prelapsarian days

For those who dare to defy the given models of defiance.

- Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias
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another one and a half months, and i'd be departing this country, this old life, and start another life at another place. it's a wonder how much things have changed in the last five years, how much i've changed, so that what came before seem like prelapsarian days. i wouldn't be able to recognise my past self, and i don't think i want to either. is it really that there's only the present, and nothing to remember? some moments are best forgotten, but how much really can I will? there is much to leave behind, and much less to bring along. my newfound lightness feels heavy, maybe i'm not yet used to the light. i hope the gravity that has accumulated and accompanied me the last few years would eventually slip away.

and i hope i'd be happy.

when i turn to look back a few years on, what will i see? in a country where hearts are given to money, minds to shallowness, and heads buried into sands, what will i see? heartless mindless headless corpses, the faceless throngs on orchard road, how did this little island come to be so powerful? how did its indoctrination come to be so omnipresent, its propaganda so subliminal? when i come to that crossroad of nostalgia, will it be one silent cry, or one more lyric on my manuscript?

is it nostalgia, or is it pinings for a never-existed world?

but to be able to look back in time, in time to come, i have to leave this place. to carry on here would be to duel with it, the mindlessness of it all, for my sanity my voice my self. to carry on here would be to sing its cadaveric songs.
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Susan Sontag, Fascinating Fascism -

The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstacy, the fantasy is death.