The writing self – Alicia Izharuddin

A golden year in Leiden

There’s nothing like being high above a colony of water lilies floating across the Rapenburg on a bright summer’s day. The buildings that flank the canal cast languid shadows over the water and passers-by on foot and bicycles. After taking a picture of this scene on my phone, I told myself: I want to remember… Continue reading A golden year in Leiden

Grey hell

Luis Buñuel once noted (half jokingly) that the universality of faith had disappeared in the twentieth century because the church had so exaggerated the supposed horrors of hell that no one could take it seriously anymore. If now, at the beginning of the third millennium, we take a look back at the twentieth century, perhaps… Continue reading Grey hell

Madrid

When I visited Madrid for the first time last December, I was spellbound by the city. It seemed like a good time to visit. December is gentler in Spain than in northwestern Europe and I was rewarding myself for having completed a major project. With A in tow, we inhaled what Madrid had to offer… Continue reading Madrid

Spirals and labyrinths

A mysterious manuscript by an unknown author, a found object, is duly published by one Peter Cornell who claims authorship and gives it the title Ways of Paradise (2024, translated by Saskia Vogel). It is a work of Casaubonian ambition, but with more success and humility, gaining cult status when it was first published in… Continue reading Spirals and labyrinths

Lady-in-Waiting

Maybe I am destined for the shit life. Despite attempts to escape, I am back here again. When will this shittiness end? Do I just wait around for this slow bleak season to pass? If I wait too long, would I have wasted my life? While I wait, I find myself slowly sinking into a… Continue reading Lady-in-Waiting

Just two foreign single women getting drunk in Paris: femininity adrift in Good Morning, Midnight (1939) and The Dud Avocado (1958)

Sasha Jansen and Sally Jay Gorce are the quintessential flâneuse in the birth city of the flânerie, Paris. They represent two sides of the flâneuse’s emotional inner landscape; aimless, lonely, and morally suspect on the one hand, freewheeling and liberated on the other. As single women, they defy the expectations of women in the city… Continue reading Just two foreign single women getting drunk in Paris: femininity adrift in Good Morning, Midnight (1939) and The Dud Avocado (1958)

2013: Let’s celebrate the banal

In the last three years, this blog served mainly as a repository of my writings. But this year, I’m going to attempt something different; I’ll begin to post photos of my cooking and the less than artful snapshots of my life on this blog. Perhaps at times, if I am feeling reckless, I may even… Continue reading 2013: Let’s celebrate the banal

Will be back very shortly!

It’s a been an experientially short week (you realise there are too few hours in a day when you have tons to do!): started my job lecturing sexuality in Southeast Asian cinema last week, insisted on having a social life however sad, and curating Feminist Week on Loyar Burok this week. I noticed that I… Continue reading Will be back very shortly!

This is an opportunity for you to delurk and say hello

Most times when I write I have an imaginary audience in mind, an audience whose intelligence I would hate to insult. But if I want to be really honest, I would say that blogging is actually one big lonely exercise of making oneself feel rather important and soliloquies – a kind of shrine to oneself… Continue reading This is an opportunity for you to delurk and say hello

The joys and sorrows of writing

I often feel the compulsive need to write (though much of the product of that compulsion remain unpublished) to channel anger, frustrations, anxieties, but very rarely I write about joy or when I am overjoyed. Joy is to be enjoyed in the moment. I take pictures instead. Writing is a therapeutic process, and the miracle… Continue reading The joys and sorrows of writing