Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Why this tree? Because it was dedicated to Nelson Mandela, which i thought was pretty amazing. Nelson Mandala is the longest serving political detainee of his time only because, just before he was release, Chia Thye Poh, who was on house arrest in Sentosa, was released, so that he wouldn't be the world's longest serving political detainee. I need to get a nice shot of Ma and Oisin. They are close close to each other that they go on like a couple of kids. My mom would give off to Oisin and he'd give off right back. Today they bought a $7 watch off a chap in Tekka Mall. After a bit the watch didn't work. My mother, heartbroken at his heartbrokenness, and never one to miss the opportunity of getting pissed off at shoddy crap, insisted that she walk back to the shop with him to exchange it. Jacq and i then sat with the babies in a restaurant. As they walked there, my mom said that Oisin kept on saying that he was going to scold the man for selling badly made things from Chi...

Ghin, Oisin and the sausage tree Ma contemplates the heat Waterlillies - this is the very same pond i fell in when i was five Smile!

I have tried updating this blog over the last coupla days but the connexion is crap. Here i go again...hopefully. Ghin when he looks like Peter. Sometimes i catch him and i think, this is what Peter must have looked like as a baby. Oisin climbs a heritage tembusu tree in the Botanic Gardens. He didn't get much further than that. What a tree!!! A reflective moment... Cactus hat shot This is Yati and Ghin. Yati is the only other person whom Ghin will go to without a fuss. Probably because she was so determined to carry him - and because she was just great with kids. Having brought up four of her own and two of my uncle Gab's. Could women, who have children, now go through their lives without knowing how to take care of a child? Maybe? Yati, in any case isn't one of those women. The other pictures are of us in Botanic Gardens. As predicted, i'm on the upswing again. My dad read my blog and then told me off for feeling low, which is precisely what i was felling low about - ...

I've been concentrating on the shitty stuff over the last couple of days. I think the end of the holiday is making me feel a little queasy and sad. Also the uncertainty of the future fills me with exhaustion. I get tired just thinking, what if it's all going to be the same all over again? I've been here so many times before. I did want to think it would be different. Will it be different? And if it isn't what then? Life here is so easy. If i am to hack it on my own there... i need him to be helping out, to be beside me. If not.... All those ...es. Those drifting offs to nowhere. I am so tired of trying to construct that narrative. That story that will enable me to live my life there. The shabbiness of somethings and the lies that people tell each other to go on. I'm so tired of it, you know. But i can't continue in this cocoon here either. Cut off from the rest of the world in this bubble of sunshine and swimming pools. Of long runs. Sooner or later reality will...

It is untrue to say, that peace is everlasting. (Peace everlasting - Amen. It is untrue.) All we have is the moment. Lotus budded - and within that moment, the myriad forms of being of the many armed goddess and each moment, a hand, each hand, a proferration each proferration, a proposition to live these offerings to their brimmed full.

I left out English. In English i converse, in English i think and dream. It is not my voice - but it is also mine. Within English i am silenced. I speak of authenticity and yet i know i am not. I struggled with this. I struggled at the missingness when i speak. The absent presence of the colonial subject. Without the English i would never have had my children. Peter and i, never have met. I would not converse with all the friends i have. It defines who we are. And yet, it is not my language. I am painfully aware of the contradictions and the missing words that i do not speak. Like when i go to Chinatown. Or Geylang. Or Serangoon Road. The descriptions i give are wooden, stiff. They fail to enter beneath the skin. I am an outsider, the final veils will never be lifted, never be drawn. The only access i have is to myself - and there lacunae exist too. To never ever belong to myself. To never ever belong to the places i go to. The gaze of the observer. The muteness of the nomad, the orpha...

I long to immerse myself in the poetry of this place - but there is no poetry. No poetry which i can relinquish myself to. No poetry that i would offer surrender. The poetry of the mystics, of the West belongs there - where are the voices of the individuals who have entered oneness here? Singapore, Singapura. Lion City. At the museum i was intrigued by the Sejarah Melayu. It was the first time that i had heard that Parameswara was one of three brothers. I instantly felt a tugging at my heart. Another weft was being woven into the warp of the place. We are part of the geography and history - and yet so very apart. The voices of the Chinese who came in the 15th century and then the 19th. Asian literature is remarkably silent when it comes to the individual. There are prayers and chants, incantations. But the individual is gone. Sacrificed. And that is probably what ails me so here. That there is no voice that stands out - a space to allow voices to stand out. The pointlessness of the ind...

It has been a long time since i've felt rage. The hotmail won't go through and i see there are a few messages for me - not all of them bothersome. But the most annoying thing has been the fact that i've booked myself on the wrong flight and on the wrong day. ARRGGGHHH!!!! The first admin thing that i have to do and i've screwed up. I feel like such a fucking idiot. I now will have to pay about 160 quid to get onto the flight that we need to go to. Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

In the process... Oisin took this one. We're snacking on nato de caco. Sigh. It was such a lovely day yesterday. Suntie Gerry came over to bake cookies with Oisin and she spent the whole day doing it. Radically different from my mom who prizes efficiency over everything else, she turned the event into a real process, chatting about the wedding, gossiping - but very gently - and laughing. There was a real sense of relief for her that the wedding had gone so well. And it was hard with all the emotional stuff that surrounds something like that. Uncle Gab came over and told us that he had asked Fr Weerakoon to bless himself and Auntie Winnie who had been married 23 years to the day. My mom said that she should have done the same thing. To be honest, the Fr dind't really do it for me. Especially when he said the word pronography about four times in two minutes in the most disturbing way. Anyhow, details, details...it did go off really well. Oisin had asked Adam what everyone was ...

Oisin at wushu Jacq, Aurelia, Terence and Oisin at Hans for breakfast last Sunday Mark at Glutton's Corner after two chendols and two oluaks. Ghin moving at the speed of light - a blur when he crawls now. Pa and Ma with oisin, walking back afte breakfast on Thursday morning, after the accident. I'm still ploughing through the zen book. In between that, thankfully, Lianne lent me Female Chauvanist Pig which was good fun - although, of course the topic was less funny. To me, somewhere, along the way, the goddess project got hijacked and co-opted and then women who didn't mind being fodder to the canon went along with it. The MOST annoying use of the goddess has been Nigella Lawson's The Domestic Goddess. However, the one that REALLY pisses me off is this ad by Gilette about women's razors that uses the Bananrama song Venus and says' unleash the goddess in you. That one used to send me into spasms of rage. Small spasms. However, if i needed reminding why i didn...

It was so hot yesterday. Beneath the celebrations for the mooncakes festival, i coulnd't but feel the jadedness, the exhaustion of Singapore. Keep it simple. It's when it's simple that it's best. It was beautiful. The noise, the colours, the layer upon layer of activity. But there was something tired, something a bit fed up and dog eared. Something that couldn't sustain itself that went quiet, wound down inside me. And inside so many others too. this cannot, it cannot be the sum of life. Eating, walking, shopping. It can't. When we have this, we realise we need more. But then, how do we get more. Leaders! the PAP intones from it's podium. We need more leaders. But how can you get more leaders if you're insisting that all people do is follow? I have seen it time and time again. The spark that lights the flame is quashed continuously in the children here. Instead of an openess and trust that is borne of love and consideration, we have arrogance and smart a...

...i post another blog. Went out with Oisin to the village and had ice cream. A Church of Zion person passed us a leaflet on a church camp. I asked Oisin if he wanted to go to learn more about Jesus. I said, Adam believes in Jesus, you know. Oisin then said, well i believe in Jesus, with a grin. I said, do you? Yes, well, he said, was he real or was he a fairy story? I said, he's like the stories of Bhudda i tell you. They used to be human beings. Ah, is he like Old Roger then? You know the song, Old Roger is dead and he lies in his grave...then he wakes up again and chases this woman around. It's hilarious. Anyhow, here are the pictures. Mooncake shop and woman who told my mother that it was terribly unfair that i had been given two sons. She kept on saying how gorgeous Oisin was. Ghin at the club waiting for Pa to pick us up. He actually smiled for the camera in these. Debbi, Adam's mom said he was so adorable, like a dinosaur baby. I know what she means!!! Oisin at Sunte...

Here's a wider shot of the Malay barber's. ... Met up with Anne today for a marathon session in town. I am left so tired by these outings. The great thing was that Oisin met up with Adam and they got along beautifully. I'll have photos tomorrow, when i get the camera from the bag. I can't find the bag, it's in the Jimny. On the way back, we passed the mad flyover section along the Tuas PIE/CTE intersection. It's a criss-cross of entangling proportions and extremely confusing. Surrounding it are road works, underground tunnels and flats. I peered into the lit boxes where people tiny and indistinct moved around doing things that people do at this time of the night. Having dinners, watching TV, washing up, getting ready to go out...small spaces that went on, one on top of the other, piled high, until they formed larger boxes, one after the other - boxes after boxes, cubes inside cubes and i felt so sad. People shouldn't have to live like this. How far they were...

Ma and Ghin. Every morning my mother goes to church and then she waters and maintains her garden. It keeps her sane - i'm sure she doesn't realise it, but it does. This morning Ghin and Oisin joined her. oisin decided that the driveway needed a wash. To show you how much my mother loves him, she did not shout NONSENSE!!! RUBBISH!!! but allowed him to wash it. I asked her if she had bought shares in PUB. Unfortunately, she had not. We had a great time anyway. After i took this i noticed that it looked a little like Dante's Inferno - more specifically, the various circles of hell. Singapore is covered in these conrete malls which people go to for fun, or if they have nothing to do. It is filled with loiterers and vagrants - all well dressed - who just sit all day, enjoying the free air conditioning. In fact a New Paper article once uncovered that these shopping centres were day care for the elderly, whose chldren deposited them there for the day with some money and a bottle o...

Ghin wrapped my sarong around himself at the swimming pool - he looked so regal in the get up. all hail the chief!!! Ma prepares the boot for soup that we take to Jacq's house. Flowers in my mom's garden. Hibiscus - Malaysia's national flower. This is found in a bewildering number of varieties around this part of the world. Pink, orange, red, purple in double and single tiers. The bougainvilla is a native of South America but has taken up residence very nicely. I don't know what creatures lodge themselves in it, but you get some really old species around. The pinwheel jasmine, found everywhere, especially used for offerings at the hindu altar. My parents have taken to reading this blog and looking at the pictures, even if they live with me. I don't know how you'd explain that, except that human beings are inherently social and nosy creatures. Today Anne had a cooking lesson with Auntie Jo. They made rebung lemak and pengat. True to form, my mom found the rebung ...

Aurelia and Auntie Shirley, Jacq's mom-in-law at Jacq's place. It was such a lovely evening and we've spent so many lovely evenings there. You know, it's the simple things that we miss most of all, i think when we look back. You see it everyday and then, one day, it's gone. And you're amazed when you look back, savouring those many moments like lost miracles. Ma and Auntie Shirley with the kids. Dinner time at the zoo!!! Jacq and Vanitha, Jacq's helper, making wan tons. Jac in her 'ethnic' outfit. It's an outfit that Ma uses as well when she sweeps up in front of the house very morning. It is without doubt the only bra-and-sarong outfit worn in their own neighbourhoods in public. This is yet more proof that Jacq is becoming my mother. Oisin poses with the bumbo, a cushy plastic number for babies to help them sit. Except, like every other device bought for babies, none of the two babies like it. Ghin finds it too confining and will crawl with it o...

Having lunch with Lianne later today. Despite having met up so many times, we haven't had a real conversation about how our lives are doing. Possibly because it seems fairly obvious where we are right now. No great breakthroughs, no great dramatics for the time being. As i lay with Ghin in my arms after a feed, feeling him warm and heavy, i thought that for now my poetry is my children. They are the flowers of my garden, the novels that i write. Every day i hew and chisel at them. I build and plaster. My imperfect perfect little creations. Wonders of wonders. Ghin has become a weighty eight month old. He is a sweet and demanding little boy. My mother and i agree that Ghin wanted to come into this world. There is a determination and perternatural intelligence about him that was absent from Oisin at age 8 months. Oisin seemed to be the child that was tabula rasa. Ghin has come in with his own agenda. He is already starting to shout when he wants something. He has begun to make his li...

Catterpillar on Uncle Gab's plant. Still trying to ID it. Very exciting. It's about the size of my index finger!!! Morning glory - yes, that's what they're REALLY called. Because they open only in the mornings and wilt in the afternoon. No childish sniggering please. Trishaw in Chinatown taking a break. These are taken by tourists and sometimes squads of them can be seen galavanting around the CBD in the heat of the day. Shopping street in Chinatown. All the shops have generous fronts here that are connected by shady walkways - which serve two purposes - to provide shade and shelter from the rain/sun and to cause accidents to unsusspecting pedestrians. We were once forced to buy a lantern at an extoritinate price because Prema fell into a display and upset the owner. No, this is not a movie still from the lastest Ghost in the Hsell cartoon, but the Bhudda Tooth Temple in Chinatown. It has been built at the cost of over $60 million to house Bhudda's tooth. The tooth ...

Front page of today's Straits Times Roti prata set up Mama's cool wee Jimny The local 'eating house'. The weird thing about the Straits Times is that it has such a tightly constructed narrative need. The proof of its propagandising mode is that it uses externally written articles for one purpose and one purpose alone - to justify its views on the correctness of Singapore. Foreign articles either (a) denigrate the rest of the world, saying how good it is that we live here or (b) say what great place Singapore is and how the rest of the world should be like it. Why does it do this? Because it is what it is, it never contributes to intelligent debate. It merely amplifies the government's point of view. If Lee Hsein Loong says that it's a good idea to learn Malay, they say, it's a great idea to learn Malay. If he says it's a good idea that people should only take their annuities when they are 85, the say it's the best thing since sliced bread. And then s...