Reply to Staying Sober

Reply to Staying Sober

Saying enough is enough is not enough

The film was from Poland,
and what else to inhale but
the air of Polish sorrow and snow.

The documentary was
about 15,ooo endangered chimpanzees
another spectacle of a white man sweating
the endless African woes.

Be it white snow or tropical greenery
under the stupid sun we gave too much respect for,
it seems inescapable –
as long as we remain conscious.
Mother Nature,
I’m losing interest in staying sober.

Braille for the Colour Blind: Children Art

Braille for the Colour Blind:


Children Art

The argument persists
It doesn’t matter if we were using
Crayon, pastel, colour pencil, water or poster colour

Is the sun yellow, red or orange?

Tree and Trees

Trees (Version 2)

Flat image,
The branches above,
the roots clutching down
the ‘shadow on shadow’ I stepped, I found
on every Ground depicted as horizontal:

The three rhizomes of every Tree

Trees (Version 1)

The branches, the roots,
The ‘shadow on shadow’
The three rhizomes of every Tree

Armchairs - Andrew Bird

I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs and I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair
I sighed a song that silence brings
it's the one that everybody knows
oh everybody knows
the song that silence sings
and this was how it goesthese looms that weave apocryphal
they're hanging from a strandthese dark and empty rooms were fullof incandescent hands
and awkward pausea fatal flaw
time it's a crooked bowoh time's a crooked bowin time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow
grab hold of your bootstraps
and pull like hell‘till gravity feels sorry for you
and lets you go
as if you lack the proper chemicals to know the way it felt the last time you let yourself
fall this low
time oh time
it's a crooked bow
time's a crooked bow

Diamond Sea - Sonic Youth

Time takes its crazy toll and how does your mirror grow
you better watch yourself when you jump into it 'cause the mirror's gonna steal your soul
I wonder how it came to be my friend that someone just like you has come again
you'll never, never know how close you came until you fall in love with the diamond rain
throw all his trash away look out he's here to stay
your mirror's gonna crack when he breaks into it
and you'll never never be the same
look into his eyes and you can see
why all the little kids are dressed in dreams
I wonder how he's gonna make it back
when he sees that you just know it's make-belief
blood crystalized as sand and now I hope you'll understand
you reflected into his looking glass soul
and now the mirror is your only friend
look into his eyes and you will see
that men are not alone on the diamond sea
sail into the heart of the lonely storm
and tell her that you'll love her eternally
time takes its crazy toll
mirror fallin' off the wall
you better look out for the looking glass girl 'cause she's gonna take you for a fall
look into his eyes and you shall see why everything is quiet and nothing's free
I wonder how he's gonna make her smile
when love is running wild on the diamond sea

Letter: Some thoughts to share

Hey XXXXX,

I have some thoughts to share:

1. We like to say that Bolano's writings are 'plotless' and about 'nothing' actually. But still it intrigues us. Maybe the reason lies in the word 'nothing' which is the other word for life, our lives.

2. Baudelaire said one must be drunk! I was drunk on my reminiscence over Olivier Rolin's 'Paper Tiger'. Drunk with the kind of despair and disappointment, drunk with a nostalgia for the May 1968 I have never experienced. I want to read it again and again, if I have the time and energy to spend. If not, I would waste it on 'The Ogre' by Michel Tournier. Whenever I am overburdened by work, the mere thought of sipping Cortazar's 'Hopscotch' to quench the thirst, returns the smile on the face I kept in the closet of my brain. But sometimes, it's difficult to get in. His writings, his texts, are like the popular bars in town often overcrowded with the complexities of his thoughts and emotions. I don't like to wait outside. I read it as a form of rejection. If only I could drink them like the melodies and words of songs I have downloaded for free.

3. I really enjoyed the part in Paul Auster's 'Brooklyn Follies' about the Christian sect. No, not about the Reverend asking Aurora to suck his dick, although the manner he made the request in such theological rhetoric was funny and frustrating. Fucking charlatans! But the all those ideas about sacred/profane, beatitude of silence, no telephone, no music, no TV... and the discussion on the Chapter 1, first verse of the Gospel of St. John. (the Word, God, beginning) Aren't we not that far off from such hypocrisy and sanctimonious ideologies?

4. I told Samuel yesterday that Love and Boredom are just as counterrevolutionary as Package-Tour and Backpacking to see the 'world'. Stupid seekers of the 'evental site' (Badiou) in this manner. I was questioned about romance (what a mouthful of cliche! in the form of a single word, not even a sentence is enough) I have to admit we can't avoid the use of these terms to 'get the idea across'. I do see the sparks of excitement in the beginning of relationship as romance. Rather, the commitment to certain mundane weekly activities is the True Event, all the more 'romantic'. Since, what is a bank robbery compared to the opening of a bank: what is a fling or fleeting passion compared to a marriage. The event of living it thru's in a singular non-evental form. Building Nothing from Something, the topic of the lesson you gave?

5. You told me Tolstoy condemned Baudelaire for being a dandy. Few days later, I found an article by Louis Althusser on Lenin criticising Tolstoy's faith in art to change the world. Well, Lenin is 'troublesome', he also rejected Gorky's invitation to discuss philosophical questions with some philosophers because revolutionary issues weren't meant to be discuss but practice, Althusser use the anecdote to expound on his notion of 'theoretical practice' if I am not wrong. Well, anyway, today is Lenin's birthday, although it has nothing to do with us.


Cheers.

Watching Time

…All he had left now was the very vacuity of time. Then he tried to see how time passed, an undertaking just as difficult as that of catching yourself falling asleep. Sitting at his cash desk he would watch the big clock above Meussieu Poucier’s shop, and follow the progress of the big hand. He would manage to see it jump once, twice, three times, and then he suddenly found it was a quarter of an hour later and the big hand had taken advantage of this to move without noticing it. Where had he been all that time? Sometimes he had been back in Madagascar, sometimes he had relived an episode from Flash Guy or Mandrake, his favourite heroes, sometimes he had merely re-eaten a meal or re-seen a film, more or less fragmentarily.

At the end of two months of application, he managed to register three jumps of the big hand, but he never got up to four, not remembering this occupation until much later, being then lost in a fun-jungle, or repeating to himself like a scratched record some conversation he had had with Housette, Virole, or one of his other neighbours. He couldn’t manage to make his mind a blank.

Raymond Queneau, The Sunday of Life (Le Dimanche de la vie), P. 113.

I am not an Idealist

No
I am surely not romantic or idealistic
I hate being labelled as either
it is precisely because I am practical that I behaved in a seemingly idealistic way.

For those who are practical, they are the true idealists who live on a regular diet of action/horror movies, special effects, romantic love comedies

Stenciling

the books were a stack of overdue aspiration left on the table as dust stencil

Life is - Cortazar

Life is a commentary of things we didn't do

The line between artist and tyrant – Joshua Yang and Justin Loke

The line between artist and tyrant – Joshua Yang and Justin Loke

Drawing is basically mark-making. However, this basis is one that drawing has to share with the other form of mark-making, also known to us as writing. As we are about to proceed on a piece of writing on drawing, we are also thinking about how difficult – not to mention, futile – it would be for one to produce a drawing on writing, and how often such ideas and projects are like naïve, chimerical failures of an attempted jailbreak[1]. Whilst they share a common root, text and image are never on equal terms. Their relation is skewed and lopsided. Similar to what Schopenhauer had written, the world, or human existence, is composed both of pleasure and of suffering, but to deem suffering as comparable to pleasure is to agree that eating and being eaten are the same.

In image production, its narratives that we recognised as visual language, text, if not speech – the henchman of language – is often the final word validating and classifying the reticent images of our world. In short, the image depends on words as a medium to clarify interpretations.

In the English language, one who does painting is known as a painter, one who writes is a writer, and one who sculpts is a sculptor. But we seldom find it comfortable to call someone who draws a ‘drawer’. Probably because the term is more often reserved for the ‘boxlike compartment in furniture that can be pulled out and pushed in’; one who draws an order for the payment of money; or alternatively, the other name of underpants. An artist, architect, interior designer or a draftsman does imply drawing, but never precisely the activity. For the term ‘draw’ or the activity never gives us clear, direct reference to any specific undertaking (a painter can still, very literally, mean one who applies paints to objects). There are just too many occupations and situations that require us to draw, or at least make markings.

We are hence concerned with a series of work where drawings are treated as the finality, and not just the means. However, this series of work need not necessarily include or exclude art works; they are merely looked at from the perspective of drawing or mark-making. In what follows, a series of examples may assist in clarifying the above point. This point will then be followed by another point and the examples serve as a connecting line between points[2].

When approached by a tourist asking for directions, the best way to overcome the language barrier between us is to either draw a map or to make gestures – which are a kind of indexical drawings in the air.

And in hawker centres and coffee shops, the twisted fork and spoon, and painted bottoms of glass mugs are primitive markings akin to the sign of ownership or property we see on some open fields which reads ‘State Land/ No Dumping/No Trespassing’. A piece of drawing as a piece of art is very much defined by its opposite: drawings of solely practical ends etc.

For example, a drawing which was made in order to tell the carpenter the dimensions of a temporary wall made of plywood and whitewashed for the purpose of an exhibition would not be considered art but the drawing framed and hung on that wall would.

Nevertheless, as what Montaigne had advised us on adopting fine postures by looking at those with unpleasant ones. One should pay some attention to drawings that are not necessary art, or aspire to be art, in order to understand drawing in its totality…

We would normally associate drawings with expressiveness, as a form of expression from a supposed talent or ‘genius’, the line as an avenue for this ‘chosen one’ to pour out his/her ‘inner soul’. Otherwise, in platitudes communicated through the clichés of representation, drawings or artworks are the representation of my thoughts, my cultural background, my identity, my gender, my sexuality, my spirituality, my exoticness, my memories, my desires, my opinions, my conversations with trees… (yawn!!) In summary, drawings as representation are vehicles for personal introspective micro-indulgence. Lastly, on the supposedly radical but actually dated realm, drawings are the gestures, the overtly theatrical actions, a dramatic coordination of so many bodies and so many minds, the ephemeral performance.

But what about those territorial aspects of drawing? The possessive and exclusive, violent and bloodthirsty, roots of this activity that these days are introduced to tame, and add grace to, the infants; and seem as the pinnacle of innumerable civilisations.[3] Does this seemingly negative and malicious image refer to all drawings? In a way, yes, because the ink applied the by the most innocent hand somehow unavoidably claims and marks out its place on the piece of paper, just as blood spilled on foreign soil marks out a conquered province. Even as an art form, drawing is condemned to impose, just as the painter is often ‘condemned to please.’[4]

Like the Kings, tyrants, conquerors, or whatever you call it, who sacrifice lives and limbs in order to shift the lines on a map, sacrificing lives and limbs in order to infringe[5] (The tyrant is a two dimensional cartographer). Does this not remind us of the doings of Adolf Hitler? An artist turned dictator, his parallel obsessions with war and art, his emphasis on war machines and cultural monuments, his needs for tanks and architectures. In addition, it reminds us of a paragraph from Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.[6] This common nature is where the difference between the inks for drawing and the blood needed to exchange for territories weakens. Even, one of the best anti-war novels All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, requires the two basic elements of war and art to complete the tragedy – the blending of the two seemingly opposing flavours is crucial to stir the kind of sentiments that we love to hate.

But no! No, no, no! Artists are not tyrants who wasted lives or ambitious conquerors, but peace-loving, sensitive, soft, benign beings. They are the so-called masters of innovation, the challenger of traditions and rules – the next da Vinci to be (yawn). The embodiments and personifications of the beauty of my foot… They should be the morally healthy creative romantics – the cream of the cultural crops (that is at least how we think they should be here) – the avant-gardes who enjoys the brain-numbing 12 o’clock sun of this clinic garden. They are the ready-made libertines who walk the beaten tracks of manufactured transgression shone, all year round, with the blessed rays of Apollo.

However, artists are always trying to impose their ideas onto other minds, force feeding their opinions, their points of view, practicing an eternal insult to the taste of others.

The similarity between art and tyranny is obvious from the common practice of art. Art is never democratic, which is why it is usually a solitary project, or collaboration that seldom last. It does not entertain compromises because the very act of compromising then diminishes the singular vision of the project. Even if the project requires a team effort, the hierarchy remains feudalistic. Even for a film director who works with a team of thousands of crews, casts and cameramen, the hierarchy is clear. Voting never takes place on the set. We only see a tussle of different levels of positions. Of course, maybe the producer with his financial power could influence the decision. So, cash does represent democracy.

There is non-negotiable stubbornness that drives one to expand his empire, to accept his opinions, to make his voice louder, the loudest to be heard, to impose his ways on others. The only comparable stubbornness of a tyrant is the unrelenting temper of a child. Stubborn is the will of the child that kicks up a fuss when refused a toy and rolls on the floor of a shopping centre while the parents try to pry the child’s fingers from that toy.

There is a certain stubbornness found in the child who only draws cars and nothing else. The child will not colour them, the child only draws with pencils, and the child will not try to use another medium. But this child prefers routines to randomness and the teacher who is aware of the child’s preference plays on this fondness of routine and repetition and forces the child to produce black and white drawings of cars done in pencils within ten minutes. The line is drawn between these ten minutes and the next ten minutes, the child produces and produces something which the child enjoys over and over again, exerting a childish stubbornness on paper but subjected to the tyranny of the teacher who curbs his infantile tyranny. A form of tyranny the child, the society, and the education system actually yearn for.

Having said all this we urge you, seemingly passive, reader, to come to terms with your own tyranny, your own desire to impose your ideas upon others. Your interpretation to what we try to impose with lines of words - conflicts once again. In truth every one of us has their noble idea of an artist, idling or working quietly – or perhaps to the sound of lovemaking in the room upstairs – in a rented studio with paint-stained rags lying on the bare cement floor, sheets of empty canvas stretched across pieces of wood.

Honestly speaking, who wants to work? Who wants a nine to five job, Mondays to Fridays, stuck in an air-conditioned office when one could be pursuing one’s own – romantically inspired – endeavours? These endeavours include spending time with your spouse. However, some of us may be comfortable with that nine-to-five job which pays the bills and puts food on the table. But to give all that up would mean having to rely on the meagre sum of sponsorship allowed for, budgeted for, apportioned for by your sponsor, to whom we apply yearly or every time we gather enough works to exhibit. Admit it, dear reader, you would rather tell that sponsor to hang every one of its members – just as you would hang paintings – and go it on your own than to squirm and beg at their feet for one measly portion, a crumb from their table of abundance, and because of that crumb, you are obliged to print their logo on every piece of poster and invite and publication related to your exhibition or show or project. To hell with all that! Do it the tyrant’s way! You need to prove to all that you are an industry in yourself; an industry worth investing in. More than that, you need to gather enough mass, as a snowball, to build your own gravity, until you become a life-sustaining planet with your own atmosphere. Then, things will start to gravitate and crash into you and you become a collapsed star; a black hole which nothing, not even light can escape. But if all else fails, you can still switch to the sex industry. In a way a whore tyrannises desire.

The purpose of a scarecrow is to frighten birds from the field where it is planted, but the most terrifying painting is there to attract visitors.[7]
[1] The prisoner, who attempts to escape from jail, even if he succeeds, only expands the size of his cell. From the physical concrete walls of the cell, he is now out in the open where the entire world is his jail. Even if he succeeds in transforming his face, his name, he will not escape from the fact that he is now a fugitive, running away from the prison that has already gone inside him. As the saying goes, ‘You can take the jailbird out of jail, but you can’t take the jail out of the jailbird.’
[2] In this essay we shall discuss typically the line which separates. However, it has not escaped our attention that a line may be seen to connect two points as much as it divides two sides. Popular and common phrases come to mind: ‘Where do you draw the line?’ ‘It’s a fine line between…’ ‘The line is blurred…’
[3] Being civilised often requires one to regulate noise, coordinate body movement as well.
[4] Georges Bataille, The Cruel Practice of Art, 1949, p.1.
[5] Can the king who expands his empire be compared to the prisoner who escapes from jail? The prisoner breaks down the walls but in doing so, the prison is now in him. On the other hand, the king while conquering other lands erects walls to keep the barbarian hordes from plundering his empire. In a way, he is also imprisoning himself within those self-erected walls. Both desire impunity, but one requires breaking down walls whilst the other requires building walls. In a way, one is Napoleon and the other is Dostoevsky’s Raskonikov in Crime and Punishment.
[6] ‘As can easily be imagined, a youth like myself came to entertain two opposing forms of power wishes. In history I enjoyed the descriptions of tyrants. I saw myself as a stuttering, taciturn tyrant; my retainers would hang on every expression that passed over my face and would live both day and night in fear and trembling of me. There is no need to justify my cruelty in clear, smooth words. My taciturnity alone was sufficient to justify every manner of cruelty. On the one hand, I enjoyed how one by one I would wreck punishment on my teachers and schoolmates who daily tormented me; on the other hand, I fancied myself as the great artist, endowed with the clearest vision – a veritable sovereign of the inner world. My outer appearance was poor, but in this way my inner world became richer than anyone else’s. Was it not natural that a young boy who suffered from an indelible drawback like mine should have come to think that he was a secretly chosen being? I felt as though somewhere in this world a mission awaited me of which I myself still knew nothing.’ Yukio Mishima in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1956, p. 6.
[7] Bataille, op. cit.

Anti-photography

From: Victor Subramanium [victorsubramanium@yahoo.com.sg]
To:Justin Loke Kian Whee
CC:
Subject:A project on Anti-photography[Scanned]

Hi Justin,

How are you? How's Fiona and Joshua doing? Have not heard from you guys lately. Just want to share something with you, an idea that has been brewing for many years, and finally, after attending my friend's wedding it was the last straw, I must let it get off my chest and stop thinking about it.

From our conversation I know you always have a dislike for photographers, not personally I believe, but just general, like how society hates trigger happy people. I have an idea for a project for you guys, to add to your already unattended shelves of ideas, I won't be disappointed if it isn't materialised.

A Project that dedicates itself to the anti-photography cause: Truth, Immortality and Banality

Parties and Individuals to attack:

1. Event photgraphers/camera man for weddings, formal dinners, parties, event etc. To me they are human beings that behaves like you say outside the situation, the moment, like the incidents you mentioned to me moving around, talking, adjusting their cables during the solemn moment of silence of the memorial for the deceases of 911 in order to telecst the 'event'. And the photographer who went in to the bride's room before the bridegroom to photographed that moment of greatest significance. To me this is the most lowbrow of attention seeking. Actually I feel that you are like them, because you are not that involved, not paying attention to the wedding ceremony or the moment of silence. But that is another story on documentation in general I guess.

2. As usual, heard and read it often in books and drama series: the attitude or belief in using photos as documents and evidence. But besides the suspicion of Photoshop manipulation, there is something I noticed recently. In last saturday's 'live' telecast of an EPL match a player was foul by another, as always, we can't really see what happened. Should the penalty be given? After replaying from 5 angles, the sixth did show contact between them, whereas the other 5 looked like the player being foul dived. The commentator upon seeing the sixth angle, in clipped British accent said 'Yes indeed, there was a foul', I was wondering why when we have 5 angles (of no foul) against 1 angle (of foul) we deem the last as factual. I know it isn't judged on quanity, but there is something undemocratic, unfair about the rationale, something that's too inductive, they are all points of view, but why that is decisive. It;s like a faulting act than judgment.

3. The lousy photos that pretends to be art. But only lousy ones where the medium did not function beyond itself. Narcisstic posturing. Banal.

4. Tourist, be they hip backpackers or tour group aunties, slr or dummy digital, they are crazy about trapping moments once they step out of their own country. And the self-obsessed teens who love to photograph themselves. This are down right banal creativity.

5. Our over reliance on photography, for existence, traces, memories etc. For example, if this event/project were to actually happend out of habit and neccessity we would photographed it for docmentation or memory, for further fundings, like how I was impressed by VS's portfolio; photograph art works for catalogues. This point is important because if you were to allow photography for this project, for any purpose, then the whole idea is ruined.

Lastly, I would like to add, that photograph is the instrument that creates the illusion of the never never gone land, eternity, immortality etc. The device that uses light to colour the superficial sense of eternity. I belong to those who believe Time is finity, infnity is non-time, and Time is experience etc. Embracing photography is anti-Time, anti- progression. Photo-graph, or light, the anti-thesis is vulgar abstraction, cowardice, cheap thrill (porno), non-experential (compare viewing the scenery from busy taking pictures of it), non-intervention (think war photographer, busy taking pictures of the wounded while others are busy helping the wounded, or the quasi-God's view of camera man for documentrary who uses the excuse of 'letting nature takes it cause' while the lion tears the deer, we don't do that we see man to man assualt we call 'murder') I think this is an ethical issue which affects the Aesthetic of not just art but LIFE!

Man is finity, and woman is infinity. We understand this proposition once we understand how the sexual organs of the male and female function.
- Lance Lesslar, (1745-98)
The Anatomy of Discontentment

I think this guy is right, I can't erect the whole day but woman can fuck thru' the night. If capitalism feminises the society, then I think photography is one instrument that help perpetuate this eradication of masculinity. For the celebration of infinity, through photography, is a feminine activity.

The equation:

If photography=eternity, and eternity=infinity, and inifinity=feminity
then photography is feminine.

Only females or the feminised want to 'stay young forever', or believe 'diamonds are forever'.

I think I am too long winded, must be your bad influence. Let me know what you guys think.

Best Regards,

Victor

This is a Casette

This is a message meant more for the future. The value of this message is projected to increase in proportion to its duration of existence, i.e. the value of the message is expected to increase through its progression in time, or the cycles of time it has gone through: chrono-fermentation. The level of exposure shall not affect its objective value. Meaning, regardless of how much or how often it is to be read; how it will be appreciated; how popular it shall be, no subjective values will affect its intrinsic task of being an act of description for this object. Where the process of activation will most probably be lost or forgotten; where the relation to the item becomes unknown. However, this is not a technical description or a technological history of the item. It does not provide the chemical properties, exact shape, the origins or the inventors' name. It is not concerned about the character, personality, physical appearance, birth date, family background, and parents, in short, the statistics. All of which the writer do not have the talent or time for.
The choice of the object implies neither the significance of the object to-the-world-at-large, nor the writer's favour-ability to the item, which is to say, 'choosing cassette tape as a topic does not mean that my relationship with it is of the most pleasant or pleasurable. There are numerous problems with this equipment, which always interrupts and add glitches to the ideal-flow of aesthetic.' This is also to say,' even when one is trapped in Nostalgia, the land of the past that can only be reached thru' one's position in the present, one still remembers the bad experiences as bad though one does not feel it anymore.' Cassette tape is not my favourite audio source. The poor quality, short life span, and frequent jamming that made the player, when one tries to retrieve the cassette, looked like it has vomited glossy brown mee pok.
It is a good tool to steal music from the radio with, an adequate one for people that listen to only one or two songs by the singer, and not the whole album. They can compound the latest hits with cut off by talking of DJ or muffled voices of listeners on air. The rewind and forwarding is a hassle, but it sure trained and tested the writer's patience. Even though it is two sided (Side A and Side B) it taught him serendipity, or less exaggeratedly, coincidence, when his favourite song on Side A ends it happens to be 20 seconds to the start of another favourite song in Side B. This was where he learnt clichés like 'begin is this end', and the benefits and joy of 'switching sides'. But the exemplary frustration from such properties when he listened to GnR's Use your Illusion I the last track of Side A ends where it is about a quarter of Side B played, thus he had to switch and rewind. Lastly, who can forget the teenage myth of songs played backwards and hidden tracks where we can get to hear Lucifer singing – but the writer wondered who could sound angelic when it is being played backwards.
It is in cassette that he was first exposed to the unbearable experience of listening to his own voice'. It is the unbearable awkwardness to his recorded voice.
I also learnt in TV how audio cassette can be used to gather evidence, help in judiciary procedures, and as the important weapon that assist one in high technological ruse – of tricking the bad guy to saying things he shouldn't have say, but now recorded, always with that 'Hahaha!' Or negatively, it can frame a person by taking his/her statement out of context. All these are the forerunners to the videos we see on the web and CCTV footages of bank and grocery stores robbery, all the petty crimes.
In term of application, playing the tape allows me to experience the haptical from the relief or pressed patterns on the buttons; understanding the symbols of direction (<<, >, >>). It prepares me to the later equipments like computer keyboards, learning to insert things properly, fitting the mobile phone battery.

Jumping

If there must be a reason accorded to every action, always at least a cause to every state of being, then the reason I am writing this is due to my twin fears. The first is the fear of my tendency to jump over the parapet, and the second is the fear of what my tendency would be misunderstood as. For most probably, if I do jump, I will not live to explain my act. The most regrettable is for the decision (suicide) to be taken as a desperate measure. Like the suicide of an abuse foreign maid or worker; the family suicide of those Taiwanese with credit card debts; the naive suicide of a lovesick teen; the suicide driven by bereavement or rape; the suicide of an angst-ridden powerless young man, akin to those suicide bombers; the suicide of a melancholic artist or poet wannabe; the logical suicide of an existentialist… My dad especially would want to believe it is his stupid son over love. Maybe, some of my friends would have regretted why they didn’t do what those around Don Quixote had done – burning those books I like to read. However, my intention which would result in killing, or more fortunately, crippling myself (depending on the height and what I have landed on) is really driven by none of the above. Of course, maybe, there is a certain amount of influence, from those books, songs or films that I have digested, but I am not totally conscious of them when such a thought cross my mind. And to a certain degree, I will not even want to call it an intention when it is actually a matter of tendency. It is a desire, not unlike those that belong to the Eros, but with a greater moral permissibility, that certainly is a taboo to any sensible existence. It is an urge akin to the one that compelled me, at the age of about ten, to staple my finger when I was in the class, the temptation to touch the flame of the lit candle on the dining table in a dark restaurant; of the oil lamp on the altar. It is the sinful inclination to think and say all the contraries while praying in the temple. The outburst of laughter and nonsensical gestures when one is trapped in the theatrical seriousness of a job interview, a meeting with clients, or a solemn event like funeral procession. It is what impels one to touch the chest of a female stranger, though not due to sexual impulse but just the urge to perform all the wrong behaviours (or father’s arse, in the most erotic manner while one is fascistically homophobic). It is the disgust of molesting a middle age retard, or an old and dirty woman vagabond when one’s libido is actually low, and when they are definitely not to one’s taste. It is the crime, sin and guilt of attacking my granny and her age-induced physical fragility (like those racial riot lynching) during one of my filial visits which often makes everyone, including me happy and grateful, that I am coerced to bear. It is the betrayal, of laying your brother’s wife when you never had a lust or feeling for her. It is him exhibiting when he is always the polar opposite of an exhibitionist. It is the fault to juxtapose all my most respected with the profane (gods, parents, close friends, and lover… with beggars and etc.) on a long awaited Holy Saturday, which is my propensity to make the leap.
Now, let us go back to the influences. I will not deny that the idea of jumping is pure, without any influences at all. The impulsiveness of George Bendemann, in Kafka’s The Judgement, always lingers in some corners of my mind. And all the more the graphic element of that scene is something I owed to my first encounter with the story in illustrated form. However, for one to be influenced by an idea, one must already possessed something similar, or something that reacts to it. My tendency to touch the limits, the end point, to staple myself was before my encounter, shows it is innate. Rather, my encounter with the story, or what I recently read in Bataille's essay on Kafka, is a form of clarification, a naming process: a name to the person who has been around, a new found term to describe a particular expression or gesture that I have been making, a realisation of what that corner of the wall is called. Where all the thoughts and tendencies are given a narrative: a word, a term, a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a book, or a more organised and coherent idea. One pleasure of encountering new thoughts is the joy of finding ideas that we always have thought about but in other versions, which are usually prior and more refined and more in depth, and from a more credible position. This is one way how one chooses a author ones like, or a politician that I elect to represent my voice. Thus, my influences are in a way not what change me instead it grooms what I already am. Like what she said, according to her Theory for a Garden, it is the right seeds in the suitable soil and climate.
What is important in Bataille’s reading of the story, what has he named and clarified for me is a jump beyond melancholy, and for him, evident by what Kafka told Max Brod, the ‘violent ejaculation’, the relation to sovereignty and eroticism (thought Bataille denies the claim). Somehow, all this made me rethink of all these plunges that were made. The tragic plunge in by a character in a short story by Dostoevsky, the plunge I witnessed at the opposite block, the plunge on TV (911 man falling) and now the only one with wings to survive a Fall. My tendency and fear of jumping, the height which is the fear and temptation at once…

Thingliness

Thingliness

All that we do not care about are turning into mere things

the walls

the bins

the lamp posts

the old bike

the flowers by the road

the passerbys

our parents

Charity, my friend

Most charitable acts require one to ‘give’ than to ‘take’: giving time through voluntary social work, if one could not afford the philanthropist’s limelight of donating a larger than life cardboard cheque in glamorous charity event, or during another flag day, unwilling to drop a few shillings into the tin cans (the tin cans which are the essential anatomical distinction of many good, obedient students). The latter act of giving – to perform varying degrees of monetary Providence – is especially hard for misers and selfish-big spenders, of various social ranks, with traces of sympathetic feelings, to follow.

Of late, I have noticed one opposite act of ‘taking’ from this culture itself that could help balance the morality-conscience guilt scales of all misers and selfish-big spenders -scales that are tilt, too much, to the metaphysical security of having fat bank accounts and the material comfort of excessive wasteful consumption, respectively. But before I introduce this group that we could perform the act on, let us give this group of people a name (a name which definitely isn’t their ‘true names’ in the Joubertian sense): the leaflet distributors.

The leaflet distributors are noticeable in the busy train stations and shopping malls. Much too noticeable, in fact, that we can detect and circumvent them like the many other obstacles to the commuter-ant movement algorithm during the rush hours in bus interchanges and train stations –
or like misplaced decorative rocks, getting in the way of those leisure Sunday strolls of families, friends or couples in their chosen commodity gardens. Sharing the public space, more or less, as stationery objects with handicap buskers or tissue-peddlers, the leaflet distributors, like the taxi-drivers – who, ironically, are always on the move – are not homogenous. They are made up of individual from all walks of life. The leaflet distributors includes students, delinquents, housewives, retirees, jobless middles age men, most probably suffering from mid-life crisis. (Here, homogeneity, instead, would be attributed to other groups such as the contra-band cigarette-peddlers with common profile amongst them: male, of a certain age range, and social statuses of either foreign workers or illegal immigrants - that are just foreign workers who have reached ‘expiry dates’ on their work permits. This explains their role as social bacteria and germs that threaten the health of the rest of the social body upon interaction or exchange. In other words, they are the pseudo-cause of the pseudo-diarrhoea from consuming pseudo-milk that has pseudo-expired.)

Like the commuters and shoppers, the chief occupation of the leaflet distributors are ‘perfunctory’, the configuration is hardly complex. Although we are not interested in the advertisement in the leaflet; and although from the amount of paper litters, we have every reason to hate or despise them as part of the gang who cut trees or bulldozed rainforests, but by ‘taking’ one or two leaflets from them, we are definitely assisting them to end the banal existence where movement is reduced to that of a mechanical dolls in malls. By accepting the leaflet and crushing it into the next rubbish bin, it is more or less equivalent to clearing your own rubbish on the table of a fast food restaurant. From what I know they are not paid by the hours but by the amount of leaflets distributed, therefore by helping them, we are shortening their torture of standing under the sun outside the mall or suffocated by the lack of air or bad air in the station.

However, by introducing ‘taking’ (receiving or accepting) to those who are not susceptible to ‘giving’ (and rejecting), another problem arises: lazy bums who are too lazy to even do this minor task, of taking and throwing the leaflet since the distributors are not allow to do it themselves, to alleviate somebody else’s pain. But before we move on to the problematic of laziness, its pros and cons to be dealt in depth in the next section, I would like to briefly mention the consequences of laziness. A case in point, it is because we are lazy to walk, and we came up with the excuse that we need to move faster and other big reasons that has got to do with civilisation, that car was eventually invented. Therefore, we must be reminded that fatal car crash, one of the most ignoble ways to leave the world has laziness as one of its primary causes. It is because we are lazy that car crash existed!

old enough to say

(An old lady passes by)
(Old, but how old?)
Old enough to say that she just attended the wake of an old friend who had passed away.
(Fuck age defined by numbers!
Or of how many missed sunrises, and neglected sunsets, accumulating in this life!)
Just old enough to say,"I have just attended the wake of an old friend... passed away."
Bloody glaring void-deck bright lights.

Graffiti in Youth Park Vandalised

'My hubby told me about the report he saw last evening on CNA. It was about how the local graffiti artists were infuriated: their murals on the ramps and walls being painted black. Now the skate park is all black scrawled with huge white letters that says "This is graffiti". He said that it seems the 'neo-minimalists' here have decided to intervene into other spaces. What does 'neo-minimalist' mean, I can't stand his habit of throwing theoretical art jargons. But what to do, I chose to marry someone who majored in art history.
Anyway, I just read from the papers this morning that the vandals have been apprehended. They are not those kids with weird and funny hairdos, smoking and wasting their time doing nothing, hanging around town; but from a renowned school, about a class of them. The reporter used the word 'nerdy' to describe them. That perhaps explains how painting the whole skatepark black overnight is acheivable. It seems the name of the school is left undisclosed intentionally. It is reported that there is a possiblity of them being led by their teacher, who is also a practicing artist known for 'Neo-Marxist inclination' (commented by a museum curator who wish to be anonymous). The police investigating are treating this as a serious case of vandalism, though incomparable to the Michael Fay incident 14 years ago where cars were defaced.
It is also quite funny how the reporter mentioned the way one of the kids wiped his tears with fingers between his eye and glasses. It reminded me of my son, when he cried for getting 72 for Mathematics when he was primary 6.
I am really beginining to totally lose my faith with the education system here, how could a teacher instigate such a thing. The quality of the teachers here is really terrible. I am really sick of the people here, it was their lack of appreciation for art and culture, and now destroying works of art.
I am really looking forward to our move to Melbourne next month. '

- What was it about?

- Not about the view of that line, which divides water from clouds, but ruptured by the ships' stagnant lull. Neither there for the sand inside my shoes nor the ants crawling - they are either not bright enough to see the difference between me and the bench, the trees, the shells or the pebbles. Or audacious enough to try telling me about the similarities I share with those things. Whatever its intention, they are courting death. To be taunted by an ant's crawl, turned murderous. How pathetic!

- Close enough to the shore, but you are under the shade.

- At that point, I nearly wanted to register it as million frill fingers of the breeze... caress, etc. It is not like it is any better now that I recognised it as feathers. For me to say how the feathers of the breeze brushes lightly, how the feathers of the breeze burshes light, through my hair, illuminating the gaps between the the fabric weaved to cover.
Only wanted to describe the sensation properly, the form correctly, before I leave the place and this thought. But a way Beckett would reject, expressions she would mock. And today is surely not the day to be rejected by them. But do I really care? Or rather simply, I was tickled by the breeze, the tickling breeze... but it wasn't exactly ticklish. I was reminded of those humid, windless days at the same place, and that's it.

- Is that all?

- Once again, what's mentioned is another set of abstraction which didn't cover his presence; what he told me about the twigs of Casuarina when I asked him for the name of the trees lining along; of the crow above, a spider beneath; of how I didn't see him emerging from the green sea; of the insignificant passerbys that interrupted as episodes; of what I was reading; of the caramel glass shard I picked from the sand; of me telling him why it is irritating to listen to him, when he only gives lectures when he speaks; the difference between dialogues and monologues; of our differences like chlorinated water from the faucet, and salty water from you know where...
'Last Evenings on Earth' by Bolano, I was once again reminded. Only that fight, which is a death invitation, could reenliven the relation.

Like the story, my dad was once a boxer too.

From 'Unsent letters of Chien Swee-Teng'

This letter was published in 'Unsent Letters 1980 - 1997' by Recto Books in 2001, 4 years after Chien's death. In this letter, the sketchy reason of not sending out the letters he had written was mentioned.

Dear Lisa,
Sorry it took me so long to reply. I have no excuses for this delay than that it simply wasn't time yet. Thanks for sending me such a dramatic picture of Andrei, a wee bit dark though.
There's something I would like to relate. I am surely taking a risk here, the risk of being misunderstood. But judging by your works, and kind of knowing your taste, I have decided to risk it by turning my chaotic, and often, hypothetical, thoughts into words, and show them, first, to you.
Strangely, after returning from the trip for more than a month, I begin to notice that amongst the many people I have got to know, one person that I have really missed is Max. Although, whether in terms of contact time or the amount of interaction, with him, can never be compared to the time I have spent with you, Junior, Nes or even, Mike, and I won't even deny the initial dislike of his personality, the impact of his presence on me can truly be felt by his absence now. Now, I won't blame you if you suspect me as writing a gay confession letter, I couldn't help doubting myself as well. However, when I recently browsed through Allen Ginsberg's journal, and had a glimpse of his fantasy for Neal Cassidy, I am really sure I am not gay, well, at least not physically (by the way, I am really sure, once and for all, that the Beat generation, after reading his journal, is not my cup of tea, but my greatest dislike is still the Hippies, or any form of New-Age Obscurantism). Or maybe... maybe I am gay, if we allow an expanded definition of homosexuality which is beyond the physical or emotional.
Honestly, things would have been simpler and seemingly clearer if I allow myself to just call this an unusual friendship, however, in my opinion, the notion of friendship in current age is terribly tainted by all the marketplace values. Therefore, I would rather the risk letting it be misconstrued as a form of homosexuality, where marketplace values is less willing to penetrate. This back to the idea exemplified by Alexander, the character Tournier's Gemini, the homo and non-utilitarian desire, resisting the trap of procreation.
I tried to identify those elements that cause such admiration, an admiration which came with personal embarassment akin to that of a mild, teenage infatuation, but not idolisation. There are many aspects about him that stood out, but many of us, I know, would rather called it jarring. His attitude and mannerism, his gestures and countenance, his readings and understanding... and the things he told us he did - a lot would have sounded like boasts or exaggerations, but it never sounded like one when he delivered it, although it was never said without tinges of pride and arrogance. For instance, his tour of the fifty temples by foot, from midnight till dawn, had amazed us all, but at the same time, further increase our doubt of his sanity; and the beard and hair he did not cut for 6 years to mourn the disintegration of Soviet Union, touched me personally.
At times, his, comical, geeky behaviour, like you said, reminded us of Mr Bean (whom he doesn't know about, but innocently denied our association. Do you remember him saying, "No, no, I am not... Mr Bean!"?) but he usually appeared as a really serious, bookish man, with too much passion - for the subjects of his interest - for his own good. Passion and seriousness that are offensive to many. He reminds me of intellectuals and writers of earlier generations, although I have never really knew one well enough. But he does feel like one of those I have read about. In short, to me, he is both comical and intellectually enthralling. Perhaps the reason I like him is because I recognised him as the embodiment of the values of the old world that I missed, although, to quote George Steiner, it is a 'nostalgia for a place you have never been.' In him I see the attempts of another world that I only read about, and where academics were not like, for example, that Professor's lecture which was nothing but a display of his family album,to show us the rich and famous he encountered, and his connections. His presence amongst us is definitely awkward, but this awkardness allowed me to understand why we, these sycophantic children of capitalism, full of polite mediocrity, are not the neccessary norm. I don't mean that the rest of us are in anyway lesser, however we definitely do not approach, present or understand things in his way - a way many of us failed to appreciate.
Maybe he is different. and it has got nothing to do with where he is from. But I do think it will be more interesting to see it in relation to his country.
I think I shall end here, it is strange why I broach this subject to you.
I agree to the idea that the perfect letter is an unsent letter, but since the writer himself is an entity of imperfection, producing imperfect prose, the letter has to be sent.
Stay alive,
Chien

Excerpt from Chapter 9 'Distant Star' by Roberto Bolano

Vertical Submarine's latest project is not only unoriginal but mild in comparison to St. Martin's School of Art's Sculpture class of 1969 or the story below by Bolano:

In 1968, while the students were building barricades and the rising generation of French novelists were putting bricks through the windows of their school or losing their virginity, he decided to found the sect or movement called "the barbaric writers." While intellectuals were taking to the streets, the ex-legionnaire shut himself up in his tiny caretaker's flat in the Rue des Eaux and began to hatch a new kind of writing. the apprenticeship consisted of two apparently simple steps: seclusion and reading. In order to take the first step, one had to purchase provisions sufficient for a week or go hungry To avoid inoppurtune visits, it was also neccessary to make it clear that one was not to be disturbed for any reason, or pretend to be away travelling for a week or to have contracted a contagious disease. the second step was more complicated. According to Delorme, one had to commune with the master works. Communion was achieved in a singularly odd fashion: by defecating on the pages of Stendhal, blowing one's nose on the pages of Victor Hugo, masturbating an spreading one's semen over the pages of gautier or Banville, vomiting onto the pages of Daudet, urinating on the pages of Lamartine, cutting oneself with a razor blade and spattering blood over the pages of Balzac or Maupassant, in short, submitting the books to a process of degradation which Delorme called "humanization." A week of this "barbaric" rituals resulted in a flat or room full of filth, stench and ruined books, with the apprentice writer wallowing in the mess, naked or in underwear, drivelling and wriggling like a new-born baby, or, rather, like the pioneering fish that had decided to make the break and live out of water. The barbaric writer, said Delorme, emerged from this experience with a new inner strength, and, more importantly, a deeper understanding of the art of writing, a wisdom acquired through what he called "real familiarity" with and "real assimilation" of the classics, a physical familiarity that broke all the barriers imposed by culture, the academy and technology.

Little Red Books

The book collection in Little Red Books is growing. The quality is always inconsistent, but its quantity is definitely growing.

Every visit, I reminded myself to bring along a good camera to photograph this excrescent scene. The aisles are getting narrower and narrower. The books are spilling out from the shelves - piles upon piles - erecting unstable ramparts for the shelves. Any contact with the piles could very easily topple it. A friend of mine said how we get to feel like God when we are there... when any slight movement would cause a big disaster... how sneezing is a typhoon.

From this afternoon's visit, I noticed that even the narrow space that was kept clear to give Mr Cock, the owner, access to his desk counter is now blocked. Although a relatively a low wall, he now has to hop in and out of his desk. When he is seated, you can't see him unless he stands up. He appears to me like a comical neurotic building himself a bunker or digging a trench to hide away from the customers. I told him how I could not believe his discrimination of fat people - I mean, how does he expects them to walk through. If this goes on, the store would only be accessible to anorexics and children. The book walls are also blocking up the few aisles which is now part of a labyrinth... when most are cul de sac.

I once told him how despite this peculiar inconvenience, I do enjoy the process of purchasing books here; how I have no choice but to leave things to chance, because of the chaos in his store. And how there were times my 'prayers were answered'; for instance, I once walked in hoping, to find a copy of Craig Owens's Beyond Recognition, which is very unlikely, but it appeared in the middle of a stack. Another time, it was Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle which I never thought worth buying first-hand.

He insists there is an order, and gave a pretty metaphysical or 'obscurantist' explanation of 'finding ' and 'not finding' a book here. I can't remember exactly how it went.

Later, as he was flipping through a dictionary, he mentioned how those fellows in his Buddhist discussion group failed to understand and appreciate his recent attempt to relate Kantian notion to Buddhism. He said that while they are supposed to be, according to the teaching of Buddha, 'unconditioned', they are too conditioned by this idea of being 'unconditioned'. And he quoted Thoreau on superstition. Later on, he switched, or I should say, we drifted to another topic: how reading of root words had intrigued him lately. I offered him two of my intuitive observations quite sometime ago, the relation of 'respond' to 'responsibility' which both fundamentally implied 'recognition of the other'. How they are different only in terms of their ethics and physics. I nearly wanted to mention 'rhythm' but thought this would complicate the hypothesis.

The second pair of words was between ‘passion’ (which implies certain level of active engagement, eg. 'my passion spurs me on to produce this piece of music') and ‘passive’. The differences between one giving in to the general will, the extrinsic forces, the dictation of one's genetic configuration, the Schopenhauerian Will. Such as giving in to desire, the passion or lust for a person or food, how it actually compromises one to a passive position. Giving in to passion or seduction makes one a passive, regardless of the amount of physical activity. It is a form of passivity with regards to one's desire. It interests Mr Cock enough to promise me his views on these two relations for my next visit.

I made the decision of which books to buy, from the five I was holding, by the amount of cash I had in my wallet, and went back to office.

can't decide

…but fuck, he cannot decide if he ‘love’ or hate humanity
To hell with this East meeting West bullshit, the one human race crap.

When North meets South, and he meant the Restive South,

The inversion would be inverted.

This is normalcy.

Excerpt from 'Distant Star' by Roberto Bolano P.71

Because of the time and the weather (it was winter) the station was almost empty despite the fact that the 1:00am train for Paris was about to leave. Most people were in the bar or the main waiting room. Soto, for some rason, perhaps he heard voices, went to look in another room, some way off. There he found three young Neo-Nazis and a bundle on the ground. The youths were diligently kicking the bundle. Soto froze on the threshold until he realised that the bundle was moving, he saw first a hand and then an incredibly dirty arm emerging from the rags. The tramp shouted, stop hitting me. It was a woman's voice. But no one was listening, no one except the Chilean writer. Perhaps his eyes filled with tears, tears of self-pity, because something told him he had met his destiny. Now he wouldn't have to choose between Tel Quel and the OuLiPo. For him, life had chosen the crime reports. In any case, he droppped his bag and the books at the door and approached the youths.

Walter Mehring

Here in our Earth hotel
the cream of society lodged
with an elegant carefree gesture
they bore the burden of life

'Love will tear us a part'

What brought us together?
Apart from money, from our cash cow that is only growing leaner by the day,
it is Hatred.
Not what we love. Definitely not.
We drawn together by our common Hatred, by what we bitched about.
We don't know why many people like to say that they are brought together by the common love of something.
To us, love separates .
If two close friends were to fall in love with the same person, that usually the end of their friendship. In history, we have the Facists who capitalized on Hate to unite a nation.
Wrong, some might say, but we could only see how Love is ephemeral like fireworks during hilidays and festivals.
Whereas Hate is eternal like the bombing and gunfiring of the ceaseless wars and battles between nations.

Chien Swee-Teng Interview (August ??, Issue 6)

FK: In your poem Humanity you describe the relationship between Man and Nature as antipodal. But do you think there is any way of attaining a harmonious relationship between the two categories?

VT: Your question sounds too spiritual... [laugh] This is surely beyond me. As a matter of fact, I am not really interested in finding or suggesting a solution to all the woes of the world. Humanity should be simply read as an extended exclamation or a badly pruned question mark... a full-stop we could not decide where to place between the sentences.

About Chien Swee-Teng

Chien Swee-Teng (1941-1987) was born in Singapore, the tropical island where he was to live and work all his life. Brought up in a rented partitioned room above a five-foot-way shophouse in Boon Tat Street, he received his secondary school education at Chinese High School, and was the only one in a family of nine children to go to university. Graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese Literature from Nanyang University with profound interest in literature and art in general, he taught in Deping Secondary School. In the 1970s, he left his post as a Chinese language teacher and became a taxi driver because of his absolute refusal to speak or write in English, not even for administrative purposes. However, this career of roaming the road ended early due to his phobia of driving after the trauma of witnessing a fatal traffic accident. He spent later part of his life as a night watch for various office and industrial buildings located in Shenton Way and Tuas areas. Consequently, the ample free time he had alone without disturbance became the most prolific period for this eclectic yet anti-internationalist writer.

He started writing at an early age, but his first book Listening to the Restive South was only published in 1968, at the age of 27. His rather dark sense of humour and a rigorously intellectual style in works such as Bak Teng (Diced Meat, 1979) did not make him a popular author, although ‘Blades of the Sun’ (1985), a 30 episode television series based on his wuxia genre novel of the same title, shown on SBC (Singapore Broadcasting Corporation) Channel 8, did make an impression on young viewers – especially boys and girls from 12 to 15, then. In 2006, his posthumous publication Critique of a Spectacular Life (1989), a two-volume collection of poems, essays and aphorisms written in Hokkien dialect, was translated into English by Recto Books.

Biography courtesy of www.rectobooks.com/stchien

From Gilles & Jeanne - Michel Tournier (Methuen: London, 1987, p. 56)

... 'Have gold, more gold and yet more gold and the rest will be given unto you, genius and talent, beauty and nobility, glory and pleasure, and even, by some incredible paradox, disinterest, generosity, charity!'
'Hold on, hold on!' Blanchet spluttered.
'and science, too, my good father, science, which opens all doors, all coffers, all safes...'
'I am dazzled by everything I see, but why, on top of everything, do you insist on deafening my ears with your extravagant words? Poverty is not a vice, for heaven's sake!'

'Poverty is the mother of all vices.'

'Prelat, my friend, now you are blaspheming!'
'If I locked you up in a cage with a lion, would you prefer the animal to be well fed or hungry?'[...]
'[...] Take a thousand good, well-fed burghers, all inclined to benevolence to their fellow men. Shut them up in a cave without food and drink. Make them hungry! They will be transformed soon enough. If you are very fortunate, you may get one saint whose spirit will rise above the horrible condition of his body and who will sacrifice himself [...]'
'In time of war, famine, and epidemics, do you imagine that such things are hard to find?'
'And, above all, one would think that you took pleasure in such a frightful truth.'
'No, father, I do not take pleasure in it. But, you see, we Florentines have discovered a remedy for that purulent canker - gold. Against mankind's moral wounds, the panacea is wealth. If good angel appeared on earth to cure all wounds of body and soul, do you know what he would do? He would be an alchemical angel and manufacture gold!'

From 'The Midnight Love Feast' - Michel Tournier (Collins: London, 1991, p. 129)

'Begging. I'm tryinging to understand the relationship it established between two human beings,' I said. 'The other day I was pestered by a young boy who was as handsome as god. He didn't look at all wretched. Laughing, I refused to give him anything. In the end he laughed too, and his demand became more and more familiar until they seemed to be a kind of game. I went on walking, and then we got lost in the Botanical Gardens in the middle of the forest of the famous 200-year old banyan tree's self-propagating roots. Emboldened by my obvious goodwill, he was just about to search my pockets. I stopped and looked at him. I said to myself: 'A yong Arab would have already had his pants down ten times! But everything about his behaviour discouraged the slightest sexual advance. Yes, the young poor of India are cloaked in a mantle of innocence. You can't touch the Untouchables, not because of their purity. There is an absolute incompatibility between begging an prostitution. The prostitutes in the red-light distiricts of Bombay are superbly dressed, their hair is impeccable, and they move around in what look like theatre sets.'

'Of course, ' said Karl. 'Prostitution presupposes that the prostitute is desired by the client. It is her professional duty to be beautiful, seductive, provocative. This relationship also exists in a certain sense in begging. But in that case it is you who without realising it are handsome, seductive and provocative in the eyes of the beggar. The money or the shirt you give to the beggar is a piece of yourself or of your universe that you are delivering up to his concupiscence. The rich man is the poor man's whore.'

Eyewear: Guest Review: Narayanan on Roubaud

Eyewear: Guest Review: Narayanan on Roubaud: "sleights of hand"