Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.
- Ilse Bendorf
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.
- Ilse Bendorf
I’ve been surprisingly contented these days. And I must confess, it’s largely the doing of the caring Mister Eggtart. It never ceases to amaze me how he is able to manage my irrational neuroses. This morning, we were seated together having our morning coffee, and it struck me how that little black hole of fear and resentments I secretly harbour has actually been neglected for quite some time. He steadies me in my inevitable mood swings, he understands my insecurities, he laughs like a little boy when I say something silly. Slowly, the focus of my life is shifting. I no longer feel like I’m an island of uncontrollable temperaments, and the fulfillment that I had been desperately seeking in my reading and writing is becoming a fraction more tangible.
That is not to say that my life is perfect now. Far, far from it. My immediate future seems bleak (I impatiently await the results of my application to postgrad studies in Sydney.) Maybe it’s this consuming restlessness that I have bottled up that is being projected onto other issues, like the Singapore elections. It’s relatively easy to be idealistic in that domain, to grasp hopes of a better life in a single vote.
On a somewhat related note, I cannot deny that I am politically apathetic. I do have strong opinions (to me, my choice is clear-cut), but I cannot bring myself to actively influence to political opinions of others. I tend to think that one’s political affiliation is like music taste, subjective and enduring. Other than toward my nearest and dearest people (like my dad, who more than welcomes an intellectual discourse), I am open to expressing my views but not to questioning others on theirs. For days and hours afterward, I would rage quietly inward at an ill-informed judgment. But in the end, short of an outright fallacy, I don’t think it’s my place to influence the political leanings of other people.
