Being tested by adversity.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
-J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Address.
Pressing on.
He presses on with this labour of love, realizing he has only taken twenty-seven steps.
Fragments: 3
It is raining now.
The rain crept in
while I was dreaming,
streaks of lightning
dancing across the sky
flashing across my
sleeping face.
I feel its cooling breeze,
I feel the rain drops
wash away something deep
within me,
a cleansing flood
to raise me to the top
of some mountain
way beyond.
The shroud holds up a mirror
to me,
I peer into and through
it admist the drumming
sounds of thunder,
searching for reflections of the self.
But I see nothing
that I recognize.
The rain is getting
heavier now
lashing the earth with
its drops.
And life springs forth.
His hand trembles
uncontrollably
at the touch of those
photos,
copies long made
in his memory
perhaps never to fade away.
Ever.
Looking at them over
and over again,
he feels embarassed
at the quickening of his heartbeat.
Death drive.
Death Drive
Strings run along
webs thin and clear
death thoughts
surface
a principle a drive
taking over
pushing him closer
Il s’en veux
il voit a l’intérieur de sang
plus jamais
ne va jamais finir
l’amanite phalloïde arrive
et je pars
Living.
The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions – gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.
-Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow.
On home.
My Country
Singapore is a painful place
to live in.
Everything changes. Nothing
ever stays the same for long.
I returned to Kim Keat
just the other day,
the place where I spent
my childhood
which just seemed not too
long ago,
like yesterday…
like last night.
New lifts had been installed.
A new multistory carpark stood in place
of the old one.
The wet market turned super.
Even the people living
in Grandma’s apartment
were foreigners-turned-permanent residents.
The first thing I saw
when I stepped into her flat
was that green clock
still there
facing the main door
looking out towards the opposite
block.
The clock had long stopped
at a quarter to four.
Who knows, perhaps in the middle of the night
never to see day again.
Three screw marks left
in the door frame,
a reminder of an altar,
a remnant of past household gods.
Not even gods can stop
this flood of change
from taking place in
this… place… this… land.
And this is only my childhood that
I speak of.
My teenage years become
unspeakable,
as I look for an unchanging
place to live out
my adulthood.
Things Breaking.
Things Breaking
As if by individual will
cracks appear over
gleaming surfaces
darkness spilling forth from
insides
into the world
beyond.
Falling down onto the
ground, upon impact,
splintering into a million
pieces
each offspring a
part of the whole.
A smell wafts from
the wreckage
a load discharged
putrifying essence covering
a human body.
Life bears no hold
nothing ever really changes.
Patchwork dolls each
of us
piece-by-piece.
What is the sound
of a mind breaking?
Start/End.
Whatever that has come to a start, can end, and whatever that has come to an end, can start again.
He – Traces.
All he can do is to remove external traces, things that will activate his memory into recollection and reminiscence. The only thing he cannot do in his lifetime is to remove internal traces, and even if he dies, there is no guarantee that everything trace will disappear along with him.
Open/Close.
When I Close My Eyes
When I close my eyes darkness does not fall
another world rises
dreams coming alive in me
a construct
a reality
and responsibility sets in firmly
that imagination unbound
All is loosed
those things one calls morality
or ethics or principles
boundaries blur between the living and the dead
darkness and light
all is grey
a flourish beyond the edges
of my eyes
Sensation is memory
nothing more
clinging fast to the confines
of the crystal ball
light shines through to it
to cast it back
into vivid reality
Breath and shadow.
A man is nothing but breath and shadow.
-Sophocles, Ajax the Locrian.
…
From Literature
conerning which it happens yet
again, but Felice you do understand
what is going on in this tremendous
world in my head do you
Josef’s fate: that is obvious
that fatal flaw always gravitating
towards those that lack
how is it then that I could
have become like this now, to a whole
army of people who merely exist
no I am not their
leader
cry, cry all you want
that’s the problem with our laws
no Olga no Barnabas to guide
towards the end
how now?
I see you have lost your Albertine,
your Gilberte,
consider it then a dream
your choice to have made
better off
when you can go off, run away
to flee. “Pali, Pali!”
Elysium awaits there with the
red wheelbarrow down by the abbey
just remembering to consecrate
everything to the flames
do-it-yourself
the only thing you should not
trust Ian with (look what happened
with Max)
then you will certainly become
like the ashes that remain
krakkkk… krak krak krakkk…
Mens Rea present that is enough
shortly after Actus Reus
yes all forseen all foreshadowed
no respite
they will come for you mark my words
they will come for you
concerning which is happens yet
again
Happiness, unhappiness.
A man is in bed, wanting to sleep. A rat is behind the wall at his head, wanting to move. The man hears the rat fidget and cannot sleep, the rat hears the man fidget and dares not move. They are both unhappy, one fidgeting and the other waiting, or both happy, the rat moving and the man sleeping.
-Samuel Beckett, Murphy.
Madeleines.
Madeleines
I held one madeleine in my hand
and contemplated it for a
moment
while the other two waited
on the table.
It wouldn’t go with coffee,
I thought. There is any
tea around.
Then I took a bite.
Nothing happened
no flood
no trigger
no involuntary memory
as I sat there chewing
on it. I put another into my
mouth and tried again.
Nothing.
And again.
Nothing.
There were no more madeleines
left and no memory of mine
had returned to me.
What returned was only a
memory of someone else’s memory,
a fiction,
a highly improbable fiction
that would come back
time and time again
with every madeleine.
Job’s Principle.
Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?
-Job 2:10.
Yesterday.
There is no escape from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us. The mood is of no importance. Deformation has taken place. Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.
-Samuel Beckett, Proust.
