paper the decided colour of the box's body, after tender consideration of the project's colour palette and material acquisition trip(s) to Popular, UrbanWrite, Art Friend. Around a base square, four walls of more squares with heart shapes scored to fold in half, connecting each side - this layer is the largest, each subsequent layer at least 1cm smaller on every side, cut to precision.

Layer 2: A different-coloured layer (still adhering to The Colour Palette) 1cm smaller than Layer 1, without need for the connecting heart shapes anymore, only the four square walls... unless you want another box within the box - the world box is your oyster. 

Layer 3: Repeat Layer 2 if you're really that into it but stopping at Layer 2 is just fine.

Attach each layer's base to the one before it aka each larger one aka what else.

Decoration

• Proceed to bombard each layer with photos and little pop-up faculties and dynamic-twisting-flipping-interactive mechanisms. Make your loved one physically pick up the pictures you made to look like mini polaroids -don't forget cute notes or quotes written on the back- and invite them to pull at little pieces of card stock that make mOre photos flip one after the other successively like their own little flip book -so satisfactory; why I always include it even though it is a goddamn pain to make with its tiny parts and always eventually falls apart after it has been in the gift receiver's possession for about two days-.

• They say diamonds are a girl's best friend so go ahead and decorate your box card with rhinestones! If you're in the mood for a little more bling you can add glitter of all colours -even though I recently learnt that they are microplastics that never rot but some may argue that sea animals enjoy being Barbie girls in their 'Life in plastic (it's fantastic)'-. Not forgetting good old lace trimmings that you can find in Daiso as rolls with adhesives already on the back saving you from cutting about half a thousand mini double-sided tape pieces. You're welcome.

• If you have leftover space because you wrongly decided to make a box within the box and/or Layer 3 and are fussing over how to fill them up, simply draw random doodles (with a glitter pen of course) or paste patterned scrapbook paper to make it look like a more intentional absence of material that professes your love. 

Cover: Last but not least, to make your box card's cover. I hope you noted down the dimensions of Layer 1 otherwise I'm sure it's possible to panic-measure it again. It consists of a square the same size as your Layer 1 base square but with flaps that you fold down and cut at an angle to be able to attach to each other -watch the Youtube videos this instruction manual was never really meant to be instructive-. 

And there you have it! Nicely fold your layers up into the cubic symbol of I'm Extra, pop the cover on top to hold it in place and voila! When whoever apparently so deserving lifts the cover imagining an ordinary box containing socks, the flaps of every layer should fall outward like a blooming flower and they will be face to face with incoherent inside jokes and fetus pictures they archived from their Instagram and had tried so hard to forget. Just like this, your friendship is secured for eternity on the basis that you have the soft copy of all those images and have explicitly expressed your potential for blackmail.

Oh right! 

Nourishment.

What it means to me.

[At this point Elle finds difficulty breaking from her tootfuk narrative voice as seen above.]

I've made two of these birthday box cards, each time spending many hours measuring with rulers (big feat, I'm not a precise person), cutting paper and double-sided tape. Both times I stayed up till late in the night to complete them. The night of the first box card I got scolded by my mother for the lengths I go to for so material a thing, that could get only so much in return. 

I remember barely using my phone and barely thinking about much else other than Snip Snip, Wheep, Psshzt (sound of cutting paper, removing non-sticky side of double-sided tape, paper sliding over more paper). I slathered my love on the gift made with my two inessential hands just like the glue stick runs over and across. There was no fear, ubiquitous as it can be. There was no expectation of reciprocation. There wasn't the awareness of love or special feelings or best friends forever. The walls of my room would fall away and I was held in suspension outside of time and space. It was freeing to focus my everything on a paper cube.

It became my life's mission, the only essential thing.

Day 10/ The Isolation Journals

Write about a time when you were dead wrong about somebody.

It was my fault to pin you as perfect - the inner circle type of girl, how immature I was to think that was how friendships turn out and connections are formed. You don't pre-determine who you sit with at recess and go to houses to chill out and bake, although we did some of that. I often wondered if I took too much space, when I thought of us side by side I thought me ungraceful and bloated, Dudley Dursley next to the swan-lake ballerina. You were a neat set-up of bento box perfection and I was but a tupperware of tumbling ingredients with every flick of my backpack. It was expectation that had made the fall the sort that scraped knees and revealed flesh, when I think of you there still lingers the dull ache seared by your cold shoulders and phone calls behind my back. 4 years ago, 16 years old, I cried and yelled into the phone so upset that I had to find out and I still considered . If I was taking too much space . If my voice was too loud, my tears too melodramatic, my calling you on your walk by the beach too intrusive - imagine, this girl's voice pounding out of the tiny audio slit trying to convey how absolutely devastated that I was wrong about you.

when the blood gushed and brushed the walls of my skin

not yellow brick road, blue-green meanderings straight to the soul

huffed and puffed the vessel goes

it turns this way and that, felt all but the weight of the world.

do not mistake this for a lament of lost time

only a celebration of what was - that's it-

balloons and confetti for the love i imagined could trotter to the other side in a single embrace

the way i gave myself to you through the gaps between my teeth

hoped the whites could reflect whatever light and wrap itself around those who caught a glance.

you may ask what i had left

i say what i had left? that was the most of what i had

it was a wingspan the length of a whole classroom

a vision of under tables and the way one hung their head

it was pages of reaching-out-to-you

in rhymes and allegories and discerning 

your handwriting!

yes, it was fear and hot cheeks

but more, belief.