This year, I will pass the new year at home.

It occurs to me that this is a bit of a cop-out. Originally, I had intended to go down to Marina Bay to get lost in the throngs in search of that wave of euphoria that wells up as we commemorate the hope and despair in the temporality of experience. Despair because time passes and brings change unpredictably to things that we cherish and hope never to have to give up. Hope because time passes and brings change unpredictably to things that we fear and dread and can't wait to give up. In this confusion a kind of fusion is born, and philosophy falls, broken, to the sidelines while people celebrate for all sorts of motivations - but they celebrate, and this is the energy that I am looking for.

But I haven't been able to find anyone who wants to go down with me to join the crowds at the Esplanade. This in itself isn't so odd - last year, too, I wasn't able to find anyone to go along. But last year, the supreme need was to be swept away from a way of life, to be uplifted from the drudgery of the Army, to be surprised into wakefulness and consciousness, and to have my faith in the workings of the heavens restored by the miracle of fellow-feeling among strangers. This year, in contrast, I am not in search of a concept: I am in search of company. And since there is no company to be had at the Esplanade, far better it is, then, to enjoy the company of family at home. And even the symbolic value of being in the middle of a crowd singing Aude Lang Syne is lost - what is the point of the ritual if there is no meaning behind it?

Nah, this year, fireworks alone doesn't outweight what I have at home, and what I have in store just beyond the brink of Tomorrow. Behind, a year well spent, and well-defined by what people have offered me, beyond all my expectations. My colleagues and men in the Army, all solid and dependable people, people I am proud to work with, and who have shown me, each and every one of them, that this experience need not be a complete loss, that every moment matters and you have to live for each other, commit to one another, to make it work. My friends here, who have been dependably around whenever boredom or despair loomed threateningly, who have kept their (and my) sense of humour and perspective alive despite it all, who have shown me how to grow up properly and productively. My friends abroad, who have put in that precious effort to keep in contact, and who gave me a wonderful summer this year, bringing back their stories of Elsewhere and their old personalities and idiosyncracies like heirlooms. And of course, my family, who have never stopped supporting me, who have been as good companions as they have been good sounding boards against which to vent and rant.

And next year - a year of velocity, of acute awareness of a destination and energetic progress towards it. A year starting, unprecendented, with a trip abroad (and perhaps the last of its kind for close to four years). A year stretching ahead, pure, unplanned - structured time ends after 9 January, and beyond that is a pristine prairie of time waiting for new projects and new attempts, and, perhaps, also old things renewed. And in August -

2008, long-awaited and yearned for, is about to start. Has started in New Zealand and Australia. On TV, Sydneysiders launch fireworks from the harbour and the Bridge. And to think, in Europe and the Americas, today is just starting. For others, the potential that already lies in the past here is still fresh and ready to be tapped. A part of me still wants to hang on to this feeling of anticipation, of the delicious thrill at the edge of the new year. A part of me prefers to enjoy the idea of the thing, the safe, harmless idea that can so easily and comfortably conform to what I want it to be like. But let the thing itself, so long-anticipated, come. And let us move on.

Happy 2008 to all. May it start splendidly, and may it bring ever more enrichment and fulfilment to everyone's personal experiences.

...and the new year hangs tantalisingly on the brink of Tomorrow. Been spending a lot of time on new year greetings, composing them carefully. It was a project that was inspired like Elsewhere: encountering an artifact that suggested itself so compellingly to be a part of a larger whole, and indicated what should be done with itself to make it complete. It's like finding a block of marble that suggests to the sculptor what statue it should be, I guess, in the stereotypical vision I have of how sculptures are born. Or, perhaps, encountering a tree that shows you what kind of ark you should build with it.

And partly, too, the energy to do this project has come from the approach of 2008 itself, so long-awaited and yearned for. It is, I guess, a way to acknowledge that 2007 has passed honourably and fulfillingly, and has laid a worthy foundation for the promise of the new year. It is a signpost firmly pointed forward, and an emblem of action: as I wrote, the approach of 2008 adds a sense of velocity to the sense of direction that 2007 gave me. It is finally time for life to move onward to the goal that I've had my eye on for almost two years now.

Received a letter today from Columbia asking for a report of what I've been doing for the last six months, and a reaffirmation of my decision to matriculate there in August. I think I'll relish writing that letter, and there is so much to include: not only the work in the Army, but also the three trips since then (the next one also hanging tantalisingly on the brink of Tomorrow), and the projects I've been up to - perhaps most usefully, the refurbishment and relaunch of this website and related paraphenalia. And it's also the season for everyone to submit their applications to be admitted to US universities next year. Yes, life for this batch is gaining momentum again, and it will be good to have everyone moving forward once more, and feel the energy that was absent during the long wait in the Army, that certain purposefulness and striving that is kindled by a cherished objective. I sincerely hope that everyone gets the opportunities that they so rightly deserve.

So, in these ways, I find 2007 coming to a most satisfactory close. Also, in a flurry of letter- and postcard-writing, I've tried to touch base with my people who are overseas, a sort of radio check of the old modes of communication that we had. And also will be meeting up with whoever's here in the days to come. Passed Christmas Eve at Vaish's place in a small, jolly reunion of Arts-fac types, spiking the cocktails with high-velocity jokes. Whiled away the afternoon with Thong today at a tea-house (no, not the one he's quitting soon) over pots of fragrant pu'er-and-ginseng tea and a Japanese infusion of green tea and rice, throwing around ideas for ideal birthdays. And spent a long, long time with Yiting chatting over dinner, between souvenir-shopping and coffee as a digestif, jumping between the past, present and future with the accumulated energy of two months incommunicado. And tomorrow, linking up with Liulao (who'd contacted me out of the blue with a short-lived offer to relief-teach at CHS) and the CHS gang, before perhaps seeking out the tail-end of a RJGE reunion lunch.

And, of course, there's the Sarawak-Sabah trip coming up. It's a breathless progression - I'd thought that December would be far more empty, allowing me to savour the build-up to the big events of Christmas, New Year, and the next trip. It's really good that things have rolled along so swiftly, and staved off vapidness for me so well; but a part of me, still wistful, yearns for more time, as always, to appreciate the textures of the idea of a thing before plunging into the thing itself.

Oh well, as Joel says, seize the time while it's still here. Commit to the present and stave off a lethal dose of reflectiveness. There'll be enough time for that, when the future is no longer so promising.

*

Today marks the start of a new project, tentatively entitled Directions. Hopefully will be ready before the year is out.

Felis Navidad Prospero Anno Felicidad

The last two nights have been filled with dreams, some pleasant, and others awful. But the sensations are always intense, and so happiness is almost shameful in its power, and fright is suffocating in its immediacy. And for some reason, these dreams were like a showcase of practically everyone who had kept in contact with me over the last year. Family members played their roles; friends were sometimes scrutinised so intimately that it seemed like telepathy. What these dreams mean, I don't have a clue. And I can't really say that I particularly enjoyed meeting everyone over Christmas through this medium. But there was something haunting about these dreams: haunting enough that I actually remember them after waking up, something that practically never happens to me. Something that said, over and over, to remember, remember, and to remember well.

*

...and when I think back on the year that has passed, I am amazed by how lucky I've been. Had an Army experience that was not altogether a waste of time, and in fact has been productive and meaningful, beyond my wildest expectations. Throughout the last year, I've known some really great people, who've made Army worth the trouble, and outside Army, who've been utterly dependable and understanding. I've had a good summer, despite the ever-present feeling of being left behind by the people who fly off to go back to school. And I've had an absolutely wonderful end to the year, with the two trips and, now, a good Christmas as well.

By all accounts this year has been better than I've had a right to expect. In some ways, it has even been a happier year, a year of reliable patterns and routines that exceeded even the busiest periods in the JC years. A year of reaffirmations and surprises, of old certainties revisited and new avenues revealed to previously neglected aspects of my life. It's the kind of year that constantly gives you a diffuse, low buzz of astonishment; some part of you is constantly surprised at how things are going so well, and a bit skeptical that all is actually as rosy as it is.

Which is, to be fair, a valid point. At this point of the year, after a Christmas celebration and facing a new, fresh year to come, the urge to romanticise and idealise everything that has passed is strong. One needs to feel like the year has gone past productively, in order to have the confidence to look forward to the next one. And so the constant pressures and irritations of the previous year are glossed over, and if they can't be hidden, then they are read with the perfect vision of hindsight to be part of a grand, intricate scheme leading to a brighter tomorrow. One needs to believe that each passing day is leading towards something more, something higher, to give meaning to why one should put so much effort into living.

And call it self-delusion, but my instinctual emphasis on small delightful everyday things keeps me happy, and I think it's a fair liberty to take, a small distortion to allow myself to be content enough to do more useful things. And so I linger over letters from abroad, I revisit old photographs, I tread well-worn memories. And I count myself doubly lucky to have so many of such things to look back towards for this year. If I told you just how much I appreciate every small gesture that keeps me balanced and sane, I would be giving a gross underestimation.

And...looking forward. The year 2007 is almost at an end, and 2008 looms ahead, hopeful, new, gleaming in its freshness, a promise and an opportunity hanging prestine in the quickly-evaporating future. 2008: I have waited so long for it to come, and now, time is moving forward again, and there is not only direction to life, but also velocity. A part of me wants to remain, yearningly, in this state of anticipation of a great opportunity promised to me. But that part is mollified by the far more insistent part that draws on the experience of the last year, and especially on the two most recent trips, to argue eloquently that the future is not something to be dreaded, because it will be delightful in surprising, new ways, and all one needs is an open mind and a receptive heart. So let the new year come, and let 2007 pass away peacefully, and let it be cloaked in glorious memory.

Midnight Mass

And so this is Christmas...

Another year of midnight Christmas mass alone at the Cathedral. Somehow, every year, circumstances and timings conspire against me, and no matter how I try, I can't ever seem to find people to go along with me to the Cathedral for this particular mass. There is always the chance of meeting someone familiar there, but it isn't the same, is it, as having a friend to accompany you and share in the spirit of the night.

But that's not to say that the mass is a sad affair. Far from it: the sheer volume of people there makes affectations of solitude impossible, and everyone seems to be infused with goodwill and sympathy. Small gestures of courtesy and kindness bind us together profoundly: the way spontaneously parted for a babe in arms or a communion minister; the rare song-sheet shared between adjacent strangers; the Sign of Peace infused with extra warmth and friendliness.

And when the bell tolls at midnight, not just at the Cathedral, but at all churches of all denominations across the darkened city and across the island, indeed, across the time-zone - how can you feel alone? You are swept up in a ground-swell of fellow-feeling, of goodwill to all men, of heady anticipation of the hope and salvation to come. The church welcomes all souls, offers them the greatest gift of all on the cold winter midnight: the feeling of companionship, a companionship that goes beyond the personal, transmuted by ritual and mass participation into something philosophical and thus inviolable.

You don't know who you can meet in mass, then: fellow lone rangers, families with children nodding asleep, visitors from abroad out to see a spectacle, even Christians who find themselves in a church of the wrong denomination. And in the swell and chorus of the singing host, buoyed by the feeling of renewal, of new hope, of promises reaffirmed, you feel part of a larger, inscrutable thing, and you feel lucky to be here, at this place and at this time.

Festive Spirit

Been busy with a new project - the Southeastern Coast Gallery for the Australia photos. It's really consumed a lot of my time, not only because the pictures are nice (heh, if I do say so myself) and they remind me of a good time spent overseas, but also because this project has been characterised by an unusual sense of possibility. The ideas that I had for its design have been more easily implemented than for other projects, and to my surprise, my rudimentary JavaScript skills actually allowed me to self-programme something useful, rather than to use my old method of poaching bits of code from online coding forums and databases. So this project seems blessed, somehow, as if some force from within its nascent form also wants it to be completed as much as I do.

The pictures, too, are endearing. Somehow the pictures that came out of Australia were generally more colourful and evocative, somehow more well composed. I don't know if it's got anything to do with my family's increasing experience with photography and this camera in particular. But I have to say that the settings in Australia really just lend themselves to be photographed. The scenes spontaneously compose themselves, the lush landscape, the built environment, the people, the weather all somehow conspiring to produce a pattern so compelling that I cannot resist whipping out my camera. And yet, it is also the talent of Australia to make such exquisitely composed scenes without a trace of contrivance or artificiality. So there is, this time, a surprising number of good candid shots, shots that tell of a moment and portray and emphasise its essential character.

So throughout this project, so far, I've been dwelling in a certain sense of enlightenment, as if by presenting these photographs in a specially crafted gallery, they are empowered to uplift and enrich me. These photos already hold a special place in my memory, but by repackaging and retouching them, more patterns are emerging that serve to make them even more precious. I guess a part of this can be seen as self-indulgence, but it has been so long since photographs have spoken to me so eloquently, and I am quite taken up by their siren song.

Next up - a gallery for the Malacca pictures. I think that will be all till Christmas, when I hope to launch these two new projects, as well as the revamped Lumière Project site. New and improved is the order of the day, and this is a time of renewal and rebirth, of finding oneself again and regrounding oneself in preparation of the next stage of life. And after the East Malaysia trip, this cycle of traveling will be completed, I reckon.

*

Anyway - Borneo trip's confirmed. I'm flying off again on 2 Jan, coming back on 9 Jan. An East Malaysian sojourn squashed into the period of time between New Year's Day and my 21st. I'll be visiting Soph's hometown of Kuching, then joining her for her Kota Kinabalu leg, where we'll also be joined by one of her university friends. Heh, I wonder what it'll be like, traveling with two practicing college students. Must practice my discoursive skills again, to at least be able to fend off intellectual forays.

The trip is still in the planning stages, when it's just all promise and anticipation. A range of options lies before me, and I find it invigorating to find what can be done given the limited time and resources that we have. It's like a puzzle to be solved, an one that suits a planner, I guess: how to make the potentialities of infinite possibility compatible with the strictures and limitations of a system. And once again, it's the issue of striking a balance between planning and spontaneity; though if Malacca was anything to go by, small-group traveling would require far less planning than Australia, because small groups are naturally more manoeuvrable and adaptable.

*

And besides making the gallery and planning for the next trip, I've also gone out a bit. Kay Hwee and family have flown off to New York to pass Christmas and New Year in the Big Apple, the lucky gits, but Joel and I were able to catch them on their penultimate day in Singapore. Watched The Warlords with them, which was the biggest Asian offering at the box office this holiday season. It was disappointing: a wannabe show trying and failing to be deep and epic, in the way that Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were revolutionary for the genre.

That evening, finally met up with YS for dinner. She'd been back from Canberra for weeks already; in fact, she may have left on the day I touched down in Brisbane. But due to travel (ah, what a happy hindrance this is!) and the testimonials, we only found the time this week for a reunion. She's back to work at PUB, getting to know the workings of the organisation, and preparing for a year of exchange at the University of Virginia. That places her in the general neighbourhood of the Northeastern US when I get there next year. This tips the balance for my winter plans somewhat: if more people are in the US than in Europe next winter, then I won't do the transatlantic jump. But the choices have to be weighed carefully, since most of the Europeans will be entering their final year next year, and there won't be another winter in which to do the transatlantic jump.

Anyway, had a good time chatting and catching up, I for the most part regaling her with Australia stories, and my impressions of the land and the people from Down Under, and YS looking forward to Virginia and ultimately returning to Canberra. This reunion, the conversation came more easily, I think partly because we have almost five months of stuff to talk about, but also because now I feel more of an equal to her, having thrown off the experiential fetters of the Army, and having two new trips behind me. It may be fallacious, this perception of inferiority, but it was a real barrier; though I was in the Army, I didn't feel as adult as she was, and I've said before that the Army period was a discontinuity in the progress of my life, an abortive branching off of experience, a dead end, and a period characterised by waiting for life to resume. Now, things are moving again, and most importantly, there is a sense that things are moving forward, a sense of direction, that makes me more in tune with the vibes of an undergraduate, I reckon.

*

Some of my people have returned: witness Soph's (initially abortive) return to Singapore, on the same day that Kels touched down, and our little Humanities classes reunion dinner at Newton Circus that progressed into an epic Munchkins battle at Kels's place. Witness the return of YS. And witness the plans for anothe reunion, on Christmas Eve, that invites people like Vaish and Aparna and Mel, continentally displaced friends and classmates coming home for the holidays.

But more are not coming back, and to some of these I have posted cards for the season. It's a shock to realise how late in December it already is, and how it's probably too late to send anything that will arrive before Christmas itself. But it's important to remember people in this period; if they can't be here in the flesh, the least you can do is to spare a thought for them (and, perhaps, find a way to spare more than a thought for them and to do something nice that bestrides oceans and continents). To all my people overseas, I still think of you frequently, and I still wish you could be here, even though I understand why you won't be here.

Walking down Orchard Road with YS after dinner, we ran into the whole festive spirit of the place. Crowds of people on the night streets, a choir in front of Paragon, and, magically, a procession of brightly-lit and -coloured floats driving past bearing a host of angels. The fairy lights twinkled overhead amidst the broad leafy canopy of tropical trees, and volunteers wished passers-by a Merry Christmas. I think the organisers did a good job this year; the place really feels joyful and warm. But also, this is the first Christmas season in four years that I've been able to enjoy without any worries or hindrances whatsoever. And I know that it all seems so much more special this year, because this is the time between the end of the long wait of the Army and the start of the most exciting phase of life so far.

There are many things that are great about Australia, but the thing that surprised me the most was how cheap their books are. On our first night in Sydney, we found a used-book shop downtown, which was unfortunately closed. Revisiting the next day, we found a great selection of books, used, but proudly displayed in stacks that were sorted by genre and, unlike in Singapore, by author. I could have happily spent half a day in that one store alone, and would have, too, if it were not for our severly limited time in Sydney. As it was, I couldn't resist buying two books: Bernard Shaw's snappy-sounding Three Plays for Puritans, and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, effectively taking care of my reading needs all the way till January. And the cost? S$30 total.

And then, up in the Blue Mountains, along Katoomba's main street, you can find three antique bookshops, and you find that every antique store in that town also has a section dedicated to books. One wonders how many tourists must visit that one street in order to sustain so many book boutiques. I and Greg wandered into this one antique shop, and found two 150-year-old tomes, first editions of Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. The asking price was A$60, and though it was a hefty sum, when you think about it, where can you get century-old first editions with hard covers, gold leaf and embossed details in Singapore? Two hardcover books from Kino would already cost about S$60. So we bought the two volumes, and gave the Dickens to Mum for her birthday, which we celebrated on the Mountains over a hotel-room picnic.

And finally, I found this splendid antique bookshop in Katoomba with first-edition collections that outstrip even the National Library's Rare Book section. It was amazing, wandering among the towering shelves with the books, some tattered, some worn, all much-loved and thick with the scent of age. It was like walking in my imagination. And found a handsome hardcover copy of a compilation of Conrad's The Shadow Line and Within the Tides going for A$12. It was a steal, I think: the volume had intricate cover details highlighted in gold, a ribbon bookmark and even includes reproductions of some of his sketches that went along with the stories. I originally bought it with a mind to give it away as a Christmas present, but it's such a beautiful book that I almost can't bear to part with it now, at least not before reading it first.

If only Singapore had bookshops like these, bookshops with editions that will cause you to judge a book by its cover, with editions that are more than literary masterpieces, but also works of craftsmanship that anyone would be proud to be seen holding, reading, or putting on one's bookcase. And it's not that Singapore books are that much pricier, but Australian bookshops have a certain discerning taste in books that means that they're selling you more than just paper with words printed on it. You can ask the shopkeeper to recommend books for you, whereas I can't imagine asking a Borders cashier to choose between a Murakami and a McEwan. And that means that you buy more than just the book - you're buying into a certain literary intellectual mindset. And in Australia, it's their pleasure to nurture that in you for free, which makes book-shopping there so remarkable.

*

Finally, finally finished the testimonial vetting, and what a nightmare it has been. I shan't talk any more about it; I'm just glad that it's over, and I can have my mental wellbeing back. I realised yesterday how much time these testimonials were taking up, and how much, actually, I had to do this festive season - and all that even when officially unemployed. I'd like to finish the new gallery for the Australia and Malacca photos, and I want to visit my old sergeant, whose baby just passed his first month. There's Christmas decorating to be done, cooking to be prepared, and I want to toss out whatever I can from my room, the detritus of the passing year. And I have to put away all my army gear in proper storage, seeing that I'm not planning to clap eyes on it for four years.

And, beyond that, the trip to East Malaysia that'll take place after the New Year, and my 21st. Mum raised the question of the latter yesterday after mass, and it occurs to me that I'm the first in my generation to reach 21 years old, and so it's up to me to set the standard, as it were, for birthday bashes. And it seems like such an obligation now, to organise something momentous, because that's just the done thing and everyone would expect you to do something big. And you only turn 21 once, right? Given the occasion, my family's offering to organise practically anything I would like, and, faced with such a range of options, I find myself baffled and at a loss. What do people usually do when they turn 21? I certainly can't see myself doing a drunken-orgy sort of thing.

I get the impression that it'll be the epitome of self-consciousness. That's why I never organised anything to mark my own birthdays before. I mean, why would anyone purposely put themselves in the spotlight, taking other people's expectations and assumptions about oneself along with their presents? I picture inviting all the old friends from CHS and RJ, and having everyone standing around awkwardly, aware that we are supposed to be having the time of our lives, but also equally aware of the contrivance behind the exercise. And yet...there's that nagging suspicion that if we don't mark our 21st with something out of the ordinary, we're missing out on some crucial coming-of-age ritual. Giving up a big 21st birthday bash feels like depriving oneself of a childhood, almost.

What would I like, ideally? Well, I'd like to do what my mum did on the Blue Mountains: go to someplace exotic, have family and friends around, and have a good-natured gathering, with no one feeling pressurised to act in a way that fits in with social conventions. After all, it's only the people that counts. And if we could pull that off, I think I couldn't bring myself to ask for more. And I'd have had something that some other people would, perhaps, not even think to consider as a worthy way to celebrate a birthday.

Traveling

And I'm back from Australia and Malacca! Sorry, readers, for not updating this journal at any point on the trips. We were moving around too much in Australia, and anyway, it would have been prohibitively expensive to buy some time on the internet from a café. And the Malacca stay was too short, whereas I have a lot of things to say about both trips.

The result of this is that I've almost finished another sketchbook, surprising myself by actually managing to find enough time and content to almost fill up a brand new book in just under two weeks. There has certainly been no shortage of things to write; the hard part is to steal a few moments out of experiencing the present to record the past. And, considering the richness of the experience, it seemed for the most part a pity to sacrifice some time to sleep, let alone to write in my journal. Even the road trips were engaging in terms of conversations and the scenery that scrolled past our windows on a continuous enchanting loop. So, I found myself losing sleep almost every day, and writing only in the early mornings and the late evenings - but happily so.

A complete blow-by-blow account of what happened on the trips, though, won't be furnished here, I think. Don't have the patience to reproduce the entire sketchbook's contents here; and anyway, I didn't write those entries with the view of them being read by a wide audience. The photographs that we took on the trips will eventually be made available on the Lumière Project site, I expect, and I have vague plans to turn the sketchbook into some sort of sequel to Elsewhere, though how fast these plans are realised will depend on how much free time I have between now and Christmas.

That being said - some snapshots of the trip! First, the landscapes: the perfect beaches strung all across the Australian coastline, powdery-white sand welcoming lashings of sunlight and the playful pounding surf, beaches filled with people surfing, wading, suntanning, playing volleyball, hang-gliding, boating, picnicking, but still never crowded; tall-masted sailboats anchored in the harbour of a coastal town at night, swaying gently in the ebbing tide, their masts pointing serenely towards a blanket of stars overhead; the open road winding through the pristine countryside, at times diving into forests so clear of undergrowth and so friendly that they seemed to have been groomed, at times rising above the landscape on a ridgeline and affording us a view of rolling hills blanketed by a quiltwork of farms, with a gleaming blue swath of the sea and the sky forming the backdrop; the main streets of the small coastal towns we passed through, and wandering down them, we admired each window that was so well-composed that they could have been proud works of art; a late-afternoon cruise in a sparkling bay, cold wind and warm sun on the skin, the land all along the horizon like an embrace, and dolphins playing off the bow of the vessel; hot fish and chips still crackling from the fryer and exploding from the greaseproof paper like elation from a surprised heart; handsome brownstones in the big cities, bedecked with intricate awnings and draped with histories; Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, with us strolling through its grounds in search of monumental sights, and finding serenity, dignity, a line of ducklings following a mother duck, all against the industrious and powerful backdrop of the gleaming towers of downtown; watching a Kuroshawa film in the darkness of the Art Gallery of New South Wales among local movie buffs; the mist-shrouded towns of the Blue Mountains, harbouring boutique shops selling surprises and hope, inviting one to wander inside and to stay just a while longer; the wonderful Jenolan Caves, with rock formations so intricate and amazing that they struck me dumb with the miracle of beauty that emerges out of the mechanics of probability, that defied anyone to be stoically unmoved, that affirmed that there has to be a God who created all these wonders; and mountainside treks that took us to delicate cascades of spring-water, waters as cool as majesty and as pure as truth. Such were the encounters that we found on our Southward sojourn through Australia.

And, in Malacca, wandering the streets of the town in the way that demands adventurousness, courage and open-mindedness in the traveler, we found rows and rows of handsome shophouses, the riotously red Dutch Quarter, a hill of Chinese graves, and another street peppered with free art galleries showcasing the boldest of contemporary Malaccan art; standing at junctions devoid of traffic lights with only a map and hope, savouring the possibilities opening up before us in the form of the intersection; mornings starting lazily with a book, a journal entry, a greeting, and a big breakfast; conversations, real conversations, over chicken rice balls or a pot of after-dinner tea, rambling over space and time in the way that I find only old friends can have; and most precious of them all, the surprise and delight in finding enrichment from an unexpected meeting, a curator, a painter, a fashion designer who wanted to engage us beyond what was necessary to conclude a transaction.

In these trips, there was the real satisfaction of traveling, rather than just touring. In Australia, everything is visitor-friendly, from the easy-to-understand highway signs to the people you meet, and yet, Australia avoids being condescending towards visitors. You are undoubtedly welcome, but you are also expected to have some modicum of intelligence and ability to make choices. And in not prescribing activities or places to visit, Australia avoids presenting the type of façade to the visitor that Singapore does, the kind of face that may be totally safe and certain to please, but will become boring very, very fast. And needless to say, Malacca was nowhere as accessible as Australia, which meant that we had to put in much more effort to find things that we wanted to do, especially when the prescribed tourist experience ran out after the first day. In these two weeks, therefore, there was a continuous sense of being actively engaged by the destination, a sense of being offered some new experience, but also of being asked for some sincerity and openness in return.

However, what really gets me about these two weeks of traveling is the quality of social interactions that I came across. The locals were unexpectedly forthcoming with help and friendliness, from the Malaccan artist family who insisted we stayed for a chat and then recommended us a good restaurant for dinner, to the Sydneysider businessman who was raring to offer directions to the local Chinatown, to the people of Salamander in Port Stephens, Australia who all greeted me as I took my morning walk - every one without fail. Then there was my family, going on a trip that was of such an epic scale that it will likely not be repeated in the next five years. Animated chats with aunts, uncles and cousins who I normally would not cross paths with, everyone gathered around picnic meals bought out of the local takeaway or supermarket, nights spent playing Risk and Munchkins, and days spent wandering through the city centre, meandering into shops that we found by chance. And then there was Soph, who joined the trip in Sydney, and Kats, who joined us in Malacca. it was remarkably easy to slip back into the old mode of communication that we had from two years (an era) ago, and talking with these old friends in the novel context of a place that was not Singapore was fundamentally satisfying in some way, as if by affirming that our old friendships had survived the transition of two years' separation and had been successfully brought into a foreign environment, we had acknowledged a new level of maturity and strength in our relationship; the reunion had solidified a cherished friendship.

And what lies after this? It's the holiday season, and the time to meet up with the people who are back has come again. It's the time to touch base with as many people as I can, with the knowledge, this time, that the friendships that I want to hold are stronger than I'd previously thought. And then, after Christmas, another jump to East Malaysia, and in January, perhaps another sojourn with Joel to Vietnam and Cambodia.

Now is the time, then, to finally, finally bury the long wait in the shadows of the past. I am, of course, still waiting, but my impatience is now tempered with a hopeful and enjoyable present, and it is no longer such an imperative for August 2008 to come as fast as possible, since the intervening time doesn't seem to be such a drought of experience any more. This is a heady, hopeful time.

Australia

A girl graduating from RJC in one of the Humanities classes thinks that Taiwan is a peninsula. This, after doing a research paper on the territory's indigenous peoples. For a gaffe like this, I hope it's a result of stupidity. If it's a result of laziness then there is so much less hope for self-betterment.

*

So here we are, eighteen hours away from departure. Bags are packed, tickets are booked, and it is, once again, the time of breathless anticipation for the journey to start. Soph isn't the first one to remark that I could have put too much planning into this trip. But I think planning is only bad if you want to stick assiduously to it. In that way, I think I am organised, but not a control freak. I mean, you definitely need some planning to make sure that you're not going in blind, and to minimise the possibility of something bad happening, like your getting lost and missing the check-in timing at your hotel in the next town. But alongside that you need to have the flexibility and spontaneity to accept circumstances that pop up, to take advantage of the moment. The way I see it, the plan is a baseline, a starting point that guarantees a minimum level of enjoyment and discovery. In the best case, it should be a catalyst that helps you to exploit any surprises that happen, rather than to blinker you so much that you miss golden opportunities. But that's a skill that only travelling experience can bring. The balancing point between organisation and flexibility is elusive, and fluctuating.

But anyway, Australia - the last time that I was there, I was seven years old. I remember parts of the theme parks along the Gold Coast, and Brisbane City. I remember vividly that Brisbane Airport was so small that our plane had to park itself out away from the terminal, and what a novelty it was for us to disembark right onto the tarmac! It was my first plane, and it was a 747, and seeing that huge machine poised on the ground has been an image that stayed with me, all this while, a golden standard of air travel, the epitome of arrival. There is something marvelous about standing out in the cold in a different place and looking up at the amazing vessel that has carried you across the lands and the seas on the backs of unimaginable forces.

I envy my people staying in Australia - Soph and YS. But this is something beyond the general envy that I have for anyone who isn't staying in Singapore at the moment, and is knee-deep in the tides of the wider world. These two people have something more, a pride in their location that people in other parts of the world don't have in such remarkable quantities. They frequently mention the landscapes and sights of Australia in their correspondence, and, as unique as their sights are to Australia, their delight at the physical location too is unmatched. Of course, that is not necessarily to say that Australia is a better place to live than anywhere else. But the environment does set it apart as a good place to life.

There's something about the new continents (by this I mean the continents to which large-scale human settlement is a relative novelty - in other words the Americas and Australia) that exudes promise. It's like being on a frontier - not just the philosophical frontier that marks out the edge of experience, but also a physical frontier, where the thrill of anticipation is made tangible. I guess it's all that space, all that space that's empty of people and their works, as exciting as a blank page under a poised pen. That's why Australia and the Americas have this atmosphere of great potential waiting to be realised by someone who dares to become its catalyst, and are poised, as they are in my mind's eye, on the edge of the future, while Europe and Asia, despite their powerful impetuses for development and advancement, are weighted by history and firmlyrooted in the past.

So - Australia. Here we come, in a little more than eighteen hours. It is good to travel again, and this time to travel without the eventual return being a spectre hanging over the journey that is like a promise to the end of a dream. After all these years, finally I come into a time when I have the time and the money to travel like we've always wanted to, and that is good, and portentious like the start of a new golden age.

*

I apologise to anyone reading this who finds it tedious. It's the influence of Iyer reasserting itself. Nowadays, my days start with a chapter of The Lady and the Monk in bed before breakfast, and wandering the imagined streets of Kyoto with him feels like reuniting with an old friend. The book itself is one of his early works - only his second published book. But somehow, he always seems to engage some part of me, something that goes beyond plot and is more fundamental than style, though it uses these two means to communicate. It is some sibilance on a spiritual, philosophical level. And reading Iyer feels like talking to him, in the kind of conversation that only old friends can have after a period of time apart.

And for those who are reading, thanks for your patience. It feels good to know that other eyes are running over these words; temporally distant, geographically separated are reader and writer, but this is communication nonetheless, until a time when we can meet again, face to face. I hope that this continues to entertain and provoke. And stay tuned for despatches from Down Under.

How do these things come together to form a spontaneous and immediately captivating harmony? A message on a box: "14 June 1894 - As I was approaching Ovsiannikovo, I looked at the lovely sunset. A shaft of light in the piled up clouds, and there, like a red irregular coal, the sun. All this above the forest, the rye. Joyful. And I thought to myself: No, this world is not a joke, not a vale of ordeal only and a passage to a better eternal world, but one of the eternal worlds, which is good, joyful, and which we not only can, but must make finer and more joyful for those living with us, and for those who will live in it after us."

And, at the bus stop opposite the Cathedral, across the rumbling road, I spy a lady and a man in the doorway to the nave, talking earnestly, heads together, as a film camera and boom microphone hover over them. Another man in black t-shirt and cap holds a clapboard casually. What are they saying? What am I seeing? And how is it that I can read meaning from their unintelligibility?

And this morning, in bed with a new book, the scent of new paper like a promise, a commitment, and I begin to read: "As I began to climb, the noise fell away, and the crowds started to thin out. Soon I was far above the town, alone in a world of lanterns. For on this, the Night of a Thousand Lanterns, lights had been placed beside every grave, to lead departed spirits back to Buddha. And I, somehow, without knowing it, had found my way alone into an ancient graveyard. For many minutes I stood there, in the company of ghosts and shivering lights."

Sometimes, the pattern that I can see out of the chaos, the pattern that makes itself so evident without my calling it forth at all, is so compelling that I have to stop and admire it. Beauty that is so unlikely, and so arresting, that it is portentious like a miracle and privileged like a blessing. Times like this make you fully aware only of the present, of everything you experience, and of its transience, its temporality - well, what of it?

*

Finished Winterson's The Stone Gods yesterday on the train downtown, and read the last pages in Borders, where I had bought it in the first place. The book ends predictably; she has used echoing narratives before, where characters quote each other throughout the book, invoke the past or a future that is yet to be, make a Gordian knot out of the timeline. But in her latest book she throws out any effort at a linear plot, which I think is a mistake. What made Gut Symmetries so compelling was in part because the plot was still linear, even though she bent the timeline way out of shape. Everything fitted together so nicely at the end, into a neat linear timeline that highlighted a beautiful pattern, and this craftsmanship was a testament to her skill. But The Stone Gods is perhaps too postmodern for my taste - the temporal knot that I see at the end is inelegant, confusing, haphazard, like a device used out of pretentious intentions rather than for an artistic purpose.

But she does make an interesting point, in the end. After all that humanity has done to itself and to its planet, if we were given a second chance, we would commit the same mistakes again. Humanity cannot learn, even if it remembers; human nature is intrinsically self-effacing, self-destructive. And second chances would only be squandered, again and again; we cannot change what we once were, and what we will therefore always be. "Everything is imprinted with what it once was," she writes. And yet, this is not a doomsday declaration, because you have to take all our art, our compassion, our worth together with our depravity and destruction. If the grand historical arc of humanity inevitably tends to apocalypse, then at least individuals can act out lives of love and sympathy, or art and respect, of understanding and aspiration, against this backdrop of condemnation. And perhaps these individual moments of epiphany make all the great pain of the human collective worthwhile.

*

Been doing up some work for my old teachers, going through their students' CCA testimonials. I can understand if some current students will feel offended by the thought of this, and demand that teachers, real teachers, do the editing of their testimonials instead. I can only say, understand that the teachers are also confined by the temporal laws of physics, and among all the tasks they have to do to look after your welfare, this is the least important.

I have some philosophical objections with the way the testimonials are done. They are written by students for themselves, but presented in the third person, which I think is an inexcusable sleight of hand, amounting to fraud. It allows people to blow their own trumpet and make it sound like someone else's testimony. Of course, it is likely that if the teachers wrote the testimonials it would sound bombastic and congratulatory too, but how can you allow yourself to be so superlative towards your own achievements if you know that you are blowing them way out of proportion? Reading the testimonials, you'd think that a CCA would fail if a single ordinary member didn't attend every session diligently. You'd think that an actor has as much responsibility in bearing the school name as the President of the Student Council. We may live in a postmodern world, but to accept these viewpoints is to abandon all functional concepts of proportion and perspective. This constitutes self-delusion on an alarming scale.

But such is the state of affairs that the system demands of teachers more work than they are humanly capable of, and we settle for the next best alternative. But it makes me shudder, thinking about how so many young people are making themselves out to be so great and capable, when in reality they can't even straighten out their own grammar. And as if that was not bad enough, they can't even straighten out the spelling, let alone the places to put the words they write. One even managed to misspell her own name. Twice.

Don't even get me started on what I think about the people who actually believe what they are writing. It's too depressing.

*

In other news, planning the trips, and it's almost time to begin. Leaving for Australia on Thursday, and I hope that the company proves to be fun, because I reckon we'd end up spending more time travelling than actually visiting any single place. Time is, as always, the problem.

Against this, there are the reports of the five Singaporeans who drowned in a freak dragon-boating accident while on vacation. And then there are reports of ethnic unrest bubbling up in KL. And investigations continue for a murder of an American student on holiday in Italy. The modern lore makes travel out to be so glamorous - this stepping out of comfort zones, throwing yourself wholeheartedly and without possibility of repreive into a new culture. The cloying and seductive tastes of a new place, a new experience. But this comes up hard against the realities of the unknown, the freak chance, the unforeseen development. We have all these grand plans to travel, but we really are playing with such high stakes, aren't we? The prestige of exploring still comes with the danger of trauma, injury or death, although we no longer sail up the Congo with Marlowe.

Been getting on with Winterson's The Stone Gods, and am nearing the end with the impression that it's not as good as Gut Symmetries. She writes like she has a responsibility, which makes her terribly self-conscious. The turns of phrase that made me so enraptured in my first Winterson now seem so contrived, as if she were an amateur trying to emulate another artist, which happens to be her younger self. The themes are in the same vein as the rest of her work - love, apathy, science, free will, what makes life worthwhile, and above all, communication. But there really is nothing new, and she doesn't manage to innovate on her past techniques to offer a new take or maintain the old sharpness. The book is more sci-fi than old-school literature, and not very compelling sci-fi at that. It looks like we're approaching the end of a brief, intense intellectual relationship. Somehow my first Winterson was the one that still leaves me with the deepest impression, and I'm beginning to think that she'll never top that for me, and it's better to leave Gut Symmetries in pride of place and be done with it, rather than to keep reading Winterson books and being disappointed.

What still draws me to this particular story is not something that is specific to Winterson. In it she describes a post-apocalyptic world, what she calls Post-3 War, which is the aftermath of a nuclear war triggered by the polarising effect of the War on Terror. And it's the idea of a post-apocalyptic era that is captivating. Imagine...this great, decadent world with all its wonders and weaknesses, its miracles and depravities that feed off each other, combat each other and sustain each other, reduced to a smoking ruin. Imagine humanity robbed of its epic hopes and epic evils, reduced in a fundamental way to just surviving. It is this narrowing of hopes, this shrinking of horizons, the fall from a high place of both benign and malign greatness that is captivating. It is the idea that we were capable of so much, and yet we only chose to destroy ourselves.

And it's not just destruction. The element of choice is the clincher. Seeing cities burn and populations cut down by a meteorite, by alien invasion and by freak weather may have its poignant moments, but what really grips me is when people decide to destroy themselves. When people deliberately choose war when they know the likely outcome. When they choose decadence and eschew sacrifice. When they choose themselves at the cost of everyone else. It's the waste that strikes me; the squandering of not only your own unbounded realm of potential on the pure basis of existing, and not only the unseen and unseeable future with all its promise and peril, but also the legacy of the past, the achievements that were built up over centuries only to be lost at the cusp of a moment. It's the fragility of humanity, and the brutality of how we treat our unique legacy, that is fascinatingly terrifying. As such, the wilful squander of a single life can be more moving than an act of chance wiping out the planet.

Waste, I think, is the fundamental vice. Translate it up through levels of intellect, make it more sophisticated and elaborate, and you get crime, oppression, murder, war, the end of the world. At the root of it all, I think, is a perception that waste is tolerable, that it is acceptable. But it is not, isn't it? It's becoming increasingly clearer that we can't keep wasting energy, resources, land, the environment. The warnings are out - Earth could turn into a wasteland. But beneath that, at a more essential level, I think there are certain things that cannot be wasted, that cannot be let go so easily for a temporal reward that is negligible in the greater scheme of things. The precious, rare things that can't be wasted are time, trust, sincerity, meaning and comprehension. There is too little of these, too little for us not to treat them carefully, to cherish them and protect them and nurture them.

*

Been looking at various people's photo albums on Facebook, that ultimate friend-espionage tool, as Joel aptly calls it. Focusing on the people that are not here at the moment, and their travels in the great wide world out there. Christmas is coming, and travel plans are developing, and I am wondering where else they will visit next - Reykjavik, Kathmandu, San Francisco, Wollongong? The place names that have the charms of a magic word, the promise of new territories and experiences lying beyond the borders of one's imagination. The prospect of enrichment, or expansion, of learning and comprehension. The conjugation of novelty into appreciation, delight and respect.

I have the itch to go somewhere again, and am grateful that I am going to Australia in a week's time. Finished planning the itinerary for our Australia trip, and am in two minds on how useful it is. On the one hand, planning it has necessitated me doing quite a bit of research, making sure that I'm not going in blind, and giving us a framework to fall back on and propel the trip forwards. On the other hand, planning every day beforehand doesn't leave much room for spontaneous discoveries, moments of epiphany, that kind of romantic thing. It's the difference between what I want to happen, and what can happen. And in the middle somewhere lies the experience of our trip. It's the usual dilemma - how much should you leave open-ended, and how much should you plan, to ensure a baseline worthwhile experience without precluding the possibility of something truly wonderful and out-of-this-world happening?

And after Australia, planning a short hop up to Malacca, and then next year perhaps a hop to KK and a longer trip to Vietnam with the guys. Big plans, and now, it's within our power to realise them. It's a heady time, this. The prospect of becoming something of a traveler after all this time. And the hope that this travel will be done with people who will catalyse it into something even more delightful and worthwhile than we can imagine.

The Virtual Life

Spending a lot of time these days in the virtual world. Watching many videos about the newest game releases because me and Greg are thinking of building a new computer - well, to be exact, he's thinking of building it and asking me to invest in it. And listening to him talk about the latest technological leaps, about processors that have shrunk yet again to an almost quantum level, or quad cores and dual graphics cards, or seventeen-inch screens, it makes me almost want to build a machine too. Almost - I'm really not much of a hardware person. If my machines start to fail me, I'm more likely to adapt to the failure and learn to live with it than to repair it. Software, though, is a different cup of tea.

Anyway, we've been looking at computer games, and it strikes me how much effort is put into games artistically. It's the next big innovation after the cinema. Spent an afternoon happily watching all the cut-scenes from the Halo games, and it's a really detailed and immersive storyline, stuff right out of the movies. And some of it is really emotive, on a fundamental, low-level way. Not exactly poetry, it doesn't pull any punches in the plot, but even if it doesn't do it delicately or with much finesse, it pulls at heartstrings.

And then there's Mass Effect. The most beautiful sci-fi game that I've ever seen, and it's amazing in the amount of customisable content that is in the game. Many games, especially RTS, boast non-linear gameplay, as in every time you play is a different experience, and you have many means to achieve a goal. But when it comes to FPS games, a lot of the choices you make are really obvious binary choices, and plot flows are predictable. The amount of freedom you have always felt like part of a mechanical predetermined system. But with Mass Effect, they created a really immersive galaxy, where every detail matters, and they simulated conversations really precisely, right up to animating body language. So you really have to pay attention, and nuances and details really matter.

And look at this:

In this video, every scene with a human in it is generated in-game. If you change the look of your character (right down to the amount of blush on her cheeks, or the height of his cheekbones, depending of your fancy) before starting, the appearance of the character in the opening cinematic will change too. And look at the textures, and the naturalistic movements, and most stunningly, the completely believable banter! It's breathtaking in its imaginative investment, and mesmerising in its capability to catalyse the player's own imaginative scope.

Anyway, like I was saying, been spending a lot of time in the virtual world, and not just online and in computers. Also been watching a lot of movies (as those of you who've had the patience to read will have noticed), reading a lot (both fiction and TIME), keeping up with the news, and attending a play. Doing a lot of observing, absorbing information, enjoying, appreciating. And I have to say that it feels really good, all this enrichment and expansion. But I think I'm fast approaching the point where I'll be wanting something concrete to do. To go from passive observation to active application. To make time scarce again, and make actions matter.

Was down at school today grabbing a set of school graduation certs to vet through. Giving our old teachers a hand, considering the mountain of certs that await checking and their sheer lack of manpower. And it's something to do, you know, but not exactly glamorous stuff that you'd want to put on your CV. Was talking to Kats after getting the certs, and discussing how long the enjoyment of the vacuity of time can last. And the danger, isn't it, is that you grow too comfortable with this state of mind, and can't let go of it when time ultimately runs out. But the paradox is that once you start working again, you'll look back at these times of emptiness wistfully - no matter how much you tell yourself not to. And this time, when we start working again, we probably won't have the chance to be so carefree until we retire, which is an unimaginably long time away, like life in a different galaxy.

The way to appreciate this fully is to take a philosophical, metaphysical perspective, and realise that even the pining for work in a time of emptiness is a luxury, and the pining for freedom in the midst of temporal commitments is a privilege.

Ikiru

I haven't written such long posts before, at least not as often as I seem to be doing now. It's a habit that's carried over from the days of handwriting, I think, when I could write wherever I wanted, as long as there was time and graphite to spare. There is something satisfying in the way that the written word accumulates on paper, and the way the journals coalesce into something substantial, as if distilling thoughts and condensing ideas out of the fog of consciousness. It's far more satisfying, I think, than seeing your history build up on a blogging site. And I realise that not many people nowadays have the luxury of reading through such long rants everyday. Well, I hope to entertain, but above all I want to write!

Watched Akira Kuroshawa's Ikiru yesterday, and it was amazing. Started out rather awkwardly, rather forward compared to the Fellini and the Bergman that I watched earlier. But the film was like a Murakami story, somewhat dreamy, frank and direct but with a haze around the edges, a wistful yearning underpinning everything. And the Japanese artists do caricature and imagery so well - there were moments that were positively poetic, in how the composition of the monochrome tones came together with the soundtrack and the words.

There was the scene in his bedroom, after Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and only six months left to live. He goes blindly through the little rituals of getting ready to go to bed, as if in a daze, muscle memory animating a stunned body. He winds his watch out of blind habit, then winds his alarm clock as if in preparation to wake up at the start of another unchanged day. Then he catches sight of his Civil Service certificates acknowledging his twenty-five years of dedicated, distinguished obscurity. And, overcome by despair, or fear, he dives for the covers.

Then there is the scene in the bar, where he drowns his bitterness with the more distracting bitterness to be found at the bottom of a bottle of sake. Watanabe confides his fears and frustrations in a passing writer, the alcohol and the sleeping pills he gives to the writer (was he planning a quiet suicide?) seeming to unhinge his habitual reservation. Then a scene at another bar, where he plays one of those old machines where a ball drops down a slalom course of cartwheels and posts. The colours whirl, the writer leans in: "this vending machine of dreams and infatuations".

There was another very striking scene, when Watanabe and a young female colleague are sitting in a high-class restaurant. In the foreground, she demands to know why he is practically stalking her on a daily basis. He in turn tries to explain why he finds her so captivating, but ultimately is incapable of finding the right words to express his hunger for her vitality and vivaciousness. In the background, a large gathering of teenage students prepare to celebrate a friend's birthday, their shouts and cries piercing the couple's sombre conversation. And when Watamabe comes to his epiphanic moment, and sees clearly what he must do, and is seized by a sudden burst of compelling necessity, he runs down the stairs past the girl who is climbing up to a chorus of "Happy Birthday". The parallel, the contrast, is obvious.

There are some other memorable motifs - Watanabe is attached to many antique images, such as the official stamp that he wields like a totem. And his younger colleague nicknames him the "mummy". His face is also a powerful image, the face worn with wrinkles, and yet the eyes burning and bulging with such determination, fascination and fear. The characters almost get run over by traffic several times - almost, as if they were just about to be bulldozed by life's inexorable progress, indifferent to their own dramas and revelations. There are only two English songs in the film, the "Happy Birthday" and a little ditty that two au pairs shriek out hideously on Watamabe's first night out on the town. And the theme song, his mournful rendition of "Life is brief/ Fall in love, maidens...", appears twice, once in a drunken moment of piercing lucidity at the start of his stand against obscurity, and the second time posthumously, just before his death as he takes stock of his achievements.

Watanabe is, throughout the film, plagued by an inability to communicate his fundamental realisations about the nature and meaning of life. "What I mean to say," he stmbles, and other times, bleats repeatedly, "in other words...". He cannot even find the opportunity or the means to tell his own son about his fatal cancer, and when he dies, it is a mystery to everyone. In desperation, he almost manages to break through his linguistic block in the restaurant scene, but his audience was not in the right state of mind to receive his message. And in the end, he resolves to craft a legacy for himself with the work of his last days; actions speak louder than words, and only actions can produce a message loud enough to survive the white noise of time passing.

But drinks are a means to release hindered powers of expression. Watanabe and the writer speak most truthfully when drunk, and he sings his song most evocatively when drunk. At his wake, drinks release the inhibitions of his civil-service colleagues, and opens the door to the truth about his motivations in his last days, stripping away the layers of politics and bureaucracy. In inebriation, they approach a truth about meaning that they cannot act upon when sober. Drinks release lucidity, but absolves people from remembering.

It was sometimes over the top, sometimes uncomfortably incisive, sometimes comical in its absurd tragedy, but always the film is frank and clever, and beautiful in its crafting. It's not a difficult film to watch, but it is very rich in style and in meaning. My first Kuroshawa, and I recommend it to everyone, and I eagerly look forward to more.

*

And here's a line from 8 ½ that stuck with me when I was shuttling through the film commentary. It takes place near the end of the film, and I think this is the single most pivotal point in the development of Guido's character. It is when he first expresses his core problem, and shows just how aware he is of his own dilemma.

GUIDO

Could you leave everything behind and start from zero again? Pick one thing, and one only, and be absolutely devoted to it? Make it the reason for your existence, the thing that contains everything, that becomes everything, because your dedication to it makes it last forever? Could you?

...No, this guy here, he couldn't. He wants to grab everything, can't give up a single thing. He changes his mind every day, beacuse he's afraid he might miss the right path. And he's slowly bleeding to death.

CLAUDIA

So this is how the movie ends?

GUIDO

No, this is how it starts.

Reawakening

This is turning out to be a really grand weekend. Saturday started in grand fashion with the movie binge at Kats's place. We started with Frederico Fellini's 8 ½, and it was a fantastic film. The blurb sells it as the greatest film about film of all time, and the actual product didn't disappoint one bit. I recommend it to anyone who has eyes and ears - this is a film to open the eyes of your eyes and unplug the ears of your ears.

In the film, director Guido is seeking refuge in a stylish health spa, trying to gather his thoughts and ideas for his newest, autobiographical, film. He is followed by his entire production team who is anxious, no, positively desperate, to begin shooting the film, even though Guido himself has no idea how to string the various scenes from his life together into a coherent film. So the film is an engaging and fascinating series of jumps between the haggling and maneouvrings of the production team and actors eager to be on the cast, Guido's own fantasy-like memory sequences that show how he envisions individual scenes without showing how they all fit into the coherent plotline of a movie, and that gray area in between, when he daydreams and sometimes hallucinates wistfully about how he would like the real world to more closely resemble a world in which he is in total creative control and is unopposed and unhindered by the mere effervescence of human interaction, expectation and obligation.

The film is delicately wrought, exquisitely balancing different viewpoints like a brilliant book, and giving the impression of saying something powerful while remaining ambiguous about what it is actually saying. The irritating peripherals of the creative process, as embodied in the pragmatic considerations of his production crew and actors, seem petty, only encumbering his creative vision. One gets the sense that he views his daydreams and stylised recounting of his memories as the core of the enterprise, and pragmatic considerations can burn. But then as the film progresses one gets the creeping sensation that he is merely being vain in making this film, indulging himself in a self-aggrandising spectacle, and inflicting his self-absorbed enterprise on his coworkers and prospective audience. Gradually the importance of the memories too begin to erode, and one is left with the very postmodern feeling that nothing really matters anymore. Guido cannot make his life story fit into a progressive plotline that shows them inexorably shaping him into a successful human being, cannot squeeze meaning out of the clutter of his past.

Another point was that Guido was too proprietary with his memories. Unwilling to throw away any aspect of his life, determined to portray it in all its glorious entirety in the film, Guido is driven to include irrelevant and peripheral events that only serve to disrupt the progressive storyline that he seeks. He is reluctant to cut out any of his old acquaintances from the narrative, leading to a proliferation of anciliary characters and the cluttering up of his story. This, then, is the height of self-indulgence, his essentially egotistical hoarding of disjointed memories. This also makes his prone to dwelling in the past, mulling over what he sees as past successes and refusing to deal with the present consequences of past mistakes and decisions. The film then becomes a type of escapism for him, a symbol of refuge from the present and, even more scarily, the future.

This, of course, adds to his inability to communicate with other people around him, and his inability to engage with the present in general. His production team does not know or understand what he is trying to do with the film. His wife cannot tell when he is telling the truth, and resorts to the conclusion that he must always be treated as a liar. He talks most openly with his Muse, an imaginary actress that serves as a catalyst or sounding board for his ideas, but at the same time further reinforces his handicap in communicating those selfsame ideas in a comprehensible form. It raises the old problem of how an artist is supposed to balance the need for the immediacy of spontaneous experience against the need for detachment in order to create a meaningful portrayal of that spontaneous experience.

Stylistically, the film was beautifully made, with its rich tones in monochrome, its epic-scale sets and exquisitely constructed dream sequences. The people and places are all beautiful in an elegant, prewar setting, and this of course lends itself to the feeling of romantic nostalgia that makes clinging to the past so attractive. The symbolism was richly layered and carefully designed, and it makes you bemoan the notion that movies aren't made like that anymore. Structurally, the film is a feat of idea-engineering that is as awe-inspiring as an architectural masterpiece. The complexities and convolutions of self-reflexive and ironic storytelling is balanced by a captivating and incisive humour that makes this film compelling to watch, that makes its enriching ideas easier to comprehend, that makes its ambiguities and problems attractive to the intellect.

Definitely there is more to this film than what I write here; definitely it warrants another watching. But this kind of writing is also an indulgence in itself, and I have more to write about. Maybe another time, I can take a slower walk through the intricacies of this film.

*

So, after 8 ½ came The Battle for Algiers, reckoned to be the first documentary film ever made. It was significant in its time, I guess, in that it personalised the threat of terrorism, making a faceless threat something human and comprehensible in human terms. The most important aspect, I think, was that it showed the motivations and intentions of both the terrorists and the paratroopers sent to crush them, and both are ennobled by reason. The film, I guess, is a statement against bigotry, a caution to understand your enemy in order not to underestimate his weaknesses or overestimate his scruples. And once evil has a human face it is not so easy to come to unsympathetic sweeping conclusions.

But essentially I think The Battle for Algiers was a war thriller. As is the case with documentary films, it was prone to simplistic ambiguities, fashionably poignant but overused ideas like terrorists not being wholly inhuman, the inexorable escalation of conflict to include innocents, and the waste of war that is inflicted in the name of honour and self-defence by both sides. In its day, the movie was possibly ground-breaking in the portrayal of these ideas, but I think that it's a testament to the genre's success that these tried-and-tested platitudes have come to become the genre's greatest contribution as well as biggest weakness in the discussion of the justice of war.

It si a fashionable idea, isn't it - that both good guys and bad guys can be noble, that audiences can be manipulated into sympathising with people that in real life they would be disgusted by; that audiences can find themselves uncomfortably rooting for the bomber about to blow up a bar filled with teenage revelers. The better films have become adept at playing with these weaknesses and hypocrysies generated by a weak and lazy moral code in the audience. That is not to say that this is a deplorable thing - on the contrary, people should think like this more, I think. But when the films use this device out of habit or obligation, when they make the audience uncomfortable but don't pique them into thinking about the source of their discomfort more deeply, it's like taking a bungee jump - pleasantly scary but assuredly safe. The discomfort becomes ironically a source of comfort for the audience, a superficial and fashionable feeling that lets you soothe your conscience and say that at least you think about the issues, even if you never do anything about it.

*

Also watched The Pillowman that evening. It was the first play in too long - and it was excellent! A very creepy plot, about Katurian, a story-writer whose tales have gruesome and sick twists involving things like children killing parents or strangers maiming children out of a twisted sense of justice. His brother Michael, sort of a retard, takes it upon himself to act out some of the child murders that Katurian wrote, and they get arrested by the police. The play shows their interrogation, and Katurian's search for comprehension behind, first, why the police object to his stories, second, whether Michael did kill those children, and finally, how guilty is himself of his brother's killings.

It was a very, very rich plot, in the same way that Fellini's self-reflexive film had an intricate and complex storyline. The obvious self-reflexivity of the play becomes a central problem, and the audience follows Katurian's reasoning as he tries to extricate the reality from the plotlines of his stories. He wonders how much of their predicament is true; whether the police are framing him, fabricating a story of his guilt; whether his brother can be trusted in his bumbling, well-meaning spirit; whether his writing is essentially fiction or autobiography; whether writers are only responsible for creating the stories, or are also culpable of the thoughts they spawn in their readers. Katurian struggles with the dissolving boundary between reality and fiction, in a very postmodern way, but also very sensitively, with intense emotion, compassion powerfully contradicted by revulsion, guilt vying with a sense of justice for supremacy.

Some of the stories written into the plot by Katurian are also very good in and of themselves. The "Three Gibbet Crossroads" struck me; it goes like this:

A man wakes up from unconsciousness to find he is chained in a gibbet at a crossroads with two other criminals, similarly in gibbets. He knows he is guilty of a crime, but he cannot remember what his crime was. He sees a skeleton in one of the gibbets; a sign declares the man was a rapist. The other gibbet was occupied by an emaciated old man, who was a murderer. The first man calls out to the old man, asking him to read his own sign and tell him what he was guilty of. The old murderer looks at the man's sign, and, disgusted, spits on him.

A group of nuns walk past, and say some prayers over the skeleton. They give some food and water to the murderer. But when they come to the man and read his sign, the life drains out of them and the walk away without a word, stony-faced. Next a highwayman comes along. He examines the skeleton dispassionately. Then he goes to the murderer and breaks open his lock, setting him free. Then he comes over to the man, and reads his sign, and dispassionately draws his pistol, shooting the man through the heart.

The man cries out with his dying breath, "Please, tell me what I've done!" But the highwayman walks away without a backward glance, and the last thing the condemned man hears is the highwayman's derisive laugh.

Then there is the one about the Pillowman:

There was once a Pillowman, made entirely out of pillows. He was a good-natured, kind-hearted sort, but he had a terrible job. He would go around the world, seeking out people whose lives had been so horrible, and they had been so thoroughly broken, that they wanted to commit suicide. He would seek them out, stop them at the verge of death, and take them back in time to their childhoods. There, he would tell them about the terrible lives they would lead, and convince them to kill themselves as children rather than live through the horrible years to come. He would make it look like accidents, and managed to save hundreds from horrible lives.

But there were some who refused to believe that their lives would be terrible. There was a girl who refused to even talk to the Pillowman, because her life had been so happy up to then. The Pillowman left her, tears falling from his eyes. The next day, she began to be systematically and regularly raped by a strange man, and twenty years later committed suicide by gassing herself. The Pillowman visited her again then, and she berated him for not trying hard enough to convince her to commit suicide when she was younger.

Ultimately, the sadness that he had to inflict in his job depressed the Pillowman and wore out his kindly disposition. He resolved to carry out one last mission into the past, and then he would pack it in. He travelled back into his own past and found his younger self. Then, he told his younger self about the terrible job he would have to take up in the future, going around assisting children in committing suicide. The young Pillowman, being equally kind and warmhearted, immediately resolved to spare his older self all this misery, and agreed to kill himself. The Pillowman started to fade away, and in his last moments, gratefully thanked his younger self for taking his own life. But at the last moment, he was buffetted from all sides by the screams of the children he had saved from leading terrible lives, all resurrecting and being forced to live their original lives until they reached their original destinies...

Such twisted, but also disturbingly perceptive and sensitive examinations of the complexities of human life set this play apart from many that I've seen. It is exquisite to see Katurian being tortured by the consequences of his stories, as well as the disturbing origins of his genius. These are sensitively rendered on stage as he faces police torture and the uncomprehending, jolly killings his brother made in the name of his stories. Katurian is also faced with the possible destruction of all his stories at the hands of the authorities, and he decides that he will do all he can to protect the stories, twisted and tortured though they were, as rooted and bathed in blood as they were; and ultimately he even decides to trade his life for the preservation of his stories. Of course this raises the question of whether all fiction is worth preserving at any cost; whether burning literature is a form of sacrilege against the human experience, or whether some products of the imagination are best left in the safe tenebres of ignorance.

And, ultimately, the audience is faced with the last postmodernist question: if Katurian was a story-writer, then how much of the play is reality? Is the ending a self-indulgent figment of his imagination, or a true reflection of the humanity and humaneness that exists even in the most brutal characters? In this play, these self-reflexive questions are far more up-front and central to the plot, but like Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it is also possible to see the full implications of subjectivity examined in a subjective medium creeping up to ambush the audience's consciousness, and consciences, at the last moment.

In all, it was a good play to watch. If anyone comes across the script, or a production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, I highly recommend reading or watching it. It will deeply perturb you. And though it wasn't the best, most moving play I've ever seen (Quills still holds that special place in my heart), it was a good start to a reclamation of the artistic aspect of life.

*

But I think the best part of yesterday was, as always, the people. Setting thoughts and ideas free in a spirited discussion, throwing ideas and notions around, and together appreciating the beauty and power of the craftsmanship in the various forms of art; this was something that we had lost with the end of school and the start of the long wait, and the reclaim it in such grand style, on such a large scale, was in my view a triumph. It is good to be able to think, to feel, and to talk like this again.

After the play, went with Joel to Timbre for a round of drinks and a long, long talk, the kind that dabbles in the philosophies of life, people that are away but eagerly awaited back here, hopes for the future. Here and now, on the brink of a new adventure, and with so many people no longer around, it is good to have Joel around to keep my bearings and shore up my confidence in the worth and beauty of living in this time and place. It is a stand against despair, a philosophical and moral decision not to accept the end of the golden age that school started, a conscious decision to engage with the world and, essentially, to live life. And, though our abilities may be changed, though things will never be the same again, though our thoughts may evolve, there are still some things worth fighting for, some things worth preserving and perpetuating, to be defended against the undiscerning forces of transformation.

And, after all, succeed or fail, the attempt is the important thing.

Friday

Been a busy day today. It started with the finishing of On Chesil Beach. Then, after lunch, went downtown to run some errands. The nature of life as it is now is that I have the luxury of time to take the scenic route if I want to, take the time to appreciate the sights and sounds on the way. So I took a leisurely bus ride downtown starting from Bedok, on the way passing Siglap, Joo Chiat, Geylang, Kallang and Bugis. This stately progression through the streets strikes me like slow food; it is somehow deeply satisfying and heartening. It inspires an inexplicable happiness in me. And if I can find the time, I will try to capture this feeling on film if I can.

Once in town, it was down to the National Museum for the Neues Bauen (New Building) exhibit, an architectural affair replicating an exhibit of the same name that took place in Stuttgart in 1927. It caught my eye when we were looking to watch some stuff in the German Film Fest last month, and when we went to watch A Touch of Zen in the museum, we just happened to chance upon the opening ceremony for the exhibit. And it was stunning. It's amazing how modern the concepts were, even though they were articulated in the 1920s. The concrete slabs, glass curtain walls and horizontal plane windows that typify the architecture of the modern city all had roots in this movement at the turn of the century, and what we consider stylish and sleek in architecture today owes much to the boldness and innovativeness of these architects trying to test the limits of technological improvements in construction and quantum leaps in demographics.

Beyond the building styles, though, there was also mention of architectural dabbling in urban design. It's understandable, and architects should rightly consider the social and economic impact of their buildings on the urban fabric. And there were some amazing ideas, like arcologies, or massive city-buildings, different transport means separated on different street levels, vaulted terraces skyscrapers, and this amalgam of an airstrip atop a central railway station. But from this one can also discern the roots of utopianism, the separate zoning of residential, commercial, cultural and industrial spaces that has typified modern urban planning, the search for ideals such as the Garden City or the Monument City that has spawned, unintentionally perhaps, monstrosities such as Parisian banlieues, sprawling American suburbs and dust belts.

It's times like these when I think of being an architect. But I tell myself that I can't be an architect because what I design would only be castles in the clouds, unbuildable art pieces. Much better to appreciate the beauty that others manage to squeeze into functional buildings, others that make beauty in the physical surrounding into something integral with normal life, rather than leaving it as a pleasing peripheral property of daily business.

Then it was off to the Esplanade library, to pick up some films for tomorrow's binge with Kats and Joel. The latter suggested some interesting films; definitely he is more of a buff that I would probably ever be. To come across such gems as 8 1/2 by Fellini requires some serious research, it seems to me, research that I am just not motivated to do. Of course, a part of me recognises the desirability of being a film buff; this is the same part that wants to look cultured for the sake of its social value, the part who wants to be seen reading books that have suitably attractive and intellectual covers, who wants to be able to name-drop revered works in art. But among all the art forms, books still come first, and film is a relatively new hobby, having only comparatively recently been taken seriously enough to discuss at a sustained and critical level.

And, considering that it's been well nigh six months since I last went to the Esplanade (imagine that - even with all the people back in the summer, it didn't occur to me to revisit my old haunt) I took the time to try my luck again. There was the usual pretentious and perversely obvious critical commentary on the ills of modern society at the tickleart show-window at the entrance to the Esplanade underpass from CityLink. But the tunnel is now a suitably festive installation of apparently kid art. I'll be sure to take a closer look when I go there again, but compared with the more sombre and far more abstract installations that have occupied the tunnel before, this leaning towards the childish is positively refreshing.

There was an Indian dance item at the foyer, but I was drawn to the waterfront instead. The old outdoor theatre had been demolished to make way for a larger facility that would accommodate the growing crowds (in itself a good starting sign), but when construction costs spiralled up in the wake of the granite shortages, the construction company pulled out, and what was once a cherished venue full of good memories is now a boarded-up grassy patch. But there was a band performing at the PowerHouse stage downriver, and they were not bad.

It's a welcome feeling to be amidst all this energy and enjoyment again. The lights of the Friday night skyline speak something to me. The shadows of buildings rising into the night sky, cranes a-twinkle with spotlights, they speak something to me too. These energetic performers and revellers on the verge of the weekend speak to me. And they all say, Welcome back, it's been too long.

*

This week has been really artsy. Beyond the pretensions and desire to reclaim the zeitgeist of two years ago, or at least the veneer of it, there is a real sense of coming back to something precious. My reading, my writing, the arts and performances, the discussions afterwards, the nourishment and sharpening of the mind; these had been put on hold for too long, the breaks in the long wait for it to finish notwithstanding. Tomorrow has the first of hopefully regular movie binges, and in the evening, off to watch The Pillowman and say hello again to another long-lost friend: the stage.

Also started to read my new Winterson. At first glance, The Stone Gods is depressingly funny. It's a dark reflection of our future, a world in which freedom and science has driven men to extremes of possibility, to create a world of superlatives, a delightfully depraved world where everyone is beautiful but illiterate, Aryan-perfect but emotional blanks. And into this evolutionary dead-end comes a brand new world. A promise of Eden returned, that most precious of commodities - a second chance.

The question, though, is whether humanity can be trusted with a second chance. In McEwan's work, you get the sense of humanity as an earnest child, well-intentioned but bungling in a world that is complicated beyond all reckoning. People screw up because they are out of their league. But in the new Winterson, as in Gut Symmetries, humanity is the scourge of creation; the problems are all humanity's fault, and the peripheral characters that I have met so far are devoid of ambition, of higher aspirations beyond sex and glamour. She says taht brains are shrinking, and humanity is degenerating. But there is, I think, one saving grace; she herself can still love, though she cannot find a human worthy of loving and instead has to invest this emotion in a robot that is more human than anyone else. The question is thus elaborated - does humanity, despite all its degeneration and depravities, deserve a second chance because one person can still love? It's a test of forgiveness; in the Bible, one good man saved a city from God's wrath, but is it possible for one good man to redeem an entire species?

I have a feeling that my writing style will evolve over the next few days, though; Winterson's writing is always so powerful for me that I find myself inexorably emulating her style.

On Chesil Beach

This is a remarkable book - breathtaking in its sensitivity and perceptiveness, in the clarity of the message and the beauty of the style it is ensconed in. I recommend it to anyone who knows how to read - even if you aren't touched by the message, you will be taken by the technical and stylistic precision of the language and the plot.

In my admittedly narrow reading so far, I haven't encountered someone who can equal Ian McEwan's style. Some books can recapture the sense of wonder at the convolutions of human relationships, others can reproduce the phenomenon of universal sympathy for all parties of a protracted conflict, and few examine the problem of interpersonal communication as eloquently as he. But reading the best of McEwan is like partaking in a slowly unraveling miracle, a wonder of pattern. He weaves emotions and ideas linguistically and clearly, and when I read his work, I get the feeling that I really sincerely know what he is talking about. Sometimes he induces a sort of eerie déjà-vu, making me understand the intricacies of situations I have yet to experience myself. This inducing of sympathy towards an experience grasped only theoretically and not personally - that is a rare gift indeed.

His most powerful ability, I think, is to humanise every aspect of a central conflict. His best works show that very human misunderstandings, preconceptions and prohibitions interact to deepen a conflict. Society plays a big role in circumscribing the limits of acceptable interactions for his characters; it comes to the point where they are locked on an inevitable collision course by politeness and sociability, even though a radical departure from accepted practice could save the characters a lot of guilt and anguish. Thus the actions of individuals, be they well- or ill-intentioned, compounded by and interpreted in the social context, give rise to catastrophic results that no one could have foreseen.

External social conventions, therefore, play a central role in catalysing human conflicts, but that is not to say that the characters are absolved, in the postmodern sense, of responsibility for their actions. McEwan uses the characters' intentions to reveal their culpability. On Chesil Beach's Edward and Florence thus bear echoes of Atonement's Briony and Robbie; both pairs have moments when they are vengeful, and both have moments when they try to reach out to each other. Both pairs' most passionate intentions are never immune from the miscarriage brought on by the alchemical properties of the societies they live in.

But they are spared condemnation, because McEwan is careful to show the basis of their intentions. They may be susceptible to folly and impulse, or they may fall prey to a cold, logical desire to inflict an almost surgical harm on another, but at no point does McEwan allow the reader to develop the sense that his characters are acting out of a core of evil. The sometimes disturbing, and always redeeming, thing is that the reader can see himself plausibly doing the exact same things in their shoes, given their exact circumstances; and in this way McEwan harnesses the reader's own guilty conscience to redeem his characters.

In this way, therefore, McEwan manages to exquisitely immunise his characters against too-harsh blame. We hold them responsible for their mistakes and actions, but it's not a personal thing; their humanity is culpable, through no fault of their own. And this is the very sympathetic view of humanity that, so far, I have only seen McEwan carry off successfully, and not only creditably, but excellently.

In On Chesil Beach as in Atonement, the central problem revolves around an inability to express oneself. While in Atonement, this communication failure resided ironically in an aspiring writer, this failure in On Chesil Beach resides equally poignantly though, perhaps, less ironically (though this is a comparison taken in the view of prevailing social attitudes towards marriage) between a pair of newlyweds. The couple is cloistered, no, positively chained in the niceties of social norms in the dying years of the '60s, and Edward can't articulate his repressed violent and sensual nature to his chosen, while Florence is equally devoid of the necessary words to express a pathological revulsion towards sex. In the first parts of the book, we see the couple in their honeymoon suite, sitting down to dinner with the air thickening with tension, as Edward's eagerness to consummate the union is contrasted with Florence's mounting terror at the ordeal to come. This is contrasted in turn with flashbacks to their past, in which we see them growing closer in the natural fashion, going out for walks, tentative intimacy, shadows of reticence on Florence's part notwithstanding. But what strikes me is that their closeness is assumed to be natural by both parties, and is not really confirmed unambiguously by them, either verbally or physically. They take it for granted that they should be close, drawing from the conventions of society, and thus they do not disturb this socially-sanctioned serenity, even though both have issues that the other should know about. Their drifting along the conventional path brought them to the final impasse in the Chesil Beach hotel that they are honeymooning in.

As the night draws inexorably onward to the socially mandated consummation, Florence tries to take charge of the situation to abate her fears. But the only way her habits and her conscience would allow her to do so is to lead Edward towards the bed, thereby trading her security for a brief temporary respite. This perverse trade, in which she wins some breathing room for herself in the hopes that some miraculous change of heart would spawn in her before she had no more ground to give, is predictably misinterpreted by Edward as sensuous eagerness. And when the time comes, she also predictably flees from the act, unable to control a revulsion that is not her own fault, in such a way as to assure the reader that her fleeing was also fundamentally not her own fault.

In the wake of this, their exchange on the beach is an extension in a night of miscommunications. Florence tries to explain herself to Edward, but though he tries hard to remember his love for her, his humiliation and anger prove too powerful. Her anger at Edward is also juxtaposed with her continued love for him and her impression that she had failed him, cheated him in some way by running from the bed. In the light of this, her anger at Edward, the hurtful things she says, are transformed into a form of self-punishment. And in both cases, their anger at each other is somehow beyond themselves, drawn from social expectations unfulfilled. In this most personal moment of truth, one gets the impression that their complaints are not fundamentally personal; they are seemingly just products of psychologies befuddled and bewildered in the wake of an incomprehensible turn of events. Their combativeness is thus a form of self-defenec against confusion; they have their cozy and secure social model demolished from under their feet and, reeling from the shock, they inexorably, inevitably turn against each other despite their sincerely held regard for each other, like two large, lumbering ships locked into a collision course.

Out of all this, one gets a deep sense of waste. Edward certainly realises this in the closing pages of the book, when, in his old age, he acknowledges what he lost, all too easily, on Chesil Beach all those years ago. If they had met a few years later, when attitudes were changing in Britain, perhaps they could have articulated themselves to each other more freely and comfortably, thereby avoiding their awkwardness. Or, all it would have taken, McEwan reveals, was a stab of sympathy, a shout after Florence's retreating form along the shingle, and he would have been able to call her back. But because Edward's and Florence's respective viewpoints are necessarily restricted to their own thoughts by their inabilities in communication, they miss this pivotal moment, in which they both want to stay together, but neither can conceive that the other is feeling the same way. It is tragic, really, the way that they slip away from each other. Granted, their love may have been too immature in that they did not explore it very carefully or sensitively before committing to each other, but if you accept that any love is better than no love at all, then their relationship was worth saving on that basis alone.

I know that I should substantiate the points above in the usual literary fashion, with quotes and commentary. But I am too taken by the moment to indulge in rigour and convention. Certainly if I ever get to do literary criticism again, I would take another look at this book. It has been a very good and impactful read. Here, though, are some quotes that have been especially incisive on first reading:

"A month ago they had told each other they were in love, and that was both a thrill and afterwards, for her, a cause of one night of half waking, of vague dread that she had been impetuous and let go of something important, given something away that was not really hers to give. But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper."

- p.59

"And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all."

- p.96

"...she suddenly thought she understood their problem: they were too polite, too constrained, too timorous, they wern around each other on tiptoes, murmuring, whispering, deferring, agreeing. They barely knew each other, and never could because of the blanket of companionable near-silence that smothered their differences and blinded them as much as it bound them."

- p.148

It is very rare that I have the good fortune of reading a book that portrays love so humanely. Not many authors would examine carefully what it means to be in love, what are the very human caveats and exceptions that make idealised love impossible, and what we should accept as an adequate facsimile. And lately I've been looking for someone to provide a new language that can be used to describe such a crucial feeling in individual terms, in terms that do not resort to oft-repeated formulations, conventional interpretations, or socially safe platitudes that not only do not fit the individual situation adequately, but also do not do it justice. What I was looking for was a language that was worthy of describing and communicating love in all its intricacy and uniqueness, that brought out its individual imperfections and made them part of the glorious and beautiful pattern of the experience as a whole, rather than typecasting them as anomalies to be worked out of a socially accepted framework. Most authors fail at this; love in their books may be cute and pleasant, but strike me as somehow wistful, and false. Some authors come close; Murakami especially presents strange and interesting romantic situations, but he too gives in to socially conventional devices and vocabulary in the end. Only very few remarkable writers seem to provide what I am looking for.

In the last pages of On Chesil Beach, McEwan writes a review for the quartet that Florence dedicated herself to after leaving Edward. "Then came a searingly expressive Adagio of comsummate beauty and spiritual power," McEwan writes. "Miss Ponting, in the lilting tenderness of her tone and the lyrical delicacy of her phrasing, played, if I may put it this way, like a woman in love, not only with Mozart, or with music, but with life itself." With a few obvious variations, I could say the same for this book as well. And it is somehow fitting that McEwan himself puts it better than I can.