Looking at Poach's journal this morning, and how she says that because of blogging we don't bother to think sustainedly and to write complete thoughts. Which is true. This has been more of a blog for me so far, although I am not sure I ever intended it to be a journal to begin with either. I don't like the way I cease to take care of my language, and simply dump out any account of my day. I thought of having both a blog and a journal, like Poach, but it's too much effort, and I'd probably never push myself to finish a complete, well-thought-out entry, so what's the difference? Here at least I occasionally say anything coherent. What she said about what her friend said about mental agility vs fuzzy contentment is very true though. Some part of me is restless for something challenging, on the other hand, mostly I'd like to curl up with a Wodehouse and a steaming mug of tea.

Thinking about the kind of books that I really want to read these days, and literature (or the futility of?) started me thinking about the books food and sex business again. I get lots of messages about this, people who want to revise their answers, or who claim indignantly they never said such a thing, or gosh did so and so really rank XYZ? I really think of it as a serious question. We're Singaporeans, for goodness sake. What could possibly matter to us more than where we can find the tastiest laksa, the crispiest prata, the ice kachang most loaded with kachang? Sex, for those of us in relationships, is shorthand for love. And which of my closest friends is not in love with words? How many of us aren't most alive in the world of the mind? When I tried to rethink my question in abstractions, then, I concluded that what "sex books or food?" is really asking is whether you value most your emotional connection to people, your intellectual engagement with words, or your sensual delight in life. But then I thought about it somemore, and it's not really that simple either. I have been thinking about why I can't choose, and I think the book-sex thing has ultimately been my problem even from the time I was very young.

I believe in words. There's an Edna St Vincent Millay poem that starts my "books" section and I feel as if I can never say that to any man and believe it, but that I know beyond any doubt that is what I want to say to a life with words, books. How can I explain it. It's the most real thing there is, it takes everything out of me and gives me so much back. It forces me towards the overwhelming questions, to ask myself what language means to me, and how I can even begin to answer this question to begin to live. But when I say i privilege words more than anything, do I really think that though, or is that posturing? How arrogant is that, and more, how unfeeling is that? Do I really want to say that I believe in words more than in people? If anything I ought to know words are more treacherous than people could ever be.

See, like Poach and I were agreeing once, long ago, there's a part of us that thinks, that *really* does think that love is the supreme virtue, who would ink emphatic exclamation marks inside our DH Lawrences. I think we're pretty intense and passionate and to an extent wilful. and it is as if nothing is right, unless we love and are loved, otherwise any sort of intellectual achievement is just dross. When I was reading Winterson's The Passion I imagined myself in imprisonment, and I think that would have killed me, my love rowing by my window each day. Put me in a small cell and never let me see another person again, but give me an endless supply of books? I don't know - I'll probably go mad, craving the shape of bodies I've once held, the echoes of voices I've once melted to. But tuck me away in a secret place with the man I love, but let us have no more books, no more words to share - I will kill myself sooner than exist in a world without books.

And that has also something to do with A.S. Byatt talking about the attraction of the Snow Queen being that of the solitude of Christabel, of Maud's "icily regular, splendidly null" person, of the Lady of Shalott too. How art, abstract beauty, the "mathematical perfection" of the Snow Queen's puzzles for instance, happens at the expense of the warmth of the hearth and emotional connections and love and red roses. She quotes Yeats too, about choosing between the life and the work. In Galatea 2.2 also, "Powers" asks his dying literature professor if books help, and his answer? Not at all. Literature's not really central to life, and it's not much consolation to him, at the end of the day, poetry makes nothing happen, etc etc. And Helen (Imp H) shuts herself down because she could read but not love.

I think about this a lot as I start to wonder whether to go to grad school, and how everyone will be back home and I'll be slogging alone for years at the expense of home and friendship and love and if anything is worth it, and if so I'd better figure out what really quickly. Because sometimes I wonder about poetry making nothing happen. Choonping said in an email last December that when you come down to it, so bloody what? do we really care about the ratiocinative impulse in Poe's fiction, or the autobiographical imperative in Dante? He rages, in one of his post-essay frustrations: "And so what if in The Sound and Fury Benjy's disjointed sense of narratorial time suggests incomplete Lacanian socialisation?  So what if Zora Neale Hurston explores the non-vocalisation of a self-consciously feminine linguistic? So what if Homer had constructed his epics out of pre-fab phrases? Does it MATTER?" See, I actually find myself agreeing with him. Although maybe we're confusing literature with academia, but often I find myself going "I don't care. Give me my Pratchett and a mug of tea and go away."

And I also wonder if saying, I don't care, really means, I'm not very good at this, or I don't understand. I really don't think I'm much good. Good enough to pass courses, but not really good. My little anthills are here, and there the pyramids are! Max and Onno say that we should never feel small compared to the universe, to music, to literature. Max explains in a sentence that almost exactly echoes a poem by Emily Dickinson, which opens Galatea 2.2, which, when I got up a second ago to look for so I can quote it, I remember I'd lent it to Vaughn on Wednesday, so I can't. Basically they say that the brain can comprehend the universe, and more besides, so how can we feel small in comparison, because in that we're greater than the universe. Onno tells Ada it's no good saying that Bach felt small compared to music, because music aren't celestial strands floating around, but only exist because of Bach and the rest. But it isn't "Literature" I feel small compared to. I feel small compared to people. I'm so frustrated sometimes by how little I know about anything.

I wonder if it's just RJ and how all you ever hear about from teachers are how *fantastic* their ex-students are and how you know all the names and all the anecdotes and you still pass down these essays by brilliant former students, all of whom are honoured with the definite article before their names. Which is probably why i'm always looking for mentors and guides and people to look up to. And why this past semester, seeing graduate students up close have mostly been disappointing. Why, some of them are just like me, better undoubtedly, but partly on account of having done it longer, and having more drive or focus, more hardworking. Reeves once wrote on Yen's S paper essay, "You are the real thing, my dear" or words to that effect. To this day I aspire to that but will never see it. The real things, I suspect, don't aspire to be real things. But when I look at the grad students around me I wonder, why are all these people so sure of themselves and so sure that they have got *it* or are *it*. Why do any of us think we're any more than competent and is competent what is needed? Read books, mull over them, write something. I suppose i'm not bad at doing that, but so are lots of people. To pass courses, that's not difficult. To really be good, to say anything worthwhile, that's a different matter altogether. Me? Clever? rather. But clever enough? Third rate at best. And if only competent then why bother, why don't only the right people keep going all the way and the wrong people stop early enough. Isn't it better to go off and be a JC GP teacher and stop clogging up the corridors and let the first-rate people get on with it and admire them? I suppose the problem then would be, how do you know if you're the wrong sort. By the pricking of your thumbs, I suppose, or your teachers' pens. Survive early slaughters by red pen, and maybe you'll be on your way. Last week I impulsively let someone see some old essays and then I regretted it for ages afterwards. Herman Mussert in Nooteboom's story scorns his lover's husband's vapid poetry, saying they'll disintegrate if they even brush against a line of Horace. That's approximately how I feel about those essays. Enough to bluff the teacher, to use whatever you'd been taught to quickly write something by 5pm. But the moment someone smart turns his gaze on them the words simply turn to dust.

See. That's where the food comes in. Wouldn't it be easier to live and not have to think so hard - you could be perfectly vapid and perfectly happy. Eat well, dress well, enjoy life, be kind to animals, genial to strangers. And what's wrong with that? For today, I think, just give me my mug of tea and my Pratchett and go away.