65

tis phil's birthday (he turned 65!), and i had phoned him with my wishes. apart from the few letters and emails, it's the first time we spoke since i left. my ears could not but ripple to his voice, with all its old-world genteel charm that could only bespoken by a kindly, congenial don. one of my most vivid images was of bumping into him one rainy and grey morning on my way to class, and he off somewhere, wrapped in a black aquascutum trenchcoat and wing-tipped oxfords, a black silver-handled, silver-tipped umbrella swinging by his fingers, cutting a very elegant, very patrician figure. his gently wrinkled face broke into a wide smile when he saw me, and asked how i was, tilting a little his whitely-mopped head. this was to be a recurrent gesture of his, reserved for any student who passed his way who said hello. and it was this little nippin of his time off his footsteps wherever they were heading no matter how hasty, that endeared him to us, quivering voice and all.

...loved; life; London; this moment of June

i had been renting dvds that, unintentionally, turned out to be rather british, like the english patient, being julia, closer, pride and prejudice. it was the last that got me pulling out austen's trope where i had left off a year ago and finished up the final bits. and because of that i'm very inspired to pick up dickens again. ahhh. past one week saw me on a novel rampage, finishing up in earnest winterson's oranges, the powerbook, rereading desultory bits of the passion and written on the body and reread her art objects in its entirety. when my mind's more settled i'll tackle art and lies. i tried reading it a month ago and i just couldnt get into it. also finished (finally) mrs dalloway in rather quick fashion, simultaneously reading her diaries. pulled out nabokov's lolita and started on it today - a most funny, sardonic book i must say - i think i'm gonna enjoy this one.

had browsed at kino earlier far longer than expected, lately zooming into (or starting from) 'W' for you-know-whos, and working my way down the alphabets. i went back to naipaul and after a long spell of wispy winterson; his lean, exacting and introspective prose (not to say ms winterson arent these, but she's different) offered ambivalent sentiments. i'm not so much into plots as themes now; in fact i think novels should abandon plots totally and simply focus on telling stories. it sounds contradictory but it isnt - stories and plots overlap but are not the same things. use language to tell a story, or use stories to elevate language? maybe it depends on which you prefer or privilege so it neednt be so stark but i am beginning to believe the obsession with 'plots' submerge both stories and language. if a story is internally coherent a plot-of-sorts will naturally follow. so its no wonder i'm not a fan of detective novels. where's the joy of reading about a murder if you already know one is going to happen? anyway, i should like to avail myself to more victorian and early 20th century works - somehow i never tire of the former, while the latter ones are a recently-acquired predilection.

the cafes in singapore are going mad. one has too much space indoors and too few tables, the rest are blasting music till kingdoms come. it's bad business sense and bad for my state of mind. so i wrote a note and before leaving, stuck it onto the coffee mug: please do select appropriate music and turn them down to suitable levels conducive for a confined place like this, so that the baristas would then have no need to compete with it and the expresso machines and shout atop their lungs above the din, making being in this establishment unpleasant, even intolerable. ohhhhhh yes i am allergic to noise.

and i loved mrs dalloway - i love virginia woolf:

.... they love life. in people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

listen to her rhythm! poetic, dolce, and light; and the alliterative decrescendo - ...loved; life; London; this moment of June. it was vivaldi cascading on violins of words.

whose stories; and who tells them?

this is a world of stories, without which it is not a real world. a world without dreams and fantasies and miracles, is not the real world. you do not have to will them to life, let them remain sapphire steeples and emerald spires, edifices in your imaginations as alive as the thousand expirations in one relucent night. one day though, they might just awake stone-hard, precious-glittering, testaments of once-upon-an-imagination. the least you can do is not demolish... - because the ensuing rubris will be an inverse tribute to their reality. there is a world from which atlases and maps are drawn - inadequate, abstract, but of course, real. we have forgotten that the world's first Atlas tumbled out from a story: passionately beheld in the grecian heart, carrying this weight of the world, and from which many other stories tumbled forth. so authentic these fables, cloud-high skyscrapers and invisible (global) economies graze on it. there is another world that resides in the heart - diminutive, frivolous, and naturally, unreal. but it is truer than anything in this world. it has always been. does it matter whose stories and who tells them, as long as there are stories to be told?

falling nights

1 dec 04.

"You seem rather quiet..."

What did you expect me to say? I didn't want to (and couldn't) peer aimlessly into your mind. I'd rather you let me know how you feel, what you think, and how you intend to... With you i feel defenceless and weak. I cannot bring myself to indulge in mind games and flirtatious banter. Because you remind me of a past. You remind me of a forgotten stab-wound whose scars have almost healed. Would you remember your promise to have a meal with me over the weekend?

but to what are they connected?

when i left ... i thought i was running away. running away from uncertainty and confusion but most of all running away from myself. i thought i might become someone else in time, grafted on to something better and stronger. and then i saw that running away was a running towards. an effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way. but what good are destinations without journeys? i did not wander into this quiet village following a trail of norms and conventions and easy acceptance. truer was the opposite. for better or for worse, without quite knowing what next would come, it was one of countenancing people's thoughtless doubts, defying their flippant assumptions, defacing and obliterating their timorous condescensions. it was one of proving myself and showing them wrong. i do not know what other villages there are, but i keep the faith what has, will still; that hopefully there would arrive a hamlet, where the coin is not money but emotion, where i shall relieve my every and all, and live with just ink on my hands and sunlight at my feet. there are people who tell me that i am cut off but to what are they connected?
___

realities nonetheless

the raindrops generously plattered onto the moving window panes, spraying mercurial lines that cracked and jagged, windblown diagonal, before blurring away as if a life went spent; many lives spent; in its place new splatters. i had philip glass in my ears, and it lifted but calmed my spirits, so much my mind became pellucid. i saw us in the car, me looking out to the flashing rows of trees, lampposts, the more reluctant buildings. and i thought how you could become a lover that never was; i was sure you had, at some points in time shared this exact sentiment; how time and distance apart, we extracted the same memories and reconstructed similar fantasies, that then became realities of sorts, even if fragile and ephemeral; but realities nonetheless.

p.s. i've always been ambivalent about the outside world this window presents. but in time to come i think i'll start missing those hours and days and nights sitting by this window, looking, contemplating, imagining; the numbness as well as the inspirations; the quiet time with myself.

s in town

when an intellectual firebrand that's simone flies in and hooks up for coffee three consecutive days, challenging conversations and the deconstruction of current trends are as inevitable as yet another drivel. but when today, the coffee-table got surrounded by simone, me, drew, and edison, it was the bohemia that i had missed so much, enacted, if only barely, all over again. ed had casually remarked that singapore's an intellectual deadpan, i thought him generous. because singapore's wasnt even about dispassion, apathy - it was pathos and passion for all the wrong things; because the intelligent has got conflated and confused with the (absent) intellectual, and the term 'scholarship' has become a catachresis. ashis couldnt be more prescient when he said, "knowledge without ethics is not so much bad ethics as inferior knowledge." so it was too, for truth, for passion. when i held my coffeecup and felt its warmth, when i closed my eyes and stretched my ears, snatching at those brilliant bursts of remonstrations all in the spirit of debate, three years ago seemed there and then.

because you're winged yet cant fly and every step an epitaph

because i doubt, i question, i interrogate every word you say; because it's an opening question it's not a final judgement; because i satirise i criticise i parody, and can laugh at this stupid world and 'tis moronic me. because i refuse to conform to a people who has nothing, but trite conventions and puerile expectations; because you yearn for an apartment, only to worry about having just an apartment; because when your car's scrapped and four walls dilapidate, you've nothing more to flaunt and think you're no more a man; because i'm not keen in the latest tiniest phone nor the newest mall of the same; because i'm indignant i'm adamant - there's more than just one way to live a good life, one money cannot buy. because you accuse me of arrogance but not of your colloquial condescensions. because i care, i feel, this people this life - pity its deadening sensibilities; because your truisms masquerading as truths are tiresome and misguided, not to mention dangerous; because your aphorisms are exhausted, and silence should tend to them. because we're winged, and because there're territories only imaginations can conquer; because what will be might not be; i refuse the quotidian and mediocre; because an integrity is at stake that's not begging for your dictate; because i cannot condescend but to climb, if i want extraordinary views; because you're winged yet cant fly, and every step an epitaph; because living is a struggle and against its daily deaths i refuse, to submit, to lie, to die.

like the faraway pegasus in his unhurried flight

when i found myself to you and heard i said - give me your memories to protect it, hand me your fears to cage it up, pour me your sorrows to halt your tears, i will hold you for as long as you want, and leave you as soon as you wish - i clothed myself in zodiac leo and vowed beneath its borrowed sun. gallant words from the blinding rays, bloomed a mirage of me king to your flesh. a few victories and invincible i think myself. but it was you - who drew these words from my throat like a sword from its sheath, and the sword was yours to wield. i gave my heart in all its inferno but all you came for was one last night. the kingdom that was you - my crown and glory rendered an aubade gallipoli. armoured in these weary wounds, bereft and afraid, i heard i said - sleep be my cavalier night, and yesterday will come at last.
___

why the hurry; the stars are above, nailed into every faithful night; the rain will fall when cotton clouds spill, and blossom on grounds like ricecrops on soil; and the sun will, when tomorrow comes, tendril and spray. why rustle this comforting rhythm. come and sit by me; sit by the chimerics, can you see. listen to its breathless secrets as you breathe into mine. reach through my eyes and touch my heart and knead every thought of mine. listen to my secrets, every pulsebeat every tremble every sprinkled thought. let time ride over the shimmering sky, like the faraway pegasus in his unhurried flight. come sit by me, and hear the stardust sing.

january and you

i thought of you when it rained yesterday evening. it came sudden and unexpected, just as how you had first appeared. and like the plenty that only hindsight sees, the beauty of that moment escaped me then. rainfall, yesterdays, evenings, you. embodiments of romance and dreams in my reach, what more could i have asked for. what more should i, apart from perhaps, for ever? why, for treasuring the moment of course. cliches. that's one thing you have taught and taught me well, why these cheap words are to be fiercely avoided like spurned raging lovers. the rejected do nothing but harm. but contrary to what you believe, cliches are not the trouble-makers - it's their users. cant you see, those instigators - no - vandals defacing with abandon the hallowed, wizened words of yore, all for a desperate minute of plagiarised pride and fame (so they think), all because they can. slowly, our lines blurred - guide-traveller, mentor-pupil, heart-soul - lovers. i ventured to touch your soft white hands, and you held on to my laboured, trembling ones. but that adventure did not smoothen my doubts. i dont know of what; of the unknown - can you see this irony? but we couldnt resist one more cliche, tempting fate - we'll see, let time decide. i could not tell whether you whispered out of conviction or resignation. it was blind faith in life's hopeful little destinies, but what could we do really, but to await the Grand Dame Time and Her Ticking Hands show us what will be will be? i dont know if Time wears a watch, perhaps she has no need for it. watches and ticking seconds are man's invention, only mere mortals like us device such mechanics to interpret this universe and its invisible wheels; not unlike how the myriad of gods man conceived since time immemorial have always been what man is not and can never be, isnt it? blind faith in us as man have in their gods. but dont let hubris get to me, susceptible though i am, a few victories and i think myself invincible. fallen men and broken hearts invariably surrender themselves to melodious paeans of time and god and its ever-grace. i'll return to thanking life's little mercies. like meeting you. like thinking of when we first met: i had looked at you from afar, and thought i, only i, was the secretly-admiring voyeur.

no, you later said, i was but a fish in the tank.

when the seconds wash us by
to the next years of this time
will we revive our raucous laughter
from this second night of twelvetide?

from the passion

we sang our strongest voices and the warmth and nearness of other people thawed my unbeliever's heart and i too saw god through the frost. the plain windows were trellised with frost and the stone floor that received our knees had the coldness of the grave. the oldest were dignified with smiling faces and the children, some of whom were so poor that they kept their hands warm in bandages, grew angel hair.

the queen of heaven looked down.

from the church came the roar of the last hymn. what gave them this joy? what made cold and hungry people so sure that another year could only be better? you play, you win, you play, you lose. you play. it's playing that's irresistible. dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value ... does it matter whom you lose to, if you lose?

one has already drowned, but what is one death in the midst of so much life?

-- winterson

i cannot effuse enough but winterson's an english sorceress and her pen a dazzling magic wand.

trust me. i'm telling you stories.

vanished in an instant

i was walking through the aisles at borders, immersed in my own world, when i heard a gentle and soft voice call my name. it was eve. that moment her face registered on me and i realised how ravishing she was, the thousands of books, the shelves, the people, the entire bookshop vanished in an instant with a woosh, leaving us and our connected gazes, lingering in this strange radiant world.

i guess i will talk to you sometime soon

i do miss u j, and hope you are well. haakon says hello too :) bye
___

it's hard to imagine we were classmates until only recently, because reading what she wrote made me feel as though we were reminiscing some shared childhood absconded. and reading it groggy this morning sure made me want to crawl back to bed and snuggle under a quilt of memories.

pure as a pain of ice

whenever the periodic silence settled, she would twitch her head and blink her eyes - child-like - that would behold me in such earnest. was she silently beseeching me to speak, to ward off and protect her from that inaudible, invading noise, or was she pleading for that phosphorescent quiet to still, i could not know. then, she would close her eyes and give her head a little violent shake. to sober me from reality, she said. and that was what she repeatedly did, to keep pulling herself away from the strokings of her own enthralling, but abysmal sub-conscious. to keep pulling herself away from the blinding, numbing, darkness.

it like what plath said -- floating through the air in my soul-shiftpure as a pane of ice. it's a gift.

so close

it is like getting into a vehicle that has a driver and a pre-announced destination - route even - and that is the reason why both the vehicle and the driver are there, and that you confidently climbed into it, in the first instance. you thought you knew. but when the ramble begins and quite suddenly the road appears you realise there's no other way but to go on along. the sun goes up, the heat beats down, discomfort sets in. the road too, starts to misbehave - it becomes uneven, rocky, and bends at the strangest of places, at times so close to that other side you could brush past it with your nosetip and drink in its soft, pastel fragrance. the peek you stole of this tantalising other-world for that half-second, now turned into a precious slice of memory that seems would escape the moment you stop thinking about it, constrains and tempts and vexes your senses no end. you wish for this to stop so normality of mind can return and when it does as it invariably, eventually will, you long so much for it again because that is the few snatches of time when you truly did not know a worry for a while.

duel against the rain

rain, light initially and grew heavy, fell for the longest time yesterday. entranced by the millions of silver blades piercing into my view and onto the asphalt through the huge window panes, i pounded on the treadmill with extra might, racing the rain to the ground, mocking those dying, vanishing millions - its death toll doubling every milli-second - as i emerged victor, again, again, and again. a survivor one in a million. my heavy gasps, drenching, dripping sweat, and a raging heart that fiercely threatened to shatter my ribs were like a trebled victoria cross deliciously decorated on the smiling curl of my lips; the sweet, wet aftertaste of conquest, resting on the lofty tip of my tongue.

i relished the glistening swordplay in my mind for a while afterwards; a duel against rain - but can it be won, ever? or was i merely deceiving myself.

the games we whimsically play.

stubborn raindrops in september are like merrily bewining amidst wounded, desperate soldiers in unthinkable pain and anguish, tightly clinging on for their dear souls, wondering what it would have been if their breaths really expired, wondering why they had come here so arduous and far, only to be thrusted there evanishing, praying for deliverance. and from what - life, or death? but we know, that they wouldve been better off departed. at least a tranquil smile could nestle, finally and to eternity, on those wretched, wrecked lives withdrawn.

the wars we frivolously wage.

when soldiers finally lie down, knowing they wont get up again, most of them smile. theres a comfort in falling asleep in the snow.

ks to columbia

20 august 05. i went up to the departure hall, found an empty seat, and sent her a message. it occurred to me that i should maybe write something for her, so i started on my notepad: "my dear baby:" ... then she called, saying she was having dinner at the other terminal, and asked me to join her. i said i would, even though i was half-unsure, but continued writing anyway. i cannot remember the details - i'm not a very details person - but i said it was very difficult to imagine how we had come through the past thirteen years, through the many highs and lows - with and without each other, but always with us in our minds. i couldnt be wrong on this one. the amazing, crisp anecdotes she related, that even i had forgotten, was testimony to how far back we traced and how much our lives had resided in each other's. and there were things i didnt know until for a long time afterwards. like how my mum called her and asked if she would like to marry me. like how the same mother complained to c over the phone that she had the nerves to bring her boyfriend (and who was not to be me) to this same mother's house. how i could tear at her ebullient narratives. three years ago she was at this same spot sending me off, and we bade farewell with as much certainty that we would see each other again, certain that when i returned there would be even more stories to regale - and indeed there were; and where we were now would be where we would be in 3 years' time - only then, with even more stories of our lives, with and without each other, to tell, to add to a shared lifetime of friendship that i'm sure would survive the both of us long after we depart, be it in our diaries, in the stories we tell our friends, in the footprints that would have long disappeared but nonetheless would indelibly remain in a happy soul, or an aggrieved heart, in an annonymous consciousness, somewhere. i didnt mean to sign off with a heavy heart and so deliberately pared down the emotions. but re-reading it just now i thought what i felt in me had spilt and splashed on their own onto the page that was totally removed from those black-inked cursive scribbles that purported to represent them. i could only hope that she would not read it the same way i had.

it was after she crossed the gates into the other side, when i entered the toilet and stood at the urinal, that the depressing, heavy overhang let loose its weight as i released my pee. i felt as if i was going to be standing there for hours on end, because that depressing, heavy feeling didnt seem to want to go away anytime soon. when i was finally relieved and went out, a kind of loneliness i had never felt before in my entire life sank in, sliding into my marrows, and i could just feel it snuggling comfortably in those marrow-nooks, stretching out cosily, languidly smiling to the pallid world outside, to the part of me that had abdicated with her.

Here we are all, by day; by night we're hurled

By dreams, each one, into a several world.

-- Robert Herrick

her tristan her isolde

you drank too, and fell to the floor; and i went to catch you and hold you as the men dropped anchor and the ship lurched.

you were in my arms for the first time, and you said my name, 'tristan.'

i answered you: 'isolde.'

isolde. the world became a word. -- winterson

back to where i never was

so much shared in an alacritous span of time, our most veracious thoughts, only that we have never heard our own voices, and i mean the real ones, never heard them speak to each other at all. amid this epileptic war dance and shadow-play we got lost in this heady smokescreen our conversations and their images conjured, and wandered so astray we lost each other as well as ourselves among the incessant chatter of sounds. it must be time to find our way back, because it will have to occur sooner or later, and better it be sooner, get this whole suspending plot over, and get on with what's out awaiting. but this time, by ourselves, separately, without perfidious words accompanying us, without those glib chicanery. it makes for lesser indulgences, pretense, and duress. so i shall leave you alone, and in so doing, hopefully leave myself alone too, where i can then start finding my way back, to where i never was.

whose god is dead?

there was a brief period earlier on when all my smses, msn messages, and emails went unanswered. it was quite a surreal moment because more than once i wondered if i really existed - in the existential and not petulant sense. it's somehow akin to when you stare at a word: any common word like 'watch', or 'phone', or 'rag' so long and hard, that the word becomes mere letters, the quintessence of it fuzzy before your eyes, and you are abruptly unable to pronounce it; and indeed you start to wonder if you had even been acquainted with it before.

marxist luddite

hello mrs c.,

how've you been doing? two months into my job and i'm convinced of my incompatibility with full-time work. the mind and body simply refuse to adhere to the disciplines of regular working hours (how ridiculous, this artificial constraint), professional rules, norms, and practices (socialising into corporatism's evil agendas), and of course, the various totalitarian accoutrements like the boss, the damn deadlines, and such onerous things like job-tasks. argh. it seems a contradiction that i love my job nature, but i abhor having to work. maybe in the general scheme of things i am just rebellious; i dont know for sure yet, though past experience seems to confirm this streak - and maybe you can tell me, given your traumatic experience with my mischevious past. i seem to have an instinctive resistance toward any forms of authority. another aspect is probably physiological - but once again, i cannot be sure and perhaps might need professional opinion - my predilection for doing work at night (or study, as i used to) essentially means i kinda switch off in the day. no problems with that apart from the obvious fact that i am expected to be in the office for a good part of daylight, daily, from now till i resign (or get fired, whichever comes first haah). and being around and about in this panopticon of an office also means that i have to socialise and make small-talk. i like people, i really do, though once again these days i'm not very sure, for recent developments seems to detect in me strains of misanthropy - that is on top of my pre-existing misogyny (sorry mrs chan no offence meant, i make exceptions for those who deserve it and you clearly do hahaha). this, no thanks to my increasing dislike for things capitalist, technological, and modern. that other day i was strolling down orchard road and i couldnt stop sneering at those monstrous buildings adorned with cartier and chanel heraldry (beautiful people included). someone gotta save me before i really and truly become a marxist luddite, which in singapore's context effectively confers (or condemns) me persona non grata - or worse, living under that holy thing called detention-without-trial [till-god-knows-when]. you know i'm just a normal citizen who happens to be the quiet sort; rather curl up with a cup of coffee and a good book and to hell with the rest of the world than to curl my tongue and go OH DEARRRRRRRRRIE HOW ARRRRRRRRE YOUUUUUUUUU!!! and planting fake smiles along the way. urgh. i disgust at that phoney scene. but well, things happen, and i happen to live in that kind of phoney world right now.

me.

these nittygritty bites of memories

jin would have turned 17 yesterday. the moment i remembered it was reminiscent of how i was similarly reminded of it 2 years ago. i was holidaying on santorini (or was it naxos already) and quite urgently needed her help back in singapore, so i entered an internet cafe and caught her on icq. then having remembered that her birthday was coming, i asked her if she'd like something. it was only much later, when i read her blog, that she was so surprised and delighted that i had asked that she wrote, "wah, my big brother leh" to end that entry. pity that the first time i asked was also my last. i dont wish to be unnecessarily maudlin here and now but in a way i'm glad i've written this down because honestly, i dont think i'd still remember these nittygritty bites of memories come a few more years.

p.s. ks was so thrilled with the ferragamo bag we gave her she was on the verge of violent tearing. that look on her face was just priceless.

one yesterday too many

and then i received my master's degree yesterday. almost forgot about it; it was such a mechanistic non-event that it did not feel like i was receiving something so dear as a testamur. and it's not a mere piece of paper. it delicately holds the smiles and tears of endless classes, essays, exams, conversations, one brilliant thesis, and many a treasured friendship. the memories. as i had mentioned a while ago, a rewarding path it certainly has been, it nonetheless had its moments of anguish. yet it is this tapestry of sentiments that has rendered my little journey all the more extraordinary, all the more memorable. and it is only after everything has been said and done, testamur in hand, that i could truly, truly feel what i had written then.

for now, i've had a suit made - my first ever. people say that getting the first suit is an important event - somewhat of becoming a grown man (but i'm still young, naturally). i guess the overall occasion - that of commencing work for the first time proper, that of receiving my testamur, that of graduation in general, does befit the momentous, inaugural ablution of slipping on those dark, woollen lapels.

infinities of the world in
a grain of sand, render nowhere too far
strange workings of Providence win
those hearts like a captured star

her voice her songs

her classics always give me this inexplicable feeling, where i will get a little soppy and overawed with thoughts and images from the ten years passed, as if time had found an anchor in a song, and its indolent melody, lambent beats, and the languid, ethereal voice slowly, and gently extract those fond moments to accompany the stolen four minutes of aural debauchery.

there, darkness is darkness

i miss her terribly too, but oftentimes i realised that the longing, or even grief that had manifested themselves in physical, conscious reality always lacked the kind of intensity that existed within my visceral realms - the very nooks in me that is rarely articulated and never intruded upon. it's also only at night that i think of jin, and of my grandmother too. i remember how in the first few years after granny's death i would be perfectly alright in the day and then start missing her when i was tucked in bed. of course, the darkness of night lends itself easily to the musings and ruminations of death, to draw our gaze unto the latent spectres of it. maybe it's just that only night could pause us - if just for a few short hours, in between our harried races of mortal, quotidian life - to reflect on the things otherwise darkened and concealed by the blinding lights of day. and it's upon these nocturnal reminiscences that a strangely restful sanctuary is created, providing a brief respite for the remembrance of things and people passed, and even perhaps, a bulwark for our atrophying souls. until of course dawn cracks and the night ends, hurling us back into breathing life's callous machinery. this it repeats, until our own lights in us fizzle into still, silent opacity. there, darkness is darkness. i like to think that by missing and thinking of jin, i'm bringing a little light into that darkness, bringing a little smile to her lips. inevitably then, i too, smile through my tears.

and in another time

i've been taciturn in thoughts and words of late. something, of what i have no inkling, is holding me back. and also, it doesn't do when whatever possible introspective remnants still lurking between my ears more often than not dissipate at the very point of articulation - pen and tongue alike. but we all try, don't we? just as we all try our utmost to look good, to get rich, to get ahead of our fellow minnows, to grab as much as our plebeian lives can accomodate. sometimes, we masochistically gorge ourselves to the nth in the deluded wish that our happiness would be thus satiated, only to spend nth spewing our guts into the sewage. oh how we hate our guts, and they rightly should be condemned to the newater plant. this chimera of bravado is what drives us to pursue unattainable dreams, to try to be ourselves by losing ourselves. and then we wonder why we are unhappy? naturally from here, we either wear a cloak of cynicism and sneer and smirk. or we slip on a smiling countenance and think we are actually really happy people. but the worst is to descend ourselves into spouting hackneyed aphorisms in a masturbatory fantasy of alleviating our banal existence. because it doesn't, and we can do without such pseudo-philosophical pretensions. to start with, they are not even originals. and before an august audience start rolling eyes and sharpening your feline tongues at me, i'd better hold my own. i really wanted to just say i had been rather quiet of late. and looking at this verbal diarrhoea, perhaps, taciturn thoughts and laconic words aren't really a bad thing after all.

present tense

there will eventually come this day we bid farewell, and i refer to you thenceforth in the past tense. like, 'she used to do this...', 'she used to do that...', 'she was like this...', 'she was like that...'. i know when that happens i'd live with much regrets of what-could-have-beens. it's not about doing enough or not. there are many ways of doing things, many of which may be incomprehensible to outsiders, and what's considered enough is too relative and general as to be relevant here. but what i will not know is the way you, or fate, or god choose to remove your present tense from the both of us, and everyone else. i certainly hope it will be the most normal and painless of partings - though a most wishful thinking. i also hope you'd learn to look after yourself properly, sometimes be a bit more selfish than you prefer to be, for it do you good. and finally, if it's not too late to tell you, that i love you. i always do.

if for nothing else but to not live a life unlived

when the inevitable detractions come into our lives, they scar us. sometimes we recover, sometimes not. when they gradually lighten as they usually do, they might also fade from our memory. but the scars nonetheless remain, perhaps taking different forms - seeping into our fears, apprehensions, hate; getting deeper as they lighten, until, like blades diving into a wishing-well of supple flesh and then twirling in the blood, and then disappear - they remain, completely lost in our minds, for ever, haunting us, taunting us. yet somehow, beneath the unquestionable tears and hurt and wounds, i suspect we really do yearn for them, and relish them, if for nothing else but to not live a life unlived.

in another time in another land

autumn is coming, and the maple leaves have started turning tangerine. soon, daylight will shorten, the leaves will fall, and there will be no more auburn skies at dusk. i can't wait to pull out my woolies. i can't wait to sip my coffee amidst the wintry air. they taste different, and it is romantic. i can't wait to bid this year farewell so that i can peer through hindsight under the summer sun. yet, i dread the moments that hatch them - they bear the demise of my curious anticipations.

... then, i held different hopes and thoughts. but some things rarely change. a year turns old and a new one beckons. hindsight excoriates my curious anticipations still, though this time, i'm not sure which carries more foreboding. hindsight gives a finality to events past, leaving me to rationalise, to accept, to look to a newer, better future. anticipations on the other hand cradle hopes for the present still, at the same time inspiring me to look to a newer, better future too. but i'm not sure if i can live a life of anticipations without revelations. what if, even before the teeny epiphanies the tiresome anticipations have already enervated those hopes. would i thus be left with nothing, and nothing to hope for?

that new one

sitting in a cafe at one of my favourite spots, i had a nice view of the busy intersection. the kaleidoscope of vehicles in their metallic hues and aerodynamic imbrications, resembled shoals of multi-hued fish in a clear water tank. it was always a little game and distraction to wonder about the people behind those wheels - where had they come from, where their destinations were, what they did for a living, and also perhaps, what were some of their thoughts about life, about love. at first i thought i was the uninhibited observer, freely and audaciously speculating, heaping assumptions upon foreign bodies that did not even qualify as strangers. but it wasnt before long that the full-length windows of the cafe put me right - instead it was i who was confined into an enclosed space. it was i, presumptious and none the wiser, a fish in a tank.