FRIDAY FLYER-Issue 169

“You can make anything by writing.” - C.S Lewis

After lessons finish on Wednesdays and Thursdays, a handful of budding writers return to the English corridor, poised to exercise their imaginations and create. In a busy school, where time is precious, both Ms Kate Orpwood and myself revel in our respective Creative Writing CCA slots, where students participate in the age-old tradition of storytelling. In this week’s Friday Flyer, we celebrate the exceptional talent of some of our students by sharing their work. We hope you enjoy reading these pieces as much as we enjoyed witnessing the process of their creation.

The Art of Storytelling by Ethan Greiss

Stories were once tradition, a symbol of our culture. Ideas that reinforced civilization passed down from generation to generation which brought with it excitement and anticipation. Fables, folktales, myths and legends spread from door to door like Christmas lights and brought smiles that stretched across tiny, youthful faces. Children that used to bathe in the sun and dance in the flower fields shared their stories, which formed friendships. Families which once gathered around dining tables to share their stories, which brought an endless supply of laughter and joy.

Stories sparked across nations, told in different languages with varying beliefs. But it always brought the community together. Whether it was across a bonfire by an elderly to a group of anxious children with goosebumps scattered across their arms or through pages of a book with neat and cursive words scribbled in ink, people always shared their stories with love and interest, bringing together their history and identity. People even travelled from various parts of the world just to share their stories; a collection of several ancient myths that made us all feel connected and unified. 

Stories were once a form of therapy, where it allowed people to forget their troubles and lose themselves in a world of creativity and imagination. A place where they could forget that their troubles existed and just live. It gave hope for better times and solidarity and security in times of danger. Stories were a universal language on its own that made everyone belong no matter where they came from.

What now remains is a shadow of what stories once were. It could be argued that phones were the downfall of it all. Stories now existed through the bright flashes of our screens, showing people doing random things with their life that nobody really cared about.

Social media spread like an infectious drug, an addiction that caused many people to stay glued to their screens with no personal connection or life with anyone. Instagram now became the new site for storytelling, where people sharing fake snapshots about their life were admired and idolised by the younger generation. Our stories soon became a breeding ground for hatred, prejudice and discrimination, where bitter individuals shared their jealousy about the happiness in one’s life and complained about the lack of it in theirs.

Laptops, phones, ipads and various other electronic devices made our physical world an artificial one. A place for creeps to hide behind their screens and have fake agendas. With technology, it brought deception and manipulation to our once beloved tales.

Soon enough, world-famous stories were abandoned in the trash and lost through hushed voices in the wind. Our personal experiences and lives which were once cherished and cared upon, would now be discarded, like many other valuable relics.

And so I happen to wonder that our only knowledge of the ancient past remains within a few books in terrible condition, its pages old and withered, with the name and connection of the person long forgotten. And now my present will soon be someone’s past, preserved in an online google document. And soon my story will be forgotten, just like all the others.

Jonker by Annabel Rajah

In the heart of a microscopic town bordering the Malacca Strait during the 17th century, Jonker Walk was established. Till this day, the festivities and merriness of the beloved street still pulses through the veins of the loyal inhabitants of Malacca.

The street aged alongside its occupants. Bits and pieces of stories linger in the stained and peeling exteriors of the terraced double-storied houses that seemed to stretch on never-endingly. Despite the years of wear and tear of Malacca’s extreme heat and the annual rainy season not looked forward to by many, the bright colours of the buildings provide the bustling street with unmatched life and personality.

It is night when Jonker truly comes alive. Colourful lights dance along the street–a spectacle in itself to behold. Treats and sweets and toys are laid upon rows and rows of tables. The shouts of eager and enthusiastic shopkeepers settle as the default noise of the street, blending with the lively chatter of passersby. Passersby and tourists alike are attracted to the variety of stalls selling all sorts of unique ornaments and trinkets serving as a memory of their time here in the humble town of Malacca. 

“Lai, lai, come and buy! Special offer!” an old uncle called out with a white towel draped around his neck, fanning himself with a ‘I Love Melaka’ fan in hand. “Ah boy! Come buy a keychain! Later when you go home you can remember Jonker!”

The little boy looked at the old uncle selling the keychains in bewilderment. He looked as if he were about to cry.

“Come, come. I won’t eat you!” the uncle teased. “Uncle will give you a discount!”

Timidly, the little boy walked towards the uncle’s stand. He held out a single 50 sen coin and placed it onto the uncle’s table. The uncle bared his crooked teeth in a smile and dropped the coin into a clear plastic tupperware with a red lid that suggested that prior to its current function as a money box, it was used to store biscuits.

“Come, come. Choose what design you want,” the uncle called out cheerfully, gesturing to the many keychains displayed before him.

The little boy’s eyes widened in brief shock, overwhelmed by the myriad of designs to choose from. He cautiously hovered his finger over the many choices spread out before him as his eyes ran through the selection and firmly settled on a small keychain showcasing the various sights of the state such as the Malacca River Cruise and Menara Taming Sari.

“You want this one ah?”

The little boy confidently nodded his head in affirmation and mouthed a soft ‘thank you’ as the uncle passed him his chosen keychain.

 “Good choice,” the uncle reassured. “Better keep nicely ah… Make sure to come again!”

The little boy catched up to his family, keychain in hand and waved goodbye to the uncle. He walked off happily with his new keychain alongside a memory that would definitely stick with him for a while.

The uncle sighed in content as he watched the little boy walk off. He dabbed the beads of sweat dripping down his forehead and smiled to himself.

“Lai, lai. Come and buy!”

In Jonker, the night had only just begun.

The St Jude Project by Sameer Monn Suresh

NASA TIME CAPSULE PROGRAM

ENTRY #4,654,689,356

I don’t know what this is about. Our english teacher is making us write this time capsule, for some NASA project. They’re choosing one, out of billions, to be shot into the distant, empty space. There is something so tragic about this project. What are they going to achieve with this? I don’t know.

The last thirty-four NASA projects have failed, miserably so. They launched astronauts into space, looking to colonise a new planet, but were met with an unsurprising caveat: the unforgiving nature of space. Asteroids, meteoroids, lack of air, accidents, insanity ridden crewmates, trillions of dollars gone to dust.

I’m assuming if you find this. You’re probably an Alien. Some strange lifeforce that has evolved beyond the 3 dimensional confines of space. You have probably transcended dimensions and rendered all of Newton’s findings obsolete. Therefore, I am going to assume that there is a translation service of some sort on your planet.

It’s beautiful how they named this the St Jude Project. The Patron Saint of Hope and Impossible causes. I assume that your kind has evolved so much that it does not need any Gods or Deities or a heaven or a hell. I doubt you can even die. It's funny because the name of this project feels like a cry for help. They’ve given up. We’re running out of food. We’re running out of everything. There’s no more livestock, no more vegetables. The ground has turned too acidic to harvest anything, and the air is just so toxic that animals cannot live. We have to go out of the house in respirators so our lungs don’t fill with poisonous chemicals and we die a slow, painful death. My parents tell me that there were these things called “fish” when they were young, before the water levels started rising. It was first Italy, Venice, to be more specific, where the canals slowly tipped against the edge, and soon began to overflow, to spill over. We, human beings, bent nature to our will. We robbed mother nature of her health, and now we have nothing left to sustain her. Through the workings of greed, industrialization, we released virulent gases into the air, polluting the atmosphere, and then the land, and then the water. I can only dream about how lovely it would have been to swim with fishes all around me. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I dream of the open waters, of their inherent violence, how they crash against the hulls of unsuspecting ships, how they throw them into rocks, and how they guide ships back to shores.

I think the beautiful part about being a human being at this point in time, as the world tethers on its own unbecoming, when the earth cannot sustain itself anymore, is that we still have the endearing spirit to keep on living. We built mega-skyscrapers, tearing against the blood-red sky, to house the millions of people left. When the odds are completely against us, we still find the courage to keep on living. I think that is the beauty of the St Jude Project. The world changed so much over the course of the last 50 years. People lost their homes, their families, their livelihoods. It started with the acid rain. The clouds got so polluted that it began to rain down strong acid, which corroded buildings and destroyed infrastructure, and even killed people. Then there was the water turning hazardous, and the air being filled with cyanide and chemicals. Slowly, the flora and fauna began to go extinct, marking the sombre beginning of the end of the Human Race.

My family and I now live in Project Lazarus, a programme developed by the government to keep the human population safe and to maintain continuity. Mega-skyscrapers, all towering in height, putting the former Burj Khalifa to shame, housing at least 500,000 people per building. In my section, Jophiel, I have a school, a teacher, and everything there needs to be for sustaining human life. The windows are just artificial screens, because there is nothing left to be seen outside. We get fake sunlight and synthesised food.

Thousands of years ago, the people here launched a space probe, for interstellar travel. It's called the Voyager I, and I hope you’ve found it. On the probe there is a golden record. When we launched it, we knew that at some point, it would leave the solar system. So we took a gamble. We attached a record of ourselves onto the probe, just in case an intelligent life form found it, and could decipher it. We recorded voices, voices of mothers, of fathers, of children saying hello, in multiple different languages. We recorded singing. Rock, Opera, contemporary classical. We recorded brainwaves, the sounds of animals, the sounds of rain. It has an image of earth, labelled “home”. There is an image of a father holding his daughter, of a woman eating a grape in a supermarket. It does not contain images of war, of pain, of the torturous ordeals of living.  The project was spearheaded by Dr Carl Sagan, and he recorded the brainwaves of his wife, Ann Druyann, who was in love with him. As they recorded her brainwaves, she thought of her husband, and her love for him. We didn’t just send out into the jaws of the unforgiving cosmos the sounds of our world, we sent out the very fire that burns in our bones. We sent out the very reason we are alive: love. In the hope that someday, somewhere, something can interpret it and feel what we feel. Even if the voyager has not reached you, thinking about it now, it says a lot about the human race, our faith and our love, and our ambition to reach beyond the stars. It would be 10,000 years ago that it entered a new planetary system. With little to erode it in space, it is floating silently, small. Now, it feels as if we scattered the ashes of love across the stars.

Humanity is at the brink of extinction. That is the gist of it. I am an 18 year old boy, writing to whoever is reading this – for help. The human race needs your help, and we call out to you, by nothing but the power of the unwavering human spirit, to send help. Send help as fast as you can. Help us save our home. St Jude is the patron saint of Hope and Impossible Causes. We call out to you in the spirit of Hope, and of Love. And if you find this too late, if we have returned to our earthly bindings, keep us in remembrance. Go out there and find the Golden Record. Goodbye, dear friend.

The Place I Call Heaven by Lakshmi Aishwarya

In a forest of concrete blocks,

I wished instead I had the wind in my hair.

Azure seas and clear skies,

What really does it feel like?

To have a place to call heaven.

A world of happiness,

I crave the need for more.

So I set out far and wide,

in the hope of finding

a place to call heaven.

I had nothing to find,

or so I thought.

Was I taking for granted,

everything that I had been granted?

For it simply is not what I thought was heaven.

I feel entranced by the restless spirit I created from within me,

and fail to escape from the shackles that hold me,

or is it that I chose to not break free?

For I believe that I hold the key,

To unlocking the doors of heaven.

Heaven is the spiciness of masala chai that tickles my nose.

Heaven is the feeling of being able to find footing after a long day.

Heaven is the heart and soul being poured out in exchanged laughter.

Heaven is the reassurance by ones held dear.

Heaven has always been here.

Mrs Georgie Prestidge,
Head of Epsom English Department.