i’m amused at how world-weary i assumed myself to be at 23. in my early 20s, or even my teens, there was such a firm confidence in my maturity. i felt old. i felt like i’d experienced all that life could offer. i felt blasé.
at 31 i think of myself mostly a child. just yesterday i fell while trying to tightrope walk on a tree root. just last week i felt inchoate, dwarfed by the presence of nature vast and ancient as i’ve never encountered.
how was i so certain – about myself, my thoughts, and the end of novelty – when i had yet to have a snowflake melt on my palm?
yet there is no condescension when i face my age-young self. i was, perhaps, truly old in some ways. in relation too, in context of. i admire my earnest commitment to beliefs i had no way of verifying. today i am fenced by the sole certainty that an absolute truth is often out of reach, or perhaps requires far more courage and effort than the lethargy of my intellectual cowardice can rattle into being.
that aside,
my modest little epiphany is that feeling your age has nothing to do with the linear progression of time and years.
i enjoy today my infant-like wonder at the world, and my hope that there is more to discover.
maybe tomorrow some of that old-young bravado will re-emerge, and i will again assert this and that, wanting a better world that i deem to have explored to its ends.
Flew across glacial mountains, back home to Singapore, just a tad changed. Where do I begin to describe the magic that was New Zealand? As the last large habitable land touched by mankind, there is a specialness to the space. Am I naïve to claim it remains less sullied than any other parts of the world I have experienced?
Queenstown, backyard of our hotel. The crisp air and quiet waters. Here we had a cup of coffee, starting our pleasurable habit of seeking comfort in a hot beverage in the near zero weather.
I particularly love this about NZ. At any time, your vision is framed by vast nature; postcard perfect yet unassuming. It does not fight for your attention, it simply and confidently is, as natural as nature is land and sky and sea.
The day we were joined by friends and their tots, departing Queenstown on a cruise to Lake Wakatipu.
You don’t mind at all the chill and its harsh kiss on your cheeks as the ship pulls against the wind. At a little farm we marveled at sheepdogs’ professionalism, speeding off to stare down their eponymous wooly pals into submission.
We watch the kids skip stones, tumble down hills, collect pinecones for first snowman. We doodle ships and landscapes on the journey back to land.
Departing to Wanaka, K and I spent some cozy nights under heated blankets in a little hut, rising early to drive up winding mountains towards their caps of snow. Daft Punk’s Giorgio by Moroder on repeat.
Skiing. That familiar routine of wake; drive; squeeze into boots and helmet and goggles and gear, duck walking in pain and snow; ski, lift, ski, lift; lunch and cider (maybe two); ski, lift, ski, lift; some tears and tantrums in between (mine and the kids’). You end the ski day at 4pm deeply satisfied: you have done so much and earned any indulgence that may come after (and there is still many hours left to the day!)
How much more perfect can it be? On our days off-skis, K and I (and the rest of our gang) took hikes, one of our favorite activities together as a couple.
We went on Routeburn trail near Glenorchy, a fairytale path of moss green even in the winter frost. An easy, serene route, friendly enough for the whole family. We slipped under a bridge and waved to a family across the lake.
On another day, there was Meg’s trail, a sunset hike we took sans kids. The kind of trek up that is thoroughly my joy, a little burn to thighs as you push against gravity. I relished particularly our little puzzles across streams: it is horizontal bouldering if you have shorts legs like I do.
It hits me today that everywhere there is quiet from man-made mechanical noise. There is the wind rustling flora, whisper of a hare’s hop, myriad song of birds, and a shout from the kids, but not much else, as it should be. The quiet is a big factor to the peace I found there, sensitive as I am to noise.
We moved southward to Cardrona, kickstarting the most precious phase of our trip: living in a homestead with our friends and the tots.
The space and backyard is immaculately laid out to facilitate tranquility. Hot tea with a view that runs for miles, snowcapped mountains foregrounded by undulating hillscapes.
Everyday, some form of chaos and adventure, never unwelcome. Every night, grilling dinner by the fire we made, sipping wine, sitting on the comfiest foldable chairs (and falling through all three of them), nodding off to the warmth at the hearth.
One night, a dinner whipped up by the lovely homestead owners. Possibly the best roasted potatoes I’ve had, definitely the best potato cheese soup I’ve had. In fact, everything from the steak to grilled greens were excellent, excellent, excellent. If one could eat like a king, this is the definition of it.
Other days, lunches and dinners out at, really, the only hotel bar & restaurant in the area. The kids getting their knees muddy at the playground while we dig into loaded wedges, alfresco, in 2°C. Sometimes with a nice cocktail.
Entertainment all around the clock, with ‘good morNINGs’, ‘big pasta!’, gathering a ridiculous amount of branches, an entire world map drawn with newly-charred branch by the hearth.
Oh, New Zealand, you have been wonderful. Something about your air and land and waters spoke so deeply to me. The serenity, the idyllic and content, the slowness, the lack of pretense and lack of need to be so. The walks and hikes, mud and dust a-flying. The crunch of snow beneath my boots, powder and windstorm. I thank you for all these memories.
Northward, a different land, a sea-mirrored twin. Dreams of triumph roil these waters a thousand years after our hero first breathed life into shells: iridescent white-pink conches, winking slyly, reborn bones of a foe once buried.
we shake rain dew off clear umbrellas, summer-drenched, and climbed atop a ragged-teeth boulder, like a hero once had.
later, i thought it must be here, the coast of death, that the dog’s tongue was stained. a rock snail gave its life to the discovery of purple. and so our hero bends a knee, his fingers dyed a bruised berry, while behind him a column of stone rises from the undulating coastline, a perpetual flame dancing in its belly.
One of those nights where sleeplessness was welcome. I felt again that sensation, wrapped within a dream, both somatic and cognitive: that contrast between what’s unbearably heavy and oppressively light.
Have you ever had one of those dream-not dreams? Not a chain of events, but a repetition of a feeling.
The first time I had this dream I was a child. The first and most vivid of all acceding instances. In it, I carried a large object — I will call it a boulder, although in my mind it had the incomparable largeness and weight of the perceivable world.
Bearing this weight, I walked door-to-door. I say that for as a metaphor. In the reality of the non-reality they were intervals of nothing. At each interval, I took from the boulder, each time I could only grasp and release a pinch. Each pinch was light as nothing, a down feather of a baby bird.
After the first dream, I have had frequent recurrences of this dream. Not as vivid but always, at the centre, that feeling. Not the heaviness nor the lightness, for when awake I carry sandbags and barbells above my weight, and have felt the slip of snowflake so inconsequential it dissolves on my palm.
No, it is that in-between, that contrast, the shock of nothing from everything, a down feather when I expected a boulder, that sticks with me.
The other night where I, in a rare state, welcomed sleeplessness, I felt that contrast, that discomfiting dissonance. Not in a dream but floating towards one. And after two decades of being called to this sensation in my sleep, it finally struck me the simplicity of what this meant. Or, let’s do away with maudlin needs to ascribe meaning. It struck me why and when I have these dreams.
When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, and when every action I take to address these stressors appear futile. Carrying the world, no amount of tasks ticked off is enough to complete what needs to be done.
This discovery, though, is less fascinating to me than that feeling of dissonance. It feels such a singular and isolating sensation that I’m not sure I share with anyone. The contrast of weight between boulder and feather.
Is to age to become so utterly, disgustingly trite? I am bored, bored, and BORED to near death by my boring preoccupations and thoughts. I do not want to think about: housing, children, and health.
I want to think about the immaterial, the fantastical, and the madness that is in every infinitesimal gap of every material thing.
I no longer want to be enraptured by these gormless pixels that so easily tell me what to do, think, buy, and say.
If only I can reach back to your times of most impatient loneliness and loneliest impatience. If only I can give you a hint that – as you rightly and defiantly believe – you do meet the one you have dreamt up ages ago and continue dreaming of.
All the times you feel unmoored: like life is moving forward but you merely floating, seeking a somewhere intangible and undefined. All the times you feel unknown to others. A profound aloneness. All the times you wonder what you must do to find or conjure this somewhere, something, or someone.
Is it dogged persistance? Hard work? Something about yourself to be changed or learnt?
No, Qing, you simply have to wait, intolerable as it is. Until your lives – floating, but towards each other – meet. Buoy to anchor.
One day, soon, he will be your universe. One day, you will write your vows to him and they will be the most truthful words you’ve spoken. One day, he will mean more to you than you do to yourself, a detachment of the ego and an attachment to love as you have always wanted.
He is a much gentler, kinder soul than you are, the sort you long to be. Good news! He brings a softness to your stubborn, prideful spirit, and you will want to be more and better for him; for what you bring into the world with him.
Dearest young baby Qing, there is one last piece of news I would bring you, if I could. You may not believe me, but hear it anyway: He loves you just as much as you do him. If you have ever feared your capacity to love (and you have!) … don’t. He has just as much to give, and wants all you have to offer.
As its title suggests, the novel is one of seeming paradoxes that come into focus as perfect parallels. Milan Kundera’s works are at once Brechtian yet decidedly romantic. The Unbearable Lightness is a concise testament to his literary style. The exposing of fictive and literary techniques; the non-chronological narrative placing the climax and ending ahead of its traditional time in a plot; the constant exposition of political ideas, beliefs about relationships, humans, love, life, death, and loss.
While the characters are moulded to be vehicles of Kundera’s exploration of themes / ideals, they are no less nuanced and complex – in fact, much more so – than a character in any other fictional work. Just as with Immortality, it is challenging to not identify and feel strongly for the fictive persons of Kundera’s imagination (borne of an image, a gesture, a sound, a feeling within himself) despite and because of their faults and very human-ness.
I am in love especially with an excerpt in the last page of this novel. You can say I’m pleasantly surprised at how melancholic yet romantic Kundera made the ending. It verges on kitsch, which most of the book expounded on (mostly against). Which makes it suspect as a deliberate and self-reflexive literary choice on the author’s part. After all, as Kundera himself believes, no one can escape kitsch.
She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.
I crossed into the year atop a hill, in 5°C, with only the rolling fields and hills in the horizon. There was no light but the moonlight; there was no one else but my two companions.
We watched the fireworks go off in Czech towns across the border – pinpricks of starlight bursting with a gentle pop-pop.
The rest of January is as it always is: full of family, friends, celebrations, drama… you know how it is.
This time, distinctively, full of art. Two museums in Wrocław, four in Munich, then an art gallery fair in Singapore. Getting to see Cy Twombly’s work up close; squeezing in a painting of my own; relishing the splendid memoir of Marina Abramović gifted by K’s mom; receiving a book on Basquiat from K himself.
For the rest of 2023, I want to keep this creative energy about me, and it may mean more travel, visits to galleries, downtime to harness art from free space.
I never understand when people said “This is my year.”
What does that mean? Every year is my year, just as it is not at all. I may own much of how it shapes up, but it is so easily and completely at the mercy of everything else too. 2020 is a perfect global reminder.
So 2023 is simply another year, a year in which I will grow; stagnate; take some steps back and some leaps forward. In which I will give and receive love; create art, dread some days, anticipate others. It is simply another year I keep on being. That is exciting, and enough.
Somewhere in the cusp of adulthood, I found my body.
Let me put it in finer terms. It was to realise that I could myself operate the material body I have been driven around in.
By then, I was acutely aware of my mind — how it worked; why, what I can do with it, and when I was powerless to it. It was in those moments of powerlessness that I discovered the body could be a machinery of escape. The first time it happened, I ran – literally – away from my mind and emotions. I took to running twice a week, then more, every other day, maybe more days a week than not.
As I ran, the rhythm carrying me forward and away, everything else peeled away. To think became a conscious effort, and I often ascribed a theme to each run: thinking about the future, a fantasy, a dream. There was no space for my mind to wander into the dark: all it took was to peddle my feet against the resistance of wind and soreness to bring myself back to the physical present.
I ran so much, and ran away from so much then. I was and am grateful for my body for providing that means of escape.
Years later, as I grew into myself, the engine of my mind spun voraciously. There was so much energy, always wanting more, seeking more, and it would not quiet. Then, I found HIIT. It was the perfect concentrated, potent dose of adrenaline I needed. To utterly exhaust myself through my body. With every burpee and squat jump, I pushed myself to go higher, faster — more than running I had no space for thoughts. My mind in the 45 minutes flattens its multiple threads to a single, focussed voice: go, more, higher, push.
I love HIIT, love the agility, the powerful bursts of energy my body is capable of giving, bigger and stronger each day.
Then COVID hit, and my lungs could no longer fill up like a balloon — my breath felt reedy, my body sluggish. I turned to yoga, which I had previously sworn to hate because it was ‘too slow’, ‘boring’. I couldn’t understand why my body, strong as it was, could not achieve a simple yoga pose, and why the way I did handstands out of brute strength was incorrect.
This time, though, yoga connected me (my mind) to not only my body, but the material space around me. I found myself moving, manoeuvring, and holding my body in ways I have never before. I stretched ancient muscles and learnt to be still. I observed that my balance is excellent, and my back flexibility extremely not. I noticed that I loathed stretching not because it was a bore, but because it was so painful for me (still is).
Outside of yoga classes, I now find acute control over my body, the same way I found agility and power in HIIT. More than that, it is not only in the momentary space of working out that I can distract myself from my ceaselessly unspooling thoughts. It is the practice of just. pausing, breathing, and letting it be, that has translated to my daily life outside of yoga.
Yoga grounds me.
You know what I will never succumb to though?
Spin. Not in a million years of rhabdo-infused pee will I fall into that cult, no thank you.
I have dreamt of you a hundred times since you left. A hundred different ways of you back home again, with us. In every one of these dreams, I’m ringing with joy — pure and uncomplicated.
I dreamt of you again, more realistic than ever. I wanted to ask why you left the convent, but was afraid asking might make you go back again. A hundred mornings of waking up to you silent and unreachable.
Are you happy? I don’t know if I want to know.
Once, our lives ran in perfect parallels. You lived two streets down from me. For six years through primary school, we were in the same class. We ended up in the same CCA, without machinations. We traded stories and sketches, what brought us together. Do you remember the endless well of games we thought up and played between everything?
We went to the same secondary school, took the same car together every morning, that 10 minutes wait standing with you by the road every weekday, without fail. We entered Drama together, took Japanese third language together.
We performed together, whenever we could. From Fungly-Mungly to Godot to CAP. I never found another person who can replicate the chemistry we had onstage.
C, you were the person I spent the most time with, from 7 to 16.
Even when we entered Uni, our lives taking different routes, relationships, and friends, we always found our way back to each other. The same Uni, your dorm a block away from mine. Taking Japanese Studies together. Remember the night we scaled the rooftop with G and D? Remember how G fell straight through a hole? “I hoard these moments in words online for us.”
For years, all the years that matter, you were by my side.
Now you are somewhere, doing something I have no way of knowing, maybe speaking another language. You have dedicated yourself to God, perhaps more and more so every year. And I have over the years gone from believing in the same God you do, to believing in a god not of our conception, to believing that maybe there are higher forces beyond our comprehension; to that there is nothing but the physical plane, evolution, and energy. That there is not only no god, but nothing after death. We are organic beings that cease consciousness and return to the earth. Once you stop fearing death, or what comes after, you stop needing a god.
Somewhere out there you are praying for my sins, praying that I too can join you in the paradise of your beliefs.
This is where we diverge: you sacrificed some of our time together on earth to have eternity together. I want nothing after death, and a bit more time with you on my transient, insignificant, and beautiful whisper of a life on earth.
Q 