Solo 08

Silent:
much of this is, much of this
wants to be. Cicadas cry;
my footsteps receive the
rustling of leaves and snap
-ping of twigs as feedback of
my intrusion. A tall branch plummets
down from above and feedback is suddenly
constructive criticism. I tread,
carefully; it's like a nest in incubation
crashed to the floor and I am
walking on the eggshells.
Do the ants do diplomacy?
Probably not, but still, do not fear
the judgement of the jungle;
when undisturbed, its litheness breeds
a brand of bottled thoughts,
and mosquitoes.

Sweet Nothings

Lychee Twist Cone from McDonald's
A hot as heck February afternoon

--

A dollar would soft serve me
the novel creation of golden arches
bending over backwards
for customer satisfaction.

Tinged with the faint hue
of a rosy finish, a twirling
tower of two-in-one;
Too sweet? A tad.
All in all? Not bad.

We do concede that
artificial is our taste,
stifling is our fervour,
but it was a single coin
that brought me
glee in lychee,
paid heed to my
feeling the heat.

In the end we are soft flesh
in hard shells,
rough around the edges
and bumpy along the rind,
but delicate on the inside
and fragile as you'd find.

This is just the flavouring,
and so I waited for the plot
twist -
waited, waited,
until
it all melted to nothing.

Daughter's Grief

the tears loused her foundation,
smudged lipstick in streaks
of despair-drowned breaths.

a call from home
should have borne the fresh air
of a familiar, lilting voice,
but all she heard were commas
of compunction reluctant to break
the news of a full stop
for a life to whom she owes her own.

now her shoulders point inwards
and channel quavering speech
of her grief;
of a grief I cannot relate to,
of a grief I can only apologise for.

the receiver of her first words
utters words no more.
fifty three year old eyes knew
a mother;

now those eyes weep,

for her.

Last Conversations

It's gonna be two-and-a-half weeks without any Internet connection for me (since unlike those enlisting in the army, we can't bring smartphones) so here's a slightly heavy one people who bother reading long-winded, meandering passages might again be put through. These words are from the past 15 days since I've been back from an overseas trip, scribbled on paper and on my phone between hellos that were all too soon followed by goodbyes. These 15 days were odd - some were spent waiting for people to return from their own trips, and some were spent waiting for my own enlistment days after most friends have already gone in. If I have learnt anything at all, it is that there is never enough time, and never enough words.

I have a feeling that the waiting will continue, even when I eventually enlist tomorrow and am subjected to the regimental life of uniformed forces. At this stage of our lives - like it or not - we play the waiting game.

--


It is not my first time at the basketball court of Buona Vista CC, although it is my first time playing here. The court is an ashen red, the net droops with a loose end and the rim is so lopsided I think I'll have to shoot from a particular side if I'm to score at all.

Trexel projects the ball into the air, and I'm projecting tales from Sec Three and Four - from memory to mouth.

Swish.

"Wah, not bad."

He is surprisingly humble. "Nah, no form already."

We talk about the NBA, about the Premier League, about how he used to play the 2014 NBA video game on his Mac and I'd watch during our lunch breaks.

"The file no longer works, I can't play it anymore."

"Oh man."

Swish. 

The disparate puddles from the previous night's rain dot the court, but soon they have shrunk to irrelevance. The sun comes out and the day has found a new reverence. Trexel jumps for the ball after a shot of mine circles the rim and tips itself over. He reaches for it as the ball in mid-air happens to cover the Sun from where I'm standing, such that it's like a scaled down solar eclipse in play. As he grabs the ball firmly there's the illusion that he's touched the sides of the Sun, and the rays sprout out from around the edges in that brief fraction of a second to glorious effect.

He then flings the ball in my direction, the fiery orb spinning its way towards me. I seize it mid-spin, and I imagine this mass of heat and light suddenly at my disposal. There is the feeling of being in control as I handle the ball, my fingers wrapping its contours and navigating its grooves.

This sensation of ascendancy is only momentary - a water droplet, presumably from the tree still damp with rainwater, taps me on my shoulder, and I am reminded it is never all up to me.

____________________________________________________



A snow globe a friend got for me as a Christmas gift sits on my desk. The miniature reindeer in the globe - adorned with a tessellated red scarf - clutches a hand bell and rests on an even tinier stone. With a light shake, the "snow" - or, as I like to call it, "overpriced dust" - rises and engulfs the small sphere.

I look on and wonder what it must be like to be the reindeer, knowing the snow - this unchanging snow - will rise and fall the same way every time, the minuscule specks lost in a flurry but then ultimately floating down to rest. The reindeer sleeps knowing that things are as they were.

I am later overcome by bemusement - who stares at a little knick-knack and gets jealous?

_________________________________________________

In a quiet corner of Bishan MRT Station is a QB House I go to. Six months ago my hair was cut by a lad who I think just got transferred there and since then I've been going back to him for my hair cut each time. If he wasn't in, I'd ask his colleagues when his next shift would be and might return another day on my way home, or if I was running errands in the area.

His name is Elven, and I'm not actually sure how old he is but he seems to be in his mid-20s. He has a thick Malaysian accent, which is especially noticeable because our conversations are in Chinese. That is not to say we speak a lot during my haircut, though - I'm often glad to let the razors and scissors do the talking.

I find it awfully awkward when he asks a question and we start to have a private conversation of our own, even as there are two other hairstylists and five other customers in that tight space. I still oblige in replying but it doesn't mean I mind the small talk all that much, because after all he's a pleasant fella.

A few haircuts ago he'd asked what my post-exams plans were, and I'd raised enlisting for National Service as something that was on the horizon. I've learnt that NS is actually a pretty decent conversation filler (or starter), because there are so many ways of branching out into different sub-topics that you don't have to worry about racking your brain too much for something to say.

This time, I am back again and he remembers that I will be enlisting very, very soon, so he hypothesises that this might be the last time I go to him for a haircut.

“ 几个星期后你剑 botak, 以后就不用来了，对吗？”

“ 啊，对。”

He chuckles, and then goes on to give me some hairstylist's advice for shaving techniques in case I ever wanted to “ 剑 botak ” on my own. I share how some friends are at a loss as to whether they should shave their heads at a barber shop before enlistment, or at camp on enlistment day itself. Somehow or another I also get to asking him about whether he'll get a Chinese New Year break, and whether he returns to Malaysia to see his family then. His response is to ask me if I will get a break during that festive period.

Snips and swipes later, he reaches for the "blower" which essentially rids most of the loose pieces of hair on your head before the customer takes off the gown cape and the haircut is done. He dusts some hair off my back, passes me the standard QB House comb and wet wipe, then helps me with the cape.

He then remarks, “ 最后一次，好像有点感慨哦。”

“ 噢，的确是有点感慨。”

His eyes are small but contemplative. “ 到了 army, 祝你好运！”

I do not bother with pointing out that it is the police I'll be joining, and not the army.

“ 啊，谢谢你。希望我们后会有期。"

"哈哈，不知道两年后我会不会还在这里剪头发呢。没关系，人生就是这样。”

I open the door gently, but the bells attached to the handle make no mistake of marking my departure. I'm feeling abashed by the fact that everyone in the shop can listen on and watch our little farewell, but I muster up a  “ 新年快乐 ”, and then I'm out the door.

____________________________________________________



It is a Tuesday morning I've looked forward to for quite a while. It's the first time I'm back at school ever since returning from a trip with my family about a week before. At the turnstiles, I hold my breath in expectation of rejection, but eventually I find a strange comfort in the ensuing 'beep' upon tapping my card against the electronic reader.

Great, it still works. 

It sounds like 6.50am weekday mornings, 8am Saturdays and post-lunch drowsiness. Most of all, it sounds like a half-arsed 'hello' from a place you came to know in a myriad ways, but still never knew completely.

On entry, I am further greeted by the whistle of a netball coach frantically trying to organise her team. Her players are doing some kind of transition drill, encircling and exchanging, stopping and turning. Like a banquet table in artful conversation, their training session is a series of calculated steps.

I calculate the number of steps taking me to the mouth of the canteen, lightly tapping my feet against the tiled stairway, and, with some fleetness of foot, I soon approach the College section's street football court. I listen intently to the quiet. As is often the case, it seems the rest are not on time. Then I realise I've considered their "not being on time" instead of their "being late." Mornings like these mean the "half full" side of me can't help but rear its far-from-ugly head.

As I reach for my pocket to enter a "WHERE IS EVERYONE", or "WHO OVERSLEPT" (maybe not in caps), group message into my phone, a light shadow flashes past the ground ahead of me. I spot Yinn Ray, diminutive but as usual armed with a confident gait, about 20 metres away. He must have seen me first, because before I know it he has hollered out my nickname and charges down the slope with his arms wide open, even while trying to balance his shoe bag on one side. I wonder how he can be so full of life despite having just taken a 13-hour flight the night before. With his flip flops nearly getting caught between each other, and the beaming face I've come to know ever so infectious, he makes the 20 metres, and I make light of the sight. Upon embracing we both note how long it's been since we last met, and I despair about how it felt like I was away the whole of December, and he makes no effort to absolve me of any guilt. None of that seems to matter, though, and I am all smiles; this is a guy who knows me better than most, and the one who would take raisins - or as I also know them, "Raysins" - out of my cubicle in class.

With some faith, the rest arrive and so does the familiar banter. We split teams, the game of four versus five kicks off, and there is much #hype. I am on the side with one less player but we cope better than I could have expected, and somehow in the instances when Qi and I are up front we both know where the other will be at the exact moment one of us makes a pass. I think this must come with the two years, with me sometimes missing outings or meals with this group because of prior arrangements with other groups from earlier in high school, but then always returning in the knowledge that these are the people I've spent the most time with in the last two, arduous years.

A modest drizzle grows in hubris and looks set to unleash a downpour, but the clouds hold tight, as if desperately preserving this morning for our sake. There is no dampener, no despair - only the boyish howling and the friendly jibes and jabs fill the air.

Halfway through "the proceedings", Thung makes a trip to the toilet, adding to the piquancy of the moment. Like a jumped up pinball machine, the court and its occupants make the whole thing seem more intense than it actually is.

At lunch, we catch our breath. After defending myself with a clarification to everyone on a certain (grossly mistaken and highly unfortunate) "auntie killer" accusation against me, I am largely quiet, as I often am at a table of ten. I think about how it's fitting that we're sharing dishes for our meal today, instead of getting individual portions. The Lady Susan on the table is a negotiator of appetites. Chopsticks reach for the centre and food is shared. We play "the thumb game" to decide who gets the last piece of tofu. I look up at the faces around me in various fixtures of amusement and mischief. A new order of chicken is served. Much food for thought.

After lunch there comes the inevitability of parting ways. Someone says something about meeting on the third Saturday of every month but I have no clue if that will turn into a thing. Along the afternoon activity on Upper Bukit Timah Road, there are red lights where revving engines give away the impatience of drivers ready to go. I am anything but ready to go. The group walks towards the nearby train station, and I am at the back. Yinn Ray is beside me.

Breaking the silence, I admit to him, "I don't like this feeling."

"Yang, it'll all work out." He tries.

He rests his palm on my shoulder for a moment. I tell him he seems slightly taller now, and he rolls his eyes nefariously.

"I guess so."

I force a grin, but I also want to tell him that saying it is different from knowing it.

That simply guessing is not enough for me.

____________________________________________________



On New Year's Day a fellow Liverpool fan and I map out the games that we'll miss because of BMT. After working it all out, we discovered that after we both enlist, the next game we'd be able to catch is the one on 24 February, which is nearly two months from now. That's six games missed; to put things in perspective, even during the A Levels period, the most number of games we missed in succession was three.

It is now in the wee hours of 6 January and time for the last game I'll catch before that fateful 24 Feb. It just so happens to be a cup match versus the local rivals, Everton. Moments before kick-off I text my friend. We watch virtually all the games together, that is, if you accept our extended definition of the word "together" to include being in two separate homes but awake for the same game while the rest of the neighbourhood is asleep. My first text is to check if he's up because we have a pact to call the other person if one of us has slept through our alarm.

"Heyo, you there??"

I add on a bit more, because we have just signed an exciting new player and he's been selected to make his debut.

"Van Djik's in the line-up... THIS IS IT"

It is only when the referee has blown the whistle to start the game, and Anfield erupts into its raucous best while my text goes unanswered that it hits me.

Shit, he enlisted a day ago. I knew that. 

We'd go on to win the game in the most rousing fashion, with the debutant scoring the crucial goal. Yet, even in the elation and euphoria, it all just felt slightly different this time around.

____________________________________________________

It's said that when we look at the stars we are actually seeing them as they were many years ago. Say a star is 50 light years away - we'd therefore be seeing it as it was 50 years ago. In that sense, watching the stars is like seeing into the past, each celestial body of light representing a certain period in some galaxy.

It's all very romantic but there's no such thing as "wishing on a star" - shooting stars are meteoroids that look like stars just because they move through Earth's atmosphere at such a speed that the resultant heat creates a visible path. Those wishes fall flat.

Instead, to look up at the sky is to be a privileged observer of history - things you know must have happened because you can actually see them happening.

I don't require proof of any personal recollections, but I wouldn't mind living for many more light years to come, just to watch it all unfold again when I look up at the night sky.

Silent, but sure.

____________________________________________________

My last goodbye to a friend is on a Sunday night in Bishan. Holding vanilla cones from McDonald's, we sit at a bench outside a row of shops. We talk, about people and music and life, and pressing those small buttons on the lids of plastic cups. Then, later on, with the crowd dissipating as it borders 9.30pm, I realise that it is Elven in the QB House ahead of us. He folds the barber gown capes, then sweeps hair off the floor. I watch as he goes about preparing to close shop, and after the lights in that QB House go out, I turn back to my friend, and in my mind I'm thinking about how all this is going to be so far away from me in time to come.

I am a hostage to growing up, held at gunpoint by the memories of things that were and the weight of things that will be. Curse me for being melodramatic about all of it, but heck - who's to tell?

Things keep changing, and I know that.

All too well.


--

Thanks for making it this far. A brief hiatus, for now - be back in a bit?

Where The Streets Have No Name

That night, we find ourselves at a hostel nestled between two mountains. Without an address, we'd gotten here only by plugging geographic coordinates into the navigation system on our rental car. The thought of travelling to a single point reducible to numbers without knowing where you're really going to end up has never lost its magic. There are no street lamps, no road signs and no markings. When we find the place, it is by spotting a yellow flag. Entering the hostel, we lay out our bed sheets, and, needy for dinner, we walk back out into the cold, then the car. There is a faint glow over the lower sides of the mountain to the right. We drive in its direction, and arrive at a point when the glow morphs into a ray, and then looking down from the edge are rows upon rows of city lights. A labyrinth of life stirs and its ordinariness stirs further. It looks like an hour's drive away, and yet it's the closest we've been to civilisation thus far. In the dark, our trusty Toyota Fielder works its way down, and with the heaters blasting, the alpines hide shadows - of monsters, of men, Of Monsters and Men on CD playing in the background. As the wind whispers warnings through the valley, there we are, like wide-eyed neanderthals coming out of a cave, with only the light to follow.


--
"Still building, then burning down love"

Stuff We're Made Of

In a planetarium near Mt. Aso, nightfall


What Are We

but a spectacular series of births and deaths,
a monument to psyche psyched-out,
the nightmare of the nothing from nowhere;
no one lived
to tell the story.


What We Are:

Fleeing fleas flying
Skies catching the light
Grimacing pangs
Cliff-hanging ends
Beginnings that promise
Journeys taken
Laps and leaps.


Magisterial might of light, you do not
go out. Celestial, incomprehensible,
with fate up in the air,

you

find your place in the sky.

Peel Street

We walk ten thousand paces

of life; in the claustrophobia,

we all come face to face.

Faces, walls, façades:

face of a wall, another brick

in the wall, another shop

in a mall, and the

peace, and the

pieces

- they come together.

But all the paint, and all the

scaffolding that wore;

all the words that people left

for the photographs, home or away

- there must be, there must be 

a way, some

way.

Where once "we go again" rang true,

but now you can't put a finger

on where you're going to;

not again, never a gain,

all ways, always

loss.

The Economics of Emotion

26 October, 2017
More shorts

--

On the bus

With two classmates:

one tiny, the other toxic;

We barrel our way to the top,

a wobble before a plonk, a

day after another 

- bags know these backs,

but for now,

weightlessness.

--

At a stop

A deluge of indifference

pitter-pattering like nobody's business

subsumes the already weathered faces

of men and women in jackets,

hands in pockets, eyed-out sockets...

A man holds a tennis racket 

he will not need this evening;

A cleaner looks across

the floor she was mopping;

And all is awash with the washing away.

A deluge of indifference

pitter-pattering like nobody's business

tacks white noise onto the soundtrack

of the day at a close, earpieces unwound,

the clouds frown - and I am out of nouns.

The Biology of Being

24 October, 2017
A series of shorts
Snapshots, potshots, that sort of lot

--
The lackadaisical lighting of the consultation area

descends upon hushed rushes at a mock paper.

Fans stir with sentimentality but still the air is 

still. Cupping the contours of glossy battlegrounds

drab in navy blue - hard, backless benches. 

They proselytise posture, aggrieve spines and 

demand more backbone; toughen up, I hear 

the sound of rain.

--

Math as portrayed in music is grossly oversimplified; The Proclaimers seem to take a lot of pride in being able to deduce that if they were to "walk five hundred miles" and "walk five hundred more", they would have walked a grand total of "a thousand miles". Bravo, guys - no wonder there is sunshine on Leith.

--

I leave later than usual and it is dark. My friend - one of those privileged to be reminded by an examination board that what they study is "Practical" - spent a few hours in a lab today doing just that - practical stuff. "Bio" somehow sounds very right when he says it. He speaks of moles and concentration. I only know of Holes and the lack thereof.

"Consult" is not yet bare on departure. We walk out and into the open, the white light behind us. Following a round path that leads down the hill, only the luminescent glow of activity from the school hall in the distance shows the way. The basketball team is training; I see scenes I know all too well, yet ones I have not known for long. If there is a biology of being and a chemistry of caring, then there must be a physics of fucking up. But I guess only biology can explain things that eat at you.

--

At the bus stop, a girl - probably nine or thereabouts - shows a sudden interest in something on the gravel, and bends down to pick it up.

"Mom, I found a nail. Someone might accidentally step on it." She dutifully drops the specimen into her mother's hand, which appears to be open only because it was compelled by the girl's voice. Before the grace could grow, however, a snide remark.

"Then maybe you should screw yourself" is the hilarious take-down out of the mouth of a boy who is at least half a head shorter than her, and presumably the brother. Having managed to suppress laughter, I revel in the unexpected wit just witnessed. The boy has a smirk on his face. The mom's is disapproving. Their bus comes, and so goes their nails and screws.

But then there was the lightning. And then there were the bolts from blue.

Simple Song

.

"And this is a song, song for someone

This is a song, song for someone." 

- U2, "Song For Someone"

"A song for no one's in my hand

A song they'll never understand." 

- Ian Broudie, "Song For No One"

.
And we take all of it.

Oktoberfest

Unlike September, October does not err on the side of caution when you want it to. Numbering the days almost seems pointless at this point, and if we lose count it does not count, so maybe letting them slip and slide makes it easier. As things come to a close, we speak of the hypothetical - funny, when the certainty of endings is what leaves us with "ifs". We may stand under lanterns that offer brief respite, but the déjà vu of the moment hits us to confirm that no one outlasts the "lasts". You whinge at the sound of curtains being drawn, but finality never shares your sentiments and soon it feels like light must be dug from crevices of consciousness - hard to do, even with the tint of all the things you held and helped.

In Germany they sing a song, "Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit", which translates into "a toast to good times." We could do without all that Bavarian booze, but all the same, let us lock arms and cheer: "Here's to, here's to. I am better for having met you."

--
"We're circles, we're circles you see / We go 'round 'round the sun / In and out like the sea / I'll circle round you / You will circle round me..."

Aubade to Attap Chee

Before dropping by Bishan Library to return Loh Guan Liang's "Transparent Strangers" today I had lunch with my father at the Junction 8 food court: Double Beef Pepper Rice 加蛋, Ice Kachang afterwards.

It's close to a year since the food court had its renovation works completed (*poof* went the hidden arcade within). I can't keep track of the number of Double Beef Pepper Rice meals I've had in this place, but I know that it's here where my brother swore never to eat the attap chee in a bowl of ice kachang ever again; that's after my father told an edifying tale of how attap chee is transported on trucks without boxes or any sort of protective layer to keep it from direct contact with the grimy surface of the truck. Gullible, but he was 6.

It was just my father and I today, though, because my brother had lessons while my mother was at work. After I very thoughtfully pointed out that his oversized t-shirt made him look rather foolish, he took an interest in the book I was about to return and flipped through it, before landing on the "About the Author" page. By the end of Loh Guan Liang's admittedly contrived self-composed author bio, my father laid down a damning judgement.

"Fucker."

When your parent swears it should take you by surprise (supposedly). I sniggered, though mindful that the bio hardly did justice to the guy's writing. I'm immensely fond of writing that has an acute awareness of people and places - "Transparent Strangers" did the trick. The collection is interspersed with verse on transit, transport; times of the day when we are transfixed by the crowd that envelops us, a sea of strange, transparent people. Loh's writing may be characterised by romanticised rumination, but the simplicity and candour of his words belie any sense of pretence (unlike his author bio).

So, in tribute to attap chee days of yore, and this book that was really good to have around during the Prelims period:

at lunches peppered with quips,

the same attap chee affliction;

no just desserts suffered, for those

not transparent about transportation.

--

Is attap chee translucent or opaque? (Not a PSLE science question)

Also realised this post is more like those on the "left" page but I'm too lazy to do the formatting again.

Why John is such a twat

Why John is such a twat / 12 Years a (Math) Slave

I don't enjoy doing math

but math just seems to love doing me...

I get that numbers may be a tool of some world without
sentiment, that one imperfection in the human make-up
that means we grief over love and life lost.
It should make things easier.

But really, Math, though:

Teach us to divide but then tell us we are more than a sum of our parts;
that we are more than uniformed hypotheses to be tested and
tested on; maybe we should let you convince us that
equality only exists in equations, that integration requires differentiation
but race, class, and borders do anything but unite.

Come on, who honestly cares about the number of ways "John" can sit
at a table of people without sitting next to those dressed in blue?
If John wasn't such a twat he'd sit with people regardless of colour and
save us all that trouble. But John is a twat after all.

Now, calculate the distance from A to B,
or S
or U
or you from me;
give us a figure to figure out and hinge our self worth upon
- who doesn't like another number
to remind me them how much they suck at numbers?

I once interviewed a maths prodigy; took us three tries
to finally meet - my very own 三顾茅庐 tale. Told me his
love for math stems from its freedom from language, culture,
politics - all of which complicate the real world - as well as its,
and I quote, "completely logical and systematic nature".
Gödel too believed mathematical truths to be self-evident,
but if that's the case, why does it all read like Greek to me？

Whatever happened to those who live
between the whats and ifs and buts and maybes,
not the Xs and Ys and Zs and GCs; tell us
Orion wouldn't have a belt if it were not for geometry,
and that we are all here in constellations,
in perfect equations, in little sequences and series that
make it seem as though everything happens in the same, deductible way;
as though everything can and must be explained...

But maybe there was a Jackson Pollock of the universe,
splattered the stars across the sky in some
sweeping act of rambunctious artistry, laid them bare in
nude nirvana; You see, not everything subscribes to your formulas;
which, you may say, is an art, and yet I'm pretty sure that
only things of the heart have art in them.

Even then, can your math - your fashionably flawless,
wonderfully water-tight math - explain how it is
that this was written in math class,
that the stars were written in math,
that all this was written in the stars?

That if we had to one day tell the story of the stars
we'd just speak of shapes and patterns
- not of hoping, coping, losing, then finding,
nor the weight of things that were and will be, but
just specks of significance, 3 s.f. and shit like that,
dots on lines on maps, finding their way around this place
without coordinates to the heart, or a compass pointing to okay,

forever thinking we had made sense of the world,
living the illusion that our trip around the Sun
was always a perfect circle.

--
This is an accumulation of lines from over a few months that I've only just managed to mash together very poorly but more importantly - an utterly relatable moment from one of my favourite shows: 0:21.

write ride

At the back of the bus alone - ready for 50 minutes of start, stop, up, down; all around. 

A fire engine wails past with men we never thank enough at the wheel, its red rage reminiscent of my favourite football team, but that's no proper comparison - there are lives to be saved here.

The lives on the bus, on the other hand, are ones I will never touch; commuters may very easily pass the same person more than once yet never know of it. Two strangers like parallel lines - together, but hopelessly apart at the same time - à la the wisdom of Dire Straits' "Hand in Hand".

The beauty of bus rides is that the windows give you an excuse to look someplace else, whereas the train leaves your eyes hopelessly darting and looking for somewhere to land. Then I realise I've already used "hopelessly" in the paragraph above, but I'm tired and I just listened to "Let It Be" on my phone. I let it be.

Some guy yawns above the tinny music being savaged off his earphones. Some lady sneezes a while later and jolts everyone out of their dated daydreams. In that curious moment alone, all on the bus are one - until three blows of a nose later, and we retreat back into our cocoons.

Two rows in front, two men sit faced towards me. Both with their heads tipped back, eyes shut like all our mouths that dare not make a sound. The younger one in a polo tee with his hands clutching a duffel bag; the slightly older guy has his belongings resting on his lap, arms crossed like Raffles. I look across to the other side of the bus and their counterparts in the same row conveniently strike an identical pose. One is evidently a nurse - the kind our politicians degrade as 'low-skilled', but I look at her hands - layered with the folds of age, and still looking very steady, very sure. The other is hard to make out and hard to describe, though he has every potential to be that jack-in-a-box my end of the week needs. 

I think how nice it'd be if they were all dreaming and each of their dreams appeared as holograms above their heads, so I could watch; different dreams for people with different lives, and yet asleep on a bus there is something remarkably similar about that purity of their exhaustion, that they are all now on the journey to loved ones, that in a few days time they will do this again, maybe even together, with a resounding tap of a card that linked us easy. It's not nice to intrude, even if it's a great joy to hear or learn about people's dreams, though, so I just pretend they're all dreaming the same thing.

I haven't got a clue what that dream could be. Still, in some not-so-distant place in their heads, I know there is a message, a call, a string of words - one they know in so many ways - tucked under tongues for this time of the day:

"I'm coming home."

干杯

like cups inverted,

like sides of a coin; like hay-

stacks hiding needles.

Veerasamy Road

A billion faces in tandem with a hundred different tongues 

in a thousand different towns; India was never so little that it could fit

into the map of my mind.

At the foot of my grandma's flat are 

dozens of bare feet treading the pavements, 

the asphalt, the double yellow lines whose homes

we could never name; sole on plain Earth,

soul in plain sight - telephone lines thousands of 

miles away offer a voice to cling onto,

because a loquacity not quite localised is the way

to rise above all that foreignness of a land

that hides you away in its folded corners,

as if pages look better with creases. For every 

road kerb romance, street side slow dance and tales 

tall as that multi-storied carpark, there are men not alone

but lonely, men wistfully wishful, men

with garlands of grace but then confined

by race - they should have known:

their feet would not keep up.

--

"Tell them to return to their leeches and floods / but not before they have raised our buildings and children" - The Marooned Island by Alfian Sa'at

Note to younger self

Inspired by Ernie Johnson's (one of my favourite people) "Advice For His Younger Self".

Weather forecasts are like promises that were never meant to be kept. There are days you feel more rain than sunshine - even if it's only supposed to be partly cloudy. Age serves to tell us that no one actually takes pinky swears seriously. The weather man only looks at pictures, anyway - which is a problem, because a thousand words often isn't quite enough.

You love finding the words for things, especially if it's something that you can feel, but sometimes you either can't, or you don't actually have to. Is there a word for when you've so much to say to someone, and yet so little you can deliver? Is there a word for that feeling when you're running after a bus, and it finally stops, but you get on and it isn't actually going anywhere? If we had the words for everything - the right words - then there would not be anymore spaces in between to fill. Or feel.

You can't win all the time - no one ever does. There are times you feel like you've lost even though you've won, and when you feel like you've won even as you've lost.

Humans are sometimes more rants and rockets so if hatred consumes, people take a call to arms, and nobody is doing the work of love - go do it. Because this world is divided along lines and borders but we all share the same lines on our skin.

Beyond the night sky is a spectacular series of births and deaths that we will never see. The world is also a spectacular series of births and deaths that we will never see. When someone's light goes out, millions across the globe will not even know of it - do not accord yourself too much of an importance, and yet know that we all still existed spectacularly, but only as a series.

The most beautiful thing around here is the human smile - that's why you should always make people laugh. The greatest gift of comedy is the smile.

You will find yourself performing autopsies on conversations you've had and yet there are some silences that you'll be happy to be familiar with. Learn to remember them, and maybe, you'll put the coroner out of a job.

Many a time it's the people who make it all worth the trouble. There are those who stand on stilts and walk on water but there are also those who will pull you over the line; the ones that will be the little pick-me-ups when you're nothing but a get-you-down. These people will tell you remarkable things in remarkable ways - they make the best of days.

Keep writing, because it's the only way you know how.

--
It's easy to do all this "Note to Younger Self"  kind of thing sounding like you're wiser and clearer about things. The truth is, 18 years hardly gives you all the answers - and perhaps even 80 years won't either. I guess if we had the answers then there would be no need for questions, and no need to do the all the living that could be done.

He shoots, he scores (but sometimes he misses)

They are in the Final. Year on year we went back to that same sports hall in that same far-flung place with the same people and their same antics, thinking hoping willing that in time to come, it would be our turn. For them, now a six-year-old dream is now a reality.

And like all six-year-olds, it tells me the darned'est things. I am not sure how, throughout this period of watching them compete on that stage, this six-year-old - in its wondrous capacity for questions people may never be able to answer - asks me how I feel. 

There are parts of you that obviously wish you could be there, running, screaming, fighting - diving into every single loose ball. But there is also that all-consuming, immense thing inside when you see those guys you went to the same sports hall in that same far-flung place with, doing what they do in that same sports hall in that same far-flung place six years later - some kind of overwhelming glow of light that comes on and gets you thinking, "These are the same guys. This is how far they've come." You cheer, you get up on your feet, you endure some nail-biting moments and if push comes to shove - if push comes to shove you clench your fists and pummel them through the air; a boxer running out of things to hit, and still giving it the fight.

To be injured is to set it in stone that the hurt is never all that simple. Too often I have found myself following the cadences of a bouncing basketball - I always have - except this past year it has taken on an illusory nature, and as the sound fades, you can almost make out the surface that it is bouncing on from the little inflexions and metres; how it feels its way around, how it absorbs the shock, how - despite your best intentions - its direction may sometimes be unpredictable, no matter how masterful your control.

It is hard to think that people were not made to move, or that this court was not made to be a stage. People were made to move in all its 28 by 15 metres of glory; for four - sometimes five - times a week, we would feint, slide, leap, roll, pirouette - run, with that reckless abandon which comes with space. To be your very self.

Evanescence is best served cold but you would think I could deal with it; the same guys you've made at least a thousand passes to at the same training sessions at the same court, the same one that was built to be a home - you've seen them at their best and their worst, as they have seen you too. The intensity ensures that for four hours of up and down, up and down - just as the ball bounces we go up and down the lengths of the court - people are on the brink of breaking apart; you, are on the brink of breaking apart. When people feel at their lowest, when they think they haven't got anything left inside, they're tempted to cheat tempted to blame tempted to yell at everyone in their way

please, only your mind needs to know there is in fact so much left - so often that's proven true; when that knee feels like it's about to collapse but you want to make that last lap, when you are no longer sure about the air in your lungs but you are sure of the shared mettle in your minds

No - sometimes the mind is not enough. Sometimes you can only watch from the side, helpless but hopeful, as six-year-olds grow up before you.

--

I recently performed a piece at a spoken word event - and it's all still rather surreal - with my friend Kim. You can check out the transcript here.

Ground Control to Major Tom

He peeked at his watch - not that he needed to; no, he just wanted to be sure he knew something.

She took a glance at the mirror - not like she had not done so a thousand times before; she just needed to believe it was still her.

They checked out the lyrics of a song - not that they had forgotten the words; they just had to know whether they meant what they sang.

We looked up at the sky - not because we weren't sure if it was there, but because we wondered
we really wondered
what was holding it all up.

--
Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Wasteland

Sometimes I wish for the Earth to stop spinning
for the sheer madness to hold
for people to give less of a fuck
and give more
more

of themselves

We're all more or less
                                           dying