we goes with the prose

I have been avoiding this post for a month or so. As part of a regular full-scale retreat, from the world, from my mire of contradictory desires pulling me apart, to opposing poles. So thin I've been clinging to the bare bones routine of workdays - work, sleep, and nothing, nothing. Television. Magazines. Nothing of substance. Nothing that might actually cause me to think.

There was just so much noise in my head.

All of it whispered, sneered, pitied me with the same accusation : failure. I'd convinced myself I was somehow immune to the whole concept of failure. By upbringing, by character, by determination, by luck - mostly luck - I was simply meant to be something big. An incredibly indeterminable something, but a big one.

Which is all very vain, typical and young, I know. My middle-aged colleague (let's face it, when you wander into academia at 23, everyone is your parents' age. Plus five years or so) found out I had a highly romantic literary streak and shared love of 20th century history (it's like watching an action movie, but you feel very highbrow)...so he gave me a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I don't know why it offended me at the time. Probably because I fell right into the whole 'mystical conception of destiny' belief. Maybe that's a Gen Y view of life: Go, Be, Better! You can do anything! Go be everything! (OK, my flawed interpretation, yes.)

The quote was this:

“...... Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to willpower – at its worst the Napoleonic delusion. The man who arrives young believes that he exercises his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thirty has a balanced idea of what will-power & fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will-power alone .... The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”

Well, at least I'm romantic.

Here, I should clarify. To classify the last year as a failure is a bit of an insult. It's like watching Madonna whine about being barred from adopting another Malawi kid - it's ridiculous, self-centred, and almost embarassing. So I feel a little ridiculous, self-centred and embarassed to admit that I could be anything less than totally assured of my own grand vision, replete with a five, ten and fifteen year goal-set plan of attack. Actually, the thought of long-term plans makes me claustrophobic sick. Shh.

So I feel a bit lost. My jobs finish up end next February, and from there, I could go well, almost anywhere. I could recklessly spin the globe, choose a spot, take a plane and spend my savings dry. (Yes, this involves the least planning and as such, is the most appealing.) My brief stint in NYC was a total giddy love plunge, but I have a feeling the halcyon glow might dim a little if I had to actually work there. Perhaps I'll take on an internship somewhere. Like, this international development online magazine, development industry resource site...thing...is offering a journalism fellowship for its offices in TOKYO and WASHINGTON. (tokyo, my choice, obviously.) That could be fun. Learn Japanese. Live in a cubicle. Run through the Imperial Palace Gardens. OK. Maybe I need to grow up and stop choosing jobs on the overriding criteria of amusement/interest/fun. (This is what happens when you have no financial responsibilities whatsoever, and a sensibly growing truckload of savings.) Maybe I should get a serious job worthy of all those years (and dollar bills) spent on study. There's a reporter job at LexisNexis now. That seems like a sensible option. I mean, don't I want a clean, impressive, chic Pyrmont apartment filled with Ikea furniture? Don't I want to fill my life with stuff, with success, with my 2br/1bth contribution to humanity, with coffee table books of naked Greek statues from the Medici era? How else am I going to unravel at age 30 and live out my schizophrenic Fight Club fantasies? (See, there is a plan here.) Hell, maybe I should join the circus.

See: here's the rub. I like my squeaky impressive track record, my unblemished professional CV, my smooth-sailing personal life. I don't want to make a mess.

I suspect though, that life's in the mess.

And I bet that's where the fun is, anyway.

An American Ramble.

Why read?

For no reason at all
The simple, useless pleasure
Of a world unfolding
Layered thin & light
Like so many crisp Fall leaves

Watch each as they lift
That vital dusk gust
As if a dancer's offer, a hand
To waltz a swan song circle to the forest floor.
This Park though, is an echo
Of a wilderness Ramble
Lost long ago to looming towers, steel, glass

And subways! So old! Smeared greasy dirty
Thunderous, clanky like a fall-apart toy
Filled with miniature toy people, mad people
Business people, touring people, student people
Uncivilised - and damn proud.

Every subway is marked by green bulb lamp posts
Every neighbourhood looks like Sesame Street.
Pedestrians disappear into the dark by these posts
Like well dressed British moles.

Everybody has loved this city, but it's a Mormon lover
It can have another!

And I - well I
Delight in shotgun marriage impulse
Is there any way to be more American?

We could contemplate Buddhist scripture over Fifth Ave brunch
(The King, Not Content Until All Questions Found Answers)
We could laze at the Met
We could sit by the teen girl and her friends at Times Square as she compliments each passing pedestrian sing-song (Saturday night, for an hour.)
We could catch a show, catch a bite, catch a ferry (to Staten Island, free)
We could never sit still.

Don't you know though,
the answer is obvious.

You need a hot dog.
Ketchup. Mustard.
Go on. Get lost.

I turn my camera on.

I turn my camera on.

Nerve ends - nude

Flickering electric

Meeting - fleeting

Anonymous

As the sea

Grey and blue and

Ever so deep.

I make films

You said to me

Really.

The kind, you said, nobody sees.

(By the street red stoplight

You - new to this city

So this city was me.)

Come over

My kino-eye

Take what you will.

For your red light

Darkroom.

For my pen-slicked

Bare page.

...

Ah, tis a damn good song...

Love is as good as Soma, baby.

The Soma Cafe
Hangs deep in cigarette smoke
Everyone puffs
But me.

The clean gaijin
Asking, 'What do you love most - Tokyo?'
Most at ease
Posing questions
Gauging wisdoms

Strung thin and measured
Treasured
Single lines for the safehouse.

"I've seen the light and dark - "
(Takeshi, the DJ delivery guy
Who gave us chilli sake)
"Light and dark, and I
(you know)
Love them both.
In this city.
Tokyo."

Slipstreet lost
The Soma Cafe
Like love and wisdom
Hidden.

...

In other words...
"Do you really want to know
How they live in Toky-ooo
If you seen it, then you mean it
Then you know you have to go!!

FAST AND FURIOUS!!"

...

Take it from the guy who photographs the city...from an emergency staircase.

Where did I go wrong? on Channel V

My uni friend, Rosie, has just recorded a song with Little Birdy in Melbourne. Her song will be featured on Channel V's 'MySpace Mixtape' Show on Monday July 13 - 10.30am or 1.00pm.

The song is 'Where did I go wrong?'
Check it out on Little Birdy's MySpace here

Totally proud right now. I did catch one of Rosie's first shows in her pub-playing outhouse days ;) Bleary and skin bleached from not-enough sun, I'd just done the first draft of my honours thesis, knocked over a multiple choice ethics exam (you read that right) and hitched a ride in my friend's tiny green little mini cooper to the gig in Balmain. Along the way, we saw AJ, our one-time Catfox photographer, taking photos of Sydney Uni park on Broadway. It was one of those days, full of incidental social crosswires.

I was dressed for law school, so naturally I looked like I could board a yacht at any given moment. Embarassingly preppy in contrast to the shaggy arts crowd there - but hey, if you must be a dork, be proud. Sunday afternoon. Rosie's self-depracating wit and habit of letting loose everything thought that runs through her mind is actually quite endearing...well, it won me over, but I'm a loyalist.

To cut short the ramble, Rosie's band, The Rouge Balloon, is damn good. Jazzy-cool, bemused, ruminative, it's the kind of music well-attuned for late nights alone, or lazy days with little to say. Rosie is a talented writer, which shines through in her songs. And I really, really hate bad writing (tis in fact a pet hate, along with weasel words like 'nice' and 'great' and grammatical errors and spelling mistakes...yes. dork.) - so when I say good - she's good.

...

Rosie once asked me to do a review for her and get it published, due to my general knack for being able to do that. I said yes then said no because of the crush of other commitments. This is my small way of making up for that. I'm glad she's getting the audience she deserves. A slightly kooky mutual friend and occasional reviewer for The Brag did offer to do a review, noting that as a reviewer for a free street press music magazine, he had power and influence - it would be foolish to turn down his offer. She did the foolish, crazy thing - and turned him down.

Yep. Yet another reason why Rosie is so very cool. She's actually the second friend I met while studying Writing...and it turned out that she was already friends (from high school) with the first. Sydney. It's about as big as a fishbowl ;) I kinda love that.

...

In other news, my law school site launches in 2 weeks. Oh dear god.

Free-thinking hedonists.

I've been reading up about my favourite writers lately. F Scott Fitzgerald, W. Somerset Maugham, John le Carre, Michael Ondaatje, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Haruki Murakami. I'm not sure what in particular binds them. Each write of wealth and corruption, politics, romance, human flaws and foibles. Foibles, incidentally, is one of the funniest words ever made. Foibles. You can't say it aloud without giggling. Don't deny it. Also, kumquat. Onion-domes. There's more, definitely.

I like their restrained styles (ok, Plath excepted, comparing yourself to a Jewish holocaust or Hiroshima bomb blast victim isn't restrained at all.) To me, the mark of a truly good writer is to say so much with so little. The art of the understatement. Like evidence in a courtroom. Let it speak for itself. Let the world judge. They're my heroes, if you could ever speak so grandly. Some of them, like F Scott Fitzgerald and Sylvia Plath, ended up spiralling into hedonistic self-destruction (or less hedonistic and more feminist martyr.) Still, I love what they were trying to do. Free-thinking hedonists. In life, they wanted only the absolute. The unattainable highs. By drugs or sex or success or wealth or wild company. Silken moments to forever play. Life at full volume. Now that's interesting.

"We die. We die, rich with the tastes of lovers and tribes. Characters we have climbed into as if trees."

- Michael Ondaatje, 'The English Patient.'

I have this feeling that people are watching, and wondering what I will do next. Perhaps this is pure vanity. Probably. It's the product of walking past your face on a wall every day and being told you are a person of promise and potential by your professional mentors. By professors and strangers, family and friends. Promise and potential are fickle. I'm very lucky. My sheer academic indecision prompted me to choose courses of study that fit my passions - creativity and high ideals. But you know, now what? My job contracts expire at the end of the year. My editorial team - essentially, talented friends - and I have, at most, six months to prove that this wild idea dreamed up over law school coffee does have an audience, can attract advertisers/sponsors beyond a seed money Law faculty grant, and ultimately, can change the systemic flaws that feed a law school culture of ruthless competition, suicidal anxiety, and ambition without real purpose. These are issues that really aren't exclusive to law school - they are just more prevalent and obvious here than elsewhere. So, perhaps we'll succeed. Then what?

You know, you can rule nations. You can lead companies. You can make grand speeches. You can be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a circus sideshow. You could be a writer. You could be an artist. You could be a film-maker. You could be an Indian seamstress or a Indonesian maid or a Columbian drug runner or Sudanese rebel leader. It really doesn't matter. It's not about you, or your talent, or your ambitions. No, life - and death, god or whatever your name for it, and love - is about something more ephemeral. You can't hold it, but you can taste it. You can't own it, but you can feel it. Your moral conscience. The flow of life. The Holy Spirit. The Four Noble Truths. Turn from these, and life grows claustrophobic.

Anyway, that's the realisation I've reached in these past few months, perhaps years. It has no practical advantage - nothing obvious. It's not a degree or a job promotion or a legal victory. But I have a hunch that these beliefs will lead to a very untidy, deeply fulfilling life. Life ends anyway. If you are not meant to survive, then life can't be about accumulating great material wealth by which to gratify your visceral senses. Sure, I like expensive living. But sustaining such a life is not the purpose of my actions. I wake up everyday never quite sure what will happen next. But I guarantee it will be interesting. It will be worthwhile. It will be something from which to learn.

2.04AM at the Hotel Costes

...I miss Japan. Or wherever. Wanderlust. All kinds of lust, really. For the late, late night. For a man. For the world. For recklessness. For cycling downhill in the face of a midwinter chill. For calculated indiscretions engaged upon a whim. Now, isn't everything better in cloaked insinuations? And rain. Everybody seems to hate it, but the truth is, I love it. I want to be bone-drenched. I want a complicated way of living. "Desire, like a promise in the year of election."

2.04AM at the Hotel Costes.

It's dark in the night, the city
Brightening, its arteries - roadways
Aglow with wandering cars
I can't sleep tonight.

I want you.
Simple. Untainted by contrary ambitions
The drive over, the June rain
Pulling up to park
Doused headlights

"You know, I read somewhere
The spaces between objects, inanimate and alive
Are not empty."

Molecules and chemicals and rain.
Rain.
Slipping from my skin to yours

"You're soaking. Come in.
Shower."

Marble tile, floor heated
Glass to ceiling
Steam billowing
Fogging my windows
Beyond, the sleepless city.

2.04AM. Daylight seems
Like another life.
Now, the rain, the night
Stretched bare.

All we have is time.

(c) Wenee Yap

Harvey Wallbanger

You say hello

I say, "Stranger, I don't know

Who you are, how you've been

Here - pour your story in a drink

Let's kick back and

Solve nothing.

Let's talk til 2."

Or let the night wind down

Tell me your troubles 

Without a word.

In your manner of kiss

By the lamplight flicker

As the cold burning stars carve their arc

We, beneath their collisions.

Unravel.

Disassembled.

By four in the morning

Birds call 

From tree to telephone wire

News of the world.

Turning now, toward our nearest star

Light up the darkness.

By the dawn

You remain.

As do I.

Ourselves.

Without a trace.

LLM v PhD. It's a matter of inches.

"We need to break the cycle of take, make, break."

- Panelist, AHRC Corporate Social Responsibility Evening

I attended the Australian Human Rights Centre CSR event this evening. A week's worth of sustained sleep deprivation, mad deadlines, strained overcommitment and strong coffee couldn't keep the nerd within away. It was good. More than. Satisfying. Challenging. Inspiring. Realistic. Provocative. It is what you experience when a group of highly intelligent people come together - that synapse-buzzing rush. 

I am considering postgrad law. Intriguing choice for someone who really did believe they were going to fail, every single semester. Sigh. I just want it. To live the big idealist dream. I want to go all the way to the Un-i-ted Na-tions. (Imagine that, hissed in Hannibal Lecter voice, when he says to Clarise, "You wanted to go all the way to the F...B...I...")

The big dream. Mmm. Minimum qualification for admission is an LLM. Apparently I did well enough to consider a PhD. Indulged in silly Lisa Simpson fantasy as my former thesis supervisor proposed the idea. ("Dr Yap. Paging Dr Yap!" ..."I'm sorry nurse. I only fix...THE LAW.") My friend who studied Landscape Architecture (but, with typical North Sydney Girl bent, could not exit her degree without first gaining First Class Hons, as a kind of par minimum for our peers), is considering postgrad in the States. Which is what I'm considering too.

Then, PhD. I mean, seriously. Now that we're talking crazy here (and I always proposed even honours as a crazy wild idea. My boyfriend has the email entitled: "Crazy wild idea" to prove it), doing an LLM without going on to PhD (esp since I refuse to become a practitioner) is like reaching third base and backtracking. Deeply unsatisfying for all concerned.

Tenuous innuendos aside. I've been mulling over a story I read somewhere many years ago. Possibly Reader's Digest. What? Don't judge me. Sometimes it's good. 

Three brothers found themselves stranded ashore a fertile volcanic island. Discussing amongst themselves, they decided to share the island equally between them, and each set off to claim his stake in the virgin land. (No dinosaurs ala Lost, don't worry.) The first brother, the eldest, found a fruitful stretch of land just within the rainforest. Close to shore, close to water, warm. There he settled. The next brother, the middle child of stranded history, climbed further up the mountain island until he found a more temperate region - further from water, but cooler with views of the sea. He stayed.

The youngest brother left them both as he climbed up the volcanic mountain. Steep and sharp, the forest gave way to ash and craggy rock, moss and snow, crisp winter chill year-round. Still he climbed. He left behind land suited for planting vegetables, rearing animals, pitching tents (presumbly of palm tree leaves and well placed logs.) The air grew thin. The island fell away beneath him. Still he climbed. The peak in view, he looked from the top of the mountain and saw the world stretched out before him, as far as he dared to look. Vertiginous and dizzying. He saw how the sea met the sand, how wild animals hunted their prey, how the weather ebbed and crackled. He saw the connections and patterns underpinning world order. There he stayed. Far from food and water, eating moss, watching the world unfold.

...

As I recall, this story was given as a scenario test to prospective entrepreneurs as a means of measuring where they 'fit' in business. No prizes for guessing how it worked. I think, however, it's a far more telling story. About what drives us. 

Honestly, I don't know. Dizzy with altitude sickness, I can feel my addiction. Not to a substance or a product or even a person. To this feeling. Even if it means scraping moss and never sleeping. It's a dopamine rush within the foggy glass of a car under the thin cover of night, knowing only metres away are a group of prison escapees totally unaware you're even there. (It's a long story.) It's payoff. Knowing all you've worked for is meaningful, is recognised, is...remunerated. Half the time, I'm afraid of being found out to be completely incompetent. The rest, I relish the labels. Star student. Amazing. All of it. 

Even though I know it is meaningless, in many ways. Even though I am the same person today as I was five years ago, or ten, or the day I was born. I have simply followed a course of events, seized upon opportunities offered and run with whatever luck came by. I can't claim to be special, but I like the idea of somehow - yes - being unattainably unsurpassed. 

"I find the impossible far more interesting."

- Elizabeth, The Golden Age.

Haha. Some days, I just want to walk down the street ala Will Smith at the end of The Pursuit of Happiness, applauding. Quiet. Unrecognised. Just for me. Just to know. It's not about you or me, of course. Life. It's about leaving the world better than you have found it. It's about doing good, if you can, where you can. It's about life full volume - the big blind, the rags-to-riches risks. 

Somedays, I just want to celebrate another day of living. Whether you live at the base or the peak of that mountain. 

Like today.

Cue applause.

Go down in style.

Brink.

"On the verge, as always."

               - 'In the Skin of a Lion', Michael Ondaatje

It's the end of the world

All over again

Pack your history

In a suitcase

Flee urban living

The free open country, hills and dusk

At the leatherbound wheel

Of a tax deductible Maserati.

Dr Phil will tell you how 

To live, rebuild.

His New York Times Top 10

Told you so, years ago

It's love - the lack of 

It's heart attacks and hydrogen bombs

It's all there

In ten easy chapters.

Slick your hair

Black suit - a Zegna charcoal

Pour Homme cologne - essence man

Cuff links by Vuitton, a grab bag of Vicodin

Black suit

You always knew

How to go down in style.

Down the barrel of a gun

You can't think of anything

Clever to say.

Your heart in your mouth

Still beating.

Breathe.

In. And out.

All life's essential rhythms

Fall this way.

Here you are

On the verge

Of life, death, sex, conquest

Winning and losing and all that

Never mattered.

You pull up to the drive

Your name on the space.

Another day

In a world of plenty.

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

...is a damn good poem.

This one isn't quite T S Eliot. But I try. Humbly speaking. Everyone at (one) of my workplaces is getting married, mortgaged and relishing these marks of adulthood. Because I spend half my week in the Peter Pan-struck postcode of 2010, I also live and breathe the aging hipster fear of growing old, as shown by inappropriate age fashion and mass love of Cheap Mondays jeans.

Enough granny griping. Here's the poem. 

Lie to me.

"There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet..."

('The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.')

I write you no letters.

I give you no rings.

In these modern times

Of obligation free, no guarantees

Consenting liaisons

Quid pro quo

We have an understanding.

You say this is honesty

As the sun shines cold, stolen warmth

For a distant summer.

As dusk drops its shadows in your room

By tree-lined street, the city lights flicker

We are being honest.

Honesty, I replied, is a fallacy

A cool mask cover for whatever agenda

You require.

Love is a game, not a gamble

I always win.

"I've never been in love," you said.

"But I believe in it."

Like God.

Like Radiohead lyrics.

Like freedom, truth, justice, beauty

Love.

So I will write you no letters.

I will give you no rings.

If in the street tomorrow, you passed by and asked

I would tell you, under the cold light of day

"No, no. I have never known love."

Psychiatry is this year's candy pink stovetop.

Don Draper (Mad Men, 1950s Madison Ave Ad Man): 

I can't tell whether you have everything...or nothing.

Midge Daniels (Don's mistress, an artist/commercial illustrator): 

I live in the moment. Nothing is everything.

- Mad Men, Ep 2.

...

I've had a line running through my head for the past month. It's from Lupe Fiasco's 'Superstar' from The Cool. "I try to believe my own hype, but it's too untrue." Mingled in like lemon lime, the various obiter* comments of academics, interviewees and friends on the inherent nature of 'intelligent people.' Call it a vanity interest. What are these comments? That intelligent people are given to peculiarity, idiosyncracy, 'bed-hopping', bent morality and a sense that the rules governing social interaction apply only to the proles, the common people. For whom we may fight, but certainly do not belong in their ranks. We are the special people. As one interviewee told me, "It's disturbing. Here are people who would rather die than be ordinary."

Because as Angela Hayes in American Beauty put it, "There's nothing worse than being ordinary."

Hrm. Does that mean that we strive for only the impossible? Do we get our thrills from doing something that's never been done? I was asked once, as part of some classroom meet+greet, what drove me. I said, "to do something that's never been done." 

Doesn't that stink of vanity? I keep saying that my ultimate ideals are to embrace, cold and clear, the flaws of this world - from markets left to the whim of neo-capitalism to dictators whose rule of law is down the barrel of a gun, or to show a way out from the closing four walls of depression - and from there, from within, from understanding and research and constant questioning, to improve the world's ills. To leave the world better than how I found it. I know - how humble. Haha.

Sometimes, every so often, I love the glow and glory. Pride and vanity. The by-lines like 'star student (wherever you go)' and 'amazing', 'driven', 'ambitious', 'genius'. Sometimes, I want to be a beautiful and unique snowflake, dammit. Haha. Tell me Doctor, is that ego? Is that bad? Do you have a fix-it? A pill cure or expensive rest house in the mountains, by the sea?

Sometimes, I spend so much of my waking life in a pitch, developing palatable spins, window-dressing disasters, being as creative with truth as I am with words, that I can't tell my own hype from what I believe. 

(And on those days, I must be doing a good job.)

Haha, no, that's too cynical. Perhaps I just realised that you can make a comfortable living from being unusually persuasive, from a heady mix of idealistic dream-selling delivered in a proven formula package. 

"I want you to manipulate the media. What else do I pay you for?"

- Head of Lucky Strikes to Don Draper, Mad Men.

Oh well. Perhaps it's all delusions of grandeur and I have nothing to worry my sensitive conscience over. Perhaps the ad-savvy audience of latter day noughties know better than to believe what they read in the news, on TV, on the internet, from their friends, from their favourite stars and pop culture icons. Ah. My conscience. It's very sensitive. (Some would say that's a plus. ;)

So - assume that audiences know exactly what you're doing when you say, position an article, or write one, or pitch a story you know slants facts a little. I'm not saying I've done this. After all, my clients are completely harmless...for now. There's nothing to slant, really, which is why I chose this industry to learn the fine art of media...'relations.' If you assume this, doesn't your act still deprive them of the true variety of thought, opinions and debate a free democracy needs to truly thrive?

Or in this spin-driven world that we live in, should we just forget it, channel some Paul McCartney, and live and let die? 

Have a drink. Have a painkiller. Forget about it. The ability to persuade is like law itself - a tool. The law is not necessarily justice, and nor is persuasion necessarily about offering truth. Truth is personal. Truth is an understanding you hold as you crunch through autumn leaves with nothing but the ground beneath your feet and above, the blue open sky. Knowledge is not a checkbox right answer in the exciting life challenges of academic exams or career climbing. It's cycling in the dawn through the streets of a foreign city, on a bicycle so unsteady you expend every effort just to stay upright. Your mind clears. It forgets to think. A definite virtue.  The mind too, is a tool. We - the 'intelligent people' with our brains packed full of IQ points and pride bursting with all our brilliant possibility - are so busy worshipping our clever minds, we forget this fact. 

And if you let your mind rule, it will forge an empire for you alone, within the confines of your own skull. You, as the warm burning heart of the universe. With your life of dramas and affairs, scandals and successes. Your narrative arc. Your three act finish.

This, of course, is untrue. 

Still, we are living. The dramas keep rolling. The camera's on you. If you don't 'do something', some very great something within the designated time appropriate with your so-called 'life plan', you're clearly a lost cause. You know what I'm talking about. The life plan that some might say ensures you are engaged by 22, married by 24, scaling Everests and conquering the wild unknown on the cover of Time by 27, ready for children by 29, and onward, upward. Ad altiora. No? Don't know it? Your life plan might be a little different. I'm referring to the overachiever's life plan. Lisa Simpson. "Grade me, grade me!"

I am not sure whether I have deftly sidestepped that life plan or found an even more novel way to fall right into it. What I do know is that when you step close to the vertiginous abyss, the blank oblivion depth...and find within it, the possibility of freeing yourself from the tangle of all these...dramas...you are craving peace. The kind you can find deep in a forest. High on a mountain. "I know this from gazing at mountains months on end," said Jack Kerouac. 

I know this from watching the dusk strike the sky alight, a smoky sunlight, ignored by the world below. Busy and important with their own private concerns. I know this from watching a girl cry over scoring 97% on a meaningness mid-term Maths exam - because it wasn't 100%, and this clearly meant her life was doomed. (I wasn't this girl, by the way. I was a consistent 80%...97% would have had me in serious hallelujah.) 

Mmm. I know this from the way words, strung together, mere symbols of our language, of our souls, can sink a writer, reader, into reverie. Which some say is better than sex. Some, I said. Not...in my experience. Haha.

Ah. I know this from those very few moments you might let yourself be. Breathe, and be. 

Maybe, Doctor, you just think I'm crazy. What else am I paying you for?

Still. Talking this way helps me feel a little less crazy in what is really a mad, mad world. 

Or perhaps all of you out there know exactly what you mean to be, need to say, wish to do, and no such questions trouble you. 

So, thanks for listening. How much do I owe you? $400 for an hour? Give me a receipt. I'll claim it as a business expense.

...

* Obiter: legalese to mean a comment made 'in passing.' Frequently turns up in judgments where a judge expresses a digression which might later become law. Or cloaks an irrelevant remark on say, the importance of realising international law via case law, as a human rights norm, bypassing parliament. Obiter. Because even passing comments are a betrayal of intentions perhaps more subversive.

Nicholas Hughes

Nicholas Hughes (1962 – 2009)

The spaces echo empty

Vast black, an eclipse

Of all memory of light

Of solid form.

Nothing lives. Nothing dies.

No conflict or oxygen

Nourish the blood pulse.

It is the longed-for oblivion

Desperate and craved

Annihilation.

A million splintered filaments

Hurled by one’s own hand

So the hand, too – crumbles

Melts and vanishes

Without a history.

Though the void cannot hear

A static radio call

A sister’s eulogy

A husband’s poetry

Splinters are left for the living

Shards of the bomb in their hearts

Inoperable. Holes and spaces

Sewn closed. Locked.

Oblivion.

...

One of my favourite songs is Bob Dylan's 'Tangled up in Blue.' In an interview, Dylan said he aimed to portray a tangled relationship from multiple points of view. He does so well - very well. It's Dylan lyrics at their best, and I'm a writer at heart, so I can't go past some well woven lines.

"From what I've tasted of desire...I hold with those who favour fire."

I suppose this poem has a similar aim: to examine both sides of suicide. The desperate, single-minded intent of the perpetrator, and the living left to shoulder the blame, account for the mess, seek to understand. And sometimes I think there is nothing to understand. As the Holocaust survivor said in The Reader: "If you want catharsis, go to the theatre. Nothing comes out of the camps."

Or the very famous line by Jewish poet after WWII: "No poetry after Auschwitz." As if to say, here lies humanity at its darkest. Its most irrational. Its twisted and broken ends. There is no meaning here. Just consequence. Action taken to see what would happen. To watch the world burn.

...

Fire and Ice

I can't sleep tonight. More accurately, I have a few crazy deadlines to meet, and I haven't tried, nor have I worked to meet them. Structure and discipline, the very skills I'm advocating in my latest project, are eluding me completely.

So I listened to Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', wrote a little, sipped my oolong tea (not so sexy as martinis, but if I'd had those, I'd be asleep by now!), mused some, found some dark Lindt chocolate. Life is good. "Simple pleasures", said an ex-CEO and current public interest champion I met last week. "This is what I enjoy now."

This is one of my favourite poems. Robert Frost's 'Fire and Ice.' Hope you like it.

Fire and Ice.

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire

But if we had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is just as great
And would suffice.

...

goodnight. off to write. or try...again.

Who said committees were a waste of time?

...after all, following three pages of careful point-form, underlined notes on booking group meeting rooms and the slick new website, my very first work meeting gave me musing time to write these two poems.

Leaving at Morning (or) Cycling.

Headlong down the Gulf
Last port before Papua
(Cannibal tribes reign still -
From village to city.)

We pick up speed as the road
Winds down
Drops sheer cliff to sea
Steady wild, as it sweeps in

Ragged as our breath, the wind
Meeting
In the breaking dawn.

You & I
Under the sun.
By the sea.

(4/3/2009)

Himeji Castle - Execution

Suicide alley
Was an honour
Wandering ronin - warriors without a cause
Or a master
Left this world
By their own sword
Their own will.

A single stone stair leads down
The only way out is up and back
Dead end alley
Black bark trees
Etch skeletal
Against a sky, cloud grey

From the fortress, the city vista
Spread far as the eye can gaze
Men dreamed of this horizon
Of conquest and map lines
Of wars, wars, wars

Himeji on the hill
Rules cold.

(4/3/2009)

(c) Wenee Yap

Shoveling Cultural Snow (Pt 2, The Japan Suite)

Hikari 425, 18.40 (Shinagawa to Kyoto)

20.01.2009.

To tie down these kite-flown thoughts
Into well-formed expression.
A single string, buffeted by wind -

Rushing from here - to there
With an essential Japanese efficiency
Slipping by the sleeping towns and warehouses
Bullet-speed - so swift it's as if
We are still.

Walking the streets feels like this.
Noise - hopeful bargains, sex hecklers, vending conveniences
Reach for your brief attention
Late stage capitalism -
Shoveling cultural snow.
'Nani?!'
Really. (Really really.)

Sex as a business expense.
Lovers in Japan
Are full volume or mute.

Pain in Japan
Must be screamed aloud
ah - hysteria. Or
Left to simmer
A low pilot light burn
Awaiting the trigger
Innocuous - as gas filling your Ikea apartment
Of all those things you kept buying to persuade yourself
To keep living.

Flick. Boom.
Nani?
Really.

...

Hikari 366 Kyoto to Tokyo (In Praise of Shadows.)

24.01.2009

Clear blue cold day.
Fuji-san to the left; low stormy seas on the right
Sleep like a soothing balm
By the growl and hum
Imitation of...

Tao - the many named, and nameless
We doze our last before Shinagawa
The train shoots through - Tokyo Station
Where the municipal salarymen go
Flow to the East
We, of the West
Come for nothing.
To laze under a sky of nothing
Deep sunk well where only an oval
Blue snow cloud shows

"We will soon be arriving at Shin-Yokohama
In 4 minutes."
In minutes leaping distances
By foot - days

Roll on. Doze.
Dream of shadows.

...

Paper Chaser (Fukuoka - Beppu, Arr. 23.39)

Looking to live in my own skin
Pen spinning Paper Chaser
Left to the devices
Of the world's whims

14.05. INT. CANAL CITY.
I'm watching from 1F
A handsome juggler
Yoyo thrower, men's joker
Rhythm flow to the to/fro
Gypsy accordian song
Chords plyed
By a classic kawaii girl
Love, is who they are
And radiate.

They play anarchy - with ease
Their practised chaos
Is really a departo store joke
to delight the Japanese children (Fukuoka size!)
We're laughing along, us camera-hanging gaijin

Together, they love as love is and should be
Mr Juggler & Ms Accordion.

Mia, from the Shire ('but don't hold it against me')
Turns between photographic capture
And grins:
"Everyone in Japan is dating!"

Nani?
So des ne!

I found it.
What I longed for -
Paper chaser's dreams
(It was on the Sonic 57 to Beppu
All along.)

I'm ready. Alive and entirely
Here and now.
Singing
(I dig it.)

----

Before/After

----

White Lillies (Hotel Costes)

4.2.2009

White lillies
Views of the city
Summer in Sydney: $200
Breakfast (American) for two

Wine, well aged, cooling by the mini-bar

Skyscraper lights leading the way
To the Bridge, to the glimmer Pacific
Wilkommen.
Konbanwa.
This is our city in Summer
Say the street banners on George

Most definitely.

Home is this hotel room.
Home is the space left quiet
Between 2am conversation
Between your hunger and my
Back pressed against these anonymous white walls

Say nothing.
We are East. The sun peaks to glitter the CBD glass
Law firms, banks, Ernst and Young auditors
Aflame by the dawn.

Shimmer on the ranging glass
City, and Hyde Park, the Domain
Sunday morning.

...

Shinagawa 304

9.2.2009

Let it come as it goes
Fall in with the flow
Be, wherever you are
'Now, life is living you.'

... (That line was on a poster outside Higa...something temple on Karusuma-dori, Kyoto's main street.)

...

Isn't it good.

You.
Always trying to undress me.
My beautiful clothes

'Leave them on, then.'
Sure.
And as I do, I sing
'Isn't it good
Norwegian wood.'

And you say - again.
Again.

...

Neo-Tokyo: Year 21. (The Japan Suite.)

So I'm fresh off a flight from Narita Airport, where the ground staff wave you goodbye with glowing airport signal sticks and the temperature flatlined at five degrees for a week or so. It was a culture rush. Where to start? Well, me and my boyfriend and a friend I met in the first week of high school, now over ten years ago, headed north for to flee the bushfire/flood of another Aussie summer and celebrate the end of undergraduate uni forever.

Along the way, we found a Netherlands trust fund traveller/philosophy student/writer who doesn't write/player of the Neil Strauss Game and self-proclaimed Napoleon reincarnate. We missed the last bullet train home to Kyoto after a tipsy karaoke session with my boyfriend's unbelievably hip Jap cousins in Shibuya (yes, Lauren, I did the Bill Murray cover of 'More than this' in honour of Lost in Translation), and accidentally stayed in Hotel Zero, in Shibuya's infamous Dogenzaka, or Love Hotel Hill. The windowless room with plastic wrapped mattresses came with free condoms, NHK news and both european and japanese porn. Plus a seductive box of Japanese chocolate wafers and every kind of luxury skin cream imaginable.

While bathing naked as fashion and Japanese tradition dictates, in Japan's most locally famous onsen (hot springs warmed by the lava of volcanoes) in Beppu, my boyfriend was awoken from his blissful onsen sleep by the splashing of a very fat man. After which I ordered 5 for 300 yen somethings from a vending machine...somethings turned out to be eggs hard boiled in said lava heated onsen water. Haha!

We hung out at Harajuku's Takeshita St and Ura-Hara every weekend and every spare day, and are now far too cool to function. Seriously. Haha. A black guy heckling for an out-of-the-way Harajuku back alley fashion store tried to persuade me from my beeline path to pasta lunch, and I nearly punched him. Don't get between me and a meal.

We watched Nagano snow monkeys bathe in onsen north of Tokyo, and a little baby one, tapped on the shoulder by me, turned and shook my finger out of a very Japanese politeness. Although another one attacked my friend. You know how it is.

I bought a second hand bicycle in Kyoto and cycled around like a local for three weeks. You know, that local you see everywhere, with panda ears who keeps falling off her bike? Yep, that's me.

I watched the sun rise through the concrete alleys and valleys, artificial mountains and skyscrapers of Tokyo on the Yamanote Line. My boyfriend was told he was a Japanese Olympic Swimmer lookalike who, during the month we were there, kept advertising Quarter Pounders (tagline: Big Mouth! No Limit! Quarter Pounder!) We flew by Fuji-san on the Shinkansen at 259km/h (and that was the SLOW train...the other Nozomi bullet trains zoom through the country at 500km/h)

My friend did a 12 hour marathon date with her kinda boyfriend. We met another Aussie soul struck with wanderlust, with absolutely no homesickness for her home country (she's from the Shire, so really, it's quite understandable), with whom I wandered Fukuoka for four hours, blissfully lost, eating Ramen at Ramen Stadium in Canal City, watching a Jap Amelie-lookalike play the accordion as her boyfriend juggled for unbearably cute kids. We talked about love and life and other things. Ceiling Wax. Cabbages and Kings!

It was that kind of trip. Life is beautiful, as it always was, as you always knew. But it helps when you find an MIT student hired to design a world-leading eco-green city in the suburbs of Tokyo filled with the same awe, to share the culture rush over an egg and coffee breakfast on a quiet Kyoto street. Cheers Chris! Hope you read In Praise of Shadows. Here's to the nothing-like-Shibuya-green-city that only a generation raised in the smoke of overcrowding, Blade Runner dystopias and SUV supremacy could imagine. And thanks for voting in Obama.

"I think it's great that a country where once the slave class of black men worked under a crippling racial divide now, after the Civil Rights Movement, can elect a leader from that class to change the nation. This is what I think people mean when they speak of the dream that is America. We are an idea. An idea that opportunity is for anyone - hispanic, black, asian, white." Well, Chris from MIT, I agree. Who could deny it?

Of course, I have a few poems to light the way of tall tales so good, they could only be true. Here's Number 1. I wrote it on the second or third night after landing in Tokyo. The title is from a billboard we kept seeing everywhere (we got very lost, as we thought it was feasible to walk three suburbs to Shinkjuku from Ikebukuro, the sex/dinner/shopping district where we stayed) - a handsome Japanese soccer star's face underlined by the words: Human x Beauty (Take Action!). No other explanation. It's a call to action, honey!

Human x Beauty (Take Action!)

Ricochet pachinko
Let it go, glow
Living in the Seibu side of Ikebukuro
Where Tobu pleasures sell their wares to the Seibu West
Let it flow and fall into an
Unquestionable logic.

Chaos underscores Order, and order - chaos
It is a happy marriage. Mutually beneficial, contractually binding
Quid pro quo.
Flip it over and re-use
Break it at the bend, renew
"Happiness" (you see)
"Spurs the world's turning"
On an ever replenished wheel
Oscillating wildly
Beyond evil/good. Useful/used.
It all is as it is. And ever was.
And will be.

This is the philosophy of
"Kinda Buddhism", practised by Yu-kun
Tokyoite to a tee, who studied at university
Because of Bruce Willis in a blockbuster Hollywood
Armaggedon, the movie
Astrophysics, the Masters Degree.
Citibank graduate by March

He loves this city. I love it too.
This world, its whacky cool
Accustomed to its contradictions
Fashions and ideas flow with the seasons
Rather than reason.

In the air, an ineffable urge
A spark, a dark well un-filled
To go - anywhere
'Takodanobaba, Gotanda, Shibuya, Ginza
Haha, Hakata'

We're half-cracked blooms
Cherry blooms - sakura
Dying at their height of life and drifting
Boom. Eh? Kapow!
'I need something to do now.'

We'll head to be Beppu, in a week or two
"Nani? Bepp-oooo? You know?"
Yu-kun knows, impressed.
"You are very energetic, you know.
Good for a writer."

Domo arigato.
Curious too. Another essential.
I want - the beginning, the end, the middle
In that order. I can wait.
Take a day, take a lifetime.

Time ticks down its hours
The world turns
Salarymen file home on the 6am commuter
Necking a callgirl on the stairs to the street
Dawn is grey, daybreak calls
Other night-watchers
Gaijin honing in on the Pig and Whistle
Lovers 'nesting' (vigorously) and by the hour
Pachinko slot addicts blinking in the first sun rays
Sex show hecklers in full body black coats
"Are they Yakuza?" asks my friend.
"Will they steal us into sexual servitude?"
"Do they live in rich Shibuya?"
Hai, hai. (Yes, yes, sure.)

4.01AM.
I have a point to prove.
Though words, as always, will not do.
Do not do.
By the shadows as they slip between the cracks
Of the steel frame wire-net window
Frosted by midwinter snow
I can feel its pulse. The grappling logic.

Of whacky-mad order.
Turning over worlds
Re-use, renew.

Goodnight, and thank you.

(c) Wenee Yap, 14/01/2009.

The Next Crazy Venture...

Writing is best done when you're supposed to be doing other things. (Haha, in this case, writing, of the paid kind.)

Happy 2009, everyone!

The Next Crazy Venture

I craved an uncomplicated life.

Problem-free

Though, of course, the problems wound their way back to me

As I suppose

There’s no show without

A conflict

To be expected – silly, really

Resolution is for the rested dead.

So we deal, we play

We place our wagers

Here a five, and there, our life

Clenched by a tight wire thread

Strung between the Twin Towers – NYC, 1974

Walking as the wind

Dances, and we dance, we do

We lie suspended in the sky

We laugh at the ease of it

We sing; we wait to deliver

The wisdom of an age.

The punchline finale:

‘All the world’s a stage’

‘Reach, though your reach may yet exceed

Your grasp. Or else what’s Heaven for?’

Know this. Life is one, and life

Is not meant to be survived.

Announced to wild applause

Real and recorded.

Your quality – one to be remembered

Then forgotten.

Peace. Cease to seek it.

Be.

Whatever. Hand me the deck.

Deal over.

© Wenee Yap.