Singathology

by Gwee Li Sui

  not to get lost on your way home, remember

  remember, her warm

  lips

  Penny

  BY CHONG TZE CHIEN

  PENNY

  BOON

  }

  a young couple

  WOMAN, a fish ball noodle seller

  PENNY and BOON are in a car. PENNY is driving.

  PENNY: My friend free-falls.

  BOON: Cool.

  PENNY: One time, his parachute didn’t open.

  BOON: Ouch. Broke anything?

  PENNY: He broke everything.

  BOON: Strange, how did he survive that?

  PENNY: He didn’t. I cannot remember if I broke up with him before or after he died.

  BOON: You never told me you had an ex?

  PENNY: It’s bad luck.

  BOON: Better that he’s dead now coz I’ll take care of you, honey bunny!

  PENNY: I’m twenty-six this year, I am a big girl now.

  BOON: In all the right places too!

  PENNY: I like the way this relationship is growing.

  BOON: I did say it was love at first sight. [Stares at her boobs.]

  PENNY [sees something outside her car window.]: Fish balls.

  BOON: Excuse me?

  PENNY [looking out of the window]: It’s that shop, The Famous Fish Ball Noodle Shop!

  BOON: Why famous?

  PENNY: That’s the name of the shop, The Famous Fish Ball Noodle Shop!

  She stops the car. He gives chase as she leaves the vehicle.

  BOON: Where are you going?

  PENNY: It was here!… I saw it just now!

  BOON: Let’s go. We are late.

  PENNY: I want to eat fish ball noodles!

  BOON: We’ll go someplace else, OK? They sell fish ball noodles everywhere.

  PENNY: From this shop, I want to eat fish ball noodles from this shop. Come on, this shop is really good. My mummy and I always have to queue to get in.

  BOON: Then ask your mother where this shop is.

  PENNY: I can’t. She’s dead.

  BOON: We’ll never find this shop then! Let’s not waste time. My parents are waiting.

  PENNY: Boon, my mummy told me that it was my favourite, and I believed her. She loved to take me to the market when I was young, I was as skinny as a stick. She liked to carry me on her back, pretended that she was worried sick about my numerous afflictions – from fictional tapeworms to imaginary holes in my stomach. The hawkers always felt sorry for me. So they always gave her more than she bought. Life was cheap, and I loved it. My reward for being her partner in crime was a bowl of fish ball noodles at that shop. I want my reward.

  BOON: I am your prize with a ribbon. Smile.

  PENNY [ignoring him]: My mother was the ugliest woman in the world. I don’t even want to remember what she looked like. But I loved her. She wore the most expensive and beautiful clothes. But they highlighted her ugliness even more. But I miss her.

  They get back into the car. PENNY drives.

  BOON: Where are you going? This is not the way to –

  PENNY: I am driving to the National Archives.

  BOON: My parents are not at National Archives!

  PENNY: They should be.

  BOON: Hey!

  PENNY: It’s for the wedding, all right? I need something old, something new, something borrowed. You are new, your parents are borrowed, and the shop is something old. Maybe I can find the map to the shop at the National Archives.

  BOON: You look pale. Maybe you should pull over and rest for a while.

  PENNY: I’m OK! I just want to invite him to the wedding, Boon.

  BOON: Who?

  PENNY: My dad.

  BOON: And jinx your own wedding?

  PENNY: I don’t have my mother with me. Surely I deserve to have my father at my wedding.

  BOON: Tell him you are getting married. That’s enough.

  PENNY: Is it?

  BOON: You have a new family now. It shouldn’t matter.

  PENNY: I am hoping but also preparing for the worst, Boon.

  BOON: Penny, I don’t believe it, you know I don’t.

  PENNY: I need to find this shop, OK? I will feel easier once I find it.

  BOON: When is the next doctor’s appointment?

  PENNY: Next week.

  BOON: We should ask for a second opinion.

  PENNY: Boon, it’s going to be the same answer.

  BOON: We want three kids. We can tell him that. He can at least make you live long enough so that we can have three kids. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

  PENNY: I don’t even know if I will love you tomorrow or have one, two, or three kids or I will ever live to see them grow old with us; or perhaps even before this night is over, I would drive this car into a tree and finish each other instantly! There is no guarantee in life, Boon.

  BOON: OK, we won’t get married. We will cancel the wedding, dinner, honeymoon!

  PENNY: That’s not what I am saying!!

  BOON: But you are getting all stressed out, and the doctor said you can’t afford to handle any more stress!!

  She stops the car.

  PENNY: Why don’t you take the cab and meet your parents. I’ll look for the shop.

  BOON: But you don’t even know where you are going!

  PENNY: That’s why I don’t want to take you with me!

  BOON: I love you. You know that.

  PENNY: What is the point of love when nothing is forever?

  A WOMAN knocks on the car window.

  WOMAN: Fish ball noodles? Take away or eat here?

  PENNY: …Boon, it’s here, I found it!

  She leaves the car to speak to the WOMAN.

  PENNY: I have spent the whole day looking for your shop. I always eat your noodles – I’m getting married next month!

  WOMAN: Congratulations. I’ll give you extra fish balls.

  PENNY: You remember me? My mother and I always come here. You remember her? She’s crazy.

  WOMAN: Are you…?

  PENNY: Yes, I am.

  WOMAN: …Oh yes. You are a big girl now. You are twenty-three this year?

  PENNY: Twenty-six. My mother always told the hawkers that I wouldn’t live past fifteen. That was how she got all the best bargains from them. I’m so sorry.

  WOMAN serves her a bowl of fish ball noodles.

  BOON: This is too oily for you. I’ll finish it.

  BOON takes the bowl of noodles away from PENNY.

  WOMAN: Your heart still gives you problems?

  PENNY: Annual checkups only. I went to the temple last week. The monk said that I shouldn’t wear anything white this year.

  BOON: She will go naked for the wedding! Ha ha!

  WOMAN: …Your father heard about your wedding. He wants me to give you this. Wedding present and money. He thought that you might come.

  BOON: …Who’s she exactly, Penny? How does she know your father?

  PENNY: My father has been seeing her behind my mother’s back for years. My mother liked to bring me here for her noodles so that she could check her out, hoping to catch my father red-handed in her shop one day. She never did.

  WOMAN: Your father misses you.

  PENNY: When my first boyfriend’s parachute didn’t open, I died. I was eighteen. Did he know? When mummy didn’t come back from the hospital, I died. Did he know? Next month, on my birthday I will marry him, his name is Boon. I will turn twenty-seven. Does he know? Where was he? I don’t remember. Where is he now? I don’t know. Where will he be tomorrow? I will never know now. The doctor told me that I am dying.

  WOMAN: …Tomorrow morning he will go for Tai Chi at Serangoon; at 11 a.m., play chess at the community centre. But, in the afternoon, he will be here. Tomorrow he will be here.

  PENNY: I miss him.

  WOMAN: Don’t talk about him anymore. Your wedding is next month. Be happy. Not sad.

  PENNY: I couldn’t find this shop. I couldn’t remember my way here.

  WOMAN: We are cl
osing next month.

  PENNY: Why?

  WOMAN: Government wants to take back the land. Want to build don’t-know-what new expressway.

  BOON: Expressway… that’s good. Fast, good to move on.

  WOMAN: Listen, your father’s health has improved a lot. He wants to see you again. But the monk said –

  PENNY: The monk, the monk, but there’s a hole in my heart. Does he know anything about my suffering and pain?

  WOMAN: It’s for everyone’s good! The monk said that it’s best you and your father stay apart! If not, someone will die! What’s going to happen to me and our children if he dies too?

  BOON: OK, OK, no stress, no stress, we better leave, Penny, let’s go, we are late.

  WOMAN: Penny, your father has a new family now.

  PENNY: I don’t believe in the family curse any more than I believe in the doctor! This is my wedding, and my father needs to give me away!

  BOON: Auntie, can you let your husband come to the wedding? Penny would really like her father to come.

  PENNY: Forget it! Let’s go!

  She enters the car. BOON takes over the driving wheel. He starts the car.

  PENNY: Faster.

  BOON: We’re already on the expressway.

  PENNY: Faster.

  BOON: This is the fastest!

  PENNY: Do you believe in family’s curse?

  BOON: No.

  PENNY: Do you believe those fish ball noodles are to die for?

  BOON: No.

  PENNY: Do you believe it’s going to be a great wedding, Boon? Do you believe that you will be happy?

  BOON: …

  PENNY: Do you believe that I love you?

  BOON: …Yes, but I am so bloody confused. I want to marry you. But I know that you are dying, and we don’t have many more days together. But I can’t bring myself to break up with you to spare myself the pain of what’s to come. Next month at the wedding, I am supposed to be at my happiest, but I dread every single moment as the day draws closer. I have never been more lost…

  PENNY: It’s at the next exit. The cemetery is on our right.

  BOON: …It’s going to be a great wedding.

  He drives the car into a cemetery.

  Lights change. There is a spread of food around the tombstones, offering for the dead.

  PENNY: Wow, your family’s ancestral plot is huge.

  BOON: My parents have gone home. The food is still warm. We just miss them… Let me make the introductions: these are my grandparents. Here is my first uncle; he died of lung cancer last year. This plot is reserved for his wife. Their children are Christians, so we won’t be seeing them down here. Down here is my grandaunt and her many children. She was a compulsive abortionist. Kidding. Not close to her. Over there are my cousins’ parents. Beyond that tree are just names and pictures to me. So here we are, this is your new family. I have dead people on my side too. We are not that different.

  He starts cutting the grass around the graves.

  PENNY: Where’s my plot?

  BOON: …Next to mine.

  PENNY: My grandfather was exhumed. I remember there was one year, my parents made me cut the grass like this too. I was bitten all over by mosquitoes and had dengue. The next year, suddenly my grandfather was inside an urn. Soon after, my mother was diagnosed with leukaemia. My father consulted a monk, and he said we were cursed because we had unearthed the dead. When mummy died, the monk said, to stop our grandfather from taking another one of us down with him, he must not be able to trace us. My father and I changed our names, moved house over a million times, we were even forbidden from talking about mummy. Sometimes we even forgot that we were father and daughter. Something died, and we didn’t talk about it. Boon, all these people here are not my family. I don’t know a thing about them. But all the better. It’s something old, something new, something borrowed. All the better. I am only a ghost of my former self.

  BOON embraces PENNY who is slowly collapsing to the ground.

  PENNY: Last night, I had the most vivid dream. It was linear, had a beginning, middle and end. It was real. I was at the airport and it was spanking new. All metal and glass, and beautiful. They must have finished renovations or built a new terminal. Everyone I knew turned up. And I mean everyone and anyone. They filled up the entire space of the departure hall. All my friends, family, relatives, colleagues, students, whom I have not met for years, and even my stalkers, my secret admirers from school days, came and, being very typical of them, hid behind the pillars. I avoided eye contact with them. It was still weird. I bade everyone goodbye, and some started crying. I laughed and said, “I will be back!” They cried even harder; some others went into a laughing fit – for no apparent reason, they started marching, but it was enough to crack everyone up and lighten the mood. By the time they were all done, I was late for boarding. Luckily, the ground crew held the plane for me and rushed me to my departure gate on a buggy. I felt like a queen. Once inside the plane, I settled into my seat and left my hand luggage on the floor. I looked around, and I recognised an acquaintance I had met at the Malaysian embassy. Which was weird because I am not even a diplomat and don’t know anyone from Malaysia. But I just knew her.

  I waved, but she didn’t see me because she was buying a play script from the onboard duty-free. But since when do they sell scripts at duty-free? I caught a glimpse of the cover. It was Look Backing in Anger by John Osborne. I recall watching one production of it and didn’t think that it was good. Very intelligent, but too cold for my liking. Then I heard a wail, and, at a seat behind her, a Korean couple’s five-month-old baby vomited, sending everyone into a screaming frenzy in the plane. That Miss Malaysia acquaintance of mine suddenly reacted and grabbed an air stewardess by her arm and demanded in a shrill voice, “Is there a diplomat on board? I want a dispute settlement between Malaysia and Korea!” By that time, the plane was on the runway ready for take off, but the cabin was in a total chaos. Two air stewardesses at both ends of the plane were communicating in sign language and singing that silly NSYNC song “Bye Bye Bye”. Then the plane hit something on the runway and veered sideways, sending everyone screaming.

  I was jolted out of sleep in bed, staring at the ceiling. I turned around, but you were not in bed, and I started panicking. Then I saw you across the room playing with our baby that I haven’t even given birth to. I don’t know why, but I turned over and returned to sleep and what do you know, I went back to the same part of the dream, where the air stewardesses were singing “Bye Bye Bye”. The one who stood closest to me suddenly stopped singing, turned to look at me, and smiled. “Welcome onboard,” she said, but not with that air-stewardess’s diplomatic “welcome-onboard” kind of smile but a knowing smile, as if she knew something I knew. And then I remembered. I reached down and grabbed my hand luggage from the floor and zipped it open. The plane was climbing the skies. Everyone was screaming, rolling off their seats because they didn’t wear their seatbelts. And there it was, inside my bag, a bomb with a clock attached, ticking to a zero. The alarm rang, and the plane cabin walls pulled apart, the ground underneath my feet fell away, a sea of fire washed over me, and I was swimming in a warm light.

  And you weren’t there.

  On the plane, when I needed you beside me… in the airport, when everyone I knew turned up, you weren’t there… in bed, you were not there to wake me from a bad dream, you were never there, you couldn’t coz you and I are destined to be apart… like my father, mother, and everyone I have loved, we are separated by an unconquerable distance.

  The alarm rang, and the cabin walls pulled apart, the ground underneath my feet fell away, a sea of fire washed over me, and I was swimming in a warm light… and then there was nothing… there was nothing.

  Blackout.

  Capturing the World sub specie aeternitatis or Why Do Art?

  BY T. SASITHARAN

  I am a whole and a fragment, connected and disjointed, in situ, and displaced. I am part of one of the oldest living civilisations on eart
h and yet nothing more than a washed up immigrant on a sliver of an island at the tip the Malaysian peninsula, the farthest point southwards that Asia extends to, flotsam and jetsam of a diasporic dispersion long before the Second World War. If I can be certain of anything at all, it is that my children will be far, far more plural and diverse than I can even begin to imagine. This is what it is to be alive today. We are many, many things and many things are within us.

  —T. SASITHARAN, 24 September 20091

  It seems pretty obvious that there are inherently inimical and ultimately irresolvable tensions between the cognitive, social, and philosophical motivations that underpin pragmatic human action and the personal, complicated, deeply felt, and existential necessities that impel us human beings to make Art and become artists.

  At the very outset, with the likes of Charles Sanders Peirce for instance, pragmatism began life as a way of clearing up metaphysics and as a quest for clarity and meaning. There is an unmistakable economy, austerity even, to Peirce’s First Maxim that exemplifies this clarity:

  Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object.2

  The consideration of the “practical bearings” of effects is the be-all and end-all of all conception of objects and, indeed, of deeds.

  The creed of pragmatism has taken many turns and has had several avatars. Pragmatism is now deployed ubiquitously as the principal calculus for rational action across many domains of human activity and agency. It is the gold standard for human action. In its most benign and positive social aspect, the pragmatic calculus may be thought of as a decision-making heuristic and its correlate, at the level of individual action or the self, as an algorithm of personal choice. However, both conceptions entail moral and ethical consequences.

  Singapore is, of course, the pragmatic state par excellence, wherein the pragmatic absolute of continuous economic growth overrides and often overwhelms all other conceivable national priorities – political, social, ideological, moral, or spiritual. As Kenneth Paul Tan, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, puts it: