The First Return

I slept for most of the plane journey back which was unusual indeed. Didn't realized how exhausting the First Return Trip as a Visitor was.

There was a long queue at the customs both at the arrival and departure halls. At arrival, I remembered to join the Visitors queue (verily long it was) but did not remember to fill up the embarkation card as I was so used to just flashing the HKID. The officer was nice about it, and said Welcome Back to Hong Kong. They still had the sour plum sweets at the counters.

The 2006 Offsite was held at Aberdeen in mahogany rooms filled with ancient marine maps and other colonial artifacts. While doing multiple presentations in the long boardroom, one had the view of the southern rocky islands set in the bluish grey South China Sea.

The Ritz had the view of Statue Square set against the Bank of China, Cheung Kong and the mid-levels. I was only on the 7th floor, but this gave the eye the perfect elevation view of the city set against the cloud-capped Victorian Peak range. There's something about that sight. It's Hong Kong at its most elegant and beautiful. In the diffused lighting of a drizzly summer morning, it would still be one of the most romantic views in my mind of any city.

Causeway Bay became doubly crowded with pedestrians holding up large golf umbrellas in the rain that fell relentlessly from morning till the afternon.

The sashimi steak was still as thick and scrumptious at Yun Shan. :)

It was an exhausting week - I had almost forgotten how much information there was to take in constantly in Hong Kong. How the mind has had to jump from one thing to another. To listen to 12 different accents from the world over in the office. The flood of familiar faces in the church congregation in a sea of new faces. People coming and going and coming back again in this pulsating city that was home for a while.

But it was still a good week of conversations with life's best friends - how many of those might be our last ones face to face for a while? Of seeing things come to a full circle and knowing that healing can, and has occured. And then of putting away past mistakes, and hurts, and laughing about headless chickens and fainting goats.

Daily Quotes

The Mammon Tower has a Viridian Green gym on the 9th floor with a Deep Azure pool that's too heavy for it. Outside the gym, there is small Ebony chalkboard on which a different quote appears each day. I usually only notice it on the way home, being too rushed and hungry in the morning to contemplate what's written on it. Most days, the last words of wisdom encountered are as tired as the working day, "You never fail at anything, you only learn how to succeed in that thing" .

The other day, I saw one which stood out from the usual motivational soundbites.

"The tree that has few leaves stands strongest in the wind."

Simplicity in life has its advantage. Being too much adorned with possessions and toys of this world often means a greater sense of insecurity in crisis times. Must remember that.

Pick-up Sticks

Rules: Each player gets twenty or thirty multicoloured sticks and tosses them on the ground and tries to pick up as many as possible, one at a time, without disturbing the rest.

It just struck me the other day that I don't think we can play pick-up sticks with people. In relating to someone, you can't just choose the parts that you are comfortable with and avoid those that interwine and touch like spaghetti with the scarier parts, all in for fear of losing the game. By doing that, you are already out of the game, and you will only be dealing with the peripheral and superficial. What it really takes is great care, patience and perception to decide which stick to move first, the right order at the right time, gently, so that you don't scramble the delicate sticks or the person.

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Was reminded of another favorite funny poem for the night skies during a green laser demo on Sunday :)


Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings

--they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside
--a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry itto their lips
and soothe it to sleepwith sounds.

And yet they wake it up deliberately,
by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to sufferopenly.
Adults go to a punishment roomwith water but nothing to eat.

They lock the door and suffer the noises alone.
No one is exemptand everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die, they hide in pairs
and read about themselves --in colour, with their eyelids shut

- Craig Raine

Night Poem

A favorite night poem.

We were very tired, we were very happy
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
The sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

- Recuerdo, Edna St.Vincent Millay (1892-1951)

This Week's Economist

Interesting reads from The Economist this week:

Wall Street vs Wall Street Why the stock prices of U.S. investment banks are lacklusture despite record earnings (read: why the recent announcement that we will get more stock options in lieu of cash bonuses does not bode well :-( ).

Obituary of Kenneth Lay, founder of Enron, who died of a massive heart attack last week - he believed he was innocent until the end, and was likened to Job in his misfortunes. erhmm.

Every older brother that a man has increases his chances of being homosexual by 33%. Having younger brothers and female siblings have no effect on his sexual orientation.

The Confucius Institute is fast becoming an icon of Chinese language and culture overseas, much like the Goethe Institute, Alliance Francaise and the British Council are for the respective countries they represent.

(Note: Some articles are only available in the print edition in the staff lounge)

Variations On A Word

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell it.

We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word Love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.

Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood

Like BF was saying tonight, "it" is definitely there, but is "it" enough for them to risk it all, to "hold on" or to "let go"?

Atwood calls "it" the word that "has only four letters" - a little word that purports to hold up so much. "Far too short", "too sparse". Now, that's quite true, isn't it? "It's not love that [polar bears] don't want to fall into, but that fear."

Only a much longer Love, made of Infinite letters, that fills all of silence and Eternity will do.

(Came across the Brian Evans gallery of soundscapes. It's lovely to see how he puts colour and shapes to music.)

Turquoise Lakes

(Photos of Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan, 2001)
Was talking to someone about travels in Sichuan and remembered these scenes. Gorgeous, ain't it?

Song

Was strangely hit with a wave of nostalgia while watching Sylvia Chang's "20-30-40" during the weekend - I suspect, but cannot confirm, that it was because of the music (the film was okay only).

愛的代價 - 張艾嘉

还记得年少时的梦吗?
像朵永远不凋零的花
陪我经过那风吹雨打
看世事无常　看沧桑变化

那些为爱所付出的代价
是永远都难忘的啊
所有真心的　痴心的话
永在我心中虽然已没有他

* 走吧　走吧　
人总要学著自己长大
走吧　走吧　
人生难免经历苦痛挣扎
走吧　走吧　
为自己的心找一个家
也曾伤心流泪　也曾黯然心碎
这是爱的代价 *

也许我偶而还是会想他
偶而难免会惦记著他
就当他是个老朋友啊
也让我心疼　也让我牵掛

只是我心中不再有火花
让往事都随风去吧
所有真心的　痴心的话
永在我心中
虽然已没有他

The Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

- William Blake

Pearls before Swine

This is my favorite comic strip after Peanuts.

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the comic strip tale of two friends: a megalomaniacal Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-witted Pig who doesn't know any better. Together, this pair offers caustic commentary on humanity's quest for the unattainable. The title of the strip comes from the New Testament, and is taken from the phrase, "Don't cast your pearls before swine." In this case, Rat believes that he is an endless source of wisdom, and that it is wasted upon Pig, who is rather slow. In truth, neither of them is very smart, but while Pig is content with his humble status in life, Rat is always on a futile search for fame, riches and immortality.

It's super funny.





























One of the sharpest cartoons around, methinks.

But it's tender and honest too. Have loved sending and receiving Pearls before Swine e-Cards.



I'm bored.





Conversation Partners





Real Friend

About the Cartoonist
Stephan Pastis is an attorney-cum-activist who maintained his interest in UCLA Law School by creating Rat stories in his class notebook margins. Stephan actually practiced law in the San Francisco Bay Area before succumbing to full-time cartooning. Pastis lives with his family in northern California. He says his first and strongest influence is Charles Schulz. I always wondered if he is a Christian like Schulz.

Blank_Joy

She who did not come, wasn’t she determined
nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?

Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are
the center of all my labors and my loves.
If I’ve wept for you so much, it’s because
I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

— Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

Was reminded of this poem a few times this week - walking with BF in the nurseries and talking about "falling short of certainty", with a colleague about "searching all over again for hope", with thePensiveOne about uber G gal, and generally thinking about "incomplete joy" in the here-and-now.

We know who left the blank. Looking forward to it being filled finally.

Pre-Book Review and Top Ten List

Sara Nelson, So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading. New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 2003.

"I have a New Year's plan: I'm setting out to read a book a week for the next year and write a diary of the experience," write Sara Nelson in her memoir So Many Books, So Little Time. But this book is much more than what she intended it to be. It reads like a memoir including interracial marriage, sibling rivalry, teaching an eight-year-old to hit a baseball, erotic literature, all these seemingly disparate elements of Nelson's life brought to bear on the art of choosing the next good read. By the end, Nelson admits, "[ ... ] for every moment that was exhilarating, there was one that was frustrating. For every reading experience that was edifying, there was one that was elusive. And just as I thought I had a handle on what I was doing and how important it all was, I realized I was as clueless as ever." But what a great read the year made for the rest of us.

Nelson begins the new year with a reading list and a plan "to read a lot of nonfiction, to pay attention to poetry, to fill in at least some of the holes in my [literature] education," but finds that by the end of week one even the best laid plans fall through. Nelson starts with Ted Heller's Funnymen but becomes distracted due to her physical location--a secluded Vermont lodge once inhabited by the exiled Russian thinker and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As Nelson attempts to read Funnymen, she finds herself blending her present situation into the narrative of the novel. "But suddenly it's not so Funny. In the book, Heller is describing the honky-tonk vaudevillian atmosphere of a Catskills nightclub; I look up for a moment and see hard ground and bare, frozen trees. One character refers to the 'A-bomb' nature of the act because it 'kills' so well, and I wander into the Russian Orthodox chapel the author built for himself in the basement." Moments like this occur throughout the book as Nelson vividly draws us into her interior world of reading so we too can experience a year dedicated to reading--something most book lovers can only dream about.

I haven't actually read the book. The blurb above is from Barnes and Noble. Here are the other 9 books that I would (currently) like to read this year.

little i

While discussing the Riding Alone movie with a walktalk friend yesterday evening, I was surprised at the surge of emotion that rose up with the memory of a particular season of life that I associated with growing up -too fast. It was strange indeed that the memory could still bring back those feelings of reluctance to reliquish dependency and a childish envy for carefree-ness.

Later at night, while sorting my lunchtime treasurefinds from BooksActually, I saw that I had somehow picked up this poem by ee cummings, typed-produced line by line on graph paper on an Olivetti Lettera.

who are you, little i
(five or six years old) peering
from some high window;
at the gold of november sunset
(and the feeling;
that if day has to become night
this is a beautiful way)

- ee cummings

And it was true. That same reluctant period saw some of the greatest miracles of provision and mercies from the Father, who loved His child enough to let her grow up.

Movie: <千哩走单骑 > Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

He rode thousands of miles alone
In the wild blue mountains
Of a strange yellow land
To find the courage of Lord Kuan
Not for battle of the kingdoms
But to say sorry to a son.

Behind the black veil of a red mask
He weeps for himself and the boy
That hurts for his embrace
He sings to the loud suo na
Of brave deeds and war heroes
His voice drowned by tears.

A old man and a child are lost
In the wild blue mountains
Of a strange yellow land
They hold each other tight
One has ridden thousands of miles
So that the other is not alone.

(Written after watching the movie)

(Photo by In_and_out_of_Focus)

A Connecting Question

Fell asleep on this rainy Sunday afternoon counting the "funny-shaped sheep of God" one has encountered in the past week. Thinking quite a lot these few days about the potential for powerful kindness, and equally powerful cruelty, within the people of God in church. One heals, the other destroys. Crabb thinks that our ability to reach through the bad dynamics of sinful hearts and touch the holy appetites beneath depends on the answer to this question:

"Are we so empowered by the Gospel that we are disposed to continue believing in another's miraculously granted goodness, and to therefore find delight in the other, no matter what degree of ugliness we encounter?"

- From "Connecting", by Larry Crabb

Where the SideWalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

-Shel Silverstein

Shakespeare and Peanuts

Sally Brown: I couldn't decide if I wanted marble fudge, chocolate, rocky road, vanilla or butter pecan...I finally decided to try marble fudge...then I had to choose between a plain cone or a sugar cone...I decided on the sugar cone...so what happened? I went out the door, and dropped the whole thing on the sidewalk! Don't tell me my life isn't a Shakespearean tragedy!

Charlie Brown: I won't.


At BookClub last weekend, we talked about choices in life, God's guidance in those, and troubles notwithstanding. Scintillating discussion as usual, especially on something that would have been close to heart to everyone at some point or the other. Should I choose this job or the other? To live in this country or that? Why does God seem to open up many choices sometimes and remain silent at other times? Why then, when it seemed so clear that He opened the road one way, when the rainbow covenant had already been written across the sky, that one still gets the uncomfortable sensation that perhaps this is "not the centre of God's Will" after all, as one had been so sure about at first?

It is a precious thing to have Peace as spoken of in the Bible. But that itself seems to have several shades of meaning. Is the Peace of God the same as having Peace in God or Peace with God. Is the something we should seek for or is it something granted to us, somewhat like Faith?

More questions than answers i think. But I think we could all do with a little Peanutty humour and tell ourselves that life's problems are not nearly as often tragic as we think they are. There's almost always a surprising blessing in the circumstance, Honey in the Rock. And as God has so often shown, He is far far more interested in our characters than in our circumstances.

Letter to Wu Xi

Dear Wu Xi

As we do know that that the 互联网 is open to scrutiny by the authorities where you are, I am not sure I can write all that I want to write to you via email. I am thinking maybe if you ever did a google or a 百度 on your own name, you might see this. Of course, there are other things here in my blog which would probably not get through the firewalls anyway. Perhaps you might read this while travelling abroad, or perhaps one day the firewalls would be removed (amen!), and we can have open conversations about the Faith on the internet. It's a little funny isn't it? We had pretty open conversations in the spanking new cafes at the Border Town, while many a 公安 passed us by. We were only having English lessons of course :)

I did receive some updates from sister Fay about you and the rest of the class. I am very glad to hear that most of you are well and growing in the Lord. I am especially excited to hear from her that you have taken up various positions of service and leadership in the家庭教会 . It was clear to us from the start that you do have a gift for teaching, even while you interpreted for Jacob when he conducted the OT studies, I was always impressed with your clear and lucid explanations in your native tongue to the class. With your enthusiasm and admirable discipline for learning the scriptures, I am sure you will be, and are being used by God to do the much much needed work of teaching the Word of Life to the very many 兄弟姐妹 being added to the Kingdom everyday in your country, where bible scholarship and teaching resources are scarce indeed.

I remember how we used to chat after class, and you would ask me many questions about how a "regular" church is run in places with religious freedom, and the things Christians do in such congregations. It never failed to remind me just how lucky I have been to have always lived in places (Singapore, Hong Kong, Singapore) where freedom of religion is entrenched as part of the宪法 . Some of us do, of course, face persecution in other forms, for instance from our families, or just social pressures from friends or colleagues that we let constrain us in our practice and proclamation of the Faith. But yes, I have come to realize the need to learn never to take for granted to ability to freely worship, and to take lightly the ability to draw on any of the Christian literature and resources worldwide. And yes, you always reminded me how blessed I am to be able to openly identify with other Christians, worshipping and praying with them in public, a comfort and joy that I easily forget.

So, Wu Xi, I hope you are well. I hope things have been sorted out with your wife, and that your little daughter is not too much affected by the separation. It must not be easy sometimes, but you must remember that all things are new with the Lord, and that you can take courage to face life ahead with the strength of the Lord, and hope in Him alone.

Your sister in Christ,

Wei

p.s. Found a gouache at the Joomi Ching art gallery website called Baidu Passages. Thought it was quite nice. Hope your new graphic design firm is getting off on a good start too.

The Harp in the Willow 杨 琴

A few days ago, our very own Professor Dr E.G. emailed to the class some photos she took of the spring flora at Oxford, which were very pretty indeed. I especially liked the photos of the willow trees, taken at different times in the spring season. This thumbnail shows one willow by the river which was just stirring to life after the British winter.

I have always been quite partial to willow trees. They are beautiful to draw and photograph, and every picture of a willow tree seems to tell a story. It was also the first tree that I learned about (yes, even before the angsana and frangipani in primary science textbooks) - in fact, at the same time that I learnt to write my name. At age 4, as mom held my hand to put my Chinese name on the front cover of my kindergarten exercise books, she said that the Willow 杨 (yang), was one of the four great trees of China. (Later on I learnt that the others are the Bamboo 竹 , the Pine 松 and the Lotus 莲, which together with the Willow, symbolized different virtues extolled by the Chinese).

Later in life, I discovered that God chose to to include in it some of the most poignant verses in biblical literature:

'By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the willow-trees we hung up our harps.' - Psalm 137

Yes, the willow is often seen as a symbol of grief. There are some who therefore find it too sorrowful to be a tree of life. But in its hanging branches, strength grows. In its bitter bark, the miracle of healing is found. It will always be found near rivers of water, and though its blossoms are imperceptible to the eye, it endures when other plants fade.

And then recently, I found another new and remarkable thing about the willow. The harps which the defeated Israealites hung on the willow tree, were in fact made from the solid willow wood! Joy came literally from Sorrow!

Take down your harp from the willow tree
Bottle the tears at the end of the yews
Let the living waters beside run free
Over the stones which sing their tune.

They who hung up their harps lost Zion
We whose strings are mended Hope see
So let the songs of joy not be silent
Take down your harp from the willow tree.

This Bridge

This book tells but half my world
The other half no one can read:
On tall white peaks, in deep pine groves
Sleep brings dancing elves on a moonlit beach .
I wish you could come in for while and share
The colourful swirling worlds I've known.
But this book will only take you halfway there
The last few steps in Dreamland we take alone.

It's been a little hard putting thoughts into prose these few days. Have only been posting verse. Could be the work frenzy, or the lack of a nice long stretch of hours, or maybe it's just the sense that things are hard to reduce into paragraphs some times. Once again, I am glad for poetry and pictures.

Chaff and Grain

Oh, the comfort --
The inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weigh thoughts,
Nor measure words -- but pouring them
All right out -- just as they are --
Chaff and grain together --
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them --
Keep what is worth keeping -
and with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.

A quote attributed to George Eliot, who is, for the uninitiated, a female writer.

Smart Investing

If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

- From LegalHumour.com

Watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room on DVD on Thursday. Thinking about why God puts us in certain jobs.

Changed label

The previous posts under this label have been moved to "Diary".

Click here to go to The Goats-Really Main HomePage.

Till Human Voices Wake Us

If you read the last post here without hyperlinking to the full text of "The Love Song", you would have been posed perfectly at that time in history before the Modernist Psyche came to the consciousness of society. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has often been called the first modernist poem in English literature.

I first read The Love Song in an elective class taken during the second semester of the second year of Law School, round about the same time when the thought of picking up a novel or reading a poem was finally no longer so painful as it had been since the dashing of a young dream many months before.

T. S. Eliot's Prufrock has become so much a part of the English language that people who have never read the poem are familiar with phrases like "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" and "I grow old... I grow old.../ I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" and "Do I dare to eat a peach?" and "In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michaelangleo." (Like we see from B's comment in the last post, these phrases stay with you for life! :) )

The title of the poem, "The Love Song", the grand prologue quoted from Dante, and the romantic opening lines, "Let us go then, you and I,..." are possibly the best example of ironic deflation in the English language. T.S. Eliot starts the poem with great promise of grandeur and romance, but when you read beyond the first lines, the rest of the poem becomes impossibly fragmented, obscure, and difficult to understand. It also has a strangely depressive effect for a poem comprised largely of the most ordinary images of modern life, with a protaganist that was so emacipated ("look how his arms are thin") and pathetic ("Do I dare.. do i dare") as to be comical.

There are very many articles written on this important poem (which if I may note, was not so readily available to us in the class of 1994, since the Internet was only starting to be populated), and any of them would give a reader a good aid to understanding its background. As a full-time frustrated English major, I spent many an hour in the NUS Arts Library (away from the law journals) researching the classical and non-classical allusions in the poem, collecting hints from the professors in tutorials, and while finally getting a Distinction in Lit 203 (largely by focusing on Hamlet in the exam paper), I had to admit that I did not understand the poem.

Since then, over the years, I would come across the poem once every so often, and on several occasions, I would look at individual stanzas and suddenly get the startling sensation of suddenly "seeing the image and understanding it". Recently, I came across it again, and sat down to read the whole poem again in one sitting. It dawned on me then that to understand the poem, one must have grown to become the Modern Person, something that took place only in the last 12 years of my life.

The "you and I" in the opening lines are in fact the same person - Prufrock, in a soliloquoy. How many of us have had these internal monologues, as a result of emotional alienation, not just from those around us, but even with ourselves?

Are there not days when you are just "measuring life out by coffee spoons", or projects, or job appraisals, or movies, or kids?

"Do I dare...disturb the universe?" - Do I dare live a different life, tell someone I love them, or even call up an old friend?

With all the ostensible choices that we have in work and life, none of which does not involve some sacrifice of something else, is there not "time for a hundred visions and revisions"?

Have you felt like an insect "pinned and wriggling on the wall", scrutinized by them all? If I read or write, or introspect, will my friends call me melancholic, can they understand that keeping a smiling face is not all?

"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each

I do not think they will sing to me."

- Will someone notice us in the crowds?

Do we dream to fly, or dance, or sing? - well yes, maybe..

"Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

(Note on the photo: tried to look for a picture of mermaid's tail on Google Images, but decided that i just don't like scaly-looking things. The picture I chose is the end of a guppy's tail- mauve, blue, silvery, - I think that's how I imagine a mermaid's tail to be)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
Questa fiamma staria sensa piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero
Sensa tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky...

Opening lines, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

Frequency

Frequency is a funny thing. You know it when you see it, it goes "click". You can usually tell similar frequencies by (a) the economy of words (b) common bases of thinking about the world; and (c) shared humour. Interestingly (a) then leads to the proliferation of conversation, (b) provides the safe ground on which to spar and challenge each other's ideas, and (c) ... well (c) just makes you laugh a lot together, which gets people through the not-so-similarly-frequent parts.

Baby Shower

The very fabulous Class 91A15 got together to have the Third Baby Shower on Sunday. Carrying on the tradition that started with She-Bear, we did another craft project (my first, since I was away in the previous years) for the Mommy-to-Be, Joyful Cow.

It's an Animal Safari Laundry Bag!

These were the pieces of colourful colourful felt left over from the last project (Wei's Baby Shower) and we had a very pleasant afternoon making the bag, which I was told is a culmination of the improved craft making skills of the class over these years.















The bag will be a good educational tool when Baby Sebastian arrives. Although Mommy and Daddy will have a hard time explaining the lemon/apple/banana all-in-one tree!















Max and Josh were such good models and just sat there like angels while I snipped and cut out their likeness. :)