Clarissa spends her life trying to separate fiction from non-fiction. As a journalist, she focuses on travel and the arts. As a desperately hopeful author, she writes short stories and is working on a novel. Clarissa won the Spectator’s final Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. Her blog, Words and Letters, is a series of vignettes exploring the nature of fiction.
www.clarissa-tan.com
Defence
January 18, 2010
“This year, our nation will spend 7.3% of our GDP, or $12 billion, on defence. Approximately $8 billion will go into Keeping Up With The Joneses, or – as is more relevant in our case – With The Wongs. If our neighbours get double glazing or a gazebo, we will too. Whatever the number of our neighbour’s cars, where n denotes the amount, the number of our cars will be n+1.
A further $2 billion will be dedicated to Maintenance Due To Wear And Tear – re-tiling the pool, upholstery of our European antique furniture, etc. We also believe in the offensive: $1.7 billion will go toward something so indulgent, our neighbours have no hope of fighting back – racehorses, for example, or a small casino.
Finally, the remaining $300 million will serve as an Emergency Fund, to be drawn upon so that at no time do we have to look lost, afraid, vulnerable, natural or just plain silly."
Zone
January 17, 2010
Somewhere in midair, as the pilot droned over the intercom, it hit me that I would gain time for flying westward. A gift of three hours suddenly presented itself, like an oxygen mask bobbing down from the ceiling. I grasped it greedily.
Leaving Sydney in the evening, I would arrive in Singapore at midnight. I could watch as many movies and eat as many snacks as I wanted, and still land in time for bedtime. How freeing it was, up in the clouds! I was no longer a semi-insomniac. I ordered more wine, more coffee. The words of a book gained further poignancy for swimming about. Aaron Eckhart looked sublime. The woman next to me said her husband had died on Christmas Eve three years ago, and I fought the urge to giggle.
Three hours. I had gained three hours.
Ovation
January 16, 2010
Wow. What a fantastic concert that was. Mind-blowing, life-changing. I must clap, hard. With hands raised higher than usual. The guy next to me is cat-calling. I wish I could do that. You know what? This really deserves a standing ovation. Oh, two people two rows down from me just got up. I’ll get up too. Here we go. Must clap some more.
Everyone else starts stamping their feet. Oh god. That means they’re not getting up. That means it’s just me and the two people down there who are standing, in this vast, well-lit hall. Oh god, oh god. I want to turn around, see if there are other people standing behind me. But that’s even more uncool. Wait. They’ve stopped stamping. Everyone is getting to their feet now, cheering. It’s a major standing ovation. Oh good, oh good. Phew.
Bravo!
Carousel
January 15, 2010
I walk down streets with names familiar yet unfamiliar – King, George, Hunter, Bond, all the way to Circular Quay. And then I board a ferry on a beautiful summer’s day, as the Opera House pops its shells over the cresting waves. Here lies a Bridge. I am meeting a friend I haven’t seen in 26 years.
There he stands, by the giant clown’s mouth of an amusement park. How one can lose track of the years, of the numbers. And then, how suddenly one becomes aware of time, as it springs forth a three-year-old with tousled hair and lilac shoes with plastic flowers, clutching at his hand.
We exchange news as she hops on one ride after another – the cars, the rocket, the planes. He accompanies her on the carousel and I watch as they go up and down, round and round, four times. Or is it five?
Web
January 5, 2010
The other day, I had the most peculiar sensation. I was writing, and I could feel that someone was reading me. A comment had dropped into my Comments box, and the clicks were rising on my stats. How weird it was, to be both producing and getting feedback at the same time.
I wondered about my virtual reader. Was it a man or a woman, a boy or a girl? Was it someone who had found me by accident, or someone who had purposefully searched? Did this person like dogs, chew gum? Was it a friend or a foe? I felt an inordinate desire to please, to say thank you for reading me: these words are for you. So here we are at Web 2.0, which should really be Web 1.1, since there is one person on either side.
Just who exactly is doing the writing anyway?
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CLARISSA TAN