HOLD ON TIGHT

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. ~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot Friday, April 06, 2007 i had a good day, good classes, cooked pasta for daniella and me, slept, called people, i went to a nice book shop. ah la dee dar. blue is the colour of these days, it's not a bad blue, it's just blue. i said my favourite colour was white, or transparent. if i could weep, if i could get over the nagging suspicion that something will happen, if i could just know . i feel like im 12 again, wondering if someone will love me. or 14, dreaming of standing in front of balcony where suddenly the world was irrevocably changed. at 9pm, the tv started on a giraffe documentary. jay used to sing songs about gi-ra-fees. it's not a gi-ra-fee! i would laugh. there were other songs too: fly fly fly a butterfly in the garden is flying high my room mate's turning in the mirror, talking dramatically about clothes. call me, i say. tell me where you are. alright, she says. call me, tell me where you are we used to say lots of that in our head. i wait for you all the time, you're always late, you're irresponsible you know. oh, i know. i didn't then. so i have the sense that im really sitting in a bus station now, i'm really waiting. i'm waiting for a flight. i've made my plans, i've cast my dice. now i'm just waiting. waiting is always hard. i think i filled my days, because i didn't want to confront the shape of the days, the oblong shape of our days. (who uses oblong nowadays?) ah, dawn, go and work. the best way to pass time is to read. in any case, you love reading. one day i'll find someone who can read with me, who forces me to read. he's someone who doesn't talk (oh, talking is so exhausting with someone you don't love, with someone you can't care for, with racist people). in new york, the politics of race is exhausting. mostly because people don't think it's a politics of race, they think its normal. oh, it was only a joke! haha! i understand what power is now - you understand power when you sit at the margins, when you leave sites of power. power is how the word becomes self-fulfilling. and there is another type of power. how things have crept up on you, without you realising it. in new york in chinese class, the syllabus was centered around guns, feminist rights, us public education. still, old sentences i've didn't even remember i memorised, about a beautiful island, about racial harmony, about family, creep up on me. here i realised chinese is so much a tool, a certain power. it's just like how the korean girls next door speak in korean and no one can understand. it's a power. i never felt disempowered at home. i really grew up thinking i could do anything i could do and be anything i could be, and i knew that if i failed, it would be because i hadn't tried hard enough, or something terrible had happened, like it was a fluke. here i know if i fail, the stakes are higher. my friends tell me, i must live a very stressful life, to always be working with the consciousness of the possibility of what would be if i did not. but in american lit class, i really feel - while i read american puritan lit, study american history - compelled to prove something, compelled to prove something. my ta said, oh all of you have studied this in highschool i suppose, before arresting himself and looking at me and going, oh i'm sure you can do it too. i know i am a different student, but i feel very conscious of my different-ness in american lit class. sometimes it is a power, because i read texts in a strange way, because paradoxes and contradictions in texts come quickly to me. i didn't feel conscious of my different-ness last term in lit class- because the reading approach was all about New Criticism, dehistoricisation, postmodernism. my (black, queens) ta liked me because i didn't give bible allusions, because i could deconstruct owen and keats in postmodernist style, because i bought into postmodernism. it's different in american lit class now - it's all about historicisation, christian allusions, the etymology of words, and entering into a whole white universality (oh yes, we have the token equiano and native stories here and there). in islamic societies class, my teacher looks at me whenever we discuss southeast asia, singles me out to ask me about sea colonial history facts. i only know something vaguely about colonial history well because, i studied it in my a levels. i felt like i had to live up to the burden of representation when the topic came up on singapore's madrasah education. when i said something interesting last class, someone from the back of the room said to me, during class, in front of everybody, oh that's right! and by the way, so where are you from? this happened during class. the ta was uncomfortable, i was uncomfortable. i answered back, in front of everybody, i'm from singapore. she's the same girl who asked the syrian ta, oh! where are you from? in asian american history class, everyone was earnest there to find themselves. i was the only non-minoritygroup american in an asian american lit class. the rest of the people in class were hispanics, asian americans or filipino-americans. one boy moonlighted as an asian american comedian. there were 2 or 3 white guys, one felt compelled to live up to something, and volunteered to help in minority group census and surveys. my education has been disorienting, because there is always a presence of power, of what was the norm in some classes, and other classes like last terms lit class and asian american studies tried to completely undo the center of power that it was so militant as to be useless. in chinese class, we have conflicting centers of power: i am taught by a chinese professor who got a green card in canada, my textbook (like her) aimed at inculcating in her ignorant (mostly) asian american students chinese culture, while at the same time making it relevant by throwing in american social issues. in islam, i am taught by a professor from oxford and middle-eastern TAs. the texts are very postmodern, anti-hegemony, feminist theory related, but still there is still the ambivalence as to what extent minds are being changed. i feel that understanding, if it doesnt change anything, can at least change me, can help me to understand the fragmentation. i also don't really know what im trying to say. perhaps i am trying to say that, i am a different person now, my mind because it has been forced to codeswitch and switch frames of reference between classes, has become deeply suspicious. at the same time, because i see that there is one frame of reference which prevails in the texts i read, because i've been called a chink like 3 times and been groped in a crowd on the streets, because i see asian people looking at fellow asian people like curiosities, like necessary friends, my mind is not suspicious of possible frames, it sees only one frame. i am trying to understand what has happened between last term and this term that suddenly made me react very strongly to an asian joke today which otherwise would not have bugged me in singapore, or when i just arrived in new york. maybe this is just the misconceived rantings, but i feel that i'm coming to something. oh, i don't know what, but there is something. posted by dawn # 7:29 PM Comments: oh, i know what you mean, i think, but yes, i dont know how to explain it. its like defending capital punishment and having people give me the most shocked of looks and asking where im from. # posted by coloured light : 7:17 AM really? i don't really know what i mean, except i get pissey. my friend tells me i'm committing the same mistake and being equally insular as all of them by taking offence. but i feel that no i'm not. # posted by dawn : 11:52 AM no! its taking offence at people being insular! why would that be the same! argh. all this crap about democratic countries and freedom of speech just masks an overwhelming amount of ignorance! -nj # posted by Anonymous : 3:20 AM i think. i need to figure out a little bit more about what i really think about this. i don't know whether ill come up with an answer, but when i will, i will tell you. :) # posted by Anonymous : 8:00 PM yes you must! heh. much love, dear. # posted by coloured light : 2:46 AM Post a Comment << Home		[publishing] Publishers Weekly . 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HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot

Friday, April 06, 2007

i had a good day, good classes, cooked pasta for daniella and me, slept, called people, i went to a nice book shop. ah la dee dar. blue is the colour of these days, it's not a bad blue, it's just blue. i said my favourite colour was white, or transparent. if i could weep, if i could get over the nagging suspicion that something will happen, if i could just know . i feel like im 12 again, wondering if someone will love me. or 14, dreaming of standing in front of balcony where suddenly the world was irrevocably changed. at 9pm, the tv started on a giraffe documentary. jay used to sing songs about gi-ra-fees. it's not a gi-ra-fee! i would laugh. there were other songs too:

fly fly fly
a butterfly
in the garden
is flying high

my room mate's turning in the mirror, talking dramatically about clothes. call me, i say. tell me where you are. alright, she says. call me, tell me where you are we used to say lots of that in our head. i wait for you all the time, you're always late, you're irresponsible you know. oh, i know. i didn't then.

so i have the sense that im really sitting in a bus station now, i'm really waiting. i'm waiting for a flight. i've made my plans, i've cast my dice. now i'm just waiting. waiting is always hard. i think i filled my days, because i didn't want to confront the shape of the days, the oblong shape of our days. (who uses oblong nowadays?) ah, dawn, go and work. the best way to pass time is to read. in any case, you love reading. one day i'll find someone who can read with me, who forces me to read. he's someone who doesn't talk (oh, talking is so exhausting with someone you don't love, with someone you can't care for, with racist people). in new york, the politics of race is exhausting. mostly because people don't think it's a politics of race, they think its normal. oh, it was only a joke! haha! i understand what power is now - you understand power when you sit at the margins, when you leave sites of power. power is how the word becomes self-fulfilling.

and there is another type of power. how things have crept up on you, without you realising it. in new york in chinese class, the syllabus was centered around guns, feminist rights, us public education. still, old sentences i've didn't even remember i memorised, about a beautiful island, about racial harmony, about family, creep up on me. here i realised chinese is so much a tool, a certain power. it's just like how the korean girls next door speak in korean and no one can understand. it's a power.

i never felt disempowered at home. i really grew up thinking i could do anything i could do and be anything i could be, and i knew that if i failed, it would be because i hadn't tried hard enough, or something terrible had happened, like it was a fluke. here i know if i fail, the stakes are higher. my friends tell me, i must live a very stressful life, to always be working with the consciousness of the possibility of what would be if i did not. but in american lit class, i really feel - while i read american puritan lit, study american history - compelled to prove something, compelled to prove something. my ta said, oh all of you have studied this in highschool i suppose, before arresting himself and looking at me and going, oh i'm sure you can do it too. i know i am a different student, but i feel very conscious of my different-ness in american lit class. sometimes it is a power, because i read texts in a strange way, because paradoxes and contradictions in texts come quickly to me. i didn't feel conscious of my different-ness last term in lit class- because the reading approach was all about New Criticism, dehistoricisation, postmodernism. my (black, queens) ta liked me because i didn't give bible allusions, because i could deconstruct owen and keats in postmodernist style, because i bought into postmodernism. it's different in american lit class now - it's all about historicisation, christian allusions, the etymology of words, and entering into a whole white universality (oh yes, we have the token equiano and native stories here and there). in islamic societies class, my teacher looks at me whenever we discuss southeast asia, singles me out to ask me about sea colonial history facts. i only know something vaguely about colonial history well because, i studied it in my a levels. i felt like i had to live up to the burden of representation when the topic came up on singapore's madrasah education. when i said something interesting last class, someone from the back of the room said to me, during class, in front of everybody, oh that's right! and by the way, so where are you from? this happened during class. the ta was uncomfortable, i was uncomfortable. i answered back, in front of everybody, i'm from singapore. she's the same girl who asked the syrian ta, oh! where are you from? in asian american history class, everyone was earnest there to find themselves. i was the only non-minoritygroup american in an asian american lit class. the rest of the people in class were hispanics, asian americans or filipino-americans. one boy moonlighted as an asian american comedian. there were 2 or 3 white guys, one felt compelled to live up to something, and volunteered to help in minority group census and surveys. my education has been disorienting, because there is always a presence of power, of what was the norm in some classes, and other classes like last terms lit class and asian american studies tried to completely undo the center of power that it was so militant as to be useless. in chinese class, we have conflicting centers of power: i am taught by a chinese professor who got a green card in canada, my textbook (like her) aimed at inculcating in her ignorant (mostly) asian american students chinese culture, while at the same time making it relevant by throwing in american social issues. in islam, i am taught by a professor from oxford and middle-eastern TAs. the texts are very postmodern, anti-hegemony, feminist theory related, but still there is still the ambivalence as to what extent minds are being changed.
i feel that understanding, if it doesnt change anything, can at least change me, can help me to understand the fragmentation. i also don't really know what im trying to say. perhaps i am trying to say that, i am a different person now, my mind because it has been forced to codeswitch and switch frames of reference between classes, has become deeply suspicious. at the same time, because i see that there is one frame of reference which prevails in the texts i read, because i've been called a chink like 3 times and been groped in a crowd on the streets, because i see asian people looking at fellow asian people like curiosities, like necessary friends, my mind is not suspicious of possible frames, it sees only one frame. i am trying to understand what has happened between last term and this term that suddenly made me react very strongly to an asian joke today which otherwise would not have bugged me in singapore, or when i just arrived in new york. maybe this is just the misconceived rantings, but i feel that i'm coming to something. oh, i don't know what, but there is something.

posted by dawn # 7:29 PM

Comments:

oh, i know what you mean, i think, but yes, i dont know how to explain it. its like defending capital punishment and having people give me the most shocked of looks and asking where im from.

# posted by

coloured light : 7:17 AM

really? i don't really know what i mean, except i get pissey.

my friend tells me i'm committing the same mistake and being equally insular as all of them by taking offence. but i feel that no i'm not.

# posted by

dawn : 11:52 AM

no! its taking offence at people being insular! why would that be the same! argh. all this crap about democratic countries and freedom of speech just masks an overwhelming amount of ignorance!

-nj

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:20 AM

i think. i need to figure out a little bit more about what i really think about this. i don't know whether ill come up with an answer, but when i will, i will tell you.

:)

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:00 PM

yes you must! heh. much love, dear.

# posted by

coloured light : 2:46 AM