thieving on time

What do you do after your 4As, two S paper distinctions and A1 for GP? Apply for a scholarship perhaps, President, SAF, PSC, firefly, DBS. Go overseas. 4 years degree. 2 years masters. Come back to serve your bond at some ministry with the job scope that involves prolonged stays out of Singapore. Like some sort of high class refugee with a 200000 – 300000 annual income. Work your way up the hierarchy – 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. One should live life without regrets.

But what I regret about my life so far isn't the 2 A1s I didn't get at o levels, nor is it the 1st place we didn't clinch for cheerleading. Instead, I regret the photos that I didn't take during huang cheng, the primary school friends I’ve forgotten, memories too far back to remember, and incomplete farewells.

No, the PSC scholarship talk didn't inspire me to work towards the top. It instead reminded me of the people I would be leaving behind. Those people who might become one of my many regrets ten years from now, when I cease to be able differentiate between one from another, when the subtle intonations of their voices merge and chorus into one barrage of loss.

12 years of study, 18 years of people, 2 years of you. I guess this is the theory of opportunity cost. But which is the greater? Throw away 12 years of study for the people I love, or the other way round? I am so tired of having to make decisions. How can we measure human beings with economic models?

Why must there be a trade-off? Yet at least where you are concerned there must. To do otherwise would be selfish. Man is innately selfish. Egotistical hedonism. But there is no greater guilt than to deprive someone else of life's chances. Life is abundant, and no man should have the right to make another stand still in the journey of time. Time waits for no man. Man shouldn't need to wait for time, or another man.

I hate wishy-washiness. Either a clean cut or no cut at all. The agony of execution is greatest mid-stroke. Spare us that. I sacrifice or we sacrifice. If only time and space can be crucified.

Pardon my hypothetical nihilism. Rationalisation is a great anaesthetic for pain.




Still, thank you for your offer.

Rain

the rain eats away at skyscrapers, memory’s wisps
Linger; the wet smell of grass, drip dripping into
Ephemerals unspoken. Silence hums the low bass of time
as we bury seconds in each other’s warmth.
Elegy is the rain; life’s breath retreating, but we dutifully sing its tune.
(is it you crying me crying or just sky misting around our eyelashes?)
Raindrops chafe at the immortality of water puddles,
while two pairs of feet splash
Laughing evanescence.




how many more times do i have to endure this?

Sunday

How life goes on as usual.

Can there be contentment in missing someone? I guess so. If the greatest fortune is to love and be loved in return, then I guess life would be unending in satisfaction, because it is so very human to love.

Life would never be mundane perhaps, with so many abstractions to pursue. Hope, freedom, ambition, love. Somehow all these ideals seem much more significant now that you are not around. Maybe you have always so distracted me with the little realities that I never really did have time to stop and look at the big picture. Or maybe I am just indulging myself with these vague concepts to pass the hours when you are not there to keep life simple.

Of course, life might already be simple, structurally, in the way that it construes seconds, minutes, hours till you come to put time on hold. A simplistic constant waiting it is then, an ironic juxtaposition of turbulent emotions that seize me without warning. Life is really a bag full of ironies.

The irony of separation and togetherness, how two hands hitting the keyboard simultaneously can never be one, and how though we might think of each other at different times, the same pool of memories lies still, quiet, untouched, except by us.

Photo

Do you know how to decipher a smile?
The lighting up of the eyes, turn of the nose, momentous show of teeth.
There is a delight in retracing the lines of joy. My eyes and hands furtively caress the furled edges of memories in a previous space and time.
There she is. Love and life preserved in a smile.
I see her, and I remember, why and how she came to be there, what was whispered into her ears, who did but give her reason to.
Fringe over face, unnoticed, as the shutter closed on a world lost behind the complicated codes of the sub-lunary – and opened simple you and me.
This is a moment when split second light captures refract into something more lasting.

A smile is a face cracking up-
sorrow and joy, till you come back.