where are my words

enough of stories

Reflections: I’m still in the settling phase, I have been since I came. At first it was settling in new zealand the country, now it’s settling into uni.

To tell of all the spider webbed connected factors I am currently setting in place would take too long, and too much of me. I tire more easily these days. How do I expand my energy here? Mostly, living with the weather, and finding words.

The weather is pale and washed out- funnily enough, the precise words I predicted before I came. How do I say it- the sun is weak, and ignored. I would say ignoble. Not that it is unappreciated. It is, but the sun has no strength here. So new zealanders live with a pale sun, and winter- winter is as winter does; washed out. Everything is cold, translucent, less tangible here. A little more dead, a little more ghostly.

So, hullo rachel of singapore, enveloped in this uncertain and dreaming place, slow down too. Filled within and without by this atmosphere, withdraw into more of yourself, your eyes curtained by a silken fringe, bangs slowly growing like tendrils unfurling gently, unseeing.

I’m also fighting to surround myself with words, pull them back from the swallowing sea, claim and struggle for them as mine. The weather works against me; it swamps my insides, nudging words out, staking the vacated space. Maybe one day I will dissipate as a nymph, a dryad, an immaterial, damp, girl-woman. But for now, these days, I have words floating around my head, just out reach of my waving, searching hair. The words that have been unjustly evicted, I have nothing as replacement. So I shrug helplessly at my room mate sometimes, and apologise for my inability to fill in the blank in the sentence I wanted to say. What I should have told her was, I have lost the words, they have been kidnapped from me, but I will eventually get them back.

Surely though, by the end of a fortnight, I will be more certain, more definite. And consequently, more articulate. Articulacy, or the measure of one’s volume of word tenants one has, is affected by confidence. No wonder Guildenstern panicked, and was flustered, and Rosencrantz could never comprehend.

A what’ztheword for it: I have here with me three factors, fragiledly linked. One, assuredness is in a causual relationship with articulacy. Two, understanding follows neither. Therefore, none of them are actually attached.

Guildenstern was inarticulate because he understood the absurdity of the situation, and desired reassuring. Rosencrantz was articulate because he was calm, and he was calm because he had no understanding. I hereby conclude that the analysis of language is a fool’s job. We should all just speak it, and make it up, as we go along.

I miss the library back in nus. I am proud of it, proud of the red carpets, the vibrant colours that snuggle around the panels and surfaces. The library is well planned, and the staff truly aware of the temperance and needs of the young. So they are smiling and brisk, and do not mind us taking food to eat at the Red Room. A lounge, really. We have a lounge in the library, and voluptuous sofas everywhere.

Then again, I am generally proud of being in the national university of singapore. We have a beautiful campus, with spreading, dignified rain trees taking care of our greenery, ent-like. The buildings are unsystematic and short cuts are there fore one’s exploration. Prof Mendis scoffs and calls the university as built by “a mad dutchman”, but I fail to concur. There is wandering beauty in buildings that climb, corridors that are attached but mismatched, paths that lead into strange doors. Perhaps it is simply a case of an arts student going against an engineering professor.

an unconcluded conclusion