Janet picks up her fortune cookie,
Then puts it down, turns to her friend:
“Don’t bank too much on youth. Your rookie
Season is drawing to an end.
John, things we would – when young – not think of,
Start to make sense when, on the brink of
Thirtydom, we pause to scan
What salves and salads cannot ban,
The earliest furrows on our faces,
The loneliness within our souls,
Our febrile clawing for mean goals,
Our programmed cockfights and rat races,
Our dreary dignity, false pride,
And hearts stored in formaldehyde.
– Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate
No worries – no anxiety. Just reading a very good book and felt those were awesome lines.
Okay, last one, I promise – and then I’ll stop flogging this dead horse:
Context here:
I embrace this opportunity of remarking that [Mr. Jaggers] washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an usually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, wipe them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock the next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.
– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Even more information here, in case you didn’t understand the symbolism.
Just a heads up: I’ll be speaking at the upcoming WriteCamp Singapore 2011 on “Singapore Literature: Where we should be going”.
In the talk – which I’m giving in my own personal capacity – I’ll discuss:
- Why Singapore Literature needs to be taught in Singapore schools,
- Why this hasn’t been happening, and
- What Singaporean writers should do to reverse this trend.
–
When is WriteCamp and what’s it about? From the SWF website:
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011
Time: 2pm – 6pm
Venue: Seminar Rooms 1 and 2, National Museum of Singapore
Price of Admission: FREE!
WriteCamp is SWF’s take on the “unconference” – a dynamic, user-generated series of workshops and talks where presenters share their knowledge to small, passionate audiences.
Each session is typically 30 minutes, with two or three sessions running concurrently so that audiences have the luxury of choice while speakers have to keep their talks snappy and insightful.
Topics can cover the craft of writing, tips on publishing, or other writing-related subjects.
Apart from fun networking and the buzz of spontaneous creativity, Writecamp promises to shed new light on writers and writing too!
Have an idea for a talk? Send it to writecamp.swf@gmail.com with your topic and contact details and we’ll get in touch with you if it’s selected.
Please join me, either as a listener or as a speaker, if you can. You can sign up for the event here or browse the SWF website for more details.
See you there!
Was just reminded of the poem below when I received an e-mail blast from The Arts House regarding a reading of Czeslaw Milosz’s poetry.
–
Christopher Robin
By Czeslaw Milosz
I must think suddenly of matters too difficult for a bear of little brain. I have never asked myself what lies beyond the place where we live, I and Rabbit, Piglet and Eeyore, with our friend Christopher Robin. That is, we continued to live here, and nothing changed, and I just ate my little something. Only Christopher Robin left for a moment.
Owl says that immediately beyond our garden Time begins, and that it is an awfully deep well. If you fall in it, you go down and down, very quickly, and no one knows what happens to you next. I was a bit worried about Christopher Robin falling in, but he came back and then I asked him about the well. “Old bear,” he answered. “I was in it and I was falling and I was changing as I fell. My legs became long, I was a big person, I grew old, hunched, and I walked with a cane, and then I died. It was probably just a dream, it was quite unreal. The only real thing was you, old bear, and our shared fun. Now I won’t go anywhere, even if I’m called in for an afternoon snack.”
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