of fish and flight
by Rishik Vijayadas Menon
dear i fear
you know you love fishing too much
and while ive tried in vain to fall for the
cast of line and bait, in luckless faith
that nylon threads would draw us closer together
it seemed i proved too unromantic a
reeler to spin the odds to my favour.
alas I still have my tact, and tackle box
packed (not to mean intact)
I was able to take flight
off the jetty the next morning
mourning another wasted night,
trying and failing to get you to notice me.
being sensitive, and careful, noticing you
the most minute of oncoming sneeze
offering you tissue,
buying you lemon barley
rigging your lines
oh you have no idea
i would do your dishes!
...if only you gave me the chance
but like hook and master,
in spite of all our efforts
we simply could not connect to our
catch. so i thank god for small favours instead
that I did not have to open my box of
dettol plasters for one
and I suppose I remain in your regard
as that sub-species of men found in
the less favourable rungs of the evolutionary tree
more commonly known as "The Friend"
Ive not always been this impotent
though ive been known to let laundry soak
in the rain while I myself drift into
seas of luxurious afternoon sleep
in fact, I even had the audacity
to entertain notions of myself
wielding a competitive advantage
owing to my years of experience
of flying kites at the field
you see, dear, theres so much in common
with fishing and flying kites
you tie hope to the end of a string,
and throw it out into a sea of chance
and well wishes
with only instinct left to guide you
on how much to pull and let go
but the differences
'tween the two now dawn on me
as im waiting for the first bus
home to pasir ris without you
The type of prizes I sought after
while flying were momentary
snapshots of colour in the sky
while sun and wind dried my
heart into patient comprehension
of the beauty of solitude
Your game was tangible
and that was the crux of the matter
My art could not satisfy
your appetite for something real
if not always alive.
as vibrant as it might have been
that lack of direction or purpose
spelled the end of
what-just-might-have-been "us".
without anything definite to look forward to
I flew as long as the wind would let me.
*** random thougths @
1:39 PM
Friday, November 13, 2009
No comment. (or does this become a paradox?)
Why ask rhetorical questions?
I never use extremes!
Us lone wolves need to stick together.
The following sentence is true. The previous sentence is false.
The following sentence is false. The previous sentence is false.
Homophobia is gay.
Austerity at any cost!
*** random thougths @
3:22 PM
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Im only 20 year old people. But im gonna make myself a promise.
I am going to stay educated!
Seeing as how I've run out of 'witty', and 'clever', and Mensa Singapore has kicked me out for not paying yearly subscription fees, its pretty much the best I can hope for. In the long run.
Its not a bad deal actually. all it takes is a little effort everyday to...
read
write
converse with people
listen to music
watch movies
try something new!
kay so its not exactly being educated. but something in between educated and cultured. you get the drift.
Janadas Devan has got it right. the guy is awesome. he doesnt show off a whole lot. but when he writes this quality about him shines through. his education. his cultured mature mind. he doesnt use academic lingo to build a barrier beyond the common man to show that he's better. He does it in the most simple of ways. engaging. shining light on new perspectives. introducing new ideas in moderate doses. serving bite sized portions of history, fact and anecdote. never extreme. but clearly passionate and confident about where he is heading or leaning towards.
how do you reach that stage in life? that ability to write so comfortably without falling into old traps doors of a particular niche' audience and crowd.
im thinking experience has to do with it. and a very conscious effort to stay relevant. to stay educated.
Let me contrast that to sXe Phil (Philip de Franco). I watch the guy's show on youtube and there are brilliant moments on quite a regular basis. Not easy considering its virtually a daily show. and i think to myself.
Its certainly possible. If you dedicate that much of yourself online everyday, your bound to come up with enough material to talk about. but dont you wanna move beyond talking about it? beyond mere commentating and reflection.
I guess the internet is full of that. witty comments. insightful and sharp reflections on society.
But blogs (or Vlogs) will never replace mainstream media or the news in particular. because there is no sustained focus online. topics fly and trends die in a blink of an eye.
and while communities might form, like the vlog brothers (the Nerd Fighters) or certain forum communities (even on Yahoo! Answers) these communities tend to be immersed neck deep in their own lingo and inner references and jokes. not exclusive. but private.
and while you can build a reputation for yourself online, also with experience, its simply not sustainable. people will forget you. you can pour your heart into issues over time, and become something of a credible force. but are people ever gonna say, "they wanna be like you"? cause its not gonna last forever. your only popular online for 10 minutes. and then they have their own lives to get back to. well at least for me anyway.
I wanna be popular WHILE im online. and then I wanna return to the normal world, and do normal things.
I guess what Im saying is, I think sXe Phil is a talent. who deserves to get out of youtube and do something bigger for society. cause he really is quite a smart-ass. and i mean that in the best sense. but he strikes me as a talent who is being wasted for an online audience who will forget him when his time is done.
and the other thing im saying is.. you dont get educated on the internet.
you get informed. you get striked with news your allowed to take in, and then you get to comment or blog about it.
you get access to google and wikipedia and dictionary.com and with a few clicks your capable of making obscure witty references and riding on trends and memes only comprehendable to a small few group of online peers.
but because its so easy to get that information, your so unlikely to remember it in the long term.
and when push comes to shove, your at a black tie cocktail party trying to make conversation, your ideas of things to talk about run dry and theres no google or wikipedia to pull you out of that hole.
so yes. I may belong to this wired generation.
but i still believe in education.
god forbid I don't let myself decay.
*** random thougths @
12:51 PM
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Sweet
Lime
Sugarcaneyour the first girl
that made me wait
a day i missed
just spent on
counting minutes
to the last parade
and white collared train
trying hard to be different
but I feel the same
I cant resist
Ive got to
make you notice
Rose
Syrup
Carnation milkI cant go on
while im feeling jilted
But you still insist
that "boy
I wish you made it
for the wine high banter
but it wasnt filled
cause i missed your laughter
could not sit still"
I fall in disarray
how could i not have known this?
--
more random thoughts and quotes.
Age: Its just a number... that signifies the number of years in your life.
I wanted to dedicate this post to The People of The World with Low Self Esteem.
But after thinking for a while, I realised they didnt deserve it.
"its okay to not have a dream. kids in africa dont.." (WTF!!)
"if you can run for 5km, you can run..forever!"
*** random thougths @
12:01 AM
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
so as i recently discovered im actually quite a Pink fan.
"Funhouse" and "Please dont Leave Me" being the two turning points.
As if that discovery wasnt battering enough for my already fragile male ego, it turns out im also quite the unwitting jesse mccartney fan.
catching me off guard with "how do you sleep" and "leavin" (both of which I had no idea he sang), I recently went to great lengths to discover that the tune I have been humming the entire weekend was "body language" by, lo and behold, Jesse Mccartney!
sigh. or maybe its not sucha ego bruising after all. i mean. maybe jesse mccartney IS cool.. i mean he must be right? all the cool radio stations are playing him. haha. sigh. no, rishik. i guess faking enthusiam is just not within you.
its really not easy to track down songs stuck in your head by the way. driving alone at night listening to the two 98s of local radio, where one rnb track merges and melds into the next, certain hooks just have a way of ingraining themselves into your head. whether its a collective effort (as in the case of loosening the bottle cap) or not is beyond me. the quest to find out the lyrics of the sounds stuck in my head is challenging as it is. to discover the author of those sounds, and the name of the song truly is an achievement.
i mean really. try googling "konichiwa" and "lyrics" and see what you get. no joke. god knows how i managed to discover "Body Language" with just that one word.
BY THE WAY..
If anyone can help me with this other song i have stuck in my mind I will greatly appreciate it. This is how it sounds in my head. lord knows the actual lyrics but ive given up searching.
"im still on you. like my very first love.." yeah.. thats that.
not all songs are that hard to find though. take "empire state of mind" for one. surprisingly so, since you would expect loads of songs to have the phrase "in new york". but i guess the power of google is how its top searches also tend to be the more recent and thus current. and that definitely helps in a treasure hunt like the one I'm involved in.
Empire state of mind.. another great song by the way.. most of all, leaving me with this feeling of..
can we write something like that.. with that kinda feeling and emotion.. for singapore..
and i think the answer is yes. simply a matter of time.
but songs by themselves dont create patriotism. they reflect it. so what then creates patriotism? and what IS patriotism?
this feeling. that something is on the line. you have something to lose. this fear and sadness of losing on a collective level. (interesting how as im writing this out, its starting to sound like collective kiasuism.)
war creates this feeling. for sure. losing something on a collective level.
but no need to go to such extremes. cause sometimes competitions are enough.
i wont forget how pro-TJ lizzy became near the SYF band competition. that was school pride. she was out there to make a name for herself. by assoiation. as part of the collective. that was patriotism.
i think i felt it too last night at CHIJMES, watching the liverpool Man U match. there was patriotism around me. and the competition definitely fed it.
so is that what we need then? competition? is that why so many singaporeans are pushing for singapore to rejoin the Malaysia cup? cause its a cause for national pride. its a case when national pride was on the line. ironic, how one form of pride (which says we are too good to join the Malaysia Cup) is stopping another positive form of pride from being created.
which is why i think im gonna support the ABL. Im not a basketball fan. but for the first time, without any excuses, once again, national pride is on the line. and thats a good thing. this aint the olympics of the SEA games. this is a league. plain and simple. regular. and hopefully televised. with all the power, to breathe back some life and fight into a society with a suffocated sense of sporting pride and culture.
*** random thougths @
11:26 PM
Saturday, October 17, 2009
the great thing about the army, is how much material it feeds me for my writing.
how there is such prosperity of character and poetry over flowing, simply waiting to be harnessed.
for example, did you know the word "deepavali" was also metaphorically used to mean anything which is brightly lighted up.
"When driving overseas must be careful la. The roads there not as deepavali as singapore"
OR
"What the fuck! You never 'tactical' your torchlight?! you think this is deepavali is it?"
Happy Deepavali Singapore.
And may our street lights always overpower the stars of our city sky, in all its resplendent glory.
*** random thougths @
3:26 PM
