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

Monday, December 10, 2007
hunger pangs
new york city came to me like a hunger pang this morning. the feeling when one has been working for too long, and when you look up from your books, and realise, you are hungry.

i feel like winter, aching. my body feels extremely sensitive.

last time i was nervous about returning to singapore, i'm not nervous anymore. singapore is like a home that smells of sweat and shoes. i gravitate to it, because home demands me, people are calling to me. i have come to hate its smell of sweat and shoes and what it has come to represent.

i wonder how new york city will receive me, like an old lover, or with indifference? with forgetful snow and christmas lights?

oh, new york new york.

Comments:
take care dawn. when are you coming back?

singapore is perhaps an imagined concept. its what you want it to be. a memory, or the very people that call back to you. until you inhabit it again, then it will be the present.

tee
im thinking about what you said.
i've been having a lot of thoughts about singapore.

im home, just home!


[publishing] Publishers Weekly . Dystel & Goderich . New York Center for Independent Publishing . Association of American University Presses . Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

[people] clarisse . nurul . aunty zarina (ummi's bakery) . jeremy . pak . cyril . softblow . karen & kenny (booksactually) . eric . joel .

[other loves] digitaljournalist . ballet dictionary . poetshouse . urbanwordnyc

[me] dawn, singapore, new york city, ithaca.

[yesterday] papers and winter
strangely familiar
groundhogs
week in review
announcements!
like engines
snow under streetlight
trauma and the heart
breathe
pretty

[archives] January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009

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