28/03/2017

/Read over this and realise how complain-y I sound - I shouldn't be. I am safe and warm and have just received my Sainsbury's delivery and have a comfortable life/

This dissertation I am writing this dissertation is writing me I can't tell you how

shrivelled and disgusting you feel after spending a whole day sitting and typing. Particularly after spending days wandering streets, going on boats, digging toes into sand - that is what the human body was meant to do, move, explore, breathe in different air and laugh and speak and worship in joy.

I read a quote about how every moment in life passed is a moment closer to death and mourned all the moments today spent typing because I would rather be out walking the fields and creating art (for some reason I have had the strangest compulsion these last few days to create some sort of art piece/exhibition)

And that is how I know this dissertation is going badly - good writing progresses faster and I feel more invested and interested in what I write. This dissertation has morphed into something I didn't quite intend initially, and seems altogether too intellectual to me. Also I ask myself why it matters? It matters for my exams - do they matter? I'm not sure. Yes, because I want to be a responsible daughter, scholarship holder, and don't want to squander the education I am receiving by not doing my best. No, because exams are not an accurate measure of intelligence, not the only beginning of life, not worth sacrificing health and joy for.

Brief respite occurred when I took a blanket out into the garden and lay on the grass while typing. But it soon got too cold and I headed back indoors.

I talked a lot to the cat, and decided that I am too cold towards it and should show it more love.

Subsisting on cereal, porridge and hummus sandwiches.

27/03/2017

Last night I dreamt that Grandma was alive.

How? How did you do it?

I can't remember what she said, but somewhere else in my dream I was among a group of children who were under a spell, and were only freed when water was sprinkled on them in the name of Jesus. It was one of those dreams that transcends the mundane salt, pepper and emails dreaming that often settles when you are 'grown up'. It reminded me of this dream I had months ago, and both remind me of medieval dream visions.

Today I looked through Grandma's old read diary, where she penned down thoughts she had while sitting in her pink arm chair in Pinford End. I can imagine her writing, and her voice comes through so clearly, sometimes in the words she chooses that I only knew her to use ('ablutions') and other times in the hesitation and care with which she wrote.

(On our Christmas day meal, family, and love)

'It just reflects what the word FAMILY can be. Today was a microcosm of what has happened, over space and time. It just reminds us of the word LOVE. It is not a flimsy, perfumed, airy, atmosphere. It is a pen and pencil, shopping lists for provisions, shopping for let's say this and that at festive time. That aspect needs patience, thought, action, reason logic, availability of money, transport amongst other things.'

Strange sensations I remember vividly:

-The alien feeling of my arm when I sleep with it over my head and it geos numb and heavy
-The wet warmth of my Mum sucking my finger when I stubbed it on something
-The swooping feeling of doing a 'face-drop' or 'back-drop' on the trampoline

16/03/201

Someone decided it wass highly necessary to practice the tuba at  about 11pm as I tried my hardest to stay awake and do my referencing for my portfolio essays. There is a time and a place...

By about 12am I was in that sort of vortex of work where you know it's going to be a night (my night meaning no later than 2am but I think that's definitely late enough) and then the random soundcloud list I was on segued into an insane musical ride and every single song was bright sparks of colour and tapping feet. Maybe my late night music critic is more lenient, but I was very much enjoying doing my references along to these tunes (warning - highly happy clappy music):

                        x
x
                                                                      x
                                    x

The next day I woke up and kept going - footnote, textbox, fig.1m, italicise - aargh a spelling error!!! But I managed to get my essays printed and handed into Leo for the 12pm deadline by sprinting through the plodge, vaguely reminiscent of this essay hand in last year.

And then I went back to my room and of course looked over my essays again, worried, and spotted a rogue text box that had jumped into the middle of the page! So I had to go and print it again, but you know how it is, when you move one thing suddenly the entire page shifts, and all your previously carefully constructed formatting is shattered and you've wasted 50 pages of paper.

Agh.

But I did it again properly and Leo was fine with replacing the first one with it, so that was good.

Alex and I had planned to get falafel and then jump into the Cam to celebrate, but things went a little different. The falafel van we always get our falafel fix had run out of falafel (travesty) so we got them from a stall in the market, and I got a juice and Alex got a fresh tomato that she bit into there and then.

Then we sped-cycled to Grantchester, dithered a bit on the bank (Leo's warning of 'rusty iron' potentially lurking the waters ringing in my ears) and then Alex slid in. I watched her for while in case of disaster and a necessary quick rescue from bankside. 'Are you alright?' I called (now I was just stalling) 'Just trying to focus on my breathing!'

I splashed some water on my face and chest to get used to its freezing coldness, then went in slowly, slowly and then all of a sudden.

Oh! It was so cold it felt like my skin was burning. I was breathing so fast, and loudly, but gradually calmed a little and we swum together down river. To see the river bank rising up on our left, the trees so vast over head on our right, the constant throb of the cold water on aching muscles, it was so surreal. My flesh seemed to have expanded in the cold, all taut and raw, a mix of pleasure and pain.

I don't know how long we spent in the water, although I doubt it was very long. We clambered out, river mud on our legs and arms, wiped ourselves down and changed there on the bank into clean, dry clothes and cycled back in the sunshine.

method

I wonder if the person who evaluates my dissertation knows I wrote 70% of it sitting in bed, in my pajamas, with sad movie soundtracks playing in the background. I wonder if all criticism is written in similar circumstances.

(Alternatively - how many essays are written at midnight? Take me away)

What running a half marathon taught me

Although I signed up for the half marathon in Michaelmas term, I started training for it without intending to back when I graduated from JC. That was when I started running around my block, first for 10 minutes, then pushing myself to 20 minutes, fueled by the strong beat of Bollywood music. 

Then I ran for a full half hour, which seemed an age.

Then one day I discovered the Green Corridor, the lush bones left from the removed train track behind my house, and I run along that tunnel, without knowing when to stop or turn back. And I ran and ran and saw a sign saying 'Bukit Timah' and felt like I had arrived on Saturn and that was the first time I broke the 10km barrier.

When I came to England and all the British girls came into college already knowing each other from offerholders day, I ran and then took a train to watch The Winter's Tale for Grandma's 86th birthday.

I ran when I felt lonely, and when the sun shined particularly bright. I took pride in knowing I could run to Girton, I took peace in knowing that if I ran far enough along the river I could get to an enclosed paddock where three horses just like the Starhill ponies live.

And then back in Singapore, when I felt a bit like bent puzzle piece that no longer fit where it belonged, running was again a constant that kept my life rhythm steady and my heart rate up. 

When I went to the podiatrist in the Christmas break, I told him about training for the half marathon while he showed me how I talk more on the outside edges of my feet than normal (who walks normally?) He told me to mix my long runs with shorter interval runs and said that he understood that long runs felt like a beautiful escape but that training is not escape but improvement and facing a race head on. I didn't know psychology came into podiatry but there it was. My long runs were sometimes me running away - in first year it was running away from loneliness, in second year from work and stress.

On my second full distance run before the half marathon, I ran by the river and listed (out loud) all the things I am thankful for. 'Trees, family, horses, albatrosses, bananas, trains, the sky, rain, breathing, legs...' I went on for more than twenty minutes, just moving, speaking, filling with gratitude (and also fatigue but).

One of the important things before the actual race is tapering in the last two weeks.

Two weeks before the race was when I found out that Grandma passed away. Two weeks to the day. I ran to clear my head, I ran to a field to hear the birds that grandma always had an ear out for, to feel the wind that she'd been shut away from in those last months in the nursing home. I ran to an open space to speak to the air and ask God what I was meant to do when I felt so sad and scared.

I ran, I walked, I listened to my legs and my heart and when they said 'you are tired, grief is tiring' I lent against a fence and cried.

The day before the race, when you are meant to rest, I attended Grandma's Thanksgiving service and afterwards completed three rounds of an obstacle course that my cousins and I devised in a playground. I ate lots of puff pastry snacky things instead of race meal food. I talked to people who remembered her beautiful life instead of reading up on race strategy.

On the morning of the half marathon it was raining and grey and cold. I walked to the start line with Becky, I shivered and felt tense and cold. And then the timer started and tugged along by the thousands of other runners around me I was pulled from one road to the next, my legs moving but not really feeling like they were running. By the time we got to Grantchester and the rain stopped, I felt amazing. I high-fived the children who stood cheering on the sides of the road, I read the t-shirts of the runners around me, and then I sped up too fast before the last bit of the race. So the last two miles felt like death, except for the last 100 metres which felt like flying and drowning simultaneously (which I suppose is also death).

And although my family didn't see me on the actual race course, after I finished I ran into their arms, the arms which cheered for me through A levels and when I got my scholarship, that waved goodbye when I flew over here, that welcomed me back after months, that waved me off again. And perhaps that was why, tired as I was, I ran my fastest time. Because I wasn't running away from something anymore, but towards something, or someones who I know are my safety and my support.

13/03/2017

I write this with a bump on the back of my head from throwing it back in laughter and hitting the door, a burn on my neck from the splash of boiling water as I took the corn out of the microwave a little too haphazardly before a dinner party, and a bruise on my forehead from goodness knows where.

The dinner party was on Saturday, and after going for a run I rushed over to ALDI to get supplies, raced back to college and started cooking in quite a frantic rush. The Greek Girl who always cooks the most incredible food came in and saw me and asked if I needed help. (The dinner party was lovely - I love those people)

On Friday morning the world was so brilliant I almost want to write the sun was blue, and I walked through town stopping often, buying nothing, although I was sorely tempted by Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I bought it off Amazon instead, together with Lighthouse Keeping by Jeanette Winterson, a book that I have meant to read ever since Ching stuck a post it with its title into my copy of Jane Eyre.

On Saturday, I watched Arden of Faversham with Alex, and cried just before the interval, because I suddenly noticed the stuffed teddy bear prop on the stage bed, which reminded me of how Grandma would sleep with her bear, Percy (short for Perseverance) tucked behind her neck. Crying in a comedy. I need to pull myself together. In the interval we went to the bathroom and I somehow managed to stick the tap so that the water wouldn't stop flowing out! In a panic, my oh-so-logical brain thought that if I pressed the other tap, the first one would stop. But what happened was the second tap got stuck as well.

On Sunday, I tried to work on my Scott essay all morning to no avail, and then gave up and went to play cards and bananagrams with some of the girls from church. The choir had practiced the Leighton Second Service on Thursday, a complicated piece that made me physically tired to sing it. But then on Sunday I awoke and listened to it and suddenly the notes fell into place and it was easy, and I wouldn't stop listening to it the whole day. Just like how I did five books in 2 years in JC and now I do at least 2 a week, I find it surreal that a piece like the Leighton, which we'd practice for weeks or months in AC Choir, we now perform after just two rehearsals in the Sidney Choir. (We also did View Me Lord which I found so much rest in)

I am so thankful to have had evensong services for the past few weeks. After Grandma's death I haven't been to church, partly because everything has been so overwhelming and also partly because I don't feel like my heart would be in the fast moving songs, or my mind in the challenging and thought-provoking sermons. I needed a space where I could just be with God, where I could be lifted from reflecting on myself and my own feelings which grief tends to make me do, and instead just think on the glory of God.

After evensong, Mum (who had come down before her flight back home today) and I met Auntie Sarah for dinner, and Mum passed me a bag of things, including a lovely wool sweater (I have a weakness for those things...) and two of Grandma's handkerchiefs and her blue blouse. They insisted on driving the bag up to me although I could have carried it on my bicycle, so I cycled off first, and waited for their call. After waiting longer than I thought normal, I called Mum and asked if they were lost.

Apparently they'd been pulled over by a police car for erratic driving, and the policeman had assumed they were either drunk or on drugs, until they saw they were just two harmless women.

Today I discovered the poet Billy Collins, and read 'Marginalia' and 'Litany', the latter made me laugh:

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine. 

the birds still sing

Last (last) week was pretty rough, and I felt like I spent all my emotion on Sunday night and then went around in a cloud of function for the rest of the week, although I wasn't entirely functional. This is what I remember.

Monday

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag. Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.

Though her words are simple and few, listen, listen, she's calling to you.

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag. Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.

Just keep looking up to our savior and our friend
Jesus loves us and will to the end
Keep looking out for another to bring
Under the shade of the soon coming king

I took a run/walk towards Girton, stopping in a field and walking around singing for a while. I went through In His Time, Feed the Birds, Amazing Grace... I leaned against a gate and felt the wind and looked at the clouds which reminded me of Grandma's hair, how soft when I put my cheek against it as she lay in Pinford End.

Later I cycled down to the river, a warm evening, and I sat by the river and meditated despite the creeping damp feeling of moist grass beneath me, and the occasional over curious dog. I wrote a letter to Grandma, the last one since I'd written to her about my internship. I cried some more, and decided not to put the letter in the river which I had thought would be symbolic, because I didn't want to litter.

Tuesday

I cycled to a lecture (which was so full I couldn't get in), met Lucy and Sarah, had falafel with Alex, went to class and fell asleep momentarily, came back, went to the gym.

After the gym I picked up the post from my pigeonhole, and opened a white envelope to find a card from the Just Love committee which made me smile, but very briefly because I had to quickly jump into the shower, get changed and go over to the Dome to collect my tickets for Natalia's birthday formal - all in 10 minutes!

I spoke mostly to Alex and Mikolaj (Natalia's boyfriend) during dinner, and occasionally to Victor (also from Gdansk) who told me that Caius is notoriously bad for its formal food. Dessert was not fruit salad for once, but a vegan pannacotta that was so set my fork could bounce off it.

Before bed I looked at pictures of Grandma and cried.

Wednesday

Mum and Uncle Rog came in the morning, although my plan to walk them down the river was derailed by heavy rain.

I met Tim for lunch and we talked about body image and how much we want to do something about it.

Choir practice, CCHP volunteering and

Rain began, rain rain rain, and

I lost my phone. And anxiety overwhelmed me when I realised I wouldn't be able to contact Emily, and also I mourned again because all my voice recordings were gone with it - Grandma's stories, the alleluias in the Lyon Cathedral, the my thoughts on my first 17km run. Gone.

Thursday

I began freaking out about work. Oh help.

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Friday

I had my first ever whole half glass of white wine. I didn't like it much, but I did like sitting around the fire with other Cambridge Christian English Students reading Rossetti.

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

Although my favourite poem by her is still The Convent Threshold

After the dinner/poetry, my bike lock was so stuck that despite my mental pleas (not voiced because Jacob and the-girl-i-keep-bumping-into-in-the-UL were there) it would not budge. The two of them were really lovely and walked with me as I half-rolled, half-lifted my bike away, and Jacob then helped me move it all the way up castle hill and back to college. Although I told him he didn't need to I was glad he insisted because castle hill at 10pm isn't the safest place, and that bike wasn't easy to carry.

Saturday

I cannot express how much relief I felt throwing that problematic bike lock away. So many tears shed and so much worry felt over that piece of stuck metal.

Sunday 

What is it about evensong that lifts my spirit so? The Magnificat was just so full of joy. Although I had a little cry on the way to choir, realising that it has been a week today since Grandma left this earth, this evensong was probably the first one where I felt like bursting into laughter and song simultaneously. (I did the latter, just in case you were wondering)

Alex and I booked out tickets for the garden party, and then our tickets for Portugal. She also reminded me that life is meant to be celebrated, something that I think I lost momentarily this week, and perhaps something I'd been in the process of losing for a while as the stress of work and needless pressure rubbed away at the meaning behind it. It was so good to remember that simple truth - that Jesus came that we may have and have it to the full, not so we could work without learning, sing without feeling, or plan without living in each moment as it passes.

07/03/2017

Hello hello

It's been a while, and a lot has happened, and I have thirteen drafts on my blog dashboard that I started and haven't finished because, well, words haven't been very sufficient for me in the past couple of weeks.

Somethings that have been sufficient though were:

Leaning my head on Timmy's shoulder and looking round at my cousins, and knowing that there is something immensely strong and secure about a family suffused with love

Time to sit by the river and write a last letter

Hugging Hannah after running the final 21km

Seeing Mum in the seats at Evensong before singing the finest Gloria ever written in Howell's Collegium Regale

Not being able to film the cremation as I was tasked to because I was crying too much, but then seeing Dad take the camera and feeling the relief of knowing it didn't matter.

Seeing the most beautiful salmon pink sunset just before coming back to Cambridge, the sunset from the west-facing window in Grandma's house, which she always gave thanks for.

Always, always the comfort of God, in song and verse and creation. A breath of wind on tear-wrenched eyes, 'and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes' in Bainton's 'And I saw a New Heaven', and new mornings after tired nights.