hello, goodbye.
there.
it's done i guess, and now the ball's in your court.
things that make you think.
or actually just while your time away, if you have too much of it. although i think you can never have too much time. just a few sites that i find quite amazing.
PostSecretUnphotographable: a text account of pictures missedThe Subway Chroniclesand these are just funny.
The Haggis-On-Whey World of Unbelievable BrillianceBest of CraigslistSomething Awful - The Internet Makes You Stupidenjoy.
a short note to say, i never have to book in again. and a small footnote to that: a day that i actually thought, with a bit too much naivete perhaps, that you'd be there to share with me.
i really should stop this shouldn't i? i sometimes hate how i can remember dreams so vividly, especially the ones that matter.
i tell myself that it'll get better once school starts, that i'll be too busy to bother with this any more, that i'll meet new people and get out of this and be able to stop floating around aimlessly and finally do something with my life. that everything will be magically and amazingly different. then i think, what if it doesn't happen that way? then oh my, that'd be bad.
but it's a happy occasion, or at least one that deserves to be... not-so-morose about. so now, i am not-so-morose. my new mood of choice.
where the fuck is lacuna when you need it.
starshine and sealight.
i suddenly had an extremely vivid image of the beaches at night in bali, where the sand glitters in the moonlight, and the sea is so pitchblack that it seems to gleam with a radiance all its own. i remember c and l and i walking barefoot along the beach at night, and the sand sifting through my toes, so fine it seemed like walking on powder. and i remember telling them that it would be a perfect place to bring someone that you loved, because it was so beautiful, how the stars were so numerous and how they speckled the sky with their own haphazard pattern, that we silly humans tried so hard to fit into shapes that would be meaningful to us, or the alternative would be to go insane just staring at them, how the sand was so alarmingly beautiful and how it seemed to reflect the stars in the sky, how the dark waves gently rose onto the soft beaches and how the sand could be seen visibly gleaming beneath the water and how the waves whispered back down across the sand and into the black sea, away away away.
before sunset.
in somewhat of a movie marathon for me, i've just watched both films in quick succession (albeit segmented by my guilty pleasure, desperate housewives) and i realise i'm quite the romantic. i want them so badly to have met again on that morning in vienna. i want them to be able to have continued that one night where they stupidly, stupidly decide not to exchange their numbers or any details at all. (alright i'm not -so- much of a romantic.) i want them to have had the chance to explore the possibilities of each other.
yet real life always steps in, as it does in...real life. he's unhappily married and tied down to commitment, echoing my common sympathy that one gets married to the nearest convenient person when the time is right (so wrong isn't it.) and she's gone through a string of relationships that weren't terrible, just mundane (and haven't we all.) and so i wonder and i hope quietly that they will have the courage to drop their lives, and seek a new one in each other. true, they may not be the perfect match, they may only be suited for 'brief encounters', i believe celine mentions. but who will ever know if they don't try? and so as the movie ends on a charming note where she's dancing to nina simone in her apartment as jesse watches on, and she tells him that he will be missing his plane. he replies that yes, he knows, and smiles as she continues swaying to the music while the screen slowly dims to the credits. and here my romantic side kicks in again, and i hope to hell that he doesn't get on that plane, and stays on to watch her dance and have her play her waltz to him again, and again. but maybe she won't have to, because that waltz is about her not seeing him and losing her one true love, and now they'd be together.
it's a movie, i know. but i wish real life could be like that. i mean, not where i'm doomed to have missed meeting my one soulmate, but where people dare to take chances. where people dare to step beyond what they have and grasp at what they don't know. i wish i could say the same for myself, for my life. maybe i just haven't had the opportunity, but i know that i probably wouldn't have the courage. and rightly so, perhaps, for real life doesn't end with me smiling at you whilst the credits slowly play. it ends with me standing there in the corridor down your room, hoping to surprise you with your birthday present, as i watch someone else go in. quite the movie, huh.
before sunrise.
there's a scene near the beginning of the show where jesse has just asked celine to spend a day with him in vienna. it's a crazy idea, they've just met by chance on the train, talked to each other for an hour or so and realised that they have some kind of connection. jesse's getting off the train and he suddenly asks celine if she would join him for a day in vienna, before he flies back to america the next morning. she agrees. there's a few seconds of this scene that strike me. jesse has got off the train, and the camera focuses on celine as she is about to step off. there's a moment of hesitation on her part, and it's understandable - they don't even know each other's names. she holds the hand rail, glances to the left, then turns to look at jesse for a second. her head dips slightly as she looks down, and there's a hint of a smile on her face. you can almost hear her say in her head, "oh well, why not?" and she hops off to join jesse.
why can't we all be like that. why not? why miss up a chance on something that you might regret in a year, or ten years, or fifty years down the line as you think back on your life, and what you might have missed out on just because you were scared to take that leap of faith. well then,
why not?
where the fuck have you gone? it's like you never existed, and all i have to show for 3 years are two boxes and a drawer filled with curios from a lost time. i'm trying to complete a jigsaw where all the pieces are identical, and slowly, i'm beginning to forget what the picture is supposed to look like. there's a hint of a smile somewhere, and a whispered word or two that floats by my ear on an ebbing breeze, a light tickle across the back of my hand that may be a brush of fabric or a loose strand of hair, but that's about it. it becomes harder to remember what that conversation on the back of a crumpled postcard meant, harder to chronicle the progression of time from friendship to love and the eventual decline into nothingness. evans lied when he told us that all progression and positive change is marked by a stage of decay, because some decay isn't about change, it's about termination. and i'm left to wonder now, where the fuck have you gone.
i'm glad this week is ending, because between reunions, abrupt ends, pointless confessions and strange unexpected encounters, i just about need a breather now.
hello, how have you been.
i've had a number of long, rather enjoyable conversations with people this week. firstly, talking on the phone with n until 430am, early tuesday morning. after which we realised we had so much to say to each other that we decided to meet again later on tuesday for dinner and drinks after that at the esplanade. there's this nice little cafe, it's called aria or something like that, next to harry's. they have the most wonderfully comfortable couches i've ever seen in a cafe, so if you feel like hanging out for a long time, then it's a nice place. you really don't feel like leaving after you slouch comfortably onto those couches. anyhow, we ended up talking by the river until i think it was 4? i guess the fact that we haven't met up properly in 3 years gave us a lot to catch up on. i enjoyed myself, n, if you're reading this. thanks for the company and the good conversation.
after that i also spoke with the dao one on msn, for a slightly shorter time but on a rather interesting topic, i must admit. i have no idea how the conversation got there (actually i do. the dao one asked an extremely silly but thought-provoking question) but it spawned a long discussion on events past and present, and on paths untaken. but as i told you, dao, the only reason why we could have that conversation was the exact fact that everything we talked about could only remain hypothetical, and that to be honest, nothing that you or i said actually really mattered. a little sad perhaps, but it's true. anyhow i enjoyed that talk as well, and at least we cleared up a couple of old old queries we both had.
of course i've also had one slightly more unfortunate encounter this week. i shan't venture into that, but suffice it to say, never again!
oh and have you heard? tori amos did a song called
the power of orange knickers with damien rice. goodness. the two most depressing singers in the world and they sing about orange knickers. have yet to hear it , so it may still be the cause of mass suicides around the world. with a title like that though, i doubt it. orange knickers indeed.
i still can't decide if i should send it. sigh. maybe i should just let it lie. oh well oh well oh well.
damn it.
i think that might have been an entirely very very bad idea.
confessions.
and now i've written it, but dare i send it? got a couple more weeks to think, so i'll see.
the beginning is the end is the beginning.
on friday night, i sat in the middle of a jungle in tekong with one of my fellow platoon commanders as we talked about army and our lives that were to come. it's a strangely peaceful feeling, sitting in a quiet, forsaken little jungle, looking up at the many, many stars in the dark night time sky (have you ever noticed how tekong has so many more stars than the mainland?), talking and sharing cigarettes with a person whom i know i'd probably not see again in the future. i realised that i was spending my last official night in the army in the same place that i spent the first, on that cheerful little island. it's interesting how things have come full circle in their own way, albeit with some small differences, which i doubt i'd have to mention. and as you know all too well how it is with me, those differences chose that friday night to remind me in their fullness how much i hated to have to accept them. but que sera sera.
one of my sergeants asked me why i looked much less happy than he thought i would, it being my last day and all. i told him that i didn't feel any special happiness because i was just moving on from a stage of my life that was done. and it is true, because now i look on at the rest of my life to come with some small bit of trepidation. like how a movie ends and when you step out from the cinema doors, you have to retune yourself fit in those lost two hours. like when you close a book that you've been reading for the whole day, and you're not sure what might be there when you look up from its pages. like the hint of the first new rays of sunshine in a beautiful star speckled sky. i'm a little lost, and more than a little nervous, but very much looking forward to it.
