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with whom shall I parley for everlasting youth? — demons, or angels?

~|~

Up early, in the middle of the night, all outside dark. Writing. Times like this I’m glad to have my own place. Massive Attack playing on the stereo, fierce and insistent and melancholy; lights steady. Spent most of Sunday night settling various projects, went to bed early yesterday; and now I’m awake and enjoying the silence passing, drink in hand, books at my side. It’s good to have time.

I’m thinking of the kids tonight, the way they pour hours and hours into the things they do: rock climbing, dance, football. I’m going to hear the choir perform later; they’ve just taken second place in yet another international competition, over in Venice. All those hours of work, all that drilling, just for the joy of it; just for one perfect song, one perfect show. That, and the company of friends. The ephemerality of it, leaving nothing behind — perhaps a little sad, but beautiful.

Makes you wonder why they stop eventually, the way so many have. They do what they do in the glory and flower of their youth, while at the same time juggling studies, family, a million other things. Then all that suddenly gone, remaining just a memory, as they become yet another batch of someone else’s cubicle slaves; and slowly they start to forget.

I don’t want that future for them, for any of us. Those of us who make, write, sing, craft, play. I don’t want that future for musicians or sportsmen, for writers or speakers, for all their young dreams. There has got to be another way.

Just the way it is, I’ve heard it said. By parents, teachers, all the people who tell them what life is supposed to be like. When they’re young they’re supposed to focus on their studies. Once they graduate they’re supposed to suddenly find someone, get married, settle down, have children, devote themselves to raising families, sacrifice themselves to their jobs. Once in a while a binge of travel, the occasional night class, and shopping, endless shopping for things they neither want nor need. Forgetting all the magic of creation, the energy of now; all the way through to retirement, when the best years of their lives have passed them by, when all the power and fire and energy of their youth is gone.

I think this is bullshit. I don’t believe in any of it, will not sacrifice these children on society’s altar. I know that in the end it is not up to me, but even so — this endless sacrifice of generation upon generation — what’s it all for? Human life should be lived in the now, should be glorious, no matter who you are, where you are, no matter when. There has got to be another way. And I intend to find it.

a melody doubled — hanging in the evening air, the waitress’s voice

~|~

This also is happiness: to be sitting, the only customer, in a tiny cafe, listening to the sweet, tuneful voice of the Filipina waitress as she sings along to the radio. It isn’t freezing, as cafes often are in this country; and I’m sitting quiet with a book and a journal and time which is my own. I feel like a tourist in a foreign city; more precisely, I feel as I did in a sandwich place in Galway, in a bagel shop in Victoria. Anonymous little diners, serving the same food, playing the same songs — a blessing to travellers away from home, with all their comfortable, nondescript familiarity. I’ve only just gotten home from Jakarta, where Diana’s been hosting me for a few days; sometimes it seems that it’s only in the quiet of the solitary traveller that I’m most myself. For all the pleasure I take in the company of friends, I’m still essentially a solitary man.

Last quarter of the year approaching now, with all its lights and festivity. The seventh month’s just ended, and soon it’ll be Mid-Autumn and the Double Ninth. A reminder to myself to make the most of what time I have remaining, to do what I can to make the rest of the year worthwhile.

this golden evening, new silence greets the smells of tea and incense

~|~

I’m sitting at home drinking last year’s kabuse, my favourite among the Japanese green teas; a little old perhaps, but still pleasant. I’ve set out a blend of Chinese and Japanese utensils, and there’s a light smell of incense in the air. Haydn’s Cello Concerto #2 is playing, with Jacqueline du Pré as the soloist; beyond the window light is fading to an ever deeper blue. And I think to myself that this is what spirituality means: a deeper awareness of the world in all its form and beauty, a kind of meditative clarity. Not the stillness of an absolute silence, but the stillness of movement, of falling leaves stirred by the wind. The sound of a bell echoing in a meditation chamber. I sit and listen, cross-legged.

leaves carpet the ground — through the quiet evening air, bells are ringing

~|~

A certain combination of circumstances — at least partially related to the current global economic climate — have been impressing themselves upon me for some time now; and now that I’ve had time to think, more and more I’ve been feeling that it’s time for a lifestyle change, for a retreat of some kind. Not the sort of retreat one goes on for a specific number of days, or to any specific place. More a retreat from the world, a movement to an inner landscape, a more monastic sort of life. I’m winding down various affairs, curbing consumer spending, fasting from certain extravagances. I’ll trade them for a life more greatly devoted to art and spirituality, books and nature and exercise; exploring my world more deeply, slowly, clearly. A time to think, to learn, to breathe.

I first encountered this way of life in America, where I spent some months in the little town of Chapel Hill in North Carolina — a town which is essentially a university and one main street. Those were some of the happiest days of my life. And the last time I truly did this — early in 2004, five years ago — led to a time of deep silence, of emptiness, an encounter with the abyss. Right after that came my single most productive writing period ever. So I’ll do this again now, ride out the storms, and hope something wonderful comes of it in the end.

I’m not leaving for good. I’ll be back in the heart of things soon enough, returning to the world and to society. But for now I feel a need to explore the wilderness within: wilderness as a state of mind, an exploration of landscapes uncharted, an encounter with the gods, a deeper seeing into the quiet heart of things. And hopefully there I’ll find something worthwhile.

as the dusk settles — flitting there between the trees, shapes of unfamiliar wings

~|~

I’ve been feeling increasingly feral lately. Less civilised, tired of politics and people; worn out with pleasantries. Too much of the city, of the office. I need to get out, perhaps, for a while; see mountains again, mist in the distance, listen to animals passing through the undergrowth. Look out on vistas, smell sap in the morning. A wilder life, that other life which pulses beneath my bones.

But I can’t go, not yet. Too much to do here still. And so today I headed out to Kent Ridge Park, after work, driving down the bends and twists of South Buona Vista Road. Walked there in the evening, for a bit. Cool air; birds of all kinds, not all of which I recognised at once. Just in time to hear the evening chorus. I stood under the tembusus, watched their flowers falling, breathing in their scent mixed with tobacco in the air. (Are people still allowed to smoke in public parks?) Couples sitting in the evening; a car with engine running, windows steamed up, movement inside. Ships in the distance, out over the water, lights slowly coming on. Now and again the sound of a horn. Stayed till the darkness came and the birds fell silent and cicadas and crickets took over. Green sticky humidity deepening in the night. But out of all that still a little peace.

Lately I’ve taken up the guitar again: my old steel-string, in fact, the first guitar I ever played close on twenty years ago. It’s not a particularly remarkable instrument, and is somewhat battered from time and the years. But it’s grown to become my favourite guitar, with its thin, sharp, unsympathetic voice; something a little bit wild about it, something a little untamed. It was my father’s guitar before ever it was mine. No other instrument has fit me quite as well, and when I play sometimes it feels as though there’s another spirit in the room, curious, animal, watching.

Classical training means I play acoustic fingerstyle, meditative, a music without words; just as one would play on the Chinese guqin, or perhaps the Japanese koto. (I did in fact want to learn the guqin once, but settled for guzheng instead; the latter instrument, however, has never agreed that much with me.) Growing up I was influenced by the alternate-tuning-driven style of the early Windham Hill artists (Will Ackerman, Chris Proctor, Ed Gerhard, Alex de Grassi, Eric Tingstad, Liz Story on piano, and others besides), and that style of playing has stayed with me over the years. It’s a very quiet style, one in which silence seems louder after the music than before; someone I knew once said he could hear the grass growing when I played. (It wasn’t meant as a compliment, but I’ll take it as one, a sign that I’ve been doing something right.) It’s a kind of music which arises out of silence, which makes one more aware of the changes of this turning world. I haven’t played much in years, but I’ll play again now, for myself, though nobody be there to hear. For

only in the silence which falls after music
can one come to understand the heart’s beating.

pressed to the pavement beneath the weight of water — flowers, fragments, leaves

~|~

I’m sitting in Starbucks at East Coast — the one near Big Splash — curled up quiet and comfy in an armchair, with a book (Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, which I haven’t read in years). It was raining earlier — a crashing March downpour which killed visibility and drowned the roads in great puddles of water — but that’s done now, and the world’s pale and misty through the raindrops and condensation on the glass. Music’s playing, easy as an open-top car; coffee’s black and steaming on the table before me. This is life, lived the old way: books and music and coffee and dreams, a world still green across the rainswept days. As the moment washes over I find I want nothing. How long will it be, I wonder, before I have all this again?

back from the trenches — rusty gates open to a world of one’s own

~|~

There was an oriole flying in wild circles just now, beneath the high roof of the college foyer; a frightened bird, beating its head against the ceiling the way beetles do when trapped in a kitchen. I hurried over and called up at it, trying to get it to relax; and after a while it did, settling on a high rafter, letting out a thoroughly mournful cry. Poor thing. I wonder what the trouble was.

Today’s the first time in weeks that I haven’t had to bring work home, and the weekend stretches out before me, long and inviting. Options! I’m hoping to read, to write; to visit the gym, to dream a little, maybe take a walk, catch a movie. Tonight I’ll be attending Clare’s glow-in-the-dark party; gin and tonic, I think, will be just the ticket. Life, life. How nice to be in the middle of it all again.

even the music, tumbling through the days, sounds like occasional prose

~|~

I spent last night working late, for all that it was a Sunday, in my usual Starbucks in the city. The baristas know me by now, and as I sat and got things done little conversations sprang up all around: with the other teacher rushing work across from me, with the artist painting in his usual corner, with a couple of guys playing with Transformers. Glances and smiles, traded with a girl studying at another table. Work is work is work, but this is something I haven’t had in a while: a cafe community, the kind that arises of its own accord when strangers come to know and understand each other. And in all that, perhaps, I came upon another little piece of my soul.

gazing at each other across the horizon — the twilit sky, and I

~|~

Tonight at dusk there is a boy at the piano, playing sweetly like a waterfall in the auxiliary lamplight. Something gorgeous and sad about it all, like a final parting, or a departure from a country one might never see again. In this place, I know, I’ve learned a thing or two of sorrow; over the years I’ve traced every contour of love. I wonder if it’s that which keeps me here across these twelve-hour days, or if it’s simply the loping wolf within me, teeth buried in the task, which won’t let go.