Eden by Ina Rousseau

Somewhere in Eden, after all this time,
does there still stand, abandoned, like
a ruined city, gates sealed with grisly nails,
the luckless garden?

Is sultry day still followed there
by sultry dusk, sultry night,
where on the branches sallow and purple
the fruit hangs rotting?

Is there still, underground,
spreading like lace among the rocks
a network of unexploited lodes,
onyx and gold?

Through the lush greenery
their wash echoing afar
do there still flow the four glassy streams
of which no mortal drinks?

Somewhere in Eden, after all this time,
does there still stand, like a city in ruins,
forsaken, doomed to slow decay,
the failed garden?

Qixue

All together now ... awwwwwwwwww.

*

Train stuff

Are people being to harsh on SMRT? There are problems but the train system is now 24 years old and honestly, some kind of accident was bound to happen sometime. Nobody died, people just had to eat dinner late or do their christmas shopping another day.
Not fun but not a disaster either.

what I do find unforgivable is that when a young thai girl fell on the tracks earlier this year and had to have both legs amputated, SMRT only offered her S$5000.00.... so disgusting that it beggars belief.

c'mon guys. If you just made a decent offer she wouldn't have had to take you to court. Plus since it's reached trial already, I'll bet your lawyer would have charged you 50 times of that by now. You could've just saved on your legal fees and paid her a bit more.

*

Last weekend was sort of a washout. I got up at 7 and then promptly realised that I just wasn't going to make it out of the house. After breakfast, I went straight back to bed and stayed there for a time.

After lunch, a worried Mr Grey took me to see my 89 year old chinese sinseh. He looked at my tongue, felt my pulse - both wrists - and told me that I lacked qixue - blood and .....energy.

I'm still so tired. I honestly could roll into bed at any time and just sleep for 10 hours straight.

mood music

*

Love this album and the folk rock rendition of familiar christmas hymns.

*

My christmas present ... actually more like my bonus present to myself arrived! I have a weakness - a bad one - of falling for impractical but interesting dresses. Especially if the dress seems to refer to something.

In this case, the dress was all dreamy water colour pastels and looked like it was cut from a print of Monet's water lily paintings.

I saw it months ago and never thought i'd be able to afford it - its from some designer or other and hideously expensive. But hooray for sales! Specifically 85% discounts! That's how discounted the dress had to be before I could even consider it :( and even so, it's an awfully large amount of money for one very frivolous thing.

*

ALSO, the present i ordered a month ago for... some people, arrived too! good week for postage and dhl eh?

Aural happiness

Mr Grey had a brain wave and refurbished a pair of extremely awesome sennheiser headphones for me and i've been glued to them ever since. I was so dubious about using gigantic headphones at first ... and then he dragged me to this geeky audio-phile type shop in the Adelphi (where else?) and made me sit down and audition a bunch of awesome headphones.

So now I have extremely awesome earphones that make me feel as though i'm standing in between the double bass and piano when listening to Norah Jones and Krall. You have no idea how happy this makes me; most nights when i get home, i have no energy for anything more than lying around and listening to music.

this started in medias res - the background to this is that I was once a $10-earphones-from-mustaffa-are-good-enough type of girl.

Hideously large and expensive earphones were... *ahem* unheard of in my world.

*

Related but not quite.

Lately I've been listening to Mozart's Piano Sonata in E flat (with the aforementioned awesome head phones)and loving how shaded and mellow it is. Somehow I associate that kind of mellow lyricism with Schubert more than Mozart; Mozart is usually so cheery and skippy.

But this has been a Mozart year - ups and downs but with this general underlying thread of happiness - and I am so grateful.

Earlier in the year, I used to lie in my room listening sleepily while Mr Grey played Mozart's Piano Sonata in B Flat in the living hall.

Somehow, hearing mozart and chopin in the house again has helped connect up all the left over unhappy bits ... and I feel as though music has finally - and truly - re-entered my home again.

I make my living with words but at these times and with these things ... there are no words. I can only listen to the music over and over again, knowing that the notes express exactly and precisely how it is ...

*

the only bit I really liked of Murakami's Norwegian Wood was where he talked about how the beatles song plugged the protagonist directly into the past.

I am unable to be objective about music in the same way. When it connects directly into a memory or feeling from the past, I can't tell you if it is good or bad music - only that it dredges up a whole well of meaning and history....

*

Room with a view

....

Actually, it doesn't have to have a view. It just has to be less cluttered.

People, have you ever watched one of those reality TV shows where they go to someone's house and do a house makeover?

I am so in need of one. There is 20 years worth of JUNK in my room. It's so bad that it's both funny and kinda hazardous at the same time. Poor Mr Grey, he keeps sneezing because of the accumulated dust:(

A couple of months ago, I finally cleared ONE SHELF and found - to my horror - that I had somehow squirrelled away my primary school notes and test papers. Not all (!!!) but there was a sizable stack of them.

I shook my head and thought to myself that - by hook or by crook, I need to declutter. The trouble is... how? when?

I cleared out two drawers this weekend. Yes TWO drawers and it was this massive exercise in which Mr Grey had to intervene and make me throw things out. He'd pull something out, thrust it at me and ask "Do you want to keep this? What is this? WHAT, its from secondary ONE?"

And if I showed any hesitation at all about saying "Yes, let's keep it" - it went into the dustbin.

*sigh*

We found - among other things -

2 hair dryers - both of which I never use since I don't blow dry my hair
2 digital clocks
Multiple chargers for mobile phones I no longer use / own
3 pitch pipes
3 photo frames - all unused because I have no space FOR displaying photos...
A polaroid from my fifth birthday party (I kept this obviously)
A stack of name cards...
A tangle of connecting wires and things .... and I no longer know what they are!

..........

I need help :(

That picture at the top is what I wish my room looked like. Not what it is by a long long shot.

I.WILL.CLEAN.MY.ROOM..... SOMEHOW.

*

UPDATE: Mr Grey and I made a trip to the Salvation army and successfully dumped bags and bags of old clothes / books / electronic devices (used but all in good working condition).

The room is still far from neat or uncluttered but hey, baby steps right?

paper moon

*

"Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me"

Found myself singing that a couple of weeks ago. I love that song so much .... and i found myself missing lindy and dancing in general.

it would be so nice to have time for it all - piano, books, dance, work, Mr Grey, friends, church...

but there isn't! So i'll make do with kicking dance off the menu for now - but here's a promise - I will be back!

Greek ruins and blue sea

*

Back from Italy; it was an amazing trip.

Was talking to Miss Shell last night about tours and trips. I am so glad my family stopped going on packaged tours - every family trip until I was in my late teens was the same tedious compendium of ridiculous early morning wake up calls, 10 minutes of photo time at the "sights", Chinese food at every stop (usually bad Chinese food too) and being driven to like 8 stops per day.

I mean, how can you say you've been to any country when you've had a grand total of THREE actually local meals over 10 days? Or when all you've seen of it are industrial towns flashing past you on the bus and the inside of the obligatory bad chinese tour group restaurant?

Gah.

this trip was not like that in the least. It was leisurely, all meals were local - we were often the only out of towners in the place - and we had so much time to just wander.

*

how I like to get to know a place: First, eat what they eat. Second, wander about and woolgather. Third, check out the local markets and chat with locals (if language permits). Fourth, sit in cafe (or whatever drinking/eating spot there is) and write stuff down in notebook. Fifth, go off season.

*

The second picture up there - the model in the picture is the little sister. The girl is 3 inches taller than me and therefore looks all model-esque and gorgeous in shots like these. I just look mildly like a stump.