Category Archives: Registry

10/07/2023

July 11, 2023 By in Registry Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Let us write about girlhood. Or at least allow me write about girlhood. I ask for patience. I ask for space. I ask because some of the things I wish to write can be unbearable to read.

*

It has not gotten easier living as a girl, woman, whatever. Maybe I need to break this down slowly. Do not get me wrong – it is wonderful to be feminine. I love being feminine. I know femininity is no longer something that is tied to girlhood or womanhood. For me it makes me feel like a natural woman (Aretha Franklin, you will always be a Lady Soul). For others it is not, but nonetheless a space that can be comfortable. But when men perceive femininity, it tends to be tied back to heterosexual desire. Not just sexual desire, but the desire to maintain the family structure. The settling down. The having children. The hugs and kisses amid a matrix of sexual difference. It is sexual difference that gives me the heebie jeebies. Sometimes it does not matter how you feel about femininity on your own – that agency feels robbed by how men perceive it emanating from you. Maybe it is less of a problem if one desires men in the first place. It feels like a great issue when one has minute, or almost completely lacking desire for men.

*

On femininity, another parallel thread: female friendships. Girls look at other girls. Femme girls look at other femme girls. Between femme girls, the feeling of liking to look at what is feminine is mutual. This is a pleasant arrangement. What could go wrong with this?

*

About five years ago, I finally found a space where I could present myself in a manner that was comfortable. I could finally incorporate being feminine on a daily basis. That was my official entrance into girlhood, where previously it was burgeoning and fetal (this is not to say it was minor – I have already experienced sexual harassment in earlier years). Others girls and femmes began to compliment me. I always returned the gesture. I always meant everything I returned. I desire to be femme (and even more femme), but others forget that I also tend to desire those that are femme.

*

Bb is a present lover of mine. Bb left girlhood. Bb tells me that girlhood is really like what happens in Mean Girls. That is why they left it. There are social hierarchies built upon popularity, looks, status, class. Bb got so tired of that shit. I am tired of that shit but not tired enough. I am literally just a girl. Guess where I obtained the previous line from.

*

It was in the past year that I was suddenly flooded with archetypes of girls: The It Girl, The Sad Girl, The Depressed Girl, The Mentally Ill Girl, The Cool Girl, The Girlboss, The [insert adjective] [insert adjective] [insert adjective] Goth GF, The Sanrio Girl, The Girlygirl, and so on. It was a multiplicity of girls. Perhaps that is a liberatory thing. It was a proliferation of identities. For those who know me, I never thought of (alternative) identities, stereotypes, archetypes as liberatory. It was like boxing yourself again while society already tries to box you. In mathematics, specifically linear algebra, an identity matrix is a matrix that remains the same even when you multiply it with other matrices. A matrix is bounded by square brackets that look like this: [ ]. Sexual difference is a matrix precisely because Men must be from Mars, Women must be from Venus.

*

A friend called Ym told me today how girlhood cycles back to how men perceive women at some point. Ym and Bb probably have different outlooks on girlhood, but I get the sense that neither wish to partake in it as intensely as I have been submerged into so. I have wondered for months if I should try to desire men. When men see me in the club or the dancefloor they want me to grind their hardening members. And I do. I have not kissed any men since 2018.

*

I asked Bb why people liked to call me an “Angel” as a compliment. I do not see myself as an Angel. I know for a fact that I am a flawed person with a history that is not pleasant. Even as I try my best to be healthier and to learn to be more caring. It was a compliment that felt loaded with ethical baggage. It was something that I have been called by multiple people with lovely intentions. Bb felt that such a term meant very little. It was not a compliment that has much meaningful content. It was one of the many favorite words of girls that sparkled and fluttered like confetti but not much else. I found that hard to believe. It almost felt like people were not being honest to me. I am familiar with the word “Angel” as it was used by an ex-friend who was very friendly in the beginning, but who became frustrated with my person and broke off eventually. It is a word that is tinged with that history of falling out with other girls. It is word used where in their eyes later, I would have fallen from Heaven. I know that was an overly dramatic metaphor and allegory. I know I am nowhere near as beloved as Lucifer. I am human and being human is messy and discomforting. Perhaps even for Sianne Ngai, it is feeling ugly in the most vulgar manner of it.

*

I wish to be a City Pop Girl. City Pop is a genre saturated with funky melancholic songs sung by women. The usual lyrical theme is that the woman singing knows how beautiful she is, but she is so, so romantically alone in an indifferent, cold metropolis. The (fairly niche) Idol Yukika Teramoto is one of such singers. It has been two years and I have not gotten over how pretty she is. I wanted to be pretty like that. In the past year I worked towards being pretty like that. I like how classic the makeup of City Pop singers past and present was:

  • A clean powdered look.
  • Optional blush, and next to no bronzing and highlighting.
  • Brows are neatly trimmed and require almost no drawing.
  • Minimal eyeliner. This is a sophisticated high femme look, but it is not hyperfeminine.
  • Lifted eyelashes with minimal mascara.
  • Next to no eye shadow.
  • Bright, or deep, or pinkish red lipstick.

It also meant I was not really following trends of any sort. That can be an uncomfortable position to be. Part of girlhood is having a finger on the latest trends. Part of that can mean social competition. I just wanted to look like a pretty girl that was comfortable in my own skin. Where I could sit in a Café and feel the sun on my dress and feel peace.

*

If I saw a girl or another femme that is pretty, I would occasionally feel romance creeping up towards me. This does not preclude knowing a person better with time. The issue might be romance itself, however. My personal history is that I have always gone overboard with it in unhealthy ways. Recently I have been learning to love in generality, eschewing the categories of platonic, sexual, romantic, and letting desire expand without additional perceptions. It is starting to feel like a better way to love. But as a girl how expansive can I practically be? Should I still be open to men at least, just to try? How far can my love go…

*

A part of me wishes that if a girl or femme tells me I am pretty or beautiful, it means that they want me. But in practice that does not entail anything until they tell me they do want me. If I tell a girl or femme that they are pretty or beautiful, I always mean it. And I always mean it in a way that has the potential of desire, of falling in love. It feels weird to type that out to the world. I am uneasy that I mean things this way. That I cannot be completely friendly about this. It feels almost like a masculine thing to say. I find it difficult to separate my desire for femmes from pure aesthetic appreciation for femmes. If girlhood tends to construe such compliments as purely social, purely platonic, then any desire on my end gets washed out. Any desire on my end feels dirty and unwanted.

*

Once I tried an Emo look. Seeing that, another friend known as Gb told me that I could try to pull off a TradGoth look. In some ways this feels much better than a compliment. A comment like this opened up possibilities I had not thought of or was afraid to entertain. It was an opening. Perhaps the way to see this is to see it as styles, not archetypes to follow, or trends to follow. You do not have to embody the It Girl or whatever. They are mere styles, like how femininity and masculinity are styles. Embodying an identity or archetype is probably where relating to something can become unhealthy. Can feel like being boxed in. Styles are fun. Styles are not essential. Styles are a manner of experimentation. Styles can bring comfort. I might be getting somewhere with this.

*

These days I spend a minute or two shaping my lips to redness. When I am done, life feels more bearable and worthwhile. I will regard it as a bonus if other girls, femmes, and men understand why I practice painting my lips.

30/06/2023

June 30, 2023 By in Registry Tags: , Leave a comment

I haven’t written a blog post in a while. Since 2019, I took to Twitter to microblog. I think the scrutiny and algorithmic dangers that Twitter brings has taken a toll on me. Outsider perceptions of me have taken a massive toll on me. Long after the Golden Age of blogging in the 2000s, I shall try blogging again. I do pay for this domain after all.

How many spaces I have left to be fully authentic and serious – two things that ground me – I don’t know. Writing here is an attempt to rediscover what is personal.

The Lune of 2023 was very different from the Lune of 2018 that started this blog. The five years in between have simultaneously felt like thirty years and a half-forgotten series of short vignettes. They are half-forgotten because of years of accumulated trauma. I have fallen for just three people in those years. I have nearly perished multiple times in those five years. The Lune of 2018 would go on to build vast networks across writing spaces, LGBTQIA+ spaces, and civil society spaces in Singapore, and will proceed to lose more than half those networks by this time of writing.

The Lune of 2018 would never have imagined she would lose a trans sister she loved. She is still there, outside Peaches Club, in her wig that was straight from a 90s on 60s film, celebrating her trans sister’s win at the first ever drag competition in Singapore. She is there smiling and laughing, slightly drunk, making conversation with older drag queens, looking in awe at how gorgeous her sister is. Her sister wore blue that night. It was her signature color. She would book a Grab and return home feeling dizzy, loved.

The Lune of 2019 is the Lune of business. She is there in her room in the University Town, furiously typing, knowing her place. She thinks of protecting and securing the rights of other trans and non-binary students in her university. In the process she cries. In the process she finds inspiration from a younger student, just 17, protesting outside the ExxonMobil headquarters. She divines her future arrest by the police. She starts calling herself an anarchist. She starts calling herself a lesbian. She is so sure of both things. She goes onto Twitter thinking it would be just her, microblogging her life and retweeting her favorite things.

The Lune of 2020 is the forgotten Lune. The start-of-COVID Lune. The Lune that realizes how neither the State nor institution are her friends. They will never be her friends. But who Lune is in 2020, that has been erased by trauma. One thing that is clear: she wakes up one afternoon, and found her own LGBTQIA+ community group in her College infiltrated by Christian conservatives. They have created a moral panic out of a student-run educational seminar on bondage practitioners. She begins to burn out.

The Lune of 2021 is the Lune of struggle. She is still there with her handcuffs. She is there inside the Cantonment Police Complex holding cell, staring at the ceiling, the disproportionately large emptiness of the space. Inside she recites the first part of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. The one with Marie sledding down the mountains. The part with reading and going south in winter. She is preparing to recite it in a creative writing class taught by the local poet Boey Kim Cheng. When she does so, someone cries at the performance. She goes on her first ever date that year, after a long summer of depression and burnout. She is still there by the river, on another hot afternoon, yearning. From then on she learns teenagehood once more. Painfully.

The Lune of 2022 is a shell. She is still there in her room, where someone she trusts is about to betray her. She dissociates and dissociates. The Lune of migraines. The Lune of heightened anxieties. The Lune that broke. The Lune that has deep gashes. The Lune that is poorly. She is there standing at Archway Station trying to connect the new and the newer. She keeps failing to do so. She lives in another’s fantasy where she falls onto the tracks and dies due to her weakness. She tries to live with dignity. She stops calling herself a lesbian.

The Lune of 2023. There’s nothing much to say. The Lune of botched girlhood. The Lune of the long road. It is not clear if that road leads to ruination. I have stopped smiling. I’ve forgotten how to smile without wincing. I remember how I smiled in 2018. In 2021. That smile, and its authenticity will not come back for years to come. Joy became something increasingly difficult to grasp as the years go. Nina Simone sings in “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” (1967):

I want a little sugar in my bowl
I want a little sweetness down in my soul
I could stand some lovin’, oh so bad
Feel so funny, I feel so sad

There is a long road.

2003

August 10, 2022 By in Dysphoria, History, Home, Men, Mother, Numbers, Ones, Poetry, Registry Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

i recall a lot where there can be
no return – everyone’s an American
Idiot; where i am just young, bare in
accepting boyhood. i cling onto Mom
for the remainder of that life, fingers
tight, gripping with the lack of futures.

on page 5: my hands in my Father’s
back pocket, the gravity of a Nokia
and the engorged snake, inching.

am here in another hotter summer.
memory-like liquid crystals. I…

+1. is the roar of a television shutting down.
i recall a lot, wanting to see Green Day
live, and so did i, a mushroomed head.
i went to the barber’s exiting with a bowl tarnished by water.

i went to the barber with vertigo;
i never fell from my Mother’s bosom.
the nokia rings. i stop touching my Dad.

water is short like the snake like the being i stopped

Suiteroom – Take 3

October 13, 2019 By in Algorithms, Copout, Dreams, Drinks, Path, Poetry, Registry, Rooms, Tea, Words 1 Comment

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.829]
(c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Lune>darken puddle
‘darken puddle’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\Lune>add tears
‘add tears’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\Lune>dose check
‘dose check’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\Lune>hot tea
‘hot tea’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\Lune>stroll room
‘stroll room’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\Lune>d:

D:\>cd Google Drive\Poetry

D:\Google Drive\Poetry>type Suiteroom_3.txt

12/06/2019

July 13, 2019 By in Fiction, Genera, Registry, Response Tags: , , , Leave a comment

This is what Hauntology does: the endless consumption of remakes and reboots even after your biological death. In ‘BR: 2049’, we see holographic renditions of Elvis Presley – who’s to say in 30 years you won’t be presented the option to consume commercial facades of David Bowie, Mariya Takeuchi, or Keanu Reeves. Every generation had, has, and will have an ‘Aladdin’, a ‘Frozen’, a ‘Lion King’, in exploitative tradition. The next generation will internalize the same media as personality, have collective memories of a magical past, where all there was were similar conditions of wage-labor and replicative production. In this, the nostalgia economy runs efficient, haunting each generation for their productive energies; a ghostly Soma that distracts from the rise of collective class consciousness, alike how a B-grade Horror flick uses jumpscares to evade a shell of a plot.

Week 4

September 5, 2018 By in Registry Leave a comment

How do I place it in words – Part of me strongly finds Tembusu a mistake; The other insists that it has always been the right decision.

Former argues that you listened to her, made her the reason, which resulted in a terrible choice. Latter retorts by saying that the Former is overthinking: “You are causing your own misery.” Former, at a loss of words, says that you should never have met her. Latter tries to find something to pick at, and concludes that you need to settle your own emotions before it destroys you.

Former always goes into a downward spiral. Former is asking many questions: “Why am I so ugly”, “Why did I fall for her”, “Why am I vying for her attention as if I were desperate for love”, “You haven’t changed since 10 years ago, haven’t you”, “Will you ever learn”, “Is there beauty”, “Why am I so hideous”, “Is it because she no longer has time for me”, “Why am I so selfish”, “Why, why, why”.

Latter exhales: “Clearly you went in with very high expectations – The returns are simply awful.”

Latter continues: “Clearly, she is a friend. She will always be. Find another phase.”

Former, not listening, mentions: “You’re transgender – You do not deserve love. You’re disgusting. Remember how people forget to use “she” when referring to you. Remember how someone mentioned that there are only 6 girls when there’s 7. Remember how the state fails to recognize you. Remember how you can never be the woman you want to be. Remember how the moment she stopped singing your praises, and you realized that you were petty, ugly, undesirable, jealous, and all the longkang metaphors became true and your being is stained to the last grime.”

Latter, also not listening, says: “Do not tie your self-worth to her.”

Latter ends with: “I’m going to give up.”

June 19, 2018 By in Mother, Registry Leave a comment

I just finished reading ‘Sugarbread’ and was left deeply impressed by acute depictions of religious corruption, and casual racism on this sunny island since its independence. This book also centers on the struggles of the Protagonist’s mother in dealing with her traumatic past. It brings to mind of my own.

A friend tonight mentioned that, overhearing a conversation I had with my Mother, about the frustration I had my voice. I seldom talk like that to Mom – It was more of how she purchased financial products (super low-risk ones like the Savings Bonds) for quite a while now but still didn’t understand it fully. But it always hurts when she claims that she’s too stupid to understand anything. It’s a complex she had for years, paralyzing her in times of immense stress. I should have been more patient, in hindsight.

It brought to mind about how Dad was elitist when he was still with us. Before he left he argued with my Mom over rather trivial matters but insulted her intelligence. I don’t understand how someone can take so much pride in their own intelligence just to put down others. Just because she was a diploma holder while he held a degree. I’ve seen him talk down service staff and lower-income job holders, too.

Mom doesn’t want anything to do with her own family, especially Dad’s. Dad’s side consists of people who are mostly Christian, and upper-middle class. She was acutely aware of how my aunts were subservient to their husbands, and unconditionally accepted their gaping personality flaws. In some way, Dad and his brothers were either sexually promiscuous, had terrible tempers, or were condescending in general. She disapproved of my aunts, degree holders and professionals in their own capacity, of putting up with the antics of my uncles for the sake of a religiously-fueled vision of a family.

I’m glad I write poems about her occasionally. Her mother, my Grandmother was a domestic helper who had to deal with her cheating husband’s and drug-addled son’s shit. Great-grandmother fled her home in Hong Kong during WWII just to endure 3 years of occupation by Imperial Japan in Singapore. She sold bee hoon in the north back then, raising five children singlehandedly. Both matriarchs in their own right. Mother is the next in line in generations of incredibly resilient women, all who unfortunately had to suffer due to the men in their lives being poor excuses of people.

At least by writing , I can count the mistakes of the men in my family, while celebrating the women who have made worldly things possible.

 

 

No Sleep

May 31, 2018 By in Desire, Registry Leave a comment

My deck is hinting that I require someone as reliable as the King of Pentacles. Or maybe that I should aspire to be like him. Or perhaps all I really need is some form of immense stability – Something sorely lacking this month, and the next. My current deck tends to be a rather harsh Mother that understands me better than I understand her.

I have been trying to keep my infatuation in check. Friends who know me know how I describe it nowadays as a pie I cut for many wonderful individuals, the intensity of it reduced in this manner. Except that by this point I am now cutting more pieces for a singular person, and alarms are ringing alongside with allure. She is incredibly talented and precise, not that I can understand any of her nuances.

Maybe I should write something about illusions. My namesake is filled with exactly that.

Something like infatuation is riddled with ideals, even the idealization of flaws. I know this, and I will have to restrain myself until the day I am able to drown in work and distractions.

A great thing to note would be that I remain grateful to have found my current group of friends since the past year. I cannot say how lucky I feel to belong during these years of limbo.

The Four of Pentacles have come up. It seems like I really need to unwind my grip on things.

 

 

Crossroads/Stasis

May 24, 2018 By in Registry, School Leave a comment

I spent six years in High School. 

Lately, I’ve been having recurring dreams where the setting is more or less the campus proper. It used to be an eldritch combination of my alma maters (i.e. my Primary School and High School), but that has been shifted in focus to represent my high school in a more detailed fashion (excluding the extra-dimensional frameworks dreams usually manifest themselves in).

These dreams tend to depict an implied time period set approximately in my fourth/fifth year, with a strong foreboding emotion of an end-of-year major, major examination. This part is uncanny, since my High School, unlike most other tertiary educational institutions in Singapore, do not offer the Singapore-Cambridge GCE ‘A’ levels. We spend six years studying for in-school examinations conducted each semester, the results of which contribute to our final GPA for our graduation diploma (our school follows the modular system that Universities/Colleges apply). There is no one, ultimate examination.

And yet, there is a sickening feeling permeating in these dreams that I have yet to accomplish something of a massive scale in the past – The reality is that I have obtained my lackluster diploma since two years ago (I recently finished my conscription cycle), and I’m currently interning while waiting to enter college.

I see the hazy faces of seniors, paired with an afterthought of moving on with life after High School, after University. I climb the stairs and walk the extra-dimensional, larger, more complex-than-life corridors in a haphazard, aimless manner. Struck with anxiety about not graduating. Despite already being an alumni of two years. Dreams tend to be visually unclear, but can be extremely stark in emotional nuance. Many objects or landmarks however warped is tagged with an emotive quality. My friends, juniors, seniors have moved on in life and I’m somehow wandering around, being constantly late or worried about preparing for a national examination that does not exist. Unable to envisage the sixth year or the future, plagued by a momentary amnesia where I forget that I’m already living in the future.

Somehow, these dreams have occurred before my decision to join Instagram. Perhaps they have been amplified, after seeing everyone I knew in High School having the time of their lives – The other girls previously from my batch on their summer breaks before their third year of College, seniors with their graduation pictures.

The stagnation is stifling, anxiety-inducing. I’m doing things, participating in art-related events, submitting my writings. However none of it feels like it is amounting to anything.

In time, I’ll matriculate. It for the best if I can leave these insecurities behind by then to make my time in College worthwhile.