Insomnia

I just finished Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and just could not go back to sleep. It's an amazing book - how can one write a novel so lyrical and sensitive, and at the same time deal with the burden of the entire post-war German generation - the Holocaust?


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I made another one of those embarassingly late connections in pop culture while browsing at Kinokuniya the other day. On the philosophy shelf, not far from Focault, was a name teasingly waiting to be dug up from my assorted memories...

Marshall McLuhan...

Connections started to light up in my head (the sound effect is one of them sounds when you get awarded points in gameshows). Hadn't Prabda Yoon just name dropped just the other day? The Medium is the Message. The movie line in Annie Hall!

[An excerpt from Woody Allen's Annie Hall] (audio)

MAN: It's the influence of television. Now, now Marshall McLuhan deals with it in terms of it being a, a high-- high intensity, you understand? A hot medium--

WOODY ALLEN: What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it.

MAN: -- as opposed to the truth which he [sees as the] media or--

WOODY ALLEN: What can you do when you get stuck on a movie line with a guy like this behind you?

MAN: Now, Marshall McLuhan--

WOODY ALLEN: You don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan's work--

MAN: Really? Really? I happen to teach a class at Columbia called TV, Media and Culture, so I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity.

WOODY ALLEN: Oh, do you?

MAN: Yeah.

WOODY ALLEN: Oh, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here. Come over here for a second?

MAN: Oh--

WOODY ALLEN: Tell him.

MARSHALL McLUHAN: -- I heard, I heard what you were saying. You, you know nothing of my work. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

You learn something new everyday.

The Poets of Singapore: Arthur Yap

there is no future in nostalgia

& certainly no nostalgia in the future of the past.
now, the corner cigarette-seller is gone, is perhaps dead.
no, definitely dead, he would not otherwise have gone.
he is replaced by a stamp-machine,
the old cook by a pressure-cooker,
the old trishaw-rider's stand by a fire hydrant,
the washer-woman by a spin-dryer.

& it goes on
in various variations & permutations.
there is no future in nostalgia.

The Poets of Singapore: Alfian Sa'at

Plaza Singapura

Two men talk.

Eyes hope for the sign of a gleam
In the other's, like a first star.

Words unravel and hiss like steam.
Speech a civil noise among tongues
Burnt by strange tribal welts of longing.

A nod, a smile, a switch is flicked.
They look at each other, naked light bulbs.
The heart white-hot, filament-thin.

Caresses in the stairwell.

Each sigh echoing, a child tumbling down the steps.
Fear the ecstatic engine of their gropes.
Their kisses so famished it is almost incestuous.

And long, long after the footsteps
Of families ebbing outside,
The grindstone mill of perambulators,
Housing doll-eyed babies shaking their rattles,
After the washing-machine pride of wives,
And the nail-polish vanitiy of girlfriends,
That parade beyond sealed door,

They hold each other, still in fear,
But this time of themselves in,
Or simply losing, their shipwrecked embrace.
Grateful somehow, when pried apart
By what is not shame, not fultility,
That they had avoided the territories
On each other's skin,
That could have singed them with love,
Or even its pale embers.