What can I say? StAJe Camp 2010.

Now to find the person who broke my glasses. I think it was me. Damn, I hate you, Michelle. But thank you, Ainesh, Anisha, Meiyen and Syuhadah for the great times.

And the musical, the musical that haunts me. StAJe should write a musical one day. It'll be painful to watch, but fun to play. Of course, every role is a major role, and we are, of course, Identity Crisis.

I suppose, I would still be very much kept in the dark, if not for StAJe Camp. Interesting, isn't it, Simon? Every camp I go to, I learn more about people, and other complexities. I'll find time to think things through, I have to find time. But please, allow me to obfuscate.

You see, I don't suppose I foresaw this long ago.
Acting - its a profound art. I don't suppose I'll ever get it right.

You see those lives on TV, on theatre - there's a thing, that is spell-binding about them. Do they reach out to you, to touch you? I suppose, the most important word I learnt in scriptwriting workshop, was the word "So?". "So?" what? Does the audience even bloody care what you are trying to portray? Does the audience see for themselves the emotion that the actor is trying to portray? Or does the audience, instead, see a goof on stage, acting, and not feeling?

Uta Hagens reminded me of bad acting - that if the audience sees through the eyes of the actor - that, is bad acting. I suppose, an actor is there to tell a story, to share a story. The creation of a world, the imagination, is yours and yours truly. Be free - you are not bounded. If you see something that is convincing, ask yourself why. Why is it that you believe? Or why that you don't believe?

I suppose, people have always felt that acting is a bogus art. People, on stage, playing someone else, someone that they're not, complete hypocrites. Crying, yelling, biting, screaming, when they don't feel anything, drawing attention from the audience. And after the show? Poof. Back to who they are. People don't change that quickly. Not unless, you're acting.

Natalie taught me a very precious lesson when I met her after StAJe Camp. I am grateful, that I know, so many people, so many real people, and that we feel the same. But I'm probably too young and inexperienced to know, so who am I to comment? Simon, you, of course, must understand me. There are, a group of StAJers in AJ, who will keep me alive. And sane.

But for now, the voices of Bryan, Joey and Rachel are playing in my head. No, I don't hear their lines and remember them properly enough. I do hope I manage to get lines down by Wednesday.


Grandmother, The Bride

You had already picked out what to wear in this second
crossing:
The same black silk blouse, heavy with chinese embroidered
dragons
Unfurled in red and gold above
A crimson skirt that skimmed your ankles, slit to
Reveal shapely legs to your husband.
The dragon twins smile pink flowers from their mouths,
Adorning your marriage kwa as proud parents.

You remember the first time you wore it:
Father flexed his love with an entourage that
Dutifully adorned you from the day you crossed bloodlines,
Face made-up by servile hands,
A month of basking in love.
You were the first in a family of twenty-three to be given away
in marriage.

Today I watched other hands line your lips with rose-red,
Flower-fragranced talc and favourite lipstick lying next to you
Unmoving, as you are.
In the same marriage kwa of double happiness
You claim your free will as death's bride,
Making your silent escape from your body and husband
You choose to return to be father's daughter,
Your sedan chair a wisp of greying smoke.
Slipping away in the morning sun,
You leave the rest of us small comfort that it is fine weather to
die.

On bright days you took us for strolls at the playground;
I was nine and you walked unaided.
We renewed the usual conversation every New Year's Day:
Of mother's cooking, my singlehood, your health.
I know you loved flowers and to be pretty,
Eyes smiling, lips brightened with red and mouth apart to laugh.
How did you find strength in the fearful stink of sickness and
pain?
How did you bind the curses of a faithless husband?
How did you heal from the death of your son?
Who are you as woman not grandmother?
I watched you moan for relief as you struggled in the last days
in the hospital bed,
Twisting violent lines into white sheet, eyes tightly shut as
cheeks lay wet,
Shrivelled hands outstretched - I want to hold you -
But your lips will now be dulled, you are silent in cold embrace,
the fine wrinkles that gently thread your face lie unread.

Today, the dragons will spew red fire to consume you
Gold replaced by the eye-whites of mourning.
The stifling fragrance of incense unfurls into the air
Tracing your passage as you cross thresholds again in
fifty-seven years.
Are the certain arms of death any more fearful than a
stranger's?

Cool ash falls softly on black skirt as I kneel in front of you,
with
Your entourage of two generations bowed in waiting.
You will live through me in my blood and memory,
Our fatelines have crossed by marriage from grandmother
to granddaughter,
Weaving our histories into one like so many lines on my palm.
But I do not have the map of you in my hand, only
Imagined flashbacks, secondhand and embroidered with time.
I fear it is not enough.
I choke with each ghost of wasted opportunity.


I feel, like I have kindled my gothic impulses.