Typical workday at 25A

I open my eyes. It’s already light outside, but the blinds do a pretty good job of keeping our room dark enough for sleep. My back begins its usual waking-up complaints, but they barely register anymore and are usually taken care of by a few glorious twisting stretches. I slide the blanket off my body, take a deep breath, close my eyes for a moment, and, resisting the mighty “just a few more minutes” urge, get up and out of my single bed.

I walk out the bedroom door, through our small, narrow kitchen, past the dining table, and on to my desk at the far end of the office area. I either make myself a cup of coffee or have our office assistant (I’m not sure what her actual job title is, but she takes care of all the ancillary household and office chores) do it, if she happens to already be in the kitchen anyway. I open a notebook and write for about forty-five minutes to nearly an hour, filling up my six allotted morning pages.

By the end of the session, I’ll usually be feeling more than a little guilty about not checking on and catching up with work yet, but I’ll still hold out for around thirty minutes of checking my own personal news feeds and other online sources, letting the caffeine circulate and wake me up fully. (Here’s a part of my daily routine that could use tightening.)

The office and our entire unit in general is a very quiet place, which is just how we like it. All day long it’s just the low hum of the airconditioning, people typing and clicking, and, sometimes but more often lately, work-related conversation. The television in the living room slash guest room behind me is rarely turned on, even in the weekends, and I can’t even remember the last time anyone touched the Xbox! We don’t often have visitors, and when we do, they’re usually here just to crash on the couch, and are out touristing or taking care of business in the day.

In the afternoon after finishing a few pieces of work, I usually find myself in need of a short break to refresh myself for some more hours of work in the evening. So I’d take my Kindle out to the nearby kopitiam for some coffee (kopi o kosong - black, no sugar), toast, and sometimes two soft-boiled eggs and an hour or so of leisure reading. Most of the people there have little English, but being a regular (he says with a weird sort of pride), I’ve picked up their accents, they’ve probably picked up mine, and we understand each other well enough.

Then it’s back to my desk with (ideally) renewed energy to knock off some more to-do items and build or fix more parts of the Insync client. Productivity usually comes in bursts that sometimes (have to) continue on until late in the night. That’s one thing that’s awesome about working from home -- no need to worry about pesky things like it getting too late to commute back home easily. (Although I suspect it’d still be quite easy to get home here, even late at night, but I digress.)

The day ends whenever I run out of energy and find myself needing to get some sleep. Sometimes I take a second break and have tea or coffee (or occasionally a beer or two and peanuts or satay) at the kopitiam, unwinding a bit before going to bed. I close my eyes, and the cycle repeats in eight hours or so.

***

This has been my routine for the past few weeks, and as far as daily routines go, it’s not a bad one, although there is one glaring omission that’s been bugging me to no end: gym time. Perhaps a month or two previously, I would usually make sure to take about an hour and a half off in the afternoon to work out, either spending about an hour on the treadmill or elliptical while listening to a Pimsleur Japanese lesson, or doing a mixed dumbbell-machine routine with ChannelNews Asia in the background.

(Apart from exercise, I also intend to add an afternoon writing session for working on essays, blog entries like this one, among other creative-writerly items. Thirty minutes or so should be enough, if I prepare materials and draft ideas sufficiently beforehand.)

Just to even begin.

I find myself in a rare thoughtful mood, sparked by listening to St. Vincent on a cigarette break just now. Perhaps this is still an after-effect of last night’s long-overdue personal time; I’m beginning to feel as if I’m filling myself out properly again, bit by bit regaining comfort in being inside my own skin, in being in this situation and living this life.


“Marry Me” begins to play, and I’m suddenly walking down that familiar Cubao street, on the way to the MRT station from where the jeepney lets me off. I’ve nothing on my mind but a commuter’s quotidian worries and what to do with the rest of my evening upon getting home. My much-too-bulky bag that I stubbornly still haven’t gotten around to replacing bounces familiarly against my hip with every brisk stride. I briefly consider dropping by the 7-11 on the way home for a couple cans of beer, a pack of spicy cracker nuts, a bag of chips. Then the song ends and I’m at home. I shrug off my bag, take off and put away my shoes, head into the kitchen for the obligatory drink of water, go upstairs to my room and change.

Here the vision ends and I’m back in Singapore, sitting with my legs up on my chair, listening to the rest of the album and enjoying a slight buzz from the strong black coffee I bought from the nearby cafe on the way back from my break. Stretching my fingers and facility of description, trying not to let my disappointment get too much in the way. The important thing is to keep moving, keep practicing. In fact, just to even begin.

Touch

I

Your fingers might have sought
mine but they didn’t
quite make it, couldn’t bear
to traverse the distance between
barely knowing each other’s names
and knowing all too well the unease
of slipping through hair
without getting entangled.


II

Let things unfold, and don’t complain
too much. Be still and listen
to the breathing of this heart,
sitting next to this other one.
You say, enfold; do not contain.


III

I remember nothing
I haven’t already forgotten
at least in part:
Your hand taking my hand,
slipping away.

Posted via email from miscellaneous momeng

Unstable equilibria

Not for us the languid falling
into place of pieces
that have lain comfortably
in wait, no, not for us
the rolling down a gentle hill.

No, the pendulum will not slow
or stop for us, nor the wheel
lie quietly on its side.

No, the waves will not cease
grinding our beaches into sand
or washing away
our footprints, our castles.

But no, though the bridge will sway
and not stay still, and though
the drop beneath will only deepen,
not for us the torpid sinking
into the oblivious river.

No, our feet will stop
only for that nervous peak,
that brush of lips and fingers
before a gasp and a misstep
send us hurtling back
to once more start again.

Posted via email from momeng's posterous

On Haruki Murakami

Hello, let me tell you how I fell in love with the work of Haruki Murakami.

Well, you see, Haruki Murakami is this Japanese writer, translator,
erstwhile jazz bar owner, and long-distance runner. I could go on to
tell you that his novels have been translated into more than forty
languages, or that he was given the controversial 2009 Jerusalem Prize
on top of many other awards. But none of that would tell you why I
have become obsessed with his work.

It wouldn’t help you understand why I have never before or since felt
so keenly the desire to read everything someone else has written.

Inside Someone Else's Head

In most of his novels and stories Murakami puts us inside the head of
a pensive, solitary guy with a knack for peculiar observations,
strangely apt figures of speech, and attracting metaphysical trouble.
I first met him in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,
where he proceeded to win me over with a thorough, humorous
consideration of elevators, of all things.

Now, I like to think of myself as a pensive, solitary guy with a knack
for peculiar observations, so perhaps it was inevitable for me to form
a strong, even wishful, identification with this protagonist. This
willing immersion is helped immensely by Murakami's deft story-telling
and unmistakable ear for rhythm.

I am an introvert, and so spend a lot of time – some would say too
much time – inside my head. I have to tell you, it was a wonderful,
pleasant surprise to find out that I am just as comfortable nestled
inside this fictional head as I am inside mine!

Largely passive, this main character often finds himself listening to
the stories of other people, proving himself an intelligent,
sympathetic listener, seeming to naturally ask the right questions at
the right time. All that time spent listening to his own thoughts, I
suppose, must have attuned him to the rhythms of narrative and
thought, even those not his own.

Music and the Rhythm

Rhythm is just as important in writing and storytelling as it is in
music. I know, from unfortunate experience, how even the funniest joke
or most interesting anecdote can fall flat if told without regard for
properly timed delivery. This quality of being “in rhythm”, while
being difficult to describe, is unmistakable. And Murakami, an avowed
lover of music having run a jazz bar for some years, has unmistakably
got it.

Murakami’s language is deceptively simple, avoiding complicated
sentence structures and scholarly diction in favor of being frank and
straightforward. He works his pared-down language skillfully; the
ceaseless interior monologue of his protagonist feels natural and
uncontrived. Once meeting his main character had hooked me, getting me
to stay was no problem at all. I didn’t even want to leave.

Reading him is in fact like listening to a favorite record:
engrossing, familiar, rewarding. It matters little whether he is
describing the most mundane of activities or discussing loss – of
life, love, innocence, or any one of those essential things curled up
inside us.

Escape and Exploration

Murakami’s protagonists more often than not live lives that seem just
as pared-down and inevitable as his language.

They lead isolated existences, with barely any contact with or
attachment to society. Reserved and self-sufficient, they touch other
people’s lives only incidentally, or more relevantly, by accident.
They remain inside their own heads, either lost in contemplation or
fully absorbed in the current moment.

For an introvert like me, not much seems to be more satisfying than
living alone, cooking and doing housework for myself, spending my time
reading, downing the occasional beer, and, of course, thinking. It is
much too easy for me to fantasize about leaving everything behind and
living such a peaceful, carefree life.

However, everything is not always as it seems, and I eventually get a
nagging, gradually strengthening feeling that something isn’t quite
right. In the external narrative, strange events and people filter
through and widen the cracks. Then, I experience, along with the
protagonist, a certain internal current, an ominous movement in the
darkness.

And thus I come to recognize that, if I want to escape into Murakami’s
world, I must also be prepared to explore the mysterious darknesses
within myself. The characters I meet in Murakami’s world are troubled
souls, carrying burdens deep within themselves. Just like me and you.

Haruki Murakami and me, and you

As I near the end of this, my communication with you, I begin to feel
with greater intensity the desire to do right by Haruki Murakami. He
has, through his writing, managed to reach out and touch my mind, to
share a part of himself with me in a deep, significant way.

I can only hope that some small echo of my experience has come
through. As our brief acquaintance ends, I hope that you will listen
closely for a soft, resonant note sounding within yourself, and pay
attention.

In Murakami’s world, as perhaps in our own, the music that grows from
such tiny beginnings may very well transport us to places we never
thought we’d be.

Posted via email from momeng's posterous

Memory

The aquamarine- or turquoise-colored rock that,
as a child, you picked up and pocketed and kept
tucked away: no longer there. You can check;
your fingers will encounter nothing
except the nothing you don’t expect.

Not the nothing-special bit of brick you chipped
off the old broken-down wall back home, or
that accepted-offering shard of sea glass,
or even any of the indistinct pebbles that did
or did not sometimes wake sleeping windows.

Posted via email from momeng's posterous

Order

Remember that night on that beach when you leaned closer to me and
whispered, I can draw perfect circles (but only in the sand)
and then you stood to enclose my lying body in just a one?
I was delighted. I always took you at your word, remember?

Me, I was your other shaky hand. From what remains
of my memory, I can only draw a crooked but unbroken
series of accidents: a motel-room conception, an ugly-duckling adolescence
(but at least I was smart), meeting you in university,

growing up and apart and me powerless against the drift and the pull
into an endless succession of lovers and jobs, one after the other bringing me
inevitably here. Sometimes you would send me letters, remember,
in your meticulous handwriting all about your meticulous exploits

in your rarefied, ivory-tower air, and if you didn't know I loved every bit of it,
even though I was lucky to understand every other word. Many times I tried
to write you back, but the husband or the kids or the boss or the dog, well,
I was sure you didn't want to hear about it. So you never did.

But on this bright night with its perfect-circle moon, I'm in a looking-back mood.
I remember your coffee smell, and the slight trembling of your arms when
you would tell me about the latest tiny bit of order you've found and brought
into the world.

Posted via email from momeng's posterous