oh how i miss thee

lazy old days of yore.

buses, the bus rides. the joy of stepping out of the gym after a cold shower with my hair still wet, and to feel the blazing sun on my skin, burning through every pore, seeping past the tiny hairs on my arms and penetrating it's souless gaze upon each figment of cell. the feet on the ground, one in front of the other, in an endless cycle of walking. steps, cobbled pathways, concrete pathways, we walked through them all. the gaze that one gives another, the stay in the lift when everyone evades eye contact, the brief glance that you would entrust to a stranger when memory tugs upon your mind and connects you to another time and place, alive only in your heart and mind.

of hopping onto a bus and not knowing where it would go, if only you knew where i was. of whizzing past establishments, small cafes with men in striped shirts and ties and a metallic watch on the wrist, cuff links. whizzing past the past itself, alive in what you think you see, ghosts drifting in and out of your world as you turn upwards and feel cool air gushing out from the vents above you.

and how i miss thee, lovely, lazy days of yore, when the morning brought nothing but pleasures of the day. a lazy, languid day stretches ahead and you forget the faces of those you've seen almost everyday for almost the entire year - they drift away, they cease to exist in your world.

of leaving without thoughts, of getting on a jetplane and just to leave. of budget terminals and designated queues and a common waiting area for all those waiting for their flights, then the longer queue for the plane and striding past the blazing hot tarmac, so hot you wondered if the soles on feet would melt on the tarmac. you get on the plane and dump your baggage on the overhead compartment, whitish gas gushes forth ahead as the plane takes it's tentative steps to moving along.

and then the getting along there, i never hail taxis in foreign lands, the danger of being in an enclosed area alone with a total stranger disgusts me - one can drive the other anywhere, just anywhere. the only time i'd taken a taxi was to quiapo church, where i'd tried to go to the previous day, but ended up at the post office and the city hall area - it was only later that i realised why the police officer i'd consulted for the directions had given me a weird look - the words, you can't walk it - come to mind, mind drawing a time from ages ago when i was lost and tried to find. the other time i'd gone for a movie at orchard - some chinese movie which was average on the plot but the soundtrack was awesome and reminded me of a scene in years to come. of dancing in a dark room, hands and lips and a stranger in tow.

tales of a spinning head that have been told thousands of times, that stranger in the dark whom i never ever saw again - i realised last Saturday night that all love stories are the same and i wondered why i hadn't trusted in that mantra before. alcohol that seeps through my veins, that when i was younger, a few shots would take me to high heaven - not so now, not so. perhaps life has shaken me up, smacked me back to reality where i see how things are always grounded - nothing ever changes. in fact, i did predict several things, one of those a stay in a Hong Kong hotel. once you've lived through enough, you realise that most things never change and once you've gone through so many experiences, you already know how most things turn out. and since you are already in possession of that knowledge, there is nothing more to live for, for you know most things and hiccups along the way mean virtually nothing. then, life gets sad.

perhaps school has done me some good - i wake at six every morning, wash up, make up, am exasperated that there is simply nothing to wear although my wardrobe is bursting. routine, routine. brain-numbing routine that tells us how our lives are going to turn out and perhaps it is with this routine that we cease to accept change - we are resistant to it, we repel it, are horrified by the great unknown and bunch up in our little cocoons. or perhaps i live better this way, work does occupy us in some ways, however unwilling we are, whatever unwilling slaves we are.

the parents are back from Bangkok and while they were away, i led a solitary life. i hardly ate breakfast, save for that one Sunday when i went to yakun for delicious butter sugar toast and eggs. scrumptious, and i shall save that one comment that all girls make after writing about the apparent sin they have committed after eating. pah! the weekend was a frutiful one, especially since it was the first week of school and work hasn't really begun piling up yet. i booked my appointments for a haircut, a facial and a massage. did the first two around the bugis area on Saturday and did the last on Sunday after a visit to my grandmother's place at Marsiling. she was obviously delighted to see me and this put some guilt into me, especially when i'd to leave after an hour or so for my massage.

morning session is a weird session. you seem to think that you can leave soon after the bell goes and obviously that is the ideal situation, but nothing ever goes according to plan, as usual. instead, you more than often find yourself staying back to do some marking, which escalates into more work as you uncover more work undone, academic related or otherwise. teaching is a tiring job.

and so i miss the days of travelling and more so going into the unknown with narry so much a map, of looking at rail lines and train station maps and trying to figure out where to go. hotels and bellboys and those pulling along Samsonite luggage bags with priority tags of them. the other day, i'd slipped into hotel intercontinental at bugis for the use of the restroom and wanted to see if the lovely christmas tree adoring the spiral stairway near the tea lounge still stood and in it's place were two chairs and an elegant table. i turned and caught sight of a bellboy tugging some luggage along, with blue priority tags. i smiled as i remembered. the moments are gone, but not forgotten, and sometimes in the dead of the night, i suddenly wake, a placid and peaceful sort of a rousing and listen to myself exist.

in august, i wrote that i have grieved far less that i thought i would have, and the same thing goes for now. i have grieved lesser that i expected these past few weeks. back in singapore was a sort of an agony, like a shell, my emotions did not betray me - i ate, went around and basically continued with my life, until one day when i woke up in the morning and decided that if i was going to be sad, i would embrace grief with all my heart and with the capacity of all that i could take. i no longer stayed away from places that brought a tug to my heart, i no longer berated myself for dredging up memories and playing certain scenes in my head. i cherished these scenes, played them as many times as i wanted and thought of details, envisioned myself there again in that same time and place. i embraced grief, knowing what it could cost me. and through this embracement, i learned to let go. with all the beautiful memories dredged up, i learned to smile at what was, rather than think of what was not to be. i cherished certain things, recognised that things would totally change, unknowingly, unfairly, unexpectedly.

i do miss thee, lovely, lovely days of yore. work does keep me sane at times, but one does sometimes doubt and wonder if perhaps life is a dream and what if everything were in vain? what would we be then?

i miss thee, lovely, lazy days of yore.