Saturday, June 19, 2004
My Legendary Girlfriend
I've been doing a lot of thinking the last few weeks (and a lot of tying, the last few days! groan. my poor fingers... as an aside, laparoscopy is simply the coolest. I love it to bits.)
This is what I've come to :
Worlds
Watching the familiar shores of home slide smoothly out the bottom of the limited view presented by his ubiquitous porthole as the plane traversed a steep bank, he felt an overwhelming sadness. Which was odd -- this hadn't happened before : at least, not from leaving these shores, anyhow.
Forty-eight hours later, watching soft golden-hued English sunlight forming shifting dappled patterns in the tree-leaves outside his window somewhere in Porthsmouth, he felt that same sadness, still.
I am beginning to miss home. Not, as many would assume, because home is such a miraculously wonderful place brimming over with good old' oriental asian values and that magical mystical allure of the east. And whilst I do have family and friends back home - many have left as well. And faded into my past.
Having stepped outside of the fishbowl, I no longer harbour any illusions. Singapore is frankly sterile and soulless. It's a city to exist comfortably in - simply to exist in. It's difficult to grow when all around you are happy, fuzzy illusions of warmth and comfort (does anyone remember what happened when those illusions melted away with our recent SARS and financial crises?)
Singapore is the matrix.
I think I'm beginning to miss home because I'm tiring of the UK.
The UK is rich in abundance. Rich in words. Rich in variation, of thought-form, of humour, of cultures. THIS is the true cosmopolis, the melting pot of cultures that Singapore pretends to be.
It is also very dark. It has the worst of all worlds, alongside the best. And the prevailing Englishness paints the country - cold, and grey. Dreary. Cynical, sophisticated, and oh, so world-weary.
A stranger commented that she thought from my writing that I wasn't quite sure where I belonged. I wondered at first if she might be right, but then I realised - it's not that way around. I think it's more that I know where I don't belong. I don't really belong in Singapore -- as much, or as little -- as I don't belong in the UK.
Here I am too quiet, too timid. Too easy to overlook. The beliefs and significances that I hold dear to myself I share with nobody. This is the land of eternal twilight, the endless frustrated clawings at the wallboards under the ambitions pasted high up, near the ceiling.
In Singapore I am too vocal - but not in the way that people want to hear. I clumsily, and obstinately in my quest for truth, smash to the floor the pretty scaffolds upon which other people's egos and happiness are built upon.
I read with amusement the flurry of articles about ABCs feeling that they "fit in" best in Singapore... pretty, pretty scaffolds. But oh, so fragile. When, one wonders, will they finally run away whimpering, tails firmly wedged between their legs? When will their bubbles burst?
The reality is, Singaporeans don't want to hear the truth. We don't want to know that we're intrinsically a racist people who cast slurs at our neighbours behind their backs, that we've got a second-rate government which is so busy painting their own CVs a glowing white that they've forgotten what their people really want... that celebrities are real-life people who get cut and bleed too.
We delude ourselves at so many levels of society -- and are happy doing it. We must be. Best in the region. Best in South East Asia, and someday, Best in the World. Olympic football, anybody?
When journalists cross the line, and write that perhaps we should just learn to sit back and smell the roses and maybe, just maybe alter our concept of the "Singapore dream" to forget being "best" for a while -- they get ominous summons to the PMs house for little "pep talks."
Our press is free to report on current events, within acceptable limits...
I don't know where I belong, or, if there is anywhere that I will ever fit in. But right now, that potential British PRship doesn't look so bad. It doesn't look great, either.
Words
Words transcend the boundaries of individual senses - the written word. The spoken word.
How often I take for granted that they are not one and the same. I confess that I speak my words "aloud" in my mind as I read and write them. It's a little like having a movie soundtrack in my head. (Rachel Stevens, apparently, has a permanent musical going in hers. Now THAT is disturbing)
These few months have reminded me that words hold a great power, both written, and spoken.
But for me, as a living, breathing creature blessed with the gifts of both sight and sound -- the spell that binds them for me, the final piece of the puzzle - is the melding of sight, and sound.
Perhaps I'm just superficial that way. Or perhaps I'm just a fool.
Women
"I now knew how pointless it was trying to pretend that I didn't still feel something for her. It didn't make sense to love her. I'd weighed up the pros and cons a million times, and the results were always the same: I needed her. She was no good for me, she didn't want me to be part of her life, but there was nothing I could do about how I felt. I loved her. I couldn't lie to myself, though it was the one thing I wished I had the strength to do. I couldn't forget about her. The passage of time had, if anything, made her more important to me now than ever. I couldn't replace her with another girl without constantly comparing them to her and finding them lacking. I couldn't move forward, and I couldn't reclaim the past. I was stuck in an ex-lover's limbo with nothing but happy memories to keep me company."
- My Legendary Girlfriend, Mike Gayle
That same stranger from before holds that I never really got over Her.
There certainly seems a lot to get over - when I did it, I did it big. She was (is?) tall, and looked even taller than she was. She stood at least at his height, if not a little taller, and had a perpetual intelligent sparkle in her eyes - a hint of that sheer, irrepressible humour - and yes, even effervescence - that could - and often did - well up suddenly and engulf her unsuspecting prey. She had a keen mind and a honed wit, and the most beautiful, rogueish smile. She was tanned, and looked like a fun-in-sun kinda girl, although in his foggy memory she never did anything more extreme than hit a rubber ball into a wall just above the tin. Her voice was pitched slightly too high for the rest of her, and she had a distinctive drawl that spoke of obvious origins down south, further from the equator.
She was pretty too. Unconventionally, but undeniably. She was more than he.
She was utterly, and completely out of my league.
I last met Her six years ago. But there are days when, if I close my eyes for just an instant, the full, gory technicolour memories arise unbidden - the perfect contours of those brows and eyelids overlying those devastating eyes, set above that provocative, flirtatious and very, very slightly sardonic smile.
But there's more - much more.
I also remember how She made me feel. It wasn't just the soppy Hollywood milkshake of adolescent endorphines run amuck, that thingie about stomaches falling into the abyss, and hearts clawing their way up oesophagi. It wasnt just a faintly electric tension in the air (or at least, the air between acoustic meati heh heh), a "prickling point of awareness".
It was also very... Jack Nicholson. As Good as it Gets -
She made him feel alive. She drew a well of wit and humour from the depths within him, In the constant tension when it looked like She was bubbling over with almost-laughter -- She inadvertently elicted a reciprocal reaction from, and set him free. The best part of him, anyhow.
He loved Her because of who She was -- and who he became around Her.
I know I write about Her often, and I must read exactly like that excerpt above. But the truth is... I've been there. And out the other side. I love her memory now. We will never see each other again... and I accept that. Six years is a long, long time to hold an antiquated torch, for a stranger one barely knows anymore.
Somewhere in the pits of this cynical soul smoulder the last embers of romanticism, which were first set ablaze (too early dammit!!) the day he met her.
He still wants to believe in that nebulous One out there, and that one day he just might meet her, and hold her when he does.
I see now through open eyes - too often have I used Her as a yardstick. Too often I have chased down Her shadow in someone else's laugh, someone else's eyes. Someone else's smile. And too often have I held people against that yardstick and been disappointed.
I know now that it is not, after all, "someone like You" that I seek, K****. And it is not a question of "unrealistic expectations" either, ye animaniac elf.
I think I'm seeking that elusive somoene who gives me the "movie moments" -- the moments magical when the edges of reality seem to shimmer just a little, when just sitting close by is enough, and just speaking is a shared, comfortable, funny intimacy. Someone who makes me feel wonderful about her - and about myself.
And I suspect that this is what we all seek:
Someone who sees past the skeletal flesh-and-blood frames we carry ourselves within, through to the rusty, creaky and most of all, fallible personas we hide with time and experience, and feels wonderful about it -- and herself, in return.
Wisdom
"Don't marry for money.
You can borrow it cheaper"
- from the Spicy Sauce packet of my pot curry breakfast today
This is what I've come to :
Worlds
Watching the familiar shores of home slide smoothly out the bottom of the limited view presented by his ubiquitous porthole as the plane traversed a steep bank, he felt an overwhelming sadness. Which was odd -- this hadn't happened before : at least, not from leaving these shores, anyhow.
Forty-eight hours later, watching soft golden-hued English sunlight forming shifting dappled patterns in the tree-leaves outside his window somewhere in Porthsmouth, he felt that same sadness, still.
I am beginning to miss home. Not, as many would assume, because home is such a miraculously wonderful place brimming over with good old' oriental asian values and that magical mystical allure of the east. And whilst I do have family and friends back home - many have left as well. And faded into my past.
Having stepped outside of the fishbowl, I no longer harbour any illusions. Singapore is frankly sterile and soulless. It's a city to exist comfortably in - simply to exist in. It's difficult to grow when all around you are happy, fuzzy illusions of warmth and comfort (does anyone remember what happened when those illusions melted away with our recent SARS and financial crises?)
Singapore is the matrix.
I think I'm beginning to miss home because I'm tiring of the UK.
The UK is rich in abundance. Rich in words. Rich in variation, of thought-form, of humour, of cultures. THIS is the true cosmopolis, the melting pot of cultures that Singapore pretends to be.
It is also very dark. It has the worst of all worlds, alongside the best. And the prevailing Englishness paints the country - cold, and grey. Dreary. Cynical, sophisticated, and oh, so world-weary.
A stranger commented that she thought from my writing that I wasn't quite sure where I belonged. I wondered at first if she might be right, but then I realised - it's not that way around. I think it's more that I know where I don't belong. I don't really belong in Singapore -- as much, or as little -- as I don't belong in the UK.
Here I am too quiet, too timid. Too easy to overlook. The beliefs and significances that I hold dear to myself I share with nobody. This is the land of eternal twilight, the endless frustrated clawings at the wallboards under the ambitions pasted high up, near the ceiling.
In Singapore I am too vocal - but not in the way that people want to hear. I clumsily, and obstinately in my quest for truth, smash to the floor the pretty scaffolds upon which other people's egos and happiness are built upon.
I read with amusement the flurry of articles about ABCs feeling that they "fit in" best in Singapore... pretty, pretty scaffolds. But oh, so fragile. When, one wonders, will they finally run away whimpering, tails firmly wedged between their legs? When will their bubbles burst?
The reality is, Singaporeans don't want to hear the truth. We don't want to know that we're intrinsically a racist people who cast slurs at our neighbours behind their backs, that we've got a second-rate government which is so busy painting their own CVs a glowing white that they've forgotten what their people really want... that celebrities are real-life people who get cut and bleed too.
We delude ourselves at so many levels of society -- and are happy doing it. We must be. Best in the region. Best in South East Asia, and someday, Best in the World. Olympic football, anybody?
When journalists cross the line, and write that perhaps we should just learn to sit back and smell the roses and maybe, just maybe alter our concept of the "Singapore dream" to forget being "best" for a while -- they get ominous summons to the PMs house for little "pep talks."
Our press is free to report on current events, within acceptable limits...
I don't know where I belong, or, if there is anywhere that I will ever fit in. But right now, that potential British PRship doesn't look so bad. It doesn't look great, either.
Words
Words transcend the boundaries of individual senses - the written word. The spoken word.
How often I take for granted that they are not one and the same. I confess that I speak my words "aloud" in my mind as I read and write them. It's a little like having a movie soundtrack in my head. (Rachel Stevens, apparently, has a permanent musical going in hers. Now THAT is disturbing)
These few months have reminded me that words hold a great power, both written, and spoken.
But for me, as a living, breathing creature blessed with the gifts of both sight and sound -- the spell that binds them for me, the final piece of the puzzle - is the melding of sight, and sound.
Perhaps I'm just superficial that way. Or perhaps I'm just a fool.
Women
"I now knew how pointless it was trying to pretend that I didn't still feel something for her. It didn't make sense to love her. I'd weighed up the pros and cons a million times, and the results were always the same: I needed her. She was no good for me, she didn't want me to be part of her life, but there was nothing I could do about how I felt. I loved her. I couldn't lie to myself, though it was the one thing I wished I had the strength to do. I couldn't forget about her. The passage of time had, if anything, made her more important to me now than ever. I couldn't replace her with another girl without constantly comparing them to her and finding them lacking. I couldn't move forward, and I couldn't reclaim the past. I was stuck in an ex-lover's limbo with nothing but happy memories to keep me company."
- My Legendary Girlfriend, Mike Gayle
That same stranger from before holds that I never really got over Her.
There certainly seems a lot to get over - when I did it, I did it big. She was (is?) tall, and looked even taller than she was. She stood at least at his height, if not a little taller, and had a perpetual intelligent sparkle in her eyes - a hint of that sheer, irrepressible humour - and yes, even effervescence - that could - and often did - well up suddenly and engulf her unsuspecting prey. She had a keen mind and a honed wit, and the most beautiful, rogueish smile. She was tanned, and looked like a fun-in-sun kinda girl, although in his foggy memory she never did anything more extreme than hit a rubber ball into a wall just above the tin. Her voice was pitched slightly too high for the rest of her, and she had a distinctive drawl that spoke of obvious origins down south, further from the equator.
She was pretty too. Unconventionally, but undeniably. She was more than he.
She was utterly, and completely out of my league.
I last met Her six years ago. But there are days when, if I close my eyes for just an instant, the full, gory technicolour memories arise unbidden - the perfect contours of those brows and eyelids overlying those devastating eyes, set above that provocative, flirtatious and very, very slightly sardonic smile.
But there's more - much more.
I also remember how She made me feel. It wasn't just the soppy Hollywood milkshake of adolescent endorphines run amuck, that thingie about stomaches falling into the abyss, and hearts clawing their way up oesophagi. It wasnt just a faintly electric tension in the air (or at least, the air between acoustic meati heh heh), a "prickling point of awareness".
It was also very... Jack Nicholson. As Good as it Gets -
She made him feel alive. She drew a well of wit and humour from the depths within him, In the constant tension when it looked like She was bubbling over with almost-laughter -- She inadvertently elicted a reciprocal reaction from, and set him free. The best part of him, anyhow.
He loved Her because of who She was -- and who he became around Her.
I know I write about Her often, and I must read exactly like that excerpt above. But the truth is... I've been there. And out the other side. I love her memory now. We will never see each other again... and I accept that. Six years is a long, long time to hold an antiquated torch, for a stranger one barely knows anymore.
Somewhere in the pits of this cynical soul smoulder the last embers of romanticism, which were first set ablaze (too early dammit!!) the day he met her.
He still wants to believe in that nebulous One out there, and that one day he just might meet her, and hold her when he does.
I see now through open eyes - too often have I used Her as a yardstick. Too often I have chased down Her shadow in someone else's laugh, someone else's eyes. Someone else's smile. And too often have I held people against that yardstick and been disappointed.
I know now that it is not, after all, "someone like You" that I seek, K****. And it is not a question of "unrealistic expectations" either, ye animaniac elf.
I think I'm seeking that elusive somoene who gives me the "movie moments" -- the moments magical when the edges of reality seem to shimmer just a little, when just sitting close by is enough, and just speaking is a shared, comfortable, funny intimacy. Someone who makes me feel wonderful about her - and about myself.
And I suspect that this is what we all seek:
Someone who sees past the skeletal flesh-and-blood frames we carry ourselves within, through to the rusty, creaky and most of all, fallible personas we hide with time and experience, and feels wonderful about it -- and herself, in return.
Wisdom
"Don't marry for money.
You can borrow it cheaper"
- from the Spicy Sauce packet of my pot curry breakfast today
