[Slideshow 1]

~

Markers & Memory at Bukit Brown Cemetery

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

So I finally went and wandered around Bukit Brown Cemetery in land-scarce Singapore. This weekend was the beginning of Qingming and the annual tomb sweeping season. I wondered myself why it took me so long to visit.

What I know of Bukit Brown I know from the good folks at Singapore Heritage Society and from the few other photographer friends who have come and documented. There, I met a ninety-something year old tomb keeper. She was still as a rock and waiting. I did not see her at first, nor she me. When she saw me she asked repeatedly, which grave I was looking for, or at least that was what I assumed. I speak no Hokkien.

Markers and memory were what I noticed in Bukit Brown.

[Slideshow 2]

The day before. I bought a book, The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap, from Kinokuniya. 

 Page 154 muses… 

 there is no future in nostalgia 

 & certainly no nostalgia in the future of the past. 

now, the corner cigarette-seller is gone, is perhaps dead. 

 no, definitely dead, he would not otherwise have gone. 

 he is replaced by a stamp-machine, 

 the old cook by a pressure-cooker, 

 the old trishaw-rider’s stand by a fire hydrant, 

 the washer-woman by a spin-dryer 

 & it goes on in various variations & permutations. 

 there is no future in nostalgia. 

~