lost. Drown. afoot. stories.

i lost my mp3 player on my way back home from KL. was a tad disappointed in myself for not being careful with it, but then thought, what's meant to be, will be. i will be able to read more now, i thought. which happens to be true: two books in a week.


Drown by Junot Diaz

something about reading really stunning short stories. it chokes. it must be what being hanged feels like. to be painfully grabbed away from breathing. the throat's passageway deemed useless - folded and twisted into a cut that engorges the body, whole. his stories are like that. the first one is a heart-stopper. it kills you into an awaking.

his stories also makes one feel like a trespasser, strolling stupidly into a world you know nothing about, and yet are trying to stake a claim upon. what a fool. and in the end, the stories do just that. it fools us and we cannot do anything else, but accept it.

at the same time, i find myself silently searching for parts of the characters in me. sadistic, almost. but such a beautiful yearning.

a must read.




afoot. work. it brings out the true value of a 'friday', the TGIF. i spent mine walking. my temporary workplace overlooks a gorgeous sky and often i wonder what lay beneath it. so this morning i planned a route. it was two train stops away, a route i had never walked before. Tiong Bahru to Tanjong Pagar. it would take 5 mins by train but about 1 hour 15 mins on foot. worth it though.

stories. the characters have been born. time to breathe air into their limbs. o heart. stop feeling. let the mind do her work. shoosh.

book cutting

i found some of my mom's old hardcovers. she didn't want them anymore, and so, i attempted book-cutting. it was fun from start till end, but the 'fun' evolved through different emotions - glee, pain, and even pleasurable pain. it was worth it in the end though. i've made the book into a tree, with a hollow trunk to fill in things with.

pages of minds

the Penguin Warehouse Sale

Expo Hall 6

3rd- 6th Dec

10am- 9.30pm

be there!

i love Penguin books. the papers they use smell nice. i love smelling books. i also love going to warehouse sales because it's when you get un-cracked spines, smooth pages, & cheap books. cheap being $5 to $10 for hardcovers. how beautiful is that! i also love how there is very little eye contact between people. every eye, peeled onto books, titles, names, searching, searching. a sea of faceless faces, acknowledging only through the bodily presence of the other, caught at the corners of eyes. our bodies gyrate against the tables likes waves to the shore, to and fro, to and fro. pendulums. rhythmic. collect and deposit. awe. lust. picturesque covers. 1st editions. un-cracked spines. swoon.

ahh, book people. book people are beautiful people. yeah!

"half glimpses of life"

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

i've been wanting to read this novel ever since i watched/listened to Chimamanda speak on one of the TED talks | The Danger of a Single Story. she is such an eloquent speaker. resilient beauty. it made me desperate to read her. so, i did.

the first thing i did after borrowing this book from the library was to google the Nigerian-Biafran war. i had never heard of it. for shame. equipped with a mere wiki update on the war, i started. i was immediately intrigued by the characters. they were whole. described with lavish words. i fell in love. a biased love. turned them into heroes. the beacon of all that was good. this was however, shattered. but it was a disappointment so beautiful, it only added more whole-ness to their beings. humans. being and becoming who and what they can be, shaped by their ideals; changed by their circumstances for as goes the saying, what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger. this new-found strength can however be translated in both positive and pessimistic ways. half glimpses of life. not all that grow reach for the sky. some dig deeper into the ground, into darkness.

a thought. certain histories, calamities, genocides are constantly revisited, narrated, and thus their sacrifices, miseries, survivors repeatedly mourned, remembered through museums, memorials, movies. by those who can afford it.

but for those who can't, what become of them?

half glimpses of life