NaPoWriMo Day 9: The Secret Life Of Phone Booths

Note: I know I read a poem ages ago about levitating phone booths, and I cannot for the life of me find it anywhere online - the book's in my hometown. So, apologies to the poet whose name I can't remember - this is a fond tribute, not a rip-off because I have very fond memories of that particular poem.

The secret lives of phone booths are complicated.

They stand, solitary street confessionals

Inviting telephone confidences.

Unwilling eavesdroppers of conversation

Each graffiti mark has its tale:

Marz luvs Joolz. Call Me xx-xxx

U sounded like coordin8s 2 avoid were an invitation 2 bed

Down with taxes! right next to Have more sex, it’s free.

Phone booths hold the weight of the world

Within their cramped, four-walled confines.

Close, heavy air laden with secrets

Claustrophobic with anxiety and sweat

The rank odour of dead dreams and stale food

An insistent, insidious permeation.

Such gravity is hard to carry.

Last night I heard a phone booth whispering to another

Through the telephone line:

A soft, dull patter like the rustle of directory pages.

They stopped politely when I made my call

Coins dropping through the slot like cheap marbles.

When I finished, I heard them resume

Before I put the receiver down.

When I exited, I swear I saw my phone booth float

Two inches off the ground, then lift off quietly

Into the air where another phone booth waited

A silhouette against the crescent moon.

But in the morning, it was back in its place

Solid, unmoving, a perfectly ordinary phone booth

On a perfectly ordinary day.

NaPoWriMo Day 8: Love Letter To A Girl

At eleven you might have showed promise of height
But genetics defeated you.
By thirteen you sat at the front 
Of the classroom again.
Awkward, sharp-tongued gypsy with just vocabulary for defence
You built book castles in the air
With thoughts for companions.
At sixteen the whole world knew you'd never attract the boys.
Too many angles. Too outspoken.
Too self-sufficient to be easily charmed.
Too much the lone traveller on uncommon paths.
You buried your pain in words
In letters to a man-boy who'd break your heart in college
Though in hind sight, it was inevitable.
Back then your rage moved mountains
Fuelled by wounds that had no voice
Save through paper and keyboards and online games.

In the dark of a summer's night you wrestle with loss
Future balanced on the point of a kitchen knife.

Little one, I reach through the glass of two decades
Hand on your ghostly shoulder to tell you:
Your world did not end.
Your heart will break a thousand times more
Before you find your footing
But the past will not drown you.
You will make mistakes
The darkness will come again, many times
But you will fight, and you will live to sing the survivor's tale
Like lilacs in a dead land, your roots will go deep.

I will tell you, future to past:
Forgive your failures. Love yourself
A little more.
This is not the end, child with the face of my girlhood
It is only a colon.
In the end of this, is your beginning:
You fade into me, and I become you.

NaPoWriMo Day 7: Resurrection

Yesterday's pain will not dictate today.
One step forward culminates
Several backward steps past
The past does not hold the present
In its death grip.

Rise soldier, from the ashes.
Stand.
From the embers of grief and pain
Blaze forth in pure fire.

NaPoWriMo Day 6: Frozen

Easier to thread a camel 
Through the eye of a needle
Than to believe this too shall pass.

Easier to break diamonds barehanded
Than to thread me
Through the eye of your heart.

NaPoWriMo Day 5: The Dame to the Dude

Tell me something I don’t know.

Tell me that you love me, and maybe

Just maybe, I’ll believe you.

Marry me a little – oh, I’d marry you

A whole lot more than just a little

If you’d let me.

I’ve been too late since birth:

It’s a chronic disease.

Too late for pageants

Too late for sports

Too late for love

And too late for you.

(That last is what sticks most.)

High-octane dame on a two-bit cylinder

You’ll crash and burn, they say.

Well I crashed into you long ago

And I’m still burning.

You had me at Prufrock’s table

You, and those sharp grey eyes.

(I’m denying all this if you see it.)

NaPoWriMo Day 4: For Brian

April is indeed the cruelest month.
How times flies - two years almost to the day
You left us so suddenly.
Perhaps we could have loved each other if we tried -
Solitude is hard to break for lone souls
In hindsight, there was wisdom in our 'no'.
Perhaps I could have been kinder
Perhaps I could have tried harder
To breach the distance.
Perhaps
Perhaps
Perhaps.
But time heals all things, even regrets
And April, however cruel
Remains bittersweet - a rosemary wreath.
Forgive me, corazon, for lost time.
I wait in my dreams for you to rise
A forgotten angel with tattered wings.
Here are my hands, outstretched
Holding this last kiss for you.

NaPoWriMo Day 3: Jalur Gemilang

Note: Jalur Gemilang, or Glorious Stripes, is a name of honour we use for our Malaysian flag.

Unstitch me this flag
Where colour is creed
And coconuts in a bomoh's hand
Weigh more than Justice
On a scale.

Unstitch me these lines
Dissecting this land
Where divisions of skin
Count more than conscience
And social need.

Redraw the boundaries of What Is and What Should Be -
Truth is a hard mistress but Lies
Decay the soul.

Break the ground with brittle promises
Suppress the brutal honesty you fear
But weeds, so tenacious, will grow through cracks:
Let the truth rise from the least of these
Let our flag fly -
Undivided by colour or creed
United by this common coat of scars.

NaPoWriMo Day 2: The University Choir Before Its Debut

Dwarfed by space and silence they stand

A flock of colourful sparrows, fluttering doubts

Flitting over each expression.

Can we pull this off? their stances ask

The space surrounding them

Electric with nerves.

Skitter-shy as colts, they wait

Champing at the bit as the music begins

Then the drop of the beat and they transform:

No longer sparrows but nightingales

Soaring on wings of song.

NaPoWriMo Day 1: Victorian Wedding Portrait

I hadn't actually even considered doing NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, not until a good friend posted the link and drew my attention to it. 30 days of poetry is a lot of commitment, and I was quite sure I wouldn't have the time.

With a few insanely busy upcoming months, including 3 classes and a whole lot of work-related projects, it would have been the height of folly to even think of merrily joining in.

So I did.


Victorian Wedding Portrait

The camera loves her but she does not love it back

Profile solemn, black bird wings of hair

Tamed by gauze and pearls.

Grave as a novitiate she sits

A comma in a sentence

Uneasy in her white dress, pale and still

A fresh-faced vanilla orchid

On the cusp of blooming.

The Unseen Hook and Invisible Line

Returning from a country not my own is always a fresh revelation - a new set of eyes.

I came back from Australia yesterday, and I never felt so happy to be back in the dusty, haze-laden over-heated oven that I call home. Malaysia isn't perfect, but many of my most complicated emotions are tied up in this yam-shaped mass of land on the map. To quote Chesterton's Father Brown, it's embedded in my heart 'an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.'


Kuala Lumpur coast line from the air, shortly before landing

I come back. Time and time again, despite my best rebellious efforts, I come back.

Last Thursday night when the plane took off, I wrote a letter.

Last night when the plane took off, outside the window it was a constellation of lights from the city, all of it outlined against the jet black sky. Bright twinkling yellow speckled through with colours, just like proper stars. A constellation needs a name - I kept thinking of what I might name it, and fell asleep before I could.

When I woke up, there was the most glorious sunset outside the window. I’ve never seen such vivid colours, ever - deep burnt orange to fire-streak flame, dividing the blue of the sky and the darkness below it. I took a picture of it for you.



There’s frost on the window - tiny little needles of it on the edges of the glass. I can feel the cold on my cheek if I go too near. Below is a mottled, greeny brown landscape of snaking tributaries and patches of darkish green that could be trees. There are straight lines that must be man-made roads. They dissect the land like compass points.

Behind us, it’s misty like a mirage, a cloud bank - and then suddenly, as you pan across to the view ahead in my window, the scene sharpens into focus.

There are gullies, and now towns, and little clumps of civilisation. Big shimmering bodies of what could be water. The sky’s lightening up now, the colours no longer as startling.

We’re entering Gold Coast territory. This is the Australian outback below me, and I am suddenly struck…dumb? No, not dumb, just bereft of words. I don’t know how to feel. I’ve read so much about this land all my life, in stories, in poems, and now suddenly I’m here.

The outback is unforgiving as it is arid, but there’s a stark beauty in its austerity too. The sun is unforgiving too now - bright, hot, fierce.

And it’s morning. My first morning in the Great Australian Continent.

When we finally landed on the tarmac at the LCCT yesterday, my first thought was, 'I'm home again.' The feeling was indescribable. Almost like falling perilously in love, tumbling into a dangerous liaison.

I'm home again. This, too, is a kind of happiness.

Thoughts on 40

I turned 40 last week.

It's all a game of numbers, my friends told me. Mind games. You're only as young as you feel, and age is just that - a number.

Easy enough to say, even for myself. Not so easy to re-tune the mental track that's been saying, for over a year, 'You're 40, you're old, and you're destined to be alone and never doing anything significant for the rest of your useless life.'

I don't look 40, or so I've been told. I can still pass for a student when I'm up at university teaching, especially when there's a group photo, and if I don't smile too close to the camera. Too many crows' feet at the side of the eyes. Too many smile lines on the face. I'm in better shape than I was in my 20s, or at least I try to be, and I think that my judgement's improved over time. Oh, and my disposition - at least I have a modicum of patience now where I used to have absolutely None At All.

40, Asian, single. Weddings are difficult things at any time, Asian weddings can be a bit harrowing but thank God for relatives who've learned not to ask me the million dollar question about When I'm Getting Married Next, especially during my brother's wedding last year.

I can't honestly say I was expecting my fortieth decade to feel any different from the day before, or that I was looking forward to it, because I really wasn't. On both counts.

And then my friends happened. Took the entire day, blew it out of the water with so many wishes and thoughtful gestures. My choir mates armed with cheesecake and mille crepe cake and the happiest 4-part Happy Birthday in the world, surprising me and another choir mate who happens to have the same birthday. For about an hour after rehearsals, there was crazy and food and photo-taking, and lots and lots of laughter.

Love happened, and my entire world changed because of it. My friends, my family, the people I care about most in my life, gave me the best birthday I've ever had. My students wrote me such beautiful messages, some whom I never even thought would remember, and slowly it's beginning to sink in - it's true, age really IS just a number. Where there's love, where there's purpose, you are never old. I have amazing friends, and I have amazing students who come out into the world to become equally amazing people. That counts for something. It's a start.



A few days ago someone asked me, How does the big 40 feel?

I told them, It feels fantastic. Because it does.

This year I've stopped thinking about what I want to achieve in life, now that I'm into my 40s. Instead, this is the year I think about what I want to leave behind - the legacies to my friends, family, students. Because I can achieve everything I want to, but if none of that impacts any lives for the better, then what's the point?

I had the privilege of meeting up with two former students, who are now in university. I taught them in high school five years ago. Five years! Where does the time go? They are both beautiful young women who are doing so well in their studies, and still making time for their musical passion, and I am so proud of them. What gave me pause was that during the conversation, both of them talked about old times, and what they remembered wasn't the big things like winning competitions, or the lack of. They talked about the little things - me staying behind to give feedback to one of them and teaching them how to breathe properly when singing. How I'd stand at the back of the classroom to try and get them to use vocal support to sing louder. How I'd use crazy illustrations like the cicak on the conductor's forehead to help them focus sound.

I came away from the conversation humbled beyond belief. What matters isn't the big things, although those do have their place - it's the small details that you think are throwaway, that people remember. These girls remembered random acts of kindness, things so mundane I take them for granted as part of my work. But to them, right then, it was everything and more.

Legacy. From now on, it's all about legacy. Because life is short, and what you leave behind is often far more important than all the biggest projects you've achieved.

Light

Iron railings around the Da Nang river docks

I have been silent for a long time, and now that it is finally 2014, perhaps it is time to break that self-imposed silence.

It has been a year of progress in many respects - many firsts, like travelling with one of my choirs to Thailand and taking a group of children to Vietnam. Recording my first single in a proper studio for a compilation of local indie singer-songwriters. Completing my Kodaly teaching certification for primary level.

It has also been the hardest year I have known. For ten months, I was on the verge of letting everything go. Planning my will, meticulously mapping out who to leave my library to, what to discard, the people I would need to see before I ended it all. Nights spent, thinking of how to die without causing too much trouble to everyone else, deciding that the end of March 2014 would be when all my obligations were finally discharged, and I would be free.

People cling to life with a will; I wanted to die with that same will, a fierce determination that it was time to let go of life and let other people get on with theirs.

I had it all planned so well.

Then Mayerling and Edward Watson happened. A chance research encounter on Youtube with the Royal Ballet's rehearsal clips of an extraordinary dancer named Edward Watson going through a pas de deux with the amazing Mara Galeazzi in the ballet Mayerling, and something...changed. I don't know what happened, and I still don't. I only know that that night, dance had a voice, and that voice spoke to something inside, and long-dry bones began to stir.

I watched more dance clips. Lost myself in the shape of bodies carving their mark in the air, stamping their presence on space as surely as an official seal. For the first time in many, many months, I thought that perhaps I could do it too - dance as I used to do before the injuries and the mental blocks.

So I tried. It was awkward, clumsy movement, but it was movement. I started taking an interest in dance, started working out again slowly. Started thinking about things other than dark shadows and death.

Little by little, mornings were no longer things to be feared despite health problems and acute physical pain. Then one morning, I woke up, and I no longer wanted to die. A pinprick of light at the end of a very dark tunnel - tiny, so very tiny, but it was enough.


Woman on terrace in the Old Quarter, Hanoi, doing late night laundry


And so I went to Vietnam. A solo journey, as much to escape for a short time, as it was to find myself again. I went to Da Nang, and learned once again the meaning of kindness of strangers. Women at the waterfront, line dancing and pulling me to join them, trying to match make me despite language barriers, laughing and smiling. A history teacher I have never met before and whom I may never meet again, pulling me with her and taking me around the town at night, stopping at the ocean front to walk in comfortable silence before taking me back to my hotel.

I went to Hanoi to find memories, and find them I did - places I had visited before, 8 degrees of misty winter cold that brought me straight back to university in Virginia, the forgotten academic within that blazed up again at the prospect of an intellectual historical challenge at the National Vietnam Museum of History.

I returned home to a new year and a new set of challenges, and for the first time in a long while, the fear was not overwhelming, and death did not enter into it. The healing had begun, small but sure.

I don't write this for sympathy or anything other than to document a descent, a journey, and to bring it closure. This is where I have been. This is where I am starting from, all over again. A new year, a new road, and sparks of life in long-dead dreams.

May 2014 be a year of discovery, and a celebration of life for everyone I know.

No Shit Sherlock

It is now April of 2013.



One semi-unsuccessful U-Turn, a month of shows, one wedding, and three weeks of sickness later, I honestly just need to state for the record:

No, my shit ain't together.

Perhaps it's the constant illness, perhaps it's the foreboding feeling of constant stress and the ever-present 'When are we going to have extra rehearsals, competition's coming up soon, we need you to be there there there and here and there and there', or the 'Ok, when can you commit to this and you also need this and this and we need this and this and that from you, and can you do yet another audition panel for this and this and this and...'

Or, actually, all of the above.

I am tired. No, that's not really true. It's more of being mentally pounded into the ground to a point where I'm looking around me with deer-in-the-headlight eyes and going, '...I am trapped. Oh god I am trapped.' I chose this life and this career, and it's now become my biggest cage.

It isn't supposed to be that way.

It won't always be that way, I tell myself. It won't, and I can and will kick the crap out of this.

Right now though, I'm just incredibly exhausted. I don't want to be, and I loathe this draggy, lethargic, almost claustrophobic feeling. I want to be better, stronger. I haven't been able to workout for weeks because of the illness, and because at the moment my balance is shot, due to ear infection. Has been for three weeks actually.

This will end. This CAN end.

At the moment though? I want to crawl into a foxhole and howl miserably. But there's Life to be Done, so I'm getting off my ass to do it in a few minutes. Haikus for the Single Girl, I should have gotten that book when I saw it in Borders.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. No, actually, it's The Major vs. Cthulhu + the Kraken. There was a point in time when I could actually Irish dance to the music from the Kraken scene in Pirates of the Caribbean.

One foot and another foot moving later, I'll be able to do that again I think. One day. Right now - time for Life.

The Boys of Summer

The boys of summer with their skateboards
suspended mid-air like a gasp
arc down - a kingfisher flash
onto concrete
skirting the edge of adolescence and flight:
fledgling birds trying their wings
before the girls of summer
emerge from their lace-and-lipstick cocoons.

Rings

I wear these two rings daily - in fact I'm almost never seen without them unless I have a gig or a task that requires me taking them off.

They remind me of the two most important men in my life.

The lightning bolt ring - which has gotten lots of compliments from a lot of people - is a gift from my brother. All sisters are biased, but I do think, with every justification, that I have the best brother in the universe. He has been a constant support in my work and my art, the recipient of many of my rantings and frustrations, and he always believes in me, even when I don't believe myself. He is a musician of the first water, a gentleman, my protector, and anchor during some really dark periods of my life.

The steel circlet is from my father. This man has shaped my life in ways that I could never have imagined. He has loved me through times when some parents would have just thrown me out, and he is above all a man of integrity, faith, and humility whom I respect and admire with all my heart. I didn't see much of him when I was growing up, and our relationship has taken time to develop - it's still getting there, but I am thankful for it. He is common sense, practicality, support, lame jokes, and immense ability - this is the man who, without ever knowing what a drop spindle was, helped me build the Turkish drop spindle I use now. We connect through food, cooking and guppies - our conversations almost always begin and end with food, with mentions of guppies interspersed in between - but that is our measure of love, our own private language.

Love, strength, protection, all wrapped up in two steel and silver rings.

I carry them with me, every day of my life, to remind me.

Creative License Day (a'la Danny Gregory)

Today, I am giving myself leave to rest.

I have one production behind me that has taken several gruelling months of rehearsals, and which has been so rewarding and fulfilling.

It's time to recharge and give myself room to physically create with paints, paper, and inks again.

I am slowly making my way through Danny Gregory's wonderful book 'The Creative License', which I've had for yonks but have never really sat down to go through in detail. What I've read so far, however, is deeply sensible, practical, and immensely helpful in understanding my creative processes. More importantly, the book addresses the issues of negativity and how to free one's mind of that in relation to one's creative work - something I need desperately.

Time to deal with fears, hurts, and let art be my therapy for now.



Millenium Collage, done for Towers and Turrets mixed media class some months back. Time to return to that dark, quiet creative space and percolate.

Tether

Untether me from this shadow
Where you’ve pinned me, like a photographed smile
To the heels of your ghost.

Sink down, sink down, echo of our past
Fetched up from below the waters
Adrift, turned on its pale belly.

Let the dead remain dead, my love.
I have mourned you.
Stay buried beneath these stratas
These layers built to hold your ghost at bay.

Too sudden. Too soon.
In my heart, you have never left.

I am tethered to you by an umbilical cord.
Cut me loose, my love.
Let me live.
Recede into the distance beyond our grief.
You will not be forgotten, for love
Remembers all but softens the edge of departure -
The ache of our pain.

Post-Musical Fatigue

One word to describe the last two months:

CRAAAAAZY.

Choir competition season will be officially over on 1st July, but for weeks on end it's been training, stress, hair-pulling, and all manner of insanity. This year though, there were unexpected and absolutely rewarding payoffs: all my school choirs placed in their district competitions. 2nd and 3rd places for the two secondary schools, 3rd place for the primary school - a huge achievement for the students, who have worked so, so very hard.

My youth chamber choir has also done me proud by taking a Distinction in their Trinity Gold Level Choral Assessment. So all in all, I am a very proud and happy musical 'mama'!

Add to that Jason Robert Brown's 'Songs For A New World', which just finished its run this weekend, performed by the vocal quartet I sing with, and there you have it. Between rehearsals and choir competitions and job and everything else, it's been insanely busy but character-building!

I haven't had time to do anything with the blowtorch or wire or any metals, which I'm hoping to remedy when July comes up. I did, however, manage to rustle up a rusty something-or-other one night when my brain was going completely bugnuts:



This is Jess, from a series of stories a friend and I had fun writing back in the day. She is 16, and has the attitude of a disgruntled, vocal porcupine. And also, just maybe, a little dangerous.

Oh July, July, just a few more days!

The Geography of Loss: Losing Brian

Brian Rucker, 1964-2012
Rest In Peace

My heart's a great black hole.

I never knew what they meant by the weight of grief until now - an ache pressing so heavily against your chest it feels as if something has to burst from the pain of it, both physical and mental.

The last few days have been chaos. Unstable. One minute I'm all right and the next, something triggers a wash of memory so strong the tears come and don't stop.

The night I heard you'd died everything stopped as if time slowed down, as if thought were in slow motion. 16th April. Last weekend. How is that possible, Purry? We were just chatting on Facebook, posting memories from Virginia Beach and Sci Con only a month, month and a half back. How can you be gone, just like that? If Wes hadn't posted the news, I'd never have found out. None of us from Amber or your beloved game forums would even have known. None of us were expecting to lose you so suddenly.

We were supposed to grow old and cranky together, kvetch about the state of life, tease each other about our perpetual single status and figure we were too set in our ways to be any different. You talked about going to San Diego Comic Con this year. You were happy, damn it all, after Mysticon - you'd come home again to your first love of gaming and conventions and the crazy days of being young.

Today is Day Three of trying to make sense of all of this. And I can't. I still can't accept that you're gone, that I'll never hear you laugh at me any more, that I won't be visiting you in your apartment or watch the river under the bridge with you again. We'd only just reconnected last year. How could you just slip away without even a farewell?

We had our ups and downs, we had our disagreements, but you were important to me. You represent the happiest times of my grad school days, when things didn't make any more sense than now, but you tried to get me through them anyway. Cooking in your kitchen, learning how to skin a chicken, you laughing because you had no idea how to help me, both of us playing host to Courtney and Dan and Sis. Dan and Sis waking you up at 4am to tell you they were running through sprinklers in DC. Me waking you up one of your visits to my place, and wondering why my neighbour was moving furniture at about 2am and you going, "...That's not furniture, that's bed springs..." and laughing at my half an hour of snarky, sleepy diatribe.

I don't know if I ever told you how important you were to me, how glad I was to have you as a friend. I can only hope I showed it, but I wish that I could have said it too. Said it so that it would be set in stone, so that you could have heard it and been glad.

Funny how the years amplify things. All that time apart, just barely reconnected for a year, and I miss you so much. Perhaps it's the unexpectedness of losing you, that makes your absence so acute it's a fierce, almost physical presence. I want to reach out, grab hold of you in a drunken sort of desperation, shake you, tell you how much you've changed my life in so many good ways, how much I owe you. I need you to hear, I need you to know, to have some closure.

You were always such a proponent of supporting the local music scene, and I think that you would have liked to hear my youth chamber, that you would be pleased that I'm going out into the independent music scene too with my quartet. You were already so happy to hear I was singing now - 'Singing Purry', you called me.

My chamber sang 'Imagine' today, and I thought of you - your passion for fair politics and justice for the deserving. You would have been thrilled to know about the Bersih Rally here today, and that I was supporting it wholeheartedly.

I know I will never have a chance to say goodbye, good night, not in person, ever again. I don't know if you can see me writing this, or if you'd ever think that I would cry over you. Well, you tall skinny stubborn diamond-in-the-rough doofus, I am. I am right now, remembering your voice, hearing past conversations in my mind, and the ache in my throat is so strong I might choke.

I would give anything just to hug you one more time, hold you, tease you about being so thin I could break you in two, one more chance to tell you just how much you mean to me. I miss you, I love you for being my friend, I'm thankful for the privilege of having gotten to know you and do life with you, even though it was far, far too short a time.

As the song says, 'Good night sweetheart, good night.' Good night, Brian Rucker - my sanity, my partner-in-crime-and-craziness, my dear friend - good night.

Deliciousness by Nova Designs

I've loved Nova Designs for an age - Tess, the talented artist behind the gorgeousness, is an amazing, amazing jeweller. Her signature pinwheel designs actually -spin-, and they are so full of beautiful whimsy.

She's also having a giveaway so do check it out - nothing I say could ever do justice to her beautiful creations!

I mean, just LOOK at these. How could anyone not covet a pair of beautiful spinning earrings like that, or a pendant that one could play with?



Image: Nova Designs

What I Need More Of...

Love, light, and peace.

Some time with family, and a quiet sanctuary where the long arm of people and to-do lists can't reach.

Time to be still.

Quietness and confidence. And strength.

Being Blonde, or, The Lunch Date

For Kenny Mah, because.

Morning text message. I'm half-awake and still drowsy, but reading it makes me smile. We've been wanting to catch up for ages, and today's the day at last, and it -will- happen because we've planned for it and it better, or else...well there's no 'or else'. It is happening, and that's that.

I'm late. Of course I'm late, these days it seems to be a chronic (and unfortunate) trademark. I could cite the bus, or the mosque traffic, but I'll just knuckle down and say that yes, I got out of the house later than expected while seeing to stuff, and my time management needs a lot of work. My brain reminds me you're going to be so hungry given how late it is now. I make a mental note to do better next time.

Next time. I hope there will be a next time anyway.

It rains the minute I get out of the bus, which I should have expected, and stops the minute I get into the LRT station - which I also should have expected. Never mind, I'm there at the agreed meeting point, and there you are, reading (a totally unnecessary purchase, you tell me, but I understand. My bookshelf is testament to this.) I always forget how tall you are till I hug you. Then again, I'm short. It evens out.

So there's that little adventure of the stuck parking ticket, and the impossible maze that's the parking lot exit and a car window that refuses to cooperate winding back up. You try to apologise, but me, I don't mind. It's good to be out of the house, it's good to be not thinking so much about crap, it's good to be with you, and that's all there is to it. I'm an adventure magnet. These are what memories are made of.

Indian food. I love it, so do you, and this is a part of town I've never been in before - even better.

Lunch comes. I talk too much. I always do. Even more so when I get a little nervous, but today, that's not the case. Why am I trying to be sensible and profound when I know I'm nothing of the sort? When I catch myself it's already too late, I've prattled on like a ditz and I think, oh gods, stop being blonde you idiot, this isn't Wicked, you're not Glinda. If this were a date, it'd never get off the ground. You don't seem to mind, for which I'm thankful; your company is relaxing, which is what I badly need right now, and it always is wonderful to catch up with you in person after so many messages, texts, and emails.

There never seems to be enough time to say everything that we want to say. My conversation is like a scratched CD, skipping from place to place to topic to other topic with bewildering speed. I only realise this after we finish lunch. If I'm not blonde, I'm doing a pretty convincing imitation. You carry the conversation as calmly and serenely as a palm-fringed oasis. Gods, I wish I had that sort of poise, something I mentally make note of to learn before I get mistaken for a hyperactive child off medication.

It's days like this I miss, conversations and company like this that I crave desperately when things go awry and when stress levels create their own overwhelming Richter scale. You put things in perspective, and for that I am so grateful. For a few hours at least, the knots in my psyche loosen and unravel, and the world seems much more bearable.

Thank you. Today was a much-needed gift. The next time, I'll be punctual - and less blonde.



Photo credit: Waterfall Yin

The Socratic Creed of Examinations

...which explains why I am neck-deep in examinations until mid-December, and why I have turned into even more of an elusive hermit than before.

I'm wondering how on earth I'm going to survive the next two weeks, when none of my coursework seems to want to come together, my vocal exam pieces are complete disasters, and my musicianship homework is in a shambles (granted, I did procrastinate on numbers 1 and 3 so it's no one else's fault but my own.)

If Socrates were here, I'd assassinate him without hesitation. Or remorse.

Which probably means it's time for bed.

Drama, Texture, and Smoking Brides

Kim Klassen is amazing with textures. I stumbled onto her page by accident through reading something else, and I was hooked.

Enough that I stayed up till 4am for two days messing around with textures and photographs. This of course is intentional sleep deprivation but I'm not blaming anything except my magpie attention span for it.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

This post of Kim's caught my eye, especially Day 1 - Adding Drama. So I dug out some photographs I took when I was travelling in Austria for the World Choir Games this year, and had a go at it.

Which (after some instruction tweaking as I'm using Photoshop CS2 rather than CS4) resulted in this:



I nicknamed this lady the Smoking Bride for obvious reasons. She seemed to be somewhat annoyed as well, apparently waiting for her wedding car driver, and she did tend to speak rather loudly (though whether that's just a language thing or actual annoyance, I couldn't tell. I went by the cranky expression.)


And because I couldn't leave well enough alone, I tweaked the photo with one of Kim's textures, added in some gorgeous brushes from Annika Von Holdt, and voila - vintage ephemera ahoy:



After years and years of resistance, finally I seem to have caught the Photoshop bug. I don't know whether it's good or bad - the last thing I need is a new distraction, with production, graduation, and exams coming up...

Ah, heck with it. I'm filing it under Rest and Relaxation.

And yes, THAT'S my story and I'm STILL sticking to it.

Inspiration Room Challenge: Rococo Nouveau

So. There was this challenge photograph posted one balmy day by the brilliant Deryn Mentock. (All right, it was mostly hot and muggy here, but I'm taking artistic license here. Liberally.)

With the photograph was an immensely eye-opening and wonderful link on how to make a colour palette. Don't go there if you don't have time to spare. It's addictive, this colour palette business. I was supposed to just mosey over and look, but I wound up spending the rest of the hour working on the colour palette because it was so fascinating.

Which resulted in this:


...and, after some precious lessons on why it is not a good idea to start working on challenge pieces after midnight on a long day (crooked wire, bad wraps, even more crooked wraps which now litter half the finished work), THIS is the result:



And now onto better photographs when I'm -not- trying to wear a piece and take a picture. Details on colour scheme and various bits of the piece:


The pendant is half an earring that I bought and never used, so I recycled it.







Clasp detail at the back, the best I could do because I was lying on the floor at a really funny angle trying to take this!


The clasp proper. Ignore the crooked wrapped link, move along, nothing to see...

Originally I thought it looked Gothic. Then after I finished the piece, I realised it wasn't Gothic, nor Classical Gothic, it was Rococo. So Rococo Nouveau it is!

And now off to post the link because for once, I actually finished a challenge ON TIME. Amazing. I hope the new owner likes it as much as I do!

Revisiting Once Upon A Time

From the old Noir Files dated back a few years:

There's always tragic endings in noir but there's always the most
memorable kisses. If I was Vivian, would you be Marlowe then? One kiss
to last a lifetime - maybe that's how it feels, under a stark white
moon with shadows like grey cats in the dark.

Tonight is a dime-store pulp novel - the hard-boiled detective with his infinite cheap cigarette, the dame with soot-black hair and tulip red lips, and the eternal dark in a small, stifling room with tawdry furniture just before the prelude to a kiss. The sheets are down, the rain is pattering like whiskery possum soft-shoe. There's all the time in the world.

And maybe - just maybe - the world turns on a kiss that's still waiting to be given and all that time, all those words, are just fillers till it happens.

Once upon a time, I could actually draw. And I could actually write stuff worth reading. Maybe that's a hint to get a kick in the pants and start practicing both again.

Words and Pictures

These days I'm more inclined to let pictures do the talking for me, so here is what I've been up to of late:


An attempt at Deryn Mentock's beautiful Boho Hoops; she's Da Woman, a fantastic teacher and a great mentor. Next time you offer this class, I'll be there!



Subversive Lace: Blue Buddha Boutique's Staggered Japanese Lace bracelet. 0.5mm, 0.6mm and 0.7mm rhodium-plated copper rings. It's subversive because of the enamel skull at the clasp behind...



Like so...



...to keep the clasp centered when I wear it.


And of course, can't forget:


Caipifruta in Graz, Austria, for the World Youth Choir Championships this July!
Photo credit: Tracy Wong



With Grupo Chorus from Brazil - some of my favourite people in the whole world. Caipifruta + Grupo Chorus = GrupoFruta/CaipiChorus. Viva! Viva!
Photo credit: Tracy Wong

So folks, that's what I've done and where I've been, and that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Sometimes...

...I wonder whether it's worth pouring in so much effort for things, only to be proved a second-rate coach/operator/person time and time again. Because despite all my dreams, maybe that's just about as good as I'll ever get.

It's a wonderful feeling, knowing you always let people down.

Not To Scale

I don't want to live to scale - small life, small box. I want to live large, dream big, make it count.



I want to live, not merely exist.

I don't think it's too much to try for.

The Dangers of Being Fred

I tend to have surreal conversations with my friends. Today is no exception, with the result that a chat about art prompts interspersed with random bits about Cthulhu plus my distinct lack of drawing practice, birthed this little monstrosity.

The prompt, incidentally, was 'Fred'. No, I don't know why this came to mind. My mind is a scary, scary place, as evidenced by the appearance of John Constantine in My Little Pony trench coats.



I suspect need a SAN check now.

The Importance of Being Uncomfortable

Part of my sketchbook project - never tried Victorian lettering before and might not try it again!


This year, I set myself a resolution to make myself uncomfortable.

Not in the 'sleep on bed of nails every night and torture myself with really bad music' sort of way. More of a determination that if something comes along that isn't creepy, makes me panic at the thought of having to do it, and has the occasional makings of the impossible, I'll jump in and give it a shot.

There's a rationale to this twisted logic as crazy as it sounds.

It all boils down to this: I'm a person who abhors change. It was fine when I was still in university, but a series of moves across three continents in succession gave me a distinct disinclination towards upheaval. Stability, a place to come home to without having to constantly live out of suitcases - more and more, that got to be something imminently desirable. My gluten intolerance only compounded this, as travelling on a gluten-free diet? It gets hairy sometimes, and I dislike being ill even more than I dislike upheaval.

For the past two years though, I've been restless and fidgety, and I couldn't quite pinpoint why. Not until last year and only because I had to sit down and be brutally honest with myself - I'm discontented. I miss doing things that I used to. I feel stuck in a rut and creatively unfulfilled, and all in all, it was leading to a downright spiral of depression. The biggest reason? I'm afraid. I see new things and I think oh, that's great, but I'm too much of a coward to step up and say, Sure, why not.

The move to this new place last year was the beginning of a sort of mental shakeup. New place. New life. New things. Why was I still sticking to my comfort zone and bitching, when really, whose fault was it?

So this year? I've accepted two teaching positions that terrify the -crap- out of me. I don't feel capable, and I don't feel comfortable at -all- taking them because of the age groups involved - but the only way I'm going to grow is to stretch myself and -make- myself do it.

I've registered for an online jewellery class taught by a wonderful friend and mentor even though I'm scared stiff I won't do well and that I might have difficulty getting a butane torch and I might burn the place down due to stupidity. If I call myself an artist, I need to expand my skills - and being a cicak under a rock and bewailing my lack of 'em ain't going to get me anywhere. So it's kick-myself-in-the-butt time - knuckle down and just do it.

I'm trying to jab myself into resuming learning one new language. I figure if I want to say I'm bored, I can at least say it in the lingo of another country, which will make it slightly more interesting.

And I took a bookbinding class way out at the other end of the world this January because even though it was a crazy commute and I had to end early to go back to teach, I figured it was worth it. I've wanted to take that class for years. What's a little difficulty getting there anyway? Composers like Bach and Scarlatti -walked- to the next TOWN to hear concerts - that's harder than taking the LRT and making two or three changes, right?

Be less lazy, more forgiving, more productive, learn more stuff I've always meant to but haven't - that's what I'd like for this year. And let's not forget achieve very hard but not impossible things, like a win for Caipifruta at Graz this July for the World Choir Championships.

The importance of being uncomfortable - it keeps you from stagnation, and the pain of an overly large backside.

The New Year Rising and the Helm of Dreams

For Kenny, after reading about libraries and Neil Gaiman's marriage

How I loved him. Every night, waiting so eagerly to slip into sleep, easy as a scalded peach slips its skin – but of course, he was only a figment of fiction and I could hope, I could dream that perhaps I’d see his eyes as I’d written in a story so long ago.

Dream’s eyes. The Corinthian had none, only sockets capable of so much blood.

How she loved him, Jade the White-Haired. She’s found in no canon other than the long-forgotten annals of role-play in the Endless’ extensive universe – a demon in the shell of a scorned, betrayed girl, each tattoo on her beautiful, tebori-marked body a soul that she’d claimed. And of course, she fell in love with eyes that were pools of shadow with glimmers of light within. She didn’t mean to, but she did, and every night in sleep she would wait to see them. Hope for them to appear.

Her secret that she likely carried to the ends of forever, this. When the role-play universe of that world ended, she walked hand-in-hand with Dream and vanished into the distance, united at last with the one she had grown to love so well. I like to think that she was happy at last, and that she gave him pleasure too, the time they spent together.

A beautiful fiction invented to keep out the cold, to quote Vienna Teng’s beautiful ballad Blue Caravan. I too wanted to escape the mundane and search for the exotic, the fantastical, the greener grass on the other side of some mythical pasture far across the sea. Well. I can’t say ‘wanted’ when I still do, really.

The legacy of Dream’s Helm, isn’t it? Finding it buried in the corners of the mind deliberately left untouched for years, not being able to resist the temptation to pick it up and slip it on despite the bony spine, the bulbous skull, the alien, almost frightening appearance.

Because in the end, the need to dream, to wish, to yearn for, is sometimes as necessary as breath. Old desires, long-suppressed, sternly forgotten against one’s will, bubbling slowly to the surface in an instant of unexpected trigger – news of an old friend, now a successful author and recording artiste; the marriage of a writer/artist whom you’d always harboured a secret crush on; the jet-setting, exciting lives of acquaintances and more friends; the plans of dear ones.

None of it bad, of course, no such thing – in fact, you’re thrilled for them – but the secret little yearning reaches its tendrils out and tugs at the heart, whispering, ‘You wanted that life too, many, many dreaming ago. Now look where you are...’

So many heart-burnings. So many acid recriminations against the self, against the workings of the life you’re leading, against how mundane it all seems compared to the rest.

And yet – and yet – a little small still voice floats up from the depths of the envy abyss yawning in front of you, like hope in Pandora’s box.

Lives, it says. Your students. The lives you teach in this new life you’ve begun by accident and continued by choice. The ones that you can perhaps can make a difference to, the ones whom you have made a difference to.

I weigh them, as I’ve weighed them again and again – my life now, my students, my work, against the words I always dreamed of writing, the unknown artist I dreamed of marrying, the life I might have had if only I’d stayed in another country instead of returning home.

And what I know now, as I knew then but refused to accept, was that contentment is learned. It is a decision not based on the heart, but rooted in commitment and the surety that a life can count, if you make it do so.

So I sit here, holding Dream’s Helm between my hands – so heavy and smooth, this marvel of bone and memory! – and I wish the abyss away, close it with a decision. I’ll do it many, many times in the days and months that make up the year.

Because whatever else I might have dreamed and yearned for, this life counts, and I make it count only if I seize each day, each year of it and keep moving on. More often than not it’s plodding and trudging, but I have made my choice on what I value and what matters in the long run – and with that, comes contentment and peace with myself.

The Helm is heavy on my head, comfortable even. It promises flight and new dreams and even journeys into the past, pleasant or unpleasant. Oh I’ll indulge, I know - I can’t help it, I might even linger a little in those dark, familiar depths.

But I won’t be confined there. I must keep moving. Because in the end, life is short and the lives along the way are precious, and there is work to be done – and that, I think, is what matters.

Almost Home

And once again I've let the blog go for a few months before updating. I know, I know. I'm always apologising for this, but the truth of the matter is, I -have- been busy with some key things in life.

I've just been through a crazy three week period in which my first jewellery bazaar and my 2nd level Australian Kodaly Certification went head-to-head. I survived both with sanity a little less than intact, and passed my certification exams far better than I expected.

And got a bout of gluten poisoning/food poisoning to celebrate.

But this morning, some friends and I went to help out at a house - the little boy's room needed painting, and the mother needed the wire nettings on the windows changed and some water pipes fixed. It's hard to be a single parent, working as many hours as she does, and I really admire her. I couldn't stay long because my stomach decided to run riot, but I was very glad I could be there for even a short time to help clean.

One more week till I go home for a much-needed break. One more level before I finally get the full Australian Kodaly Certification I've been working on for two years.

In more than one way, I'm almost home. And it's a good feeling.

Wednesdays with Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: Pizza Pizza!

I've been absent from my blog for a looooong time - most of this is due to life throwing up a lot of busy-busy-busy with very little time to do any jewellery or creativeness that way. Well, that and I've been travelling - this time, I've just come back from Vietnam - Hanoi to be exact! A few of us in the choir I sing with travelled there at the invitation of the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra to sing in a huge-scale celebration of Hanoi's 1000th birthday. The repertoire was Mahler's 8th Symphony, nicknamed 'The Symphony of a Thousand', making it particularly fitting (and challenging, but that's another blog post altogether. Hanoi deserves one of its own.)

The week before I left for Hanoi however, Shauna of Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef blog mentioned something very exciting - Wednesdays cooking from her new book, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. If you don't know who Shauna is, she is one of the most inspirational people in the food blogging world that I know of. She's spunky, caring, innovative, and she's been one of the biggest influences in my life as far as being able to survive gluten-free goes.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get hold of her book yet so I wasn't sure I was going to be able to take part in the Wednesday cooking sessions, and left it at that. However, thanks to Michael Ruhlman's interview with Carol Blymire of 'Alinea at Home' and 'French Laundry at Home' fame, I -was- able to participate in this week's Wednesday - baking pizza!

This is -me- of course, so I -had- to run into problems first reading of the recipe. Corn flour. Now...here in Malaysia, that's what I call corn starch. But corn starch had already been mentioned in the recipe so I was pretty sure that wasn't what was being asked for. A bit of slightly confusing research drew up an article that mentioned Southern cooking and the silky smooth flour made from finely-ground corn meal. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. That helped.

Except I didn't have any of that, and the nearest thing to hand was maize meal, rather coarse-ground. To heck with it, I thought about it for a moment, then grabbed the maize meal, weighed it out on the rickety contraption that -calls- itself a manual kitchen scale but in reality should be more 'Cook's Domestic Torment', and went right ahead with the recipe.

By golly, it worked.



I am not the world's best photographer so the first shot I got of the pizza coming out of the oven is cringe-worthy (and I forgot I had a camera tripod). But I was far, far too excited to even think about proper photography at the time - I had PIZZA. Glorious, safe, pizza!

(Rolling dough into a circle, however - that's another story. The adage that anyone who can draw a freehand circle will make a good artist? LIES. -MY- circle looked like someone patched together a 2-year old's sense of geometry and mangled it with a Picasso perspective. Thankfully, that's got no bearing on the taste of it or I'd be in trouble by now.)

This morning, I got some better pictures of the project that hopefully do the recipe a bit more justice.





Notes:
1) I mixed up the entire batch of flour and realised that my small oven wouldn't contain a 10" crust, let alone anything bigger. So I halved it. I didn't need to do a thing to the recipe otherwise, apart from adding just a little more water to bind the dough properly when it was getting mixed together - and that likely because my measurement for the oil was a little off.

2) The dough was a bit wet and sticky to handle for rolling. When putting it between two sheets of parchment paper didn't work, I removed the top sheet of parchment paper and substituted it with plastic wrap instead. Once rolled out, I took the entire thing, parchment paper and all, and put it on my baking sheet as I don't have a pizza stone. I was afraid that not sprinkling the bottom with corn meal might make the whole thing stick, but as it turned out, I needn't have worried. The crust came off the parchment paper beautifully. I also will try rolling the dough out thinner and using a different flour to see if that makes any difference to overall texture; I might need to bake the crust for a bit longer to get it browner and crisper.


Taste-wise? FANTASTIC. I topped this crust with tomato puree, spinach, black pepper smoked pork strips, green apples and parmesan. The one remaining crust in the fridge is going to get eaten soon; perhaps I'll try roasted eggplant, home-made tomato sauce and bacon. Either way, I would make this again in a heartbeat. Thank you so much Shauna, for this beautiful recipe!