1500hrs and all is well.

2300hrs

This is a time for lovers. As the rest of the world makes their way home, rests beneath their sheets, sleeps on the MRT, beats their wives, runs out of things to say to their friends, makes plans to meet hopefully sometime again this year, wonders why their children are not home yet. As the rest of the rest of the world, the lost and the wild and the exuberant, brushes teeth and puts on makeup, tries on six different outfits perhaps meant to seduce or maybe merely meant to restore some sense of self-worth, the only way that's left? As they slink their separate desolate ways back to their respective sanctuaries/hells, into their double locked gates and abuse or their dark clubs and gyration and excess and loss of self.

These streets are for lovers. The sidewalks meant for two and the two-seat benches at parks and the alcoves barely sufficient for two bodies bound by the belief and the fear that the world consists only of the other.

The quiet is for lovers. For murmurred declarations of love, for philosophy and the separate pursuit of the only question that matters: is love enough? and the follow up: how can it not be? For frenzied-hand-scrabbling in the dark and the urgency of motion.

0400hrs

This is a time for nobody. For the nobodies who make up so much of everybody. As the rest of the world dreams, lies in restful oblivion. As the rest of the rest of the world slips out of darkened spaces, makes plans for real food and real sustenance despite fatigue and drunkenness and disappointment, pretends desperately that life is not slipping away, that the excesses of youth can be replicated without any consequences.

This is a time for regrets and terrible decisions. As you lie awake at night wondering at the consequences of all these things over all these years, as you make unsound promises to yourself to effect change at last, as you begin even to believe yourself and that these 4am epiphanies actually represent a turning point in your could-be-so-much-better life, as these late-night visitations of wisdom and revelation occur again and again and again, as you wonder how much anything has changed at all.

1500hrs

This is a time for [fill in the blank]. Who are you without the urgency of the night and the madness of deep morning? Who do you think of in the middle of the day before you are assailed by the doubt and loneliness and sorrow of nightfall? [Who thinks of you?] What do you mean most of the time, unmasked by sunlight, stripped of shadows and the poor excuse of alcohol and the mumbled pleas of sorry I'm just really tired?

Consider Us Disturbed.

There's something so beautiful about rain at night. The light from the street lamps diffused and scattered by all these droplets; the thrum and the hum, the pitter and the patter, in the quiet, in the dark. The sense of things being washed and swept away, of cleansing. That as the rain silently fades away, as the morning comes, as all these recede - things are made new again. I love the rain at night - minimal disruption, maximal beauty - just as things should be, no?

Of course not. Minimal disruption - what a terrible aspiration!

Anyhow. Just had one of the most enjoyable Saturdays in a loooooooooong while - from reading terrible Lang Leave poems in some random cafe, to the most satisfying massage I've had in my whole life, to making it back home by public transport - alongside pretty much the greatest bunch I could have chosen to spend one of these rare free Saturdays with. Thanks fellas!

Thanks for reminding me that happiness and joy et al ain't that far out of reach after all. It's been so easy since beginning work to discount happiness, dismiss our chances at it, with all these excuses of fatigue and priorities and stress and all these other things.

If we'd only known what we were getting ourselves into! All these kids huffing and puffing to grow up, really...

Life and its crazy revolving door of people who appear and disappear just like that. Spit out in different directions and that's just that - different lives, different trajectories - life goes on. But goes on where, exactly? Sometimes it seems we're all just getting on with our lives, moving on from past hurts and successes, we're on the up and up! And yet we never seem to end up anywhere at all.

Ah, but maybe that's just the myopia of loneliness.

This Vast Wilderness.

And loneliness is the cry
Of your soul into the vast
Wilderness
That is human life

And love is the improbable
Impossible
Imperfect reply.

/

Falling in love reminds us
Of what it is like to be young again
Hopeful, unshackled, invulnerable
Desperately, beautifully,
Myopic.

Love, then, is growing up.

When passion and desire
And the light in your eyes
Have long since burnt away
As we emerge from our bunkers
Surveying our burnt out remains

And the answer remains:
Yes

When There's Nothing Left To Burn (Set Yourself On Fire).

Welp. What a way to end a pretty awful, almost comically bad week. Not my proudest, for sure. All that fatigue after staying in for the past 5 days. Got caught up in so many silly, pointless arguments (euphemestically, "discussions") which I really shouldn't have, too. Pretty frustrated with myself over so many points over the past few days. This isn't me.

Sometimes you feel like all you need is a win, huh? Big one, small one; in whatever area of your life. Anything. Anything to halt the slide. Oblivion beckons sometimes, doesn't it? The losses are mounting and I'm beginning to lose my feet, a little bit at a time.

It rained today. Wasn't it so annoying? The exasperation as the rain, instead of thinning, got even heavier. As water began seeping everywhere. As your clothes and your shoes get wetter and wetter. How bothersome...

What a life! When was the last time you had time enough to really look out in the middle of a rainstorm, this tropical phenomenon, and not feel penned in, not feel perturbed by it? It is its own strange beauty. In the way it obscures and masks everything. In the shadowy half shapes it forms of the most concrete objects (buildings and lamposts and schools and churches). All these tantalizing possibilities, no?

Just reading The Harmony Silk Factory and have been absolutely lapping it up. What a superbly assured debut. Not a bad way to see out the rest of the week at all.

Thankful, also, for the opportunity to celebrate a dear friend's birthday over supper! Wouldn't have ended my self-imposed 5 day "residential phase" any other way. Despite all the crankiness and tiredness and frustration from days such as these.

And so.

Live through this and you won't look back.



明天會更好 ! (Thanks for the memories, kids.) (Haha gross, I know, but still....)

Working Title.

Here we go. Thus, I guess, does a new year begin, again. Year on year it just seems harder and harder to drum up any sort of excitement for new beginnings, huh?

Some days it seems as if we're sliding two steps back for every step we try to take forward - these are the lost days. Some days we try and we work hard enough that we convince ourselves this isn't happening, until we stop for just a second and notice the nothingness.

What a difference a week makes. What a difference a year makes. All this time, day by day, second by second, we're accumulating - but what difference does it make? We get older and colder with each passing day.

The kind of deep, unspeakable disappointment you only ever feel about one's own. Family, they say. And when will we ever be able to forgive each other for all these things we've done? Scar tissue fades; it never goes away. All these things we've been building so precariously all these years - how easy it is to bring it all down with just one sweep of the hand.

Do I have the energy to rebuild all this? Can I afford not to? I don't know anymore. But I think I have to. Is it worth it anymore? I have to believe so, right? Right. So here we go.

And since we're at it, here's to giving up on all these things I've held on for too long, too. Hope, even. Hold on to something too long, too tightly, and it leaves its imprint on you - grooves in your hands, holds in your heart. Sad as it may be, you let go.

Goodbye.

"Oh You're Just A Riddle In The Sky."

______________________________

 The dust motes swirling in the sunlight
as it streams through the open window.

A woman tending the fire to the sound
of crackling firewood.

The smell of tea fills the air. 

Home can be found -
Two and a quarter time zones away.

______________________________


This was meant to be the start of my Nepal-post, typed just about 6 or so weeks ago, but maybe I'm never going to do that. Instead, here we are, approaching the end of November, and the year. Guns N' Roses' November Rain, as ever, ringing in my ears though the torrential downpour we've experienced over the past couple of days, respite from the haze, welcome relief from days of claustrophobic heat.

Caught in some strange sort of time-warp over the past few days, too. From late-into-the-morning conversations with the siblings, 4am dota nights (?!!), three hours spent watching old videos of Ronaldinho circa 2004 (¡Viva la Barcelona!), board games night (Balderdash!) (...or gossip night?), etc...

It's like the 00's all over again.

______________________________


And how brutal we all are to (all) our past selves.

And some nights we just want to walk on and on and on and on - but we can't. We've got all these responsibilities and commitments and obligations. And don't we wish we never grew up? And some weeks, like these, maybe we believe.

"And you'll fall in love again," she threatened.

And partaking of a stranger's happiness on a train, as she reads a birthday card, perhaps from a lover. Perhaps not.

"And were you ever lost,
and were you ever found?"

And she casts no shadow on nobody,
and nobody cares, nobody does not get hurt.

"And are you ready for this life?
The world is calling out your name,
there's another future out there for you.

And this, and that too, shall eventually pass.
The universe is riding off with you."

And oh, bluebird, I would not ever
try to capture you.

A City of Dreamers.

So 13 thousand gazillion years after watching V for Vendetta - I think this is the first time I am legitimately able to say, albeit quite disappointingly now: "Remember remember the 5th of November." YESSAH. Ok thanks.

I did have a genuinely excellent, and worth remembering sorta day though - thanks to the Singapore Writers' Festival and more pertinently, Dimensions and Demons!! Truly blown away by the copious amounts of talent displayed tonight. Ferry, weish, and Riot !n Magenta - Stephanie Ye, Dave Chua, and Daren Shiau. Collaboration has never sounded nor looked so sweet. What a night.

And hope for a dreary city, no? This concrete jungle produces fevered dreamers, too.

Now before the stroke of midnight, and the considerably less interesting 6th of November, shall I depart. Good night fellas.