Funny only if you get it I lately lost a preposition; It hid, I thought, beneath my chair And angrily I cried “Perdition! Up from out of in under there.” Correctness is my vade mecum, And straggling phrases I abhor. And yet I wondered, “What should he come Up from out of in under for?” - “The Naughty Preposition”, Morris Bishop Unless How will we know who we were before unless we change? Testing again If I publish a post via SMS with M1’s Mobile Blogging service, the first sentence in that post becomes the post title. Okay… that’s no good for me… Test post. Test post. - This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone. Pledges His eyes widened with interest as I described the music for the short film I am making—of which its working title is The Connivance—should be like. “I like music that lifts you,” I said. “Like those electric guitar chords you heard a moment ago, or strings, or whatever. Music with moments that make the hair on your skin stand, and take you to some place else.” He nodded in earnest and added, haltingly, in English laced with dashes of his Burmese accent, that he’d love to write the music for the short film, echoing two similar pledges made to me by two other facilities. “You have our support,” they had all simply said. I had decided, long ago, the editor who I want to be cutting the story, the director of photography lensing the film, the line producers running the production, the production designer breathing character into the sets, and another musician painting the soundscape of the film. To have heard this composer volunteer himself touched me deeply, because his gesture implied the trust he has in me as a peer. Funnily, the musician had added ‘If you don’t mind…” before his pledge. Of course I do not mind. Having the blessings of so many gifted individuals in the industry to collaborate on this personal project of mine, I can only be grateful for their enthusiasm, and look forward with baited breath to the alchemy that I am sure will happen, come October or so. The glass wall What they do not see as they sit at their table feeding each other silences is the glass wall between them. Above his sandwich and her bangers and mash it towers, clear but impenetrable, two years high and two years thick. “You know what our problem is? We are too complicated for our own good. There is no simple joy, no simple pain. And we like to bear the price for being complicated like a cross on our backs.” She nods immediately in agreement, so fast that it takes him by surprise. The lost whisper “I have to be leaving. But I won’t let that come between us, okay?” “Okay.” The sheltering sky Sometimes I feel so small, so insignificant, so… humbled. This is one of the last pictures I took with my cellphone before I retired it. For the rooms Can you hear their heartbeats? Can you feel the heat of their bodies, their desires? Can you comprehend the loneliness? The ride They sat side by side in silence as their taxi cab sped to the first of the two destinations. Hers, then his. Funny how it seemed all the traffic lights were consorting against him when it was now that he most wanted his time alone with her to stretch for as long as possible. Harsh, clinical fluorescent light spilled into the vehicle. He squinted and leaned his head back, his eyes tearing from the intensity. Yet the dance of those lights, horizontal streaks of bright white, red, green and yellow, mesmerized him so much he continued to watch with a squint. He wondered if she was looking at the same thing. He turned to look at her and found her looking back at him. Now, the cab was traversing past another neighborhood. The only lights which remained were the yellow lights that lined the quiet road. He stirred in his seat. He felt his heart swell. Every minute that he agonized over the singular thought in his head was a minute closer to her destination, a minute lost. Then the moment will pass and will be forever lost. Right then, as if the forces of nature had somehow decided to conspire with him, a light turned red. It has to be now… As the engine idled, he searched her face again. She looked away. But she was still smiling. He turned away and fixed his gaze at the passing landscape. Even so, he could feel that her eyes were now upon him. It was his turn to smile as he chuckled in his heart at this cat-and-mouse game they had been playing ever since they first met. They were two persons engaged in a dance of subtleties, stepping gingerly back and forth as they toed an imaginary line they knew not to cross, even as they were bursting with desires. A shared language He painted with his hands the emotions he found no words worthy enough of, and her body was the canvas onto which he painstakingly colored in slow, languid strokes. In reciprocity she responded to all that he did not have to express by closing the space between them. ‘I have words,’ said his touch. ‘But I’d much rather talk with my hands.’ ‘I quite like that language,’ said her body as she pressed herself into him. The cloak She slides lower into the safety of her rattan chair and hugs her legs tighter. The clock ticks the first minute of the fifth hour. The flow of words has ceased. In the void of a conversation writhing in the last throes of its life as the sinewy fingers of sleep wrap themselves tighter around its jugular, only stale cigarette smoke and cautious intent hang in the air. The prince of darkness, a jet-black crow, lands and perches ominously on the edge of her chair. With a pit-less stare it surveys, with neither prejudice nor malice, the tragedy of the two persons in the room and decides it has to mete the only function its presence serves. The cloak is spread. Like a blossom decaying, it begins to wrap around her small body, announcing as its feathered edges lightly scratch on her fair thighs that innocence has seen its last light and that the first phase of darkness has already been set in motion. His favorite piece Like a fly on the wall, he sat in a corner, unnoticed, and watched as she went about getting dressed to head out. The aroma of the shower she has just had wafted into the small, sparsely-decorated room; tamarind and lemongrass, evoking recollection of both past travels and past occasions in which he had been in the closest of proximity to her. She stood before her drawer of intimate wear, unsure of what she should choose. A creasing of her brows, a pouting of her lips as she weighted a flurry of options concerning color and cut and combination in the way only a woman could and would. Options tried and rejected were carelessly flung onto the bed. Once more, she turned to the considerable array in the drawer, her hands triangulating the spot on the small of her back he knew intimately, that spot of promise and desire and appetite. Then she slipped on the piece he adored, smiling as she made up her mind, that in one way or another, she would see him later that night and surprise him with it. 無底洞 無底洞 - 蔡健雅 曲︰黃韻仁 詞︰小寒 編︰黃韻仁／蔡健雅 有時寂寞太沉重　身邊彷彿只是觀眾 你的感受沒有人懂 難得誰自告奮勇　體貼讓人格外感動 愛上他前後用不到一分鐘 嘿　回想戀情的內容 有誰想過有始有終 不過是一時脆弱讓人放縱 穿梭一段又另一段感情中 愛為何總填不滿　又掏不空 很快就風起雲湧 人類的心是個無底洞 嘗試親吻嘗試擁抱或溝通 沒有好感　再嘗試也沒有用 大多數人都相同 喜歡的只是愛情的臉孔 沒有誰背後慫恿　不該愛又愛的衝動 是你害怕孤單而拼命補充 很快就風起雲湧 人類的心是個無底洞 Friday night lights Quietly the black cat with the stubby knot of a tail and the emerald eyes strolled up to him and sat at his feet. It lifted its head to look at him, and held its gaze. They both blinked. He smiled in acknowledgement and turned his attention back to the scribbling on the page. A thread wove itself into the web of story arcs, characterizations and plot lines in his mind and, for a moment, he forgot about the cat. When he looked up again from his notebook, the cat was no longer anywhere in sight, a shadow assimilated into the darkness, away from the probing Friday night lights. Like the birth of a new dawn I see the faces, people and places Burn up the night, and fade to grey Walking on water, dancing on wire, Hang on the edge and don’t look down I’m on the outside, wide open spaces Searching for time, to hold on to Into the daylight, your revelation Cuts like a knife, then breaks on through Hold on to this To dream is a gift To love is divine and I won’t bring you down Hold on to me To dream is to be To live is to shine and I won’t bring you down - Hold On To Me, Armin Van Buuren featuring Audrey Gallagher, from the album Imagine. Night Disembodied words on a screen, piercingly bright in the dark. Late night cab rides, traversing wastelands and neighborhoods in slumber. No traffic, no pedestrians, no nothing. Only him, a lone figure on the streets in the still of the night, as he impatiently makes his way to hers. To see her. Hold her. Like a specter, he does not exist by day. Like the shadows he is so acquainted with, he comes out only at night. He can only come out at night. In a trance A gray afternoon, the pale clouds above portending a storm. Sitting at a Starbucks, on an assignment, waiting for the sky to break. Listening to Armin van Buuren’s Imagine album. Bliss. Sharon Den Adel’s voice is cathartic. Finding endurance “Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig up a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble. “In other words, let’s face it: life is basically unfair. But, even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness.” - Haruki Murakami, The Running Novelist: Learning How to Go the Distance, The New Yorker, The Summer Fiction Issue Some thoughts on writing Is there such a thing as method writing, the equivalent to method acting? Entering the zone and becoming the character?   Every time I write, I die a little. Like liver spots, like freckles, these ink blots on my hands, my fingers, are reminders that tranquility is merely a surface.   Words are aphrodisiacs, best served as double entendres. A certain distance Seated beneath the huge tent by the river bank, he nursed his pint and quietly soaked in his surroundings. Against a backdrop of colonial buildings juxtaposed with phallic statements of modernity, a jackhammer furiously chipped away at the old somewhere in the distance. On the rippling, shimmering river, a boat trudged along. One of its two occupants, the one perched at its bow, took a swig of water, the net he was using to dredge litter momentarily forgotten. The Italians at the next table spoke passionately about the finer points of living in a different city, and often made references and viewpoints about the one they were currently visiting. He thought it strange how he could always grasp the gist of a conversation even if he did not speak the language. Their gestures, expressions and postures spoke a language unheard by the oblivious. Two Americans, patrons of the neighboring restaurant, talked business discreetly at the next table separated by the row of planter boxes between them and him. Americans at a Continental restaurant, Italians at an American sports bar. The contrast was not lost on him. Two scenes of culture fusion that was further reinforced by the presence of a table he observed some distance away, a table of different colors and creed. Watching people at a certain distance gave him a sense of tranquility, for it was when doing so that he felt he could clearly gaze into the murky depths of the human psyche and see others as they truly were, which, with a dash of cosmic karma combined with prescience, made them mirrors into which he saw himself. And her. And the certain distance that existed between them. Still, taboo, societal obligations and responsibilities notwithstanding, he reveled in the comfort of the familiar sights before his eyes. Nested in the embrace of that idyllic work-day afternoon, there was nowhere else he would rather be. Except to be inside her. The connivance Around them, tables of on-the-block men—the bourgeois sort that he abhorred and had no wish to be in the proximity of right then or at any other time—nursed their beers as they cussed freely in Hokkien about what seemed to be an infinite list of grievances, the volume in which they raised their voices made their intentions clear that they were not conversing so much as they were simply ranting and hammering home the points they were trying to make. If there were any. The din around them cut the silence which now floated between him and her. She leveled a searching gaze at him, a gaze he averted. His eyes sought out what was on the table. The meal has been finished long ago, the ice cubes in the six sweating plastic cups diluting what little there was left in their drinks. Condensation flowed freely in little streams across the formica table top. Without their knowing it, two hours had passed, during which they talked about a great deal of everything and anything. Now, as the clock on the wall signaled the first hour of the morning, an overdue closure manifested in the silence between them. Her hands were clasped. Slowly and without thought, she caressed her left thumb with her other as she waited. Finally she spoke. “This wasn’t just about supper, was it?” “No.” When he finally looked up at her, it was with part defiance and part torment. “I want you,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. Her eyelids lowered for the briefest moment, fleeting and light like the flinching of her shoulders he caught in that instant. She parted her lips but no words came forth. But what she did not say immediately was communicated with her eyes. The fiery sharpness in her eyes, the very thing about them that had drawn him to her, was slowly eroding as the seconds ticked by, giving way to a conflict that was further compounded by the honesty in his. All that had transpired in the fortnight between them now hinged on that one moment. In the discreet exchange of text messages that had begun after a mutual acknowledgment of the impression he had left her and vice versa, to the clandestine rendezvous they had arranged in the online back alleys of the instant-messaging world, all that they had hinted at, subconsciously or designed, spoke of their shared curiosity about one another and the latent attraction they had confessed they felt for the other. And in the tempest of lust and desire they had found themselves being swept into by recent circumstance, he sought to deem the arrangement they had implicitly allowed themselves to enter into as merely a means to an end, the quenching of a thirst, and that she thought the same. But the fact that he could very well be wrong only underscored the bluntness of the declaration he made moments ago with a clear and present risk of abrogation to the delicate circle of mutual friends they shared, let alone their budding friendship, in the wake of such an indiscretion if it was ever discovered. He found himself unwittingly frowning as he grappled with those thoughts. For a while his attention was robbed, and it was only when he returned his gaze to her that he saw the ambiguous smile slowly forming on her lips. Whether it was of hesitation or of connivance, he could not immediately tell. It was only later, when he had walked her to her block and they were about to part, when she gave him her reply. “Yes,” he repeated softly to himself. “It’s still early…” The smile Empty tables My head to the wall Watching gray clouds roll Traffic pass Thinking Recalling Eliminating The smile, just as fleeting Impossible the audacity The words The act Impossible to forget  The bristling on your skin You have felt it all morning. From the moment at daybreak when you carefully slipped those articles of clothing on and admired in the mirror the way they looked on you. How invincible, how empowered you felt. With every movement you make, the bristling you feel on your skin reminds you of your state of nakedness beneath those black-and-grays. How little the black lace covered. How its intricate patterns and lightness feel so good in all the right places. And you smile as you walk in the mid-day sun, falling behind your regular lunch companions as you suddenly remember last night. Then, she, the one you gossiped and shopped and bitched with, asks why you are smiling, and you, being caught, only shake your head and laugh it off, saying it is nothing. As you fall in step, you feel it on your skin once again. But this time you cannot bring yourself to smile. Because, for now, or perhaps for ever, the bristling you feel on your skin is as close as you can get. “And I want to tell you.” After what seems to be an interminable amount of time, I have finally hit on a story I want to make into a short film. The last time I felt I had something to work with was six years ago, but I was unable to due to a lack of funding. It is about time. For everything there is a season “It gives you life, but you can’t hold on to it. You can’t breathe indefinitely. We need to surrender to the fact that all efforts at permanence are hopeless. No structure we can build will protect us from the contingencies of life. But in the midst of that impermanence is the incredible gift of life.” For everything there is a season, And a time for every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to throw away stones, And a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to seek, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to throw away; A time to tear, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate, A time for war, and a time for peace. - Ecclesiaste In the tempest It is only in moments like this, when darkness sweeps over the heart and cloaks the eyes, that I feel I am truly free to create, that only in the tempest of the mind can fact and fiction truly blur without causing collateral damage to the us in the physical, the lesser world. I am reaching far deep into myself once again to wake the demons. I am sorry. It is something I have to do. Truthfully It has been a really bad week both on the work front and and the personal front. Like a slap in the face, the events that had unfolded earlier this week only served as a hard and sobering reminder that I am far from what I want to be. Then, there is you. You, who I have yet to be all that I can be. I wish I could extricate myself from this rut. But every time I try to do so, I get sucked back into the vortex of fears and doubts, and I become only half the man I am. What if I am utimately lesser than all that you think I can be? What then? Red pill or blue pill? This blog has turned five years old. In all that time, I had maintained a policy of anonymity save for the few times I had gone for blogger meet-ups, most of which happened mostly in 2004 and 2005. Unless you had met me then, it is very unlikely you would know what my name is, what I look like or know my circle of industry or personal friends. Now, as the lines between online life and real life are beginning to blur, I am wondering if it would be less of a headache if I simply revealed myself. Even as I am typing this, I am agonizing over the decision of whether to submit for a call-for-entry my photography works as Tetanus or as myself. The Catch-22 is that, if I submit these works as myself, any one who has seen them on this blog will know who I am. But if I use my real name, it will not be difficult for the people who know me in real life and from whom I have kept my online identity a secret to discover my blog, and I will lose a fair bit of liberty to speak freely. Decisions, decisions… Random thoughts Random thoughts born out of casual observations made while on a routine, daily commute and, later, on a walkabout in a shopping mall… 1. People who obliviously stand on the right of the escalator should be cursed to fall and break their legs in sixteen parts. 2. I’ve come to the conclusion that people who shuffle and drag their feet have absolutely no business with me, past, present and future. You can guess more of a person’s character just by the way he or she walks—and hence the way he or she carries herself—even if everything else is meant to advertise a different message. 3. I think kids are getting it on at an earlier age these days, if I have read correctly the body language of the youngsters on the train I was observing. 4. The color hot pink has no place on lingerie. Consequently, looking at its window display, La Senza will continue to not have a customer in me as I look for something for my girl, because hot pink does not exactly scream ‘turn on’. 5. A man should not be holding on to hand bouquets. A huge, fuck-off bouquet that doesn’t scream “I have no taste, which is why I let the florist decide for me the tacky arrangement I’m holding now”, yes. A hand bouquet of questionable artistic direction, no. Never. 6. A man should also not turn the collar of his polo tee upwards. Just because every other man does it does not mean it looks good. It looks stupid, not cool, contrary to what you sincerely believe. Stupid begets stupid, stupid. Snap out of it. 7. On a related note: girls, the more you make yourself fashionable, the more you are actually conforming. Let your individuality breath, will you? 8. Sadly, too many women do not how how to balance, let alone stride, in heels. Tits up, shoulders back, ass out. If you are so conscious, stick to flats. 9. I do not understand the attractiveness of children. I am glad my girl is on the same page for this one. 10. With points #4 to #8, I am beginning to sound very gay…