• Home
  • About
  • Collective
  • Authors
  • Forthcoming
  • Announcements

s/pores

new directions in singapore studies

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« The Seventies: Transition from Cultural Desert to Global City
Editorial »

Sketches from Prison

June 2011 by spores

Teo Soh Lung


Lizard scratching its ear. It is kind of funny to see this lizard using its hind leg to scratch its ear! It was the first time in my life seeing this and I was very amused!

I was trying to make a folded book for my friend's daughter. This lizard which I called Liz was full of tricks. It was always entertaining me - scratching its head, turning its head backwards to look at me, sticking its tail out of the hole where the fluorescent tube was affixed, catching flying insects, etc.

I was trying to capture the movements of the lizard. I had a dream of lizards swimming in the sewerage pipes and I was drawing my dream.

Ants - I captured ants in my plastic box which once contained delicious chocolates. I could see the ants from all angles and upside down too. I drew them in great detail.

One day a spider weaved an intricate web on the branches of a flower stalk. I was quite fascinated at the skill and care with which the spider weaved its web. The completed web was very pretty.

A drawing of my cell door and the shadow it cast at a particular time of the day. Notice the small shutter which the guard would lift up and peep into the cell, my Shangri-La suite.

Insects that visited my cell. I was trying to draw a black beetle. One flew into my cell and the lizard tried very hard to catch it. I watched the entire incident - the lizard chuckling and jumping about, wagging its tail and well, generally excited about its meal. The beetle on the other hand was lost and was flying around, bumping about without any direction and hurting itself unnecessarily. It finally fell to the ground, with its legs up in the air. I wrote a poem about it.

The small lizard was really cute. It followed me from the top of the wall. When I walked to the left, it moved left and when I walked to the right, it also moved right. I was reciting poems to it and he was really quite amazing. As for the pregnant toad, it was found on the floor at the visitor's room. It didn't move throughout my family visit time. I drew it when I went back to the cell.

One night my little black toad came out of its plastic bag and deposited itself in the box of water where I placed my bottle of honey. The toad was very entertaining. If you looked at its face it was actually quite ugly. Its mouth was like an upside down 'c' and its eyes looked quite evil. But when you had no friends in the cell, you didn't mind entertaining yourself by singing songs to it.


Teo Soh Lung is author of Beyond the Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner (2010). She was arrested on 21 May 1987 on the allegation of being part of a ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ and detained without trial under the Internal Security Act.

Advertisement

Related

Posted in 09 the arts II | Tagged art, political detention |

    • https://spores.wordpress.com/about

      The s/pores e-journal aims to provide a multi-disciplinary platform for the dissemination of works investigating different aspects of historical and contemporary Singapore society... more
  • Recent Comments

    1. Kingston Sim on A fierce Cantonese woman – growing up in Singapore in the 60s by Chan Wai Han
    2. Kingston Sim on Going to Where the Silence Is by Fong Hoe Fang
    3. Tom Lee on Being d/Deaf in Singapore: A Personal Reflection of Deaf Culture and Identity by Phoebe Tay
    4. Maria BOEY on Being d/Deaf in Singapore: A Personal Reflection of Deaf Culture and Identity by Phoebe Tay
    5. Let’s look at ‘d’ art – Apocalypse Later on Looking at ‘d’ art: Fab or fad? by Alvan Yap
    6. Noor on My experiences and perspectives on the lack of empathy in psychiatry by Nurul Fadiah Johari
  • Issues

    • 01 inauguration
    • 02 archives & memory
    • 02 archives & memory II
    • 03 commemoration
    • 04 if
    • 05 detention
    • 06 the arts I
    • 07 men in white
    • 08 intellectuals
    • 09 the arts II
    • 10 so what
    • 11 the pOp cUltURe Is-U
    • 12 seX spaces in Singapore
    • 13 after l thought
    • 14 "Yang Tersirat"
    • 15 bookshops
    • 16 Being Young in the 1950s
    • 17 History and Critical Pedagogy
    • 18 Exploring Disability Studies
    • 19 Growing Up in Post-1965 Singapore
    • 20 Bicentennial 2019 Biennale
    • Commentaries
  • anti-colonial art civil society communism Cultural politics economic development editorial education environment exhibition feminism films gender globalisation health and medicine history identity labour unions literature media memorial migrants multiculturalism music nation-building oral history philosophy poetry & prose policy political detention pop culture postcolonial race & ethnicity socialism social memory student activism theater

  • Links

  • Food #03

    Theatrex Asia

  • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Singapore License.
  • http://s22.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=s22spores Site Meter

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

WPThemes.


Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • s/pores
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • s/pores
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...