the2ndrule Issue 03
The 2ndRule
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Mar 2000 email edition
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Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Body slam [Shannon Low]
2. Two Men at a Cafe Table Near Closing Time [Tim]
3. Residues [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
4. Seattle 1999 [Sim Pern Yiau]
5. A history of the spider through nursery rhymes [Ong Ee-Ing]
6. Half-Day [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
7. Breathe [Shannon Low]
8. Exhale [Shannon Low]
Editorial
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Having been involuntarily dislocated from urban surroundings recently, I spent a great deal of time on returning numbing myself in front of all variants of news media with a newly found ability to be totally unaffected by the incessant messages of turbulent worldwide political and socio-economic change. Good, I thought flicking through the channels, but how does this affect me?
Many of the articles this issue are about personal experiences that you won't find in any news report. These articles are creative responses by the authors that are more interesting than Corleone-like fat-fingered politicians or triple-digit bull-bear index fluxes. So close up that news website and read.
As always we would love to hear from you. Please send in your comments to the2ndrule@hotmail.com and if you would like to write for the magazine that is also where you send us your contributions. Do forward this magazine to your friends (we've got no advertising except word of mouth), and if you're one of those who got an issue and would like to subscribe, email us with the word "subscribe" in the subject and we'll add you to the list.
Do take a look at our 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, Tim
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Body slam
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When life picks you up by your middle, arms and legs flailing, not expecting the lapse of gravity, and slams you into the ground, which you catch with your chest. When you were expecting a dull sleeper-hold that would leave you numb and limp. Instead you feel every rib-smashing, face-bruising moment of life crashing into you.
You think life should treat you better, but it should treat everyone else better first.
You think life should give you more breaks, but how many people you know get any breaks?
Life throws you a knockout punch with curves that break your jaw. You sure you wouldn't rather be lying in bed staring at the ceiling? Shake the sting out of your head and watch, dumb, as a jaw-dropping high-kick flies into your face.
Still wish you could feel every second of life? Without a doubt. It's better than sleeping and waking up dead.
- Shannon Low
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You are not your job.
You are not the contents of your wallet.
- Tyler Durden
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Two Men at a Cafe Table Near Closing Time
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(Extract from 'The Invisible Manuscript')
Don't be silent. Last night I had made my mind up over you, I imagined what it was like to rest my brow against yours and what are the things we could see if we suddenly opened our eyes, so close that way. Our eyelashes brushing like pollen-heavy anthers. I have also imagined what it would be like for you to sit across me, your voice not making any sense, your mouth handling the vowels like hot metal, tongue lubricating consonants, and echoes; echoes in the sinuses of your skull, cranial echoes too quick to be marked as separate from one another! Do you want me to place my hand on yours? Then place it on the table, on the coaster with its Carlsberg cursive, it is not wet, here is not where the wetness is. You must understand: silence cannot save us now. Neither can the scenery occupy you for long; a woman's solar ear-rings, the leaf-variegated moon, the waiter who returns your glance only once, self-conscious, hostile, smoothing his crumb-flecked apron. All these night-things can betray you; I cannot prevent any of it from happening, but I can still help pull the knife away from your breast with one clean stroke and if I break my wrist doing it then it is a kind of fate... I admit we have only known each other for a week, but you have stitched yourself into my mind like a hieroglyph, like a tapestry in archaic calligraphy and I must know what it means. This is what is due to me, I deserve this, this is the culmination of the years spent watching Valentine's passing like a lurid, ghostly procession, nurturing crushes like ugly sores, my teeth white bandages or a flag of the desert fortress, eighteen years of my life bumping into myself, muttering sorry, still walking in the wrong direction towards the picnickers at the beach. Never looking back, for fear of turning into a pillar of salt, stalagmite mummy, dumped into the sea, crystal pumpkinhead, my eye sockets dissolving, a hole gaping into my mouth, eating my face: the white roar of leprosy. You understand all of this yet you remain silent. I confess: I am needy, I have always imagined that why I feel so incomplete is because one half of me is standing in the past but I have realised that that past is yours too. We can unlock it together, I have a scrapbook full of baby photographs, I adored iconic slutty female singers secretly in secondary school, look at this body, if only I could bring it back into a classroom of boys changing into T-shirts with crests; drawstring shorts: my eyes, bare thighs, sesame-seed nipples, my eyes again, a different body now, harder, muscular, the same moist eyes. The world owes me something: you are that world. Your fingers on the edge of the table, receding into your purring loins, like crabs from the sun, I declare them capable of undoing, we can rewrite this: I met you in a park, in daylight, a hundred letters passed between our hands, soaped, perfumed, soiled, I once stood under your balcony with a necklace of raindrops, our first kiss made me faint and I woke up upside-down in your head. Don't be silent. My past will be redeemed: it will become our future. The only future I demand is the past we were denied, say something. Don't be silent. You have been silent so far. I have been silent thus far. Say something.
- Tim
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Never underestimate the power of denial.
- Ricky Fitts, American Beauty
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Residues
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(what fell out of my green army pouch
when I turned it upside-down)
1. navigation exercise
you were sleepwalking
fumbling for the switch
to light up the blind jungle
in a conflagration of white
the skeleton negative of trees
stunned arsenic grass.
2. reveille
doing pull-ups on the dew-slicked bar
and wondering if the clanging of mess trays
and cutlery matched the chime of stars
haphazard in a sky dark as oil
I recalled a dream of finding happiness
by simply looking under my bed.
3. thinking soldier
the Scotch tape
for the broken arm of the spectacles
the handkerchief
for the broken arm of the buddy
and sanity, even smaller
than these improvisations.
4. inspection
the black under your guilty fingernails
was also the black of your praised boots
the black of the sweet coffee
was not the black, as they say,
of the commander's face
thus did black become its own diametric.
5. field training
nobody ever spoke of dying
digging trenches we exhumed only ourselves
we buried mines in the loose dirt
with our own hands, not one heavier than grief
it was enough for anyone to say:
I want my death in another life.
6. debrief
the logic of machismo is the logic of silence
to speak in the colonel's tongue
you have to say, 'rite of passage,
learning experience, moulding men,
you could not have suffered
what you have survived'.
7. lights out
if it was true that someone read his Bible
by the light of a pen torch
if it was true that someone uncapped
his music box under the insomniac blanket
I would have asked if such pain came from
the habit of remembering; or the will to forget.
8. blanket party
after we returned to our beds
our knuckles shining with violence
I doubt any of us could hear
the roar of war behind our ears
except the one who was bruised
raging at his remorseless rage.
9. two three five nine
what you called the pre-booking-in blues:
the hunt for the missing garters
the bleached cap adjusted in the mirror
a sandwich eaten at the doorstep
clomp of polished boots
down the vanishing staircase.
10. ORD
even if you stared long enough
at the photograph in the pink I/C
it would not stare back at you
but behind and beyond your vertigo:
the person falling back into a life
that had fallen away from you.
- Alfian Bin Sa'at
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Download Tinnitring v1.0beta today, and convert that non-stop
pop song loop in your head to a ringtone on your Nokia phone!
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Seattle 1999
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Corporate rule is fast becoming the only rule of the day. as they say, money doesn't talk, it roars. The most powerful corporations are even stronger than many small governments and the economies of small countries. That it was necessary for the huge machinery of the US govt to take Microsoft to court, in an attempt to reduce its monopolistic power, is just a more obvious example of the extent of their control. and now we're beginning to see that the corporate mindset is not just one of money-making, but an insane and self-propagating drive towards absolute control. The few people at the top of the huge companies that own hundreds of millions of lives and dictate life-choices, these guys already have all the money they could ever possibly spend. Now it's just the pure lust for power that drives them.
In many parts of the world, from New York to Seattle to Bangkok to Australia, people are waking up to the nightmare. Armageddon and the apocalypse is not a huge explosion of Y2k nuclear radiation and the instant death of humanity, it is the long drawn out barbecue in which we are the sizzling meat, and it started long ago with the industrial revolution, when the seeds of Macdonald's were planted in the assembly lines.
Seattle, according to the main papers, was just a bunch of hooligans with pet peeves out to topple the noble cause of globalisation. But as some of them involved in the street protests have maintained, it wasn't globalisation per se they were attacking, it was corporate rule. and corporate powers without attendant responsibilities and consciences.
In Singapore, given the level of socio-political awareness and apathy, something like the Seattle street protests is unlikely to happen. And whether we want our voices to be heard in that manner is a topic for another discussion. But at least, it is time to wake up, and to start to own a voice. Singapore Inc has been around for a long time, but its board of directors are no longer the same. Already we are selling space in our history to burger-makers, the Padang to high-class clowns and tearing down the library to build managers. We know we are being run. But by who? And how? And what can we do?
Seattle showed two things. Firstly, that people do not have to be ignorant. Secondly, that the people can make a difference. The WTO talks crashed, the big guys were forced to reconsider, even if just temporarily, their concept of globalisation. And nobody expected that, not even the protestors.
- Sim Pern Yiau
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It's easy for a culture to disappear when all power and all
knowledge are in the hands of an elite.
- Giuseppe Orefici, archaeologist
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A history of the spider through nursery rhymes
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"Will you step into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly
"There are lots of pretty things that I want you to see."
The fly, of course, very sensibly said no.
The spider, unfortunately for him, lacked imagination. Unable to switch to a diet of worms, and lacking the advice of his psychiatrist who was away playing golf, he wandered around looking for food. (His nutritionist was off advising cockroaches on the advantages of washing their legs before eating, and making a ton of money.)
Little Miss Muffett
Sat on a tuffett
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her.
And scared Little Miss Muffett away.
She should have whacked the spider over the head. Or drowned him in the curds and whey, which any normal person would have thrown away anyway. Instead she ran off, leaving the spider. Who incidentally was the one on the as of yet fly-specific diet. And who was in fact trying to find something else to eat, but, appalled at the curds, threw up his breakfast (of half-digested worm).
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner,
Eating a Christmas pie.
He stuck out his thumb
And pulled out a plum,
And said, "What a good boy am I!"
No you're not. You're just weird. Go play outside and have some fun. Go squash that spider trying to get some of your pie.
A horse! A horse! A kingdom for my horse!
For want of a nail a shoe was lost
For want of a shoe a horse was lost
For want of a horse the kingdom was lost
And all for the want of a horse-shoe nail.
I bet the spider wriggled into the nail-hole, trying to eat the steel, and found out that feelers just don't do metal.
So the spider lost his eating implements, and grew hungry and gaunt, and could barely crawl home. Where he found that some uncaring hand (I'm naming no names, but the web remnants were sticky with pie bits) had ripped his web apart. In despair, he lay down and waited for the rain to fall, so that he could at least get some water.
Next day, Miss Muffett, still running, squashed him flat.
The fly rejoiced, and was caught by a Venus fly-trap afterwards.
So endeth the spider's tale.
I never said anything about a happy ending, did I?
- Ong Ee-Ing
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When one considers that a typical airline handles customers'
baggage at a far lower error rate than we handle the
administration of drugs to patients, it is an embarrassment.
- Mr James Reinertsen, CEP Caregroup and Beth Israel
Deaconness Medical Centre, Boston
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Half-Day
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He was woken up by a phone call at nine a.m. The voice was familiar. And it became more familiar each minute, rising to an accusatory pitch. But he decided to place the receiver on his other ear to discover that he did not recognise the voice at all. It spoke through multiple sieves: layers of tissue, through apiaries of microchips, braids of wires, through cosmic dirt and atmospheric pollution. The telephone receiver was like a conch that performed the illusion of conjuring up a non-existent ocean.
He was silent for most of the exchange, rubbing his eyes, stifling a yawn. When the voice had expired he heard a soft click, and for a split-second he felt comforted as he pictured the telephone back in its receiver, a sense of restoration and order. But the engaged tone came on, warning sirens, and he switched off his cordless. Then he went back to sleep.
He woke up again sometime before noon, the sun trying to find a way to get behind his eyelids. That could have explained why the recollection of the dream he had involved a red, viscous climate, with desert sands billowing like rouge. He got up from the wrong side of his bed. Accidentally or purposefully he just wasn't sure yet.
After his shower, he wiped the mist from the mirror and stared at his flushed face. He decided, on a whim, to comb his hair the other way, defying the parting he had taken on for himself since he was eight. The effort required a lot of water and hairgel, and once in a while a few non-conformist strands would pop up, with the gradual tenacity of mimosa leaves unfurling after retreating from a touch. He plastered them down with more gel.
He realised he was falling into the patterns of a ritual. He put his Casio watch on his left wrist instead of the right. A mental note was made that in the course of the day, he would constantly refer to his right wrist for the time, only to be confronted by an albino patch in the watch's shape, a murder chalk-tan-line. Similarly, he slung his Fila bag on his right shoulder when all this time it had hung from his left, even leaving fabric-lightening friction-burns on his favourite sweater. No, it wasn't boredom that drove him. It wasn't even a desire to break the locks of predictability. So what was he doing?
He was recalibrating his centre of gravity in fractions. There were parts of him now that felt naked, and some that felt overdressed. He had lost symmetry. Absence and abundance disproportionately distributed on his body.
(He wasn't himself anymore.)
When he stepped out of the house he felt like somebody wilfully marching out of step. He distinctly felt a keen sense of danger. How does one remove a habit so intimately welded to the skin: the weight of his bag, the caress of his watch, the slant of his fringe? Without removing a layer of the skin as well?
But he knew that although this particular incarnation gave him a degree of vulnerability, it also made him invincible. He was not the person who was mumbling down the telephone in the morning. The shifts were subtle, although his body had felt as if his very bones had been re-arranged. If there was any attempt to hurt, he would thrust this doppelganger, this clueless reflection of his, to receive the blows. He himself would be unharmed.
(Through such sleight-of-hands he would reverse the meaning of things. He wanted to giggle at the simplicity of it all. Furious hailstone words would hit him like sweet wrappers. A shed teardrop would tickle the cheek: hence laughter.)
So when they met at Spinelli's she was slightly disconcerted at his stoicism, the way he nodded; some sorcery was at work. He was a sponge that could absorb an entire ocean without betraying the slightest swelling. But she managed to continue: she didn't know where the relationship was going, she didn't think that being part of a couple had made her a better person, in fact she was now more adept at improvising evasions, supplying false alibis. And he took it all in, gamely. She didn't even notice that his hair was parted the wrong way. She kept going on and on, her hands expressive, contrapuntal to the sluggish melancholy of her eyes.
Suddenly, without warning, a thought flashed in his mind. This was the person he had once described to other people as his 'other half'. The thought stabbed him. This was why he had to double himself this morning, invited his twin from out of the mirror to walk into the unforgiving streets with him. He had to create another half because the one in front of him now, with the herbal-minty hair he sniffed in darkened theatres, with the hand that fitted like a bird in his own, had decided to leave him. He would have to be dependent only on himself now. Manufacture his own company.
(Already he had created the laterally-inverted form of himself. He was sure other versions were possible. The world had turned upside-down. Yes, the more he listened to her, the more he felt a throbbing sense of exhilaration. To turn the Earth itself like an hourglass, to begin anew. The giddiness of the trapeze artist, suspended above the crowd's petty fears, audaciously insulting gravity. Upside-down.)
Do you have anything to say, she asked again. But he wasn't responding. Again she sensed that he wasn't himself today. Because this is it, she said. He was still silent, placid, at peace. She became irritated and told him, All right, if you're not saying anything then don't blame me for not letting you have your last say.
She did not know. How could she know. That he was trying his best to listen to her with his feet.
- Alfian Bin Sa'at
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Anger soap.
Exactly what you need after fear shampoo.
Try our hate conditioner for lasting effects.
Only suffering will follow.
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Breathe
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Jack is taking his time to breathe. As the pool of gasoline rises up to his neck. He wonders how much higher it'll go, how much higher he can go, before the space between him and the ceiling narrows to the width of his nose. Strangely, Jack is finding it difficult to breathe.
The smell of gasoline is making him nauseous and the taste is churning his stomach. He knows he's going to die, but he doesn't want to die choking on his own vomit. He wonders what it will feel like in his lungs, as the thick automobile cordial runs down his tracts. Will they let it into his bloodstream? His lungs recoil and shrivel in response. This makes it harder for him to breathe. He wants to know. He doesn't want to pass out from the fumes before.
Breathing is life to him. Breath is what feeds him. Drowning is what he fears most. Drowning in gasoline, he doesn't even know what to make of. Jack has a lighter in his pocket. Would it work? Would he dare to? Would it hurt less? He can feel his skin starting to singe already. He thumbs the lever at a crossroads. Take your life into your own hands, or await the unfolding of events?
- Shannon Low
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Should I stay or should I go?
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Exhale
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Evacuate soul in 5 seconds.
Jack's soul is a bubble of oxygen and nitrogen rising up in a small room full of gasoline. Jack's eyes are shut and the lighter still in his hand. Everything looks a little rounder from the inside of the bubble. Everything is mapped onto its surface, and the world, every detail, is suddenly inside out. Jack can see for miles and microns all at once, in every direction. Can digest the immensity of canyons and the texture of a grain of sand. All of the present happening simultaneously, and simultaneously aware of all of the present.
But this is a transient state. His moment of perfection that lasts as long as his bubble doesn't.
Pop.
- Shannon Low
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All Respect Due to James Brown and his countless disciples for
inventing modern music.
- DJ Shadow
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Two Men at a Cafe Table Near Closing Time, (c) 2000 Tim
Residues, Half-Day, (c) 2000 Alfian Bin Sa'at
Seattle 1999, (c) 2000 Sim Pern Yiau
A history of the spider through nursery rhymes, (c) 2000 Ong Ee-Ing
