Saturday, March 19, 2005
Soulful Strut
In the past few months I have noticed more chinese men around. Chinese men meaning men from China. On the mrt a few months ago, there was a tired chinese man sitting in front of me, probably a construction worker or a very measly-paid admin worker. Anyway he was asleep and he looked like what most of them look like. He had very dark tan skin with sort of a glow, rather sharp nose, lips that are smooth and brown, thick black eyebrows, hair that they obviously don't make an effort at, yet it looks either black messy and nice or brown and wispy like a baby's, really brown eyes that are usually only noticeable under strong sun, and the nicest feature which is very straight brown long eyelashes. how very intriguing. he was obviously poor, with tattered black shoes and an old belt and old-looking dull-coloured clothes and an old cloth bag. And then I watched the movie 'A moment to remember', where the korean carpenter was like that.
And the most amazing thing. I have been spying madly on the 2 chinese construction workers next door. My neighbours moved out a few months ago (lovely little neighbours with kids running around a lot making lots of noise. i liked that they screamed and shouted every afternoon) and the new people renovated rather than tearing down the house. and then one month ago i started observing the construction workers. only 2 of them, to the whole house! and their boss who is a white-haired slow loris who sits there and saw me looking over today (DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!). the 2 of them! one of them i noticed first, because once when i reached home they were leaving and he was on the back of the lorry and kepy staring at me which scared me greatly. then i observed them from my room all the time. from my window i can see right into the lower level of the house, and when they are working on the side of the house and the roof. the man i noticed first seems to be older. he always wears a green and white striped shirt tucked into khaki pants with a black belt! it sounds and looks rather nice! i wondered why and my father says that chinese construction workers always dress like that- a t-shirt tucked into pants with a black belt! he is older than the other, in his 30s i think, and handsome in a hardworking honest way. the other is more intriguing. he almost always wears a dark blue cap with an orange circle on it, a dirty khaki long-sleeved shirt, a little unbuttoned, jeans with a black belt and dirty black boots. he always wears his cap the back way around. once he was sawing something and the older man came along and gave him a cigarette and they smoked in silence in that dusty dirt-filled downstairs for a while before resuming work. it's easier to take photos of the younger man, i suppose, though i don't know why. he has a longer face, and that same dark tan, handsome in some way too. they work everyday, and sometimes the younger one wears a sleeveless white shirt. anyway i only see them eat once a day, very sadly. everyone in the estate should cook for them. it doesn't take too much to cook for 2 more people so they can have a good hearty free meal, since they earn between 25 and 40 a day only. i hope they don't eat till the very last grain of their styrofoam packed rice, or that would be very sad. one day they started going to the roof to do stuff. it was lovely. at first they were both on the roof, meaning they could look straight into my room, so i had to be careful of what i was doing. one of their handphones rang and they both squatted against a wall on the roof (the roof is like a platform hole between 2 triangular walls) and smoked as one of them answered the phone. after the older one left, the younger one was left alone on the roof, intriguingly silhouetted against the clouds, bending down to saw things or carry things. i think the older one knows i am spying, shitty. one morning i heard them argue about pay. i always wonder if they can see into my room and why they don't seem to be curious at all. i would be. i love it when they smoke. i hope they earn enough. i hope they are happy. my room looks straight into the neighbour's ex-toilet, and once i saw the older one walking around in the void of the toilet, transporting something, and it was like his head and a bit of his upper body moving around an empty space! once they were balancing outside the toilet meaning about 2.5 metres away from my window! they were faced away, spreading concrete on the wall. this is all amazing. they probably come from a province in china and sleep in a cramped and dirty place and eat very little a day for the labour they do and then they smoke so they spend more on smoking and i wonder if they have families and if they write back and whether the 2 of them are best friends, good friends (i really hope they are) and whether they are happy. never in my life did i feel that watching people BUILD a house is so amazing. using hammers and saws and nails and machines that create sparks, spreading out concrete so carefully and skillfully and creating the house, it's madly amazing, i could watch them all day. one day they will finish work and leave the house to pompous rich people and never see the house and their hard work ever again and the pompous rich people will never know or even care who built their house and i will never see them ever again. strangers are better than friends.
moled at 3/19/2005 05:56:00 AM
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Dear John, Paul, George and Ringo,
I have been working hard on my dramatic sequence, but not as hard as I can. For the past few months, it has been the main thought on my mind, and for the past week, it has been almost the only thought in my mind. Whether I'm peeing, eating, going to bed, sitting, breathing. I can't even concentrate as excellently as I used to on american idol, survivor, the amazing race, the apprentice and desperate housewives.
Dear John, Paul, George and Ringo, please help me, wherever you are. John and George, in heaven (I hope you did go to heaven, John, even after saying that the beatles are more popular than Jesus) and Paul and Ringo in your homes, trying to spike your hair or in bed with a one-legged wife, give all the silly hippy believers in the world some magic in their pathetic delusions.
It's very odd. When I sat in front of my computer last friday night, giving the script one last FINAL try, I was in a dazey hazey sleepy intense trance and I sort of pretended I was a hippy after the beatles 'died' and in a way I didn't quite need to pretend and I just typed while talking and acting to my computer and the monologue just came out then I dropped to sleep after praying (either to God or to a fiery-haired god in the solar system) and the next day I just wanted so bad to be able to do the sequence (it's irrational yet it's not!) and i was madly happy when I could and then it came back to that very, very tough stage again. I suppose, I'm happy! Sort of devoting everything in this week to the little summer of love. Tomorrow I am going to school and going to rehearse the monologue in the sequence all day, but I am always lazy to rehearse it because I somehow feel that if I just have the belief on the day itself it will be good, just as when I was typing it.
This is just all peculiar, insane and absurd! A group of 18-year-olds running a little theatre community and getting a group of 17-year olds to crew for us and instruct them and teach them and making them operate things or make things or be things in the 18-year-olds' little things which the 17-year-olds hardly feel for till maybe very much later and which only the original 18-year-old knows all about and feels for so madly it is ridiculously obsessive (probably applying to almost everyone) and just walk about the tsd area calmly when their minds and hearts are exploding, go to the canteen to buy food looking like any normal-thinking person when there are little explosions and seizures inside their cramped and tense bodies. And everyone seems so alone in a way in their obsessions that i feel obsessed with asking people how their little things are.
The costume room was like heaven today. Ling was inside doing her mask, which looked like she was giving someone a mud facial, and it was cosy orange and the lights were glowing and the air-con was just the right temperature, very cold, but cosily cold, and hidden between the studio and black box, with mirrors and just so immensely comforting. The garden table area is like a hangout for lizards lying still in the sun and the workshop is a chaotic mess of erratic behaviour. The costume was so much like heaven, I was feeling quite dizzy and I half-expected to turn and walk into a cloud and see Elvis Presley. I always think people see Elvis Presley when they go to heaven, but he walks away before they can talk to him.
All the moronic adults on public transport!!!!! I HATE their office wear!! tight skirts where you can see their tight little underwear and big buttocks, tight pants that outline the shape of their private parts (the woman in front of me on the escalator!), awful hair and makeup and even more awful and depressing faces, little shiny diamond rings in pathetic attempts to make their hands look nicer and ALWAYS, brown hair, or just a pathetic clump of white hair that they have done nothing about because they don't mind looking like sad and wasted human beings. Sometimes I feel almost sad taking out my ipod in front of them to choose a song to listen to because they might be people who can't afford one and see a much younger person who has one or because it's silly that i would be so happy listening to songs right in front of them who are sad and pathetic. it is the grotesque tension of so many people standing incredibly close to each other yet not saying anything to each other, trying not to look at each other, and certainly trying very hard not to touch each other. IT'S HORRIDLY UNNATURAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LEMONY LOLITA
moled at 3/15/2005 05:21:00 AM
