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Jonah’s Song

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; All your waves and breakers have swept over me. Ps 42:7

In the humid jungle my thoughts are silenced by the steady flow of mountain water spilling over cliffs on every side. We stand witness at the bottom of a funnel to the heavens. I have been here once before,

in the middle of the desert, scaling wind-carved monuments swathed in ephemeral sand. Giving sand, forgiving sand. The night-soaked dunes rise and sink beneath my feet. A sea of saturated stars. I think of the prophet in the fish

in the belly of the ocean, running till surrender at the edifice of dawn. Some days, I want to run till submersion in deep forgotten grace. What can cradle my all-incessant longing, this groaning earthsong? I dream of waves. Fearful, hopeful, wonderful waves.

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August goes with surprising alacrity

August goes with surprising alacrity, and suddenly we are left with four months short of another done year.

'This time last year', passers-by lament, tethering memories to themselves with nostalgia. This time last year, we were making inevitable plans.

I am good at making plans. But this waiting frustrates me, and I do not know how to number my impatience for these in-between-times, these in-between-things.

So I start a collection of countable things. Two hundred strokes to lap the reservoir, eight semi-crochets in a piano sonata, three eggs cracked into choux pastry.

Then I make batches of pastry cream, send a letter, read a book. Some days, doing the necessary means nothing more than lying on the grass as the sunlight goes.

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terap

Every so often, life in the city is fighting to breathe in beauty. Once, on a whim and with an hour to spare, I waited for the dying sun to render grace. Head propped back on arm, the mere act of stretching out on a wooden park bench felt like some form of quiet rebellion. Fittingly, it was without much fanfare that the show began: spiderweb-light flung graciously over the canopy of a terap tree, the last gift of the waning day; velvet seconds dipping the broad oval leaves translucent enough to reveal every vein. Under the golden-green patchwork quilt lay I, sole witness to this ephemeral concert on the age old hilltop fort. I find myself suddenly buoyed by an unsung insouciance. Here it is, a gentle chiding and resetting, that what I consider luxury is perhaps after all necessity. The city's best kept secret is this - a cloud strewn sky is superior company.

Mar 2020

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A young director makes a film

On Funan, a film set in the Khmer Rouge regime, directed by Denis Do, produced by Les Films d’Ici. Winner of Cristal du long métrage at Annecy International Animation Film Festival (2018)

When exile is in your blood, it is inevitable that your work should be informed of it. This is how it begins - as your only way of participating in past family lore. Over time, of course, it becomes a homage to your mother's tenacity and her first love's courage, then a gift of closure to your older brother, who you suspect has never quite forgiven his father for dying to give them life away from the despotic rule of a ravenous regime. You did not grow up knowing the sweet juice of mangoes in perpetual heat, yet the paddy and pepper fields flourish unbidden under your pen and paper, and perhaps, perhaps this is reconciliation calling from beyond an unmarked rainforest grave. Because here are the repercussions: you cross the ocean to where your brother cannot bear to set foot again. You seek out animators and artists, young men and women who in a gentler world could have been your childhood playmates. They tease the story in your heart to life and bring colour to a world they know, drawn from your visiting eyes. The slow unfolding of one family's history into two dimensional animation is unexpectedly healing for them, too. After all, these threads are ravelled around the notes of sorrow in their mothers' cooking, could well be the reason why their grandfathers never sing. In the end, the film premieres in your mother tongue. Behind every line is your mother's tongue, echoing in a subtle double, for now only audible to your ears. Civil war, let alone civil war in the ochre tones of a cursive script, is not easy to sell. But at a film festival you overhear a girl, her heart half lost behind this same history blocked by bloody walls, half sprouted from this country you both call home, call home. Tears in her voice, she apologizes for all the stories she has never heard. Some lives are too horror-bound to be put into words, even in explanation to your own children. In this sun-soaked lakeside city, your film will go on to clinch the highest accolades. For you, though, the best prize is the mountain breeze coming in from empires east. It carries pride and love softly twined into a breath, a whisper from the indomitable fallen, who will not yet be forgotten. You too, far-born child, you too are family.

Apr 2020

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Here are the things that will always be yours

March 2020

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gare de lyon part dieu

We were still walking, parallel movements on opposite quays. You must have been pretending to be looking for your carriage, too; at least, that's how I have since placed the vague sense of good humour that still tinges the memory. In reality, you were on the other side of the rails as a concession to recent security measures blocking off platforms with departing trains. What I remember though is the moment I looked back along the tracks. With a sudden rattling whoosh the train cuts across the space in between us. The slight amount of prescience had gained me just enough time to catch a last unfettered glimpse of your surprised, laughing face, your alacrity at this unexpected ending. Pushed around by hasty bodies, I board, checking intermittently on your scrutiny of the carriage you thought I was in. I wave, at first discreetly, then pointedly, as I try to draw your eye. I almost think I succeed several times. But your eyes never quite find mine through the clouded window panes, and as the train callously pulls away from the station, I am left overwhelmed by fatigue.

March 2020, on notes from October 2018

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On the addictive nature of the cusp of friendship

Have I told you that lately, I have been finding a taste for catching your gaze from across the room? I used to notice it too, back when we were barely acquaintances - how uncannily often you were looking back. You might tell me you never remarked on it. So be it. Maybe you were just quick to react to that gut feeling of someone's regard brushing over you. In poetic moods I might like to think of it as two souls blinking languidly at each other in moments where greater familiarity would have bred inside jokes and camaraderie. Or maybe it is a weighing and waiting, until a certain understanding of friendship can be ascertained. Once, I made an almost offhand remark as you drove, something to the effect of my not being quite able to get a read on you. Perhaps this delight in the softened edges of your too serious eyes comes from better gauging, at least, what would make you laugh. - Sept 2019

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mee hoon kuey

A little after I drop by for a midweek lunch at my grandma's, two of her multitude of younger siblings descend one after another upon her flat. Mildly surprised to see a visitor already present, they inevitably ask her in a rapid-fire Hokkien I can barely follow, 'this one is which one?'. The red packets for the many Chinese New Years past being customarily bestowed when my horde of cousins are present, I suspect without rancour that to them we are merely legion. After all, I would sheepishly avow that I too am quite unable to correctly enumerate my granduncles - the one who went on a walk with a mixed pair of shoes after a quarrel with his wife could be either number 3 or number 5, the newly minted grandpa would be either 6 or 7...

For a moment I hesitate, unsure if they would be able to place me by my name, or if I should be identifying myself as my mother's child. The privilege of being her first born grandchild rears again its mighty head when my grandma in response shouts my childhood nickname from the kitchen, where she is already cooking up a second storm. Whereupon they immediately find the resemblance with the young girl they knew some thirty years ago, who must have been halfway through her PhD then, dating my gangling big-spectacled father. I pull out my well-honed reply to this pleasantry oft remarked upon by all and sundry, 'Of course look like lah, she give birth one what'. In the next few moments, after establishing that yes I have graduated from university and that yes I have been working for a year and that no I do not have a boyfriend, they are now astonished at how much I not only look like my mother, but talk like her too.

At this juncture my grandma declares that their lunch is ready. She had grumpily told me this morning as she busied herself in the kitchen, ever the long suffering older sister, that some of her younger siblings had telephoned that morning to make a request for lunchtime mee hoon kuey. “But don’t care about them, we eat first”, as she conspiratorially doled out what was evidently not mee hoon kuey onto my plate, “they can eat their mee hoon kuey, we eat our rice”.

Back in the present where we are setting the table, my grandaunt sidelines to me that this is The Childhood Dish, cheaper than rice, easy to feed a hungry horde of 12 younger siblings with. The unspoken second half of the sentence is not lost on me: when your mother is out gambling and your father is out working, your older sister has to single-handedly raise you with a certain ingenuity. My granduncle affirms this by pulling out his phone and showing me the name of their WhatsApp group, containing their whole brood - bar my illiterate grandma, who only uses the handphone her children have bought her to take blurry photos of roadside flowers. Zhang family mee hoon kuey, I read, with an emoticon thrown in to boot. My granduncle takes up his chopsticks, proudly declaring, “that is the Group Name for our generation!”. He inquires if my one brother and I have a Group Name too, for our generation. No, I tell him, not quite sure if he is poking fun, we do not. A mildly chiding “hmmm” is the only reply I receive as he slurps up the cherished pieces of dough.

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ten polaroids on my wall, as if faded light dissipates slower. - Apr 2019

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Evening at Dakota Crescent

The tired troupe of giants surround a single fig tree, arched over a cool-tiled playground. Anachronistic floor-to-ceiling shutters colour every block a wooden textured pastel. Rust colonizes many a locked off stairwell. These visible marks of passing time in an estate due to be demolished

are arresting with relief. In a country where peeling walls are ever vanquished with relentless paint, we have

not learned the art of buildings growing old. Our sea is an endless hourglass of dredged up sand. Below moist earth, protected streams are slowly tunnelled dry. We plan dikes. Our beetles dwindle. Only drowned buildings will survive.

- December 2019 Most Singaporeans live in public housing owned by the government, with older blocks being demolished to give way to higher ones and existing blocks regularly updated with paint and other maintenance works. A new Cross Island MRT line will soon be built that tunnels under a portion of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve, gaining 5km in commuter travel distance. In response to climate change, the prime minister has announced in his national day rally in 2019 that the government is studying the building of sea dikes along the East Coast area. Much of our land is already reclaimed, primarily with sand bought from neighbouring countries.

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after the rain

Today, the sun is a friend and the air pleasantly dry. Had it not been for the bamboo poles laden with the neighbourhood’s laundry lazily reappearing after the rain, I would have hazarded early spring. At the old fort by the sea, the wind chuckles in agreement, coercing whispers from the pong pong trees as he unfurls a thousand leafed dance. Days like this, my favourite pastime is making faces at strangers' babies, every reciprocal chortle I collect a delightful, uncomplicated conspiracy.

December 2019

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Grief at witching hour

Grief at witching hour is the tightening at the back of your throat when you burst into wakefulness. The heat that has incubated over the equatorial day sinks into the soft sea breeze, myriad whispers of shuffling rain trees broken by a lone cat's yowl. These days, you cannot quite call it overwhelming, this unexpected undercurrent of softened that-which-is-missing - manque - a complicated noun more readily retrieved in another tongue. Lapsed by too many monsoons, you abort it from speech with a silent hunch that even sympathy can run its course. In and out of sleep, over and under these cotton rice bags turned perfectly weighted blanket, love that cannot be held holds court. This night, you will allow your jolted heartbeat to still to an ephemeral presence, perhaps contained to dreamscapes, perhaps all alongside tangible skin.

Dec 2019

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Khao Sok National Park, Thailand

For days we leap, again and again, into the lake's warm love. We scavenge from ages past these surefooted sidesteps of conversation cascading, now profane, then profound. When the last rains descend, we drown in the certainty of camaraderie. Look now, how inevitably the fig tree sends her filaments down, sweeping the forgiving, nourishing, earth. I have missed the friendship of the open air, this quality of what is almost surprise in our sun dappled laughter.

Nov 2019

green grapes

Autumn, again. This is becoming tradition, I tell you, and I've had

quite enough of airport farewells and train station goodbyes.

We part ways under the pitter patter of rain

on a nondescript street corner, green grapes spilling out of my arms.

How absurd to want you so much and have you so rarely. I woke this morning

to sunlit shadows swaying across shutters, a flutter of piano keys. Yesterday's Vivaldi

still echoes achingly into some forgotten cobblestone square. I dare not measure

all the ways I will walk the year to come before October, and you again.

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what remains of a year

late spring When I missed the bus for the airport that passed only once an hour, you gallantly offered to carry my bags down the hill to the train station. Ten minutes later, the RER pulled up, and hand on luggage I paused, unsure of protocol when we were saying goodbye for the summer. 'Quand même', you smiled, shrugging - all the same, this easy phrase that I would come to miss when conversing in my mother tongue - and then leaned in to touch cheeks.

mid-winter The s in desert has a z sound and in dessert an s sound - it was perhaps in the school canteen, this conversation, where you thought for a while before finding the mnemonic - because desserts are sugary. Another time, leaning against the fridge, I complained that I could never tell if I was saying 'deux' or 'douze' when it went in front of a vowel. While you did the dishes, you found the phrase to repeat - 'two dozen eggs, deux douzaine d'oeufs'.

autumn The details of that inconsequential quarrel are gone now. What I remember was standing in front of your off white door, and how incredibly hard it was to knock. This, too - your eyes when you turned the doorknob and saw me. I couldn't get any work done, I blurted out, and the only thing I could do was clean. Your features collapsed into a relieved, rueful smile, and you gestured to a meticulously tidy desk that mirrored mine.

early summer Dusk settled over the lake and the fireflies danced out. With startled joy we ran down to the waterside, wanting childlike to be among them. In their slow hypnotic blinking, we were momentarily caught up in some web of mystic quietness. It's beautiful, you finally murmur, and I find myself nodding, forgetting the threatening rain, the crackling campfire, the soaked tent, and only breathing in this soft stolen wilderness.

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two minutes on buttes-chaumont

The cherry pits were steadily growing into a small stained hill on the park bench in Paris, when a gaggle of school boys with cock sure eyes stormed into our early summer afternoon calm. - Excusez moi, does my rose become me? (imperious demand issued from the leader, head tilted to showcase the deep red stemmed through his hair.) Once I parsed their rapid fire French, I turned back to you, prepared to continue our grown up conversation and ignore their games. But you laughed, all wind tousled gold: - no, it does not (in all considered seriousness) - but why? (brash boys, defensively now) - too long, it's too long (volleyed right back without missing a beat!) - ah, merci monsieur (with a satisfied sigh, as if you had bestowed some ancient wisdom...) His pack dissolved into giggles. We return to your thesis, to European politics, to what constitutes meaningful work. I carry in my heart a glad wonder that this season has been kind enough to you, for humour to flow so easily forth.

- Sept 2019

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La Normandie

I - Étretat Four bodies stretched out on cliff top sun watching distant gulls surf the channel wind, turning ferocious lines just to land. White arches sculpted by time still stand, every second giving something back to the sea. The dancing grass wave, unperturbed by the momentary dent we make. We leave laughter behind, and hope new flowers grow. II - Lessard et Le Chêne How do you know a place you've never seen? Yet stepping out into this farm morning my soul recognized kin. Three horses lumbered over to me, curious eyes, staccato snorts in late spring song. The sky is dotted gray with the promise of rain, but now, now I exult in the crisp far from city air, the fields and homesteads extending before me - dipping rising rolling land - this wooden fence, one lone willow tree, wide open spaces of grace.

III - Mont St Michel On the city walls, a seagull dives to steal my sandwich. There's a brief respite here on the rooftops, in the shadow of the abbey. Further, the abandoned rose garden house baby chirps that a thousand earth bound voices cannot possibly mask. A crow in the old hall swerves from window to window, watching curiously the tainted outside light. We joke that he too, is taking a sabbatical from the world. Impervious to the shifting sand and the marshes, these sky borne pilgrims come and go. And still the tide breathes a thousand new landscapes, guided by the soft hands of the moon. IV - Saint Laurent sur Mer The inexhaustible packet of chocolates makes yet another round, downed with a lone beer warmed by four breaths. Here where my eyes are tired from too much road, we wait on the man pushing a yellow boat away from the shore, wait on a shaggy white dog retrieving an old log from the surf, wait on our footsteps disappearing under broken crab shells. My soul is full, I think, and ready to let go again. The salt balm sea has washed out the lingering bitterness of always being too far from someone I love.

- June 2019

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