389: i reach out for you (and our hearts collide)

Checked shirt days are rare. Checked shirt days are the days when the clouds are grey and the sky is overcast and it threatens to rain all day but it doesn’t. Not till you’re inside ensconced in the building where you are constantly on the verge of freezing. But you don’t because your checked shirt saves you. Checked shirts are for days when you feel lonely and cold and require some warmth. A hug that doesn’t need to come from people. Checked shirts are for warm coffee and nice books and hiding in your bed.

Anyway I just bought another one, so that’s one more hug for me!

387: circa july 2005

Four years on, nothing has changed.

There are many things that will tear you apart if you let them, and all of them have lines.

374: lifelong ambitions (让一切随风)

373: i’d rather dance with you

You’re so unkind, he sings. And he replies, well, you’re out of your mind.

It’s easy to forget that you’d ever left. Yet everything seems somehow different, somewhat changed in the meantime — things have moved, been torn down and rebuilt, or reshaped into different things, people have come and gone and drifted further away, and we’ve all descended into a strange pool of awkwardness we don’t quite know how to get out of.

372: es muss sein

371: but i’m not shedding tears

I thought about it.

It’s like getting thrown back in time. There are things you love, and there are things you love. These things stay with you throughout the entire journey, and they always take you back to that particular period when life was a bit less complicated (but only on hindsight) and love was a little easier to believe in. We toss these things back and forth like rubber balls in the hope that one day someone is going to catch one of them and realise they were there too, at that same point in time.

It’s great to have a passion. Better to know I haven’t lost it. It’s our last chance, for real this time. I wonder if that’s why it happens every year, the way it does, because we all know there’s no turning back — we’re standing on the brink of something far more permanent than what we have now. It chills me more to know this will not be the rest of my life, because this is one of the last few times I can feel as young, or as free, as caught up as I am doing things that have absolutely no relevance to anybody. And these songs are ringing in my head, on and on, as the music plays and the dancers fly. I know these sights will be one of the last, and I can’t help but stand there and take it all in. I’d breathe the scene if I could. I’d store it in my lungs till it became part of me and it would never come out.

I want to take in everything. The light of the sun as it sets over my house, the way the leaves fall across the avenue. The way people bustle across streets, waiting impatiently at traffic lights as they go from red to green. How cars honk indignantly at each other on the road, or how the ice in my teh-peng melts into nothing. Black eyes, black heels. Marble floors, ankle socks. Uniformed girls, men in ties. The smell of the rain as it stops, conversations that only involve hysterical laughter. Murmurings over coffee. The taste of duck rice. How the five-foot ways seem more poignant, the shophouses more quaint.

I feel like a tourist in my own country, and that’s not exactly a bad thing. The past few months have been fraught with a sense of finality I never knew myself capable of; yet everything is more beautiful because of it.

369: i said, maybe

I’m back home; it’s a bit surreal. After the sunsets, the harsh and lonely winters, the dream is over, and with it the heartwarming, heartbreaking, and life-changing moments. It was difficult at some points, dealing with things. It was mostly happy in others, watching people sing and play the guitar, to see people speak in rapid-fire French, strange mannerisms and language quirks, to remember not to take everything for granted, secrets shared (and unshared), playing games with each other for no apparent reason. To realise at the end of the day that everything must go, even the daily routines and the weekly dinners, the 9pm days in the library, cycling back in the cold. I’m back to where the sun beats down like the rain and the rain beats down like the sun, and both are equally harsh and unforgiving, and leave no room to breathe. The air is humid like a sauna and threatens to wrap you up and choke you. Everything is familiar and unfamiliar, people remain the same, but things are now so different. The mosquitoes are everywhere still and the ants steal up silently against the table and overwhelm your untouched food in one fell swoop. In any place we go, the old wounds resurface even as we make new lives.

365: when i look at you i watch the sun rise

I’m not counting. 

364: 痛苦的相思忘不了

 

 

363: 等下一个天亮

As I get older I realise I am less and less prone to subterfuge. It may be a good thing or it may not, but somehow I can’t find the energy to hide behind words anymore. There used to be a time when I took great pleasure in making everyone guess what I was talking about (strange how people put up with me, sometimes) but nowadays I’m tired of mind games and second guessing all the time.

362: and do you know what you’re doing to me

I hate the way I still prac-crit everything you say even though my English is better.

I know I keep asking, so you and me, babe, how about it under a convenient streetlight. I wish I could serenade you, step out of the shade. And you’ll reply from the top window, just like in the song. Everything’s happened; it can’t un-happen itself. You and I — maybe we’re only brief encounters, nothing else. 

361: it’s just rough to stay tough

It’s funny how things never turn out the way you expect them to. And though I’ve said this many times over in the past few months, it probably never really hits you till it should. Where do you go when you’re lonely? Do you remember, that time when we were still in love, and as usual I was being cryptic because I’m retarded like that, and you said, no, I’m not here to gun down romance, but you did anyway, in the end, barely a week later (or two; who remembers?). Slowly the answers to every question matter less and less; there is no point asking why anymore. Why? has no answers, or at least none satisfactory. And finally, the answers die away, in a corner by themselves, like little birds in the winter. 

359: if it’s not rough it isn’t fun

Some things in life are painfully legal. The other day while I was cooking dinner with Sharm we were talking about something regarding Val: it’s possible, I said, after some thought. But not probable, our friend Peter interjected, and I didn’t know what to make of that. It hasn’t been so long since I’ve heard those particular words, which often seem to people like the same thing and contributes to the (mostly true) observation that law people are just a bunch of lunatics who split hairs regarding definitions all the time.

358: 心会痛，心也会感动

从没有放弃过心中的理想

… 不知不觉已变淡，心里爱

357: a sure simple way to reach you

Though you know, some things don’t really change, …

 

356: 口上的棉花糖也溶化了

When the curtains closed last night I didn’t know what to think. I sat in my room looking out at the window, but all I saw was my own reflection because the outside was so dark. I think about the construction site and how my friend teased me about opening the curtains, and then I remember how it used not to be there at all, and it always amazes me how fast things change without you even noticing. Can you see the sunset, Sharmila used to ask me, when we were walking from our house to the supermarket, then wearing just slippers and a t-shirt and jeans. As the weather turned colder and our clothes got warmer the site grew and grew and the roof eventually appeared and blocked out the sunset altogether. It’s still not ready yet, and I wonder if it will be by the time I leave, but it’s not the same anymore. 

355: in the mood for love

(Don’t walk away, then turn and say “I love you,” anyway, / you come for the week to love me, and then you up and leave next day.) 

354: what you are is beautiful

I said, maybe Sally can wait this time. Every time I turn on iTunes and listen to the old songs I’m reminded of why I love music. The other day I had a conversation with someone (who was it, now?) about whether we would still be listening to new music when we were old. Of course, he replied, why not? Our generation is different from our parents’. I thought about it but we’re not so different after all. It’d be weird to find out my parents were listening to MGMT or whatever the equivalent is, and though this generation appears a lot more exposed to music than the previous one, some things, I think, change slowly, if at all.

 

353: 城里的月光把梦照亮

Dear R,

You have possibly the weakest willpower on the face of this earth. And even though it’s 3am now, the thing you miss the most about the Netherlands is the fact that there is nothing open for you to eat. You probably want some supper (bak chor mee at Thomson…?) and someone to drive you home although the only thing bad about that is that you get fat so easily. Also I know you just checked out on Facebook the name of some guy (aka Upstairs Random), and you were wondering why it looked so familiar. And then you searched again and realised it was the name of some Hong Kong actor. I know you love how there are all these random coincidences and occurrences in your life that bear no relevance to anything else whatsoever. 

 

352: vienna waits for you

351: keep your love locked down

 

350: all i have is your letter read

“But—but it seems so weak,” said Josephine, breaking down.

“But why not be weak for once, Jug?” argued Constantia, whispering quite fiercely. “If it is weak.” And her pale stare flew from the locked writing table — so safe — to the huge glittering wardrobe, and she began to breathe in a queer, panting way. “Why shouldn’t we be weak for once in our lives, Jug? It’s quite excusable. Let’s be weak — be weak, Jug. It’s much nicer to be weak than to be strong.”  

One of the things I will remember most about my school life is the short story. At certain points in my life random quotes from books will pop out at me at jarringly relevant intervals to remind me just how tellingly accurate literature sometimes is when it comes to observing real life. Sometimes I feel like I should stop living in quotes and books and lyrics of songs and using them to describe how I feel, but yet such words continually touch the human heart and spirit, and it is amazing how literature continues to influence my life.

I remember most all the quotes from that book. The only story I didn’t truly like was The Secret Sharer; every other short story has left an indelible impact on me. And then — that time when I filled in the worksheets, three blanks to fill in the correct words from a quote  — so primary school, but it worked — weak, weak, weak, strong, and it always, always springs to mind whenever I wonder if there is any point in borrowing strength from an invisible source.

But there is. There always is.

344: singing my life with his words

Strange how the time flies; suddenly I’m back in school again, lessons are starting up, and as usual, I’m all happy and raring to go. It’s good to be back in Holland, which is slowly but surely beginning to feel familiar. Still, home is where the heart is, and sometimes I think that it’s not so much the country but the fact that I can come home to my own room, my own life and space, and just do my own thing. Travelling is fun, and so is meeting up with people, but sometimes all you need is time to yourself. I have always treasured having my own life, and now more than ever, I feel like I’m getting myself back again.

343: i have fought the good fight

There are things I would like you to know, if only you have the time. After all that has been said and done, after all that has come and gone, what matters that is what is left is you and me. Maybe you and me, on two different ends of the earth, maybe you and I, who have been different from the beginning. We have travelled these roads, gone up and down these hills — as uninspiring as they might have been, our journeys are what we make of them. 

How do you feel as you travel through time and space towards a love you cannot save? The train rolls on, and the landscape never changes. Here the skies are dark and wintry, and one barely sees anything through the windows. One makes out the skeletons of trees and the falling snow, grey against the dark ground.

One may ask, 好好的一份爱，怎样会慢慢变坏, but the answer is simple. You remember the times when he said, there will be nothing left if only one side keeps paddling. One is tempted to continually attribute fault to one person, but the fact is that the oars on both sides must move in order to keep the boat moving; and then, more than anything, it must take two hands to clap.

The train is less silent than one expects. In France it was full of Japanese, polite to a fault and quiet as death, whispering around each other, afraid of stepping on someone else’s toes. Here there are murmurs of conversation, muffled laughter, and the sound of little children. Everywhere on trains people sleep and start up again, their heads nodding in time with the jerk of the trains along the rails. If I could, I would whisper my love to you across the tracks, and maybe you would wake up too.

And yet, even if everything is doomed, we take the same chances; and in a warped way, we follow the same paths. We try to not hurt other people as we strive not to hurt ourselves, rejoicing in our youth as we hurtle towards adulthood, drinking in the year as if we were starved of air. Like maniacs we shuttle from place to place, checking off boxes and ticking off sights as we go along, as if each place were so easily explainable, so easily seen. As travelers we brave only the surface of the iceberg, intrepid as we are, and yet what swarms beneath is what is important. What is essential, you remember, is invisible to the eye — it is only in your mind’s eye that you can see rightly.

And then, we paint our pictures in our memories. When we prefer not to take pictures, each detail of every city is absorbed, and we cannot get enough. We struggle to remember everything, as if each day were our last, and we could only breathe that air once. It could be that the people are unfriendly, too friendly, or unnecessarily friendly or unfriendly, but if one is objective one remembers that we do not know enough to judge. All we have are our impressions, and our thoughts, and these are all we have to go on. 

All was good and seemed normal as she walked towards the train that would bring her away, far away from these memories and the things that made her sad. For some it must have been a journey they have made before, towards a future they did not understand. She laughed and joked and smiled, just as she did all this time, brave and strong as she tried to be. As she stepped into the train she waved half-heartedly, as if she knew it might not be the last time that she saw him like this — and yet it was too late when she settled herself, and sat by the window. As she looked out she found no trace of him, and it might have been then she finally realised — neither too early nor too late, perhaps — that there might have been a time when he would wait until she left, but not anymore.

And then — across the rails. The train began to speed towards a new beginning in the middle of the night. Unclear and dark, perhaps, to a girl alone and scared as hell, but still surging forward, the only way she knew how.

 

房子建在海上，就注定一生漂泊. 但连浪子也不会吃回头草. 只要自己能抬得起头往前走，就是对的. 自己问心无愧，光明正大地活着，这才是坚强，这才是力量.

342: before the sunset, by the rivers

Celine: I’m glad you’re saying that, because I’m never able to move on like this. People just have an affair, or even entire relationships, they break up and then they forget. They move on like they would have changed brands of cereals. I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with because each person had their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What’s lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved … because it hurts too much. Even getting laid … I don’t do that, because I will miss of the person the most mundane things. Like I’m obsessed with little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and that I will always miss. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful, specific, details.