in xanadu did kubla khan
“this is perfect.” and his voice had a finality in it. his gruff voice resounded against the lonely walls, his vision unquestionably inspired. he lay down his blueprint, in determined mood. he will start tomorrow, for it is sunday today, and thus he has declared today a day of rest. and tomorrow, he will build, ex nihilo, a most stately pleasure-dome that will be for himself and his love.
i glance at the blueprint. he has had everything covered. the porch. the vast verandah. the elaborate balustrades. even the glittering night sky that will perpetually eclipse it.
all he has is a pack of cards.
please don’t try so hard to say goodbye.
a little encouragement goes a long way. in school, at home, from a friend, from a stranger. have you encouraged someone today? say a kind word, will you?
my days are bleeding into one another. my nights run into the days, my days, still days. it seems as if night never comes for me, insofar as night is darkness, and darkness is rest, and rest is the absence of work, movement and thought. how critical to us is rest? and how grossly inappropriate then, for us then to define rest not in its own intrinsic right, but only in relation to another concept?
i dig my heels in, hoping and praying that my pain redeems me. but my unreligious throat remains slaked, my tongue can say no prayer. pain is the means to an end, and unwittingly the end in itself. i have distractions, and i have either had, or found, great friends for whom i am endlessly thankful for. but at the very end it seems like i love chasing that which has no end, that which has is elusive and intangible. because that which is elusive and intangible purports, by its very definition, no rest, no finish line, and no goodbyes.
i would bear all the pain in the world anew.
because pain will pass, but so will you.
picture by nicole, who does it better than i can ever introspectively do.
waiting for godot
All cities are not eternal, that of this pensum is perhaps among the dead, and the station in ruins where I sit waiting, erect and rigid, hands on thighs, the tip of the ticket between finger and thumb, for a train that will never come, never go, natureward, or for day to break behind the locked door, through the glass black with the dust of ruin.
- Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing
blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears
Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come,
And take my tears, which are love’s wine,
And try your mistress’ tears at home,
For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
Alas ! hearts do not in eyes shine,
Nor can you more judge women’s thoughts by tears,
Than by her shadow what she wears.
O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
Who’s therefore true, because her truth kills me.
- Twickenham Garden, John Donne
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the allure of the uncanny connection between heathcliff and catherine is so immensely powerful only because they can never be together.
to have is to cease to want.
love-hate
“There were days when I wanted to kill her. Not to split up, which would have been the reasonable solution, but to kill her, because our relationship was so intimate and so complex and in the end so vital that murder seemed easier than separation.”
- Alberto Moravia, on the stormy relationship with his wife.
i am nothing
Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it’s me?
- Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing
we’re all victims.
Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting’s import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired one in all respects—as nearly as humanity can supply the right and desired…In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing… in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came.
- Thomas Hardy, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles
on water and rebirth
Heraclitus, who lived around 500 B.C., composed a number of adages, called his ‘apothegms of change”, which tell us that everything is changing at every moment, that the movement of time causes ceaseless change in the cosmos. The most famous of these sayings is that one cannot step into the same river twice. He uses a river to suggest the constantly shifting nature of time: all the little bits and pieces that were floating by a moment ago are somewhere else now and floating at different rates from each other.
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on the same topic, also by Foster:
In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Morrison has Milkman Dead get wet three times. First he steps into a small stream while searching for gold in a cave, then he’s given a bath by Sweet, the woman he meets on his trip into his past, and then he swims with Sweet in the river… The first time he goes into water, he steps into a little steam he’s trying to cross, but since he’s just starting out, the experience only begins to cleanse him. He’s still after gold, and characters who seek gold aren’t ready for change. Later, after much has happened to change him gradually, he is bathed by Sweet, in a cleansing that is both literal and ritual. Of equal, importance, he returns the favour and bathes her. Their intent is clearly not religious; if it were, religion would be far more popular than it is. (lol)
for we are all Brothers
My brother kneels (so saith Kabir)
To stone and brass in heathen-wise,
But in my brother’s voice I hear
My own unanswered agonies.
His God is as his Fates assign -
His prayer is all the world’s – and mine.
- Rudyard Kipling
contemporary postcolonial mambo song
Well Jo’anna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy, oh
She don’t care about the rest at all
She’s got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection
But maybe pressure can make Jo’anna see
How everybody could a live as one
(Chorus:)
Gimme hope, Jo’anna
Hope, Jo’anna
Gimme hope, Jo’anna
‘Fore the morning come
Gimme hope, Jo’anna
Hope, Jo’anna
Hope before the morning come
I hear she make all the golden money
To buy new weapons, any shape of guns
While every mother in black Soweto fears
The killing of another son
Sneakin’ across all the neighbours’ borders
Now and again having little fun
She doesn’t care if the fun and games she play
Is dang’rous to ev’ryone
(Chorus)
She’s got supporters in high up places
Who turn their heads to the city sun
Jo’anna give them the fancy money
Oh to tempt anyone who’d come
She even knows how to swing opinion
In every magazine and the journals
For every bad move that this Jo’anna makes
They got a good explanation
(Chorus)
Even the preacher who works for Jesus
The Archbishop who’s a peaceful man
Together say that the freedom fighters
Will overcome the very strong
I wanna know if you’re blind Jo’anna
If you wanna hear the sound of drums
Can’t you see that the tide is turning
Oh don’t make me wait till the morning come
(Chorus)
i wanna make love in this club
these days are characterised by a chronic emptiness, the kind that is easily perceived but almost impossible to define. as i stagger between varying degrees of intoxication from one night to the next, time unwinds, and days collapse into one another, intertwined and enmeshed into one singular, unrecognisable entity.
and it occurred to me that for every day of triumph, every day of feel-good, the inescapable truth makes it impossible to get away from a corresponding day of feeling purposeless, lousy, and so whatever. like two sides of the same coin, the two faces of janus, one entailing the other. can’t get away, and can’t get enough.
and all the alcohol serves to heighten the senses and numb them at the same time. perfect metaphor for life’s duality.
The moment I was old enough to play board games, I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. O perfect balance of rewards and penalties! O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice! Clambering up ladders, slithering down snakes, I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When, in my time of trial, my father challenged me to master the game of shatranj, I infuriated him by preferring to invite him, instead, to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes.
All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it’s more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose.
there seemed nothing to do but live
Everything else was behind him. When he awoke in the morning he faced only the single huge block of the day, one day at a time. He thought of himself as a termite boring its way through a rock. There seemed nothing to do but live. He sat so still that it would not have startled him if birds had flown down and perched on his shoulders.
He did not know what was going to happen. The story of his life had never been an interesting one; there had usually been someone to tell him what to do next; now there was no one, and the best thing seemed to be to wait.
that when i wak’d i cried to dream again
those cat-calls. from afar. i heard, loud and clear, even through those darkly tinted window panes that have remained close for many an hour. and i lay behind those beckoning apertures, in a dull white tee with soya sauce stains that would not go away and a furrowed brow.
i stare outside. i stare at my computer screen. i stare outside again. i see nothing. in my own head, i rushed to the window, threw them open, and screamed for the things to shut the hell up. they look up, they yell back at me. they could definitely see me. they saw right through me. my heart pleads. pleads that they were just ignoring me. maybe it didn’t matter to them at all that i was but a small speck up on the 27th storey. neither did they care they were keeping me awake.
except that, i wasn’t asleep. neither did i dare do anything. all i could do was be. be and stay, awake that is. and in my pain, i cried to go to sleep. i rushed to the window, threw them open, and meekly stared. i heard.
clear and loud, heard i. from afar. those cat-calls. and if you were here with me, we’d be singing at the top of our lungs.
hmm.
That night, in bed, the three of us lay still. We were full of awe and respect for Pecola. Lying next to a real person who was really ministratin’ was somehow sacred. She was different from us now – grown-up-like. She, herself, felt the distance, but refused to lord it over us.
After a long while she spoke very softly. “It is true that I can have a baby now?”
“Sure,” said Frieda drowsily. “Sure you can.”
“But… how?” Her voice was hollow with wonder.
“Oh,” said Frieda, “somebody has to love you.”
“Oh.”
There was a long pause in which Pecola and I thought this over. It would involve, I supposed, “my man,” who, before leaving me, would love me. But there weren’t any babies in the songs my mother sang. Maybe that’s why the women were sad: the men left before they could make a baby.
Then Pecola asked a question that had never entered my mind. “How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?” But Frieda was asleep. And I didn’t know.
and still I do not see it
In the middle of the square there are children at play building a snowman. Anxious not to alarm them, but inexplicably joyful, I approached them across the snow.
They are not alarmed, they are too busy to cast me a glance. They have completed the great round body, now they are rolling a ball for the head.
“Someone fetch things for the mouth and nose and eyes,” says the child who is their leader.
It strikes me that the snowman will need arms too, but I do not want to interfere.
They settle the head on the shoulders and fill it out with pebbles for eyes, ears, nose and mouth. One of them crowns it with his cap.
It is not a bad snowman.
This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on a long a road that may lead nowhere.
hmm.
there is no philosophical, moral or practical reason that you’re alive and someone else is dying or dead.
come on, come on.
the past week and a half has gone by at manic speed. i heard the sound of deadlines and tests roar by, i’ve had results and essays thrown back at me, i’ve partied hard and drank hard and studied hard and before i could catch my breath there’s only a month or thereabouts left to the finals.
i recall the genuine joy at picking apart shakespearean texts. and i had the same feeling again last night. not that i could afford not to care about all my other modules, but i only dearly want lit to give as much loving back to me.
…All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us – all who knew her – felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used – to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.”
king henry’s war cry
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’
very long thought of the day
i was talking to a very good friend about the merit of building castles in the air. literal structural difficulties aside, we disagreed upon almost everything.
i’m a big fan of dreams, really. i dream i would one day sit on a deserted island (i would preferably own the island), with a supermodel girlfriend beside me (i would preferably own the girlfriend) and with a state of the art titanium and precious-stone-laced macintosh notebook beside me, (i would preferably own the macintosh notebook too, really) its bulletproof and toothpaste-proof screen flashing green lights indicating more and more capital gains by the second.
eeyer, what fun is that anyway. my life would be so vacuous save for some tantric sex with a hot woman. (when she’s not being moody or having her period) so no, i dismiss all thoughts set out in the above paragraph. so i opt for a more poly-centric approach in favour of this uninspiring life.
or more precisely, those thoughts vanish in an instant when my mum wakes me up in the morning saying it’s time for me to go to work. and here, my very good friend says, is why dreams are bad. “snap back to reality” was the advice.
for all my intimations of wanting to be a wild man, i err on the side of caution more often than not. i am big on dreams, but small on courage. on one hand i tell myself i can make it big with my tiny, miserable portfolio built up on foreign exchange trading, and on the other hand i hope my agent would find me a nice, stable job somewhere. the dreamer in me says i should stay at home (or wherever my dreams take me) and monitor the markets all day, the realist wants me to quit this volatile affair and just content myself with a 9-5 (8-6 usually) job.
so i stay firmly in the center, getting a job and went stubbornly carrying on with my investments, hoping that one day i will be on the island, with or without the supermodel girlfriend. it’s not much, and i probably know being in the middle takes me in the direction of neither. but this little dream sustains me. also, aside from that, i dream of being a well-loved, radical, brilliant teacher, but i realise first i need to actually get a degree. and may my dream sustain me through my uni years.
so, what’s the point of this rant then? totally none, besides my view that while it’s important to be grounded, allow some room in your psyche for the dreams that you may have too. it may be bad to let your dreams grow into an un-handleable monster, but don’t suffocate them either.
integration (of some degree at least) between blacks and whites, the landing on the moon, penicillin and the light bulb. these are all things great, daring dreamers worked tirelessly and spared no effort to bring about. their dreams grew into monsters, possibly taking over their lives, but they handled them well enough.
for all we know, (and to obvious protestations from the religious) the universe dreamed itself into being. after all, it is dreams which orient our landscapes.
so there, one day someone may find a way to overcome structural difficulties, and actually build a castle in the air. (and i would own one of those too) till then, a tiny 2-room apartment which came with an unserviced housing debt will do just fine.
a man with his feet too firmly on the ground has trouble wearing pants.
barber of fleet street.
the place: the dark surroundings of london, industrial london i think. for there was thick black smog that was abound, somewhat mismatched with the beautiful architecture that typifies london. where the rich trod on the poor, where the law was freely and unjustly effectuated by one man.
and this was where a story of love was set. love so strong it lit the streets so dark. strong enough to drive three men on paths irreversible.
there was the barber, separated from the love of his life, driven to madness and relentless vengence. his thirst for revenge grew so strong that it, alas, outgrew his love and good sense and in an unfortunate twist, this vengence took his lover even further away when she had once been a breath away.
and there was a journeyman, good-natured and well-intentioned but timid. driven by love to great heights of courage, to stand up in the face of authority and bodily pain and the odds.
and the third man, perpetuator of the law and in the upper echelons of society. who would rape and banish, who would sentence a young child to death without batting an eyelid. and yet this same man breaks out in song and tears, for this love so true in his eyes. this love clouds all good perception, and where the barber was once an enemy to him, the barber became a friend on the simple lie that his love has come back for him. and it is with this love he goes to get shaved like everyone else and dies like everyone else, coming down from a pedestal, however sickening, that he built for himself.
and for all the blood, the emphasis may not really be on the gore and violence seeing how it’s really fake, like as if there was no attempt to make the blood look real. sweeney todd’s a tale of love, i say.
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if you need another reason to watch sweeney todd, the reaction of the audience to sasha cohen is just pure magic. before he could say a word, his ridiculous costume (deja vu?) and comedy facial expression (hmm..) had the crowd roaring in laughter before he even spoke. the laughter got harder as he began, speaking in a funny accented manner (erm..) which sounds less of italian and more of kazakh (ah.) no one else could have done it nearly as brilliant. cohen is such a legend!
