We Rise and Fall into Spring Blossoms

Dear Reader,

Just three weeks ago, we were gathered at Aliwal Arts Centre for the official launch of homesick. The Ethos team—Kah Gay, Zining, Sharm and Mars—alongside my studiomates, came an hour earlier to set up the space. We plastered blue cellophane on the windows and lit the room with Ikea lamps. But truly, it was the warmth of the audience that really added to the magic of the evening.

Photo by Jonathan Tan 

For years, pouring myself into this collection was an outlet to make peace with my past and also, giving myself permission to belong. Sometimes, the writing process was a walk in the park, literally. A poem would come to me like a download just because I smelled leaves after the rain. On other days, writing also meant revisiting photographs and videos to gently sense out details and textures. 

I am happy to share that I’m already working on my next writing project! This month, I have been trying to revisit a hard disk containing the data I’ve backed up from the years 2014 to 2020. The keyword: trying. Unfortunately for us, we live in a world where obsolescence is deliberately built into our technology. What once took seconds and clicks in the past, now takes forever on a corrupted hard disk. Despite preparing myself, I am faced with disappointment  when my laptop ejects the corrupted hard disk each time I attempt to open a file.

The logical thing is to get the hard disk repaired as soon as possible, but emotionally, I can’t help feeling like I’m being asked to let go. Attempting to recover the corrupted files feels superficial since I’ve managed my life just fine without them. Then a deeper grief sets in—I no longer have access to the tapes and footage I wrote about in “another grandpa poem” in homesick. All that’s left are the photographs he printed. Even then, they have aged with time and were nearly destroyed by moisture. 

Printed photograph of me as a child, damaged by water stains. 

karaoke Sundays
you’d pass the mic
tell me my voice was good enough to sing
—"another grandpa poem"

If anything, writing, as a practice, offers a glimpse of hope—a moment once experienced for yourself and recently relived on a TV, computer or mobile screen, gets a renewed breath when you write it down. 

It feels surreal then, to know that homesick, as a physical object, can now also become part of someone else’s belongings, tucked among other books on a shelf, in their home. 

That the memories of the people I love and cherish can have new lives and meaning in the hearts of others. I end off this letter with an excerpt from “butterflies”: 

ten years of winter
must come to an end

my spine on your chest
I adjust my breath
we rise and fall
into spring blossoms

Love always,
nor

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