Truths of Old

I was not happy here. It was always grey, and often cold. Some of my darkest moments were spent here, and sometimes the darkness was so overwhelming it was difficult to breathe. This was a city of lost people; people came here to be lost. Some came to find themselves. All came in search of their dreams.

I stumbled upon a dream far away in the warmth and sunlight, then lost it here in the dark and cold.

Nonetheless, this city - smoky, ancient and grimy; intricately carved with a billion reasons and myriad forgotten stories - this city was my home.

And I was free here.

*****
Standing in the middle of my flat, I turned around and took in the barren-ness of it all. I've never seen it so clean here in my life. All the stories and shared moments in this flat... erased.

It looked a nice flat. Somewhere I would like to live in if I was looking for a place to stay.

In my minds eye, I remembered a thousand moments. I picked up the phone absently and heard You ranting about marriage. I closed my eyes and saw a (cough) rough and tumble on the couch. I heard Jewel singing about Foolish dreams as I stared out into the darkening twilight. I watched You, in your green windbreaker jacket thing warily watching me from one of the two couches as I watched you.

I saw the coat rack - empty now - bend slightly as I hurled my overcoat, damp from the evening rains - onto it, and collapsed onto the couch.

I... hurt.

Goodbye, dear home.

I shall miss you.

The sun hasn't come out in days. The snow's finally stopped - now it just keeps drizzling incessantly, the way I remember it doing for the last eight years.

Everything's packed up and shipped; I just need to pack my suitcases and get ready to go. (all my bags are packed / i'm ready to go)

Yet there's a gnawing sense of... incompleteness. There's something left to do, and I know what it is... but I don't know whether to or not. Or maybe I'm just too afraid to try. Maybe they are all weak excuses.

Maybe they aren't.

I didn't come here for this.

Everything I came to do, I have done.

Forty Eight hours to go.

*****
There are some people we're so used to seeing happy that it distresses us when they're not. It's almost a conditioned response - happy person not happy. Must be very bad. Bad thing.

It's especially apparently when the person is in the public spotlight; facades are essentially masks, and when the cracks appear the sheep become unsettled. They want their primetime predictability. They want their goddesses to remain flawless.

Sometimes I wonder though, when the sheep begin to instinctively bleat their reflex-arc sympathetic get-well-soons whether their well wishes are for the recipient, or for themselves.

Do they really care how much that person is hurting?

Can you really care about someone if you've never known them in real life? Sometimes it's hard enough caring even when you have...

Or do they just want to salve their own unease with a smear-on get-happy-soon! comment. The quick-fix wonderdrug for heartbreak. (which in truth, for some of us, the cynics - isn't enough either. But we smile and try to accept graciously and shrug it all off, while our hearts continue to fracture. Like white lies, there are white hypocrisies too. We do it to make the rest of the world happy again...)

I don't want to see anyone hurt. Especially not people I see as friends - or new acquaintences / almost-friends (it takes time with me; I don't trust that easily anymore)

But I won't bug anyone to be happy soon, soon, too soon either. Time will be as time is. Sometimes that's all it takes; time. Till someone laughs again. For real.

Yet sometimes time is not enough.

I'll just say this.

Sometimes beauty isn't about wearing the perfect mask, but about the person inside, behind the mask, and how she weathers the storm.

And if she lets you in; you see the truth. And happiness / sadness - doesn't change how remarkable she is.

*****
Two separate moments in time.

Two pairs of eyes.

Two cars.

One thing in common. A deep sorrow.

Two different reasons.

Both souls... heart-rendingly beautiful.

Snow doesn't show up well in still photos. You have to catch a video of it to vaguely capture some of its essence, and even then, without the biting cold and the dampness on your skin you have only a parody of snow.

He reflected to himself that it was snowing again, as he stood on the edge of the Serpentine.

It's snowed every day since I got back. I've seen more snow in four days than in eight years here.

Perhaps there's a subtle irony in that, somewhere.

As the snow fell and the grey waters reared in response to the cajoling wind, he remembered when there was sunlight - no, a sunset. And there were geese.

And bread.

"If only men were so easy to control".

A sharp look.

Time passes.

It was so cold that his hands and ears hurt. They'd been hurting for a while now; he didn't care.

A green jacket.

Another winter moment, frozen in time.

And then it struck him.

For no reason at all, he knew. Exactly where she was.

Nobody told him; nobody dropped a hint. Completely illogically, utterly irrationally. He just knew.

Like so many other times, when he knew she'd just flown in; or when she broke up with the ex.

Knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The exuberently bright and sunny sunlit skies fade abruptly as the plane punches through the pristine white blanket of clouds into a dim twilight of shadows and orange light.

He staggers a little as the cool wind buffets him, pulling at his overcoat with heavy tendrils of eddying air. The damp, slightly fetid dewdrop-laden air carresses his face and hands slightly desperately, almost with a lover's familiarity.

Overcrowded trains and irate passengers. Mindless chatter overheard on board, about hypnotherapy and how relaxed you feel afterwards, almost as if you should be hold a ciggy heh heh heh... but it doesn't do a thing to fix your nasty habits.

Jaywalking with reckless abandon, that perfectly-timed dance/dash/stroll across busy streets that everyone does without pause.

Houses built upon houses built upon shops, upon houses.

So much to see, so many scents, some good, many bad.

Part of him is amazed how much he's missed this crazy, fucked-up place.

It's good to be back.

Short stories from the brink, born of an idle mind.

*****
In another reality...

...He leaned back against the railings and looked up towards the sky.

Maybe, he thought, I just have a thing for damsels in distress; maybe there's something infinitely beautiful about the way a girl's eyes soften and the mask she wears melts away, as she confides some secret inner pain to you. Maybe it's like, what was that they said, an orgasm, "a little death", a tiny moment of pure and unfettered honesty. Man, that's so fucked up.

And it didn't explain why it was so rare, and it didn't explain why he found the first beautiful, at all. Not in the least. She was beautiful from the moment he first met her, and she was almost always happy.

Now the sky, that was beautiful and he didn't even need to ponder why. He just knew. It was breathtakingly blue, and high above him, somewhat incongruously hung the ghostly white sickle-blade of a crescent moon.

Once in a blue moon. It's a kinda magic.

*****
In another reality...

...He didn't bother to take off his damply dripping overcoat as he stepped out of the eternal twilight, into the translucent yellow haze of a random pub.

Liquid amber swirled around the rim of his glass, framed by his hand as he stared morosely into its vertex, thinking nothing in particular.

Some random stranger blew smoke in his direction; he didn't even flinch as he breathed in the musty, slightly sour scent. She laughed, but not at him. It was just part of everyday, humdrum conversation, bastard words trickling by his skin, lost in the meaninglessness of now, dying into the past, remembered and cherished by nobody in particular.

He looked up, and for a moment the world seemed to come to a standstill as he thought he saw, across the room, someone who looked very much like her. But no, it couldn't be. Nah.

He looked back down into his drink. He was getting too old for silly dwellings on unimportant things.

In life, you have to get your priorities straight.

He glanced back up, and her eyes met his.

*****
...In another reality...

"Hello," She said, smiling in that amiable, familiar way she had about her.

"This is Ethan. Say hello, Ethan."

The bob of hair at her wrist glanced up at him, and grinned.

"Huwwo, mister".

He had his mother's eyes - warm, liquid brown, yet taunting. Not quite insolent... but engaging, with a faint air of daring you to an almost-confrontation about them; an unspoken challenge to a duel. Lively. Alive. Intelligent.

He knelt down and looked the child in the eye.

"Hello, Ethan" he said, sombrely, shaking the mini man by the hand.

And for some reason, he felt happy again, after the longest time of pretense.

*****
He watched impassively from his deckchair as the sky burnt itself out into an unearthly sheen of purple. It was a beautiful sight from way up here, and part of his brain duly took note of it, dully.

It was quiet here. The evening breeze caressed his skin lightly as he picked up his 'phone and idly thumbed in "Do you ever wonder what it is we are actually living for? Or are we just supposed to go looking for a reason."

His thumb lingered for a long while on the "send" button, before he finally mustered up enough will to depress it.

The sky darkened imperceptibly as he stared off vacantly into space, not-quite taking in the broad horizon of skyscrapers and condominiums sillhouetted in bronze against the dying sunset.

His phone buzzed twice in his palm, but he didn't glance down.

It wasn't that the sendee's opinion was unimportant. It just didn't matter right now; the question could only have been meaningfully answered by someone else who no longer existed in his world.

In another reality... he took a drag from the cigarette cupped in his left hand, the one that he never did learn to smoke, put his 'phone back in his pocket, then stepped off the balcony into the nine-storey freefall towards yesterday.

Apathy is a little death, too. The death of the soul.

Tried out the two more upmarket versions of the gym I attend over the last two days.

Friday's (mis)adventure was a little disappointing. Sure, the gym had an outdoor spinning centre. (Which seems kinda counter-intuitive. Somehow.) but there were too many things cramped into too little floorspace, and the table-tennis-sized (ok I'm exaggerating for those of you who don't get it) swimming pool didn't quite impress me. The gym was also rather under-equipped, and drinks were rather steep. Running on the treadmill afforded a from-the-trenches view of the raised swimming pool and not much else. It was... okay I guess.

One thing I couldn't help noticing was that the showers had a mysterious third dispensor labelled "conditioner", without, unlike all the muscle-machines, instructions for use. Must be this whole new confusing metrosexual male thingummygig. Mutter.

Quiz. For the guys only. Conditioner - before, or after?

I have it on good authority from someone who looks like a shampoo-ad on legs (and not that kind of cheapo 3 in 1 shampoo here either, we're talking atas shampoo) that it is... err. was it after. I forget now... shrug.

Anyway todays experience was much better. Getting to the gym took three frustrating attempts thanks to the one-wayness of traffic in that particular part of the city. Miss the fateful (last) turn-off and bang, you're on an expressway headed towards changi airport, ten minutes from the next turn-off. And there is all of one way of getting there.

It was, shall we say, quite a turn-off. Ahaha.

Fortunately the gym itself was great, with a little balcony area set with deckchairs and tables overlooking the city skyline, and a modestly sized swimming pool made to appear much larger thanks to good design. Score one for the architects.

The gym wasn't fantastically well equipped either, but it had more stuff, and a large glass window along an entire wall of it with that same awe-inspiring ninth-storey top-of-the-world view.

And there wasn't no conditioner either.

Although one must wonder what the point of transparent clear-glass doors to the shower cubicles is.

Shrug.

*****
I wonder why my comments boxes have shut themselves down. I guess the chaps at enetation have decided I'm a liability, what with all the hate-comments I get. Heh.

*****
Plans for the week :

1) survive on-call
2) register for exam
3) cut 2.4 time down below 10.30. the machines hate me. I reckon this really is the matrix. Every 100m I start my sprint earlier affects my time in a reverse-exponential manner (logarythmic?) and right now I'm at the stage where it no longer appears to have any effect. Grrr.
4) write article which may well cost me job
5) write (as ordered by one of my friends) a screenplay for a feature-movie about the goings on in a doctor's staff room. Complete with salacious gossip, overt flirting, the odd sex scene and in-depth heart-to-heart conversations.

In other words, all the stuff that never ever happens in a real-life staff room.

Speaking of which, there is no doctor's lounge in this hospital. Why is that, I wonder. I suppose in Singapore doctors do not have the right to lounge, or even slouch. Ahaha, bad joke.

Some of our on-call rooms are only slightly larger than coffins and just as well lit. Well, okay fine some coffins get daylight, and none except the most new-fangled have flourescent lighting.

If I had my way, I'd build an extra floor on top of this hospital just for doctors. Yeah. The On Call Floor, with three converted wards each with spacious on call rooms for the general surgery, medical and orthopedic staff, surrounding a central lounge area. The fourth converted ward could either be a large recreational area, with ping pong table / swimming pool (heh), and wide-screen TV of course, or else a similar setup for nursing staff on call.

Man, if I were the hospital administrator...

...we'd probably be bankrupt.

Oog. (not very big) Package larger than (surprisingly slim) postbox-slot error. Does not compute.

Add to that Fearsome Valkyrie Queen astride bronze chariot obstructing said undersized receptacle.

Hmm. Maybe... not.

I watched Finding Neverland tonight and couldn't help noting that the sky was always grey in all the scenic shots. Ha, finally a film that shows it as it really is, without all the fancy hollywood graphic manipulation.

It was a familiar experience. I've walked through or lain down at many of the shoot-locations countless times before.

It felt almost like... home.

This one goes out to two of my friends, who strangely enough remind me of each other. And are also both hurting over dastardly men.

You know who you are.

I did try to send this one as a dedication to the dozer, but yaz from class 95 ignored it for some reason.

*****

Now, I don't want to lose you, but I don't want to use you
just to have somebody by my side.
And I don't want to hate you,
I don't want to take you, but I don't want to be the one to cry.

And that don't really matter to anyone anymore.
But like a fool I keep losing my place
and I keep seeing you walk through that door.

But there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.
There's a reason why people don't stay where they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just aint enough.

Now, I could never change you, I don't want to blame you.
Baby, you don't have to take the fall.
Yes, I may have hurt you, but I did not desert you.
Maybe I just want to have it all.

It makes a sound like thunder, it makes me feel like rain.
And like a fool who will never see the truth,
I keep thinking something's gonna change.

And there's no way home, when it's late at night and you're all alone.
Are there things that you wanted to say?
And do you feel me beside you in your bed,
there beside you, where I used to lay?

And there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart they can't touch.
There's a reason why people don't stay who they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just ain't enough.

Baby, sometimes, love... it just ain't enough.
Oh, Oh, Oh, No.

*****

And that's just the way it goes. Sometimes there isn't any reason, and sometimes faults are best left to geography enthusiasts.

Be well.

Sometimes I really have to wonder why there are so many people out there who just want to judge.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be one of them. Trawling the web to find some random stranger's blog and cast judgement upon him - you are this, you are that. You are... (by implication) less worthy than me. You deserve to be in pain.

Or, even worse, the people closer at hand who do happen to know you transiently in life, and can't resist sliding in a snide comment to try to make you feel bad - although if they really knew you, they'd realise they weren't quite hitting in the right places. Laugh. Or perhaps they were reading into me something they wanted to see, and not something I was trying to say.

The second group of people, methinks, are the more malignant. People I would never call "friend".

Maybe it's like a chicken soup for the soul; or in this case a double-shot absinthe perhaps.

Shrug.

Well, go right ahead. I won't delete your posts; I may not reply because I don't really feel inclined to slide down the slippery slope of ill-will towards stupidity.

But if you hurt, or you are bitter about something, feel free to take it out on me. You just might feel better about yourselves.

(footnote : transferrence)

There used to be three of us, once a very long time ago when we were kids. We were like the Jedi Knights of Humour. I called us the Kings of Corn. We were nuts, and gosh dang it we were funny.

We seized every opportunity to create humour, to make people laugh with us. To poke gentle fun at other people.

Sometimes we cracked weird jokes nobody else got; sometimes we cracked really bad stonkers on purpose, and laughed wryly at ourselves.

We nibbled at each other like puppies, nipping in mock-battle sometimes, in the name of fun.

We were invincible. We were indomitable.

And then I met Her. One of the Queens.

I wasn't vanquished by Her, I don't think. I held my own (sometimes), and I gave as good as I got.

I like to remember us as foils to each other's wit.

It's probably just in my imagination though.

It was losing Her, I think, that changed me.

Tonight something happened.

And it made me think.

Maybe the King that really fell...

... is me.

Okay, this post is borne of sheer ennui, indolence (theory : go gym. Reality : blog) and believe it or not, a reader comment about Fiona Xie's sui sui face and big neh nehs...

[what is it with singaporeanisms and repetition. I guess it must be true that all good things come in pairs.

Anyhow. Cough.]

So actually, this post has nothing to do with fiona xie's ostensibly perfect figure or her neh nehs, or even about bonking the ultimate sugar candy (re-minisce wants chocolate...), but rather for the umpteenth time about beauty.

Let's be honest.

If you found a girl (or for that matter, a guy for your girls) godawfully unappealing, we're talking yech factor 10 here... you wouldn't.

Wouldn't bonk, wouldn't snog... probably wouldn't even date (err. well maybe a nicer person than I, would. I wouldn't.)

And certainly wouldn't marry, although rumour has it that the act of marriage alone turns sexy guess models into hideously unsexy mother-in-law types overnight.

But the reverse is also untrue. Us men tend to take about 20 years longer to figure it out than the women; I like to think it's because we're perfectionists and can't handle having our fragile world-views shattered overnight. Gotta keep trying, and trying, and trying again.

The perfect face and body don't necessarily a perfect match make.

Although realistically speaking, most of us would try the snog and bonk routine (or at least try to get there) before realising marriage is simply not going to work because miss perfect she ain't. (eg when bank balance hits zero, or maybe -$1345193120)

I dunno how it works for everyone else, but for this humble soul (who is in real life quite plain, dull and completely unappealing, don't let any of my "friends" convince you otherwise, regardless of what they write in the comments box under this, disclaimer, re-minisce thinks most of his friends should be committed, but is saving them up to refer to psychiatrists for personal favours) it's a pretty complicated thing, involving... who knows. Pheremones? Initial Attraction? (When younger, Love at First Sight. Considering it has only happened once till now, I'll settle for initial attraction) Pretty face and body that appeals? (duh. Let's be honest here, and debunk the nice-nice Singaporean myths... You women do it too, and us men do it first.)

And also personality.

I'm guessing personality is the crux upon which it all really hinges, because one day miss galaxy-cosmos-universe-spacetime-continuum is going to be old, just like your mommy or your mommy in law. And subconsciously all of us men (except the rich old fogies, damn them) realise that all the beauty in the world isn't going to weather time perfectly (except for Claudia Schiffer, mmm.) and if she can't make you laugh, can't engage you... in a certain way (differs for all of us, for some men oral interaction has a very different meaning to others...) then she's a non-starter.

It's just a wild guess, really.

But the final piece of the puzzle, that final brush stroke - as precious as a sunset falling over the horizon, and as overlooked as a pin falling in a room full of beer guzzling clubbers - is something extra; something that you just know when someone looks a certain way, or her brows knit a particular way, or she turns / cocks her head at a certain angle, or says something at a certain pitch... and not just something, but something specific - albeit unpredictable. That's when you know.

It's a whole chain of circumstances which can't be defined... but all have one thing in common.

The little woman holding the reigns, in the driving seat somewhere up there in her cranium. The stick-figure that wears the mask of physical appeal, the puppeteer that pulls the strinks to make the frame do whatever it is that appeals to you.

That undefinable something which makes sometimes-intelligent guys say or think stupid lies (usually to themselves) like "if she was ugly, I would still date her" (although truth be told, if she was ugly we certainly wouldn't, see above).

Yeah, that's what makes someone really "beautiful" to someone else.
It's more than skin-deep.

Sometimes you see it from the second you meet them, and they just keep on being beautiful.

Sometimes it takes a while, and then the circumstances fall together and you can't stop noticing it afterwards.

It's all in the eye of the beholder.

You know Nicholas has hit rock bottom when you see him up for grabs on Class 95's blind dates page.

Ah well, old fencing allegiances and all that, he's really tall ladies, and he's got the whole squinty-eyed grunty-caveman bad-boy routine down pat. And he's thirty this year, not twenty-nine. His weapon of choice is the epee, although he looks and acts more the sort you don't want to meet in a dark alley with a wallet full of money.

Ha. I'm sure he's irresistable now to 90% of the female population.

So go right ahead, go get poked by him. Heh.

*****
Thirty six hours on thirty minutes sleep.

No joke.

I dunno if it made me a little hyperemotional, but I had a little panic attack this afternoon at mid-day after certain revelations were made.

Hyperventilate.

Shiver.

Okay, it wasn't the sleep deprivation, I'm still getting runs of cardiac arrhythmias just thinking about it. Bad arrhythmias.

Where's my passport again...

1) Baby : hollow tube open at both ends and continent at neither

2) Date : Less than two hands on the steering wheel...

*****
Oh, and apparently I have rapid female fans.

Too fast, too furious for li'll old me...

*****
Stamp of Approval:

ask for Fire and Ice at Cantina, Greenleaf avenue (or somewhere thereabouts) By invitation only, not on menu.

Nothing like watching flaming coffee beans bouncing off your plate onto the table. Highly recommended for all pyromani... discerning gastrophiles out there.

Look out for an unforgettable waitor called Kirby who is simply a star, although he gets minus marks from S. the Weatherman for sudden-onset amnesia regarding all existence of his "other-half", in the overwhelming presence of a smouldering (ha. pun.) female.

Note to Weatherman : this is actually a normal phenomenon called the Y chromosome. - re-minisce.

*****
Sad

The best friend has flown out of town with his wifey back to miserable old MIT, and all I have to show for it are 115891238 dodgy PC-cdrom games.

Sniff.

Life will never be the same...

Oh well, first things first.

Power-on... open CD tray... Wheeeeeeeeeeee.

*****
My Mummy Say

Think I should consider making this a regular feature.

Today in car en-route to jail on-call, interrupting the usual, peacefully drowsy silence re-minisce considers quality time:

Mother : "You should start thinking about marriage. You need another doctor."

re-minisce : "..."

Mother : "Only they can understand your lifestyle.

Don't go for looks. You need someone who can think. Some men need someone inferior so they can feel good about themselves, you need an equal. Otherwise you will get bored quickly.

Go for someone tall, and calm. Because you are very jumpy."

re-minisce : "bye mom."
exit stage right into welcoming silence of waiting taxi.

Just great. Now I have a mom and a fortune cookie all rolled into one.
Think its this stupid Chinese New Year phenomenon I keep hearing about on the radio rearing its ugly head. Next thing I know, well-meaning relatives will be inquiring into my (lack of) marital status and making me feel like a worthless, unproductive degenerate.

*****
Model Quote of the Week:

"With Power comes Justice!"

(or was it without power there is no justice...)

? original source from ? superfriends?

*****
Re-minisce humbly retracts casting aspersions about models' single brain cells...

Some of them have two!

:D

just kidding.

Oog. Arg. Better stop now before I get stamped to death under a tsunami of vengeful high-heels.