Dichotomies

while haphazard music floats in the background
like a cheap whore made up to draw another one in
here I am with another man and another beer

how many men has it been and when will it ever
cease

Men seek women to feel younger
but why does every man
just make me feel older
and weaker

I've had men for breakfast, lunch and dinner
sometimes supper
I've had men when single
I've had men when attached
I've loved my men and left them all the same

This one tonight
He's much much older while I'm in my minted twenties, or so I'd like to think
God knows why he's here with me
wearing his nose so straight never seen before in a Chinese man
He has bright eyes
wide eyes
but his eyes are their eyes all the same

I stopped
thinking about the pain
which has always lured the men into believing
they could play the whole Messiah thing with me
the moment he
spoke of how his brilliance
could have possibly demolished others in their younger selves


I wanted to say,
and I deeply felt
sorry
and I do wish you had gotten married,
intention is more than enough to last a lifetime
even if you get divorced later
But I honestly didn't give a damn
and was sure by then neither did you

You gave me a few buddy slaps in between laughs
but we didn't toast
Just ask me do you want to sleep together
Just tell me we don't have to be together
in any way possible
I honestly gave a damn
and was sure by then you didn't

If you don't know then I'd say it so dont ever wonder

If the stone benches could talk
Would they tell you what they missed more
Your marble legs an irony against their grey skin
Or how you sat there the whole night and for once,
made them feel wanted

Did you ever wonder
smoking into those nights by the lake
would you smoke enough
long enough stay enough
to touch the sky's ceiling

What was more beautiful
The moon descending for the day
The skies bruising to bid adieu to the night
Or seeing yourself in the
crystal ball of an eye
convicting you to memory

Is your gingham pink collar
missing any fingerprints
or have you in your obsession
starched them away for newness and forgetting

Do you realise something in the air
will raise its hand to acknowledge you were once here
even if you are now not

People are designed to forget faces first
and words later
But what might you hold on to as your mind's fingers
slip away
Is it the palm that cradled you in
Or the other mind's fingers

Did you run after the questions
who ran away
Was he Pride, or was she Denial
Was It fear

Is missing silent by day
and articulate by night

When the pizza that took forty minutes to
bake and served with ice water did you think it
could lead this stanza

What is a Saturday
Is it the afternoons spent waiting while pretending
to be writing
Is it the nights that in reality
is a Sunday morning

Is it okay for a muse
to kill you
in exchange for making you feel alive

Are you a fairytale
or one of those biblical parables
departing with a stern lesson learned

Is it really you
Or are you simply tied to leftovers of a heart's fiber
that seem remotely familiar

A Few Questions for Chang E

Is the Jade Bunny
A good enough companion or would you rather
A man who breaks your heart to make you
Real
Are snow skinned moon cakes what you fancy
Or will the calories shoot you with the swiftness of Hou Li’s arrows down
Back to earth
Have you seen the suit
Of silver on Armstrong and what do
The stars say to you when they speak
How short is an eternity on the moon
Or is it only as long as we deem

Relativity?

Chinesque Discovery

Hua Song Museum is located at:
Haw Par Villa

262 Pasir Panjang Road Singapore 118628

I might be so do not take a second a step a day even away from me

Your silver lines of skin and old flesh
are nothing short of beautiful
I need you to be so to be real

So incline towards me and depart not
for the old school romance
of apfelstrudel, coffee and cigarettes

You will be everything that I want that you do not want
So what do you hide Sir beneath the insouciance
and the smoke that skirts around your face
Her cursory veil
to shield you from what you try to keep away

The paradox of our time

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space.

We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less.

We plan more, but accomplish less.

We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Dr Bob Moorehead

A collection of images from my organiser/journal

And still the beating never ends, on and on and on it goes and says to her “stop crying and bring me my son”

She loves him more
He loves her more,
Seems like they won’t ever let each other go,
Laughing and kissing it’s a match made in heaven
Behind the rings on their fingers
Imprints the ink deep in the inner
That has stained their souls together now
Stained soul mates forever now
Seems like they’ve made it to the other side where the grass is greener
And the sky is always blue
And it goes on forever and ever but there is only room for two
Deep at night I’m awakened from my dreams,
Next door, yelling cries mercy she is begging please
“Don’t end my life you’re all I need and darling I will never leave”
And then she prayed on her knees, she said

“Save him, save him from the hand he that beats me on”

Dark clouds cover her paradise,
She covers her eyes and hides behind enemy lines,
And she walks through the night with her child in her arms
She’s thrown back hostage’d
See twenty years ago when she was just ten years old
Lost in imagination she was left alone
And pops had nothing to let his anger on oh he beat her cold
She used to pray on her knees, she said

Chorus

Deep at night I’m awakened from my dreams,
Next door - yelling cries mercy she’s begging please,-
“Get up, get up”, he brings her to her feet,
And smacks her down till she falls to the ground
And over and over again,
He brings her to her feet till she can no longer stand –
And still the beating never ends
On and on and on it goes
Until he brings out a gun
And says to her “stop crying and bring me my son”
She cries harder and harder
He cries harder and harder
She says “baby please don’t do this”
Two shots to her chest
And a blow to his own head
She quickly loses breath and blood rushes to their bed and baby cries his eyes out

“Save him, save him from the hand he that beats me on”

She loves him more
He loves her more,
Seems like they won’t ever let each other go,
Laughing and kissing it’s a match made in heaven

Justin Nozuka- Save Him

My gum wrapper collection

Where are these found, and what do they have in common? Till November, watch this space

Some of my favorite pictures from a Story of The Image

Eroticism or feminism?

Personage: Who sees what, what do you show to who?

Have a meaty selection

An Anonymous Bosniak Soliloquy

Jans Kempenaer - #03 Sarajevo [football field quartered out to make way for cemetery expansion]

from the exhibition, a Story of The Image at the National Museum



An Anonymous Bosniak Soliloquy
I still believe in humanity, so don’t let me down

Especially not today
Not now, now that my eyesight is diminishing from the gas
And my slippers have worn out thinner than your military’s excuses
You look at me

There is nothing in your eyes
You look at me
Like we weren’t once born of the same soil
You look at me but your eyes are just black circles
Of void in white ovals, diluted of emotion
Your gaze mean as much as the stripes on your uniform
And Soldier, your insignia means nothing

You can freeze yourself in propaganda balderdash
Or you could be free yourself by freeing me
Liberate me from the iron bars in your mind
I am rusting and bleeding

Your muzzle digs into my temple
And I’m not sure now if this is for the better
or worse
For your hands
have already wrung my clothing to naught,
Modesty now shredded ribbons fraying in the wind
Plunging and plundering in me like a piece of meat
A sacrificial lamb you devote
to war



The last thing I see from the corner of my sight
Is the angle of the trigger depressed by your finger
But I had prayed, and I will keep praying
Not just for me
But also for women and their only commodity
when food, money and love have dissipated

I remember the ridges of your fingerprint
They swirl around in haphazard patterns
The same state all of us are in now
Your nail

It houses dirt, blood and eventually

My expiry


Post script: Here’s my story of the image, what’s yours?

Friday, January 04, 2008

Maybe if I died
you would miss me

Or would you even notice
me standing here holding my heart in my hands

as one last offering to myself

December 2005

That time by the river bank at Raffles Place smoking, I sat there and looked at all the buildings... and wondered at how my limbs will sprawl out, the trajectory of my flight before collapsing onto the tarmac belonging to the upper working class echelon.

The silence was so articulate, I could hear its heartbeat alive and pounding in its reticence. I was screaming in my head over and over again, and all I could ever think of was how anyone could miss me with my heart in my hands.

I could just imagine kneeling on the steps crying blood. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed over in my mind, it was so loud, it might as well develop a heartbeat of its own the way silence did.

And now here I am, remembering the last time I felt this way was the December of 05 as I sat with the blade of a best friend somehow believing that blood and tears had a will of its own to teleport the emotions across to another even if they were not by your side.

In Front of You

In front of you mentally I wear my straitjacket
It keeps my mind from defecating upon your pristine heart
It keeps me from wanting to claw at your imperfect soul, the same way mine is designed

You will say, "I never wanted you to think I'm perfect,"
You will even say, "I never ever said I was,"

What can I say to that?

Still

You are the one I once
saw as my Jesus light bulb
It illuminated my tarnished shadow

In front of you
I prefer my synthetic mask than any blushes of bronze or kohl of sorts
It keeps me from yielding to the hold you have on me
I wear it as handcuffs on my heart

My mask keeps me from letting you know that my emotions
are parallel to the angle
you let the pendulum swing or sink

I will smile, when I smile I will laugh when I do
And I will smile even as you make me wince in all the expressions I am too proud
too shameful to have you uncover

In front of you I sit on a chair with two wheels or walk on crutches
This, you will never know how I am down on my knees
bound, broken, defeated
and crippled
by you, no less

In front of you,
I believe I do not exist
I am not here and I will never have to hear the gravitational consequences
of the things you will never regret

In front of you,
I believe I have no feelings, and you will not have the power to hurt me
Yet your words will forever spin in my mind, a boomerang with no entrance or exit plan
No escape holes except the ones that drill bigger and bigger
till it rupture the valves in me

I hear them loud and clear
like an anthem you brand upon my skin as a reminder
of what you felt made you happy then
makes me what to kill myself now

Until then I live in my head to dream of
a person who's free of straitjackets, disguises, wheelchairs and actual existance

Existing with you
and I will let you love me
and I will let myself
believe it

I may be depressed, and many times like this, I have plodded on into the night trailing into the morning with music in my ears and tears in my heart and a blade in my hand.

I have been told I wallow too much in my head to live with others in the conventional mental society. I've been frivolous with skin and men and time and the whole idea of life.

But I love my life... there are things that have made it great... so what is this big deal about the way I live life as cry for help... So what if I'm depressed and I probably always will be, and there are people who are normal but will never have faith in things like I do, I do.

A disapora of bubbles in its reflective film rose up as the backdrop against him as the subject, and that very moment, something in me felt... free. I can't even describe that feeling; it was like someone had opened the windows and let the breeze in. Happiness is too mild, inaccurate, even juvenile to explain how it was like.

He was absolute clarity. Many times, such moments are immediately annihilated by my defense mechanism of the reality; I'm still me, I'm still depressed.

But he looked so beautiful, pensively eyeing the bubbles, I took the rein of thoughts and told myself, this is it, it won't last, so just live this moment.

I've been sitting in my head for at least the last six months, rotting into the same chair as I pen the lexical of heartache and a cacophonic mind. Every dalliance that came my way ended up with more perplexity and disdain above anything else- even inspiration that followed were halffucked. And I know he will leave, and I'd go back to being myself,

but that one second of him framed in time, was something so magical, so golden, ridiculous...

and heartbreakingly beautiful

If you ask, I would say yes, just ask. There's isn't much time left for contemplation, I would say yes

Cat Power, Ice Water

Like I heard her
Backwards saying
I can take one thousand
Showers
And never be clean
Of course she lied away

She is ten times heavier
Stronger, then you found
The grave
Or ever was

He's got it down name
You know what I need
Who doesn't lie?
You know what I mean

If I'm never in
Doubt of you
Like you don't know
I am so, angry
I am so, at ease
I feel just like
Some great big disease

I think you need
Ice water
But the only thing that
You really hate
Is all its emptiness
Ah, you'll swim
And I will drink myself to
Death
If I'm never in
Doubt of you
Like you don't know

Robert Hass: Meditation at Lagunitas

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- faced woodpecker
probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is,
by his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light.
Or the other notion that, because there is in this world
no one thing to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night
and in the voice of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief,
a tone almost querulous.
After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves:
justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I.
There was a woman I made love to
and I remembered how,
holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows,
silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed.
It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.
I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much,
the way her hands dismantled bread, the thing her father said that hurt her,
what she dreamed.
There are moments when the body is as numinous as words,

days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

From All Broken Up and Dancing, Kelvin Tan

What was real anyway?

Your first kiss became a re-enactmentof a movie you
saw last week.
Your first embrace, a series of responsibilities you were not sure
you
wanted to take.

Sometimes, you wondered how it was like to get close to
Marilyn Monroe. At
the Queenstown Library, I had looked through a book with
nothing but pictures of
Marilyn. I was dazzled... All these men who
professed affairs with her, what
were they trying to do?

Marilyn had
a smile that said, "I'm sad" and "I'm real" at the same time...

She was
so charming, most people forgot she was human...

She had to find her own
way. Her mistakes became immortalised in
print...

Somehow I found her spirit, her myth thrown into the souls of so
many
around..

hearts all dressed up with nowhere to go.. looking in all the
wrong
places for the wrong things... which right outside, but deep within them,
they know it'swrong. I've often felt that way. God knows I'm lost... That is
something better than groping in the dark ... to find you've deluded
yourself.

I saw Marilyn in so many women, and men. I saw her in Jimmy, Wah Chong, my
own mother... She became a paradigm, and I became the sole torch bearer.

What was loneliness anyway.

So far away from truth or definition

5
School 2004
I suggested we could both drink
since I didn't smoke
She did both
We were young, we were prematurely tired of this life
17, 18, and we already had a death wish
Maybe this was it

Graduation 2007
There's wasn't a personal need for a certificate
But the government suggested it

6
Smoking by the lake,
I would have given a hundred blowjobs by now
I'm here once again
The lights are too bright
The music is too loud
The boys are still foreign, I wonder
if they'd still be, if they grow up into men
and will they ever accept me or understand

At least the smoke never stops spiralling
into airy strings and schtings
as long as I never stop lighting up
as long as I never stop smoking

But I never stop wondering how it'd be
to be sectioned out into bits of flesh and blood
a powerful vacuum to void me
of identity

Would my star of hands still reach out for that hope
I never see after these years?
I could have been the brother

I almost had
I might have prefered that

'I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die.

First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time.

For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars.

And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street.

Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper.

And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world.

Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst.

And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... You will someday.'

Lester Burnham in American Beauty

The years pass easily when it has
But seemed like an eternity at present's best

The body breaks and the body is fine
I'm open to yours and I'm open to mine
The body aches and that ache takes it time
But you'll get over yours and I'll get over mine
-Devendra Banhart, The Body Breaks

Painting Development

“What has been concealed is 'person' or 'people', since wishes, resolutions and desires of single 'person' are not regarded in our society. I show the absence of 'person', 'people' on purpose in my work,” Lu Hao, in an interview with ArtReview.

If a venue, other than a woman, could be dressed to kill, that was simply how the Art Museum looked like on the exhibition opening on Friday night. The courtyard was decked out in Chinese lanterns strung up high in their yellow-crimson glow and people turned up in their own interpretation of the dress code of Beijing Rockz- a Mandarin collar shirt and pants, and embroidered cheongsam top and jeans.

But of course, the aesthetics of the opening were merely a backdrop to the real thing; the paintings and installations of Cities Here and Now.

Channeling the modernity and urbanization of Chinese cities into realistic paintings, the collection includes life-sized paintings of objects preponderant to current society- Coca Cola and Bacardi range of beverages, trendy canvas shoes in every colour and design, plastic stools for sale, international online news articles in a dichotomy of negative and positive reports.

Curiously what leapt out at me in these paintings was what that was not present. The element of what marks development; the people who create it. But then again, it wouldn’t have been Lu Hao’s signature then.

Gouache

Termination

But I never stopped wondering how it'd be
to be sectioned out into bits of flesh and blood
a powerful vacuum to void me
of identity
Would my star of hands still reach out for that hope
I never see after these years?

I could have been the brother
I almost had

I might have preferred that

From A Neo Hippie

I'd never be the mother of all your unborn children
I don't want to nurture your spirit
I'm never careful with feelings
I will never love you
I'd never be with you
I'd grow more ambiguous with each passing day,
you might have to get new mirrors all the time

but I will bring your heart somewhere freedom has never gone
I will paint you the unseen splendor your money cannot buy
I will give you more space than Mother Nature has rented out to you

And you can lose yourself in what
has been known but never seen

From Bags to Riches

An amusing thing about the French label, Louis Vuitton, is how it challenges you to figure out what aspect of business is it they do best when you step into their flagship store in ION Orchard. Yes, there’s their classic line of luxurious leather monogram bags. Then there’s the exquisite collection of prêt-a-porter. But there’s also the intricate architecture and dignified structure of their largest boutique in South East Asia that closes you off from the outside world and introduces you to a place that encapsulates only the Louis Vuitton ardor. The handsome interior and rich layout of the store garners enough attention to cast aside their reputation as a fashion power house, albeit temporarily.

That’s when the disorientation set in.

How did an extravagant brand acclaimed for its leather bags morph into conglomerate of architecture, design and fashion?

Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation, the exhibition presented in the Hong Kong Museum of Art from 22 May – 9 August 2009, answers that, chronicling the Louis Vuitton sartorial finery and the bold punctuations its stores and styles has created world wide.

Started in the mid 19th century as a retailer of luggage, it incorporated fashion and durability etched with its omnipresent LV symbol into each trunk and bag. On display are trunks from the 19th century made for aristocrats as artifacts. When exploration and voyages transpired in that era, Louis Vuitton was meticulous that his creations endured travels by the sea and rail and of course, time.

A predilection for a vogue sybarite, Louis Vuitton can come across as unattainable and possibly archaic, but with its induction of American designer, Marc Jacobs as its Creative Director in 1997, collaborations with contemporary Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami and designer Stephen Sprouse (remember cherry blossoms and the words “Louis Vuitton” in scrawl?) brought about a mélange of graffiti and popular art into fashion and design.

In 2006, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy appointed famed Canadian-American architect, Frank Gehry to design the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, a museum in Paris. The 127 million dollar project is an etch of their foray into contemporary design.

From its days as a leather and luggage connoisseur, the Louis Vuitton corporation is altruistic to venture into architecture, prêt-a-porter and books today, stamping an artistic presence in the world as prominent as its monogram itself.

Well, till the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation is completed, let’s just head down to the flagship store in ION Orchard.