hazy morning

a hazy morning, after a hazy night spent at the neighbourhood pub. haze, because of the smoke filtting around, smoke emanating from the burnt ends of cigarettes. the familiar acrid taste of beer, bitter a brew as any could be, the taste a memory from yesteryear when i'd last had beer. beer mixed with coke, a lemon or two, sliced and infused into the mixture. black straws, indiscriminate small glasses, a girl or two clad in a tiger-beer bluesuit. mismatched black lacquered tables, creaky high stools, put some of these together and you get my pub.
accompanied by the ballads of yesteryear, and we watched pot-bellied old men belt out hits from the time that we were not born yet, cringe at the shrill pitches trying to climb note after note, unsuccessfully, yes. that was my night. but there were nice songs too, the usual jay chou ballads, and whoever else you have, pleasant radio-friendly dittys that stay in your head long enough to allow you to remember the words and want to mouth them over and over again when the songs are being played.

dreams. part reality, part fiction. sometimes i dream of the last person i've thought of that night, never dreamt of my grandmother though. a grandaunt claimed to have dreamt of her one night, her clad in her peranakan outfit and black veil, standing just next to her niche in that peaceful church at bukit batok and when she ventured closer to my grandmother, my grandmother turned into a butterful. the story then goes that my aunt, her main caregiver during her final days, opened the balcony door one morning to see a butterful waiting outside her door. the butterfly flitted in when she opened the door a tad bit wider, made a circle or two of the house and then was gone, never to be seen again. such experiences. i've wondered whether such so-called experiences after the living are gone are triggered by some form of over-sensitivity to the things around us, our heightened awareness. the answers to that are probably never clear-cut. the other night i was just wondering why people cry when they are sad. is it merely a natural reaction or one that has been conditioned - that you cry because you know for sure it is a reaction for sadness. then again, we cry from birth, so that is something that is probably inborn.

i called your disconnected number again last night, and then your still existing one. a few days ago, i noticed that your welcome message for the voicemail's been changed. no more of that irritating noise from a computer at the begining. the voice still remains, highly strung, if that can be used to describe your tone. last night i watched, men in their vertically striped shirts, collar unbuttoned, at the pool table. the backs of shirts, the center portion of an inseam, which always reminds me of a cleft lip.

vertically striped shirts will always remind me of one thing. dark nights and flashing tailgates.

the sun's come out now. light green leaves are fluttering in the tiny breeze, shadows on the gravel ground, some leaves a lighter shade of green than others, because of the sun's reflection.