the2ndrule Issue 12
The 2ndRule
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Dec 2000 email edition
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Web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule
Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Christmas 1999 [brandon lee]
2. two tears [Judith H]
3. Inuka [Koh Beng Liang]
4. What to write about in Cold Storage [Alvin Pang]
5. Bittersweet [Phinehas Tan]
6. The Ex-Boyfriends Club [Tim]
7. On Sunny Days [Teng Qianxi]
Editorial
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Jack is a year old. And so is what he stands for. Time to review, rethink and react.
From septuagenarian past heroes who refuse to relinquish their authority and desperately grasp at their own relevance, to young, upstart guerrilla magazines touting "apathy to activism", there will come points in time when those who cannot change will be broken. Too much collateral damage?
We ask ourselves: Is there hope? Is it worth going on? Does it have to be so harsh, and will next year be any better?
We are all tortoises with hard shells and soft insides. It just takes a little understanding and we won't need the shells, and a little belief, and the insides will not be soft.
What next year will be like is what we choose to make of it. Choose, and keep well.
The 2ndRule team wishes all a merry christmas, and good tidings for the new year.
Comments and contributions to 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, Sim Pern Yiau, Judith H
Contributors : brandon lee, Alvin Pang, Phinehas Tan, Tim, Teng Qianxi
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Christmas 1999
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It seems no one is waiting this year's end
For the air to settle and take on the blue warmth
Of a streetlong mirage, christmas lights, orchard road.
A great coming or going is in progress, in the shrill.
The shrill. The night-hung air is a woman waiting.
The sky-bound bliss a boychild of song among sisters.
A single held note of a hallelujah above us tonight is only a reprise
Of countless lives lost, rosewine gone cold and puddings half-eaten.
He brings a finger to his lips for silence.
And so the century of standing by and watching comes to an end
With this rich endowment of festivities-
Dear God, make no great humans of us all.
Drown us not in the heavy seas of occupation.
Be with us every minute of parental neglect.
Forgive us while we seek out our necessary peace in invention
And home in the sounding of temple bells,
the floating of march flowers
the walking of fired coals.
Ask not our poor for so much.
They have too long been the lonely lovers to our tired hearts.
Take the disenfranchised and stricken into your arms,
Bring them out from beneath the pseudonyms, the illustrated profiles.
Hush the clang of shame,
So that as last I may call a friend a friend, and a man a woman.
Give our tired fathers one quiet hour.
Our sons a minute of grateful love.
Our girlfriends compassionate words and our boys a safe tour of duty
Through the unimaginable night.
Listen,
To those who have run out your road
Leading lives of what look like dead ends sleeping in the pews,
Drinking out of under hosed faucets, entire homes slung in shopping bags.
And need only another inch.
Let not the promise of a thousand years, diminished as it has come to be,
Go out in the poor light this time around.
If only the quiet kite moons on this last still day
Were bright enough for our ways into the love of your heart.
- brandon lee
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Jack loves to watch the waves crashing at the bottom of the cliff before
jumping off. That's why he waits. What do you see?
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two tears
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She was smiling wanly at him in the lift, at him and his machinegun chattering jokes, all the while staring at the heavy oak paneling of the lift. And the mirrors... especially the mirrors. Halves of him and her reflected in the dim yellow light. He'd dressed up, she could tell. She supposed she should have done that too, maybe a little more than she had. A cotton blouse and skirt seemed suddenly rude; it was Raffles Hotel, after all. And he had asked her to come so many times.
Dinner was awkward, his desperate chatter unbalanced by her preoccupied silence. She supposed she really should say something, but the ceiling awnings were so interesting. They crissed and crossed in both green and white... and she'd already lost the thread of his monologue. She supposed she was sorry, but she couldn't tell, really.
She rather pitied him, but he bored her. He was nice, yes, and he mixed well with whoever seemed to be everybody, but she wasn't everybody. She idly wondered why anyone asked her out at all. She was only moderately pretty. Time crawled, and he lapsed into more and more digressions, just to fill in the silence. Just too bad, wasn't it? Yes, it really was too bad.
They had reached the tea-or-coffee, sir? stage, and he was exhausted. She sensed his disappointment, and because she was not an unkind person, she felt a little sorry for him. But hadn't she sworn there was nothing that could touch her now? The pang of guilt came, after all, with a flood of relief. Nothing had, she noted with mild amusement, diminished his appetite, in any case. She was just wondering when he would stop ordering.
The thought of the slick, oily Hainanese chicken rice she had just stuffed down her throat choked her, and then there was the usual pain in her stomach, so she stopped wondering. She excused herself, leaving him looking after her almost comically, coffee still poised in hand, still in mid-sentence. Still bewildered by his spectacular failure.
She walked out of the glass door and spied the gold-plated toilet sign. It was a posh place, she heard herself think, to have gold-plated toilet signs. And there was the pang again, only it was more than guilt now -- it was a rising nausea. She shouldn't have cleared her plate, only he'd insisted... Don't waste good food.
She stepped into the air-conditioned toilet, so the fragrance of tasteful air-fresheners greeted her, making her dive for the nearest marble-floored cubicle. As she passed by the mirror her fleeting reflection reminded her of some sick ghost... a running spirit in a cotton blouse and skirt. The image lingered with the blot of the lock, a faint metallic sound. Her head swam.
Her frail hands -- always criticized as "so thin!" by those aunties visiting during Chinese New Year, clutched the toilet paper holder and the three-ply patterned paper, so it ripped. She bent down over the toilet bowl, her gasping reflection groping up from the clear porcelain water.
One finger down the throat, and the memories were gone. The toilet had an automatic flush, but what had she expected? It was Raffles Hotel, after all. She tasted the chicken rice, the slick oil and the sour juices, a bitter cocktail swirling, her finger nagging her throat. And down it went, while she sat losing her apathy... she was so little, spinning around as her knees triggered off the flush again and again. Raffles Hotel. So rude of her to do it here.
She felt the presence of the porcelain, the woodwork, the potted plants, returning with the gentle glow of the yellow light, with the strains of soothing jazz from outside. They returned to her, as her shame swirled down, the last bit of it... her throat was bitter. She looked up, still kneeling, to stare at this ceiling. It was a warm yellow glow, and to calm herself down she stared at the round circle of light for a minute. When she smiled, her eyes closed around a purple circle of an afterimage, and she smiled harder, to make sure the juice went down. The bitterness laced her mouth.
She sat for perhaps a minute, smelling the new water still trickling into the bowl, and appreciating the posh wooden surface she leaned against. It was sturdy... it held her up without rocking back, like one of those pink, painted wooden doors in public toilets. This wood had wood grain it was not afraid of hiding, unpretentious. Her hands grasped the coolness of the marble, and she breathed out carefully. She smoothed and flicked her hair -- some had dipped their ends in the water. It had been quite a meal.
When she stood up, her cotton blouse was crumpled, and when she saw her reflection in the mirror outside -- pale, wane, even sickly, she wanted to laugh. At least this time she was standing still, not stumbling stupidly. She adjusted herself a little, brushed on a little blush, which only made her look paler. Maybe she really was a ghost. She was tired. It took all her weight to press the wooden door open. To see him standing outside, leaning despondently against a pillar, moodily contemplating the jazz players, and the shadows in the flickering lights. How sweet.
The door made a soft swishing sound that callously flicked her wet hair back, sending her back to him. She only dropped two tears on the way out.
- Judith H
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Don't move, don't talk out of time, don't think, don't worry
everything's just fine.
- "Numb", U2
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Inuka
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(polar bear adopted by Singapore Press Holdings)
10 years of no auroras, caged in a false cooled pond,
his half-ton frame, trained for tricks (like jumping
and waving and dancing and bell-ringing) has no need
to alter metabolic rates or suffer seasonal starvation,
and his pale fur was tinged green by tropical algae.
Mother could not teach him to hunt -- that on hind legs
he looks not cute but can slam his front paws and smash
through the snow lair roof to seize the seal cub, that his webbed feet
can paddle marathons through unpredictable ice conditions to adapt
to changing seal distributions, to sometimes stoop to eating rotting
bird carcasses and vegetation nourished by guano. The only child will never
learn to play-fight, hunt walruses or cordon off the females.
That adorable black nose will only react to paychecks
of fish, bread loaves and fruit.
- Koh Beng Liang
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Faith, love, charity
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What to write about in Cold Storage
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Half-asleep, and holding the red earth of the here and now
close at hand, it is easier, I suppose, to walk pass the battlefield
that is real grass, into the cool shade of track lighting, reconditioned
air hinting at just the right scent of harvest time, bouquet of peaches,
fresh lime with an aftertaste of new apples. Reminds you of autumn,
if you've ever known such a thing as leaves dying into colour
and fruit bursting their seams like dresses shrunken from the wash,
like prisoners given amnesty for an hour choosing art over hunger.
Take a trolley to all this beauty laid for your delectation, the idea
of choice, need turned into gold. Sail past the verdant green aisles
of kai lan, dou miao, basil, rockets, suet. Ponder the introversion
of mushrooms, the luscious enticement of tomatoes, firm grip
and fullness of ripe flesh. Pick a pasta, any pasta, their cryptic
labels slip your tongue as easily as Latin, finger the cheeses, how
any civilisation could think of eating mouldy cow-milk curds
and at these prices. Over here we have canned beans, canned tuna
canned soup, canned curry, canned fresh orange juice, Spam.
Moving on to frozen dinners, each lovingly packaged and wrapped
in the most delicate layer of frost, cunningly arranged, perfect ciphers
for cuisine. A fine selection of wines, full-bodied, white, Australian,
Chilean, French women fingering the dust off bottles of cognac,
their eyes glinting in the dull red glare of the nearest Merlot. Finish
off at the billboard: lost pet, spare kittens, maid seeks expat family,
garage sale, english tuition, native speaker, results guaranteed.
And you tell me there's nothing to write about, that life
has handed you a blank sheet and you're only waiting in line
to pay up and get out, like everyone else. Maybe
you're even right. Your car's parked outside. The cash
register bleats its numbers into view, there's the sudden
sharp smell of fresh money changing hands, plastic
bags rustle frantically to be on their way. Maybe
all there is to this is moving on, moving up, the queue line
of souls waiting for checkout and carrying on to wherever.
Or maybe this could be nothing at all, backdrop, wallpaper
against which you ought to scrawl a life less ordinary,
cleaner air, better pay and more controversy
than you could shake a pen at. Dress down, and get your
hands dirty in the real stuff. Fight a few fires, bloody
your fists against the hard edges of the world. Think
deep thoughts. Change the world. Get a life. Well,
your car's over there, here's the shopping and the keys,
when you're done come upstairs -- dinner's at seven.
- Alvin Pang
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I am Smirnoff.
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Bittersweet
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All alone, tearing down both cheeks. If only I'd been blusher-ed, perhaps the ruby-red rivulets would have been more appropriate. After all, red is the colour of the "disconnected" ICQ flower. Six months of frugal living, endless nights online waiting for the electronic kiss, the smell-less, warmth-less yet glorious embrace and oh-so-sunny grins. =)
---
Why isn't she online tonight? Does she still love me? The downward spiral has begun. The virtual relationship matures spasmodically, dictated by pressures; peer, parental and scholastic. The torturous wait in the IT age. In the minute waiting for the next "uh-oh", I have grown old and died.
The acronyms, sighs of parting, childish games of peek-a-boo. "Privacy (invisible)". Fumbling through quasi-amorous meetings. The sizzle of that first touch, the magical first kiss. The agony of the first goodbye. Post first-meeting blues. We both part with excited, yet strangely heavy hearts.
---
"Hello!"
"I don't love you anymore"
"But why? Yesterday our online goodbyes were said with infinite fondness."
"I changed my mind. Sorry." She flees. Green flower reddens.
I hold her birthday present, bought only yesterday, in my hands. Mentally consecrated to her, it has lost its spiritual owner. It lies unattended now, in the corner of my room, just like my ruby-red heart, and my ruby-red compact. Fast love in virtuality, just as quickly lost. I have been unplugged.
- Phinehas Tan
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Do not mistake the finger that points at the moon for the moon.
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The Ex-Boyfriends Club
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1. Foreign Talent
My first one drove a Volvo, his name was Andreas and his eyelashes were golden and crumbling light. When we first met I asked him what his name was, to which he asked, "Why do you want to know?" and I said, "Or else I'd have to call you daddy." He was fifty but he had a lot of credit cards and I was young, with sharp elbows, and in my head were visions of running away from home and nights curled with strangers who had the warmth and stink and dumbness of horses. Andreas was very hairy and bought me jeans, a mobile phone, magazines, my affections, and for the last I made sure neither of us kept any receipts. I loved my body then, the way Andreas was so fascinated by its "smoothness!", and I was proud of the fact that each time I shuddered, he mistook it for pleasure rather than repulsion. One night I slipped away from his embrace and even the goosebumps on my skin didn't give him enough grip to hold me down.
2. High School Crush
My second swam for his junior college and could play Paul Simon tunes on his guitar; he also had a girlfriend. We met on IRC and he was "shucks" and I was "hickey" and within a week we were calling each other "shuckster" and "hickster". He had a slight American accent and by the fifth date I had made him lose it. Oh, he lost some other things too; he often told me that his girlfriend was the "Sunday school sort". She even had a portrait of the Virgin Mary over her bed, not so much to guard her sleep but to terrorise with the infinite melancholy of her eyes anyone with the knowledge of the existence of recreation between their legs. The problem with people who call themselves bisexuals is not that they haven't made up their minds, but that it was already made up when you came into their lives. I was a moment of indecision that lasted for two months. When I wrote letters to myself about him I referred to him as "that lousy fucker" but for my last one I wrote "fuckster" and that was when I stopped.
3. Sign Language
My third spoke Cantonese very well; he tried to teach me but I gave up after a while, six different tonal variations at one go was just too much. He liked karaoke, and he had a good voice and I would sit around in karaoke bars watching him pass the mike back and forth with his friends. When it came to my turn I would shake my head and pretend my mouth was full of peanuts or something. He didn't read the papers, he had no idea who Wong Kar Wai or Gregg Araki were, but he was the best deep throater this side of a freak circus. One day we went out, and as an experiment I kept silent throughout, and it didn't seem to bother him at all. We sat in cafe's, watched movies, and all he would do was stare idiotically at everything: cinema posters, a fat girl whose T-shirt said ANOREXIA, a piece of sky even, as if God had just winked at him and he was supposed to keep it a secret. I spilled the beans at the end of the day: did I not exist, why didn't he say a word to me? He seemed confused at first, and then laughed and then in his broken singsong English said: "I thought you are angry. So this is a game only?" I said yes, I wanted to say "Charades" but I knew he wouldn't get it and it's sad to be the only one to realise how corny and melodramatic that reply would be. When I walked away, from that lovely-chested man with no gag reflex, I thought of the phrase "broken singsong English" and repeated it so many times to myself, made up a tune for it even, until it made no sense at all.
- Tim
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There can be nothing worse.
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On Sunny Days
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people sit together at the water's edge
discussing how they would change the world.
Children dig the sand, shaping it
into turrets that wait for no tide;
they do not hear their parents' calls
passing like the wind through grubby palm trees
and drowned by the rock music yelling
from some teenager's stereo. A red steamer
blows puffs of speech-bubble smoke
and plastic bags are swept
like silenced corpses onto the shore.
- Teng Qianxi
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"I'm not afraid of anything in this world,
there's nothing you can throw at me
that I haven't already heard."
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Christmas 1999, (c) 2000 brandon lee
two tears, (c) 2000 Judith H
Inuka, (c) 2000 Koh Beng Liang
What to write about in Cold Storage, (c) 2000 Alvin Pang
Bittersweet, (c) 2000 Phinehas Tan
The Ex-Boyfriends Club, (c) 2000 Tim
On Sunny Days, (c) 2000 Teng Qianxi
