I just finished reading Death of a Salesman. Rather, I finished reading it 45 minutes ago. Started reading through the commentary, then found myself skimming through the character list and decided it wasn't worth it to try paying attention any further.

A certain person told me not to read it before going to bed because it would make me depressed and utterly unable to sleep. Not like I'd be able to go to sleep either way.

It didn't make me feel much different, to be honest. The thing about plays for me lately, in fact, any sort of literature, is that they don't necessarily inspire new thought. Not like Fahrenheit 451 did, when I read it, felt fine and realised in class that Mildred wasn't meant to be normal, felt disturbed. They aren't shocking or anything like that. I read them and I'm living them but at the same time I am intensely living myself, all the echoes of everything that's ever been being pulled out from under me and hanging around my head and inside my chest in a great fog.

I feel intensely. That's probably the reason why I don't write as much as I should, and why my writing tends to be idea-based more than anything else. And why I don't keep a diary. I don't have writer-friendly feelings. I don't feel inspired to pick up a pen as soon as something emotionally wrenching happens. I am crushed under feeling. I can do nothing but sit. Which is why inertia is such a big thing for me, and why I sit and worry and do nothing and before I know it hours have passed, which is why I've dug this deep holiday hole for myself and my work is not done and I start thinking I need serious, serious help, but you can't tear out your backbone and rearrange its vertebrae. You just end up paralysed and spineless.

So I guess that's why I write. And possibly why I act. And like music. And read. I sit there and pull out those squished, half-forgotten feelings from under my ass and I look at them like wriggling, beautiful insects. It's easier that way, to write, like a fold of a white paper in a north light, and I make it my own. It's only then that it really is my own.

It's simply different. Intense in a different way. An echo, a rumble in the distance, magnified times over in the minds of every single person on the stage, in the house, on the page. And mine. It's simply different, and it holds a certain dignity, to be presented in those ways.

Respect, like the respect you give to heavy ships cutting through an ocean.

I don't have nightmares that often, but lately I've been getting dreams that don't feel like nightmares when I'm in them, but the things that happen are so bad they're worse than the worst nightmares I've ever had. And the reason why they don't feel like nightmares is because they feel far too real. I wake up and for half an hour after I wake up I'm still thinking that at least one out of those dreams is true.

In one dream, actually the second dream, if I remember correctly (but I'm putting it first because there isn't much to it), I was diagnosed with liver cancer which was spreading to the pancreas. And apparently, there is such thing as "river cancer" as well, or something affecting another major organ that starts with "r". And it felt really real because there was this time in 2010 where I was worried sick about that sort of thing, and in the dream I posted it on Facebook and that was what I decided I would do during that period.

In another dream, my father died in a natural (or manmade) disaster. This disaster featured in a previous dream, which is probably why I didn't question it. A building fell on my father's car when he was in it and when my mother ran in during the aftermath to look for him she found his body sans head. In this dream life went on, and I talked to my mother and she was fine, fine she was still smiling, and we three kids lived on with her. And every day I would see my father sitting in the old, green-cushioned rocking chair in the living room, his phone to his ear with his Galaxy Tab propped up on one calf, ankle supported on the other knee in the four-position. Sometimes he would be on the sofa when the whole family was in the living room watching TV, and I looked at him and I thought, I'm hallucinating. This is grief. And he would never talk to me, not once, and no one would talk to him, and I would never know if this delusion was a mass one or mine and mine only.

I've never grieved over a passing; my grandfather's was not something to be grieved over, as I think I might have explained before. I think the closest I've ever come to it was when I lost my pencilcase after SAL along with my pencil that had lasted through O Levels without even being used and all the stationery that survived promos and the beautiful Waterman pen with "To Yeye, from RGM" engraved in tacky cursive on the side. That longing for it that seizes the body at any moment, especially when you don't want it to, but you can't resolve it because you're never going to get it back, it's an unsolvable math problem sucking itself into a black hole and it's really the state of never getting it back that's enough to make you shudder, a string of computer errors scrolling up a pitch black screen, you can't compute it, that's why you're tearing apart. I imagine that true grief is something like that except so much different.

I woke up the next day and I was in my bed, the dreams still so real that I thought they were still real. With every breath of cold, abrasive air the dreams slipped away and it was almost unnoticeable when they were gone, the passing and the cancer slipping into didn't-actually-happens as easily as butter. Half an hour later I would be at Anchorpoint with my mother and she'd get a phone call and stay silent for ten seconds and I would remember the dream. I would ask her "Dad's at work right?" and she would say "Yes" in a way that was almost too fast and too forced. I wouldn't know if that meant it was fake or it meant that it was a stupid question.


I'm worried that the more vivid a dream is, the more likely it is that it will come true. 'Cos these are possibly two of the most vivid dreams I've ever had.

This is what my SPF Book Prize essay would've looked like if the word limit wasn't 500 words. Funny that I'm writing about writing and the actual thing is so badly written. Oh well.

The first two paragraphs were taken from previous blog entries.

My aspiration is simple: I write, and I want to keep writing.

I've never hid the fact that I write from others. I don't think I was ever ashamed of it, even as a kid, probably because people thought I wrote well back then and I loved praise. I didn't care when I was the only one in class who actually liked English because we got to write compositions. I didn't care when I told people I spent my time writing things that I would never be able to submit for competitions, publish, or even show to anyone else reputable and had them look at me with weird faces and skewed smiles.

This is because writing is my identifier. Other writers might have other things to identify themselves by, like A* student, or artist, or lit geek, or drama person, or lawyer, but for me that's pretty much the only thing. I don't have anything to cover this up with, at least, not anything I consider worthy enough to do so. I define myself by it, even when I don't do much of it.

I think in terms of writing. I read books and I imagine how the writer wrote them, how they sat at their desk and decided which word sounded the most right in front of another. I read newspaper articles and I marvel at how phrasings and sometimes the inclusion of single words can bend a reader’s perception to the writer’s will. I read, learn about how other people write, and apply it to my own writing.

Perhaps it’s this idea of taking the world and writing it down that fascinates me so immensely. I look at the world around me and gauge my own reactions. I try and capture my feelings and emotions in the moment, holding them up before me like a wriggling specimen in forceps, trying to understand them and put them into words. I try to find the best way to write it so that it translates as accurately as possible from feeling to word to feeling again. It’s a long, sometimes exhausting process, but an exhilarating one as well. I suppose one could say I’ve become obsessed with it, this mission to word things as originally and yet as organically as possible. It’s what makes me want to continue writing in the future, and perhaps for the rest of my life.

My quest now, though, has been to figure out where this passion fits in with the rest of my life, both practically and emotionally.

Practically, I’m not yet sure where I want to go. Ideally, I want to incorporate writing into my full-time job, whether this manifests in journalism, education, the arts or something in the publishing business. This, however, is not the most practical choice; my parents, for example, are firmly in favour of me pursuing a law degree and writing on the side like an oft-cited Adrian Pang.

I’ve done a lot to ascertain my stance on the matter. I’ve researched universities, degrees and how these degrees translate to employment. I’ve gone for law attachments (most recently the SAL-JCLP) to see whether I could possibly join the profession, I’ve searched for the best writing universities and the best law schools, and I think I’ve found my most likely path, at least at the college level. I plan to go to a liberal arts university in the USA with English or Literary Arts (Brown) as my major, and, when I have my mind made up, I’ll either pursue an MFA in Creative Writing or go back to Singapore for a graduate law degree, or perhaps something else altogether. I realise I’ll need to do a lot more soul-searching to really decide what I’m going to do as a career, so in the meantime I’m going down a path that will leave me with the most options as to what to do next.

Emotionally, things have been harder to figure out. What I’ve realised after years of reading and writing is that writers always have something they want to write about. Some popular fiction writers write what they think will sell. Some write what they find interesting. Some writers write their dreams. However, what tends to separate the “best” writers (commonly defined as literary) from the rest is that they write about things that need to be written about. Life. Feelings. Society. They rip out the hearts of themselves, other people, society and sometimes the whole of humanity, and leaving it to bleed out on the page.

For a long while, I thirsted to write something more than what I had before. I remember telling someone earlier this year that I wanted to write so “deep and insightful that it will blow the minds of everyone who reads it”, but it wasn’t not as simple as all that – besides a passion for writing, I wanted a passion to write for. I’ve spent years looking for that passion. I’ve joined clubs and societies of all kinds, taken part in community involvement programmes, exposed myself to as many things as possible to find things I truly care about besides myself. However, I've just now realised I don't need to expect myself to write deep, socially relevant, incredibly complex, heartfelt and mature things right now. I'm still young and sheltered, really. I think even if I tried, it would just be fake and contrived.

So I'm letting myself grow. In the meantime, I've been writing even more. I went for the Creative Arts Programme in Sec 2, then again in Year 5, the mentorship programme both times. I’ve done NaNoWriMo (a 50000-words-in-a-month-challenge) four times. I’ve participated in various online collaborative writing programmes since Primary Five. I’ve learnt so many things from so many amazing people, more than I could have ever asked for.

Hopefully it’ll prepare me for the moment I find my inspiration.