where were you?

dreams, clarity

last night in slumberland i dreamt of you and us teaching chemistry in some village school where pupils needed to use pipettes, which you forgot to give them because you missed me too much. or so you said in the dream. strangely, that only sought to increase my unease and i'd to think about ways to distance myself. all in naught, the past is past.

and the past was yesterday, where i re-opened dusty diaries of yesteryear and read through them, marvelling how much a person can change in the course of 6 or 7 years.
and the past of 6-7 years also came back in the form of 50 short messages that raised hell with my mobile phone, to the extent that i stopped shutting my clam shaped phone.

actually i think your life is simple and fine just the way it is. i was thinking about you and how you both work long and late hours and how you both make time to go for dinner after working late and how you'd always fetch her around. it's just a very simple life that people like me can only dream about. so therefore, there is no need to proposition an affair. or so i think.

along with the dream on the science lab, i also dreamt to rearing tiny terrapins, which disgusted me to no end for though i can say that i'm not afraid of creepy-crawlies i have this sudden strong aversion to terrapins and shelled creatures. i can recall putting the tiny minion in the water sink and watched as it expelled eggs and the entire terrapin separated into two parts. most discomforting to watch. and then someone filled the basin with water and fish and the fish began to eat up the eggs of the terrapin just like that. talk about dying without a cause.

the last part of my dream ended with a run after the buses, for without boarding the buses, it would be a long, long walk out to the main road. the streets there were reminiscent of side streets, lanes near beaches like marina, east coast, or the incredibly foresty areas near punggol where i used to pass by all the time 5 years ago when i still worked on an island and transport to that island was by speedboat to-and-fro in the morning and then evening.

so we were running after this long-uber-long TIBS bus service 190. yes, i know it goes to choa chu kang and there are no sandy beaches there, but it didn't stop for us. we got pissed at the prospects of waiting for another bus and perhaps even walking the entire way out, so we chased after the bus and banged loudly on the bus- yes, it was going THAT slow.
so i presume the bus-drivers (there were 2) got a huge shock of their lives cos the next thing we knew, they lost control of the bus and it plunged into the beach, the sea. the long bus broke into 2 parts and sank, the only 2 survivors being the drivers.

what a boulevard of dreams. restful sleep next time perhaps. and tonight, party time, drunk time, groove time.
i pray i race through time though lying prostrate, i hope the world spins merrily around me, i hope so many sntaches of everything comes back to fill me up for the next few months.

this christmas

has been a bit dull, a bit typical, a bit special, a bit too fast, a bit too disappointing, a bit like all x'mas-es.

***

the birthday came and went, and along with it, a whiff of nonchalance at turning 23 for there really isn't anything much to look forward to yet, to just keep going on despite everything because as they all claim, youth is still on our side.

***

loads of meals and chocolates later, there is a realisation that some people do still care, though not all. i guess that's more or less sufficient for me. nice gifts received, more thought put in this year i guess- calendars, towels, jewellery, clothing, watches, chocolates, toiletries - bah, the usual as usual can be. strangely i think that the excitement of unwrapping presents diminish with the passing of each year. might be coerced into buying presents, wrapping them and then sending smiles on the faces on the young ones instead - that is parcel of growing up i guess.

***

the new year ahead beckons, after the massive birthday party of the supposed Messiah that half the world does not believe in. i wonder how snow sprays and fake snow fights were relevant to christmas - it seems rather pathetic to be amusing ourselves with faux snow here in sunny singapore when the rest of the world tog themselves in fur coats and have snow fights and actually make snowmen - stuff out of fairytales for us i guess - with snow, and stone that make do for the eyes, nose, mouth, buttons.
so not quite new york this time in a posh lovely hotel with luxury carpeting, no sipping of the red wine and trying not to spill it on the leather couches, admiring the candles glitter in the dim light.
tokyo, someday. new york, someday.

***

the lights were lovely and now are etched on some parts of my screen now, depending where i click with my mouse.
taken on a whim, edited and now a memory.
faux snow, the lights, flicking off suds at a traffic light junction, a quiet space in a pub in the mess of orchard, quite a miracle.
i also learned that very same night, that someone else is having a ball of a time, sitting in classrooms, posing for that ocassional photo, with ladies with oh-such-painted-faces, oozing senseless charm and wit i suppose, shattering egos and the-like along the way. but you were so yesterday, so have yourself a good life and not drown somewhere along the indian or pacific ocean, crying for your life.

***

you read past diaries and you remember many things that you've probably never forgotten.

oh well. just another week more. to a supposedly new beginning although life will go on the same way as before.

Icarus all over again -
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

or by frost, somewhat.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned in life: It goes on."
-Robert Frost

nothing really changes. but nothing lasts forever either.

i wish you best, i wish you life, i wish you drink from the vial of the fevour of life. i wish you tears, i wish you pain, i wish you strength in growth. i wish you sadness in love, the pains of knives stabbed through the heart. i wish you a death full of lightness and release. i wish that one day you'd wake up though.
and i wish the same for me.

my christmas wish perhaps, a day too late.

on a night like this

i recall having done or been involved in the following in no particular order.
i've eaten a polar cookie monster cake with my name on icing on it, and i thought to myself that it was a perfectly adorable cake.
i've skipped gym so many times but have done snatches of exercise on the sly on my own, to my knowledge that they are too paltry for the festive season.
i've eaten set lunches at long beach seafood restaurant that consist of small lobsters, bamboo clams and their famous black pepper crabs.
i've written a whole chunk of new data on friendster just cos i was bored and needed something to do while waiting for my turn to use the toilet.
i've agreed to go with a bunch of friends to genting though that is yet unconfirmed.
i've rejected someone's offer of a date because i had something up and promptly accepted it when what i had on was cancelled.
i've been very angry with someone because he's giving me a christian book which i will not read and now i have to desperately search for someone "churchy" to give it to.
the psle postings were released on my birthday and i think many of my ex-5a girls made it to nanyang.
we might be going to the airport instead on saturday.
i bought 5 sets of lingerie from john little.
i've bought Paul Smith EDT and i think the scent is absolutely spicy.
i've been to breko's at bugis village and the chocolate cake there tastes more like stone hard rotten chocolate kept for a week in the freezer.
i've eaten at tung lok restaurant twice in my life.

take a trip

she drifts by, as transcient as the wind, feeling as flighty as air as she rides on.
at the junction where many cars pass, she pauses to give them the right of way, then swerves into the concrete pavement so as to prevent getting into their way. she underestimates when to swing the handlebars and ends up hitting the pavement hard, almost falling down. unperturbed, she adjusts herself and ignores the stares from the cab-drivers, the motorcyclists, those riders of the road, those.
she passes by the school where she used to teach last summer, and as far as she can see, there is a red nissan parked in the parking lot. she can't remember who it belongs to. the field, normallly full of screaming children languishes in weeds and yellowed droopy flowers, drips of snow hidden deep within the hardened nectar.
the once bumpy downhill slope that she always had to get off and walk her bike through had been concreticized. the bump that she always had to slow down at was no longer there, made flat, tunneled flat.

standing still

i bought a packet of meiji melty kisses the other day at watsons and was just walking aimlessly along the shelves, looking here and there and at nothing at all, thoughts wandering about the atrocious designs of christmas cards that are being sold when out of the corner of my eye i spy someone looking at me.
i turn and look at the person who seems to do a double take at me and find myself staring at some face from the past, more than 5 years ago right in front of me suddenly. some things come rushing to mind - burnt edges of letters, lined paper pasted on pages torn quickly from magazines.
lots of things.

***

and today, gnarled fingers working nimbly on dough, a beige mixture well whisked perhaps, spread over a hot pan, a pan so hot that the dough immediately hardens and takes the shape of the pan. resembling skin, aptly called "skin" with a twang of sacarsm perhaps, probably.
that in that hot home, time seems to stand still, as the man-made fountain continues to swish water downfall in a pull or a tug, to rejoin the large puddle where fishes are still thrashing about in their reverie, alive.
of time ticking by in the grandfather clock, of echoes of muted sounds enamating from the clock, as if mocking the notion that time would ever stand still, as though it could.

and then on the way back i spied a melty kiss hidden in the car, i tore open the wrapper and nothing was inside but liqid chocolate. i threw it upon the grass, an ode to ants, and i thought of that day when you wanted to give me some chocolate and the day we drove to macs.

as rei once said, e mango.

women at a sale are scary. the rabid glimmer in their eyes as they reach for a particular piece of fabric, possibly the last. one that their lives could possibly depend on. and there are the sale attires - a tight fitting top that any other top could be nicely slipped over. a short skirt that would not get in the way of tugging pants/capris/other skirts upwards and then flouncing the original short skirt upwards as they examine themselves critically in the mirror.

that mad glimmer.

***

in other news, bangkok was rather well, rather bangkok, in that sense, since i was only there this april. other than shopping, sniffing the awful and weird combination of scents that emerge when ditchwater flows into a choked drain, pigging out on cheap steamboats, cheaper ice cream (think swensons in thailand) and being enthralled by the range of good sold at roadsides on thin shreds of cloth, on pushcarts and the like, i also met a stranger in a blue polo tee on an overhead bridge connecting somewhere between the world trade centre and the big c shopping centre, while buying short gym shorts.
i was led to think of tokyo and long flights, hot coffee being served on trays, pushed by attendants, lying suppine on the aeroplane seats and having a blanket placed gently on me and i strap on my seat belt. i dream of plans that take place after the plane lands. i dream of a place and a time that exists in a different plane of time, literally.

***

it has been a week since i sat alone and watched the words absolut and the lights gyrating on their own, coloured spirals fill the air, sail gently through the air and finally land on the walls, casting their lovely shades against the walls for a while before they dissipate into separate colours, ceasing to exist once more for that moment, in that form.

***

he is away for 2 weeks and will return on christmas eve, how apt?
he just got back from abroad and is now back here to stay, telling me so at 4am in the morning. i wonder if you've changed over the year.
he gave me dark chocolates with a cherry centre containing brandy. not likely to get me drunk though.
he never calls again, presumbly miffed by the brush off.

***

popiah tomorrow. how nice.

finally finished.

the earlier post extracted from the wild sheep chase, which i finally managed to finish after almost three months. but you can't blame me, it has been a long three months after all. the time i started was the trip back home from the local library with two books from the known author, the other of which i never managed to begin on and thus, never managed to complete. it will have to wait.
and the begining of the book coincided with a few days of school holidays, three days in which we were subject to work as robots around a set of nine tables, relagated to menial factory work, the same repetitive movements over and over again.

***

the segment i stole from the wild sheep chase seemed ridiculously similar to the situations that we found ourselves in on the first day.

***

the day i passed you on the bridge, i knew.

there were so many legless people in the city of angles. one looked like he had his eye gouged out, i shudder to think of what might have been done to him.
others set up shop consisting of a flat mat and some wares, clothing and the like.
you were in blue.

***

the next day, an old man with a stump for a leg, holding out an empty plastic bowl, sitting in the corner of a ditch.

walking the hot streets, i saw us in tokyo, the plane landing, me alone in the departure lounge, watching the array of scattered individuals waiting for the plane, listless, pale faces, with no one attempting to talk to anyone else.

***

our dolphin hotel

When we tired of walking, we went into the first restaurant we saw, drank draft beer, and ordered some salmon and potatoes. We'd walked in willy-nilly off the street and gotten lucky. The beer really hit the spot, and the food was actually good.

***

"Well then," I said after coffee, "what say we settle on a place to stay?"
"I've already got an image of a place," she said.
"Like what?"
"Never mind. Get a list of hotels and read off the names in order."
I asked a waiter to bring over the yellow pages and started reading the names listed in the "hotels, Inns" section. After forty names, she stopped me.
"That's the one."
"Which one?"
"The last one you read."
"Dolphin Hotel," I said.
"That's where we're staying."
"Never heard of it."
"But I can't see us staying at any other hotel."
I returned the phone book, then called the Dolphin Hotel. A man with an indistinct voice answered, indicating they had double and single rooms available. And did they have other types of rooms besides doubles and singles? No. Doubles and singles were all. Confused, I reserved a double. The price: forty percent less than what I'd expected.

***

The Dolphin Hotel was located three blocks west and one block south of the movie theater we'd gone to. A small place, totally undistinguished. Its undistinguishedness was metaphysical. No neon sign, no large signboard, not even a real entryway. The glass front door, which resembled an employees' kitchen entrance, had next to it only a copper plate engraved with DOLPHIN HOTEL. Not even a picture of a dolphin.
The building was five stories tall, but it might as well have been a giant matchbox stood on end. It wasn't particularly old; still it was strikingly run down. Most likely it was run-down when it was buit.

This was our Dolphin Hotel.

***

goodbye, world.

for a tiny while.

gone but not forgotten

i wish i could say something more romantic like, "gone to find myself" or something like that along those lines, but, no :)

streams of sunlight and rays of sunlight streak in through the glass panes, bouncing off the ceramic tiles and illuminting the dust piles in my room. dots of tiny dust float up into the light, swirls in the wind.

and so i'll be gone for 4 days, to soak up the sun or floods, as reported in the papers, though i'd be crossing my fingers.

gone but not forgotten.

falling star at dusk in the forest

teeth chattering, you spoke.
those long ago days
of time travelling through the telephone line.
bringing to me,
on a hot, sweaty and sultry night,
the magic of a place with snow.
snow ridden, snow pelted,
covering each tiny detail
with a tiny smattering of white dust.

fluffy doe eyed dreams,
the work of magic dust.

wet, wet concrete,
a wisp of smoke.
smell of burn,
assaulting my nostrils.

you asked.
to be laughed at in other circumstances,
but not as yet that day, not quite.
the TV that blared,
the denim top and red bell bottoms.
goodness, whoever wears that anymore!
relegated to some
obscure corner of the musky cupboard,
not those zipped up kinds.
just like you
in my memory.

when are you coming back from the land of ice?
to dine with me once more
and to talk god.

yesteryear songs.
the magical fountain,
an array of lights.
quite so now.

snatches of coffee,
coffee stains and spills.
drudgery.
heels clicking on tiles.
the return to the cubicle.

of red pens and mastery.

the plane that flew and brought things away.
the plane that flew and brought respite.
the other land of smiles.
concrete and dust, so cover your nose.
a touch a lingering memory.
the tendency to romanticize, to ruin
with expectancy.

friday came too quick.