14/02/2017

In the morning, I went for my last long run before the half marathon, doing 21.1km in 1 hour 55 mins and then very slowly jogging for another kilometer, before stretching, showering, and passing Alex her Valentine's day card.

Valentine's day, and it couldn't be prettier. The world always looks more dazzling through my teary-weary post run eyes, as if it needed it today, with blue sky and only slight could wisps. I had dates (with almond butter and chocolate) in the morning to celebrate - my run, the day, the sky - and love in general. I have always loved this poem about love:

Understand, I’ll slip quietly

Away from the noisy crowd

When I see the pale

Stars rising, blooming over the oaks

I’ll pursue solitary pathways

Through the pale twilit meadows,

With only this one dream:

You come too.

(From “First Poems,” Rainer Maria Rilke)

When I had my practical criticism supervision later, we talked about poems, and journal entries, and blogs. Poetry is a mediated art piece, edited and word-painted with conscious decision. The journal is apparently more honest, but how can it be when the very act of choosing a word changes and performs (in the theatrical, intentional sense) a version of reality, or self? And I know all too well how I change words and choose what to write or not write in this space. The separation of my 'public' thoughts and 'private' thoughts into blog and journal was meant to be an exercise in authenticity (that hyped up millennial word) but I've come to realise that I approach my journal with an equal measure of perfectionism. I wrote on a page of my journal recently, in big, black, bleeds-through-the-paper sharpie 'HENCEFORTH THIS SPACE SHALL BE FREE THOUGHTS, NO WORRYING ABOUT IF IT LOOKS GOOD OR SOUNDS ELOQUENT' which had effect for a while but now I've once again wondered how far that in itself was an attempt to assert some sort of free spirited facet of my personality on paper and -

I could go in circles like this forever (and don't doubt I ruminate about it in a sort of continuous undercurrent of thought) but I'll stop, in a conscious decision not to belabor the point.

We also talked about Lynette Roberts in my supervision, who I am now desperate to read. She was a journal writer who revised her journals with intention to publish, but they never were (published). She also wrote poems and prose fiction, visited (and was admired by) T.S Eliot, lived through the war and had two children. After a series of breakdowns, her writing petered out, but Leo says that to read what she writes as she is slipping, and realising that she is somehow losing her mind, is painful. 

I'm now trying to learn the alto part for Lugebat David Absalom, but I keep getting distracted by the soprano line. I also realise that I've been distracted from the main point of this post, which was going to be about love. But it is past midnight now and love will have to wait, I suppose.

13/02/2017

This afternoon I sat in a ray of sunshine and felt anxiety creeping up on me as I looked at my half finished essay on chinoiserie and women (so much pleasure, so little time) and then at the clock, at the copious scribbles and notes on my left hand in my brown note book and then back at the clock and the word document.

Just before that I walked, granola-in-mug-in-hand, another essay in other hand (with pasted apology note for just one essay instead of two), in my pajamas to the plodge and deposited the latter. The former left a sillage of toasted coconut and caramelised maple syrup through the air and I thought of the founders of SPOONs Cereal, who just decided to start a granola company in their kitchen. (Also, granola can be made in a mug in the microwave - who knew? Life changing discoveries.)

I had a drawer of love letters to give out, the products of late nights listening to buzzing music and thinking of puns, and I brought them to Just Love and gave them to some of my favourite people in Cambridge, and then sat back, legs outstretched before me and thought how thankful I am for these people. Although I only see them once or twice a week, and I haven't had a proper conversation with every single one of them, I know that they are good, caring people and that part of their big love for the world has fallen on little old me.

I have some left, and an infinite number unpenned, mostly to all the people I love so much my heart aches back in Singapore. Family, Emily, Christy, Wei Xin, Ellis, Nat, Luk Ching, Claire, Prisca, Gloria, Agnes, Toby, James, Chris, Alicia, Rebecca(s),  Grace(s)... I thought of the imaginary glue bond Emily and I used to pretend existed to stick our sides together, and imagined what strength it was made of, for it exists still, over oceans. And then there is the love letters I pen in my head when I walk past a stranger who smiles, or when I see a child being a child, or when I witness random acts of gentleness and compassion. And what about all those love letters to God? So many unwritten, so many that should be written that I don't even know should be written.

After Just Love, I came back to dinner and college group which was on Psalm 27, which ends:

I remain confident of this:
    I will see the goodness of the Lord
    in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
    be strong and take heart
    and wait for the Lord.

Just last week, very quickly

Things I want to remember from this week:

- Finding out that Tim is going to be training with the National Team!

- Hearing Shane Taylor's life story (here's a recording of him telling his story in a different church), and his incredible transformation from one of the UK's most dangerous criminals to a gentle father of five children because he met Jesus Christ in prison and believed and was saved.

- Hearing Tim (Lornie)'s passionate poem:

Burning Flags

Flags.

Flags burning

Burning flags

Everyone’s burning something these days

Flags burning

Koran burning

Bridges burning

Muslim ban

Can you believe it?

Our precious countries, with their foolish borders

Lie in tatters

All of our proud ideologies have shattered

What we could have had

Get fed to the churning seas, the stomach lining of our hungry nationalities

You see

These dark mentalities

That build up walls, always walls

That make banalities of human beings

Clocking up pointless Mediterranean fatalities

But have just become reality;

Normality

Our mundane, reckless refugee reality.

Calories.

Calories burning

Burning calories.

But not many

Not any, some days

Maize

Would do, today

But it’s always the same

The boring same.

They’re learning young to tame the pangs

The fangs that bite

When need comes

When the need to feed comes

And mums watch their kids grow potbellies

And something in my gut cries “no”

“It’s not meant to be this way”

But so it is.

Things are not as they should be

could be

would be

If we loved.

Loving.

Even hoping seems fragile, sometimes

Coping is all we’ve got, sometimes

But loving

Loving costs

When you love you get burned.

Burning

Words burning

Burning words

Words that burn

Words that yearn

Not to be said, but which were said

Words that slipped and blurred

And words that grip and slur

And words that tip and turn

Us round and round in circles

What he said to me

What she said about me

What we said about them

What I said to him

What I said

Things I said

Things that bled from my lips

We’ve all said them

Shed them

in ugliness from our tongues,

We’re all caught up in these tangled webs

Our lungs are thick

With words, words, words all around

This cacophony of words that stick.

Burning

Anger burning

Things are not as they should be

Burning anger

Furious, tense, shouting, loud

Blazing

“What have you done with my world?”

Or…

Is it even anger, any more?

Maybe it’s just grief, as he sits and he weeps

And as he keeps

coming back to the world he has made

And he keeps

Coming back to the world he has made

And he keeps

Coming back

But still we’re the same

When will we change?

And he can’t hold back the tears

Not any more

For all the long and wearied years

That he has longed to see something that looks just a little bit like justice

“Must this violence go on?”

He cries

“Must you spin your webs with your words and lies

Thoughts that tie

You up in knots?

I’ve not come to judge

I’ve come to love

But we both know it’s true

When you love you get burned;

And when you pierce anger, it bleeds

Fire

Blazing fire

God is here.

Perfect, flickering flame

Cannot be tamed

Wildest love, cannot be tamed.

Burning love.

Passion

Burning passion

Passion burning

Churning him inside out

Compassion

The tearing of the soul

The bearing of the whole

weight of anguished love

the love that burns him

We’re beyond doctrines, here

Beyond dusty books and hymns, we

Are beyond flimsy

Arguments and back-and-forth

For

This is real, this is blazing fire,

Beyond words, words, words

Of words I’ve had enough!

But this man –

He could be love.

And he turns

And he burns

He burns

Fiercely in his eyes

and he says

“Come. Will you follow me?

Will you actually follow me?”

Where?

“Where? To the places I always go

Come, and let me show you,

The places I always go to”.

They’re the dark places

The places no one wants to be

The places no one wants to see

The people no one wants to be seen with

They will be your friends

Come and spend

Yourself, yourself

For the poor and oppressed

Come and use your voice for the voiceless

May the homeless know your address

And may it be theirs as well.

May hell itself

Flee your every word

For they are life and love and hope

And when you cannot cope

My child

With this broken world

I will be your strength.

Bring me every gun

And I will rip it

Every prison grate

Show me every wall that separates

Your walls of hate

And I will tear them down

I cannot bear your walls

Your walls I cannot bear

Bring me every spear and sword that humans have made

Every knife that tore, every arrow that maimed

Bring me wood for a fire and a flaming brand

We’ll set it alight and we’ll look and we’ll stand

For a day is coming when grief is all gone

And the people who hurt have a place to belong

Come with me

See what I do

I am the God who makes everything new

My love, it burns.

Will you come and follow me?

- Auditioning for the Sidney Choir and joining in their (candle-lit) rehearsal

- Having the best gallop up the columns in Esther's Ceilidh, really really fast, just how I like it

- Seeing the lights from the E-Luminate festival project a galaxy onto the side of senate house

- Running down to class with Alex, and arriving at the same time as our supervisor who had only just managed to get out of her meeting, hadn't had lunch, and had to open her emergency stash of chocolate biscuits

- Chance snow showers (love-hate relationship)

- Discovering this recipe for a cinnamon roll mug cake (absolute dreams - has also altered my normal banana, cinnamon and raisin porridge breakfast habit)

- A chance encounter with a homeless woman, born of seeing her ungloved, cold hands and feeling the unshakable impulse to do something. (Although also this week Cambridge was shocked by the disgusting news of a student who burned a £20 note in front of a homeless man)

- Looking up in the University Library and thinking how absolutely unbelieveable it is that they have so many books. (And yet, the one book on Chinoiserie that I wanted was unfindable.)

-Finding out that the Dome now has vegan options!

- Discovering Punks and Poets, Lion Club and Venice on Soundcloud - hello solo dance parties!

-Laughing and laughing over Sunday with Will, Tim and Darren.

Less proud moments:

- Chickening out of my long run this week because of the light light snow (will do it next week, also I was just genuinely tired)

- Eating all three of my treat coconut and macadamia bars in one night (they are so good gah)

- Procrastinating majorly on my essay

Auditioning for Sidney Sussex Choir

After hearing Emily's beautiful evensong on Sunday, I missed choir singing more than ever. A bit like how I miss sprinting in track, but also different. Sprinting is freedom, and power, and a different physical plane of being for a glorious 14-ish seconds. Choral singing is challenging and soaring and a different spiritual plane of being for minutes and minutes that flow and blend. (Neither is better than the other, just different.)

Emily told me that the choir is looking for an alto, and gave me the email of the choir director, so I screwed my courage to the sticking place and emailed him on Wednesday - and got an audition on Thursday.

Suffice to say I was so nervous I did no work between sending that email and receiving my audition slot. I realise that I haven't auditioned for something in ages. I just joined Just Love, I just go for yoga classes, and I didn't even need to audition to be in Romeo and Juliet for the ballet last year. Perhaps I needed that break from auditioning for a while, after the constant trying to prove myself in JC and afterwards in trying to get a scholarship. But I told myself that this audition was different. Sidney Choir are incredible, I hadn't sung chorally for almost two years, I only chose my audition song at about 11pm the night before the audition, I was auditioning as an alto although I've always been a soprano 2. And so it was highly likely that I wouldn't be accepted. 

(I still don't know if I am, having not received a response from the director)

Emily very graciously gave me a little singing lesson, reminding me how to breathe from my diaphragm and teaching me an amazing trick to strengthen your voice (go through your song with 'brrrr' lips before hand, and then sing it afterwards, the difference is incredible!) and generally calmed me down.

At 5.25pm I cycled down, humming all the way down to keep my voice warm despite how bitterly cold it was outside. Arriving early, I dithered outside the chapel for a while, sent two pictures of my distressed face to Hannah and Weixin, read the plaque that says Oliver Cromwell's head is buried somewhere in Sidney (no one knows where) and felt my stomach curdle as someone inside was singing like a modern day Andreas Bocelli.

Soon, two people came out and wished me all the best, and then I walked into the dim candle lit chapel. I introduced myself, shook hands with the director (inwardly cursed myself for having perpetually cold hands), gave the man at the piano my sheet music and then stood at the front of the chapel. The director told me to sing to the statue of St George at the back of the chapel.

My first verse was breathy and weak, and I took a little while to get the tempo that the guy at the piano was playing at. But at some point inside, I internally told myself 'Don't you dare give up. You like this song, you've practice this song, you can do this so much better.' and the chorus and second verse went so much better.

Then the director got me to name some intervals, and do some sight singing (I had a bit of trouble with catching the rhythm and reading the latin) and then, as the choir started coming in for their Thursday rehearsal, asked me if I wanted to stay and have a go with them.

And so I did, and, ah, it was hard. It was basically an hour of sight-singing, really fast. But also to be surrounded and lifted by such beautiful voices and at points being able to lend my own in, blend my own in and sing with them - I missed that.

I don't know whether that was my last rehearsal, or my first, but I was glad Emily was standing opposite me and smiled at me whenever I looked at her (with no doubt either a blissful smile or a panicked frown) 

Now I wait.

(So the director just got back to me - I think I'm on a sort of 'probation', as he will give me the music for next weeks rehearsal which I have a week to learn, and then he will see how I do in the next rehearsal.)

Call me a bike thief

Yesterday my replacement bicycle lock got so stuck before class that I gave up on it and (with Alex, who kindly forsook her own working bicycle to be with me) ran down castle hill and along by all the shops to Kings' college, dodging the late afternoon shoppers and clutching my books, boots heels stomping along the pavement, listening to Alex's plans to direct a Shakespeare play transposed to the context of gang rivalry.

We arrived on time, had our lesson and then walked back with considerably less haste then we had taken to get there. In the evening, I went to the plodge to try and get those big scissors you use to break through bike locks, but they hadn't any.

They did have a hacksaw though, so I borrowed that, and knelt beside my bike and sawed away at the lock.

'Srzzzchshhh'

It was rather noisy, and also I looked quite suspect, there in the dark trying to break open a bike lock. A man looked through the gate to the bike shed and called out, 'Is everything alright in there?'

'I'm just trying to get my bike. My bike lock's stuck so I'm trying to cut through it.'

With that rational explanation and also probably as a result of his realisation that I am a scrawny girl and not your typical bike thief, he asked if I needed help and proceeded to saw through the last bit of the bike lock. 'Now that was your bike, wasn't it?'

To rest a little after all that exertion (who needs push ups when you just hacked through rubber and metal) I made valentine's day cards for next week, while listening to Punks and Poets by Elliot Root, and got into such a groove of cutting, pasting, writing and good music that I only stopped at 12.30 am. (Possibly why I missed my lecture this morning)

01/02/2017

Today on the way back from my run, I saw a man talking to swans, which put a smile on my face.

Also, it's February. How did that happen?

This morning I just made it to prayer, and as I prayed, I felt that God was really listening. I know that seems like a given, God is never too busy or too far away to hear our prayers (And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.) but sometimes I feel like what I send up in prayer hits the ceiling of the room I sit in and the words fall back beside me clunky and awkward. But today I prayed what I meant and I felt as I used to that the words from my mouth flew up in a stream that passed into heaven. Praise be to God.

After a lecture on Hume (which I understood!) I went to the library and curled up on a bean bag and listened to the Light Between the Oceans OST and read about literary theory, which turned out to be fascinating, before buying two bread rolls, having lunch with Sarah, and then getting back for a vegan-buttered roll and a mug cake. I can attest to the fact that vegan chocolate mug cakes taste a whole lot better than normal mug cakes (which I made and then gave up on making before I was vegan). I used this recipe:

1.5 tbsp cocoa powder
3 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp maple syrup
2-3 tsp coconut oil
3 tbsp plant based milk

Mix everything together, stir in any add ins (I swirled in some almond butter and 2 crushed up oreos), and microwave it for about 1 minute.

Things I've been listening to this week include:

-This guitar cover by Oscar, who I met in Paris
-Sleeping on the floor and Angela by the Lumineers (the first makes me want to take a spontaneous trip to Iceland or Ireland or the furthest north of Scotland with nothing but some money, a vegan butter sandwich and my running shoes)
-Bad Blood, by Bastille (hello, good songs of my past)