today, i lived a solitary life, him being away from the hotel since 10am. the toilet bowl was choked up and i'd to be there while housekeeping cleared up the mess. we went to the gym last night and i was turned away for not having the proper attire. he later on told me that the gym instructor had said to him, "your wife is very pretty." i should have been flattered, but i wasn't really flattered. compliments, like everything else, pass me by very simply nowadays.

i think of families and mothers cooking up a storm of pork chops in eras gone. i think of cuff links and cuff links. i think of mr and mrs smith, the movie. i think of playing with chopsticks and sheepish smiles that evade quickly. i think of yoga poses and hand holding and balancing on one leg and thinking about falling. i think that the longest distance in the world can be the shortest at times. of damn carpets and crisp white shirts and black shorts that hang low on hips. of fingers, neck and skin. of ears. of ergonomical swivel chairs and laptops and palmtops, of luggage tags and priority.

***

I drew her to me and kissed her. It was a heady kiss, a nostalgic kiss. Then we drank our umpteenth brandy-and-soda, and snuggled together while listening to the Police. Soon Mei had drifted off to sleep, no longer the beautiful dream woman, but only an ordinary, brittle young girl. A class reunion. The clock read four o'clock and everything was still. Mei the Goat Girl and Winnie the Pooh. Images. Deductible fairy tales. What a day! Connections that almost connected but didn't. Follow the string until it snaps. I'd met Gotanda after all these years, even come to like him, really. Through him I'd met Mei the Goat Girl. We made love. Which was wonderful. Shoveled sensual snow. But none of it led anywhere.

***

the phone's on vibration mode, a tribute to someone else who sets it on vibration mode, then deigns not to answer calls from associates at half-past eleven at night. club sandwiches at night, toasted bread with fries on the side - don't tempt me with that last piece, don't eat already lah. i'll tell you what i want - i want toasted bread, lettuce, ham. that's about it. the tray was heavy. i wondered how i'd managed to balance it while opening the door while he - he? he? i think he was out. where was he? i met him on the way to the shopping centre. like a flash of recognition. they were holding on to umbrellas. i think it was raining before that. that someone brought in a blower to the room and the noise made me leave the hotel room even though i'd told him that i would prefer not to leave. i know that girls don't like to eat alone. no. i'm fine with that - i just don't feel very safe going out at night.
he wrestles me to the bed. an odd memory of me being astride him and asking him a question. unexpectedly, he bursts out in brief laughter, "call my engineer". we spoilt the moment, but we spoilt it beautifully. yesterday, i decided to embrace grief. and i've embraced it beautifully so far.

coffee in the mornings to clear my head. my morning smoke, ash drips into my coffee cup and i lap it up, the acrid taste of smoke with ash mixed with coffee, a thin blend, instant coffee. there were tiny packets of coffee placed in a nice box upon the shelf near the wardrobe - you know, hotels always have this tiny place where they place two identical cups, with saucers and a jug with which to heat up water - the exact word for it eludes me- milo before you sleep, coupled with a yellow pill under your tongue.i can't sleep without drugs, you say. i just keep thinking.small wonder, i think. you're thinking, thinking, full of vitality, energy. heat rub. around your body. a small tube in a red box. i saw it in the bathroom and was wondering - muscle ache? aches? muscles?

dance, dance, dance. revolutions, convulsions to the tunes, music, words, pop, retro tunes. dance. a lampshade, bright hues of yellow. a switch that can only be turned on or off by turning it clockwise. you can't turn it otherwise. when the man came to do the plumbing, another showed up to fix the switch. it seem ludicrous that he would complain about it. what did he call it? an intelligence test - and i failed it. the man showed me the paper on which was written the complaint - by GOH. guest of honour? cue laughter, please. the piece encasing the keycard that i found in the bin. GOH again. the second piece encasing the keycard that i slipped into my white saddlebag. and which is still in my white saddlebag. i'm comtemplating putting it into my black leather wallet - is there a display slot? a plastic one?because there are some rushes of memories from yesteryear. because such are the things that i will take away with me. i hardly know if they will matter, years down the road from now. i hardly know. a heavy head from sleeping past 3 last night, no yellow pill under my tongue, i stared at the night scene and remembered that a particular building was there, as though it had morphed out of nowhere - i never deigned to take particular notice of it till yesterday. the words in blue and red lighting up the cityscape, i thought of - i thought of - people in the lit offices. i thought of - steel circular handles on black rosewood cabinets.

just like any other night. the nights seem all the same to me. i stalk the streets, i tumble upon concrete, my heels clicking down stairways, the salty smell of the sea - tangy, upon my face. wafting. cars flash past me and i think of them encasing a memory each, a story, lives, screams, sniffles. they all drift past me.
the moon hangs in the dark sky, a pallor of brightness in a sea of gloom. the streetlights illuminate my face, my being. i face the sky and drink in the moonlight.

i shall try and take a yellow pill today. flu medicine, each tiny pill lying encased in a metallic-like structure, individually packed. you pop it below your tongue. earplugs are a must. tiny orange earplugs that look like baby carrots. you lie beneath the sheets, the distance between you and me so near yet so far. the last night we were together, i'd crept past the distance and lay and held you and then crept off again. i heard your breathing and you started when i touched you because you were surprised. my hand on your belly, i felt your warmth and the closeness i felt at that time was enough. quietly i crept back to my bed, slid under the covers and curled up, feeling your warmth still on my skin, my fingers. i curl up in bed, my left feet placed against my right shin, the feel of feet upon feet reminding me of the time we lay with our legs entwined.
you get up and shuffle towards the bathroom and i hear you check if the door is double-locked. the chain slides into place and you enter the bathroom. a second later, i listen and hear the taps being turned on, water gushing into the basin, a clean, clear sound of water gushing, and then slowing to a trickle. i close my eyes and a second later, you are under the covers with me, holding me just as i held you. your hand on my belly, i reach for your hand and i interlock my fingers with yours - something that i've longed to do for a long time, and dream. i think of all shopping alone at night along orchard, people-watching, seeing mothers, fathers, families and couples striding by the street as the sky turns from a salmon-pink to a darker shade and how the colour eventually drains out of the sky all of a sudden and it seems as though i am the only one left around. i recall the first time this year that i stroll along orchard, just as the lights for christmas are turned on and how i feel that first gush of childlike joy and how i am surprised at myself - that such a joy could come through me is unfathomable. i'd reckoned that cynism had already taken over me. it is such a purified joy that surprise cuts through me like a knife. and with these thoughts, i fall into slumber.

the next morning, sun shines through the thin curtains. morning comes early to manila - it is already bright at 6 in the morning. similarly, the night begins at 6 in the evening - it's as dark as night in singapore. the days seem shorter. i glance at the other bed and i see that his eyes are closed. afraid that he may open his eyes and catch me gazing away, afraid that i may be caught unguarded, as if all my emotions are written on my face, i look away. however, i steal supretitious glances at him again. i cannot help it. his eyes, normally full of life and energy, are shut. his face looks peaceful, relaxed. the crows feet around his eyes are smoothed out, unlined for the moment. i turn over and look at the ceiling - it will be the last morning that i am waking up in the same room as him. a long journey stretches ahead of me - i've to be out of the hotel by ten, to travel to Angeles and then to Clark. the phone rings, unexpectedly, jolting me out of my reverie. he picks up the phone and mumbles a "Thanks" into the phone. it must be his wake-up call. i hear him move under the covers and pull them away from himself. i turn and watch him sit upright in bed, getting his bearings while still in that hazy sleeplike state. he sees that i am awake. "Get some more sleep girl," he says. i am somehow touched that he tells me to get more sleep, the same way that strange things touch me - the unexpected caress his fingers, the grin that breaks out unexpectedly while he is seated on his bed in the new room. strange things.

my mother swept my titus watch onto the floor today while taking a slice of bread for our sardine breakface. the piece encasing the watch face cracks badly and i recall the last time i really looked at that watch - it was in manila when i was waiting for him in the room - i'd idly picked up the watch, looked at the seconds hand ticking away and then to the back of the watch which was pressed against my wrist for the most part of the time i was wearing it. i noticed that the plastic covering the back of the watch was still intact, that it shielded the engraved words tian chang di jiu. such cryptic words ... such overused words that bring to mind how nothing ever lasts, that i no longer believe in faithfulness, in true love and in being a true believer.

We talk after we’re done with the food. And you smoke. Smoke relaxes a person. I don’t smoke yet, but one day I might just take it up. Things take its’ course. Better to let the water flow. What water?
Would I get into a relationship with a married man? You have questions that are loaded. With what I can’t be bothered to ponder. Better to drawl in a lazy tone and answer. Yes I would. Humans are all flawed, that is my excuse. Fidelity is gone. I don’t believe in many things, save for God. But of course, I’d be realistic, as I’d always want to be. A married man belongs to his wife. She fucks him and he fucks her. They probably have children. Little Women should always know their place. Never to be on the losing end. And why does this suspiciously sound like I’m a know-it-all when I’m a don’t-know-it-all? To know your place is knowing your limits, what you can do and what you can’t. Judge with all your heart and stop from getting hurt. Just don’t love.
Me? I don’t think of love anymore. Intimacy may be a close call to love, but just don’t mention love. That’s a word nothing short of dangerous. Women crave intimacy but we’re not beings that can’t do without love, really.

It’s dull being a weak woman. Weak women cry when they can’t get their way and are easily hurt. All women are born essentially weak. When I almost broke up with the old boyfriend in the autumn of 2003, I was broken and begged for his return. Things change and of course so do people. People are not always the same. The old me was dependant on having another person with me, of being loved and of going out with someone else on weekends. Now I no longer care.
So what then are my priorities? I’ve transcended the need to be loved, truly. I can’t say it’s forever. To say that would be too sweeping a statement and most probably a pompous one. But I can say that perhaps I recognize a few true facts of life, not rules, facts and realize that life is possibly much easier after the recognition of such facts.

All love stories are the same. Breakups or threats to break up are so bloody frequent. Misunderstandings can snowball into full blown fights and fights takes days before the other party cools down. Through sms-es, hurtful words are thrown at one another and painful accusations cut through to the heart. Over the phone, one party sobs and words are choked in the sobs. There are silences and many unsaid words expand and fill up the silence along the telephone lines, signifying how much there is to say till there is no way to begin, and in this way, time snowball and elapses. All love stories are the same. We love, fight, hate, breakup, patch. In the end, most true relationships end without a bang, a closure. We just drift apart when there is nothing more to be learned from one another, when (cliché enough) the flame just dies out.
So there is nothing to look forward to where love in concerned. All love stories are the same, like sand on the beach, like clouds in the sun. A lot of things happen when they are supposed to. It really doesn’t need to make any sense. Sometimes silence really is the best answer. Like sand that appears on the beach and like clouds that drift across the sky, life happens everyday.

it still remains on the pedestal, mocking me.

i've flipped through the calendar countless times on, the memories of a night spent sleepless, trying to get a flight out, but to no avail. uncertainty pervaded, the scent of a million people in throes of dreams brushing past my skin. i recall forgetting to bring along my book and thinking to myself that perhaps i could get norweigian wood at the airport. i can hardly remember anything else, save the busy people milling about the train station waiting for their turns to board, to move, waiting for that one single bus to charter them to that next destination in life.
i was one of them, uncertain as i was, single-minded in my one desire to be away. everything seemed perfectly normal the day i left. the bus downtown was not crowded, as usual, on a weekday morning, the young at school, the adults far else away, the odd people on the bus. spaces, voids, empty places and a wealth of seats available for me. strangely, everything seemed familiar, as if things have been written on the stars at the beginning of time and all we have to do is play out our roles in motion.

a cup of coffee at pacific and i start to think of life in all its' normality - how i wake everyday at the same time, feel that same sense of dread at leaving the house and getting to that tiny cubicle where i waste almost half my life away, switching on the radio and listening to the familiar voices on air at the same time every morning - small things provide us with comfort. or how a familiar voice beckons out to you that you belong here and now, that there are people who recognise you for who you are, that you have been classified and fitted into this tiny portion of society, that you are able to recognise the roles you should play, the things you should do and not. that essentially, you know your place and where you belong. lost in this knowledge, there's still room, however, for your thoughts to wander. for what is life if enclosed behind the facade of belonging all the time. yet, hidden comfort, hidden comfort! in simply belonging.

my dreams all around me, i crossed the glistening floors. i watched old men fall asleep time and again on hard plastic chairs, unknowing of whatever unfolded in front of them. a plane takes off and then another. behind the glass shards, one can hardly hear anything.

in a nutshell, i am sick of many things, routine, however comforting, is still one of them.
i make small talk, i cross my legs, i speak politely.

and yes, i flew to hongkong again, this time, not a sense of nostalgia beckoning me over - for heavens' sake it's only been a friggin' 4 months!
i am never taking a morning flight that departs at six forty a.m in the morning. ever. again.
i felt dead and deprived of oxygen in the plane. words in my murakami novel swarmed before my eyes and i stared at the empty seat next time, conjuring a world of possibilities in my mind. i checked into the low budget hostel at mirador mansions that i'd booked, and was horrified when i ascended the building in the creeky lift - the noisy doors opening up to different faces of hongkong that i'd never seen before - sickly patients on one floor on stretchers with feeding tubes attached to them, chinamen in cheap, thin shirts, negroes with kinked hair and large builds, fair-skinned indians who gave me the once-over. the room was a tiny one, so tiny, yet comforting in the abode it was to me.

***

my history - in messages that are sent fast and furious over the internet. messages that i hardly recall we've sent. incongruous messages that i hardly remember reading through. delving through history is a strange way of remembering time itself.

i waited today at the bus stop for half-an-hour while buses of all kinds whizzed past me. even the dismal-looking bus with the words "duck tours" painted on it whizzed past me. i hadn't realised that the numbers at the bus stop told a lie - that the bus didn't pass by that stop at all.
in the time that i was there, i spied people, returning from work, downcast faces, an endless waterfall, ties and shirts, SUVs.

and the mundane friday returns. i often wonder how is it that a day can cause so much unhappiness. yet, after all, you could be dying and another person could be laughing.
it's all so ironical, as we play out our parts here on earth.

a restless friday night last week, one with promises of bright lights in the city, hands, togs in black, unknowing, omnipresence, the closure of eyes against light, the beat of the music, sway, alcohol slipping down your throat, madness. the endless gleaming cabs in the city, on the way back, the way back, and you don't feel happier than when you first stepped out of the door.

i wonder how people live. satisfaction at their lives? i've been reading the zahir by coelho during these 4 days of the PSLE marking and with the usual questions of what the fuck are we doing with our lives, i've come to be annoyed with the questions. the searching and never finding, and not even knowing what we're all looking for. how could we ever hope to find something as insipid and as flighty, as evasive, elusive, obscure. and perhaps it's something only artist who can hope to understand this. others get by their lives fine and dandy the way they do, they meet up with friends, lead normal lives at the offices, attend meetings, fag and go to the bar for drinks ocassionally after work, they get married to pretty and desirable women who desireness fade with the sands of time, scattering, placidly. then the dreams start, with the words, i could have, but all's too late and soon, they resign themselves to the plain ole' story called life.

well, if everyone's life isn't the same.

what do i remember about last week? i remember nothing. slipping past traffic on a dreary and hazy night. the traffic was light, the roads clear for a friday evening. the expressway - did we pass through the tunnels? i'm not quite sure.

cheap thin fabrics. lying face up. hairs on the pillows. a key made of paper. rattan fans that are used to keep nocturnal insects at bay. i was Kiki the callgirl in the Dolphin Hotel.

The hotel envelops me. I can feel its pulse, its heat. In dreams, I am part of the hotel.
I wake up, but where? I don't just think this, I actually voice the question to myself: «Where am I?» As if I didn't know: I'm here. In my life. A feature of the world that is my existence. Not that I particularly recall ever having approved these matters, this condition, this state of affairs in which I feature. There might be a woman sleeping next to me. More often, I'm alone. Just me and the expressway that runs right next to my apartment and, bedside, a glass (five millimeters of whiskey still in it) and the malicious — no, make that indifferent—dusty morning light. Sometimes it's raining. If it is, I'll just stay in bed. And if there's
2
whiskey still left in the glass, I'll drink it. And I'll look at the raindrops dripping from the eaves, and I'll think about the Dolphin Hotel. Maybe I'll stretch, nice and slow. Enough for me to be sure I'm myself and not part of something else. Yet I'll remember the feel of the dream. So much that I swear I can reach out and touch it, and the whole of that something that includes me will move. If I strain my ears, I can hear the slow, cautious sequence of play take place, like droplets in an intricate water puzzle falling, step upon step, one after the other. I listen carefully. That's when I hear someone softly, almost imperceptibly, weeping. A sobbing from somewhere in the darkness. Someone is crying for me.
The Dolphin Hotel is a real hotel.

delta

the dissapated scent of a million people who have streamed past you, each awash in their own memories and caught up in carrying on in the moment. smoke gets in my hair and i recall being burnt by the lit end of a cigarette, the other end of which looks dipped in cheap pink lip rouge. my hair airs the tired smell of smoke and odour and the scent of a million other people. i lie prostrate on the couch, wondering why my head does not spin as much as before. perhaps it is time for another vodka, indeed. mix one with coke and down the combination. add the lethal combination of a pill or two, and send yourself to high heaven.

of pierces and art, of tiny red dots and bleeding lips.

the emptiness that seems reflected on the walls. the shadows empty existences of inanimate objects. and then perhaps your head stands to spin, the vodka burning a thin thread of acidity down your throat. you feel it moving swiftly through your gullet and then identify where the alcohol has gone to by a burning sensation in your stomach.

in a nutshell, it is close to the end. the first end if not the second ending and it already feels like it. to hang on for the moment, uncertainty shrouded in the desire to cling on just for a little more. ahh.

i care little, because i've found out the divergence between caring and how things divert from going the way you think they should, just because you cared. subject to realism, perhaps.
and i am nearing the end of my teether. another hiatus again, perhaps?
of going to a place where i become faceless and nameless.

you were there that day when i left. you were in the hall, togged as you were, all the time. perhaps you were running, perhaps you stopped for a moment. were you there when i felt the helpless urge to speak? did you look up into the sky and think of different people, different worlds? worlds apart, as we are, would you ever know the significance of any item to me?

would you have known that tiny contraption placed upon a pedestal at my desk, that i wanted to hurl it down 30 storeys below and then watch it lying in bits upon the concrete? but what good would that have been? i recognise flashes of vengence now as crumply bits of salvaging your own self-worth. as if it were of any good.you drift now, with the practiced air of nonchalance, mastered through years of being too uptight about everything else. nothing else seems to matter, you seem to say.

i'd smile and look at you one day on, perhaps then you'd be the person i'd hoped you'd be.

lights up!

a tiny plastic ornament hangs from a pedestal, mocking me as it swings forwards and backwards. a cheap object, gained from a pseudo-machine taking in cash in the guise of amusing young children, reminding me of the time all the children swarmed around us in taipei, squealing in delight and counting down as the toys tumbled down from the machines in return for a paltry 10 yuan.

fun, laughter, and joy. these remind me of another scene. intersperse the present moment with the precocious delight of children. eyes wide in disbelief and unbriddled curiosity at what could have caused so much joy - half in bewilderment too, at the huge concept of happiness itself, little of which they have grasped - for how would they have known that without sadness, they would never have known joy. joy, pure unadulterated, a bane to those who realise that joy at the present moment would only serve to remind them of "the better time", as so-called when it comes to their turn to be down and out?

i crossed the path of death once this week, ignoring the flashing green man and insistent on going across the road. i stopped in the middle and glared angrily at the motorbike taking precendence, moving forward, then realising that all the vehicles were moving forward, and none were looking at my bike stuck in the middle of the road, crossing towards the right side of the road as i was, and turning right to the expressway as they were. i flustered. yet, the classic instance of half your life flashing past you while you are facing imminent death never falls true, for me, anyway.

in the past month, i have been busy. i have grieved far lesser than i thought i might have. i have flown to taipei with tickets bought the day before again, as usual. i walked the streets of ximending and took the jieyun again. i didn't buy any taiyangbings back anyhow. in a flash, it is difficult to sum up what i've been up to these past few months when i've been unreachable. it could have all been a dream, it could have not. anyhow, like kafka on the shore, i do think i might be in a sandstorm right now. perhaps the best resort would be to take my hands and cover my ears with them, to close my eyes and to hope that my lids offer the best protection against the flying dust in the wind.

as always, the lights are still on. i don't know how or why, but that is a consolation.

interspersal

that i do miss the smell of freshly laundered sheets and towels and the common print of comforters and the silent hum of the air-conditioner and the padded footsteps of restless children running along carpeted flooring early in the morning and late at night. and i do miss the blare of the TV and the seemingly thin walls that separate one room from another that makes it easy for one to listen to conversation going on in another room. i miss waking up in a place that seems foreign and to be living there only for the moment, to reach for the digital watch placed asaunder on the bedside table, which would contain, among other things, the hotel phone, a map of the city (whichever it happened to be), the novel that would accompany me through the night, the purse that contained my rosary (i am prissy about carrying it around in a foreign country), a bottle of water and my glasses.
i yearn for the possibilities that a fresh new day brings, to learn and to glean from experiences. to watch the masses and to know that i don't belong here, that i am apart, i am different, just as i am.

I cycled close to a bougainvillea plant today and didn’t remember that there were thorn on such plants – scratch went the thorns, red welts appeared on my skin and soon enough, thin, shiny, red lines began to appear.

I recalled then, a time when we were carefree and lost and she hadn’t moved into your apartment and a time when you were alone and we seemed like one, big, happy family. The time when we played cards. And of course the moment that the bougainvillea plant reminded me of – your brother and her on a double bike – she wanting to make something of a U turn and thus reversing and not remembering that she was on the front portion of a double bike, reversed. and your brother gave a wail at his posterior being wedged into a rose bush. Ten years ago, this day, perhaps.

The welts on my arm are better now and will heal nicely with time, just as how time seeks to heal a great many other things. Angst ridden, I refuse to be.

Lost memories. Of a young girl. Of the city. Of walking on glass.
Sheets in the city.
Footsteps.
Vodka in a glass, a thin black straw.

***

tarry, tarry me. a note left on the floor saying that i'd gone to play mahjong at a pal's home and then i left, the keys jiggled somewhat and i unlatched the door and i was out in the cool breeze of the night. i tarried about where to go or what to do, the only thing was to get out into the open, the streets empty save for cabs.

***

it is a sight to behold. the ornate staircases, dim lights shining and leaving sparkles of glimmer everywhere. i think i look out of place. i stare down at my silver sandals which were purchased in HK just 2 weeks ago. i think that it is lucky that i didn't bring any luggage along - what i needed, i would buy. the bag just contained essentials, as in, essentials. a few clothes rolled up. some worksheets that i was supposed to mark during the flight and when i had nothing better to do in the hotel, work being work, brought all the way back to HK. i wish i had a stamp that read : been to HK and back and then i'd stamp it all over their worksheets.

***

i walk to the bus stop and there is a group of grannies waiting for the bus. i wonder what they have been doing to be still up at this late hour. the feeder service arrives and one of them get on the bus, waves at her friend and is whisked away.
i wonder if the bus to town will be coming. after a long wait, i decide to cross over to the bus stop on the opposite side of the road. the bus to some place comes and i break into a run for the bus, stopping halfway though. i had no idea why i stopped, i didn't want to get on that bus and drop halfway at some obscure portion of singapore, memories rushing up to hit me as i look around and spigments of thought assaulting my brains - i have had enough of thinking.

***

thanks, i say as i slide into the passenger seat. i remember the time when i almost fell as the vehicle is higher than most. i remember what he had said about the vehicle being a quiet one and how he now could get headaches from being in cabs in manila because they allowed too much noise in. i regret the time that i picked something that looked like a coin from the ground, a tribute to another lover who always noted that finders' was keepers'. i felt foolish.
you never told me that, he said.
there are many things you don't know about me. doesn't that preserve that aura of mystery about me? i laughed.

then there was the time when i had told him about some of my ex-loves, sleeping with a woman and flying to taiwan on a whim. i jacked up my legs on the leather seats and i remember his consternation at my feet on his leather seats. ah, men.

***

Cutty Sark came by to my cubicle today and said that i'd been looking better than ever. so, dating anyone lately?
i racked my brains and thought about the word, dating. it's strange how people can answer a simple question in a simple manner, just a yes or no, whereas my damn brain refuses to see things in black and white, pushes for an expansion on the term - dating while the other person in the conversation becomes wary of me cooking up some lie or some strange story.
dating?
finally, i said, i think so. and i gave her one of those ironical looks.
oh good, she said.
so you like him?
well, i really had difficulty with this one.
well, OK. i answered in the end.
she gave me a "i-don't-know-what-to-do-with-you-look".

***

i'm finally on the bed, lounging around. the view is a nice one, overlooking the harbour. my feet are bare on the carpeted floor and i think if i should change into something more comfortable. this in turn leads me to thinking about how i should spend the day, one of the precious two days that i am spending in HK.

i slip into the covers and look at the ceiling. there are no spots and no cracks. i close my eyes and inhale deeply. i smell, carpet, handsoap, and the smell of freshly laundered sheets. i listen to the quiet hum of the television and i heard the pad of footsteps outside the door.

why am i here? i had no answer to that.

perhaps i needed respite before the start of hell again. perhaps i needed companionship. perhaps i thought highly of myself and my ability to detach my soul from myself. i thought i could, previously, but was proven wrong. perhaps i've grown enough this time round.

i remember the stars and the planes that ceased in the night sky, waiting for their turn to land.

***

i boozed. i'd no idea that tuesday was ladies night and so i asked the bartender how much a glass of vodka ribena cost.
he gave me the eye and said that it was ladies night.
all for the better, i thought, and downed my glass of vodka in a few mouthfuls.
next i ordered a gin tonic, and it tasted bitter. a similarly bitter smile crossed my face as i recalled expecting a gin tonic when i took a sip of the drink and only found the unyielding blandness of iced water.

the last time i had a gin tonic, it was along the changi coast where i could see the planes in a line-up, waiting for their turn to land from wherever they'd come from.
never, never land, perhaps.
i like to watch men who are driven speak on topics that they are driven upon.
they become fixated. and somehow, more real. like unwittingly, they are stripping off some sort of a disguise.
it's really strange to take a sip of something and then realise that it is just plan water, that it lacks the taste of what is expected. and then you try to reconcile to the taste and then the water accquires a different kind of taste.

it was only when i'd drank half of the water in the glass that i said, "i do believe i'm drinking water."

it is also strange when someone whom you've locked lips with before chooses to take a sip of water from the glass itself, rather than from the straw that you've just used.
brings a new meaning to the word, strange.

***

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That is what this storm’s all about.

- Murakami, Kafka from the Shore

***

He comes back in the evening while I am reading a book. I bought Murakami’s Norweigian Wood at the airport terminal. It is not easy to buy good novels in Hong Kong. The last time I checked the Yau Mei Tei bookstores, they only had Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore in stock. I was reading about Toru being drawn to Midori when he came in. My legs are entwined with the sheets, my hair down, falling past my back. I watch my reflection in the mirror for a while and marvel at the fact that I am where I am. He loosens his tie – how typically male, and sits at the foot of the bed.

***

I once had a girl,

Or should I say

She once had me.

She showed me her room,

Isn’t it good?

Norwegian wood.

She asked my to stay and told me sit anywhere,

So I looked around and

I noticed there wasn’t a chair.

I sat on a rug

Biding my time,

Drinking her wine.

We talked until two,

And then she said,

‘It’s time for bed’.

She told me she worked

in the morning and

started to laugh,

I told her I didn’t,

and crawled off to sleep

in the bath.

And when I awokeI was alone,

This bird has flown,

So I lit a fire,

Isn’t it good?

Norwegian wood.

-The Beatles

Wan Chai

on the plane back to singapore, i sat beside this lady with a protruding mole on her ear and i wondered if anyone, like me, had ever mistaken it to be a black ear stud. her daughter sat next to her, and cramped as jetstar planes are, i had to squeeze past their feet to get to the toilet - the perils of having a window seat instead of an aisle seat - you'd to hold your bladder.
she took out a tiny notebook halfway through the journey and began to jot down things, saving a finer manuscript for writing in a larger notebook. i tried not to peek - i was bleary from nodding off in my cozy corner and had mistakenly thought that the mother and daughter pair had swapped places sometime while i was asleep and half berating myself for not having gone to the loo at the exact same moment that they had swapped places - making it easier for me to move through two seats.
i'd no idea what made me come to that assumption - that they'd swapped places, but anyhow i later realised, with a start, that it was the mother who was writing next to me. i'd no idea what to do - was i supposed to notice that she was writing? most people i know wouldn't write on planes. would one writer know another?
i've no answers to these questions, but seeing someone actually writing a great deal made me feel less special.

the trip back to the airport was a heartwrenching one. i stared at the neon lights initally, wanted to remember them as they were and as the neon lights gradually gave way to the more pleasing view of the city as the shuttlebus went across a long bridge, i thought of the short time i had spent in Hong Kong. a ticket bought on a whim, when i was still unsure, a forced click on the mouse, and more than three hundred dollars was transfered to the airline company. it never fails to amaze me how much can be done in the comfort of anywhere - as long as you have internet connection and a working computer/laptop. i booked my hotel online as well, not a decision that was made with a great amount of care or research, but one that came with necessity - oh where the fuck am i going to sleep tomorrow night? a call was made to some tour agency which happened to be the first i saw when i flipped open the newspapers, as i returned, half-dead from camp. a call later, a return fax with a signed copy of a payment slip, and i was assured of a place to spend the night for the next day. out of convenience, i booked the same hotel for the next 2 nights and it was a decision that i did not regret. the rooms were tiny, yes, but the staff did have a way of making me feel at home, and perhaps, it was the novelty of being in a new place all alone - a place that offered possibilites for me to be totally free from everything, and even perhaps the person i'd thought i was.

the weather was wonderful for the few days that i had spent in Hong Kong - breezy, cloudy with a hint that it might rain, but the umbrella that i had packed along for my trip was left unused in my luggage bag. i wanted to travel light but ended up lugging loads of stuff around in that fred perry bag of mine - bless its' soul - which had provided a perfect solution to go along with any outfit. there was the makeup that had to go into the bag for touchups, a camera to take pictures to remember the moments by, my glasses in case my contact lenses popped out suddenly - no it never happened -, the wallet, the handphone, a book to occupy myself during meals, a notebook and a pen to jot down any sudden inspiration, and yada, yada.

i went wherever i wanted - time being of no consequence to me and neither was there the desire to please a travel mate - my only desire was to please myself - sounds well, whatever, but true. i woke early most days, took a look out of the window, and upon seeing that the sky was still a milky blue hue, turned the other way and fell asleep into my sheets again. i woke when i wanted to - most of the time around 10 and then took my time to wash up, maybe read a bit, if i desired.

the first day, i'd gone to tsim sha tsui and had a meal there, then shopped and had my highlights done - oh, i have red highlights now. blimey, how am i going to rid myself of them before school returns? miss punk-teacher? but i don't care about all that now. it's as alien as book checking was to me, lying supine in the sheets in the tiny dorsett hotel room.

the day i was due to fly back, there was a terrible storm, in return, perhaps, for the fine weather that i'd experienced there so far. the airport was on red alert and no planes flew from the airport. the boarding gate for the airline that i was to take, was changed, a consequence of the storm and all of us passengers, had to take a quick one and a half minute train ride to reach gate 43 from gate 12. i was tickled by a sign next to the train doors that said - Relax, the train will be here in three minutes - that was how i'd gathered that the train ride took one and a half minutes - you mean you thought i had timed the entire thing?

the plane remained on the ground for a very long time before it finally took off, once more, a testimony to how nature can always wreck her fury upon us - look at the earthquakes for inspiration!
when the plane took off, the airbus rattled with such intensity that i thought it might fall apart. then, the plane took off into the stormy clouds and for a moment, all i could see was a white light, a bright blinding white light that was almost epiphanic - as if we had all died and the plane was taking us all to high heaven - literally. it hurt to look at the white light that glowed outside the windows and for a moment, i regretted taking the window seat.
i remembered what i had thought about while waiting at the departure lounge, that if the plane crashed - and i have this morbid thing about always thinking that the plane i am about to take might crash, that i died living my dreams and then i would think to myself in the final moments that the plane would take a downward spiral - of the possibilites of a life not lived - of a boy lying in a fitful fever against the headboard of an old bed, of me in the classroom once again, of my parents, of old friends and companions. and i realised in Hong Kong, that there really wasn't much that i could possibly think about in the course of my lifetime that i could want to recall when i was facing death.

i've always not known the phrase - life is but a dream, but over the past few days, in trying to capture each moment as it is, in trying to narrate each moment as it occurs to me, and failing, i see how life really is a dream - i can never capture each transcient moment in its posterity, as it is. and i will never be able to.

my song

i dream of black ants that moved together on white tiles, strange though that there was no food present that could attract them.

i dreamt of that faceless boy again yesterday and i looked down upon the empty hall and thought of shadows being flung against the brown tiles of the school hall.
i think i dreamt of him again, having an ice cream from those old-school ice cream motor carts. i sat down from a distance, watching him again as usual and he was looking in my direction, looking but not seeing.

i listen to an indie tune and it makes me think of an accident.

an accident that takes place at the happiest moment of a boy's life. he performs and perfects his stance and then pauses for a while.
at that exact same moment, a girl was crossing the road, not knowing how and why to live her life any further. the car inches closer steadily and she would never know why the horn was never sounded.
the impact sends her flying upward, but not for long as she begins her descent downwards towards the car, her back hits the front bonnet of the car in a sickening crunch. her head dangles over the edge of the bonnet for a while and then the weight of it pulls her body downwards to the ground and there is a sickening thud as her body hits the ground.

the song has ended and no more. the driver exits and the onlookers swarm. sound is strangely absent, as if everything is happening in a vaccum.

at this very same moment, it is announced that he is the champion and his face lights up.

***

the decision to go to Hong Kong was a rather sudden one, spun up from thoughts of wanting to kill myself, frustration at wasting 3 precious days of my life in a stupid Brownie camp - on hindsight, it made me realise that time IS precious, and i just wasted 3 days of my life there, and so, instead of looking back in regret - which i am still doing - i am more determined than ever to live everyday of my life as if it were my last. yeah. as if.

so in line with that, i booked my air tickets to HK on a whim on that saturday morning at 830am, just before we went to that fateful camp where the girls pissed the hell out of me by being so excited about every single thing in the world and asking extremely stupid questions which i shall not care to recount over here in case my blood pressure shoots up and i die before i reach HK.

girl guides. a mystery to me, always and forever. i can't see what's with the spirited cheers, the cooking of food, the using of axes, the telematches and the games that are reminiscent of JC orientation days which i was once crazy over - hell, i was even an OGL before *dies in shame* but those days were fun ones.
perhaps the passing of the times have jaded me, shaped me up to be more prepared for the hard knocks in life.

***

i can't help but keep thinking of that song. the start of the song sees paramedics swarming around, deathly silence prevails, save the song that was playing eerily in the background.

a boy walks out of the school gate with his sister and they turn towards the scene of the accident. the boy is captivated, and so is his sister, but his sister thinks of dinner, piping hot, served at home and after a long day of training, just wants to get home. she walks away and then turns and calls out the name of the boy captivated by the scene of the accident. i can still see him in my mind, the brows creased in concentration, fixated, staring, captivated by the possibilities of whatever lay on the stretcher, on that white sheet, and then turning to look at his sister who called his name, turning back again for a final glance at the scene and taking decisive steps in the direction of his home, turning back to face another direction only when his feet had carried him some ways ahead.

i did dream of walking along tsim sha tsui dressed in a spag top and pedal pushers perhaps, pockets being a necessity, i for the present moment having a strange affliction for pockets - oh, to simply put my hands in them and swagger along the streets.
so plans are in store for loads of shopping, a haircut, hairdye - i have decided, streaks of red - highlights, perhaps a spa, facial and eyelash extensions - whatever, whenever, at my own time. and afternoon naps in the tiny rooms of the dorsett hotel too, screw all those i've travelled with who say naps are a waste of time - it's my holiday and my life.

so hong kong later and i'm living my dreams.

his thoughts were of the sky

noon time and i walked to my car, the keys hidden deep in my pocket, both my hands in my pockets, an air of diguised nonchalance as i spy your form in the yard. you are happy.

that i just received an email from a long-lost lecturer whose life i assumed went on in the university in the same way that mine did - that it was comforting to know that most things didn't change while my life did - that he is about to transfer to NTU's humanities faculty. that i am thinking of the lull period in the university right now - that it will mostly be deserted and i think about the last time i walked through the library, the last time of walking past the shelves with aphra behn on them.
that i walked back from the train station and thought of many things while i was strolling under the wide, night sky, my hands tucked into my pockets and whistling a sad song to the tune of the song in my i-pod shuffle, the material of my fred perry bag sending off waves of refractions.
that i no longer care about most things, save thinking.

i strolled past the closed shops - closed since it was after 11pm and the odd fruit sellers were hawking their cheap durians and the odd old man would look at me with a glimmer in his eyes.
somewhere far below the curtain of the night sky, a boy sits at his worn out couch, pointing at the characters acting out real-life on the television screen. he passes a random comment and his sister, sitting on the floor beside the worn-out leg of a coffee table responds to the comment. they both laugh.
below a streetlight, a man trudges home from his lover's home, worn out by the endless drudgery of life. his hair is wet from the shower that he had just taken and tiny beads of seat sparkle on his forehead - he thinks of love but quickly sends the thought away. oh, to live for the moment!
in a tiny room, a woman breastfeeds her newborn daughter and thinks of the full month party that they will be holding on her behalf this coming sunday.
the show ends and the boy looks around his flat. it is the same, day-in, day-out. the images and situations he has just watched on tv play out endlessly in his mind - the male and the female, of love and of a chance meeting in a foreign country - he thinks that perhaps, that will happen to him one day. then he catches himself smiling, shakes himself and almost laughs at himself for being so foolish - how could such a thing ever happen in real life?
he looks at his brother quickly to see if he has caught on to the emotions he thinks he has betrayed on his face. but there is none.
the living room are still the same, the same furniture that he has looked at since he was a child. he can hear the sounds coming from the cars speeding by on the highway next to his house.
perhaps one day, things would change, one day, many days ahead, but today is the present. until his mother called his name to attend to a mundane matter, his thoughts were of the sky.

my lover's home

when next we will be lovers
crossing the path and jumping over the bridge of friendship
which sadly wasn't meant to be.

i held your hand
and traced them
over triangles.
you looked down and i could never see into your eyes.
or perhaps we would see something there
neither of us wanted to see.

like a leaf that falls to the ground
cutting through the air
i know i've already hit the ground
transcended most boundaries.

one day you will sit outside on the ground
your face awash with tears
and i will ride by
as if by chance.
i'll take your hand and lead you for a drink
and yet i know
the distance between us.
too great.

it'll be two years past
so i would offer you a smoke and watch
as you inhale your first puff
and think of all your first -times
and mine.

you'll grow and take your first-steps.
time waits for no one.
one day you'll love.
one day you'll suffer.

i think the shutters are already down,
a joss stick or two lights the lonely night.
there are holes in the shutters
but i'll not peep.
like the nobody i am,
i'll slip quietly into the night
so quietly that you'd never know i was there.
just like all the times i'd watched you.

waxing contradictions.
my lover's home.

wafting stars

i waited in the quiet carpark today and let the remnants of the day wash over me in a pool of moonlight.

holiday by green day reminds me of the time when i wore a violet mango halter and let go of my inhibitions. that was the very same day that i danced behind the window and forgot that the world existed. i have a dream to pack up and leave one day and to leave the sign at my cubicle that says "gone to look for myself". otherwise, my dreams are pretty much the same - i dream of wonderment, of seeking myself, of looking and seeing, and not just watching.

the words "what is life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare" came to mind too, as i stood in the lonely carpark, the day done, the vestiges of darkness threatening to wash past me in a tide of nothingness where loneliness lurked behind the covers and tears threatened to see the light. and then i looked up and saw the sky awash in a myraid of sparkling lights, of stars and wonderment and i wondered if far, far away, you were looking up at the skies too.

but probably not, it is not your turn yet, no matter how far from your peers you are. you still have far longer to wait.

i flipped through pages of memory today, each page giving off a different waft, a different scent.

i counted the shimmering stars tonight and they numbered ten. the glittered invitingly in the sky. next to my foot on the ground, a snail went on its own shimmery way, meandering through the crevies of the concrete ground and leaving silver dust in its wake.

just because

the weekend has been mine, mine and mine alone, along with my refusal to take home any stacks of books for marking or checking, despite the fact that i've to get my ass to school early to clear the back-log of marking.

i think i shall walk to school once again, stop by the traffic lights and once more shield my eyes from the blinding sunlight with my fingers and reminicise about how i used to walk to school the same way in college, only that the sky was lighter then and i was decked in the same way, day-in, day-out.

i saw two kittens playing by the roadside yesterday and i stopped to take a look at them - one silky coal black and the other charred in shards of grey. they put their paws in the spooks of the wheel of my bike and their eyes widened in curiosity - i presume they've never seen a bicycle before.

they didn't let me stroke them though - too frightened and having seen too little of the world and not knowing whom they should trust - their mother keeping a close watch on them from a short distance away, casting distrustful glances across my way from behind her slit eyes and lazy demeanor.

i cycled to where i'd not cycled for a long time, my heart always taking me to another place, in another direction, when yesterday, i decided it was all to naught and i'd be better off going where i really wanted to. perhaps a small scale metaphor of my life - but ooh-la-la, i'm too tired to care. comparisons can be drawn and reflections done - but to carry them out and to change - ah, that's a big thing.

it is always a pleasant surprise for me to see whatever i'd thought of seeing a split second ago and yesterday was no exception. i spied the car, parked at the same location and i thought of many yesterdays ago with me and him and essentially, me.
i think of days past and i notice that the car is dented at the front and at the back and i smile to myself as i think about how he could have hit someone's rear from behind or how he could have backed all the way into a concrete landing. i think about how time has passed and how it has made monkeys of us all, and i recall a time when we both wore our white school shoes to church and then i think about what has always taken me in another direction, and i manage to find similarities.

i've said enough of things that only i understand though.

the last week of school and i'm confounded at the fact that the heady feeling has not engulfed me - that same heady feeling that whispers promises of hazy days spent in bed, of flying off on planes and waiting at departure lounges and of walking alone into the sunset as people thronge around you.
perhaps today as i reach school, a tidy pile of result slips will be awaiting my endorsement.

i've spent the weekend pigging out on good food from lemongrass, seafood from malaysia and pizza from pizza walker at wisma atria - nothing like authentic italian pizza with an exceptionally thin crust. i have also, like a typical bimbo in distress, spent a gazzilion load of money on sales that tempt, sales that entice. this time - a selection of normal looking knit tops from m)phosis that would be good for work. oh, and a short flare skirt in black too that makes me think i'm too old for such skirts, but i still bought it, just because.

gallivanting

everyday i go to the office by 9am and i wake by 7.30am. that has been my sad routine for the past 3 days, monday being a public holiday, monday that saw me eating dim sum and snoozing on a wet evening.

while invigilating yesterday, i looked at the backs of heads, hair tied up in ponytails, boys with nicely shaven heads, cropped hair, and observed how the neck, besides joining our torsos to our heads, does a graceful imitation of a curve.

gallivanting again last night when i dressed down in jeans, a black tee, and realised that i was putting on weight - damn! it should have been those late dinners at J.B, Malaysia, the chips snacked on while crouching ahead of the goggle box and the generous colleagues at work.

i sat on the train - such a pity they don't call it a subway. across me was a girl dressed in a black tube with her chest spilling out of her chest.
the train was at orchard when a blood-curdling screech filled the air and all the commuters gaped and looked around but the source of the sound was nowhere to be found.
there is a sense of loss when you are on the last train - not many commuters and not too few either - probably since it is the last train, many pack onto it - and the train is relatively empty, so looking towards the back of the train, you can see the black of the tunnels rush past the train in a billow of nothingness, and there is a sense that the train is transporting all the tired souls to a never, neverland.

nevernever land was city hall to me, where i alighted. i'd even forgotten whether to turn left or right to get to the bar - such is the distance that work has drawn between me and the nightlife, but i'm not complaining. at 24, there is a sense that perhaps time has overtaken me time and time again - the younger ones have it all.
so i turned left and walked through the glass doors before deciding that i should turn right instead. it was the correct choice, otherwise, i would have had to walk around the shopping centre.
so once more nothing much has changed, from the last time i took a jaunt by myself, during the end of term when the heady feeling engulfed me. in december last year, the lights added festivity to the night and people were rowdier, more carefree, more inclined to spontaneity.

***

the lights have not changed and neither has the decor, and neither has the lift. the areas leading to the lifts had beautiful rugs made of beads and trinkets hung above a spotlight each, so that the lights bouced off the trinkets and beads, creating the illusion of floating shimmers.

i took the lift up and walked to the bar and already, i could sense that the crowd was a good one. i took a place near the bar, the exact same spot where i'd sat a good four months ago and gazed once more at the captivating night scene, 70 floors above the world. the lights shimmered, the lights glittered. over at millenia walk, there was this place with windows outlined in a bluish light and the different windows took their turns to light up - i'd forgotten all about it till yesterday.

i can't believe how stupid i was to mix up a martini and a margarita - i ordered a martini in the end - B dazzled. it came with a cherry and a fanciful stalk. thank god for happy hours.

the music rocked. but i can't remember much of it. i do remember hollaback girl, let's get it started, stayin' alive and smattering of others. in any case, rememberance is just simply a recollection of past events.

i asked for the menu again and wondered about what to order. and then they started playing house and i took it as my cue to leave, as i was gazing out at the beauty of the night scene once more, the waiter came over and wanted to take the menu away, i pushed the martini glass to him and he asked if i was waiting for someone. i was more amused more than anything else, and then he said that someone wanted to be friends with me and vaguely pointed in the general direction of the thinning crowd.
i smiled, waved my hands and declined.
after that i left soon after since i didn't like the feeling of being watched.

***

in the end, obviously, i returned home. and while it only lasted a good 2 hours, it's good enough to sustain me.

Smoke

After a long while, nothing seems to have changed. I seem to be stuck in a time warp of some sort, living and existing in the moment and then looking back to see that time has passed and little has changed.
Perhaps it's a mid-life crisis, perhaps it's not. All I'm left wondering about is whether there is any meaning to life at all. Therein lies the paradox of existence - do we exist for others? To be part of the world, as we know it, to fulfill the roles that we think we are supposed to? Or do our lives really belong to ourselves and that we are free beings, to act as we wish?

I'd like to fag actually. As always, I think I am looking for respite, release. To smoke and to blow puffs of smoke up into the air, kick off my shoes and to linger on a steel chair and listen to the waves far, far away and the sounds of the planes taking off, transporting all those in its' steel body to different places, transporting them to their dreams, their desires, each trip a different one.

I tap my fingers languidly against the lined, steel table. I notice that one nail is chipped, so I decide to inspect my nails. I notice that my nails tend to slant in one direction, due to an old habit of mine - a tendency to pick at the sides of my fingers, and in this case, mostly just picking on one side of my fingers. My nails are turning yellow. I then look at my rings, my constant companions, not out of an inability to let go of the past, but rather, out of the way I've grown used to feeling them around my fingers - my fingers feel naked without them.

I walk towards the sand and take off my pretty sandals. My skirt billows in the wind and flaps around my calves. I think of fingers around my ankles and the last time I curled my feet under me when I sit. The sand is dry and crumbles beneath my feet. I do not fear stepping on glass or stones, for there is no more pain that I am no longer numb to. I walk towards the waves and then my feet sink into the sand. I think about walking further and further into the sea - there would come a point when the sea bed dips suddenly.

I was so close to you today, so much so that I believe we were looking at the same spots of light, inhaling the same wafts of cigar smoke mixed with the charred smell of grilled food.

Friday night was spent at a dingy pub called "Tattoo" at Far East. Dark, cramped and warm, uncomfortable stools that make one wonder where to place one's feet. Smoke wafts around and there was a hazy, unbelievable aura to the place. Add booze to the picture and everything turns into a dream.

Bright lights to hurt your eyes and to smash you back to reality, people rushing past as if you never existed as part of the human race - to each his own - is that not understood enough?
To think and wonder and then conclude that much is in vain - to stiffen up and forget to think.
To lose yourself.

I was close to you and I wonder if you sensed that. You've haunted my dreams for the past few nights. In one dream, I saw you sitting at the back of a room with a book in tow, a white book. Lost fragments, I can hardly fathom what the dream was all about, suffice to say there could always be better dreams.
The shutters were down but I spied lights beyond, beyond and beyond. The distance between you and me an endless one with boundaries that stretch far beyond.

Outside, joss sticks provided me respite with the knowledge that half an hour ago, someone rolled up the shutters and placed a few lit joss sticks upon the altar.

rain

walked past rows and rows of niches with photos of those long gone discoloured, in the place that time seemed to stand still. for those people, at least. immortalised within the niches, put to rest with two dates in red or gold, one when their life began, one when their lives ended.
looked at the niche of a baby sealed together with her mother's and wondered if her mother died of grief a few years after her child died at the age of 3. walked past the niche of a pair of twins who were born and died on exactly the same day. looked at the loving picture of a couple who died before they were 40. looked at the niche of a boy who died at 14 and wondered how many of the dead took their own lives.
saw the niche of a beautiful lady whom i remember died in a diving accident 7 years ago when i was still in JC.gorgeous she looked, even on the photo on her niche. what was left on her niche was a faded rose, droplets of water rising against the plastic wrapping, a testimony that she was missed. that someone perhaps dropped by on a hot and languid weekday afternoon, walked up alone to the 2nd storey of the row of niches in which she was placed, put a rose at her niche, stepped back, thought of her and her smile, her joy and laughter, her tears and pain, looked at her photo and tried to remember her full of life, but seven years on, that isn't easy. traced his fingers across the engravement of her name, perhaps. did a tear roll down his face? we shall never know.

***

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

***

it's like waiting for a sailor to return from sea, when the sea is turbulent and the skies are grey.

it's like waiting when you know waiting is in vain.

it's forbidden fruit.

and i wonder and dream about eyes, wet from rain and tears, droplets of water cogulating on a whisp of fringe.
your fringe.

***

you should fall. you should lose your balance. you should lose and have the taste of defeat. the sour taste of defeat accentuated by taste of tears seeping into the corners of your mouth as you desperately try to contain them and blink them away fiercely.
you should fall, you who have never fallen.
you the one in orange staring idly at the world going by, your feet in rubber slippers and you stare the the grey floor you trotted about as a child. the ants who weave around the floor in circles. you watch them idly, never noticing the girl on a bicycle.
you in orange. you the fidgety one. you the one i think of.

get used to it :)

For the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometimes a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.

I did love you once.


You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it.

I loved you not.

Get thee to a nunnery - why would you be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent, honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not given me life. I am very proud, indifferent, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them beck than I have thoughts to put them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us.

-Hamlet, Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's the only genius with words. now, do YOU know when you're being insulted? :)

when

I wish I could say that many things have changed in the course of 6 months, but nothing much has changed. I was just thinking the day before that instead of searching along the streets of booze and decadence and lanes filled with the raucous laughter of the drunk, I now search along the housing estates, past the men in thin cheap white shirts crying for their livelihood, cajoling others to stop and take a look at their durians, or the various fruits of the seasons. I walk past the men togged in white shirts and ties, barely past reaching adulthood, a stack of leaflets in hand, resorting to fake smiles and cajoles as a trade off for their time. I walk past the ladies with painted faces who sit and varnish their nails as they wait for customers to arrive, customers who browse unceasingly through the pile of clothes, nitpicking, and who vanish as quickly as they come, hopes of earning a quick buck from the sales of the items hopeless vanishing, evaporating.

Instead of looking at bright lights and fast cars, I now look at clothes hung on bamboo poles, billowing in the wind, a testimony to air molecules moving, rushing past each other in a dance of love. I now look at bright lights of a different sort - they blind the eyes and you've to be careful not to look directly at them. When in the past bright spots were tandem to the night sky and the bright lights flashed and swarmed before your very eyes when music blared in the background, the fluorescent lights now only serve to hurt your eyes.

When in the past I grabbed my gym bag and headed to the pub alone after a solitary dinner and watched the words "absolut" rotate unceasingly across the walls and bored waiters trip over themselves as they tried to serve me and bouncers asking me what was in my huge red bag and advising me to up my protein intake before exercising (think soy products and egg whites), I now search the neighbourhood streets where medicine men tout their latest products and men and women of different ages with degrees of varying interests in the products stop by to watch the medicine man break glass bottles with a thin piece of paper, sweat dripping across his forehead and rendering the cheap thin shirt to be plastered to his back in a layer of sweat.

When in the past I never thought much of the old man with his little grandson who chuckled shyly at the many glances towards him cast by so many teenage boys and girls whenever his grandfather brought him to the exercise corner in my college, now I wonder whether the old man still exists in this world and what has become of that young boy.

When six months ago I was still in the classroom with almost 35 seven year old children and trying hard not to scream at them, a seafood dinner followed in the dingy coffeeshop well-known for their crabs. I remember licking the spicy gravy off my fingers and the place that we sat at and how we had to wade into a stall in order to make use of the wash basins situated inside the stall.

And while it was sweet while it lasted, I no longer think about you, not even when I was away and watching the sea in a foreign land or in my stupors along life, tumbling over the abysses and finding my way up again.

"I am on another flight away, away from Singapore once again. I wait in the departure lounge, reading yet another Murakami novel. This time, it is Dance, Dance, Dance. A science fiction novel that outlays the boundaries of realities and makes me think of fiction in a new light. I board the plane and get to a window seat. I sit next to an old man and his wife, they are huddled in blankets and remind me of what winter in England must be like. I only have a cardigan on.
And then I see you. On a flight to Tokyo."
Perhaps you recognize me, perhaps you do not.

"It is like an ordinary day and the wind streaks through the cold air, streaming through leaves. Like fingers weaving through unyielding coldness.
On a humid and cold morning as such, the sky seems water-painted. Clear visions of colour are passing before my eyes. The tree outside my window thinks it is spring and time to bloom and it is right. On such a morning, it is difficult to imagine that the world is moving, that people are in motion and that clouds are drifting lazily by.
You are but an imagined concept, one that is built up upon dreams, visions, hope and a tiny bit of reality. What transpires may never be fulfilled."Perhaps not, or perhaps I don't want it badly enough to.

"Perhaps it shall provide me with a clue as to whether it was a deliberate one or an accident. not that it really matters. i guess i just need to find out. was he crying with fright at all the noise? was he in a hammock hung down from the ceiling? did they make sure he was in a different room?
i imagine the house without any air-conditioning, a bright day or perhaps a humid night. the leaves were not flying in the wind due to a lack of it. the sheets would be stained with sweat. a pink nightgown or perhaps shorts and an oversized top. the rotating fan causes a slight breeze in the room. and something magical occurs."

When once I searched the streets of decadence, I now search the faces of the common people, the grief-stricken ones, the ones clad in cheap shirts and flat slippers.

sinew

i was at MPH and i scoured the bookshelves for the kafka book today. at first i passed the chick-lit section, and then i wondered on and saw books by atwood, nicholas evans - the divide - the book i borrowed in december and never managed to read, and the i spotted it. i don't recall whether it was the cover with the painted face that first drew my attention to it, or whether it was the one with a black cat and a white background that drew me to it. i looked at the covers and then i looked at the prices, one being inconsequentially cheaper than the other by five cents, and then i looked at the quantity, one being the last one on the shelf and the other with around five copies of it remaining. the content would be the same, the translator was the same - philip gabriel - and then i saw that the one with the black cover had a scratch on the mid portion, around the right hand side, and i decided to take it anyway because the scratch reminded me of you, because i usually only see your right profile and i've never quite got down to figuring out whether that scratch was a fold caused by the crease and lines of your pillow after you get out of bed, creased with sleep as you are, or whether it was a testament to a fight, nails, sinew, flesh under skin, glass? a smash of glass, a fall? a fall caused by a trip and the delicate cheekbone that hits the ground. perhaps. that much i shall never know.

grille

the sky's now turning grey as i speak. respite is in the air, the last week before school closes. i wish i could speak of summer breeze and restlessness, of the smell of summer that comes after spring, but i can't.

the grille gates have not changed and today i got off the bus. the same bus that i was on 5 years ago that stopped abruptly when a car sailed merrily into the lane the bus was travelling along. strangely though, that the driver of the car was more shaken than the driver of the bus, pausing and getting out of the car with a look of astonishment. astonishment at the near-accident, astonishment at escaping and perhaps ridicule.

that time 5 years ago, i don't know where he was. pottering around the wet market perhaps, gnawing on his fingers. cut your nails, please. playing with stones, fruits, grass, bits. many many things change in 5 years. like the other time when we went to block 213 to a tiny room and listening to songs that included "alleluiah". i still remember suggesting that we use that song while it rang out "alleluiah!" pretty weird.

there are many called fuckwits around me.

i'm tired.

i don't mind the rushes and sprouts of youth coming back to me, after all i could have forgotten what it was like once to be young and dumb. i'm not infalliable, i'm not perfect.

blinding

a torrid dream today or perhaps from the night before, a movie on egyptian pyramids and the title was one of those "names" that i coined myself, nothing very different from intrasingence and there i saw it on the poster. come to think of it, i think it reminded me of the movie "the mummy" or perhaps "the mummy returns". and movies then conjure images of lost youth, of 6 years ago when i was in a cushy job albeit with low pay, with a (store)room of my own, attaching film slides to movie synopsis and then mailing them out to the media. the various organisations. the days when not doing anything meant that there was little to do and how many things could be gone without being done, unlike now when not doing anything actually means the inability to list things in order of priority, simply because everything just has to be bloody done.

but i'm losing my grasp for words perhaps in this sated, muted concious act of simply wanting to type.

i resent the scholars' choice that appear with the straits times today, simply because it reminds of of the world of possibilities out there and how the world has already stopped for me.

i ate chips at the pavillion he built before he left a thousand years ago. one by one with my slippers on the ground and my feet tucked under my body. i felt it ironical since the other time i was thinking about waddding into the pool and here i was, in a different time and place at a similar pool.

fish

and why are you out when you should be in the city of blinding lights, the city where no one sleeps, the city with restless hearts and loud music to drown out the words in your head? and why were you at the city of blinding lights that very day when she was probably miles, millions of miles away from you, sailing above the clouds with brightly manicured nails and a plastic smile in tow?

we take trips all the time, and i can't remember the last time i went to the airport though. nothing much has changed, not the bright blue contrast of the sky against the green leaves waving in the breeze, not the winding road that leads downwards and then upwards again, with the familiar landmark right in front of you, the throngs of people who all look the same despite your differences, simply because you've seen enough of the world.

***

when i got home i opened the tube of moisturiser and realised with a start that whatever i'd placed inside in a bid to forget its' existence, had tarnished, was now blackened with age, and i realised that by the simple act of just placing it there without thinking further was already the start of the end. i'll not forget that day when i rejected the ride and took a bus to the infamous sultan road and simply drank. i can't remember which floor i was on though, or perhaps that was simply the start of a few drinking sessions. either way it was the beginning of the end and a welcome end.

***

i went back to the church that i went to on a weekly basis ten years ago and it's fucking changed. however, i've realised that i'm able to sieve out changes and to simply remember places as they once were, not because change is bad, but simply because i've become resistant to changes in some ways. i can't figure out the reason. perhaps time has passed me by so fast and ignored my desires for it to still, for it to slow.
and i'm amazed that the bunch of us have known each other for seven years. it seems like only yesterday that we were in chaos over studying for the dreaded As, the day of my first A level paper when i went to mac donalds and chanced upon a suicide and a dead body in a mud pit on the way home, the hours of writing essays, and then the wait and dread for the papers to end and looking forward to prom-time when the papers finally ended. and the excitement of supposedly beginning a new life with uni life when you find out that nothing really changes, because by 18, you've almost seen enough of the world to get sick of it.
and it's seven years now.

***

i also remembered how i reared turtles in primary school and let them go in the pond one day, the same pond into which i dropped my specs one fine day in march perhaps, those lazy bright hazy days when i didn't want to go home and those days when an extra outing to church meant a brighter day. those days when i could still count my age by the fingers on my hands and that time when you wadded into the pond to reach into the water, fishes swimming around your ankles.

***

and sunday tomorrow.

incomprehensible entry

the radio is now blaring a song which suspiciously sounds pretty "chinese-ey", what with all the ai-ee-ai-ee-aii. but it's a welcome change from hearing it enamate from those dusty miserable computer speakers in school. so thursday is today and the week is soon going to be over. but not quite since there is official duty on bloody saturday. a bloody saturday i repeat. probably shall pop across the causeway sometime before this week draws its' final breath.

oh and i've ordered clay for my poor art class pupils, who have been so bored in my classes that they are still brushing off the mildweed and cobwebs. so clay it shall be to occupy them for two weeks and to shut their mouths for two weeks.

so v'day came and went and by the way i'm having nightmares at times. the last i dreamt was about this stupid guy and me and we went into this house of horrors. anyway the point was that there was this monster or some human who was like a monster and wanting to keep us there, we had to creep out of the house when he was sleeping, then run for our lives to the nearest bus-stop. and the damn place was somewhere in bukit batok with bus 315. i believe there IS a bus 315 really, actually.

oh and the reason why i dream of bukit batok is also partly because my mum met my cousin at the interchange last night and she was wasting time walking around the shelves of ntuc because she was waiting for her hubby to pick her up from yishun. not at the location my mum met her, she still has to take a train to yishun. in her pregnant state. oh and that is why i think marriage is a dead institution. not an institution of love, really. i think it suffices to marry another as long as you don't want to club each other on the head all the time, resulting in untimely deaths. because of love or lust, we get together. we part if we get sick of each other. if there are flowers and wine and nice dinners, we stay together as a testimony to the illusions of love that hinder us from looking upon love itself. and soon, due to the illusions of love, we get married and start to have children.
and that is when the shit often hits the fan.
women get bloated, ugly, whiny, oily, the insecurity fans and spreads. post-natal blues.
and you almost never looks as you do post-baby. and then the flowers disappear and love too fades.
how lame is marriage?

***

and i envy the younger generation. a wave of jealousy at what i deem i've been cheated of during the period that is supposed to be one of the best in my life. where were the handphones, the neo-print machines (okay we had them but the or-beet ones), the laugter, the friends, the MONEY?
as usual i think money often makes the world go round, but that doesn't mean i'm a materialistic bitch. it's just the way things are.

forgive this incomprehensible entry anyway. next better one.

a song

trails of music, tinkles of notes, a shred of a voice singing about a big concept called "if". and i was dreaming about the last time i heard this song, not too long ago, but not too recent either, i can't remember exactly when, but it must have been one of those times in the black freezing room with my feet on the cushions, my arms hugging my legs to my chest in a futile attempt to keep warm. perhaps it was that time when i stared opposite and noticed a girl, a normal prebuscent girl, i've no idea what made me take special notice of her that one day, she, walking down orchard road, and later seeing her in the room opposite, gave me a start.


***

oh i dread weekends now, for their inability to stretch beyond, into nothingness, into promises of pampering, lazy afternoons, of lazy jaunts, of smoke and gyrates, of shopping with sunglasses, of royal copenhagen tea lounging.
and instead, each weekend rushes past me, drowning me in a swirl of marking on saturdays till the afternoon, depriving me of a long nap in the evening when i've to wake up for church, depriving me of partying and booze most of the time, plunking me into a grease-filled place with grimy tables and stools when i indulge in oily food (no, that isn't so bad after all actually) and making me go round in circles of worry at the coming week ahead - am i on task? what do i need to do for the coming week ahead? on sunday.

but it's just another start on a monday, not exactly blue but not exactly a day when i jumped out of bed thinking of joy and an inability to wait and see how the day turns out. pah.

and so my days will be over-run with deadlines to meet and things to accomplish. but whose aren't?
oh, and exactly a year back, life "began" for me. one of the beginings.

211

as usual i was staring idly out of the windows, the orange light on my i-pod shuffle flickering periodically and the tracks jumping as a result of a lack in battery power and me thinking, fuck. i'd thought i just plugged it into the damned laptop the other day.

the other day? which day? the days are flickering by, remnants of a life perhaps not lived. the morning is the same everyday - when i make it to the door, trudging wearily there, i'd think, how did i make it this far? referring to the distance between my bed and the door, actually.

most days i'm up long enough to see the hands of the clock merrily join together as one at 12. and most days i'd feel i've not slept enough since reality flickers with dreams and they come together as one to haunt my sleep. my lucid sleep.

i don't brim with excitement at the start of a new day. yet i'm past being angsty, jaded, cynical, squealing. i watch with an air of detachment. i recognise how certain things never change and i sardonically laugh at myself at times.

the bus sailed through routes familiar to me for the past 4 years and i was left thinking about how it was like travelling for 3 hours to-and-fro to a place commonly described as a god-forsaken place in the west for four long years.
and obviously now nothing's left of those 4 years but certain friends, memories that aren't tangible enough to remember vividly. like dredges in the mud. like sand weaving past your fingers when you pick it up.

my plant died the other day because my mother dropped the entire pot of it on the floor and i threw the pot away. at first there were three beautiful plants and then 2 died during december, suitably, i deem they died suitable deaths for reasons that only i shall know.
without a thought.
once i took them full of hope and ironically, i lost a friend on the same day that they were given to me. not even a year has gone by, but it was time to die anyway.

and i sailed past the first floor of what was thought of as a "shophouse" and the backdoor was left open, so the door-grilles served as a suitable frame for which i could peer through. but the moment was gone and i could see nothing.
and then i began to think of black.
black huge frames framing her face, blocking her eyes, the windows to the world, what i perceive the world with, leaving only pores, a tiny rosebud of a mouth, a nose dusted with freckles. hair flying past in the wind, a tribute to air molecules and the certainty that wind has a life of its own, without a doubt.
a black skirt that flies up in the wind, and perhaps that mango top that she regretted buying when it wasn't on sale yet. (it's all your fault)
end the piece with a pair of silver heels and she gets out of the car and walks in a non-descript manner. she puffs and lets the cigarette fall to the ground and steps on it with her silver heels and moves her shoes from side to side, with her sole still on the ground and the sharp end of a heel still in the air.
then a man enters the picture.

i no longer posses angst as a license to be silly, stupid or to indulge in vices. i posses a languid air that allows me to flit however, in my own thoughts.
i need a fix.

and for those who've asked why i've stopped writing, it's because i've not seen the need to. :)

Hearken me, I'm back

and i was also thinking that i no longer had to search for myself in booze and bright lights and wafts of smoke and strange people and reflections and walks like a damn cat on the prowl on heels over broken pavements, sidestepping cracks in the concrete and listening to the wind speak.
but i guess there is no end for it yet.
and it's strange that i have to enter a classroom 2 hours later with the pupils having little inkling about what transpired in the last 20 hours or so that we last met.
i'd thought that among the bright lights, i'd found myself. perhaps it's just an illusion, or perhaps what you'd said to her on a bright weekday afternoon on a lush green court with brick red ground still rings true, the sharp words piercing the summer's breeze like a javelin. it's all in the mind, though i'd hearken not to think so.
the strange bodies all squashed on a platform, the people waving their cigarettes in the air and the smoke leaving whitish trails in the calm, undisturbed air, the individual buried with his face in a pool of vomit, the swirls of beer and froth on the ground, the blue tops above taxis that scream "take me", and now this reminds me of that last day we met when the cab that i narrowly missed taking had some semblence of a meaning to me since it represented when we met, but in the end it all didn't matter, because everything was too late, just simply too late.

hello, old life, life of drudgery, of late nights, of fatigue and of dreaming of planes. hello.

addicted

today we formed a ring together and moved to the left and then to the right. i also realised with a start that today marked 11 years since i wore a white top, shorts, had on my black shoes and walking around white-washing, spotting a white-washer, escaped into the washing and realised there was no way out. today also brings to mind a bible-togging aged man who has aged as much as i have. i wonder if the drain that i stomped on angrily has been fixed. or is it still loose, hanging over the culvert and lying in wait for its' next victim to jump up in fright as a clanging sound erupts from putting on too much weight on one portion of it.

so i marked in school today once again and had this weird conversation with my colleagues about food and sex, through no fault of mine since there is a magazine with the words "have sizzling sex tonight" displayed prominently near my shelf, which obviously does not belong to me. so there was much talk about helicopters, if you do know what they're getting at. i'm still unclear but i think i've figured it out :)

i shopped at somerset today. bought a pink tee with a wide collar and another pair of beach-shorts. i need them for blah days when i don't know where i'm going. i sat in the smoking open-air section of starbucks and had my latte with a mango cheesecake which melted in my mouth and smelt ash, cigar smoke and conversation mixed with the acrid taste of expresso. it's at times like these that i find coffee tastes like water mixed with cigarette ash. and i'm also convinced that i'm a potential chain smoker, if i do decide to pick it up at least. give me my coffee and pills to tide the day, and also a pencil to tap in hand to signify an action.

i went to this tiny church on the outskirts of busy orchard, where i passed by while walking to mohammad sultan once and which i took a picture of in the dark.

dinner was a lovely sweet, spicy, bitter, sour affair at siam kitchen, which i'm into nowadays. i love glass noodles, tiny peeled prawns, chopped corn, chicken wrapped in pandan leaves, thai fishcakes and tom yum soup.

then it was off to "addicted" where the songs, music and visions brought me back to headier times, times when we were carefree and free and love was an easy word. so long since. so long since. i hitch a ride home and never turn as i walk towards the lift and all of a sudden i recall lights shining behind me, imprinting me against the pink tiles for a moment, and how you looked with the backdrop of the brick tiles, the white walls, the tiny palm trees, and time stopped still for a while.

se7en

sometimes you search for words to play around with, some words are over-used, some skip happily over your mind as you try to reach over and grasp hold of a semblence of a way by which to convey your meaning. at times, words fail, they are pointless, they fail between the barriers between articulation and conveyance of a specific meaning.

i'd never thought of you that way, if only you could hear, not just hear but also listen, hearing and listening akin to seeing and searching for the meaning, meaning the elusive character that eludes our grasp everytime.

we spend our lives searching, often, for that which is in front of us.

and when was there a need for me? how did this need arise and from where did it stem from? creation of reasons, creation of needy reasons, this is all getting too blatant.

cremation of you.

If you can't make your mind up,
We'll never get started.
And I don't wanna wind up
Being parted, broken-hearted.
So if you really love me,
Say yes.
But if you don't, dear, confess.
And please don't tell me
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
by cake.

but the lyrics to the song bring to mind some half-past-six-long-gone jewellery ad and some girl in a black/grey smocked tunic dancing around - was it so?
and reeks of pathetictism. if there were only such a word.

so perhaps? not, please.