Skip to main content

Dog Days

A dog dies and it doesn't know when. Even if it did, it would have been wagging his tail nonetheless.


"I don't have a story to tell."


My life isn't sad enough to make something beautiful, because when I finally found my peace and joy, there was nothing left in me to create something special. I'm not special.

I'm not special because I,

I'm too happy?



What now, then?
When your back is turned away from the silent void, when you need not hear your echoes for another ear is there to receive it. No longer thrown away into the thrash.

I go out now: my bicycle is tied to my art I guess. The more I descend down that tiny hill, wind in my hair, sweat escaping my pores, completely quotidian - free from that backpack that I threw on the parade floor. I'm done with the rat race.

I'm done, I told my mum.

--

Yesterday, Tango took me by surprised. Two and a half hours, family drama, gays, lesbians, aunties, Hong Lim, and penguins. The boy sat in the middle of the stage on a 2D plane. Lights on him, he reveals to his aunty on a HDB stairway that he, likes boys.

Gosh, here we go - I instinctively react. My base level of skepticism takes a hold of my person - but my heart tremors and eases into a break all the same. I feel it in my eyes as soon as I force the immediate thoughts out. It was beautiful.

Later, he stamps on the floor in recounting an encounter at a public toilet. His arms flailing, head down: his presumable tears realise in me a pain - no - a... piece of me I had chosen to forget.

Why do art? Why write? Why overlook your inadequacy and keep persevering on?

Why reject the race?


I tell myself now,

It is worth it, and it will be worth it.

Nights like this, nights you have neglected through your petulant impatience - they'll visit you again.
Strike up the word doc and keep on going.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thematic Summary of The Star by H.G. Wells

H.G. Well’s wrote The Star in 1897, but apocalyptic/disaster fiction had already existed for thousands of years. Well, the authors didn’t think they were writing fiction, but nevertheless, they were still writing speculative ‘non-fiction’. A quick Wikipedia look-up on Google will tell you that hundreds of seers have prophesized the end of mankind. Unfortunately, fortunately, they have all been wrong! Yet, these countless predictions prove a point about our very own human nature: many of us have fetishized the ‘end of the world’. Christians call it the rapture. Vikings called it Ragnarok. Others called it the Apocalypse. All these stories about our eventual end on this earth have a common thread: there is some greater reason for our end to occur – most of the time, it involves the triumph of good over evil. This is where The Star differs in its narrative. Instead of focusing on some grand narrative of good gods achieving a final victory over the forces of evil, it sticks to d...
3 comments
Read more

Thematic summary of When It Changed by Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ’ When It Changed centers on a human society made entirely up of women on a planet called ‘Whileaway’. The human colony is void of men because of a plague that occurred thirty generations ago. The females that remained after the plagued managed to survive without the males by a process that sees the merging of ova. This allowed women to reproduced with women, taking away the need for penetrative reproduction and thereby making redundant the role of men in the human reproductive cycle. The story begins when four Russian astronauts arrive on Whileaway. All four of them are male, which makes them the first 4 men that have set foot on the planet in hundreds of years. Their arrival has a profound effect on the women they meet, and we see this effect from the perspective of Janet, a thirty-four-year-old woman that is married to Katy, with whom she has three children. Upon meeting the four men, Janet is immediately taken aback by their physical size – “They are bigger than we ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inheritance [Balli Kaur Jaswal]

I really shouldn't attempt to write this... as if this were an assignment due on Monday. It isn't, so I shall not.  Two days - it took me this to finish my first SingLit novel, as far as I can recall.  It was about a family who goes through tough times. This family was Sikh. This family was Singaporean. This family felt, for a few heart-wrenching seconds, like my own.  Dalveer and Harbeer have three children: Gurdev, Narain, and Amrit. Karam is Harbeer's nephew, but he doesn't get to be a narrator in the story, so, screw him. Also, he's an asshole.  We see their story unfold over a period of twenty years - this is paralleled by Singapore's own growth as a nation. We see the effects of rapid industrialisation on the nascent city state, and we begin to identify some of the more... unspoken problems faced by its people. In its endeavour to grow, advance, burgeon -- people, genuinely good people, are left behind. In our  struggle for success, the few am...
Post a Comment
Read more