Pre-Performance

Bleah I'm already regretting buying that ticket. Such a fuss over what I look like on that day, to the extent that I think I'll be feeling so self-conscious at prom that it won't be much fun. In fact...can't really see it as a prom, with all the sentimental romantic connotations attached to it. Looks right now like a big circus I'm preparing for - ladies and gentlemen, one more trussed up turkey for your amusement!

I had no idea that clothes could cost that much...the only apparel that I had seen that cost more than $100 was winter wear, so you can imagine I went positively dizzy in the head when I saw a blazer in some Paragon shop costing $1800. So many digits on one price tag! No wonder they try to hide that dastardly slip of paper. What I spent three hours today wandering around town to discover was that I couldn't wear the clothes that I could buy, and I couldn't bear to buy the clothes that I'd like to wear.

Seriously...with the amount of money I'm looking to spend now I could reenact the whole of Frexprog One!

Interesting, though, how easily one is sucked into this kind of thing. Partly I think it's just because I want something to occupy me with. A restless mind gnawing at anything it can get a grip on. But still...social conventions are a particularly vicious vortex. Surprisingly strong for something so openly contrived. The force of consensus is behind them...everyone has the same idea of what a prom should be like. And if conventions can keep the heart of darkness at bay, how am I to fight these hands thrusting me into a suit I don't even want to wear?

Hmm...but I don't intend to sound all that angsty. Sense of perspective, always (incidentally, today also wrote that PSC scholarship application essay, and the sense of perspective was its crowning glory, so to speak). It's really just a mild irritant. But when you're in a condition of general wellbeing even the smallest thing can be vexing.

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Finished Life of Pi in one fell swoop today. Fascinating to read about the way Pi survives on that boat, intriguing to consider the kind of social arrangement that can keep a tiger at bay (if social conventions can overcome the instincts of a wet, frightened, hungry tiger, how am I to defend myself against it?). And at the end of the book, one wonders whether it really is about God. Because the last section, it seems, adds a whole new spin to it, a positively postmodernist spin - if everything is a story, then maybe Pi's feverish belief in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam is a way to bury his guilt under these holy stories. Pulling up the rags of faith, as it were, to cover up the nakedness of his savagery at sea.

None of it is true, of course. It's just as likely that he made up both stories at the end, and what really happened cannot be related to the page. I'm still not sure what his point is at the end, to contrast the wondrous story with the terrible story. Maybe it's to show that if both stories are incredible, at least we should choose the one with hope, and not submit ourselves without a fight to the kind of existentialist despair of Camus. I dunno. That last section completes a loop, and the mind runs around in circles trying to find out what is the right meaning.

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But we count our little blessing, do we not? In a surprising bout of western-ness Mum bought two types of cheese and two types of pâté and cracked open a bottle of red wine, so for two heavenly nights, we actually had a respectable French-style supper of bread and cheese and pâté! All we needed was a proper wooden board and we could reenact a scene from Atonement. Unfortunately the only wooden boards in the house are the chopping boards which I'd rather not eat on. But nonetheless, a bit of European rusticness in a Singaporean suburban highrise apartment. The environment couldn't be more different, I think, and somehow the incongruousness adds to the flavour of the moment. Ahh if only we could have more of these evenings!

pondered by phoenican @ 4.12.05