the2ndrule Issue 18
The 2ndRule
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Jul 2001 email edition
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web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule
Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Going easy [Koh Beng Liang]
2. morningside speed [offspring nirvana]
3. on how [Joanne Leow]
4. To the man who fell in love on the plane [Joanne Leow]
5. flag day [Judith H]
6. Three Metaphors for the Heart [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
Announcement
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For all our readers in Singapore:
Some of our regular writers are holding a reading session in August. 'A Moment Of Poetry' will be held at Kinokuniya (Ngee Ann City / Takashimaya) on the 25 Aug at 2pm. It will feature Yeow Kai Chai, Alfian Sa'at, Koh Beng Liang and Teng Qian Xi, as well as the launch of Cyril Wong's second book, The End Of His Orbit.
Editorial
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Mass gatherings of likeminded people in peaceful protest or celebration are not uncommon. Yet vast progress in instant communications is enabling these displays of unity to be held with less central control and greater spontaneity. They come closer to sincerity; however, we should not be naive to think that a large group of people can truly be of one mind. There will always be the spoilers who misrepresent, or the seeds of the mob.
100,000 -- Seven plus one is not a renaissance. In Columbus's old home, the riots are about an even newer world. Put on the helmets. Turn on the water cannons. "They are just selfish." The tears, the tears. Was it worth it, Carlo Giuliani?
200,000 -- The streets full, rock bands playing well into the night, citizens of Split in unison. "You're a genius." Off with his shirt. "Goran for President!" Off with his jeans. A cross is a cross. A rose means love. And a shark is a mean, mean animal.
(mail us your comments and contributions: the2ndrule@hotmail.com)
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2ndRule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Ong Ee-ing, Judith H
Contributors : offspring nirvana, Joanne Leow
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Going easy
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Two kinds of non-presidents: Clinton, ex-,
and Sheen, TV-, having dinner Italian.
"You seem to have lost some weight, Bill."
"I'm no longer a heavy-weight, Martin."
"You are, you are. You had a great reception in India."
"And you get millions of viewers anywhere there's reception."
Mr Clinton dined on sausage with cannellini beansand
sauteed salmon with green herb sauce.
"Do you think Bush watches the show?"
"I'd like to see him figure out the remote."
"The press, they went too easy on the idiot."
"Isn't it the life, staying in New York
and living off your wife."
Neither spoke of the Vietnam they didn't really went.
- Koh Beng Liang
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"It appears that I am considered to be a housewife. I say to those people who belittle housewives: What's wrong with that? It does not mean a housewife does not understand politics."
- President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia
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morningside speed
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morningside speed was the zine me and spurs did while we were 17 and bored and desperately needed help and some girls.
it was born of the weird dada movement and the heck-care punk era.
we were sad and wandered the streets of orchard every weekend, just walking around with less than ten dollars in our pockets and talking and talking and looking at pretty girls.... there were no starbucks or what cafes then. we went far east plaza but the real punk girls and boys scare us because of their heavily pierced ears and colorful hair and baggy alien workshop jeans and 77th street accessories and so we escaped to the substation but the arty farty types made us scratch our hair and pick at our noses consciously. we don't belong.
morningside speed -- this word came while i was reading trainspotting which spurs had lent me and it describes some high you get when you mix sex and cocaine.
that was the high i was searching for in life.
transcending life.
cool.
ha-ha "fake laugh"
i faked laughed a lot back then. i wonder if i still do so now.
anyway spurs might be angry at me for putting his name here because he thinks i was such a loser then and i guess it won't be good to associate with me. spurs has since gone on to a better life of pubbing and dancing with girls in the weekends. we still communicate on the phone though.
i remember the days of morningside speed... inspired by force vomit and their album with the spacemen over malaysia song... me cutting out pictures from the newspapers and other magazines and then pasting them onto A4 sized paper and then writing down my stories and other stupid poems and doodling and then getting spurs to contribute some funny stuff which he always churn out easily cos he's very witty and then going to some photostating shop to get the auntie to help us photostat our zine. it would come out crisp and we would use staplers to staple the pages together.
i always thought of the audience for the zine as some poor guy sitting in his bedroom on a saturday afternoon with no friends to go out with and feeling lonely just listening to the stupid radio playing stupid r and b songs about stupid people and their stupid voices that warble just plain showing off and faking lotsa fake emotion and then frustratedly throwing his pillow at the ceiling and screaming at life for being boring, some poor kid, some lonely guy hanging out with his pots and plants.
then there was me in the bedroom cutting away, all the stupid pictures and words. how absurd.
the zine was done for me. ha-ha.
the first few issues of the zine were depressing stuff where i put down depressing feelings (i remember me sitting on the bus depressed without a word and spurs beside me staring out the window, the brooding silence freezing everything we did.) and then it took a turn for the worst when i tried to write childish dumb retarded stuff so as to cheer my innocence up as i lost all innocence growing up and then it became maudlin because i just kept producing and producing issue and issue of the zine and had to canvass my friends to buy them. i considered the zine a work of art actually and i sold them at a price of fifty lousy singapore cents so as to recoup photostating costs but even my classmates would think for a while before buying them. to put it more like some bearded bohemian artist like dostoevsky that black devil old friend of mine: "i feel insulted! am i a car salesman? bow down! philistines! this is a piece of something some poor fuck has created while pasting pictures and serial killer alphabets all joined together. a masterpiece!"
well... so what i would do is i wouldn't charge them if they bought the zine willingly... i would give them the zine! (if my memory is wrong and some of you out there, old friends of that youthful era, had been charged fifty cents by me because i thought your fake excited enthusiasm for reading and awaiting my zine had not been 'real' enough, well, i hope you won't take it too hard... cos what's fifty lousy cents? come on,grow up. i grew up.)
so what happened on the way to hell?
the zine born and died.... spurs asked me if maybe we should fire up that old spoon of sugar again... resurrect jesus and inc... yeah... i'll do it the next time i get inspired by some local piece of work that's black and white and pasted with serial killer alphabets and pictures ripped out from the naueseatingly glossy magazines like eight days of boredom.
what this place lacks is a serial killer with nice cut-up sentences he leaves in the minds of readers he molested.
ha-ha.
all these nonsense. just cracks me up.
cracks me up. bitterly.
that poor guy in his bedroom.
- offspring nirvana
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"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."
- Robert Bresson, French director
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on how
------
remind me
never to
marry
at 35
move
to seattle
become
fat
pregnant
my mobile
home
with its
leaky roof
dripping
driving me
to distraction
without a
license
lazy trees
ice-storms
a once slim
jet-black porcelain
stewardess
obsessed
with a. hopkins
this is
no way
to live
out your
days
after
life
in one
city
after the
next.
- Joanne Leow
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Junichiro Koizumi
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To the man who fell in love on the plane
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Was it at first sight
between the swish of
her patterned standard issue
and her black hair
grazing the tops of her eyelashes
When she agreed to be
swept away
by you
(to your cold and leaky house
in the pacific northwest
a safe town, but quiet)
Did you think she would miss
the long tropical nights
and the markets where there was
always sticky rice and dumplinged noodle soup
to be had
the hot dusty streets
her bed unslept in
- Joanne Leow
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"I don't even care if I ever play a match in my life again. If I don't want to play, I don't play again. This is it. This is the end of the world."
- Goran Ivanisevic, Wimbledon Champion
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flag day
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a growing can
in a jingling hand
I flash a schoolgirl smile
to these harried passers-by.
hope glints off my teeth.
their trajectories slant from me
as though, being there,
I exude a sort of anti-gravity...
hoping to trade
the shine of a smile for a coin,
they smile back; I think they should all
join, the Singapore smile and smile and
smile campaign...
the whole underpass is smiling.
as if I could collect their smiles
and say,
ma'am, I collected these coins, and
all the other benevolent people donated
these many sheepish smiles
to charity, for having such and such and
such a psychiatric disability...
the clinks and coins grow heavy
when I went home today,
my jaw was aching.
- Judith H
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That thing in my spine is a he?
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Three Metaphors for the Heart
-----------------------------
(For Melvin Tay)
1. A Red Kite
When I saw you that night
Kicking dustbins, smashing a bottle,
Biting your SIM card, flinging a branch,
Leaning like a falling tree
Into the back of a pick-up truck,
This was what I saw:
A boy chasing a red kite,
That had been torn away
From his grasp
Afflicted by those helpless gasps:
Each time he lets out a breath,
The kite pulls away from him,
Tugs harder at its place of origin:
The windy, wide-open chest.
2. Alarm Clock
As I hugged you
I heard a sound in your body
Muffled by your sobs.
The familiar ticking
Like a clock,
But whose function
Is not to measure time,
But suffering.
As time was invented
Through the invention of clocks,
The arrival of human hearts
Spread the gospel of pain.
Not just one face is engraved on it,
But many, and human ones too,
And often the hands move
In a counter-clockwise direction,
To revisit a second of anguish
Evidently without warning.
As a precision instrument
The heart is second-rate.
Unable to withstand
Terrifying depths, and definitely
Not shatterproof.
If you happen to dismantle it
Not even a piece of quartz
To reward you for your efforts.
But ticking is not
All it's capable of.
Someone has wound it up
And set it at the invisible hour
Like a mother for her sleeping child
Who doesn't want him to miss
The first rays of morning.
3. Moon
It was your best friend who told me
That there was always space in your heart
For forgiveness,
That I would find some corner
To land like an astronaut
Weightless, unburdened of my crimes--
But as daylight appeared
Rudely, like a splash of water
On a drunkard's face
I began to fear
That perhaps the geography of your heart
Was like the moon's, and each second
Would witness it waning into a crescent,
The shape of an indifferent smile,
A smile sickle-thin,
And cruel.
How wrong I was.
On the phone I heard your voice: calm, assured;
Unexpected, like radio waves from a distant star.
You were telling me: if what I saw
Was a crescent moon, then I should place myself
On another planet, where from that superior view
The moon would be full.
O, leave the petty quarrels on Earth:
The perimeter of your friendship
Is ringed by galaxies.
- Alfian Bin Sa'at
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Make your own coke.
http://www.opencola.com/products/3_softdrink/formula.shtml
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Going easy (c) 2001 Koh Beng Liang
morningside speed (c) 2001 offspring nirvana
on how, To the man who fell in love on the plane (c) 2001 Joanne Leow
flag day (c) 2001 Judith H
Three Metaphors for the Heart (c) 2001 Alfian Bin Sa'at
