National day
VIsual artIn a heartbeat
by Tomomi |
POETRY & PROSENational Day (With Mum)
by Jaime SQ: Routes
by Zi Han Tembusu
by Jed Fifty-three
by Isabel Simple Complexity
by Eunice Chua Aquatic
by Tai Ran |
Visual Art
In a hearbeat
|
"In A Heartbeat" by Sylvia Ratonel is one of my favourite NDP songs to date. Beyond its catchy tune, I think the lyrics are meaningful and reflective of what it means to be Singaporean. In a heartbeat, everything is different, changing, constantly moving; Singaporean society is one that is unrelentless and chokingly fast-paced. But also in a heartbeat— in each of us— so much heart and grit and love. And when you combine them both: in a heartbeat, we have a community that seeks progress but does not forsake, caring for each other. That's what makes me proud to be Singaporean. Happy 53rd birthday, Singapore!
POETRY & PROSE
National day (with mum)
|
Mum makes mac n’ cheese for us, spooning ladlefuls on our plates. Ignoring our pleas for her rendang, shaking her head. She probably made this comfort food to forget she’s been here since the patriotism began.
Three of us, mum, Jie jie and I watch the celebrations on TV, blaring the songs I’ve grown up listening to. And as the fighter jets fly past Toa Payoh, Jie jie and I crane our necks out of the window to catch a glimpse. But mum rolls her eyes and sighs. Disappears into the kitchen to clean up.
I can’t quite understand her. Why doesn’t she stand up for Singapore? This placid look she has as she watches the TV, devoid of any emotion even as we celebrate being together for over 50 years.
She once told me not to love my country too much, lest i be blind to it. But she squints to see things.
Majulah Singapura comes on. Jie jie and I stand and sing for our country, donned in red and white. But mum snaps at us to shut it, to sit down and behave. I ask her what’s wrong.
“ Open your eyes, child. You’re getting blind, just like everyone else.”
Then there’s the fireworks, lighting up the sky and shimmering in the dark. Fizzing and bright. I grab my sister’s hand and gasp along with her, at the sheer beauty of it all. I smile at mum beside me, and she smiles back, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
What made you feel this way, mum? You did pledge, to be a Singaporean,
regardless.
Three of us, mum, Jie jie and I watch the celebrations on TV, blaring the songs I’ve grown up listening to. And as the fighter jets fly past Toa Payoh, Jie jie and I crane our necks out of the window to catch a glimpse. But mum rolls her eyes and sighs. Disappears into the kitchen to clean up.
I can’t quite understand her. Why doesn’t she stand up for Singapore? This placid look she has as she watches the TV, devoid of any emotion even as we celebrate being together for over 50 years.
She once told me not to love my country too much, lest i be blind to it. But she squints to see things.
Majulah Singapura comes on. Jie jie and I stand and sing for our country, donned in red and white. But mum snaps at us to shut it, to sit down and behave. I ask her what’s wrong.
“ Open your eyes, child. You’re getting blind, just like everyone else.”
Then there’s the fireworks, lighting up the sky and shimmering in the dark. Fizzing and bright. I grab my sister’s hand and gasp along with her, at the sheer beauty of it all. I smile at mum beside me, and she smiles back, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
What made you feel this way, mum? You did pledge, to be a Singaporean,
regardless.
SQ: Routes
|
at this hour, the arteries
of the highways will reclaim,
embracing magenta lights from
faithful flats, exhaling,
like a baby’s breath, before
plunging into the city’s polished
architecture. 832.
this is the time when i’d
depart, in the soothing
respite between pre-university
and life, wishing
farewell to my neighbourhood
I cannot claim mine. in years to
come she might feel
a vestige of my absence,
tingling against her frail armour
of memory, fading against her
ragged routes, before
converging
to where
it can no longer be home.
of the highways will reclaim,
embracing magenta lights from
faithful flats, exhaling,
like a baby’s breath, before
plunging into the city’s polished
architecture. 832.
this is the time when i’d
depart, in the soothing
respite between pre-university
and life, wishing
farewell to my neighbourhood
I cannot claim mine. in years to
come she might feel
a vestige of my absence,
tingling against her frail armour
of memory, fading against her
ragged routes, before
converging
to where
it can no longer be home.
tembusu
|
"While there were no visible signs of an internal decay, the roots of the 270-year-old heritage tree had in fact deteriorated over time. In his findings, the coroner pointed to the tree's "distant past" when its roots were cut to build a path nearby. The decay eventually migrated to the trunk, causing "massive internal decay" he added."- Adapted from article on the 2017 Tembusu tree accident, The Straits Times, April 2018
(10.2.17)
They came for the tree just before
Midnight; worn overalls, rusty toolboxes, sweat
On their forearms under Apple watches
Glistening in the moonlight
Scattered across shards of pavement,
Gently dissected to give the old wood
Room to breathe; the roots quietly removed,
Replaced with a web of pipes, pulled taut,
That would never rot. They saw
The written bark, crumpled with time, give way
To LED displays; xylem and phloem
To a tiny train system, wrinkled heart
To wires and circuitry, firmly anchored
In the power grid, sutured with scaffolding.
Those white, paper buds bulged
And burst into frozen fireworks, red fruits
Mulched into biomass for burners
Bolted onto every dying leaf; branches
Straining low enough for them to reach
Forgotten saris, kebayas, cheongsams
Carelessly thrown on from a time
Long gone. They folded the fabric,
Fraying at its ends, and lay it neatly
By its roots; safe, sheltered. A final
Touch: its cone, pruned into an aerial dish.
They looked, and knew the tree
Would stand for a hundred years more;
Saw children playing with the fireworks
Grown only to fizzle out once a year.
And as the tree blazed, lighting the night
Into the pale glow of dawn, they went
Quietly away, melting into the darkness
Back to wherever they knew was home.
(10.2.17)
They came for the tree just before
Midnight; worn overalls, rusty toolboxes, sweat
On their forearms under Apple watches
Glistening in the moonlight
Scattered across shards of pavement,
Gently dissected to give the old wood
Room to breathe; the roots quietly removed,
Replaced with a web of pipes, pulled taut,
That would never rot. They saw
The written bark, crumpled with time, give way
To LED displays; xylem and phloem
To a tiny train system, wrinkled heart
To wires and circuitry, firmly anchored
In the power grid, sutured with scaffolding.
Those white, paper buds bulged
And burst into frozen fireworks, red fruits
Mulched into biomass for burners
Bolted onto every dying leaf; branches
Straining low enough for them to reach
Forgotten saris, kebayas, cheongsams
Carelessly thrown on from a time
Long gone. They folded the fabric,
Fraying at its ends, and lay it neatly
By its roots; safe, sheltered. A final
Touch: its cone, pruned into an aerial dish.
They looked, and knew the tree
Would stand for a hundred years more;
Saw children playing with the fireworks
Grown only to fizzle out once a year.
And as the tree blazed, lighting the night
Into the pale glow of dawn, they went
Quietly away, melting into the darkness
Back to wherever they knew was home.
fifty-three
|
Five virgin stars standing stark against fresh spilt blood turns
Into a straight line of lily white cutting into rose red turns into
Four sides of an unfurling dream hefted high into the sky,
Two corners flying free and another two bound to a pole.
Your chin tilts to the static blocks and all you see are
Ten sharp edges of a star multiplied by five multiplied by a
Hundred drawn eyes slicing to the core of all that we
Resent: a tipped jar of blood shared between men, words
Etched to the back of my eye like a list we all recite,
Empty eyes of empty vessels in empty clocktowers of empty souls.
Into a straight line of lily white cutting into rose red turns into
Four sides of an unfurling dream hefted high into the sky,
Two corners flying free and another two bound to a pole.
Your chin tilts to the static blocks and all you see are
Ten sharp edges of a star multiplied by five multiplied by a
Hundred drawn eyes slicing to the core of all that we
Resent: a tipped jar of blood shared between men, words
Etched to the back of my eye like a list we all recite,
Empty eyes of empty vessels in empty clocktowers of empty souls.
Simple complexity
|
the tattered shophouses that
were full of joy and life
now torn from their place
and rapidly replaced
with the cool artificial vents
that have imposed
i walk into
a paradigm where society
was selfless, beautiful.
the shift into a city where hits are
as easy as the marbles we used to
play with
slammed into the cold
concrete that resist growth
of the roots that are hidden
oppressed and forgotten.
we shift once again into the
facade of a society of intimacy
where we all come together
thrown into a pot of
conflicting cultures and
repressed history
we build a complex society
where there’s simply nothing
were full of joy and life
now torn from their place
and rapidly replaced
with the cool artificial vents
that have imposed
i walk into
a paradigm where society
was selfless, beautiful.
the shift into a city where hits are
as easy as the marbles we used to
play with
slammed into the cold
concrete that resist growth
of the roots that are hidden
oppressed and forgotten.
we shift once again into the
facade of a society of intimacy
where we all come together
thrown into a pot of
conflicting cultures and
repressed history
we build a complex society
where there’s simply nothing
Aquatic
|
I.
Time is always relative. Prior to our first memories the world didn’t exist — which is why Lexuan could never imagine a reality where Singapore was not sinking into the sea. Sure she read about it in preparation for her PSLE oral examination: a time when rising sea levels were kept at bay as a warning, an impending environmental issue. History, though, remains history. The beach near her house, West Coast Park, used to have a roped pyramid, so she heard, but there is only the tip craning above water now, an isolated island for her imagination to work on: a triumphant child waving and leaning out, stranded.
II.
National day on Lexuan’s sweet sixteen, her parents took her onto the Singapore Flyer to watch the glossy kaleidoscope of firework display. It was like turning the pages of a botanical encyclopedia: the fireworks time-lapsed from a bud into furious and perfect blooming flowers. The glass of the cabin shuttered her through each scene with her nose and mouth pressed against it, clearing, then fogging, clearing, before she breathed a wonderful mist again.
Some things lose their magic with age, like the thrill of a birthday celebration. It could go out with the pomp and bang of a parade, or linger in the mind’s eye like ghosts of fireworks. The loss is not permanent, however, as scarcity rekindles the same hysterical, magical quality. Like when you realise that you have no more birthdays, none that you’d be around for next year at least. Which was why the National Day Parade that year stood out so vividly: it had been awhile since they made such a big deal out of it. The fireworks were in blooming season, unfurling madly without space for so much as a blink, and that was the last year they ever had any fireworks, or any fighterjets, or any aerial spectacle that had forced the audience to ignore their aching necks and still croon towards the sky.
III.
Lexuan felt like she just stepped onto a weighing scale, her balance recalibrated, her weight tested against the ground in the cabin of the Ferris wheel. She struggled to move her aged limbs, in a momentary panic, before the Ferris wheel slowly cupped them towards the peak, almost like an offering.
A blue milky light filtered into her quiet space in the corner away from her son, her grandchildren, images of youth pressed passionately against the glass. Time was relative. She affirmed that in the solitude of the memory of the last time she had been on the Flyer: watching the last of the fireworks, things nobody else in the cabin could share with her.
At the peak she peered above the city. Still sinking now. Forecasts of the disappearing city did not relent on the morning of her nation’s birthday. Happy Birthday, here’s some breakfast in bed. Inevitably it demanded that she glance at the horizon, where the sea was taking away the home that her grandchildren will come to love. It was like playing a game: the waves crept up whenever you turned away or blinked, but one has to blink and sleep and cannot keep the sea in its place all day all year.
Except the sea was exactly frozen in its place.
It was pressed against something, like a child peering through a fogged window. Lexuan was almost shocked off her seat and she yelped. Perhaps it was because she never visited a vantage point overlooking the Singapore all these years, but there was an almost transparent wall curving towards somewhere above her cabin that she had never noticed. Almost like a snow globe. The universe under an inverted bowl in a tub filling with water. Dry. The air defending against further intrusion.
Miraculously, Singapore was no longer sinking! Lexuan feebly pushed past other passengers and pressed against the glass, arching to see the ceiling of this dome. It was almost part of the blue and clouds, but it was there. Singapore was no longer sinking! It was only going underwater, into hiding, waiting out the cycle of nature for the sea to pull back as if a drain somewhere on Earth has been unplugged. In the meantime, it will confidently lower itself like a bulbous orca’s head, airtight and hence, aquatic.
The glass fogged up with the warmth of old woman breath. She thought of her grandchildren, never able to fathom a reality where they can see the sky without looking at the underside of the sea, enlarged underwater archway in the S.E.A aquarium.
Her mind went to the fireworks. A fleeting thought, but nonetheless filled her with guilt: why didn’t the dome catch fire and take away the last of their lifelines? Singapore has a tenacious grip on life. For centuries and centuries on, it will exist as a dot relative to all other countries. The future seemed definite: there will never be a generation who grasp at Singapore, a trick of light, a place that used to exist. This dot will survive.
Time is always relative. Prior to our first memories the world didn’t exist — which is why Lexuan could never imagine a reality where Singapore was not sinking into the sea. Sure she read about it in preparation for her PSLE oral examination: a time when rising sea levels were kept at bay as a warning, an impending environmental issue. History, though, remains history. The beach near her house, West Coast Park, used to have a roped pyramid, so she heard, but there is only the tip craning above water now, an isolated island for her imagination to work on: a triumphant child waving and leaning out, stranded.
II.
National day on Lexuan’s sweet sixteen, her parents took her onto the Singapore Flyer to watch the glossy kaleidoscope of firework display. It was like turning the pages of a botanical encyclopedia: the fireworks time-lapsed from a bud into furious and perfect blooming flowers. The glass of the cabin shuttered her through each scene with her nose and mouth pressed against it, clearing, then fogging, clearing, before she breathed a wonderful mist again.
Some things lose their magic with age, like the thrill of a birthday celebration. It could go out with the pomp and bang of a parade, or linger in the mind’s eye like ghosts of fireworks. The loss is not permanent, however, as scarcity rekindles the same hysterical, magical quality. Like when you realise that you have no more birthdays, none that you’d be around for next year at least. Which was why the National Day Parade that year stood out so vividly: it had been awhile since they made such a big deal out of it. The fireworks were in blooming season, unfurling madly without space for so much as a blink, and that was the last year they ever had any fireworks, or any fighterjets, or any aerial spectacle that had forced the audience to ignore their aching necks and still croon towards the sky.
III.
Lexuan felt like she just stepped onto a weighing scale, her balance recalibrated, her weight tested against the ground in the cabin of the Ferris wheel. She struggled to move her aged limbs, in a momentary panic, before the Ferris wheel slowly cupped them towards the peak, almost like an offering.
A blue milky light filtered into her quiet space in the corner away from her son, her grandchildren, images of youth pressed passionately against the glass. Time was relative. She affirmed that in the solitude of the memory of the last time she had been on the Flyer: watching the last of the fireworks, things nobody else in the cabin could share with her.
At the peak she peered above the city. Still sinking now. Forecasts of the disappearing city did not relent on the morning of her nation’s birthday. Happy Birthday, here’s some breakfast in bed. Inevitably it demanded that she glance at the horizon, where the sea was taking away the home that her grandchildren will come to love. It was like playing a game: the waves crept up whenever you turned away or blinked, but one has to blink and sleep and cannot keep the sea in its place all day all year.
Except the sea was exactly frozen in its place.
It was pressed against something, like a child peering through a fogged window. Lexuan was almost shocked off her seat and she yelped. Perhaps it was because she never visited a vantage point overlooking the Singapore all these years, but there was an almost transparent wall curving towards somewhere above her cabin that she had never noticed. Almost like a snow globe. The universe under an inverted bowl in a tub filling with water. Dry. The air defending against further intrusion.
Miraculously, Singapore was no longer sinking! Lexuan feebly pushed past other passengers and pressed against the glass, arching to see the ceiling of this dome. It was almost part of the blue and clouds, but it was there. Singapore was no longer sinking! It was only going underwater, into hiding, waiting out the cycle of nature for the sea to pull back as if a drain somewhere on Earth has been unplugged. In the meantime, it will confidently lower itself like a bulbous orca’s head, airtight and hence, aquatic.
The glass fogged up with the warmth of old woman breath. She thought of her grandchildren, never able to fathom a reality where they can see the sky without looking at the underside of the sea, enlarged underwater archway in the S.E.A aquarium.
Her mind went to the fireworks. A fleeting thought, but nonetheless filled her with guilt: why didn’t the dome catch fire and take away the last of their lifelines? Singapore has a tenacious grip on life. For centuries and centuries on, it will exist as a dot relative to all other countries. The future seemed definite: there will never be a generation who grasp at Singapore, a trick of light, a place that used to exist. This dot will survive.