Saturday, January 14, 2006
Today I learnt how to ride a two-wheel bicycle!!!!!!!!!!!!! To me, this is, FINALLY!!!! I've waited so long for this!!!!!!!!!!!! I always knew I would love riding a bicycle. I just thought of what liping told me: 'don't think you're gonna fall...don't think you're gonna fall....' My cousins ran by me and shouted 'go! go! faster!' and we did go, for almost a km without all the adults, just us along some quite track. And then we had a sizzling dark barbeque. And a few hours ago I heard someone in some house outside playing the harmonica, a sad paced tune. Bob Dylan is intriguing me the way John Lennon did.
moled at 1/14/2006 07:09:00 AM
Friday, January 13, 2006
'Beyond The Sea' was originally 'La Mer' written by Charles Trenet and Leo Chauliac on a train ride, and is about how the sea has affected a man. It was popular in France in the late 40s and 50s maybe. The English version was written by Jack Lawrence and later sang by Bobby Darin, and has a love story in it. Here is the translation of the original 'La Mer':
The sea
which one sees dancing along the clear gulfs
to sparkles of silver.
The sea
Of changing sparkles
Under the rain.
The sea
Confuses the summer sky's sheep
With angels so pure.
The sea
Shepherdess of blue infinity.
Look!
Next to the ponds
Those tall wet reeds.
Look!
Those white birds
And those rusty houses
The Sea
Has rocked them like a baby
Along the clear gulfs.
The Sea
Has rocked my heart for life.
Both versions are special in their own way and are linked by the melody and the romance of the sea. This morning my sister sobbed because I wouldn't help her out of the gigantic evil-pink beanbag and sat laughing at her. Huge trees swaying in the wind on a sunstruck day in the suburbs always reminds me of Roald Dahl stories. I would like to live by the sea someday when almost everyone in my family is dead. And yesterday was a glorious sunny day, finally. I'm not sure yet but I hope Marvin the paranoid android did not die when the blackship crashed into the sun above Kakrafoon at the climax of the rock song.
moled at 1/13/2006 10:28:00 PM
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Did someone in a movie talk about watching people walk away till you can't see them? I can't remember now but it always happens to me. Not to people I know of course. To strangers that when I get on a train, I can't help but look at them till they get off and look at them till they walk away and disappear and it's the last time I'll probably ever see them again. And this probably sounds crazed but then I'll say bye to myself, but not some movie romantic whisper of a bye but a buzzing bye. What is a buzzing bye? I don't really know myself. And I always imagine that someone standing near who is listening to music too is listening to the same song as I am. Which would make it magically fated but since none of us know it the fate is gone. When you get on a train and look into someone else's (anyone's) eyes, it's sort of a hook. But don't look away first or you lose. See how long it is before the other person can't take it and looks away. Do not repeat with the same person (especially cranky old folks) or you start feeling psychotic. If looking exceeds 4 seconds, then the game has really begun. If you ever play a game (which I've never), and it ends (meaning someone looked away) after some time, try having a high-5 with the person and say 'good game, man' or 'you win!' or 'you're the toughest competition i've ever had. congratulations' I don't really know what I am getting at, but if you bravely try it and win then, whoopee. you have conquered the pathetic-strangers-standing-in-a-train-doing-nothing-in-particular-besides-breathing-only-because-they-need-to battle.
moled at 1/12/2006 06:32:00 AM
I watched A Knight's Tale today and ohhhhhh I just love it. It's fantastic and raw and aggressive. I love medieval times. All that icky hair and dirty clothes and no plumbing and shouting and roaring. Completely REAL!!!!!!!
And the next project sort of thing I am wanting to do is to become an expert in 60s and some 70s music. I've mainly listened to the beatles, the innocent sounding happy songs from random scattered places, some easy rider, some rock songs, some of the influential bob dylan and joan baez, though it's more than a hundred songs it's not much at all. But I keep flitting from one thing to another, it's from face painting to drumming to crosswords to documentary to this, though I am still at face painting and drumming. I can never really keep at a thing intensely. Sometimes I think I'm only into movies, travelling, music, 60s things and daydreaming, since it suits all of the above.
I was just thinking of some really funny things that happened before. One is in secondary school when desiree, lynn, amanda and I would go to the toilet together and shoot our nike water bottles, shooting the water on the floor and at other people, and lynn and I were super scared of this fat indian auntie who took care of the toilets we were using. She was always in some batik or colourful nighty looking thing and i think we called her hippo. We used the teacher's toilet when we were too lazy to queue and it was just terrifing because she could appear anytime and start booming or roaring so we would keep a lookout and once she was peeing and I was too or something like that and the auntie started coming so I hurried her, and then we ran away. Another time LiPing and I wanted to get the key to the music room to get some drums and we had to find uncle ah lim (yes! I just remembered his name!!!!!) and he was in the peacock garden watering something. So we asked him and he referred to it as Monika-toh eh-bang-geng (room in hokkien). (Monica Toh had, at that time, left the school for 3 years already. She was an old cranky music teacher with puffed up hair and body, a crazed look, red lipstick, blue eyeshadow and white stockings. She would make us sing 'Good morning, Miss Toh' and make one person in each class-me for my class-play 'bom cha cha, bom cha cha' very gently on a bass drum and somehow when I did it she exclaimed something in a high floaty voice and threw the drumstick and walked away shaking her butt. She was someone we all remembered. So anyway it was quite funny for uncle ah lim to call it her room since she left ages ago) The funny thing was, he was using his walkie talkie to call this other auntie somewhere else to help us. So he held his walkie talkie with his curly black/brown/gold/white afro sort of hair with the watering hose sort of on, and shouted into the walkie talkie and to some higher storey, calling for auntie Elizabeth to respond, 'LI-ZE-BIRD, LI-ZE-BIRD! LI-ZE-BIRD, LI-ZE-BIRD! LI-ZE-BIRD, LI-ZE-BIRD!' Think we almost died laughing. In jc lots of things were quite funny. But what comes to mind is when our group tried to teach shaun how to say 'aw-aw' in hokkien, in 'huh, my hair aw-aw then can get job ah?'. It just killed me. All the intonations. And sunil looking like a crazy pervert in the class photo and vivienne saying mrs liew looks like a stonefish in the serious one. And Esmonde's boils where I almost puked laughing.
Maybe at the end of time, or in a few centuries, I hope people will get sick of all this modernity and become more primitive again, going backwards into the 60s period and then further back to medieval times. The world would be much more fun that way. Instead of people on trains staring at the ground or pretending not to see each other.
moled at 1/12/2006 05:55:00 AM
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Wet Wet Wet
What a name. I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral today. I have fell into the movie's sort of purpose and want to get married but then I always wanted to. I'll have 7 bridesmaids, because it's a good number. I also watched About A Boy today, which makes me sound like a hugh grant obsessed person. I love the songs in it, and the boy's hair and clothes and his mother's clothes (yeti costume). Sometimes when I hear certain songs it brings me back to a certain period in the past when I was obsessed with the song. Beautiful Boy (John Lennon) and Sgt. Pepper's remind me of tsd a levels. Something to talk about reminds me of the horrid but not that horrid period after tsd a levels. Alone Again, Naturally reminds me of when I heard it and felt depressed for a week dammit. I was fooled by that silly old song. I sure listen to a lot of songs by men.
The rain is funny. It's been raining non-stop for 3 or 4 days now. It puts a damper on things but it throws you into a quiet, calm sort of mood. I could never get tired of rain. The bit in The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, after Zarniwoop sort of forces Zaphod and Trillian to meet the man who rules the universe, he is on an island with sandy banks, in a wooden hut, and it's raining so hard that there is mud and the shells around the hut are hidden. Anyway he turns out to be cranky and whimsical and makes a point about whether things really exist or not and talks to his cat and is lean with dirty golden hair and beard. And they abandon Zarniwoop on the island. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Is anyone out there? After reading 2 books in the series, I am believing it. I know I don't really believe it, but I also know that I do, and I don't and I actually do want to believe it, but know it's not real, but I really think it could be. Something like that.
After weeks, I'm finally landing myself in a spot where I know what I want to do and I think I might be able to get to do it. It's like finding a comfortable spot in a huge beanbag and hoping you'll be able to keep to it throughout the rest of this fantastic tv show you're watching. Using a stupid metaphor story, if our lives were tv shows, everyone would eventually find a few channels they really like, a few they hate and could puke at the sight of and others they try to ignore and skip right to the ones that they can settle down and eat chips and watch on a deep sofa right at home. Anyway, I completely believe that there is life out there in the universe and I hope that it is nothing dangerous but as crazy and absurd as the hitchhiker's series.
moled at 1/10/2006 06:37:00 AM
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Taking a bath on a rainy day is surprising and rejuvenating. Everything smells twice as good. I can smell the raspberry, grapeseed and milk and AIR better. Especially after a day where bad and crazy things happened. If those things didn't happen, maybe my bath wouldn't have been so good, I don't know. After my family's maid went quite hysterical, I escaped out of the house to give measley tuition and do crosswords for hours with the hen and her sister. It's The New York Times crosswords. Except we had to research for answers which is downright pathetic. And then I found out that an inevitable conflict that has been boiling with supressed tension for 18 years has come up and threatens to ruin things, which have been sort of ruined if you think about it. Bitterness, spite, fury, fears, tears, amusement and inaction float around the house. That said, I want to emphasize the little fresh greatness of a bath on a rainy day like this. And maybe one more on the cautious night that will soon follow a day like this.
**** ******** ***** ****
Many historians have asserted that the beatnik philosophy of anti-materialism, combined with its fundamental soul-searching ethos, may have influenced some of the lyrics of popular 1960's musical groups such as The Beatles, and was
the precursor of the Hippie generation.According to Ed Sanders the change in the public label from "beatnik" to "hippie" happened after the 1967 "Be-In" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (where Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure were leading the crowd in chanting "Om").
There were certainly some stylistic differences between "beatniks" and "hippies" — somber colors, dark shades, and goatees gave way to colorful "psychedelic" clothing and long hair. In addition to the stylistic changes, there were some
changes in substance:: the beats tended to be essentially apolitical, but the hippies became actively engaged with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.
moled at 1/08/2006 01:43:00 AM
