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

初一

Once a year, there are as many shoes as there are people.

Once a year, life is caught in a postulating pause. It's as if the passage of time is more pronounced, less subtle; more effect and less cause.

I still remember the days when my brother, cousin and I would be playing in our aunt's 'Lego Room' at these yearly affairs. 太婆 would walk in, her smile so nurturing it punishes the austere face of the wall, before sitting down and telling us in Cantonese, "Xiu peng yao, tai po kar lei mon hong bao."

On this day, however, 太婆 merely sits up and wonders aloud, "Erng ji bin gor da bin gor" ("I've forgotten who's who"). When we pay her our respects, we introduce ourselves. She remembers little.

Today, we aren't in the play room. 太婆 can no longer walk at will. Perhaps ninety-four 'yearly affairs' later one seeks, in watching people go about their own ways, an odd assurance.

So let me assure you, 太婆, let me assure you and your daughter, our grandmother - who tears when she realises that it's exactly thirty years ago that her two sons were taking their A and O Levels, just as my brother and I are this year - let me assure you that when you both have long forgotten, that when your memory is lost to age, I will introduce 'us' to you again and again, for as many times as it takes; that when the past tempts you, eludes you, forsakes you - I will weave coherence into your confusion.

There will be as much sense as there are shoes.

Come on, now - we have so much catching up to do.

Q&A

You may not want to barge in through the chimney
'Cos at least Opportunity knocks at the door.

We'll put out the milk and the cookies
We'll sit by the tree with bated breath
But Age will serve to tell us
That it's another no-show;

For silver hair live out our golden years
Before our bronzed skin is taken
By the things we fear.

Eyes will glisten and
Hearts will listen
As radios speak of
A Berlin night of terror
After Aleppo waited in horror
and the world didn't seem to bother.

Santa,
Santa
For all your gifts
Your hand-crafted blessings to Mankind
- does world peace happen to be
one of them?

I know
they say everything is nicer in
black and white
But we're all still after colour,
chasing rainbows we cannot ride.

To paint is to taint but to sketch,
To sketch
is a means of drawing hope
from our deepest reserves and sometimes
Sometimes
That's not a bad thing.

Dust the dirt off your carousel
Whisper
Shout
(Sound like you mean it)
There is plenty
to be Merry about.

In time gone by

If Dream had a best friend it'd be the acrid smell that rain leaves - no, hangs - in the air, suspended not by wires and ropes but nagging persistence and a little companion called Hope.

If Dream had a face it'd be nondescript; the kind which gives little away.

If Dream had eyes they would be soulful like dirt, and you could look into them, and at that very moment you look into them you would see into a world of possibilities. They'd just be a vision, in a dark, extensive, elusive experience beneath his eyes.

If Dream had a hobby, it'd be running, so no one could ever catch him (but they'd all keep on chasing).

If Dream had a dream it'd be made up of the things he fears the most, and yet it takes courage to fear.

If Dream had a favourite colour it'd be blue because the sky is the limit - it's just that there's no one to tell us there's nothing up in it.

If Dream had one last day on Earth the planets would all stop spinning and watch with wry smiles on their faces; time will play a fool, and Dream will lend himself to the very air he breathed, slowly carrying him beyond existence.

Fortune's always hiding

No moon is too blue,
and yet no flag too white
You join this late game
of darts and sights.

Gaiety glances are shot

and questions abound

But they're cunningly cerebral

And it's loss that I've found

Words have a curious way

Of reigning themselves in

Absent then, of course, are

The things I truly mean.

To keep another's words

In a time-tested safe,

And to think they keep yours

Takes a measure of faith.

When silence glares at you
with its head in the clouds
You begin to wonder
if thinking's allowed.

(What's worse...)

Happy endings are a problem

We can never mend, for

Whatever happened to

Being happy before we end?