Blindness

My specs broke finally on Tuesday morning! And I am consigned to a world of muddy colours, like looking into an artist's palette. A raw unfinished world.

But it didn't break before we had our Alfian Saat talk about Controversial Politics. Heh, cleasrly he has been censored, because terrorism doesn't seem to fit in very well with Controversial Politics. Ah well, I guess we have to wait to build up to the real big guns. Anyway, he was talking about how terrorism has been badly defined, and there's an ingrown fallacious connection between terrorists and turbans, and how politicians use the war on terror as a means to sidestep true democracy and freedom. He showed us a playlet he wrote on the ISA (which, unfortunately for the ISD, actually translates as the Koranic word for Jesus).

(A commercial break - Simei just experienced some kind of power surge...the lights blinked, and Greg's computer spontaneously restarted. The funny thing is that my machine was unaffected. And now, looking out, not a single streetlamp is on, and the floodlit street soccer court is a well of blackness except where one emergency lamp is burning in an island of luminence. It is quite a sight to behind...the tai-chi-ers standing frozen in the shadow waiting for the lights to come back, and now they haven't come back, and they're milling away to retreat to the lit void decks. The coloured lanterns and lights festooning our little square are still lit, forming trails of colour in the blackness that has replaced the square. And all the other lights are on - just the big lights in the square and the streeetlamps have disappeared. And you realise, when you look out at the black ground and the towers of light with their foundations lost, how orange normal nights are. And of course, thanks to Singaporean efficiency, the blackness is fleeting.)

Anyhoos, I thought he took the Jesus link way too far. Maybe it's cos the term Jesus has so much connotation for me personally, but I found it really distracting. If his purpose was to discredit the rationale of the ISA, then equating it to religion which is sometimes used as the rationale for terrorism may not have been the best way. The Jesus link was powerful stuff, and I admire him for spotting it. But I think he didn't use it properly...exploited it for its shock effect without adequately exploring its implications.

And the thing that struck me most about his talk was how he established all thse fallacies, but then he couldn't provide what he thought was the right answer. So he told us what we knew already - and anyway, I really don't read "terrorist" as "Muslim" at all. He pointed out all that was wrong with the war on terror. He even pointed out how the term "war on terror" is wrong. But he didn't provide any viable alternatives to the ISA, or the war on terror. That, generally, is the problem with most of Singapore's opposition. They spend far too much time pointing out what everyone knows is not the best possible state of democracy on our fair island, but they neglect to suggest any workable alternatives to PAP governance. The question he didn't answer was between the two evils of the Ji and the ISA, which one was the lesser one?

Anyway...yeah, my specs broke at the bridge, so I couldn't see anything in school to do any work at all, and I evacuated to get home and grab a spare pair of glasses, which I'm using now. They're good enough for close range work, but trying to see distant objects now makes me dizzy because the degree is wrong, so I only wear them when I really need to. Heh, and I gotta admit that working without glasses is actually quite fun, all things considered.

There are of course the expected jokes about my temporary blindness...everyone's been holding up fingers to my face =P But I gotta say that everyone's been very nice and most helpful. For the most part there's no change, but it's nice to have everyone asking after my lack of specs. Heh I know it's egoistic, but at least they noticed, and one takes what one can get =P The most striking thing is the new philosophical outlook...now that I can't see everything clearly, I realise that I really see so few things clearly anyway. Walking becomes an exercise in imagination as I try to visualise what my path is actually like from memory. And the road becomes a bright smudge of colour, which is how I imagine that drug-induced hallucinations must look like.

The only bother is that I can't see people at all. Places and vehicles are still can, but faces are hopeless messes of shades and smiles. I've gone around school daoing a lot of people, I'm afraid. Hmm but at the same time, not being able to see anyone clearly also creates a feeling of independence, as if they won't be able to see me clearly either. I find myself sitting back for a more detached viewpoint, observing the blurness moving and hearing the sounds of life. Heh I imagine that part of this new philosophical viewpoint is also a result of On the Road.

One peaceful moment today...after lessons ended, sitting in 13A's room playing songs softly on my guitar sans specs and feeling my way through the chords and notes. The Ian smudge sitting on a table reading a book. The Shane smudge on headphones and doing homework. And the Chern and Mel supersmudge sitting on the windowsill against the great bright smudge of the afternoon sky murmuring something personal. And everything peaceful and quiet and picturesque and brilliant in colour and sound. It's not everyday that things resolve themselves to such peace. I am a quiet person by nature.

Anyway, been writing again...about Hariri, the slain Lemanese former prime minister, after seeing his funeral procession on BBC. It's amazing...so many people heaving against the coffin as it inched through the grief of crowd. There was so much emotion and so much humanity that the whole wailing mass could only sway softly, the despair crushing itself into serenity. Yeah...and that image sparked off another poem. And then, when I was blogsurfing, Alwaysbehindyou's diary had some really nice phrases. The truly luxurious experience of studying Lit in England has clearly done him good =P I hope he doesn't mind if I quote...

"but if i am to keep dreaming, i will always keep thinking of how i want things to be."

"I'll be loving you. Love, me." - I never knew it came with that comma. It makes a lot of difference.

"All in history we see people who implode."

I was trying to fit em into the poem but they just wouldn't go.

Hmph anyway, I'm about to submit Cabdriver again, all revamped and beat-generation-ised. On the Road is a numbing read, just like The Town and the City and Just Above My Head, the other beat works that I've read. Their style is intense, every expression like a blunt punch. Their simplicity belies the darkness and the upheavals they write about. It's most remarkable, and so good that I don't think I'm up to doing them for Lit S. Finding the perfect expression is remarkable enough, but expressing the perfect expression in terms that people can understand and identify with easily is a stroke of genius. Linguistic exactitude is essentially just frills if no one can figure out what you're trying to say.

pondered by phoenican @ 16.2.05