She was a neighbour I never knew. Was she 30something? Or 20something? I don’t know. (My mother, the HDB detective, hears different ages from different neighbours, some of whom have put their 4D money where their mouth is.) What was her favourite song? What colour were her favourite shoes? What were her fantasies? I don’t know.
All I know is, civil defence was on the way – and still she jumped. Over Cheer Chen songs I am playing, I hear the wood clapper and funereal chant. Namo Amitabha.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
A crash-landing
Out of the blue, an ah soh who lives in the next block rang us this morning.
“Where’s your mommy?” she said, as aunties often do.
My father had picked up the phone, so he said, “My mommy? My mommy has been dead for a long time.”
But she had called with some serious news: Someone was dead at the foot of my block, someone who seemed to have jumped out a window.
My father and I walked from window to window in our home to see that someone for ourselves. What we saw, in the end, was bright red newly-spilled blood, a handful of policemen and the contours of a body – man? woman? young? older? it was impossible to tell – that the police had covered with white canvas.
I looked up and down the block, looking for an open window. Which home had he or she fallen from?
“It’s either the 5th floor or the 7th floor. Windows are wide open,” I said to my father.
He went to the next room to tell my mother, who had come out of the bathroom.
I stood at the window myself, feeling nothing. Then, the tears came. If indeed it was a suicide, how desperate had he or she been to think of jumping, then do it? The worst I wished for, the one time I was desperate, was a convenient car accident to end everything. I did not think of jumping, of actually, actively dying. I am sad for this someone. Namo Amitabha.
“Where’s your mommy?” she said, as aunties often do.
My father had picked up the phone, so he said, “My mommy? My mommy has been dead for a long time.”
But she had called with some serious news: Someone was dead at the foot of my block, someone who seemed to have jumped out a window.
My father and I walked from window to window in our home to see that someone for ourselves. What we saw, in the end, was bright red newly-spilled blood, a handful of policemen and the contours of a body – man? woman? young? older? it was impossible to tell – that the police had covered with white canvas.
I looked up and down the block, looking for an open window. Which home had he or she fallen from?
“It’s either the 5th floor or the 7th floor. Windows are wide open,” I said to my father.
He went to the next room to tell my mother, who had come out of the bathroom.
I stood at the window myself, feeling nothing. Then, the tears came. If indeed it was a suicide, how desperate had he or she been to think of jumping, then do it? The worst I wished for, the one time I was desperate, was a convenient car accident to end everything. I did not think of jumping, of actually, actively dying. I am sad for this someone. Namo Amitabha.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Truly deeply
The first time I heard of the D spot, I was probably still in primary school. There was some silly Taiwan cartoon about some silly monks which I watched with my brother and cousin and in it, there is an old monk teaching new monks how to breathe very, very deeply.
氣運丹田 – 深呼吸 –
So someone breathes in such depth, sucking in so much air from all around him into his nostrils, towards the dantian, that everything not nailed down flies to his face – including an older monk. Breathing with the D spot was no joke, that much I knew then.
When I was in the choir in secondary school, we were told to stand and sing with the dantian, never mind that we didn’t know where it was. Our teacher said it was the diaphragm. Or she might have said it was the abdomen. I did what I could with my stomach. And maybe my intestines.
In yoga school, I have been learning how to breathe deeply and the trick, I am told, is to leave the nose out of it.
Pinch a point at the base of the neck with the hand when you take a breath, my teacher says. Think that you are breathing in and out there. Your breaths should be a bit deeper, a bit lower, than when you were breathing in with the nose and out with the mouth. You should sound like Darth Vader. Keep breathing but without bodily heaving.
Lie down on a floor with the buttocks against the wall. Keep the legs closed and up on the wall. Breathe. Be here for about a minute.
Keeping the legs on the wall, open them sideways such that they look like a V. Keep breathing. Be here for about a minute.
Keeping the legs on the wall, lower them sideways such that you seem to sit on the wall with the soles kissing each other. Keep breathing. Your breaths are now so deep, so low, you seem to be inhaling and exhaling from somewhere far below your belly button, close to your pubic region?
You are breathing with your dantian now, my teacher announces.
Oh. Oooh. Well, watch out, world.
氣運丹田 – 深呼吸 –
So someone breathes in such depth, sucking in so much air from all around him into his nostrils, towards the dantian, that everything not nailed down flies to his face – including an older monk. Breathing with the D spot was no joke, that much I knew then.
When I was in the choir in secondary school, we were told to stand and sing with the dantian, never mind that we didn’t know where it was. Our teacher said it was the diaphragm. Or she might have said it was the abdomen. I did what I could with my stomach. And maybe my intestines.
In yoga school, I have been learning how to breathe deeply and the trick, I am told, is to leave the nose out of it.
Pinch a point at the base of the neck with the hand when you take a breath, my teacher says. Think that you are breathing in and out there. Your breaths should be a bit deeper, a bit lower, than when you were breathing in with the nose and out with the mouth. You should sound like Darth Vader. Keep breathing but without bodily heaving.
Lie down on a floor with the buttocks against the wall. Keep the legs closed and up on the wall. Breathe. Be here for about a minute.
Keeping the legs on the wall, open them sideways such that they look like a V. Keep breathing. Be here for about a minute.
Keeping the legs on the wall, lower them sideways such that you seem to sit on the wall with the soles kissing each other. Keep breathing. Your breaths are now so deep, so low, you seem to be inhaling and exhaling from somewhere far below your belly button, close to your pubic region?
You are breathing with your dantian now, my teacher announces.
Oh. Oooh. Well, watch out, world.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Life actually
At this large terminal we call life, someone is always arriving or departing. Others are on the way. Some of us are in transit, with an eye on VIP departures.
When Leslie departed (you know which Leslie), I made many calls to many friends just to wail, “Leslie died!”
When Christopher Reeve died, I SMSed Mr T. He was so shaken by the news, he took more than an hour to reply.
On Tuesday night, he called me to tell me, “Dana Reeve died.”
Poor Dana. She died of lung cancer, less than two years after Christopher died. I had happy news for Mr T though. Ms C’s baby boy has arrived, I said.
+ + +
Fortnights ago, we were tasked to pick the nicest picture of my mother from a pile my uncle had taken of her at his studio, which he would then enlarge. That’s about 20 photos of the same woman in the same I-got-it-at-OG-for-less-than-$40 blue kimono-style blouse. But to me, they were all different.
“You don’t look like you,” I said of one picture – and about 10 others.
“Why’s your smile so weird? All your grandkids will say, ‘Why’s Ah Mah’s mouth so weird?’” I said of another. (Ah Mah means paternal grandmother. Even in my hypothetical mentions of my mother’s hypothetical grandkids, I make them my brothers’ kids, not mine.)
She protested, “Your uncle and aunt kept telling me to smile wider.”
Okay okay.
My uncle had numbered the photos. So my picks were No.7 and No.11; my uncle and aunt’s picks were No.18, then No.7; my father’s pick was No.6.
In No.7, she has a soft smile, the smile I like, and is facing my left. In No.11, she has a similar smile and is facing my right. Her smile is even softer in No.6 (my father and I were on the same page, after all), except the picture is somewhat shadowy. In No.18, her beam is wide. She looks nothing like the woman we know.
As for my mother, her pick was No.13. I didn’t get it at first. But then I saw what she saw. Her half-smile here was the same as that in her old photos, when she was young, half-smiling and looking keenly ahead at someone or something off-camera – was it the future?
“You looked like this when you were 19, too,” I said.
“I’ve looked like this all of my life,” she said.
Many ah soh her age prepare nice pictures of themselves. Just in case. I might not have known what she was up to, had I not studied No.13.
+ + +
On Wednesday morning, I picked a nice Washington Post obituary of Dana for publication: the only one that told of the night she swam with Christopher at a pond, after a 10-day flirtation, and gave him their first kiss.
That afternoon, a good girl friend told me that she was pregnant.
That evening, in an old tradition of welcoming new arrivals to this world, Ms H and I went shopping for kid-sized stuff for Ms C’s boy.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Bookmarks
Sometimes a movie or a song works as a bookmark.
Maybe the movie, True Lies or whatever, didn't matter much to you when you were first watching it and it was the last day of the A Levels.
But catching the movie on cable years afterwards, it somehow takes you back to that page in your life. You remember that you were 18 and what a beautiful day it was and when the closing credits rolled - Sunshine Of Your Love comes rocking on and you run out with the song in your head and you run and run and run all the way to the MRT on some sort of adrenalin high. That song, that sunny day, that wide-necked top, those too-tight jeans. You really remember. You even remember that the next day, you were wearing the same clothing when you went and sat for the SAT and there was an American boy, with a head of cute curly hair, who smiled at you.
So you are still watching the movie - "Arnie, hasn't he always been hotter than Sly?" you say to no one - and you have cranked up the volume as you wait for your song. But just as the song comes on, the tot next door calls to you. So you go to the door, bouncing up and down to Sunshine Of Your Love like a loony - and it's bad for the ankles, your 29-going-on-30-year-old ankles - and she sees you. She shrieks her happy shriek. She starts to mini-bounce to a song she has never heard before...
Maybe when I next chance on the movie, I will remember that day when I was 18 and this day when she was two.
Maybe the movie, True Lies or whatever, didn't matter much to you when you were first watching it and it was the last day of the A Levels.
But catching the movie on cable years afterwards, it somehow takes you back to that page in your life. You remember that you were 18 and what a beautiful day it was and when the closing credits rolled - Sunshine Of Your Love comes rocking on and you run out with the song in your head and you run and run and run all the way to the MRT on some sort of adrenalin high. That song, that sunny day, that wide-necked top, those too-tight jeans. You really remember. You even remember that the next day, you were wearing the same clothing when you went and sat for the SAT and there was an American boy, with a head of cute curly hair, who smiled at you.
So you are still watching the movie - "Arnie, hasn't he always been hotter than Sly?" you say to no one - and you have cranked up the volume as you wait for your song. But just as the song comes on, the tot next door calls to you. So you go to the door, bouncing up and down to Sunshine Of Your Love like a loony - and it's bad for the ankles, your 29-going-on-30-year-old ankles - and she sees you. She shrieks her happy shriek. She starts to mini-bounce to a song she has never heard before...
Maybe when I next chance on the movie, I will remember that day when I was 18 and this day when she was two.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS | Day Eight
Yu sang in this house is an epic. Not for us the mainstream thing - tossing raw fish and everything else all at once, drowning it in a dribble of New Year cliches, getting it over with in under five minutes - no, that is not for us.
Ours is Pearl River, once-upon-a-time-in-Canton, this-is-how-my-great-grandmother-did-it yu sang. The fish does not appear until Act Two. Act One is just lime juice and sugar, which is mixed on a dish until the sugar melts. The fish is tossed in the juice in Act Two, for the fish - which was sliced by hand by my mother and laid out by me on paper for drying purposes - to soak up the sweetness and sourness. Act Three: Oil is added. Stir, stir, stir. Act Four: Salt, pepper and a dash of alcohol are added. Stir, stir, stir. Acts Five to N: Sesame, peanut, pickled ginger, pickled onion, parsley, chilli, radish, carrot, et cetera are added one after another. The idea is to start with the small things that will stick to the fish. After 30 minutes of stirring - we are too out of breath from the chopstick action to mouth many cliches - dinner is served.
Ours is Pearl River, once-upon-a-time-in-Canton, this-is-how-my-great-grandmother-did-it yu sang. The fish does not appear until Act Two. Act One is just lime juice and sugar, which is mixed on a dish until the sugar melts. The fish is tossed in the juice in Act Two, for the fish - which was sliced by hand by my mother and laid out by me on paper for drying purposes - to soak up the sweetness and sourness. Act Three: Oil is added. Stir, stir, stir. Act Four: Salt, pepper and a dash of alcohol are added. Stir, stir, stir. Acts Five to N: Sesame, peanut, pickled ginger, pickled onion, parsley, chilli, radish, carrot, et cetera are added one after another. The idea is to start with the small things that will stick to the fish. After 30 minutes of stirring - we are too out of breath from the chopstick action to mouth many cliches - dinner is served.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS | Day One
I have two brothers, Fei and Bak. Fei was born one year after me and Bak, nine years after him. (Nope, there was no planning on my parents' part.) Bak tells me that I trust Fei more than I trust him - he's right - and I tell him, "What to do? I've known your brother longer." I've known him longer: He has been there at all the New Years that I remember.
When we were kids, New Year was a time for coin-shaped chocolates, White Rabbit Creamy Candies and our grandmother’s "yam shrimps" (fried ribbons of yam and ginger, a savoury Cantonese snack we never learned to love). On the first night of the year, seven of us - our parents, uncle, aunt, cousin and us - squeezed into our uncle's car to go to our grandaunt and granduncle's one-room home in Tiong Bahru; the adults would talk among themselves as the kids squatted on the floor and snacked; our grandaunt and granduncle would hand each of us a lai si of $1.10. ($1.10 for cheut yan tau dei: The dollar denoted people that we, the coin, were to rise head and shoulders above.)
After they passed away, we were a little lost. We didn't know where to go when the first night of the year came round. So we turned to calling on Jackie Chan – at the movies, that is. His First Strike - he skis in Ukraine! swims with sharks in Australia! speaks Cantonese and no one dubs him! - was one of the fun ones. But soon my parents started saying, "Jackie Chan's losing it."
Now my uncle, aunt and cousin just come round for chitchat and dinner (this year's special was my mother's pun choi, basically a big buffet in a basin which would turn into the loveliest, slurpiest leftovers the next day). But before that, in the morning, my brothers and I pay our uncle and aunt a call at their home in Bukit Timah. Then we walk to the temple round the corner - spouting silly rubbish all the way as Fei and I tease Bak and half-tell him tales of New Years past - to pay our respects to our late grandparents. This time that the three of us spend together is my favourite New Year tradition for now.
When we were kids, New Year was a time for coin-shaped chocolates, White Rabbit Creamy Candies and our grandmother’s "yam shrimps" (fried ribbons of yam and ginger, a savoury Cantonese snack we never learned to love). On the first night of the year, seven of us - our parents, uncle, aunt, cousin and us - squeezed into our uncle's car to go to our grandaunt and granduncle's one-room home in Tiong Bahru; the adults would talk among themselves as the kids squatted on the floor and snacked; our grandaunt and granduncle would hand each of us a lai si of $1.10. ($1.10 for cheut yan tau dei: The dollar denoted people that we, the coin, were to rise head and shoulders above.)
After they passed away, we were a little lost. We didn't know where to go when the first night of the year came round. So we turned to calling on Jackie Chan – at the movies, that is. His First Strike - he skis in Ukraine! swims with sharks in Australia! speaks Cantonese and no one dubs him! - was one of the fun ones. But soon my parents started saying, "Jackie Chan's losing it."
Now my uncle, aunt and cousin just come round for chitchat and dinner (this year's special was my mother's pun choi, basically a big buffet in a basin which would turn into the loveliest, slurpiest leftovers the next day). But before that, in the morning, my brothers and I pay our uncle and aunt a call at their home in Bukit Timah. Then we walk to the temple round the corner - spouting silly rubbish all the way as Fei and I tease Bak and half-tell him tales of New Years past - to pay our respects to our late grandparents. This time that the three of us spend together is my favourite New Year tradition for now.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Purple roses
If ever my consciousness does converse with my subconsciousness, here is how their heart-to-heart might go.
Mr Con: We were there at all her kisses, right, which weren’t that terrific, right?
Ms Sub: More or less, yah.
Mr Con: Then how come you know things I don’t know? How did you come up with that kiss in last night’s dream?
Ms Sub: I improvised lah.
Mr Con: Don’t bluff. What about that –
Me: Eh, eh, eh. Shaddup leh.
So…I was with Viggo in my dream. It was a sweet dream, oh, it was sweet. I’m not about to kiss and tell – well, not more than what Mr Con and Ms Sub have told – but shall we say I woke up with an idiotic smile which would not go away, not even when I got to the office.
Maybe, just maybe, this, this waking life, is a dream and when I wake up, Viggo will be there again.
No…I didn’t believe that, not even when I was typing it. As beautiful as the butterfly dream is, I don’t think Zhuangzi means for us to think there is more to our dreams than we think. I think he means for us to think there is less to our waking lives than we think. I think I should stop thinking and go back to bed.
Good night, all, sweet dreams.
Mr Con: We were there at all her kisses, right, which weren’t that terrific, right?
Ms Sub: More or less, yah.
Mr Con: Then how come you know things I don’t know? How did you come up with that kiss in last night’s dream?
Ms Sub: I improvised lah.
Mr Con: Don’t bluff. What about that –
Me: Eh, eh, eh. Shaddup leh.
So…I was with Viggo in my dream. It was a sweet dream, oh, it was sweet. I’m not about to kiss and tell – well, not more than what Mr Con and Ms Sub have told – but shall we say I woke up with an idiotic smile which would not go away, not even when I got to the office.
Maybe, just maybe, this, this waking life, is a dream and when I wake up, Viggo will be there again.
No…I didn’t believe that, not even when I was typing it. As beautiful as the butterfly dream is, I don’t think Zhuangzi means for us to think there is more to our dreams than we think. I think he means for us to think there is less to our waking lives than we think. I think I should stop thinking and go back to bed.
Good night, all, sweet dreams.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
In search of a lost self
I used to know this 17-year-old girl who wrote these intelligent, eloquent essays in under two hours. I used to be that girl. That girl has now devolved into me, this woman who wonders how she could have said all these things she meant to say about tear-jerking telethons in an editing-proof watertight essay – four days after it was published in a very rubbish version.
Where was that girl when I needed her?
Where was that girl when I needed her?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Saturday
Some days are more equal than other days. A couple Saturdays ago, the baby brother turned 19; I was told that I would be talking to Takeshi Kaneshiro, then, after a few happy hours, I was told I would not be; in a blithe burst of spontaneity, the whole family went KTV-ing - but the night ended on a less happy note when I was slow with my credit card, my uncle beat me to the bill and my father was silently unhappy. (And I knew, I just knew.)
I remember that Saturday. I also remember that as the day my new little neighbour paid a call on us for the first time. Little Ms T is two. She's a smart girl. She's not a girl who will agree to kai kai with you because you buy her candy. She's a girl who says no. But in a big change of heart that day, she was paying us a visit, playing on our computer and squealing at the wonders of the sliding small black thing that we call a mouse.
When I told her that she had to go home as I had to go out, she said she would kai kai with me. Hand in hand, we walked to our lift lobby, and as she walked her adorable two-year-old's wobbly walk, always leaning against me trustingly, I remembered another little girl.
I realised that once upon a time, I had been a fool wishing to be loved by a little girl more than she would love her own mother, while wishing her father would love me more than he loved his own little girl. I realised I had been ridiculous. And I had to realise it before I could put it behind me...
I remember that Saturday. I also remember that as the day my new little neighbour paid a call on us for the first time. Little Ms T is two. She's a smart girl. She's not a girl who will agree to kai kai with you because you buy her candy. She's a girl who says no. But in a big change of heart that day, she was paying us a visit, playing on our computer and squealing at the wonders of the sliding small black thing that we call a mouse.
When I told her that she had to go home as I had to go out, she said she would kai kai with me. Hand in hand, we walked to our lift lobby, and as she walked her adorable two-year-old's wobbly walk, always leaning against me trustingly, I remembered another little girl.
I realised that once upon a time, I had been a fool wishing to be loved by a little girl more than she would love her own mother, while wishing her father would love me more than he loved his own little girl. I realised I had been ridiculous. And I had to realise it before I could put it behind me...
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