Best Time of the Day

Be ready in the morning, and then come up.... Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. No one is to come with you.

Exodus 34:2-3

Ugh

Thesis writing is a long lonely never-ending winding road that leads into a dark forest that is completely pitch black with a million entangling vines on the ground.

New Soul (Indeed!)

It takes a bad case of flu to break the routine of Chinese New Year. This year, I traded the usual visiting for sleep. I’ve been having plain porridge for the past 5 days, been drinking all sorts of herbal tea, and finally went to the doctors first thing in the morning today. I finally feel good enough to sit up. It is such a beautiful Wednesday and that brought tremendous cheer. I had porridge again for breakfast but it was nice having it outside: sitting in a coffeeshop, enjoying the morning breeze, watching old people drink Kopi and realizing what an ageing population we have. There’s a quiet peaceful beauty in people-watching that shouldn’t be trivialized. I love listening to conversations from the neighbouring table (stocks to buy, jobs their children have gotten, places that sell good kopi, how expensive everything is getting), the outfits people have (pirated Armani blouse with love handles spilling out, Army singlets, white round-necked tees, freshly permed hair). It is always amusing watching Society unfold right in front of my very own eyes.


The only conversations I’ve had this new year centre around my sickness (a twisted irony—yet another routine of: (i) Why are you ill?, (ii) Have you been very busy? (iii) Why haven’t you been to the doctors?) Also these few nights, I fell asleep praying because my incessant coughs keep me from sleeping and between counting the seconds in the intervals of my coughs, I prayed that God would give me sweet uninterrupted rest.

During these days of rest, it hit me that being ill over CNY is exactly like people watching (minus the perpetual cough, the sore throat, the mucus, the muscle aches). Having lost my voice, all I can do is sit and watch my relatives eat, listen to their conversations, watch their hands gesturing around, like someone has videotaped these scenes, muted them and I'm now watching tape after tape. These observations from the sidelines made me realized that we’ve all grown up. Almost all the cousins have moved on from studying to working, my nephew is ten this year, we’re all moving somewhere.

Anyhows, I feel mighty being able to smell the air: the waft of my neighbour’s cooking, the breeze that carries the crisp of leaves baked by the noon sun. After living the past few days in a trance and looking like a bad disaster (No visitations translates to not wearing any of the new clothes I bought over and above my ghostly complexion and pale lips), I am so awfully happy that I finally feel alive, being able to stay awake without slipping into naps every two hours. It’s such a great empowering feeling.

I feel like I need to get down to doing everything that I missed out on, which is ironically (life is full of ironies) the reason why I fell so ill. I pack my days with activities down to the very minute and I quite like it that way. But I've learnt my lesson this time round--I will take good care of my body admist a filled but slower-paced (should be workable somehow) life.

Past Midnight

The times when I seek comfort from the softness of the pillow, the times when all that I feel are the creases on the bedspread, the times when I choose to shut my eyes because it is an easier option than staying awake are  the times which are not palatable to the world of glamour and perfection. Those that are welcome on the buffet spread of emotions are the confident grins, unwavering smiles and shiny eyes. But still, there are times when the greatest comfort comes in the form of the aged old familarity of the smell of the bedspread and knowing that tomorrow will come, but tonight will give me enough rest for tomorrow.  

I love Boey Kim Cheng's Past Midnight

I turn the light on to see if I am still there.
The bulb creeps to life, resentful
at being roused to work. The dreary repertoire
which a discordant band went through a dozen times
during a neighbour's funeral are marching
in my head. I hum a classical tune, summon
the words of a sentimenal song
to expel the stubborn band. The blaring trumpets
cut them with a single blow.

Life is a perpetual unrest
in the housing estates. The endless knockings,
the stempeding feet, the hurricanes of bad temper,
the eternal television, the thrashing bodies,
the endless rituals of life and death.
Where is the point of stillness
art directs us to?
My mind veers crazily.
I turn the light off.
The bulb goes on burning inside.

before I Shut my eyes

I’ve been talking to ex-convicts day in day out, been listening to recordings night in night out, been detecting trends and patterns sometime here and sometime there. It is surprising how exhausted I feel after each session. An hour per person and I feel entirely drained, like the essence of life is being sucked out of me. I sat in Starbucks today, sinking into the couch, sipping Honey Orange Mocha, staring into space, watching people pass, gazing at the sky. All I register are colours, movements, shapes, nothing defined and concrete. It’s as if I were sitting inside a vacuum watching some form of life played out on a plasma screen with a glass panel separating the screen and my being. In my business these days, I feel more at ease and at peace though. I guess it comes with being clear about what I want, what I don’t, and ultimately forming more meaningful relationships with people who matter.

I'M ALIVE

Deadlines make me work hard and I'm happy when I'm busy. Sociology is beautiful!

Beyond a Distant Star

Words are very important to me and it’s a powerful medium that reaches to the core of my soul. My interest and fascination in poetry began when I discovered that poems are open to interpretation and can be read in as many ways as one chooses to read it. I like the ambiguity because nobody knows exactly what I’m thinking or how I’m feeling. Tonight, I’m not interested in writing poetry or fictitious letters. I guess my writing acts as an open declaration so that I would be hard on myself to stick to the decisions I’ve made. Tonight marks a closed chapter and the finality of the night is accentuated because it ended where things first began. The disbelief and pain came two years late, but it feels as raw as an open wound. This sudden turn of events once again reminds me that I’m as fragile as anyone else though I choose to believe that I’m special: calm, collected, and wise, unlike the run-of-the-mill girl. But this slap-in-the-face realization is also a discovery that whatever was shared was real and sweet, which makes memories doubly painful.

Somehow I draw people to share their pain with me and I easily dispense advice to them. I listen, empathize and advise. It is almost second nature. But when it’s my turn to be thrown off boat, my faith is clouded by doubts. There are so many times when Paul has scooped me up before I fall further. I remember every single call he gave because there aren’t many and he only appears to call during my crisis moments: that afternoon when I was plagued by stress in school, the morning I laid in bed when I was severely ill, the night before my exams, and tonight at midnight. I am always amazed by his discernment and timely calls in which I don’t say much. I listen, nod and occasionally murmur a ‘Yes’ to indicate that I’m still on the line. But somewhere in that unspoken silence, there is a quiet understanding.

When we hung up, I thought about my interviews with the ex-convicts and it doesn’t trivialize the issues I deal with but it makes me feel that there life is bountiful. I can’t remember much of the long conversation with Paul except this line he said, “You pray, believe and things will be alright”. Tomorrow I wake to a brand new day and a fresh new start. Though I know that it is a closed chapter, I am left with the most beautiful and irreplaceable memories of those two and a half years and there is no better way for a closure.