The Twinkle

I grew up feeding on snippets of Horoscope from the papers, magazines, anything that tells me how my day or week will be, what my lucky colour or number is, on which days of the month the great love of my life will appear, the people from certain constellations I should avoid on certain weeks and the like.

And as the demands of my daily life increase, this habit has been reduced to times when I happened to flip to the particular page in the Life section or whenever I randomly remember. Recently, I am beginning to doubt how the various positions of the Sun, Moon and Planets affect my individual life, as well as billions of other separate, unique beings.

Increasingly, I believe that the decisions one makes or doesn’t make have to do more with the different agencies in one’s life. I am accepting this job because I am an Indian from the middle-class, I am choosing children over work because I am a female, I am living the present, uncertain about the future because I am a youth, and it goes on endlessly. There is really no such thing as a unique and special individual.

Because everyone can be matched to a certain other(s), experiencing identical emotions, dealing with duplicate problems, going through particular equivalent stages of life. There are different groups, but there is no marked and distinctive person. Ecstatic happiness that “no one knows of”, piercing sadness that “you’ll never understand” are little notions that we subscribe to for the precious and fragile sense of individuation, which does not exist.

So, the stars glitter black skies and- I think it ends there.

Inquisitions with no answers

Tonight, I am observing the landscape of a streetlamp-lit country. There are protrusions of cranes in the skyline, cable cars, distant and ambiguous, sailing in the darkness. The smoke from a cigarette butt rises from a rubbish bin. Trees with leaves so black, they are unrecognizable from their morning identities. Sights like these go unnoticed every night as they negotiate in dark spaces.

Each time, I’m on a bus ride or a train ride, I feel like I’m in a goldfish bowl watching the rest, without them realizing my gaze is on them. In these rides, everyone is busy, reading a book, a magazine, playing PSP, catching up on lost sleep, bound and tied down by institutions. I wonder if people are happy because people look tired mostly, they look like they have so many things left to be ticked off their lists and they are not even half-way through. In this space of eyes glazing over, I think we have to deconstruct the term happiness. What does happiness really mean, and how much do we need to be happy in this space? How much more or less do we need to be happy in another space?

Happiness, in our space, is tied to achievements and rewards from capitalism. The lure of it is so great, it traps us in, leaving us in an awful mouth-agape, perpetually hungry state. Pragmatism is the reason why we will never escape the lure of the big C. Sometimes, on cold nights like this, I wonder what is practical about such relentless drive for economic betterment, social mobility and at the end of it all, feeling breathless enough to yearn for simplicity.
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Z says:
do u think u can give capitalism up?
D says:
why do u ask ?
Z says:
oh..
Z says:
because i was thinking it is so difficult to do so
D says:
well...capitalism is the dominant form of way of life
D says:
if we give up capitalism, we become peasants and farmers
D says:
LOL
Z says:
hahaha
Z says:
yes exactly
Z says:
u know how people have to get everything
Z says:
before they can finally retire n go fishing
Z says:
i mean-u can go fishing without completing all that
D says:
hahaha
D says:
u see how pple associate fishing - a form of non-capitalism activity, as a form of 'retirement' ?
Z days says:
HAHA
Z says:
but it is such an irony of life u know

when time passes,

Here we are, always threading on a fine line-the world of practicalities where money buys, and the world of strong determined personal values where money is paper. On our way back, we played a Korean soundtrack in the car. There was this one song, one of those songs like Sukiyaki, painfully sad, and agonizing. When a person leaves, dies, departs, rests in peace, it is no matter what they call it, I don’t know what is left behind, clothes, objects of regret and memory, tears, remembering this way and that and every way but never being able to pinpoint exactly the warmth of the physical self.

Pieces here and there

The highlight of today is settling into the cold seat of a plates-and-cups-clanging Starbucks, sipping Green Tea Frappuccino, whipped cream almost touching the transparent cap cover but missing by a little. Sprawled on the table is Who Are You Today. Aroma of coffee beans, the smell of the cool air-condition air and sunlight falling on faces.

It has become a subconscious habit to link every sight to a theory or concept I’ve learnt. Spotting a pair of Adidas on a kid and immediately relating that to the theory of the Sacred Child. Beatrice Richmond sat beside me and Daniel Ong said, “Kids are expensive. They are a million dollars each.”

Looking at the green-aproned people behind the counter and thinking how race and class are conflated in Singapore and how class is reproduced one generation after the other.

There is an American who orders a drink and starts a loud conversation with one of the Starbucks boys. He says the Singapore dollar is getting stronger and why aren’t imports comparatively cheaper. He is an Economics graduate, he says, it is all very simple really but we are all getting cheated- the rest of which I couldn’t catch. Then his voices rises again, “I don’t know all the details of the Myanmar thing but Singapore has done many bad things and you should know that."

I think one could do a thesis paper just sitting in Starbucks.

Oh.

Friday evenings are tender and orange when there is the weekend to look forward to. This week has been such a hectic rush, walls and floors blend together in an acceptable way. The Friday crowd is always happy and everyone is walking different ways, smiling, holding different conversations. I realized on the crowded bus ride how here they are, fellow Singaporeans I am reading about, studying dutifully, writing papers, finding journals, researching about. It is a muted ride, I listen to these same recycled songs and I cannot hear any sound beyond this inner concentric world of mp3 songs. Here we are, all together, squeezed in on this evening ride to different destinations. Each day, we talk about the society and its different aspects. And suddenly, on a slow bus ride, I am reminded oh this is how society looks like.