Thursday, July 22, 2021
CCXLIV - Dreams
But the strange thing is that dreams have a certain power, an insidious draw, over the consciousness. The old things have this power, commonly called nostalgia, which the tides of memory, from deep, unremembered waters, cast upon one's shores. Dreams of a colour and timbre recognised by the soul of one's consciousness, through which a strange, ectoplasmic attachment forms, pensive wisps of spider-web streaked with morning dew.
I feel that unsettled gravity, after I dream, clouds of something not-quite-anxiety mark my horizon, as a furtive animal senses a thunderstorm. I search my thoughts and do not know. Suspicion, some inner decision, not quite resolved conflict, I do not want to revisit. Fight, I fight it, by the cold light of day, blinding will.
water returned to the sea, cold, purposeful water,
water of crystal poplar and unnamed desire,
undercurrent winding in repressed agony, vengeful dance.
Sunday, February 28, 2021
CCXLIII - Jardin Botanique
An afternoon at the Botanics, when perfect, is unlike an afternoon anywhere else. It's hot, and also dry. The wind picks up, soft, and not for long. So it's going to be a stifling kind of walk, but the sooner you make peace with it, the better. Nothing better than a paced sweat. Light fabrics, pockets for music players and keys, soft shoes, a cap, sunglasses. Now it's perfect. The light streams down in lazy sprinkles through golden foliage, oscillating, whispering and innumerable. There are many places to start walking, and there are as many paths to take, so no walk feels quite the same as the others, no instance of music meets with vision at the same point. I choose Bill Evans, or perhaps he chooses me, and you can't really tell with music, can you. There's something dreamy, no, mystical about what he evokes when he plays. Pair that with a little green world, going it alone, nothing else on your mind. It works a charm. The piano, the path, it melds together, the adventure takes.
Now, look at the trees. Trees everywhere. The thing about trees is that they're always there, always a part of the background, a grove here, a cluster there, giants on both sides. And yet a moment happens, a closer inspection, a long glance, and a tree presents itself to you, as if for the first time. Take one, now. It's thick, scaly, perhaps a grey type of brown. Wide, slightly protruding cylinder, slanted for light, wind or weight, and sprouting upwards and manifold. But down below, where roots touch the grass, run haphazard ridges, it's such a creature of essence, of reality. Reach out a foot and touch it, step in the sand that spreads between its toes, balance on the uneven veins running underfoot. It's so rooted, so actual, so existent. So much a creature of itself, of growing, of moments strung together in being. Up above, fresh, tender saplings eke out tiny stalks, branches long and spindly, arms strain at distended angles, odd shapes. Everywhere leaves, then ferns, then palms, then tendrils, then flowers, then fruits, then moss, then bark, then at the same time, everything else that makes up a tree. Green, brown, and gold dominate.
Consider next how much air a tree covers over with its hands, how the quality of light it lets in is just the kind to sustain the kind of grubby, insistent life that takes shelter under these boughs. Know also that there are all kinds of trees, and one is not alike to another. Know them through their fruit? No, they hardly fruit. I know them through their figure, and colour, and the types of leaves that they have, and the type of stripes that run down their bark. I hear a kind of music that runs as well through this race, a meandering sort of sweep to their bodies, sighing as they bend, gurgling as they rustle, now laughing, now weeping, as they caress the wind. Trees, peaceable and calm.
But take a jungle path, and now, silence. Quiet, dark, and hidden, at every side is a ready ambush. What is there in such closeness that presses in so heavily? What manner of tree now sits, stern and unrelenting, its heart a closed book. Same tree, only different scene. More trees, in numbers unnerving, impassable, thicketed. Quickly striding now, time to get out of here, into the air. Only the end of the path, into strong light and renewed wind, brings uncommon relief.
The Botanical Gardens is nothing if not relief, strong sunshine and the promise of eternal forest. Nothing on my mind, just walking, breathing, and free, calm space in the sun.
CCXLII - UNESCO, ¿Por qué? For what?
The words UNESCO heritage site and intangible cultural heritage mean nothing to me, and perhaps that's my fault. Ignorance, admitted. (I've been to three UNESCO heritage sites, I think, outside of Singapore, and it's not as if I wanted to visit them on that basis.)
"... the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity."
"... ensuring visibility and awareness of the significance of the intangible cultural heritage and to encouraging dialogue, thus reflecting cultural diversity worldwide and testifying to human creativity."
UNESCO. It's a chop of approval, which frankly, these things never did much for me. No, I think Makan Sutra is something of an authority on food in Singapore, I'll accept that. But things like ISO, Michelin, Man Booker, Wine of the Year, you know, I take that stuff with a pinch of snuff. If the thing has inherent value, if it means something, which I've appreciated for my own reasons, then I figure that's better than borrowing from someone else's judgment. And they morph into popularity contests anyway, the judging is arbitrary, opaque, gossip-fodder.
And these are all just labels, in competition, which to me is counter-intuitive because no one place should be compared to another, and judged adequate or wanting. In whose eyes more culturally significant, by whose toil more worthy of admiration? By whose humanity? I don't get it, and I hope I don't get it either. Why should we court the attentions of those who can be drawn by a label? By what merit do we feel ennobled to be treated as having attained iconic status? What does the child of this country think of being compatriot to a land with two UNESCO labels? But I'll speak for myself and say I think it's all very silly.
Take the Botanical Gardens. It's not a place, I don't think, which Singaporeans would recommend as uniquely us, something that had to be walked to understand this country, what it's about. And it's a legacy in a way of our colonial past, when Great Britain had the whole natural history craze going (Darwin sailed on the Beagle eight years after Raffles started the Gardens, and he published On the Origin of Species thirty years after. I'd be remiss for not mentioning his younger colleague Alfred Russell Wallace, who, you say?). Would an Asiatic, a Straits Chinese get all huffy about plants the same way? Don't get me wrong, I love it. I'll talk about it sometime else. I just don't think it's an icon we cherish in quite that national way, not like the old Kallang Stadium with the fireworks and winning the Tiger Cup, or City Hall overlooking the Padang, or Changi Airport when it had two terminals. I mean, am I wrong?
And it's worse, I think, for two reasons, when it comes to hawker centres, hawker culture. The first is that our hawkers are our own, and what I mean by that is that the UN and whomever they have in the culture department have nothing to do with our hawkers. I say "our own", of course, without in any way appropriating the lives that hawkers live. No, on the contrary, hawkers are the salt of Singaporean earth, and I am not. I simply can't be, me a child of the sanguine eighties. They're individuals, families, old and small, little else besides handed down recipes, ancient words passed down besides stoves and stone pestles, and toughness, always toughness. The war and old families meant no school for most. Waking up at four am, noses to the grind, peeling prawns, cutting chili, boiling broth, god, they live by the sweat of their brows. Us, when we get a three dollar bowl of noodles, take a one dollar bowl of soy beancurd, how much do we think of the labour that goes into making all that? And yes, we talk of profit, of five hundred bowls a day, but do we talk of rent, do we talk of toil, do we talk of the heat of the wok and the heft of the garbage pail? No, we're next-generation. Someone else does it. Someone else slaps the iron spatula and tends the roaring flame. They're a dying breed, and we all know that. When I was a child and someone told me that hawkers would die out, I knew I'd never do what my grandma did, and so it was inevitable. Not at that price, nor at that sacrifice. My grandma, my uncle, they have hands, you know what I mean?
I mean, it's ridiculous, what does the UN have to do with that?
Which is related to my second point, which is that the [rude-word] Singaporean government has little to do with that either! I mean, I'll say it like it is, right here. Yes, they've built the centres, they've sort of managed the rents (don't quote me on that, you'll get an earful for sure), they've kept the grounds tidy, they've put in part work part welfare and things like that. But what on earth is the Singaporean government being all proud of the individual hawkers for when the hawkers have stood up for themselves from day one to present-day-eighty-thousand and going on? I mean, stuff that, you overstuffed shirts, take a hike. Put up your banners and your congratulations from the MPs somewhere else. This publicity, this flirting with UNESCO, it's a joke.
Think about it this other way. Every bit of heritage, every rough word, subtle cooking savvy, keen skill and artful acumen handed down, is so unique, so precious and fiercely protected. These are trade secrets in the purest sense. How's it make any sense to aggregate all that, build a "brand", for crying out loud, and pop a shiny ribbon on it? I mean sure, you can defend the idea of "hawker culture" as the heritage, and you can pretend that the idea that each hawker is unique is still protected, somehow. But you take a visitor to Singapore and ask them, well what do you think of this bit of heritage which has now taken home the UNESCO thing, and they eye the bak chor mee stall next to the mee rebus stall and that's kind of it?
UNESCO? Why? ¿Por qué? For what?