Some incomplete lists
ephemera and para-texts to make it all make sense
I count a lot when I’m doing mundane tasks, like filling a kettle with water, or sauteeing vegetables in a wok. I wish I could say I like counting but it’s really just something that happens, neutrally, unthinking. I also make a lot of lists, which I suppose is another way of counting what counts. Here are some that have been rattling around in my brain.
I’m looking forward to…
Therapy this Saturday
Somatic therapy next Monday
Sourdough class next weekend
Trip to Laos in December
Yoga at the CC nearby, beginning in October
Swimming soon when new tattoo and piercing are more healed
Goodbyes:
Alex, who is now based in New York
Mins, who will soon be based in New York
Thai Basil that I mentioned in last newsletter which struggled along valiantly but ultimately could not survive the ravages of my neglect (RIP)
This one’s a slow one, but I’m realising in a big way that I need to slow my life down, that this is not the life I fought to have—I want space, I want pleasure, I want to have the time to tend to myself. Goodbye…urgency? Idk.
Things I’ve Lost That I’d Like To Find, Please God Please
My earplugs, which I bought with a friend some time ago, lost, and then found, and then promptly lost again. I used to use them at raves, concerts, movies, and during commutes, because I’ve been more and more sensitive to sound and seem to have some form of tinnitus. They’re somewhere in my room.
The charger that plugs my phone into my laptop, which allows me to use my laptop like an oversized portable charger with many bonus functions such as word processing and internet browsing. This is probably also somewhere in my room.
My duvet cover, which fell off the laundry racks outside the window some weeks back. It fit my 200x200cm duvet perfectly. Both were inherited from a friend who left Singapore, whose room I stayed in briefly right after returning from Shanghai, before I had a lease. This friend, who is now based in Hanoi, was also someone who shared their studio apartment with me right after I graduated, once again before I had a lease.
In Stardew Valley, a game which I played on my phone and recently began to play on my laptop (which allows me to access an expanded world with more quests and features), you can give gifts to fellow villagers to increase or decrease your friendship with them. (Like, Abigail, who’s goth and has purple hair, likes receiving Amethysts, and Lewis, the mayor, loves chili peppers. But if you give the Wizard refined quartz, he’ll throw it into the fire and see what happens.) Because I’ve only just started playing on my laptop I’m taking awhile to get used to the controls. This is maybe the first and only video game in my life, and I wasn’t paying attention and selected an unknown item in my inventory and accidentally gave it to Marnie, who runs the shop where you can buy chicken, goats, pigs, and cows. I don’t really know what I gave her, so I suppose it wasn’t a very important item in my inventory, but there’s no way I’ll ever know. The response was neutral.
Interest in cooking. This started before the trip, just over a month ago, and I thought it was going to be a temporary pre-trip thing where I was just getting sian of trying to clear ingredients in my fridge. I got back and this has continued, though, which has been very interesting because I used to get annoyed if I didn’t have the opportunity to cook and had no choice other than to eat out. I’ve been trying to be kind to myself; cooking for one is somehow much, much harder for me than cooking for a larger group.
New rules for cooking, if/when I get back to it: prioritise wet markets where I can purchase ingredients in small quantities, don’t buy condiments that I’ll get sick of quickly, cook smaller portions and don’t store too many things in the freezer because then I get stressed about using stuff up, offer to share with housemates so I can cook more variety and eat the same thing for a shorter amount of time. And in the meantime I’m not going to be mean to myself about not-cooking.There was something else about #5 that I wanted to write that I forgot. In the meantime, I have befriended the noodle stall auntie and some of the drink stall workers at the coffeeshop near my house. I am also fast becoming friends with the caifan guy at the coffeeshop near the park. I would like to bring them baked goods one day. Leaving the house to eat reminds me that I have a place in what Mary Oliver would call the family of things.
Last night I lost a lot of sleep dreaming about being harassed by strange men and also, the end of the world. In this climate apocalypse, you could pedal bikes to generate power. These were set in the area between the sea and the shore, that in between where the tides ebb and flow. There was no indicator on the bike that you were successfully generating power, because that too would have required power, and if you recall, this was the end of the world. Amidst all this apocalypse, I was also under pressure trying to find an outfit for a wedding.
I remembered the thing! I read this somewhere once: Betty Crocker box cake mixes require you to crack an egg into them because that gives you the sense that you’re participating meaningfully in the cooking process. They could just dehydrate it and add it to the cake mix so all you’d have to do is add water, but the fantasy that Betty Crocker sells is that you can have convenience but also Homemade Cake, not a Box Cake, so you have to add an egg.
There’s something about freezer meals (even if they’re freezer meals that past-me made and froze) that feels like Box Cake. I’m not feeling the fantasy.?
Vegan Dinner Party Thoughts
Thunder Tea Rice
Plantain Tacos
Nasi Ulam
Jackfruit Curry, Mushroom Pongteh, Achar
Baba Ghanoush, Hummus, Grilled Taukwa, Mint and Pomegranate Rice
Some stuff I’ve consumed…
One Day We’ll Understand by Sim Chi Ying
Brazil (1985), directed by Terry Gilliam
Firangi Superstar—delicious food, weirdly orientalist colonial vibes, beautiful space
Not much poetry, lately
A lot of caifan at the coffeeshop near my place, which also seems to have a thriving blackjack table even on weekdays. Grassroots ground up heartland initiative wahoo.
Birth control pills, as of a few months ago. So far no side effects and they’ve helped a lot with PMDD. I’ve been doing continuous use until this week so I’m suddenly having a period for the first time in a few months and in my hubris I thought I’d continue to be mentally and emotionally stable? Hilarious. Still, this has otherwise been a very successful experiment that arose from two consecutive months of particularly horrific PMDD.
Lotus Root Support Group which was cringe and comedic and full of heart. I love when I get to know lore about people and their friendships??
More specifically, I’ve been reading lately:
How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, or rather I’m listening to the audiobook after the first time I read it a few years ago. Honestly listening to the audiobook has shown me that the narrator’s voice can be self indulgent and annoying at times but also reaffirmed that some of the ideas Odell writes about continue to be revelatory. “We’re all here together, and we don’t know why,” she writes. Also, the notion that an idea is what emerges at the boundary of self and not-self, similar to David Whyte’s notion of reality as an ongoing conversation. I’m really craving ego death. Considering a Vipassana retreat. The idea of a week of silent meditation both frightens me and makes me feel alive.
Info sheet for an ADHD assessment I’m considering taking. Hilarious to me that they only take cash, so I’ll be rocking up to the testing site with hundreds of dollars stashed in my wallet I guess?
The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney—still processing but thinking a lot about language and the poetics of refusal, and the extractive mechanisms of academia
LaserWriterII by Tamara Shopsin, a strange and short novel about a computer repair shop, which made me think about getting my computer fixed in Osaka after it died on me less-than-24h into the trip, and gave me feelings about machines and the people who care for them
The entirety of the Beaufort Scales Mysteries by Kim M Watt, and most of its spinoff short stories and novelettes, all of which have terrible puns in their names (“Yule Be Sorry”, “Game of Scones”, “Baking Bad”, to name a few) which I put up with because the tale of interspecies friendship between dragons and old ladies is funny, sweet, and cosy as heck, with lots of tea and baked goods
The Pill by Meredith Katz, a short story that I was transfixed, confronted, and mesmerised by
This essay by Dr Devon Price on “the cosmic horror of small-scale fame”
Updates from friends who manage buying e-sims for Gaza out of a small communal fund pool.
10 sept update:Not yet activated: 11
Activated: 12
Exhausted: 1
Usage so far: 91.589GB
Remaining cash pool: $310.48
The Devourers by Indra Das, which I was utterly consumed by. A chimeric book: guttural, gory, brutal, lyric, elegaic. Grabbed me by the neck and didn’t let me go
Honestly yesterday in the supermarket I was reading luncheon meat labels because I’ve been on a real luncheon meat kick, there’s like three cans in my backpack because I stopped by NTUC on the way home from work
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison. Haven’t finished. Am I going to address my relationship to alcohol? Ha ha, stay tuned to find out. I also want to know.
Serialised chapters of Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson whose work, I maintain, is really not great on a sentence level, but I am so invested in the plot and worldbuilding I’m still reading it
These messages from my mother, sent ten days ago, which I revisit over and over and over again:
