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.

brine

you know
it wasn't quite
so long ago,
that we ate
crabs
in a dingy coffeeshop
with oil, grime and dust,
fingers picking
eagerly into crevices.

walking sideways,
akin to crabs,
along the briny beach.
walking sideways as we shouldn't have.

fridays remind me of art,
blue fingers and hypothermia.
of screams and
balancing paint on art paper.

it's hard to think of what the mind conjured,
when it's no longer present.
why is it that the same song
no longer regales the same emotions?

i think and try,
but the song never brings more
than the movie to mind.
and which is that?
you ask.

i smiled at the whiteboard,
knowing what transpired.
you at midnight,
a friend who left.
you changed your number.
it isn't the same.
the phone that rang.
the phone hidden under the pillow.

a shrill ring that pierces the air.
a shrill ring past midnight.
conjuring images of horror,
blood and the unexpected.

has it been a hundred days then?
i wanted to sleep while watching you.

it lies, unopened

i realise yesterday who thomas reminded me of.

***

the fact that a prominent minister of singapore will be kick-starting the light-up ceremony over at chinatown brought to mind o'farrell's characters, mel and jake, the crowd, the push, the pull and how you just flow in a crowd, devoid of direction, moving as if attracted by the pull of a magnet in the direction the general want to go. there was an outlet and they wanted to leave, but a man carrying beer bottles dropped them, the glass bottles broke into tiny shards of glass and the beer foamed and swirled out upon the ground. they had to return to the crowd once again though why they preferred being pushed around the crowd to stepping on shards of beer seems unfathomable to me unless they were barefooted.

and then i thought of last year this time when we were together watching the certain minister's son instead kick-starting the event, walking through the crowds, pushing our way through, sidestepping and worming our way into any fatigable corner in order to move, just to move will do.
and then stuck and not moving, the firecrackers went off without warning and there was cheer and merry-making and you could literally see the crackers lighting up in bountiful sparks.

and then we meandered our way to burger king and sat down and ate and has it already been a year dammit?

***

your present lies unopened in my bag.

the shallow entity

it's quite sad to be stuck in somewhere resembling a time warp when the world goes on outside your cocoon.

***

i think of your full fringe now swept to the side and i think of how i tied my hair up today and yet my nape wasn't exposed because i was wearing that semi-shirt that i bought when i was with you, while things were still fine. i'm glad i can still fit into that shirt.

the pink. Mr Brightside the Pink. this suddenly reminds me of my pinky ring that i bought myself when i declared independence and which i lost somewhere in bugis, either left in the gym shower or slipping off my hand as it glides through the air in a futile attempt to catch the bus.

when switching on the current i think of seven years ago when i was all alone in that big school and how you were all alone too and how your bus rides to school ensured that you would pass me by every morning. i still remember shouting to you over the phone that you shouldn't let your life be such, that if it were such, you'd be better off dead by jumping into a river. at that exact moment, it hadn't occured to me that a river was probably a shallow entity.

but you're fine now and done good, that much my green eyes must rest. you have a big car and a fancy girl with pink hair and not much that i care about you but for god's sake stop trying to get to me when i know you don't care about me, it doesn't bother me much. oh, the pink again.

since when was i so associated with pink?

i lost the pinky ring and now i still absently graze my thumb across the base of my tiniest finger, hoping to reach for a tinge of metal and the criss-crossed patterns engraved on the ring. i could always reach for hers but it isn't the same. and for that, i won't.

words of the day: celebrated - initiative, infer, indulgent? no, of course not. briny.

everyday is a winding road darling, it's how you wind you way through it perhaps. but some days simply suck.

it's just the start of term, just the start of term.

the new year beckons

no. i refuse that. it does not beckon, it stamps its' feet, bangs at the doors, demands to be let in, stomps in and kicks the door shut.
it has come unannounced and is unapologetic, blatant and demanding. it demands you do something to welcome it, it demands attention and craves to be celebrated.
you welcome it unwillingly, annoyed by the need to usher in it when you've not let go of the past.

2005 was a blast. maybe not quite the blast that the term "blast" conjures to mind, but still, an eventful year.
after all, this was the year i did so many things for the first time, things i hadn't dared to do before.

i graduated, i taught, i drank, i danced, i slept, i wrote, i revelled, i dreamed, i thought, i travelled, i read, i cursed, i loved, i hated.

some friends are no longer friends, some were known only for a few hours when something sparked between us and created a wave that carried me on for another month or so. some friends were found after more than five years, some friends are totally lost now. some are best lost.

it's difficult to sum up the year in so many ways - guess i'm already late to this since it's already the second day of the new year, but closure, closure.

all in all, i learned. and while i'm not exactly welcoming that unwelcomed guest who came one too early, i guess, i'll live with it.

onward 2006.

where were you?

dreams, clarity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

this christmas

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

nothing really changes. but nothing lasts forever either.

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

my christmas wish perhaps, a day too late.

on a night like this

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

take a trip

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

standing still

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

***

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

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

as rei once said, e mango.

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

that mad glimmer.

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

popiah tomorrow. how nice.

finally finished.

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

***

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***