Monday, April 25, 2005
Downtime
I've been rather quiet lately.
Guess I'm losing the will to write, what with doing a large number of on calls in a very short period of time, and with the prospect of looming examinations (tomorrow) that I'm woefully unprepared for...
Minor points of note.
Some student decided I looked like a character in some TV serial. Apparently I'm some ABC who's the son of a char siew seller.
O-kay. Not sure if that was a backhanded compliment, or just a backhand.
The other MO, of course, got compared by the same girl to James Lye...
Had a dream last night that I'd touched down down under. It was dusk, and darkness was beginning to settle around me, but somewhere far off on the horizon a golden sheen of aurora-borealis-like lights was drawing sleepily across a Lord-of-the-Rings-esque landscape. Complete with big trees and little hobbit hovels.
I'm probably going frodo... err froopy. Loopy. Whatever.
Sure, I know it's not the paradise I saw in my dream; but something tells me my subconscious wants me to be there, and not here.
Every passing day makes me wonder just a little bit more why I've chosen the paths I have, this lifetime.
In yet other news, a friend of mine is leaving for the UK soon. She's going with her current squeeze but wants me to write to her about the London I knew and wrote about here, so that she can go and try and catch a glimpse of it.
Part of me is afraid to write to her about it; what if the London I saw only exists in my own mind? (but then again I remember Alice enjoying that same london with me... maybe the two of us were just crazy) What if... she can't see what I saw?
And part of me is afraid that this friend of mine... may not be safe in the London I knew. It was a hostile place for the outsider... deceptively sedate until the darkness arose. You just had to learn to brush it aside, with a certain naunce, a certain step. A certain... vapid hostility in your eyes. And then you were safe.
But a large part of me has always wanted to share the London I knew...
Once upon a time, we stood, in my mind's eye, upon -- was it Blackfriar's? bridge - the one with lamps and little step thingies you could step up onto and hold onto the lamps... and I reached out an arm in a grandiose all-encompassing sweep, spanning the red-draped panorama of London at dusk, and declared "All this, I give unto to you, milady."
And in reality I stood alone as the wind buffeted me, hands clutching a close-to freezing lamp-post, watching the reflection of the sun setting blood-red on the Thames, and whispered into the callous wind, whipping through my hair, my coat, and the vaguely forgotten memories of my past... something to do with electives over here, with time together, with... vague shapes and semblances of impossibilities that never really had a chance at fruition.
It wasn't being alone that saddened me. I've always been a bit of a loner... It isn't so much about a burning desire for independence as just... being put together a certain way. People like us, we just need a bit of quiet in our heads, away from other people.
It would have been easy, all the years I spent alone in london, to call and meet, at the blink of an eye, with the French girl with the grey/green eyes, or Alice, the girl in chains, or any of my other friends.
Many of the years I did spend in London in the company of the ex.
But I felt alone.
In my head.
And I still do.
All that, old friend, I would have given unto you.
Guess I'm losing the will to write, what with doing a large number of on calls in a very short period of time, and with the prospect of looming examinations (tomorrow) that I'm woefully unprepared for...
Minor points of note.
Some student decided I looked like a character in some TV serial. Apparently I'm some ABC who's the son of a char siew seller.
O-kay. Not sure if that was a backhanded compliment, or just a backhand.
The other MO, of course, got compared by the same girl to James Lye...
Had a dream last night that I'd touched down down under. It was dusk, and darkness was beginning to settle around me, but somewhere far off on the horizon a golden sheen of aurora-borealis-like lights was drawing sleepily across a Lord-of-the-Rings-esque landscape. Complete with big trees and little hobbit hovels.
I'm probably going frodo... err froopy. Loopy. Whatever.
Sure, I know it's not the paradise I saw in my dream; but something tells me my subconscious wants me to be there, and not here.
Every passing day makes me wonder just a little bit more why I've chosen the paths I have, this lifetime.
In yet other news, a friend of mine is leaving for the UK soon. She's going with her current squeeze but wants me to write to her about the London I knew and wrote about here, so that she can go and try and catch a glimpse of it.
Part of me is afraid to write to her about it; what if the London I saw only exists in my own mind? (but then again I remember Alice enjoying that same london with me... maybe the two of us were just crazy) What if... she can't see what I saw?
And part of me is afraid that this friend of mine... may not be safe in the London I knew. It was a hostile place for the outsider... deceptively sedate until the darkness arose. You just had to learn to brush it aside, with a certain naunce, a certain step. A certain... vapid hostility in your eyes. And then you were safe.
But a large part of me has always wanted to share the London I knew...
Once upon a time, we stood, in my mind's eye, upon -- was it Blackfriar's? bridge - the one with lamps and little step thingies you could step up onto and hold onto the lamps... and I reached out an arm in a grandiose all-encompassing sweep, spanning the red-draped panorama of London at dusk, and declared "All this, I give unto to you, milady."
And in reality I stood alone as the wind buffeted me, hands clutching a close-to freezing lamp-post, watching the reflection of the sun setting blood-red on the Thames, and whispered into the callous wind, whipping through my hair, my coat, and the vaguely forgotten memories of my past... something to do with electives over here, with time together, with... vague shapes and semblances of impossibilities that never really had a chance at fruition.
It wasn't being alone that saddened me. I've always been a bit of a loner... It isn't so much about a burning desire for independence as just... being put together a certain way. People like us, we just need a bit of quiet in our heads, away from other people.
It would have been easy, all the years I spent alone in london, to call and meet, at the blink of an eye, with the French girl with the grey/green eyes, or Alice, the girl in chains, or any of my other friends.
Many of the years I did spend in London in the company of the ex.
But I felt alone.
In my head.
And I still do.
All that, old friend, I would have given unto you.
