Thursday, June 16, 2011

Ambitions

I was just thinking today, what if I could really make it as a writer. Surpass all the Singaporean writers, whose books, I admit I don't really read a lot about because I find their book synopsis... a little mundane. People don't rave about them and people don't really get themselves on bestseller lists.

The paper kind of looks too new.
The stitching is too hard.
The covers are just photographs or illustrations you can't connect with.
Or perhaps we're just Asian, and the culture was never meant for us to think in this language.
Of English.
It's another man's language.
Isn't it.
You are just scribbles and pen-marks with no sense to them.
You weren't made to write like this.
Write. In. Your. Own. Words.
But all words are borrowed.
How do you string them up and choke the very life out of them
When they aren't even your own property?
You only do that to slaves.
Words can control you, manipulate you
Speeches can convince you, sway you, or down-right
Ignite a passionate fire
Essays can go to the trash bin
Who likes reading them?
News articles tell you the vogue but nothing more
Novels are decent; the most modest of the lot.
But most of them are channels of the cloaca
That is human thought.
Mostly for sewage.
Then some are crotchet-filled dumps.
Then some are just for people like me.
Lusting to live in some big old city that's not here
Sounding just like the latest pop star sensation

I'm going to change that if I can. If I don't dream BIG now, there will never be any dream that I'll fulfill next time.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

At the Dentist

With all the crisis going on lately in Japan and the rest of the world, I thought it might be nice to post something vaguely related to calamity but with at least validated humour in it. Don't blame me for this choice of a post, blame that Superfreakonomics book I'm reading now. It's very good.

AT THE DENTIST; notes for a short story

1) enduring the process, and the unfortunate thing of seeing a harried dentist in a blue shirt and black pants (he looked like an average property agent, only without the winning smile and extra layer of material which is a coat) beginning of the ardupus process plus the dreaded air sucker placed perpetually at the corner of your left lip which becomes numb when you realise it takes an effort to close and open them when rinsing your mouth out

2) thinking about literature Okonkwo's role and all and failing miserably, annoyed at Mama's voice from Raisin in the Sun, Dad is silent in the room

3) hoping like anything that I have no cavities

4) GLEE girls and the HAWT dentist, compared to my very old looking in comparison dentist who is my dad's age... ah long deprived teenage dreams

5) After the initial fear is gone; no immediate cavities; what if I made denatal appointments my spa treatments

6) taking the X-ray and feeling like a baby with a sucker in my mouth, fears of electromagnetic waves and all that stuff in the physics text

7) enjoying the whole scaling and polishing

8) x-ray results out and realising that i have a missing wisdom tooth and one that will most likely cause problems (calculating the risks involved and remembering my mother's extraction = not a very sound state of mind)

9) A lecture on the dangers of sweets on my dear back teeth and the possibility of braces (the stark reminder that the kind gentleman who spent the better part of forty minutes peering into my very unsightly mouth and all, just wants to make money out of a very costly aesthetic service which renders the eating of most gummies and sweets impossible, plus no eating of whole apples and difficulties talking as my friend has told me)

that about sums up my hour from two to three today. all the "free" time you get on a holiday week!