render grief, tender thieves
Encountering unknown territories as I find myself blindly mapping out the shapes of these new and unknowable emotions, neither pain nor joy but something insurmountable and outside of it all.
(i) “we dive into the hold”
I sat curled into a corner, my thumb squashed at the bottom of the book I picked at random, pressing in hard as if to push out the words running across the page, animate them just enough so I could hold them in my breath, inhale them deeply, devour their efficacies so that at any time I feel a breaking, I can conjure them up at will. I read the lines over and over, ferociously to my own quickening pulse that the words almost spill back out of my mouth, growling, howling, anger…no, not really anger as it leaves me, a pallid fury, neutered, coward. I did this as a teen, my fingers gracing the spines of books at the library, only stopping when I feel something, a kind of tingle and I pull out the book carefully, this divination from elsewhere. My made-up religion at sixteen when God seemed to be Out-of-Office (again) had grew into some habit, some ritual, can’t really decide which it was, maybe both. This time it was Adrienne Rich’s Collected Poems: 1950-2012. The trick to the reveal is to be loose, not too laboured and suddenly, illumination and then revelation
I’ve read Adrienne Rich before but never her poetry. The book was pretty thick, its weight pressed against my crossed calves leaving indentations on my skin. The book came open to a page, halfway through a poem, “And now: it is easy to forget what I came for…among so many who have always lived here.” I felt a pinch inside, a stirring where once just minutes before felt empty, no, emptied…
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here…
Down here, the pinch, that feeling. There is a warmth and in that warmth a glowing light throbbing gently. I take a breath and trace the poem to the start, read the title and almost laughed out loud. Haha universe, you’re kinda funny and kinda cruel all at once. At first glanced I read Diving into This Wreck, realising that it was Diving into THE Wreck. This Wreck, as in this round of my seasonal depression has been the quiet kind, came without warning and I found myself crashing head first into that familiar feeling and then there was nothing but me as shell, me as stone, hard and protected. I adjusted myself, and then my film camera resting against my right thigh, like an extended limb, not phantom but a cord back to myself, some measure, a strategy. A hard shell too, hard body, metal, like mine, an armour. I read the first three lines and this time, my laugh escapes like a joyful child running brightly out of some darkened hallway:
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
The only missing bit is that knife-blade, this time around. Only a body-armour, metal instead of rubber and my grave and awkward mask, the one I’ve been wearing for months that made me forget the brightness of my own face, or how my eyes are pools of water when words still hold (their power over) me gently. The absurd flippers keeps me moving but clumsily, laboured, unnatural. With each line I read, a stirring in this depth and that glowing light grows brighter. I read the poem seven times, some verses more than others,
“I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.”
“I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done…”
and finally
“we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass”
We are the half-destroyed instruments, the one who find our way, half wedged and left to rot…half-destroyed instruments. That stirring is swelling inside me, growing larger, that throbbing glow burst brightly and I snapped the book shut and placed it back where it found me. We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage, the one who find our way back to this scene, We are, I am, You are by cowardice or courage I am, I am by our cowardice or courage find my way back, you find your way back to this, this wreck, this scene, I will find my way back.
**
Last night whilst writing this, these words resurfaced once more inviting me back to the depths of the wreck; this time around the wreck is immense and unyielding, shapeless. The tentative haunters are no longer ghosts but time itself, ticking away in the ribs of disaster, no longer a singular ship rotting in the depths but a mirrored surface staring towards the sun, its reflective light setting the sea on fire. I see others here too, the ones who came alone. I see it in their emptied faces. In their empty mouths hang words that are neither maps nor purposes. No longer holding on to a course, by cowardice or courage, my empty face and empty mouth. Hot burning air. Smoke, mirrors, nothing else. No divination either. There is no rubber or metal, no body armour, just tender flesh and open wounds. Is there a way back? A way away from this wreck, a way into it, tending it, moving the body, ours, mine and yours, without force, is there, I don’t know anymore.
(ii) “Cold as ice, clear as glass”
Recently, to stave off the urgent desire for connection, I have been constantly tuned in to several podcast channels on Spotify. In these episodes, I find myself being moved with genuine emotions as though I am physically present in these conversations; laughing out over a funny anecdote, nodding to myself when I learned a new information about something I’ve been obsessing over, coming close to tears over something deeply beautiful. During these elsewhere states, I am either feeding my child, or making lunch, or running errands. Sometimes, though rarely, the elsewhere syncs up with the now-here, stifling thoughts that seem to flow stubbornly from the cracks of my breaking and I feel a deeper connection, celestial almost, otherworldly**.
If the podcasts starts to drain my social battery, I do an Irish goodbye and hide under the covers in my elsewhere world, with a playlist I picked at random or a book being read to me with no pauses. Sometimes I lose the plot but it does not matter because all I need are these elsewhere words in their elsewhere worlds as temporary salves to my isolation. This mirrors my own ReAL life interactions. I much prefer listening; receiving all the banter with engaged curiosity, nudging you to tell me more, tell me how it makes you feel, tell me how it moves you, tell me, tell me, tell me. You are the guest in my house always, holding your gaze away from my own clutter, the stacks of boxes, the locked doors, my own words and worlds tucked away. And when you leave, it’s never without first leaving something of yourself behind with me, some rarefied clarity that turns a box over, spilling its contents so I can pack it a little differently and hold it close to me.
Recently, all the time I’ve spent in these elsewhere worlds have made coming back much harder. Two months ago, I pressed my body against a wall outside of an art studio flattening the nerves that were shooting up and down my limbs. It was crowded, an exhibition opening of a dear friend. It took a lot to be there but there I was. My metal body a sonorous mass, matching my laughing. I’ve learnt this, perfected it enough that no one is able to sense something’s not right. B was recounting their summer romance, eyes bright and emotional. I teased them, kept laughing, nudge them away from myself. Slowly, my nerves was settling, tapering into familiarity. I miss this I thought. It’s been a while since I had real people time. It’s been a while since I had a guest in my house.
And then, someone asked how’s things with you, I was excited, stumbling over my words, and I squealed inside and it came out like a squeak, mousy words my child slept the last two nights in bed with me, my hand fiddling with my vape, eyes on the ground, for the first time, mousy words roaring out, I woke up and she was at the edge of the bed, excitedly, you know that scene from sixth sense? I looked up momentarily to some pity party that strangely materialised from my sharing, it was hilarious, half her body was on the bed and half dangled on the floor expecting lightness but was only met with heavy silence. It was so funny, I laughed as a half fucked attempt but it was futile.
I turned to E, desperately, my nerves shooting up and down and no amount of pressing down worked this time. I tried matching the collective energy, hungry for connection. It is hard this growing up bit, I’m just afraid when she becomes a teen. E was the natural choice because he had been a disability facilitator for years. Worry about it when it happens he said and I laughed even louder, felt the doors close shut, cold as ice and clear as glass. And that was that.
In A Lonely City, Olivia Laing wrote that so much of the pain of loneliness has to do with its concealment:
“with feeling compelled to hide vulnerability, to tuck ugliness away, to cover up scars as if they are literally repulsive. But why hide? What's so shameful about wanting, about desire, about having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness? Why this need to constantly inhabit peak states, or to be comfortably sealed inside a unit of two, turned inward from the world at large?”
and described loneliness as such:
“It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.”
In the last few months after, I’ve encountered similar exchanges that have left me a shrinking island of myself, drifting further and further away into what have brought me comfort before on this burning sea. There is loneliness yes in these times especially so, I feel its fury now, spiteful, raging. I’m better off alone on some days, and there’s no one who wants to _____ anymore on others. Most days I feel I am robbing myself of tenderness, hardened beyond return, fearing if I allow it, and open my doors again, the tender thieves would come running to strip it off, whatever little that’s left.
(iii) Render Grief
**In one of the podcast I was listening to just two months ago, I came across a couple sharing their journey of their three special boys, each one with a different disability or condition. I know them personally; the wife is my partner’s extended family and I’ve always loved how she and her husband have been generous in articulating their experiences and emotions. A borrowed strength and feeling seen as I navigate my own journey with raising my own child. 2023 has been the most challenging year for us as a family and knowing that we are not alone sometimes made me feel less isolated. However, the irony of it all is although the proximity of my family to theirs is not that remote, given that they are family, we do not keep up in the same manner in real life.
At one point when describing grief, the wife mentioned being at the pinnacle of grief and how it’s crucial for parents who have received diagnosis of their children’s conditions and disability status to go through it together to get to acceptance. Throughout the day I thought of this grief mountain, its sheer size and surface. I think of scalability of it, and whether I was truly tasked to climb it, or go around it before the “pinnacle” could be reached. And I thought a lot about acceptance. And its relationship to grief. Does acceptance come after or before? Do they come simultaneously? Once I have reached this point, do I experienced a transformation? Do things become easier, more bearable?
I thought about it all through the day and the night that followed as I walked my child to sleep. Bothered by it. My grief is not a mountain, no not really. It comes to me with every breath. Like water, in its manifestations Some days my grief can drown me and yet my grief replenishes me much like water does as I drink it down in big greedy gulps. Grieving a loss or absences makes me acutely aware of what I have right now and also how this too, this ease even though sparse and far between is at risk of being taken away in any moment.
The adjective gravis, which gives us such words as grave and gravity, also spawned a Latin verb gravare, meaning “make heavy, cause grief.” This later found its way into French in the 13th century as the verb grever, meaning afflict, burden, oppress.
However, in this moment, the act of grieving has grown complex. I am no longer able to only feel my own immense grief, but those of others. What is that feeling, that despair, knowing that the only direct connection to Palestine, the only cord precariously attached to the few that are left reporting, hoping that they have not been killed as I checked on their accounts every morning relieved that they made it another day. Is that grief or something else? That ache each time looking at the numbers climbing higher and nothing is being done as though nothing can be done, is that grief? Or something else?
In my heart and through my body, with every life of me, I render grief. Now more so than ever. It is no longer a solitary experience; the world is demanding a grief that is restorative and yet at the other end of the spectrum is a kind of absent grief. It is frustratingly loud and awfully quiet. I feel it immensely yet nothing happens to bring it to the surface. I hesitate, hold myself back, when all i want to be is stubborn and incessant, letting the words spill out, over and over until they are maps and purposes once more. It is hard to grieve losing something close, a job, a life, a loved one, but it is so much harder when it is the loss is large and immeasurable, when it is the whole world as I know it. But it is possible.
***
Last Saturday, I forced myself out of the house, to catch a performance at TPD, where Singapore Art Museum is located. In between two building was a tentage and a stage; familiar faces, chatter, banter, loud and incessant. To ready myself, I had walked about half an hour to the venue carrying an umbrella. The rain was soft, and cold, barely there tbh and the ground glistened in the light. Everything was a little dreamy, and I wasn’t really present. I didn’t want to be but I knew I needed the temporary break. It was a pretty hard week and maybe a little time outside might do me good.
I was only there to catch NADA and then planned to head back home because that was all I had the capacity for. NADA was always a joy to watch and they were paired with Indonesian’s Raja Kirik specially for Singapore Art Week (this yucky thing that happens every year in January where important people of the ArTs sCeNe from all around the world congregate to mythicise art as alive and necessary even if the world is burning to shits).
When NADA came on, I still felt the weight. That absent grief is incredibly lonely. But I wanted to fake it till I make it just for tonight. I needed to at least feel something else for a little while. And then the words to their last song came on. Rizman sang in Malay asking for the presence of God and how the children are innocent and should be saved. In that moment I turned to Z and they felt it too. People were cheering, hollering, joyous and oblivious and for us who knew, we remained still and spellbound, silently breaking.
Then Rizman picked up a standee of the mascot for this sorry ass annual event and raised it up in the air. The cheering grew louder. Rizman tore the lower part of his costume, a frilly material and cover the mascot with it, a white shroud, and a single thread clung stubbornly, a cord between him and this shrouded figure. My heart sank back to the depths of the wreck thankful to have witness this, to be able to feel it momentarily with others in all its anger and its sadness. Rendering grief together. A few days has passed since that Saturday and I still cannot get over it, I refuse to get over it, the feeling insurmountable. It is akin to grief and hope and pain and despair. It is everything I’ve been struggling with to locate in myself all these months. I had to write it down and marked it here, this point, not a pinnacle, but a seismic shift.
So here it is an invitation to gather ourselves again and again, to continue until ceasefire. Here, taking the well crafted letter from the student-led group a few weeks back, let us all come together for the Global Week of Action for Gaza.
On 2nd February at 2pm, as suggested, a group of us will hand deliver these letters to the Istana. All you have to do is esign the letter and we will print it out. Send it over to through DM here.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading my loves. I see you and feel you <3