Jonathan B. Chan is an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge reading English. Born to a Malaysian father and Korean mother in the United States, Jonathan was raised in Singapore and sees his cultural tapestry manifest in his writing. He has recently been moved by the writing of Marilynne Robinson, Joan Didion, and Shusaku Endo. His mind is preoccupied with questions of theology, love, and human expression.
take a walk
today after meeting a friend I
ambled through orchard road,
absentminded without a destination;
paused for an out-of-tune singer and
exasperated accompanying beatboxer;
wandered through lucky plaza curious
about the bastion of pinoy secrets; past the
rows of emerald hill bars inhabited by
expats and disgruntled white collars;
sipped a mojito in the masquerade of a
sanfran cable car; wove through shuttered
shops and dimmed stores; cast curious
glances upon fellow wednesday night
streetwalkers; peered into bank buildings
like art installations and furniture stores like
colonial houses; ventured to art galleries
that only allowed for window scrutiny;
thought about nothing in particular. the
adage that singapore has no soul is
reflected by the shiny artifice of its
shopping district: a grandiose veneer that
masks a system of transactions and
conditions. this is not the place to find
poetry recitals or aspiring bands or
bartending conversationalists or morose
comedians; this is not a place to expect
meaningful and heady exchanges (with
exception to dinner’s dialogue); the city
projects the image of what is expected of
luxury and commerce- a moving image
sustained without substance.
~
i need to know
to conversations that
meander through
chinatown festivals,
graphite stains
that mask
bashfulness, no,
to billowing ambition
wafting through
twice-boiled aromas and
bitter chocolate, no, to
trailing wordlessly
in hongdae thrift
stores, no, to unwitting
glances during mimed
raps, no, to untouched
garageband euphoria
between languid
afternoon smiles, no,
to the first time i
mustered what i
had and asked
if we could
sing together
~
road trips
billy joel on a mountainside path
singing of heartbreak and drink
amidst flanks of dust and rock
and well-dressed nepalese that make
ramshackle buildings and traffic disorder
(there are neither addresses
nor traffic lights but a cacaphony of car horns)
even more baffling. the momentary
discomfort of 10 hour journeys in
this claustrophobic
provides glimpses of destitution and poverty and
masses of people and acres
of farmland that whisk past our windows.
we sip their chai, eat their momos,
chow mein, dhaal bhat;
our tourist’s novelty is their daily diet.
I wince at the
juxtaposition of dulcet
california tones and the
monotony of nepali workmen.
~
tanahun
open fields team with crumbling
rocks and crags; a farmer walks
by with a line of livestock-
our urban eyes jolt at the sight of
goats and cows and chickens
and those who tend to the
hopes of harvest. the local
pastor diagnoses them with
chronic laziness-
“they work for 4 months a year
and spend the rest doing little else”
would a taste of
salvation arouse them from
moribundity?
we offer our services-
a volleyball,
a football, a
guitar, they snap our photos like
zoo animals. they accept us
into their homes, perhaps
endeared by a foreign face rather
than a savior’s sacrifice. the
prayer circles assure us we have
scattered the seeds; we wait
for them to flourish.