the2ndrule Issue 04
The 2ndRule
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Apr 2000 email edition
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Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Zhu Rongji [Koh Beng Liang]
2. Obuchi [Ong Ee-ing]
3. Hanami 99 [Brandon Lee]
4. Animal Instincts [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
5. Shades of Light in Holland Village, 1999 [Alvin Pang]
6. Aubade [Cyril Wong]
7. Missed calls [Shannon Low]
8. Do not scamble down the scree [Joy]
Editorial
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What does it mean to be original in this post-modern era? Who cares? Often you just have to write what you have to write, even if it seems absurd to you. Madonna, after all, is pregnant again, and Bono recently met the pope. Coincidence? ask Tom Cruise. In spite of all this we've received really quality works from you so keep those articles coming in.
With stock markets doing their chicken-headed fandangos recently a global view of things would be helpful, and we have some articles this issue with an east Asian focus. In local news, if you're in Singapore please do look out for our interview with Passion 99.5fm that should be broadcast in two
weeks time. Stay tuned!
email : the2ndrule@hotmail.com
website: http://here.is/the2ndrule
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2ndRule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Ong Ee-ing, Sim Pern Yiau
Contributors : Brandon Lee, Alvin Pang, Cyril Wong, Joy
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Zhu Rongji
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I adjusted my Italian suit as I tried my Marlon Brando,
a fat fingered emphasis, flared nostril snarl on my sagging face.
Slickly I combed my oily hair, stared hard into my own eyes
and practiced my jokes, in typical self-mocking American style,
blunt words and sharp wit. Till today I'm still uncomfortable
with my Shanghainese accent. My English sounds better,
"there is a need", "there is a need",
"Taiwanese strait", "Pacific Ocean".
All those years wasted in the countryside, years as mayor,
years as economic tsar, and I'm still ill-prepared to play good cop
bad cop. I don't want to be the guy who frightens those hiphop kids
with a strait-jacketed dance over flat water. I'd rather be watching
more Hollywood movies, fighting corruption and crime, and
practising my Superman qi-gong in the evening dusklight.
- Koh Beng Liang
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In the event of war, ICS aggregate liability for death, total and permanent disablement or other permanent dismemberment will be limited to a quarter of one percent of the total Sum Insured under this Policy.
- from the SAF group insurance scheme brochure
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Obuchi
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So Keizo Obuchi bites the dust. Coma. I'm checking CNN & FT & the beeb every hour for news of his death, or frankly any news about him, but all I can get is "Obuchi in coma; Japanese Cabinet in turmoil; Mori front-runner for new PM; Mori new PM," and now "Japanese economy moving on."
I start thinking I'm morbid, constantly looking for news of his death. Then I think some more (yes, dangerous activity, I know), and realize that the media, and the Cabinet, are infinitely worse. Because for them, Obuchi really doesn't matter anymore. He's gone: Next. Never mind the implications that even the PM (or _especially_ the PM) could collapse from overwork, never mind the simple human tragedy. Next please.
Of course, why should Obuchi get so much publicity anyway? People die all the time; people die all the time from overwork; ok, make that the Japanese die all the time from overwork, what's one more? It's the Office, not the Man that made him noteworthy. And anyways what about Sharif's lawyer, shot dead in the street? What about the Homeless? _And_ The Poor Animals bred & killed for their fur & used in lab experiments so that sixty-year old women can pretend to be forty again? WHAT ABOUT THEM WHALES? HUH??
But ... it's still not right. Every death should be noted, if not mourned (ok, so maybe not Jeffrey Dahmer, although I'm pretty sure some people out there do), and surely a little more respect ought to be given to the Man & his Life, whether good, bad, or mediocre.
And sure, there'll be plenty of perspectives & analyses later, on What He Did (or Didn't Do) for the Nation & the Economy, but right now at this vital crucial moment when he's in hospital with tubes & things in him (and believe me it's really painful), right now when chances are he's going to die & even if he doesn't he's going to be a vegetable for the rest of his very short life anyway, he deserves some time & thought.
Headlines today: absolutely nothing on Japan.
The world is... out of joint. At least from where I stand.
- Ong Ee-ing
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Spring fashion statement:
Spring is here. But everything is still grey.
"Pink is the new grey." Last time I looked, pink was still pink, and grey was still grey. But fuschia is the color of the moment, on itsown or with touches of gold, turquoise, navy and emerals for an Asian flavour, in tops, skirts and trousers. And what does fuschia go with? Grey.
"Asian is in." Motifs, designs and little dragon prints, from Indian, Chinese and Japanese culture. No longer splashed across the chest, but trimmed along the hem or up a sleeve or trouser leg.
Hitting the streets for men and women are semi-flareable trousers, with fasteners at the bottom of the trouser leg that let you choose how wide and high you want your flares. Materials are moving into plastic and cotton blends for a soft nouveau-tech feel, and around the waist we'll see more drawstrings and velcro fasteners replacing buttons.
For men, fitted short-sleeve shirts are still in, available in a multitude of designs. Velcro pockets, concealed pockets, zip pockets or no pockets; hidden buttons or zip-up fronts; in slate, ash, navy and olive. Sound like handphones to you? At least they'll match. All wearable for casual after-hours or the hip office in the new economy. I recommend the office. In officewear, flat-fronted trousers try to edge their way in on pleats again, but baggy or straight, and worn off the hip. Hopefully, this time they'll succeed. And tailing off with boots, half-trainers and leather mule-sandals for men; it's spring, let those toes breathe a bit.
Accessories are leaning towards the tech-flexecutive. In eyewear, wraparound sunglasses are back in a big way to give anyone with the right frown a mean look. Aviators have been given a sleeker twist with thinner frames and more shapely lenses. Tints range from yellow and orange to blue, brown and black. Bags are looking sleek and functional - rucksacks with single straps or a small satchel of just the right size. And you won't have to look - most of them will come with a mobile phone pocket.
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Hanami 99
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narita.
--
there is a wet tarmac japanese storm on the runway
with the 8pm of tokyo ahead but out of sight
I can only tell I am here
from sounds, smiles, cleaners with surgical masks.
the man clearing my boarding pass
sings, under his breath while working,
words I have heard for months watching cable
but never before with the intimacy of breath
and in his grayed hairs I find
a language's inability to express
the beauty of apology.
oahu.
--
my heart is broke for old japanese woman on streetside honolulu
handing out flyers on night wet with tire squeals,
people frowning under cloudy moon.
the fear of God is put into me by cold winds.
still she smiles with immigrant hope, 2nd generation citizen hope,
whatever the cost of life on this comparable beach land paradise-
as my own parents and other tired blunt shoulders
brush past her without the courtesy to even say no thank you!
her smile never wavers as I watch her, wrinkles
channel raindrops, oh sweet mother of humanity giving and forgiving!
I want so much to take every flyer from her tired hands
and cry, apologies for the way life is but I am sixty years younger now
and should instead be the one to learn great wisdom of sangsara
from ancient whole happy suffering of one who has seen all.
- Brandon Lee
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TUVALU has Unintelligible Dialogue / No subtitles
- poster from the 13th Singapore International Film Festival
31 March to 15 April 2000
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Animal Instincts
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'Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.'
-'Lady Lazarus', Sylvia Plath
1) Python
She moved slowly, through molten air. Sometimes he was impatient with her, the way she would sit silently, light congealing on her skin like syrup. And there were times when he was jealous of her ability to be motionless, as if like a cylinder in which one waits for particles to settle at the bottom. When she finally stirred, lucid and sinless, he imagined a puddle in the place she had vacated, a poisonous distillation of the day's violence. In a bookshop, he caught her running her fingertips across the uniform vertebrae of stacked novels, and when he asked her what she was doing, she replied, insouciantly, 'I know I'll never be able to read all of them, so I restrict my contact with them to touch, to smell. I sniff the pages and it feels like the story has wafted into my body, curling up to sleep. I know it because my body feels heavier afterwards, as if after a meal.' He had then asked, 'So all these stories asleep inside you, when will they ever wake up?' With that innocent seriousness she answered, 'I don't want them to.' He understood then, where she obtained that languor, the gait of a pregnant woman without her globe of stretched skin; she was carrying a nest of stories in her, warm and drugged, and she had to be delicate as to not upset their eternal hibernation.
One of the stories, he knew, was his.
*****
2) Albatross
'Let go,' she often reminded him. Gently.
It wasn't as if their relationship was defined by a grip. He granted her freedoms, but since these were in the plural, she resented them. She wilfully refused to return some of his pages, and conversations on her handphone found him tuning his ear to the background noise, of an MRT tunnel, or Cuban music, or even the snore of waves, as replies on her whereabouts were always vague and rushed, yelled as if by a villager distracted by the boom of a helicopter landing in her field. She sounded happiest when she was furthest from him; when holidaying in New York, she sent him e-mails that unfurled like streamers, line after line on the scrunch of snow under her boots, the embraceability of traffic lights, how the hotel windows she opened each morning drew the city like a magnet to her room. In his presence, she was irritable, anxious, her heels tapping, drawing in her breath sharply and pricking his speech bubbles just as they were threatening to take shape. When he finally told her he didn't want to play anymore, he expected her to collapse, because he knew her freedom depended on constantly having something to escape from--to be a runaway one first needed a home. But her voice was simply choking on altitude, and it was she who let him go, like a rattle from the hands of what knew it was no longer a child, with the wanderlust of what soared with the wingspan of a
fully-grown man.
*****
3) Shark
'Deeper' was her favourite word. It was both a tease and a demand, offered like an uncracked nut during their conversations, whispered with desperate urgency during love-making. She equated depth with mystery, and in fact her use of the term 'deep' was itself mysterious, because it could not be measured in earth-feet, sea-fathoms, even by scarcity of light and oxygen. 'The problem with you,' she often told him, 'Is that you're happy with just the surface of things.' He had protested before, he told her once, 'I do not believe that something like joy is innately hidden. I believe sometimes that we are the ones who hide from it even though it is constantly seeking us out, hand outstretched as if in a game of tag.' And she had answered, her voice soft and low, seaweed knotted around ankles, 'You think I want us to go deeper just so that we can discover some notion of joy? Happiness is a shallow cup--it lasts as long as that moment when the water spills from its brink--and that is why it is so temporary, so elusive.' Sometimes he considered the possibility that she was referring to a depth not to be plumbed but arrived at through persistent exfoliations, to the pith, corona, nucleus, the hermit's iris, dry and unblinking in the onion's core. He soon learnt how wrong he was--her depth was one synonymous with drowning. Yes, he would confess to himself, he preferred the surface, but not necessarily the cosmetic surface of sheath and skin, but that which broke open into clarity, into open gaspable air. He would slowly rise, his ears popping according to the laws of pressure, shedding blood even, if that was what it would take to bait and lure her from the anemone's enchantments, from the deceitful coral oracles.
- Alfian Bin Sa'at
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SHADES OF LIGHT IN HOLLAND VILLAGE, 1999
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(after Richard Hugo's 'Degrees of Gray in Philispburg')
Say you just got a raise. The last good kiss
you'll remember for life is still waiting to happen.
When you have a night on the town you come
here. Friday night, Saturday night - you walk
these two sprouting streets, past mock Latin-American
bars that didn't last, bars that did, the contortions
of BMW drivers making 60-degree downslope turns, two
at a time on a one-lane road, brandishing headlights.
Cafes and coffee-shops keep up. The corner magazine stall
must have turned 30 this year, the proprietors still furtively there
to finger the glossy Die Zeits and Le Mondes like contraband.
What they're really selling here now
is ease. They're not sure why, but people
come for love of mess, looking for a stab of feeling,
the suddenness of pain, any kind of intoxication.
Running from silence into noise. Well-kept bodies
who leave each year more regretful than the last. Even
the few good restaurants and pubs can't hide their boredom.
Afternoon shade turned acid glare, sitting out
the Economic Crisis in Coffee Club, grazing from
Tapas Bar to Chaplin's, in the rooftop balinese illusion
of Café 211, four storeys above ground.
Isn't this the life? That languorous
drowning of the senses? Isn't this defeat
so subtle, token as a piece of heaven, our
bohemian afterlife, resounding in seclusion?
Are Cold Storages and cool, imported scorn
not enough to feed a city, not just Holland V,
all the towns of towering blockades, slammed doors
and karaoke evenings, all the world will let you have
until the hunger we came from dies from inside?
Say no to yourself. The old man on the void deck,
already forty when these streets were laid, still laughs
although his legs and sight have jumped ship. Some night
soon, he says, I'll turn off the lights in my room
and never see the sun again. You tell him no
in your head, waiting for the lift to come. The taxi
that brought you here is still out there, running
for what it's worth to hunt down the kind of money
you can't even buy lunch with, your fatigue
and unclaimed grief mark the air with sighs
disguised as breathing, and it will kill you one day
no matter what you do. So the struggle now is with
the stiff bolt on your front door, the stubborn wilting
of your balcony ferns, the straining of your neck
to catch one glimpse of the woman who loves you
in the best possible light.
- Alvin Pang
Alvin is co-editor of "No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry", out now in all good bookstores.
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DATE TIME mirror basin soap bowl t/roll chamber urinal floor wall L/bin
smell DEFECTS CHECKED BY
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Aubade
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I woke up
and the window grills
were prison bars, rows
and rows of charred
bones shuddering in
the glare of another
morning, confused and
uncertain if I was really
watching from the outside
or the inside, as first light
oozed out on the bedsheets
like fresh pus from under
a scab. Tightening, I was,
once again, incapable of
moving, as the full mouth
of the sun swallowed me
with a single gulp. When I
moved my body, my body
refused to stir. My eyes
hardened into glass balls
straining to pop and roll
down my face, leaving two
trails of light across my cheeks.
So I squeezed them - and
all the rest of me - tight
with all the darkness
of my body; there was
a loosening, a sudden
plummeting, the spirit
as it was free to fall, ever-
ready to flee from the light
of another day.
- Cyril Wong
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Why would anyone need colour on a Palm?
Hook it up to a Nokia phone, voila! mobile porn!
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Missed calls
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Phone rings but no answer. You waited too long to call. So much to say to an answering machine. Rewound on tape, played back in your head. But Nothing comes out of your mouth. Click.
Ring.
" ... Can't take your call right now. If you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
Missed calls, time lost. As you waited for things to unfold to you. To find out how you really felt, and what you ought to do. Too late.
- Shannon Low
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dotcommunism.
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DO NOT
Scramble down the scree
But like the goat-foot
Plant the shoe firm on the rock that stands
Scrape off the lichen
The age-old moss
Stamp
The mountain before me
A scramble-down-scree
Sound like nails down a blackboard
Leaves a black record
Hope - soon I might
Stand firm
Stamp
Stamp my Stamp
Stamp my Stamp on the world
- Joy
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Yamikazi.
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Obuchi, (c) 2000 Ong Ee-ing
Hanami 99, (c) 2000 Brandon Lee
Animal Instincts, (c) 2000 Alfian Bin Sa'at
Shades of Light in Holland Village, 1999, (c) 2000 Alvin Pang
Aubade, (c) 2000 Cyril Wong
Do not scramble down the scree, (c) 2000 Joy
