Bookmark Stevie’s kind of library – we’ll be updating as and when we find gems.

By once young we don’t really mean ourselves. It’s our landlord. Now this guy is one of the strangest man I’ve met in my life, and I HAVE been friends with quite a few, but none shines in this light like Our Landlord. He is in the midst of clearing up the rooms upstairs for the new tenant (an aromatherapy spa for doggies!! 93 Club Street is going to be a very jolly place!), and such has presented us with a massive framed old photo of himself. You know the dull fear we have about our dated old photos? That all does not apply for him. Why?

You will know if you come into Stevie the next time. We can only hope he finds us artistic, appreciative.

Keith Bosley

O goldfish
O goldfish O
goldfish O goldfish
O goldfish O goldfish O
goldfish O goldfish O goldfish
O gold O fish OO gold O fish O
goldfish O goldfish O goldfish
goldfish O goldfish
O goldfish O
goldfish O

From Watchwords Two, part of our collection of old, collectible books in store.

Dear friends.

It’s been awhile now, how I know in my heart I’m not doing enough. Then yesterday, it has come to us that Riverkids, the Cambodian help for street children group that we sell little Kewpie figurines for, may have to close. I believe the reason is due to insufficient expected donations. Simple as that. I went to their website hoping to read more on this matter, but I see charities too maintain a facade in the name of appearing ‘capable’ in how things are run. I did not find a sad letter, and I did not get the impression that hard things must be lurking beneath its photos and stories. But, the truth is, Dale Edmonds (the founder and ‘servant’) wrote to everyone on their cause of the recent hardship, how they always just pull by month to month, until this month when a major regular donor had to pull out. In short, if Riverkids close, it is because she has to make a decision between feeding the children and schooling them.

We all know this will not work in the tomorrow after tomorrow. Education holds the hope for the future, both yours and theirs and for the world we live in. Education is the single and only key to change, or which the word hope will not have real meaning. If you visit the Riverkids website, you would notice US$300 is the most they ask for in a single donation. The critical matter is regularity, and we can be regular in giving $6.16 (milk and bread for one week) or $4.57 (buying greens for one week). With more than 400 children enrolled in Riverkids’ programmes, they need over US$10,000 a month, and they’ve made it every month, thanks to amazing support from all over the world, until this month when the major regular donor must go. Can you, or someone you know, help Riverkids to pull through one more month?

And I draw you women’s attention to the Get Ready For Girls Programme. This programme prepares teenage girls between 11 and 21 years old who are highly at risk for trafficking and exploitation through intensive training to return to school, start vocational training or apprentice in safe work. The protection through schooling children is the key reason why HY and I want to make Riverkids our main ‘charity’.

Please help to forward this to anyone you know who will or could help. Thank you for understanding there is little to choose between school and food.

More than once have people approached our landlord, because they wonder if there could be a chance we give up our store at 93 Club Street. First there was a bookseller (not any on Club Street!), and today there is a rather well-known figure whose father has come up and told of how many concessions they have received in all areas of life as a result of his fame. I’m not sure, these bits of info are volunteered by my landlord. I am sad, disheartened and I have so many questions. I had earlier welcome the bookseller when he came into the store one day (also with his son!), when he wanted to see how big our store was. I didn’t mind this, as I thought it would be good if he could gauge the upstairs unit (up for rental) from looking at our floor space. He asked questions, almost like we were giving it up, but still I thought it fine. Then today our landlord called and asked if we were really interested in his place. I mean, we signed the tenancy agreement long ago… Rental issues on Club Street have become notorious, which explains why Front Row had to move out of its old crib. Today I learn that if you are interested in someone’s rental unit, you could always talk your way into getting the unit, vacant or not. All that matters is getting co-operation from the right sources.

I guess humans are not humans unless they have a business. Whatever that business may be, the human mark, not unlike Cain’s mark, means that we have to decide at every point in the journey of survival, self-interest and legacy. And if our compass is not guided by strong principles, or that our crutches are not backed by a solid integrity, what could the replacement tools be?

How could small, independent businesses like ours prove anything to the country? That art has a place called the heart. That there is no art without science, and vice versa. That freedom is not a privilege. How could we build something Singapore would be proud of, not because we want to be like A or like B, but like what we have painted in our heads, in our heads and nobody else’s before!

93 Club Street is the third place we’ve moved to since we started our little business four years ago. We’ve always depended on ourselves, with our own funds, our own production means, and our own distribution channels, with no external help. We don’t even mind sacrificing press to spend more time on production. We always believed word of mouth, while it may come slower than direct advertising (at least for us), is the only way we know how and will accept. The truth is we have not sought funding because we’re so busy making things come alive. We’ve not known weariness.

I wish I could spell out names and not think about lawyers. (Or fans.)

I wish I could unlearn what I learned today.

Antique Snake Brass Bracelet

Amazing accessories and more will be in store this week. Mostly collectibles from the 70s and one of a kind. Grabbb one.

And thank you Cheryl Spanish for your equally poetic translation. If you come back to the store the cuff links are waiting.

And then some.

I turn to Mary Oliver’s poetry a lot, now that I’m not in school and school no longer reminds me how to read. School now reminds me of why I didn’t break the rules sooner. Maybe one day I can write again.

Here is a poem of hers, for those of us who run because we cannot fly.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Many times she takes the words out of my heart. Then I have an eagerness to be clouted by poetry, and in the next second equally let down by poetry. This ebb is not uncertain. It is certainty that frightens me.

… but how then do you explain why shops exist round the year?

We obsess over the vintage we sell and try to keep a running ‘documentary’ of all pieces but sometime we miss and they go off with someone – no photographs and soon they’re forgotten… Today I sold a beautiful burgundy cheongsam lace dress and a hard-to-come-by, caricature-illustrated 70s dress to a lady named Jemma who will wear the dresses when she goes on The Orient Express.

Vintage catalogue here.

There is a garden in my head that I’d like to plant into the store. Because of this I’m awake too early in the morning after only a few hours of sleep. I can hear the birds calling and the sun slowly roasting this Tuesday. When the garden is better transplanted, I’ll post up photos again. I’m wondering if people who walk into Stevie will think ‘what a cluttered little store’.

I feel a little guilty we do not spend as much energy selling our clothing. But I believe (not unshakably) in letting the presence behind ‘design’ tell the story of our clothes. So I’m going to spend today harvesting the viburnum from our neighbor florist on Erskine Road and more and more and more will creep up our walls…

I never promised you a rose garden.

Charles Bukowski, Pablo Neruda, Virginia Woolf’s short fiction, a Daniel Johnston book, a quick history guide for graphics, A.A. Milne and a couple of other poetry books – these are the books we have sold randomly. When the tenants upstairs moved away, we recycled some of their old cupboards into a mini bookshelf, fit for the tiny library of titles we have in store.

Is it not a wonder that a city such as ours does not have a decent secondhand bookstore anywhere? Sunny Bookshop or Silverkris do not count! And the names of other shops I forget are the same, all stocking bestseller or easy-to-read titles…

cos sometimes we do not want to buy new books.