Making Tiramisu

I think from now on, every Valentine's Day I'm going to make some tiramisu, just to remind myself of how love tastes like.

Making Tiramisu

Ingredients
5 egg yolks
5 heaped tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons full Amaretto, almond liqueur
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
500g mascarpone
10 Italian boudoir biscuits, lady's fingers
250ml espresso coffee
Dusting of cocoa powder

Method
While the sobering glass
Of espresso gently cools,
Take a risk, with two
Tablespoons of Amaretto
In the glass, swirl.  Leave.

Melt overt sweetness with
Empty promises of fertility,
As the even hint of posh vanilla whisks,
Three more swags of Amaretto, and a taste:
Almond nights warm the throat, becoming
A light, frothy cream,
Almost needing substance.

As the pale scent of Amaretto fades, commit
Mascarpone into the bowl, sense
Solid cream folding into being, except
Unevenly, like so many imperfections
Sensed in a lover.  This is a practice
In patience, glossing over lumpy bits,
Until the length of repetition blends
Into a habit of cream and cheese.

You are now ready.  Lay gentle fingers
Into cold coffee, bed into glass, spoon
Cream mixture in gentle sequence, careful
Not to jolt the delicate cushion.  Repeat
Until the lips of glass almost kiss
The outline of cream, complete.

Leave, in the cool hours of refrigeration.
Better yet, forget your effort overnight.
Tomorrow pretend to discover a new
Fondness for trifle, dusted over
With cocoa powder.  Serve.

Language or the Kiss Reprise

As I navigate through the honey of her voice, I finally realise what she was talking about (doh!). And I don't know why but that dichotomy did not strike me until now. I've always seen language as expression, without thinking that the kiss expressed differently from language. But my mind was so blocked I never got it why there would be a choice between the two - my poetry being different from your dance.

Between the language or the kiss
I know I choose to think, to speak, to watch,
To learn, to philosophize, to dream, to envy.
And I'd wish, for you, if I could choose,
To do. To act, to move, to declare, to not
lose
The chances you would miss:
"Unforgiving the choice still is,
The language or the kiss".

Our choices make our choices. I know this now as well as I did then, and yet, knowing what I know, I would still end up gravitating towards making the choices I knew I would make. If we knew we wouldn't choose anything different, and our choices make our choices, do we really have a choice?

Happy Christmas

This Christmas allow me to gently dream of dimmed lights, a simmering fireplace, snow drifting softly through glossy french doors outside and a silent, musing barefoot dance on a warm carpet to Tori's A Silent Night With You.

Untitled Scribble at Christmas Time

No need for uncomfortable silences
No tribute to modern conveniences
No trite hymns to gifts of frankincense and myrrh
I didn't want anything for Christmas

These gifts gave me nothing to hold
If not of hope, not worth a weight in gold
I'd wished for a thought, a photograph, a signal
Being stubborn to stifle a memory as I was told.

Not a shameless plug to the holiday album I never thought Tori would make, but I like to think that Christmas would be lit by the traditional this season, filled with the thoughtful tunes from old instead of the jolly holiday faves played on the radio.

Just Passing By

I know it's strange for me to like a McDonald's ad of all things, but this one's really quite clever - showing on UK screens at the moment. The use of the poetry makes McDonald's classy instead of cheap, and also cements the image of McDonald's being the food of the the people (rightly or wrongly, since I don't eat it very often...)

Ad campaign "Something for Everyone" by Leo Burnett, poem written and read by David Morrissey. The music is the opening track from the 1990 Anjelica Huston / John Cusack movie The Grifters, with the soundtrack composed by Elmer Bernstein - again, classy contradictory use of indie content for a very mainstream production.

Something for Everyo..
Watch the ad...

Something for Everyo..
Watch the ad...

"How Happy" Part 2

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
-- Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Aberlard"

How odd that of all posts on the blog, not that many of them are of any real value, this is the most read, most commented post! How... curious.

I wonder if there are that many of us searching for innocence (since it can't be that the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was that big a movie hit starring Jim Carrey...) that we cease to find what makes us happy, and content ourselves only with the pleasure of the search?

If it is indeed true that ignorance is bliss (a short form translation of Alexander Pope's sarcasm in all it's glory) then are we truly seeking bliss through ignorance? I cannot allow myself to believe that. I would rather search for something than nothing - I would be first to admit that I believe in a Greater Being (let's codename that "God") because to believe in nothing at all is a dismal, bleak, meaningless prospect.

I am of the viewpoint that 3 year olds and very clever, wise people have one thing in common - they know how to ask a simple question: "Why?" (The value of this has nothing to do with the capacity to drive parents nuts with one word... over-ridden only by the power of another word, "No", with more punch per alphabet value, but barely...)

That eternal sunshine of the spotless mind must come down like the tropical climate of the Seychelles - somewhere very few people are, where very many people want to go.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? On my part, I think I'd like to meet someone who doesn't like beach holidays. Someone who thinks having nothing to do and drinking pina coladas all day sounds like the perfect idea of torture. I'd love to meet someone with an eternal snowstorm of a curious mind. Someone who wakes me up at 2am in the morning with strange musings (like: do goldfish have friends if they remember only 5 minutes of their lives at a time?) that keep me up at night staring at the stars.

What is the weirdest thing you've ever wondered about? Were you happy thinking about them? Or did you put it away, in your saving-up-for-a-holiday-box, to bring yourself back to more practical matters?

The Narnia Code

Every now and then, I come across something that wakes up a part of me that's gone to sleep. Today was one such moment. I'd stumbled across The Narnia Code, a BBC documentary about Michael Ward, who'd made what would probably be termed as one of the most fascinating literary discoveries in recent history. I'd daresay it was compelling, and also the type of discovery to catch on faster than a new Robert Frost poem, thanks to the huge movie'ability of the Narnia Chronicles.

I've not read all 7 books of the Narnia Chronicles, I must admit. Or at least, although I can remember reading the full Lord of the Rings twice over as a kid, I remember only vague snippets of the Narnia Chronicles. I feel sure that I was fed the kind of literary diet as a child that would not have missed out these books, but at the same time, it joined the childhood stream of consciousness together with Sandman graphic novels, Norse mythology, Aesop's fables and other odd bits and pieces of information-that-nobody-knows-much-of-anymore.

So imagine my pleasant surprise coming across this documentary and learning that a secret, "third layer" of CS Lewis's subtle plan in the Narnia Chronicles was drawn from precisely the "stream of consciousness" that once made up common knowledge of people before CS Lewis's time.

Do I agree with CS Lewis? Yes, I do. Whole-heartedly. And why not? His ideas are so much more seductive, so much more enticing than the alternatives that I'm presented with by modern science and modern fact.

Watch the documentary - it's a not-so-long download on cable, and for a 250mb wait, if it sparks in you a wanting to believe, if it gives you something else to look forward to besides the end of the weekend - then it would have been worth the while.

(If Wei Chean could watch this documentary, I think she would be very edified in her long held love of CS Lewis's work.)

Incredulous
Upon watching The Narnia Code, a documentary on Planet Narnia by Michael Ward on CS Lewis's unifying theme of the seven mythological planets in his Narnia Chronicles.

Someone told me something I already knew, and had forgotten.
I know you are not the universe.
The universe is matter and mechanism, materialism,
The physical - you held me in your arms, I knew
You held a body, not a self, a discarded image
Of surreal to real, dreams to dust.

No longer do we share intimately a knowledge of the ties that bind
Us, universally drawing you from you, me from me,
That Tuesday was for war, and Friday for love,
That we know more than we know, and remember more than fact.
If it's only untrue, but beautiful, then tell me lies,
I want my sky lit with more than coloured dust.

I'd forgotten that Hope was not reserved for children, and
Dreams for courage and fairytales, that a book could lift
A mind beyond what was possible - we should all read -
And my heart would dare to think, that
I could look upon the stars and see a being
Far greater than you or I. Imagine that.

I remember...

Many things have changed.
You are you, and I am me,
In places so different, literally
Miles away, a different world in concept.

Sentimentality is a dirty word.
A song currently not on the top 25
Most recently played on the iPod
Crept up random, uninvited.

Deja vu doesn't quite capture it.
I could run but realise, Memory
Like fire is radiant and immutable.
To remember that I remember.

One Art

Over packing and getting ready to move, and watching "In Her Shoes" in which this poem featured, Elizabeth Bishop comes back to become a rather good friend:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

As it always seems to me upon moving, and packing, and relocating,

The art of packing isn't hard to master, and quite the same,
Though different; as losing,
Yourself in labels and boxes with a name.

Pack something every day. Put another part
of yourself in a box, draw lines, imagine
That you can be divided up, a mind, a heart.

I packed two photographs, from two
Places, two faces, some memories lost
Another preserved, unused, untrue.

Even then it's impossible to lose; the
Fear of losing overcome by fear of use
The art of packing isn't hard to master
The fear of losing forgot the fluster.

As I Like It

Hot Tea
Originally uploaded by metaphoric

Prefacing a diary

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
W.B. Yeats

Since I'm in a poetry phase recently, and in a bored and listless state of mind, I do what I love doing best - think up gifts, not to anyone in particular.

This idea came to mind - a diary. One that is filled, with pictures, texts, blog posts... whatever, tracing the life and times of a particular loved one. And this Yeats poem will preface the book.

Polish Poets

Jeanette W (my one true love of poets and writers if there could ever be any) showed me this on her website. She's recently been into Polish writers and culture, and I can see why.

Czeslaw Milosz
Collected Poems 1931-2001

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills -
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.

The "customary" birthday blog post

Oh, and a poem as a special surprise.

On and around the time of my birthday this year, I took a walk around Chinatown and other places. The theme of this year seemed to be "Reminiscence", and I'd had a nice spa massage (courtesy of Citibank and other faces), had a booking at the Yamaha studio where I'd had an hour of piano playing (or attempts at piano playing) to myself, a fabulous dinner with family and a planned day of times (not dates), wandering, reminiscing, getting back in touch with myself.

This is important. Partly because who you are is defined in parts by who you have been, which defines also who you will become. There is a train of thought that one can never truly know who you are until you look back, revere, and finally accept who you have been, that the mirror only shows you images of the past, light reflected on glass into your eyes split seconds after you have become who you are being.

This is also important because as I move in the semi-nomadic life that I lead, travelling and living from places to places, cities to cities, it is easy to lose track of where I have come from, and lose memories of the place where I was born, and gain new, artificial, reminiscent memories of the place I grew up in. So I treked back memory lane, so to speak.

It was quite an adventure.

I'd discovered a poet, whose father was a great Singaporean photographer, once awarded the Photographer of the Century by the Photographic Society in New York. This is apparently great, a century is a long time, and Andrew Yip now spends his time raising awareness of his father's work - antique photographs of Singapore. One photo in particular struck me, a piece called "Singapore River", which shows the mouth of the Singapore river circa 1900's (I think), still chock a block with bum boats and trading houses. The photograph leads the eye along the line of shophouses at Boat Quay, which still remains today, obviously in a different form. The photo must have been taken from a building whose vantage point is lost today, somewhere near the top of where the Merlion now stands I gauge.

Anyway, I looked at it again today, and a poem came to mind. I suppose it captured what I had noticed of the picture when I saw it, from the time I'd set my eyes on it to the experience of having bought the print. [I shall scan a copy and post it on this post for curiosity.]

On 'Singapore River'

The boats are gone now
Carried away in tides of cliche
Policy sifted the river, its waters swelling now
Not with trade but pride, a tourist lure
In twinkling lights along the quay.

The boat house at the corner stands still
A colonial restaurant today,
A mockery of days
Gone by, almost forgotten, except
For this single, astute eye.

"This one very popular, nearly
All of Australia has a copy somewhere."
In that moment then, you reminded me
Of torrential rain, euphemistic showers
In distant faces at distant hours.

No Second Troy

Was browsing through little fish's blog randomly when I struck gold with this blog post. little fish writes that here W.B. Yeats was describing the contemporary woman in No Second Troy. It was a poem I hadn't come across, but bias aside from little fish's comment, when I read the poem, it struck a chord of unsettling recognition. It was like looking in the mirror and recognizing that this was everything I could be described with.

No Second Troy by W.B. Yeats
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being as she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

It was almost as if, at that point, my image in the mirror had caught fire and I recognized, in a single blow, that it was exactly who I was, with a mind that nobleness made simple as a fire. The destructive energy of desire and ambition suddenly culminated in that recognition, coalescing like fire, in a single, sudden, all encompassing thought. My ambition no longer burnt for desire. For there was no desire for anything except to burn, the fire consuming itself, burning until it can go on no longer, until it had consumed and destroyed everything in its path and only ambition itself remained - without purpose, without meaning, with only the energy of its need to exist.

I've long told myself that I did all I did without craving wealth, or fame, or power, or money. I did what I did merely because. It is now the fact of the fire of because that eats me as I realises what it is that I've become. A victim of momentum, moving forward even though all understanding of why "forward" was the right direction has been lost.

Why should I be surprised that I have only filled the days of loved ones with misery, and had taught to ignorant men most violent ways?

little fish was right - perhaps this is the description of a contemporary woman, and thence my only excuse - that I am merely a product of my time and my age. Helen was Helen, she acted as it was in her nature to do so, and perhaps woman as woman cannot be any different from my namesake. One does not ask, "Wherefore am I?" so why should I?

Society has put power in the hands of the contemporary woman, power like a tightened bow. She has not yet learnt to grasp or wield the weapon that is in her hand, not yet learnt the ways of bearing the yoke that man has borne for centuries. We can but pretend and pray, that there is no second Troy for us to burn.

Newly Discovered Frost Poem

Robert Shilling at the University of Virginia recently discovered a poem by Robert Frost that was never before published. The poem, entitled "War Thoughts at Home" was scribbled on the cover pages of a copy of "North Boston", a copy of which was purchased from the Frederick G. Melcher collections in 2005.

I attended today a symposium on the newly discovered poem, which was about, as the name may suggest, thoughts on an erstwhile war while being in home country. It's quite obviously one of the private scribbles of Robert Frost, and probably not something he had ever intended to be published, but is still quite a poignant poem on war - one that strikes remarkedly close to home. There would have been many critics, many literature professors and doctors and people with permanent head damage who would have dissertated on this to death, so I shall not do this. I would instead write about my impressions on the poem when I first read it - because it made me think, as many things often do, of you.

Here is the poem-

War Thoughts at Home

On the back side of the house
Where it wears no paint to the weather
And so shows most its age,
Suddenly blue jays rage
And flash in blue feather.

It is late in an afternoon
More grey with snow to fall
Than white with fallen snow
When it is blue jay and crow
Or no bird at all.

So someone heeds from within
This flurry of bird war,
And rising from her chair
A little bent over with care
Not to scatter on the floor

The sewing in her lap
Comes to the window to see.
At sight of her dim face
The birds all cease for a space
And cling close in a tree.

And one says to the rest
"We must just watch our chance
And escape one by one-
Though the fight is no more done
Than the war is in France."

Than the war is in France!
She thinks of a winter camp
Where soldiers for France are made.
She draws down the window shade
And it glows with an early lamp.

On that old side of the house
The uneven sheds stretch back
Shed behind shed in train
Like cars that long have lain
Dead on a side track.

January 1918

Reproduced here with special thanks to the Virginia Quarterly Review who has published this Frost poem, as well as the Estate of Robert Lee Frost and Peter Gilbert etc. etc.

It didn't strike me half as deeply when I read it as when I heard it being read out loud. It's typical Frost, of course, very much in his style (yes, not a fake) so resonant of roads less taken and snow.

From the onset though, although this is only alluded to, I keep thinking of war - as child's play. But more than war, there was that sense of all the people with a purpose in their minds, however small or large, a goal that drives them away from their homes, away from people they love and from the people who love them. This poem is about those left at home during the war elsewhere, it is on (as the Boston Globe says) about the soldiers who have, more than families and loved ones, friends who love them dearly. This poem is about the life that seems to stop and stretch into infinity, in an afternoon, when a loved one goes away for an interminable length of time.

I am one such person, as you well know. I cannot hope to promise that this road taken would not end up, like cars that long have lain/dead on a side track. I cannot hope to promise that this is not one such side track.

When I look at this poem, although many say the line "dead on a side track" alludes to the death of a friend in the trenches in the war in France during 1918, and the war being a "side track" in the friend's life - I cannot help but think that there is also a certain death and stillness in the life at home. It is as though death in the war cannot go on without war thoughts on death, and death itself at home. The final stanza has images of things half used, being left behind and abandoned, as if waiting for re-use that is not to come. It is the life of the woman (it hints at her being old, as she is bent with care) also stopping dead in its tracks. It shows the stillness of waiting for someone from far far away.

With this I somehow think that "War Thoughts at Home" was appropriately named - not just for thinking about the war, which if you think about it happens quite briefly in the poem, but thoughts on another war on the home front. It is the anger directed at shutting out the blue jays which, trivial though it might be, are fighting their own small, petty wars, and the hope and defiance in lighting an early lamp despite there being light. It is the anger of disuse and misuse - and the gentle, silent acceptance that, like the blue jay and the crow, it is a part of life itself that war comes to us, and gently leave.