One More Year

Why would anyone even bother? The taupoking thing is almost too ridiculous to be taken seriously. Heh, how can they expect us to believe that they never knew taupoking existed? Or that the danger makes it a bad thing? How does that compute, really? Taupoks are more than mindless violence. At the moment, at the spur of the moment, it is something that is in most part impulsive. But it does show a certain side of the spirit of the moment, and rather than a sign of antagonism, taupoking frequently signals acceptance and inclusion. In other words, people get taupoked because other people know that they won't mind.

Well, it looks like this time round someone went too far, or someone made the wrong assessment of someone else's tolerance levels. I really pity whoever it was whose parents made the whole hoohah...can you imagine the backlash? Of course, it may very well be that people will see the funniness behind the whole affair, but more likely than not a stigma will stick with that poor guy. And for the social function that it serves, I personally think taupoking is worth the risks. Why is it that going to OBS to climb mountains is seen as an adventure, but Orientation exploits must remain within conventional definitions of an enriching experience befitting a "premier institution in the Bishan-Ang Moh Kio area"? Why can't people use euphemisms in a more artistic fashion?

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Went for my first Guitar prac in a heck of a long time, and it felt great! We're really going somewhere with our SYF piece now, and our second piece is something jazzy. It sounds really cool! The only thing is that the Guitar 4 parts are quite boring. But I'm learning to read notes and translate them into finger movements...multilingualism is a satisfying ability.

But now it really feels like we're moving somewhere. New venues, a new teacher (who is eminently good to work with) and new members...it's the season of reblossoming for RJGE, an exciting period, a period ripe for making impressions and changes.

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I think I will go for the charity concert on Friday for the tsunami victims. MEP piano players, chamber pieces, Chorale recitals I can understand. But what is a CWC poetry reading doing in the middle of this event? Heh they just seem a bit out of place...not that I don't want to hear the literary works of RJ talents, but how does one force out a poem on the tsunami disaster? There is no flavour of authenticity, because you can't rehearse the writing process, no more than you can set a time and place for an audience to come and see you write. But of course, I don't exclude the possibility of being surprised.

At the very least, it will be a relaxing end to this week. It'd be nice to hear chamber music again. I think placing a piano in the large concourse is a good idea...during breaks, J1s and J2s alike meet at that old instrument, sending melodies into the surrounding atmosphere. It may not be a very good piano, but at least anyone can use it, and it does add a dash of art and a whiff of the different to the school day. Now all we need are buskers at Block J =P

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Well, so today was that special day in the year, and I'm one year older, and I'm only left with the feeling that time is passing by too fast.

It was great. I guess what's really special about these JC birthdays is that people do bother to remember it. Maybe it's a girl thing...in CHS, it was too dangerous to your innocence to publicise your birthday =P And people do go far in making it obvious that it's your birthday. Heh...not only by being showered by greetings from practically everyone I met, but with really unexpected gifts and surprises. I guess in the physically manifested demonstrations of recognition, nothing beats a JC class, or a Humanities batch =) But I wonder if they realise that the best thing about this birthday is that I passed it with such a good group of people.

I still maintain that people are the most important thing around us. At the end of it, it's my friends and classmates who will define my memories of this JC period. And with the fantastic JC1 year of 2004 that is now finally at an end, and with everyone standing on an avalanche of firsts, it really is the people that are familiar, that are dependable. For all their idiosyncracies and fluctuations, I find the fluidity of people more secure as a foundation for memory than anything more physical and unmoving. At least it's exciting and interesting to deal with people.

They've already given me a great present. It's called 2004. But as that year is confined to the memory of blog entries (digital snail trails) and photographs, I'm given this brand new one in which to make new memories. Now, more things are open to me. I'm legal now, that's the biggest change, I think. But the realisation is that hardly have I started to enjoy these newly revealed possibilities with this group of people when our official togetherness will be at an end. What will I do when this year ends, and the next January 12 will occur in a jungle camp on a cot and under a rifle? What can one do with so little time?

But the thing is not for us to lament about how little time we have. All we can really do to justify this present is to grasp every grain of sand that leaks past our hourglassed perception. We enjoy what we have, and make the best of it, and hope that it's enough. And looking forward to this small window of opportunity I have, I'm hopeful that every time I look back to this period, this JC and this class, my memory will be distorted by nostalgia. 2005 is set to drip with sentimentality, and I really don't mind. Why must sentimentality be belittled? Anything can be appreciated if your perspective is correctly adjusted.

And so at this juncture, I have a glass ball in one hand, its curved-space prophecies echoing the present in the other hand. I don't know what will happen this new year, but the unknown is friendly because it is not altogether unfamiliar or unpredictable. My anchors drag alongside me on the murky seafloor. Thank you all for a great birthday =)

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I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon bookhunting at Bras Basah again, at the two fiction bookstores that we didn't visit last Friday. Heh...I found myself swimming among mounds of cheap romance and just enough classics (Hardies, Brontes, Shakespeares and their facsimilies) to give these shops a veneer of reputability. I really didn't find anything modern, but I did get a Jeanette Winterson book, Ian McEwan's Atonement and Graham Greene's Brighton Rock...all for a total of $5 =D

Sifting through the stacks of books is quite an adventure. Everything's dusty and worn - when people's eyes ran through these books, they left their scent and drops of sweat that distilled themselves into dogears and dust. It's quite something to think that the book you hold left an impression on someone else too. And you never know what you'll find...little notes in the books that could be secret and prophetic messages bequeathed to you. But there is a lot of trash lining the little gems. If literature is art and art is undying, then the bargain bookshop is the Darwinian playing field. Let the unmemorable moulder into ash, but one always knows that the ranks of the greats will be replenished by republishment. Paper bodies may rot, but the Word lives on in vessels that are not much more substantial - human minds.

But anyway, I'm reading Winterson's Gut Symmetries right now...a story about a scientist who has an affair on the QE2. Hehheh...I find that I like her writing! It's very diffuse and at times confusingly disorganised, but her skill of expression is hilarious, and there are so many fascinating phrases and metaphors liberally scattered everywhere. And I daresay that it's been affecting my own writing too...the script is being infused with a Winterson-esque irony, and the structure and flair of her book are present in this entry. I think I'll like reading Oranges are not the Only Fruit =P

pondered by phoenican @ 12.1.05