crackle

the bedroom poet, part two.

So, I did another video. I performed this at No Black Tie last Sunday night, and after the first few lines someone's phone rang a Harry Potter ringtone and I got so distracted I said "Oh. Harry Potter. Thank you for the background music" or something like that and I had to start over. This one's not as long as the first video though.

spokenword: missing persons poster from Li on Vimeo.

I wrote this in the workshop that the British Council sent me to Singapore for, with UK poet Charlie Dark, but I couldn't finish it up in time for the Singapore Writers Festival performance the next day (but I did perform No Questions Asked). This was an exercise in description.

The first stanza to be born was this:

his feet are filled with paths
practical persistent purpose
never once portraying
how much they crave
pillows.

and then I worked my way above and below it.

ixnay on the atherfay

I'm sorry if you followed a link here, or still check this place once in awhile. But to save you the trouble, this place has been compromised. I'm cutting down. Thank you everyone who's kept a secret for me. Everyday I'm blown away that you still bother.

PS: tumble.

fitnaschism

I've been asked a few times what my opinion is on the Fitna movie fiasco. Well, as Raed Al-Saeed says, it's easy to take pictures and verses of people, and use it to suggest something about anything. He went on to do it himself, in a reply movie called Schism, which is formatted and styled almost similarly to Fitna. There is no win situation.

People screw up as people, not as Muslims or Christians or Rastafarians. If I don't like a blog, I won't blame boycott bitch and butcher the Internet. How much hate do you need to have to be that irrational?

babyblackjack & the sixth of april

So after what feels like ages, I finally have my laptop back. And I'm 21.

farewell

the green room

burned

clarke, minghella. who forgets 2001: space odyssey after watching it? and I remember the intense experience of watching the english patient in the cinema when I was a child, and being thrilled with the movie adaptation of the talented mr. ripley.

hope the aliens find you in space, clarke.
thank you, minghella, for enabling me to discover the joys of movies that don't do all the thinking for me.

QotD: The Roof is on Fire

What one object/thing would you take if your house were on fire?

I would try and haul my entire bookshelf out the window.

Or just throw out armfuls of books.

My cats can save themselves.

My family will be busy saving the one object/thing they could take if the house was on fire.

I would just save my library. My years of book hunting and gifts.
Or risk nightmares of flames feeding on all those pages' sighs, how those words that had always meant so much to me disappear letter by letter, turn away from me turn black, how they droop and curl into nothing.

foreign ocean bathtub

http://foreignocean.blogspot.com

I am at it again.

ambassador of N republic

I don't know how I got this lucky, but I am part of the Nokia's Soul Of The Night project. Since December, I have been defining the city at night on my own terms, and after all that is done, the phone remains my own. I'm the youngest of the six invited and I may not get to to go out often or dine out at swanky places like they do, but I'm still proud of the little collection I've put together so far.

I felt a little awkward with it at first because I'm not used to chunky, yet more delicate phones. But it's really grown on me. The camera is convenient. Its flash & pixel count is convenient. The font is convenient and the wireless access is addictive. I am not getting paid for this, I just get the privilege of having this phone grow on me, and it has.

The N82 TV ad didn't have to grow on me when it came out this month though, I loved it instantly:

That car in the beginning is moving backward!

disappearing?

not quite. look closer.

for a boy I never met.

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business outside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue between the teeth
is still able to praise.

- Rilke

for recently deceased & mistreated Mikhail Hyder, 08/11/1986 - 07/02/2008. Spread the sympathy if not the story.