A tougher love

Come Unkinder moving facing us, 

Come alive at night and bring us, bring us up, 

Come Unkinder shake the buildings into piles, 

Come Unkinder making eyes, a tougher love.

_____________________________________________________________

Too little time.

I only want the smell of rain

Days like these
when things don't matter
when you don't matter
when
I only want the smell of rain

of cities & streets
& eyes dreary with sleep
indelible & sublime
swallowed dappled light &
leapt in air, soared

& curled up in love & silk scarves
This is where I belong
in liquid sound
I am going heady with grey
douse me in flowers & sweet tea


______________________________________________________

'So, we have now spent three & a half days in Paris. It's been such a long time since I've sat down & written in this journal, which is strange because I have gone to a great many places & many things have happened since the last entry but somehow nothing has warranted the action of picking up a pen to write. But Paris is something else altogether. 

Even as I write about it, I feel a smile forming & a strange tingling sensation under my skin - I can't help it. For many years I wondered if I loved Paris truly or simply the idea of it, the conglomeration of blurry images & romantic associations pieced together from books & films but when I finally arrived here two years earlier, I knew that I wasn't wrong at all about my intuitions. I remember being bleary-eyed & restless from the flight, but as we rode into the city late in the night, everything felt new because the landscape unfurled willingly at my feet, glowing & resplendent. The city in the day is magical, but at night & in light rain is when I love Paris the best. 

There have been moments before in my life where scenes & moments have stolen my breath & formed images in my mind that stay for a very long time, but Paris two years ago & Paris now are rare instances where the singular scene lengthens into long & beautiful films & last for days. It is a city that resonates deep, within & into my soul. All those beautiful scenes - walking along the love-lock bridge, browsing the tiny bric-a-brac shops by the river Seine, the curly French consonants, smooth like meringue & light as air rising like coffee swirls around us, & yes, all the ugly parts of it too - the dingy backstreets & dusty flea markets, the crummy cafes at St Michel. It is in those places where I can imagine Henry Miller carousing the streets with his ragtag bunch of newspaper men, the Lost Generation writers' bent heads in Sylvia Beach's antiquarian bookstore in the Latin Quarter, & Ezra Pound & Picasso discussing art in Gertrude Stein's house. Paris is all at once a culinary feast, a lovers' destination, an embodiment of art & culture, a sanctuary, a bastion of the finest literature ever written & I love it, I love it all. 

Tomorrow, we leave for Stockholm. After days of French pastries & glasses of wine & bookshops, the Swedish capital feels somewhat drab. But I'll be back soon, it's only a matter of time.'

14/11/2013

Wipe the dust from your eyes

Folk & then some.

Marion - Dan Croll

Open Season - High Highs

Fathers Be Kind - Ivan & Alyosha

I've Got You - Meadowlark

My Love Took Me Down to the River to Silence Me - Little Green Cars

Home - Dan Croll

Selene - Imagine Dragons

Susie - Mikhael Paskalev

Imik si Mik - Hindi Zahra

Always Like This - Bombay Bicycle Club

The Light Is You - Said The Whale

Ragged Wood (Fleet Foxes cover) - Kate McGill

Youth - Daughter

We Sink - Chvrches

Coolie (Prairie Song) - The River & the Road

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I haven't been blogging much, or rather not at all, but I've been writing plenty. So much has happened & all of it has been inspiring: catching Imagine Dragons & Dan Croll in Stockholm, going to London & spending hours in antiquarian bookshops & reading outdated poetry journals, & of course, Paris. Paris is perhaps the most inspiring of all. Walking the streets alone is a dream & the lines & melodies come quicker than in most places. I remember feeling so incredibly euphoric that I wanted to stop time if only to savour the moment of actually being there. 

But more on that soon. Everything is going by so quickly & I've learnt that time doesn't stop for anyone, so for now I'm treasuring the little time I have left here & soaking it all in while I still can. Till next time!

Till the sea knows my name

Photo update // Throwback to lake day.

We've been second-guessing for weeks, but now it's certain: Summer is over. Much to our chagrin, the sun has been setting earlier & earlier every day, while the temperature dips below freezing at night. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the heat, the pleasant buzz of activity, the days where it was warm enough to take trips up to Roxen lake for a picnic & a swim. Lazy days. Mmmm. 

Fika

It's a quiet weekend here, for once. The last was spent in Copenhagen, but for now there is no rush to get somewhere, no rush to pack a bag. It's nice to come home, if only for a little while. Ever since the last exam ended & we returned on Tuesday, I've been spending a couple afternoons at my favourite fika place in town: Cafe Berget.

For the past two months, people have been trying to explain the concept of the Swedish tradition of fika to me (& subsequently, I've been trying to explain it to people back home) & basically it's distilled down to the act of having a coffee or tea with pastries in the middle of the afternoon, often with someone else. This is of course a Swedish lifestyle that I welcomed gladly with open arms, throwing myself willingly & over-eagerly into a regular habit of 'fika-ing', so much so that even the most severe sweet-tooth might find himself mortified. But you know what they say: When in Sweden, do as the Swedes do...

There's also something about a Swedish cafe that makes the age-old tradition of tea drinking even more alluring. Its magic is not created by a single defining thing, but a combination of many: the mismatched furniture & haphazard rooms & the melding of tea aromas at the pastry counter. The atmosphere is pleasantly still & one can sit in an armchair for hours reading a book, while the quiet but elegant murmur of Swedish voices swirl around in the surrounding air. I've been to many lovely cafes in Singapore & have had pleasant experiences, but honestly, none has come close to the ones they have here. The Swedish cafes are really something else, altogether :)

[sic]

So here we are,
curled up like a French sound
dreaming in twos or threes on
resplendent green
& realising that nothing is without meaning
Well, we are learning still
Looking at poems as people
people as poems
& that everything in between is song
I slipped into life,
suddenly

4 o'clock in sun's arms
& caught up in autumn's hair
so we twist an idea from air
where life & light intersect
Let the sun wash away all
our shame

STHLM

'Water is the nerve of Stockholm. It opens up the sky & lends a glow to this incredible fairytale city of the north, not far from the Arctic Circle. Stockholm is the city, it is always the same, everything changes, people come & go...'

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It's been a while! School started properly about three weeks ago, & between classes & weekend trips & my general lazy habits, I've hardly had the time to upload photos or write journal entries. It's been absolutely lovely though, the primary experience of living here, & a thousand things have happened but for now I'll start with one of the biggest highlights: Stockholm.

In the past six weeks (crazy, just thinking about it) I've been in Sweden, I've managed to visit its capital a total of three times. It's strange, but I never expected to love Stockholm as much as I do. Many of us know cities like Rome or Berlin for its illustrious history & definitive architecture, or Paris for its romantic sentiment, but when it came to Scandinavian capitals, I didn't know quite what to expect. But Stockholm took me by surprise with its curious mix of metropolis & nature, the cosmopolitan vibe & old culture melding together effortlessly so much as to make a tourist feel at home. The city, made up of numerous islands & vast inlets of waters, expresses a certain kind of openness that's rare in European capitals. One can walk the streets for hours without getting bored or tired, for there is always something to do or see in Stockholm, be it the countless museums or Gamla Stan or even just the beautiful waters... The events & chronological timelines have gotten a little mixed up in my head, but I'll do my best to remember :)

First glimpse: Stockholm Central. Breathtakingly massive.

Stepped out & St Clara's krykan (church) was the first thing we saw! I love taking pictures of anything made out of brick & covered in ivy.

Headed to Hotorget flea market, which is just off the main shopping street (Drottninggatan). Flea markets are always my favourite places to go to & something I look out for in new cities. I inevitably drag along whoever is with me (in this case, Sam) & spend hours browsing through dusty second hand books & records. This particular one was reminiscent of Thieves market back home, with many Arabic & Indian dealers peddling old cameras & leather goods & odds & ends.

Managed to snag a T.S. Eliot poetry collection, a Graham Greene novel & Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' for 40KR :)

Took a walk from the city to Gamla Stan (literally translates to 'old city'), which is arguably my favourite part of Stockholm! The cafes & colourful houses have such a charm to it, along with the narrow alleyways that heap haphazardly across each other.

Got some nice ice cream from a nice shop called 'Muren'. Ice cream is almost outrageously cheap in Sweden & since its one of the few inexpensive commodities, I take full advantage of this on a daily basis. We sat outside for about a half-hour, just watching people pass by.

'The English Bookshop' in one of the quieter alleys, along with this cute candy-making boutique. 

& here comes the embarrassing bit.

We had a couple of hours before church started, so we decided to take a walk along the river. After being all touristy & taking a few nice shots of the shoreline (like the one below), I decided to take a seat at the edge of the river & of course... my black ballet flat fell right into the waters below. Could not believe my sheer bad luck & had to walk barefoot for an hour, hunting doggedly for a pair of shoes. It was a truly mortifying experience & I'm sure everyone thought I was some kind of Asian gypsy, roaming across the city & hobbling painfully down the cobbled streets. 

Anyway, I finally got some Fred Perrys on sale, so all was well :)

On our second visit to Stockholm, I managed to visit Alfa Antikvariat, which I wanted to go to previously but it was closed. It was the biggest secondhand bookstore I had ever seen, full of old ship journals & volumes of good fiction. I liked how it had no frills, but was lovely all the same. Was completely ecstatic over finding a first American edition of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover for only forty dollars. Couldn't stop talking about it for days afterwards :) 

It happened to be Stockholm's cultural week when we were there, so there were plenty of street musicians & performers the whole weekend! Loved how there was a classical guitarist or a street magician at every turning, really changed the atmosphere of the city.

Lots of beautiful ships which looked like miniature houses, or at least backyards, along the piers. I liked this particular one very much.

Visited the Vasa museum, which has an amazing (& also hilarious) back story. It would take forever to go into detail, but you can read more about it here  

Fika in the museum's cafe.

Being tacky at the ABBA museum.

The famous buildings & central square in Gamla Stan where everyone loves to have fika & take a break in the afternoon

A glimpse of the hostel I stayed in. It was pretty cosy, but incredibly noisy at night with all the partying hipsters outside.

The last time I went to Stockholm was with Jennifer & we went to Skansen! It's a strange but pretty great concept, comprising of a carnival, a few cultural museums, a fresh food fair, beautiful gardens & a zoo! Definitely a whole day activity. I loved how well-preserved everything was, definitely a special experience just walking around & taking photographs.

Copper red houses.

Horsing around (hello, predictable caption)

Visited Rosendal's garden, which was on the other side of the island Skansen was on. It was absolutely amazing, large open fields of flowers (which you could pick for a fee) & fresh produce. We had fika at the greenhouse cafe & it was a real pity I didn't take more pictures. Trust me, there is nothing else better than enjoying rooibos tea & a cinnamon bun in good summer weather.

Gelato that we had on the last day in Stockholm in the Sodermalm district. It's another island, off the mainland, & it's sort of like the 'bohemian' part of Stockholm, full of cool record shops & hipster cafes (the first cafe we walked into was a dimly-lit, vegan, gay-rights supporting one, I kid you not). We were joined by Denise, a friend of Jen's which I had met before previously, & she was nice enough to bring us to a lovely tea shop & also to a special place to take pictures of the city from above.

Amazing views.

So that was basically it! I know I'm missing something. There were so many good fikas & places we visited & great conversations, but these were the highlights I remember. It's going to be awhile before I visit Stockholm again (perhaps for the legendary Christmas markets) because it's a) pretty expensive to travel there & b) school's starting to get a bit insane, so I'm going to miss it but for now, it's back to reality. Ah. I've got more to write about, like about our trip to Gotenborg & visiting Uppsala & just general updates on life but it's currently 2:44am now & that will have to wait!

Till next time.