Love Sonnet #11 

 

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.


by Pablo Neruda

Wow I've had this hunger, need-to-possess urge before as well, and I've tried to pin it down in words,
but it's never this good.

* * *

On a side note, was just thinking that one shouldn't demand of others what one wouldn't do for others if the situation was reversed.

Yeah, think I summed it up q well.
For me,
hall life = room life.

The Nanyang Chronicle Online: Lifestyle

The Nanyang Chronicle Online: Lifestyle

Movies have lent the most perishable qualities, such as youth, beauty and comedy, a millennial shelf life. Until the cameras rolled, stars of the past could only be remembered, not experienced. Had she been born earlier, Marilyn might have existed as only a legendary rumor, a Helen of Troy or Tinker Bell. But thanks to Blockbuster, every generation now has immediate access to the evanescent perfection of Marilyn bumping and cooing her way through that chorine's anthem, Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Only movie stars have the chance to live possibly forever, and maybe that's why they're all so crazy. Madonna remade Diamonds in the video of her hit Material Girl, mimicking Marilyn's hot-pink gown and hot-number choreography, and the sly homage seemed fitting: a blond tribute, a legacy of greedy flirtation. Madonna is too marvelously sane ever to become Marilyn. Madonna's detailed appreciation of fleeting style and the history of sensuality is part of her own arsenal, making her a star and a fan in one. Madonna wisely and affectionately honors the brazen spark in Marilyn, the giddy candy-box allure, and not the easy heartbreak. - TIME article on Marilyn Monroe (part of my research for history essay)

I've got a new addiction: passiveaggressivenotes.com
Yeah.
don't even go there.

3. The I-Don't-Like-People Symptom
You embrace obscurity, alienation and whatever terms that describe displacement. You do not like to participate in collective hall activities and dread unnecessary interactions with hall members. You do not like your personal mugging sessions to be interrupted by spontaneous, loud laughter sounding from next door. You detest the nocturnal population who makes hell lot of noise in the middle of the night. You have enough of those 'hi-and-bye' friends. You seriously do not like to live with strangers whom you are obliged to entertain. You do not like to greet acquaintances when you do not feel like it but apparently, you do not have a choice unless you do not mind being deemed an unfriendly recluse. You are a creep in your own right, but nobody understands. No one (apart from your family members who lived with you for two decades) regards your indifference as uniqueness, but sees it as weirdness.
At the end of the day, you feel that you belong to the cave where you came from.
Stay-Hall Blues Severity : -There Is No Place Like Home

Which is why I can't be bothered to fight for points to stay after May next year.
No more back-breaking loads to and fro. No more getting stuck in Jurong for 5/7 of my uni life.
3 hrs to and fro every day is worth it, heck.

***

C. Choose smart

As with diet, love and life, gravitate towards what works for you. Fortunately or not, the people you hang out with have a greater influence on you than you will like to imagine. Choose friends who will bring out the best and loveliest side of you, who will tell you the truth for what it's worth without breaking your spirit. Friendships are not fast food, wait patiently, observe keenly and dive in bravely when you spot someone whom you think will have the possibility of showing up at your son's wedding. Ta! - Orientation Odyssey by Rachael Lim, NTU (emphasis mine)

“Madeleine Lee is an investment manager by day and a poet by passion. She has published four books of poetry. In particular she writes about everyday things which we fail to see in our daily lives.  She has amassed a vast portfolio of poems about trees, insects, fungus and things she sees whilst on nature walks and the meaning she finds in them. She has been called, in jest, Singapore’s only ‘green poet.’”

 A poet after my own heart! (my latest thought being "How do toadstools disappear as fast as they appear?")

I guess I should leave my reflections on my adventure at the Singapore Writers' Festival (went for supper club - an overnight walk through Bras Basah area - and breakfast club) till after this peak period for essays. (don't leave me, oh sentiments - blah, melodrama again)

Got the email add of a particalar speaker. Gna ask him abt his opinion on the place of film studies in Singapore, which I feel is under-represented in the Singapore Writers' Fest.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend catching mux live. (I'm a member of their group on Facebook, if you're interested) They sound so hypnotic live. (They gna perform at the Substation sometime in Nov. I'll make time to go if I think my studies are fine.)
 
***

The festival has got my mind buzzing about how I can get more involved in the arts scene.
It's not some high and mighty sphere where only the apparently talented and eloquent associate in.
I can tell those people are willing to engage the non-professionals, so to speak. (Ng Yi-Sheng [I'll have to admit I don't know about him before this] struck up a conversation with me, asking me why I went for the supper club. It's a casual, v short convo. But that act of initiating is worth mentioning.) I'd like to think that everyone has to start somewhere. I think my apathy about the local arts scene and my wilful study of lit texts without making the connection to real life has gone on for long enough.

Back to my deadening, disconnected-from-real-life essays (i can make them better by enlivening them, I can choose the texts and topics after all...maneuvering within the system)

One thing though, I think our lit dept is q detached from the local arts scene. I could be wrong, but I'll try to find out when I have time to spare, and maybe think on this issue a bit.