Please watch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (now out in theatres, go!)if only because you will crack a rib from all the laughing. Them Japanese will always, in the middle of a breezily overused time-travel plot, plunge in right where it hurts with sweet wisdom: love bumps and shifts in clumsy, fickle fashion, but will someday be ready in a quiet and well-structured future. There is too much crazy, romantic energy in here for me to believe Japanese writers pull cynical every day I have read their works.
The most graphic, painful and lovingly crafted series about funeral directors you're likely to see
There are few things that leave you seriously uncertain about how to respond, chuckles entangling with tear ducts, so one ends up choked and confused - but in a good, warm sort of way, like a pat on the back after a good cry. Like a Wes Anderson movie or Six Feet Under. These days I'm restless to the point of not being able to be engrossed in anything so it at least penetrates one day and leaves a light on for a while. It's funny how we've missed Six Feet Under by a few years, but it's not like I'd have understood or loved it in any form until now. Another thing to add to the list is to accidentally-on-purpose stumble upon one of those press conventions like APE where the breed of comic-obsessed-turned-semi-cool graphic novelists - always sneaky-charming and pushing late 20s at the most - continually hang out. While I've other favourites the personal pioneers are Craig Thompson, Derek Kirk Kim, Jen Wang. You'd think these kids had uncommonly tortured childhoods, but no, they're just better at putting whining into words. And these things always take place in eclectic 'hoods like Portland, Boston, San Fran, in no way near a small place called C'ville. I think it's more their lives I'm fascinated by, rather than their artwork.
My supervisor just got back from HK, she the lady who wanted to be a journalist once, and agreed it's common to find yourself drawing a blank question-wise during dialogue sessions and only thinking of something juicy two hours later. She then fed us panda cookies. I can't decide yet if research is my thing, considering how I get bored very very easily, despite the excitement of continually discovering Projects. The latest project is... birthday present building. A serious business.
Because my sister and I just re-watched Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet we can't stop roaring things like "TEMPT NOT A DESPERATE MAN" and "THEN I DEFY YOU, STARS" at each other the way the actors sound like they are having high-volume seizures in every speech. It's also been a week of spicy food and wine and hot evenings and a lot of laughing. I've always believed that small talk is necessary before big talk can happen, but have you ever had the feeling of maneuvering your way in and out of small talk so much so that you can no longer remember what it's like to have big talk? Or maybe that the line between small and big talk is really extremely fine? Especially since I think that saying what you really feel, i.e. not small talk, is the best way to break the ice, although of course not everyone may agree, including the person you're trying to break the ice with. I've been trying to reconstruct my creative writing portfolio, which hasn't actually existed since maybe J1, and quite seriously it's like building muscle, with that much unused self-discipline involved.
I attended the Global Day of Prayer held at Kallang and as much as it was an especial mark for Pentecost Sunday, the event felt more like National Day Parade For Christians. Of course I'm overtly cynical about celebrations, as much as I love them - but why did I find Reverend Kong's "Clap for God! Louder!" as pathetically crowd-drumming as Dreamgirls' Jimmy Early/Eddie Murphy dropping his pants on stage? I think people find it easy to experience religious ecstasy through music, so it's a cop-out way of feeling good about yourself, your participation in becoming one with the crowd. So City-Harvest-man was, logically speaking, taking the cheap route. As much as I emphasize the inherent selfishness of Craig Thompson's argument, which I always felt was the reason for his collapse of faith, his disillusion about the disparity between himself and Christian peers is very real. Perhaps he felt the falsity of being bound to others he couldn't love in those moments. But I would argue that clamming up is to assume superior understanding and status as 'the coolest person in the room'.
"Coolness might help in your negotiation with people through the world, maybe, but it is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on. It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw. That's the connection with great music and great art, and that is why it's uncomfortable, that is why cool is the enemy of it, because that's the other reason you wanted to join a band: you wanted to do the cool thing." To be unashamed of the Gospel is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to get along with everyone. If you are vulnerable you cannot be cool. Sometimes... more than anything else... cool feels like the most important thing in the world. But you're supposed to be something else... always something else. And it won't be a parade either, it might be just one person clapping. But what do you need besides God's applause?
"They tell me, and anyway it is probably half-true, that homosexuals are creative writers, dancers, et cetera. If we want creative people, then we've got to put up with their idiosyncrasies so long as they don't infect the heartland."
Thanks to Hannah and Jon for the stunningly framed photos and Lily for starring (I'm sure you won't mind...)
Considering all the pictures, graduation looked like a perfect day and gathering of my friends' families or "still point[s] in a turning world" - what could be more fit for celebration? I suddenly feel excited about being part of a university with very old-fashioned, sentimental traditions.
Interning at MCYS has been a bit of a dream so far: faces from every phase of my early school life pop out of the woodwork unexpectedly, there's nothing insultingly menial about the work and nothing is spoonfed, it's a relaxed environment, I'm encouraged to ask stupid questions and there's the wonderful recognition that these are people who struggle with balancing the practical and altruistic on a regular basis. Right now I'm helping to give personal input on and plan trip itineraries to Hong Kong and New York to examine their climate for social enterprises and volunteer organizations. Which just about sums up everything I'm interested in. Okay, that's starry-eyed, early, job-love exaggeration.
And now that there's a large likelihood I'm going to do more travel in Asia in August, the summer is shaping up well, very well.
