The blurry of sleep was sharply sliced through by the cold.
It had just poured, giving me a million more reasons to stay in bed. I usually do. But today, it’s easier to deceive myself.
The sheets are exceptionally cold after the rain. You don’ feel the humidity nor the heat at all. I want to wallow in my sheets a little longer, to bury myself in this illusion of temperate weather. How soothing Sleep is. It crosses my mind that life is really not worth living. When you’re awake you just want to sleep. And when you sleep you don’t want to wake. What the hell.
In Singapore, sleeping means you boil in your own sweat. Unless you have a clinical air-conditioner on at full blast or a wobbling fan, yes I do stew in my own juices. Over here, the sheets are wet for a different reason. read more…
My university days were quite relaxed. Apart from the last-minute essays (which were frequent enough to disrupt my daily dose of sleep), I spent my time bumming out with close friends at coffeeshops. Cigarette in hand, we would conduct a weekly or daily review of all that has passed. These frequent male-bonding, chest-thumping coffee sessions, I miss.
I also miss some of my literary “pursuits”.
Like the one where a friend and I sit at a cafe along a quaint little lane in Singapore and sip our coffee or tea. Depending on the weather and the humidity, our beverages may either be iced or hot. If you listen carefully enough, when all is quiet and hush-hushed between the two of us, you could hear the ice clinking against the glass as they melt.
On days like these, I refuse to yield my name and instead curl within the dark confines of iteka no singapura.
Only on days like these, when Gemini rules over all signs.
Do you know why they call those vinyl discs “records”?
I am not sure whether I have mentioned this before but surely I must have. I do vaguely recall writing it down somewhere. Yet when I look back into the past, no traces can be found.
I shall then move on, ignoring that niggling thought that I already have had this conversation.
Yes. I hear you. “Records are called so because they are recordings of the songs, of the tunes, of whatever.”
I agree wholeheartedly – it would be a nutcase who didn’t. But there is also a subtext conveniently ignored – that such records summon cadavers of the heart.
Dead emotions, long buried under six feet of dirt, willingly or unwillingly.
Songs, records.
Songs are records in more than one sense of the word for they have the ability to conjure up the past.
When I listen to The Smashing Pumpkins, I’m reminded of a feisty girl who has a Smashing Pumpkin cloth pinned to her backpack.
I could remember myself wondering, “Why Smashing Pumpkins?” I was quite a naive idiot then. At that point in time, I didn’t know who they were.
I still remember how I embarrassed myself playing a “Truth & Dare” game in secondary school…
The bottle points at me. It’s my turn to ask Amy a question. Truth or dare? Mmm. I pick truth. I don’t really know what kind of questions I should ask – this is my first big gathering in a long while. So I ask: “Where did you buy your clothes from?”
My rationale is this: that the opposite gender do not like people to know where they buy their stuff. My friends break out into laughter. I’m crestfallen. Apparently the fiction I’ve been reading don’t really have a pulse on such things. I’ve failed to get their approval, to join the “in” group. Bit by bit, the rest of the night passes into day. I cannot recall what else went on. Perhaps, I exit the game early.
I was that naive. Small, spectacled boy. With a side parting.
At times I forget. But Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails always, inevitably open a door to the past and dig up the cadavers, like forensic scientists after a case.
Records are an aide-mémoire. An electric jolt to my dead memory.
What do you do when every update on Facebook feels like a game of one-upmanship to you?
When posting photographs of an event that you’ve been to feels like you’re trying to one-up another person.
But what if you are not. Or worse, what if you cannot tell which is which. What do you do then?
Again, to relate to another blogger, am I taking photos for the sake of taking it, to prove my existence has been so on and so forth, that I have existed in another dimension in another time.
I might be over-analysing things, that the rest of the people won’t feel anything. If they’re my friends, they shouldn’t.
At least that is what I like to hope.
If all things fall…
There is always hope.
Once in a while, I just feel like typing gibberish.
Typing out stuff that people wouldn’t understand. For instance, I would go like this: arbe godb opovadf ptowetmb wfjpgt rgkl.
How does it feel, I wonder?
To just type gibberish, to not rush around with a sense of urgency or purpose, belabouring every second that the lift is taking, every second too long for you.
To go through the morning-hour rush as if it was nothing at all. Stuck in a jam? Nah, no worries. These things happen.
But we curse and swear. We mourn for every second, every millisecond lost, effectively trapped in something of our own creation – Time.
I know I do.
adgjk kvm’lk kglkfb mvgg
Then also, when I’m typing gibberish I’m typing for the sake of feeling the keyboard react to my fingers, the tactile feeling. At that point in time, there is nothing I want to communicate.
Empty: The famous castle of Prague
- I probably should place my language acquisition skills on hold until I can sort out my work schedule. I have too little time for myself at the moment.
- In a sense, passé composé refers to actions that are already completed while imparfait refers to past actions that have no specified ending.
