nightingales melt in summer

On the News tonight: Singapore recorded its strongest-ever winds of 83 km/h last night. I think it was just Sun Wukong on his speeding cloud.

It's been too warm to do anything recently. Too warm, too warm. My brain wanders and never goes in the direction of my notes in front of me. I so need to study, but I just can't. The heat oppresses like any authoritarian Lee, and there's nothing the opposition can do about it but be quietly quashed by this tropical heatwave. Now you know LKY was right, in a way; warm temperatures make you dumb and lazy.

Do your best, boy, you know you need it.

the brilliant green is brilliant.

in warmth, in wind, in ochre of the wilderness sky

A freak wind blew through tonight, howling like the ghost of a gale. Trees bent like fern fronds, and plastic bags and styrofoam shards swirled in invisible funnels on the street below. The clothes rack in the balcony fell over and my windows slammed shut like eyes afraid to see. Lights came on all over the blocks opposite, bewildered faces appearing behind panes and watching for the sound they could not see, but for the whipping of branches and the cold fingers against their skin. Primal fear must be in their hearts.

A sepia image. Village mothers chasing their dusty children indoors, boarding doors and bolting shutters. "Demons are coming," and men with shovels and hoes brace against the encroaching forest of things they cannot see, but things they can feel through gritted teeth and in the depths of their animal souls. Spirits and demons.

A demon wind blew through tonight, and the sky churned red with clouds of brimstone.

I guess we will always fear that which we do not understand, and that which we cannot control.

simple things.

You're something else, you are. And I would love to love you.

different names for the same thing

Alone on a train aimless in wonder.
An outdated map crumbled in my pocket.
But I didn't care where I was going,
Cos they're all different names for the same place.

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun.
I've no words to share it with anyone.
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed,
And all the different names for the same thing.

There are different names for the same thing.