absences

   perhaps in loving so deeply, you can see even more clearly the absences... but it is also because of these absences, that you can see clearly that you love deeply.

love is a testament through time 

在夜深人静的时候

只敢在一个人的时候叫一声：“妈”。

真想听你的声音，抱你，听你笑。

跟你说声：“我爱你“。

"April is the cruelest month"

  T.S Eliot famously wrote that "April is the cruelest month" - as a young student, one is automatically taught to recognise the irony of it - for isn't April the beginning of spring, all that is good and beautiful? Representing hope or even I dare say the buds of love?

  But, I know now why April is the cruelest month. Just as, December is my cruelest month. It is when you are meant to be happy but cannot be - that happiness becomes cruelty.

  I have not written in a while, because I have always promised myself this - if I write, I must be honest. And, the month has been too quietly painful, that all I could do was tell myself "do not feel".

  And so, my birthday passed.

  There was no miracles. A flock of birds did not arrive at my windowsill and burst into song. The dead did not come back alive. I had known this since I was twenty - there is no miracle in growing older. You find your own beauty and claim them as your own miracles.

  Maybe the miracle lies in never ceasing to believe that life is worth living - even if that belief has to defy death itself.

  But, still some part of me, found that little bit of drive left to write, and so I shall share this with you, with the hope that slowly one finds a way to transfigure pain:

 

Photography Credits: Kelvin Koh (Lightedpixels) 

Just a while ago, at the ridiculously busy junction around work, where you have to cross two streets just to get to the other side of the road, I watched an old man and old lady cross the road. The old lady's back was hunched and she was leaning completely on her husband for support. The old man, supporting her, walked calmly in a straight line. They made their own slow rhythm across the road - neither heeding the crowd bypassing them or the blinkering green man.  

I laughed then, because they were so clearly ahead of us. Farther than we would ever be. If growing older was like that, then time please wait for me.

Bangkok (Day 10) - The Ride Home

"After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight."

- Mark Twain, My Watch: An Instructive Little Tale

     After the plane landed, I walked with my backpack and oversized carry on green plastic bag full of the knick knacks I could not fit into my suit case. I decided to head to the ladies before I was outnumbered by the baggage I had to physically carry.

   There were three cubicles. One for the handicapped, one was being repaired and the middle one had a children cubicle attached. I went into the middle one and for a moment I was bewildered by the technological advances in the washroom. It reminded me of how long ago, in Japan, I had problems figuring out how to make the toilet bowl do one specific thing: flush.

   A wave of nostalgic washed over me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry that of all things, it was a toilet bowl that triggered yet again a strong longing to visit Japan. It was not only that I enjoyed being in Japan most of all, but now it was the one place I could not go. I had promised ZM that I would not visit Japan till we bore all our children. In a moment of weakness, ZM said we could fly to Tokyo because I was so sad. But, I couldn't in the end bring him to Japan when I saw how neurotic he was over the radiation.

  I didn't know how or when, but now the longing for Japan coalesced with the longing for my mother. Both places so out of reach - one spanning oceans and time, the other set adrift in the space of infinity.

  Oh, many people have given me an escape clause - tried to rationalise how going to Japan will be no more harmful than say (insert parallel universe Japan example). But, escaping was never the point - it was always about not escaping. About respecting people's inner fears about the great unknown and figuring out the best way to live, despite all the potential fallouts and harms along the way. It is not yet being a mother, but trying one's best to figure out how to love something or someone I could not yet comprehend.

   ZM and I always laughed that we were couples out of time - that we lived in two different time zones. I taking the earlier flight booked by my company, and he taking the later cheaper flight an hour behind. Silently, I walked past the duty free shops and headed to the arrival counter where nothing makes you feel more like a local than enjoying benefits that foreigners do not.

   I was back. Back from the ten days in Bangkok - the last place my family visited together, a place honestly I would not have probably gone back so soon if not for work. I saw you everywhere, as if we were a film, and it was still playing in a theatre quietly as the world moved on. I imagined you greeting me as I stepped out of the gates back to Singapore, or one of those family members tip-toeing at the glass ledge and scrutinising the people at the luggage belt.

   I read many stories while I was in Bangkok. One of them had an ending where the main character anticipated for a day when a scar stopped hurting anymore - it would just be a reminder of what it was, but it would no longer hurt. I thought grief would be like that, but it isn't. It is the lack of a scar that is my grief- the lack of anything to latch on or to grapple with. That lack of... anything.

   This middle-aged lady asks each person at the taxi stand two questions. "How many people are you travelling with?" and "Chrysler or taxi?" I am bemused. I wonder if there are other countries in this world where you are asked if you would like a Chrysler or a taxi.

  She points me to number 13 and I roll my over-sized luggage over. We fit everything into the boot. The radio plays the kind of chinese songs that always makes my heart hurt. I tell him our address and fall back into the seat. As the roads and flowers roll by, I realised I am glad to be home. 

#2: that you

   Today, surprisingly, was a day better than most. And yet, more than most days, I felt adrift. I've learned acutely again and again that it is on the happiest days I miss you most.

 My favourite moment in Avengers was when Hulk (finally) transforms and he says his secret is that he was always angry. I felt I knew him in that moment.

  When I was younger, I could almost always cry on cue. It's not that I could cry when I wanted to, but I think I was always irresistibly moved by the world.

   Even now, when I am sad, it is not that I am saddened by something. The opposite is true - I have always been restraining not to be sad.

   But, this is my real secret, I am happy and sad because of you. Neither of the two can live apart.
   

one

     In one hour, my blog would turn one.

     I think I aged ten years in this one.

     Ever since I started work again, the choice is always to write or sleep.

     And even then, I haven't been sleeping a lot.

     Even if I keep very still, life is still passing by.

     No, time is still passing by.

     Life, well, life is but a medium for time. Sometimes it's so beautiful that I think my life has finally caught up with time, and then we fall out of sync again.

    You are going to have to chase me your whole life, Time says.

    Time is a lot like love. Both like you to chase them, when really they have always been inside.

    I imagine at the end of life. Time sidles up to you and finally tells you, I have always been here, child. But the chase, ah the chase, is to keep you alive. 

#1: poetic possibilities

    

     Earlier this week, I bought a set of magnetic words for my office cabinets. I thought it would be fun and useful, since I don't get to write as often as I would like anymore. 

    Whenever I can, I would clear up my table and take out the small metallic box. I would look at the words and imagine, just for a moment, of the poetic possibilities of life. 

  

    Limitations are part of life. This small metallic box only contain so many words - and yet, I have not lived through all their variations. It dawned on me how we often stop trying to live out the many beautiful facets of our lives because we already assume our constraints bind us - when perhaps they are merely the sieve to bring out what is pure and intense inside of us. 

   We are our own poems.