JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The Chelsea Hotel is still under renovation.

When David Byrne wrote Here Lies Love, the disco musical about Imelda Marcos, the strongman’s widow was a figure of the recent past haunting the present. And now they’re baaaaack and may very well be the future. New songs will be written, but what can be done about willful amnesia and delusional nostalgia?

(Yes that is David Byrne. Please couch envious comments in song lyrics. You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it. You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything.)

Every time I visit I have to go to the duck pond at Central Park, to acknowledge a debt to this book.

“Okay,” I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. “Hey, listen,” I said. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?” I realized it was only one chance in a million.

He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. “What’re ya tryna do, bud?” he said. “Kid me?”

“No—I was just interested, that’s all.”

He didn’t say anything more, so I didn’t either. Until we came out of the park at Ninetieth Street. Then he said, “All right, buddy. Where to?”

It gets dark at 4pm.

On the way to Columbus Circle I ran into a protest rally. If the Sixties are back, will rock be back, too?

Humor as a survival mechanism.

Matches the current mood: somber, melancholy, the heightened sense that all this beauty will pass.

On the way to the park.

This is what is meant by fall colors.

We need more open green spaces at home.

For every concrete monstrosity, make the mall developers build parks. But who will alienate the money?

Parks are “non-revenue areas” and we are warned that vagrants, junkies, criminals will take them over. So only the rich can afford parks. Instead of breathing and walking among the trees, we go shopping for things we don’t really need, incur debts, drown ourselves in stuff.

A Richard Meier building

Cat in Holland Village

Noel wanted to go someplace fabulous and bleeding with local color, but I really am the most boring guest. I wanted to go to temple immediately, i.e. Kinokuniya. To my credit, I was in and out in just over an hour. I found:

– Sweet Caress, which is not a romance novel, and Armadillo by William Boyd, who creates characters I would like to meet. Any Human Heart is one of my favorite books. If you are glum and in despair over how you’ve spent your life, I recommend it highly.

– The Mark and the Void, a comedy about banking by Paul Murray, who wrote Skippy Dies.

– Public Library, short stories about libraries by Ali Smith, who is wonderful. I have two copies of How To Be Both and cannot bring myself to part with one.

– Suspended Sentences, three novels by Patrick Modiano. The French are allowed to publish very short novels. Reading Modiano teleports me to Paris, where one is happy being melancholy.

The resident cats at Books Actually have pins, postcards, and other merchandise, which gives me an idea.

On the weekend I went to chapel, a shop in Tiong Bahru called Books Actually, which last time I was there was patrolled by a large cat. There are three cats now, they know they are crowd-drawers, and they barely deign to be patted.

The friendlier of the cats at Books Actually

In the day Noel went to the office while I wrote. At night we went out to dinner. In two days I finished my second draft, leaving the weekend free. If you have to write fast, I recommend getting out of Manila for a bit. Not entirely, because what would we have to write about?

Cat at Moh Guan Terrace in Tiong Bahru

I had told Noel that I wasn’t interested in seeing the sights, which of course did not stop him from producing lists of things to do and restaurants to try. It is hotter in Singapore than it is back home, but it is clean and orderly so at no time do you feel like you’ve been spritzed with eau de Pasig River. Also there are plenty of well-fed, glossy cats on the streets and in the shops. Could I live here? Probably not, but it makes a great contrast. We all need a little antiseptic sometimes.

Zoozoo, the real owner of Cat Socrates on Joo Chiat.

I’d never spent more than three days in Singapore, and only for work, never by choice. Then one of my closest friends, Noel, moved to Singapore and rented a three-room flat so he could have visitors, and I needed a quiet place to finish my second draft. I write in restaurants and at home, where my cats are always challenging me to staring contests, but being in unfamiliar surroundings improves my writing (or I would like to think so). I suppose your senses are on high alert in places you can’t navigate blindfolded. My brilliant travel agent (Ms Angela at Asia International) booked my flight, my cleaning lady (Mrs Shiv) agreed to cat-sit (The cats like her well enough to make me jealous), and I was off.

I disagree with people who rate Manila’s airport the worst on earth, but it is definitely too small, and there are too many people in it. Most of our city’s problems are rooted in congestion, traffic being the obvious example, so the basic solution is population management (Other than shooting people, of course). In Terminal 2 there were lines everywhere: at the one shop serving sandwiches and coffee, at the washrooms, and at the boarding gates, which often serve two flights (But not at check-in or passport control, since I arrived insanely early). And then the woman sitting alone on a bench for six will tell you the seats are “reserved” for her entire family, who are presumably lining up somewhere.

The morning flight was full, departed 15 minutes late, and landed in Singapore a half-hour early. By following the signs in the vast airport (No one getting in your face!) my suitcase and I got to the MRT with no trouble at all. Sitting in the clean, cold, spacious train, I realized that I can no longer make fun of “Singabore”. Frankly I have had enough of the overly vivid thrills of living in Manila, and can now appreciate a city that treats everyone like a human being and recognizes that they have things to do with their time. It takes a third of the effort and time to get things done in Singapore, and your phone battery doesn’t die on you from searching vainly for a signal.

to be continued

Not a rhetorical question.