Orange Warmth

Finally, after Christmas, I have found the time to sit in front of my laptop to think about the last few weeks. December has been a month of rushing and also of unhurried reflections during journeys, long coach rides in Taiwan and to Selangor.

This has also been a month of the most precious conversations, propping heads up in a foreign MacDonalds, in another land having our Life Journeys played out all over again, part three, four, five, six, drawing closer to each other as we have conversations beyond plastered polite smiles, about religion, family, love, topics that carry past fatigue. Conversations that disregard place and surrounding, in a random food outlet in Bugis, Sarah and I gushing, laughing, listening to each other, parting with a tight hug, an intimacy that leaves the double syllabic friend-ship understated and weak. Conversations that ignore time, at two am in a Prata Coffeeshop with my mother, placing past secrets on the table over cups and more cups of tea, drinking into a night of revelations and also acceptance. So much emotion is evoked in these placid sharing and exchanges, it is incredible how the small human heart muscle can hold it all.

How else can or shall I document this month when there is so much to write about but when every thought that runs through my head seems indescribable. Last night, I could not follow the rhythm of handclaps because there was a joy that I could not contain. Last night, I turned around to see a beautiful sight where orange glows lifted the darkness. Cold fingers clasped around white wax, flames that held every single heart, friends around me, I could almost feel them beaming in the peaceful serenity.

Old Man Charles wrote in a Christmas card, “For this Christmas and the coming New Year, I wish that you retain the virtues of sentimentality but throw away the vices of indecisiveness.” I guess ambivalence always accompanies memory because with memory there is a desire to return, like how I could just continue on endlessly about the past, instead of summarizing it into neat paragraphs like these.

I was writing short notes the other day, with every card speaking of the New Year to come, “May 2008 be your best year yet”, and I am truly looking forward to this new year, a year of possibilities with renewed strength.