Contemplating Life?

Another gem of truth from 24, “You are such a sucker.” – In reference to my weakness for honeyed words, double entendres, rich prose and other forms of linguistic ingenuity. I guess I am a sucker for people who are able to push those buttons. And the books that do it for me.

I had drinks last night with one half of the holy twin terrors that I used to teach in 2003. Tz is now 18 and studying in an English boarding school with her twin. They have been in so much trouble it’s a wonder how they are still in school. Both are incredibly intelligent Literature prodigies and very good company. Tz was encouraging me to get a new job. She told me that Singapore is too small for my own good. Sometimes I wish I could give in to wanderlust and unbridled free-spiritedness. She’s taking a gap year to travel and work in various countries. Her parents love her a hell lot. Am I really mellowing with age? Maybe I am getting stagnant in my job. Like the water you see in those damn dengue fever commercials. My bond ends next May so we’ll see what happens. I can’t believe an 18 year old is giving me advice. Very sound advice though. Strange how it wasn’t all that long ago when I was telling that class to throw caution to the wind and all that carpe diem nonsense.

The sweetest thing that Tz told me last night was that she remembers all the poetry I had taught her – The Green Beret / Ho Thien, Mountain Lion / D.H. Lawrence and how I forced them to compare the two versions of Daffodils by Wordsworth. She said that even though she’s doing A level English now and will probably go on to read English at university, she still remembers the stuff we did in Sec 2 and how everything made sense back then. And I thought no one was listening when I was screaming the poems out loud.

Some things about Tz and me are uncanny. Like how she wants to die by the time she is 30. I remember saying the exact same thing when I was 18, probably under the influence. (I very sagely told her that I am pushing 40 and the Grim Reaper overlooked me when I was 30.) How we both agree that our essay writing skills are brilliant when intoxicated / inebriated. How we dislike Atwood and adore Plath. Who cares if some think that Plath is trite? It was a good night.

I’ve been taking a long time reading The English Patient. (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was my brainless Michigan read *blush*) It is the languid pace of the novel and the sensuous description of the desert that make it so delicious. I think the last time I felt this way about a book was Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.

He later said it was propinquity. Propinquity in the desert. It does that here, he said. He loved the word – the propinquity of water, the propinquity of two or three bodies in a car driving the Sand Sea for six hours. Her sweating knee beside the gearbox of the truck, the knee swerving, rising with the bumps. In the desert you have time to look everywhere, to theorize on the choreography of all things around you.


- The English Patient / Michael Ondaatje

Lovely. I am a sucker indeed.