Essentially he told me he had the opportunity to observe me better over Chinese New Year, and was struck but how womanly my actions were. My effeminacy, to him, was a personal source of great struggle for him, as a father to his eldest son. “Every father wants his son to be perfect,” was what he said.

Which means I wasn’t.

“I don’t know if you are psychologically damaged or something,” he went on. Then he sighed. “Your mother is so proud of you,” he added. “Everywhere she goes she talks about you and your plans for the future.”

I like to think there is a real truth behind every Michael Cunningham novel.

What can I say, really? It seems like my father just told me everything I’ll ever need to hear for the rest of my life. I can see the words in red, LIFETIME QUOTA: REACHED. But even though I kept going “hmm” in the car, as I walked my back to my bunk, the following conclusions were reached in my head:

1. I recognise that I am a flawed son.
2. I recognise that I am far from the ideal child
3. I recognise that I may prove embarrassing to my family no matter my achievements, successes, accomplishments, etc.
4. I also recognise that we are all imperfect.
5. I recognise that I’ve come to terms with #4 a long time ago, and that #4 had been key to my personal happiness and self-acceptance
6. I therefore recognise that the feeling is mutual; that my father is a flawed parent.
7. I therefore blame no one.

Over the past few days I’ve stopped talking to my father. I’m not angry, or cold, or even sad. I’m nonchalant. In fact, I’m mostly unaffected, and I think that may have resulted in the distance, an acknowledgement of something that had always been there, the separation between one’s expectations and one’s reality.

I recall spending my entire Wednesday in the Ops Room with Selig as he did his duty, either talking a lot or playing Birzzle endlessly till my contacts went all dry. My father called me that night to ask if I was coming home on Thursday; just this morning I helped my father book some Jetstar tickets to Manila, and to express his thanks, he patted my back and said: “You are the perfect son.”

I recognise that my father might feel guilty. I also recognise that those were the strangest words to have ever reached my ears.

yam.

P.S. Last Friday I had brunch with Siewfong at Wild Honey and just went giddy with excitement, lathering my bagette with the in-house sour cream; yesterday night I attended his 21st birthday party, and managed to catch up with some fellow Slytherins in my old dormitory.

Echoes of Mine
by M83

Il est tard. Je cherche à rentrer chez moi,
et je prends un chemin que je ne connais pas,
un petit sentier qui longe les usines et la ville en coupant par la forêt
Je commence à peine à entrevoir la nature, lorsque tout d’un coup,
la nuit tombe. Je suis plongée dans le noir et le silence. Pourtant,
je n’ai pas peur.
Je m’endors, quelques minutes tout au plus, et quand je me réveille,
le soleil est là, et la forêt brille d’une lumière éclatant.

Je reconnais cette forêt. Ce n’est pas une forêt ordinaire.
C’est une forêt de souvenirs. Mes souvenirs.
Cette rivière blanche et sonore, mon adolescence.
Ces grands arbres, les hommes que j’ai aimés.
Cet oiseau qui vole, au loin, mon père disparu.
Mes souvenirs ne sont plus des souvenirs,
ils sont là, vivants près de moil, ils dansent et m’enlacent,
chantent et me sourient.

Je regarde mes mains, je caresse mon visage, j’ai 20 ans,
et j’aime comme je n’ai jamais aimé.

*

The beautiful translation:

It is late. I try to go home, and I take a path I do not know, a small path along the factories and the city by cutting through the forest. I am just beginning to glimpse nature, when suddenly, night falls. I plunged into darkness and silence. Yet I am not afraid. I fall asleep a few minutes at most, and when I wake up, the sun is there, and the forest shines a bright light. I recognize that forest. This is not an ordinary forest. It is a forest of memories. My memories. This river, white noise, my adolescence. These great trees, the men I loved. The bird that flies. away, my father disappeared. My memories are not memories, they are there, live near me!, They dance and embrace me, sing and smile at me. I look at my hands, I stroked my face, I’m 20 years old and I love like I never loved.

A poem’s coming your way, February.

yam.

P.S. Happy Chinese New Year! May the Water Dragon not drown in its own misery.

reminiscence [rem-uh-nis-uhns]

noun

1. the act or process of recalling past experiences, events, etc.
2. a mental impression retained and revived.
3. Often, reminiscences: a recollection narrated or told: reminiscences of an American soldier.
4. something that recalls or suggests something else.

*

Just when I was at the point of wondering how I should angle this blog entry, something comes straight along:

If I were a shameless person, I’d provide the necessary links in this sentence, but I’m not, so I won’t. I will however invite you to enter the ‘search’ bar below if you’re so curious. Dedicated readers shall remember a dreadful time, a few years ago, when I was leaving an emotional cesspool of lava and plunging straight into a depressive vortex of shame and idiocy.

Yeah, it was that bad. As I told Naomi I was beginning to leaf through my old entries, she goes:

NAOMI: omg i am doing the same
NAOMI: HAHAHAHA what the shit, we are so sad
DARYL:  but more importantly
DARYL: is the past tense
DARYL: “we WERE so sad”

Yesterday I had a lot of fun: the initial plan was for me to drop by at UTown in the evening to catch Joel Tan’s directorial debut, White Collar, a play written by a drama student I had seen perform in an absurdist multiple bill by ACJC and later in a USProduction of Hay Fever; she played a maid in both productions, I believe. But when Naomi informed me she was having a seminar on utopian/dystopian literature that day at 1pm, I asked if I could crash, and she took up on my idea.

I had Late For Class Anxiety Attacks. Standing at the bus stop outside Buona Vista MRT station at 12.35pm, I honestly wondered if 95 was gonna take its own bloody sweet time to come and whisk me to NUS. I got there on the dot.

When class began the Indian professor began to rattle on about some introductory points on dystopian literature he wished to emphasise before student presentations began, which today centered  on Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. I actually found myself regretting I hadn’t read the text before, but as I heard two very excellent students give their takes on the beautification and beatification of knowledge and the text’s portrayal of and attitude towards Catholicism, I found myself wishing class would begin for me as well. (Alas, in half a year’s time.)

In between there was a brief interlude at the nearby canteen where I read Eugenides’s Middlesex before proceeding towards the fancy, swanky, super-expensive-looking mini-Esplanade the play was being staged in, not before going to Cinnamon’s dining hall and laughing with Naomi’s friends; they’re a really cool bunch, and it was surprising how easy it was to just be with them. After the play ended, we camwhored like crazy. The theme for Naomi and I was “hipster evening”. ‘Nuff said.

White Collar was fantastic, btw. I laughed so hard; I’ve been really into office comedy lately and so to see it all happen on stage was really lovely. Some characters started out minor but later grew in prominence in a very gradual, organic manner which I appreciated; and the set was just so lovely and convenient for the actors. During the first act we were all leaning over our chairs in the topmost balcony; during the second half we retreated to some empty rows downstairs where I ended up sitting next to the playwright herself!

I’ve had an idea that’s been floating around my head recently, that I forced myself to shelf into my brain for “10 Years Later” reference. It’s essentially a documentary-format sitcom centered on an office in an army unit, and the people who work there in its various branches, no doubt influenced by my own time in the Ministry of Magic.

A few characters come to mind: there’s the grouchy, useless, but sweet and easily-strung-along boss; the guy with the black face but a heart of gold and an obsession with musicals and movie soundtracks; the cool best friend who can be a bit of bastard; the lovely cleaning lady, wanting to keep her business but is too nice to be left out of the cubicle shenanigans; the ah beng colleague and his weird romance with the ah lian contractor; the gaggle of bitchy tai tai administrators; the bromance between the blessedly clueless gym-junkie Ken doll and the overachieving but forever-down-on-his-luck bookworm (plus their constant attempts to hunt for girls); the BFF female lieutenant, riding on the wave of an army scholarship; and the main character, a gay clerk, super-reliable and constantly-cheerful and optimism-filled, a brilliant anomaly in a macho heteronormative military context who’s constantly looking out for others and but never himself.

But Mediacorp will never produce it. Not now anyway. Let alone persuade the Ministry to shoot something like that in its premises. Which explains the “10 Years Later” post-it the sitcom has in the shelf of my head.

yam.

We first walked towards the condominums in the distance, crossing long, empty, narrow streets; we came at a junction and decided on a direction: we kept walking, beside the stylish apartments, the streetlights, before chancing upon a canal, flanked by new walkways dotted by lights fitted into the wooden planks: the canal was deeper and wider than any other I’ve known, and the waters were dark but still. Trees lined the walkways, and the back gates of estates: we chanced upon marshlands, vines, perching dragonflies, strange pavements, tufts of tall bamboo, a strange pond that looked as though someone had torn the tiles apart, a slit in the earth. An alley, devoid of light, scattered with dried leaves; in the distance, over the trees, a building towers over us, uncompleted and bare, a skeleton that loomed over us, tempted us.

My poor camera tried to capture as much light as possible.

HAPPY 21st, MAG!

*

Last night I ended up going home around midnight as well. The Ceriph guys decided to hold a steamboat inviting their past contributors, and I went along to Goodman Arts Centre, with Naomi as my +1. The food was great, and I could be myself, spilling green tea all over my shorts and legs while we chatted over random things.

Naomi left at around 9.30pm, cos she had work the next day; alone I sat on the butt-numbing inverted bin they used as stools, as we watched an issue of Wholphin, my jaw agape at the perplexing arty-fartiness of it all. The Delicious really ought to be renamed The Colour-Coordinated Mentally Ill.

yam.

Skin
by Zola Jesus

Safety net, don’t hold me now
In this hole I’ve fallen down
Secret home I made and found
And you wait to breathe

Skin of all, skin of all
I’ve had enough, ooh ohh
Skin of all

And in the sickness, you have faith
And in the thickness you find me
FinallyIn the city, you find pain
And the people you see there
That remind you of your role
Let me go

Skin of all, skin of all
I’ve had enough, ooh ooh
Skin of all

And in the sickness, you have faith
And in the thickness you find me
Finally, finally
That’s what they say
Finally

*

There was so much tragedy in the mid-season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy I just watched. Looking at Teddy ask Cristina to tell her Henry’s dead, then watching her trying to pull the drapes covering her husband, pale and unmoving. I freakin’ cried at the dining table.

And damn it why do they keep making fun of poor April.

This was also a very good moment to premiere Snow Patrol’s new single, ‘New York’, which sounds like the very kind of song that drove me to buy ‘Open Eyes’ and … nothing else.

yam.