when the rain clouds go away

Forecast for 2010: Limited and limitless.

9.17am. serangoon road. broadway hotel bus-stop. the world rejuvenates in 10 days. the baby cat paws up and down the pavement by the main road again, dancing alongside strangers alighting from the bus stop (the first time i saw her she was mocking the tourists), keeping up, giving up, sometimes earning a smile or two with some effort (a smile which properly wakes up stranger). shes (why not?) so skinny, body of grey and white. i may look grey and garbagey, but i do not sit and wait for your disposal, it seems she says. she eyeballs something that interests her, grovels her way under the fence, which doesn’t seem to fence anything but grass- and wet cockroach gapes from the puddle!- her lithe body makes it through. beyond the fenced up grass is a kindergarten school for baby humans, so it seems apt as apples for kitten to hang around here, restless and benign as the others. ah, the age when you mock the world, and not the other way around.

Filed under: musings, places, written word

blinking heart

Here’s a sneeze. Someone’s random wish–or a bothersome allergy? If someone’s random wish- who would it be, and for what reason, the pricze of a sneeze?

To this I ponder the ABCs.

A- I left (them:himher) a not too memory- not unpleasant: a warm glow in the recent drawers of the front-row cupboard -unpleasant: a stray thought first, and then a burgeoning corn I become.

B- My image is evoked amongst other thoughtful associations in the long eventful hours of a day, note: I am nothing much, nothing less, I could be functional utility.

C- I am the curator of awaited admiration, affection, obsession, the pirate’s plank of reasonable restraint, or?

A bothersome allergy. Born of me, and born by me.

I’ll have to wait for another sneeze.

…

..

.

And still not know.

Filed under: heartaches, quirks, written word

Inspired by Full Frontal

What happened to the day- I bossed the younger kids into acting in my improvised play about Sang Nila Utama and the Red lava Mountain.

This is the day-I enjoy the fact that I am behaving like an adult, watching a proper play but in fact contributing a share to people who live on dreams and passion.

One fine day- I will write my own Peter Pan to life , when the Lost Boys return. When?

How has today been?

Today is the day I planned on doing only one thing , but proceeded to fail to do. Today is the day I can summon no credible excuses for my lack of concentration- just simply can’t focus. Today is the day my favourite pohpiah at lunch fails to live up to standards- the sour old lady who sold them to me for extra 30 cents per piece couldn’t even give me two more decent slices of lettuce. Today is the day when my neurotic hunger pangs interfered with my work. Today is the day when I felt like I could not outlive the rest of the week. Today is the day I can see up till Sunday- I usually don’t go there- way too far ahead. Today is the day I go to bed an hour earlier from yesterday- and know it won’t make a big difference to how I feel about tomorrow. Today is the sum total of-

Filed under: after-shower-post, daily grind, written word

you don’t think its happening? it is.

I know, the things cannot be hidden- although few, but they are assorted- household items big and small, quite impossibly imaginary.

Please, the things cannot be sold- ageing, malfunctioning, mismatched, obliterating.

Simply, there is no place for all of their things here – these appendixes and clues to a nest.

There is no place for these things, but here. My passive income, their mounting bad debt. If I didn’t have to sell it now. I see no other choice.  Hard luck. They simply must go, them and their things.

The night is deceivingly peaceful. But night will break and come dawn, I will be the one to show them the door- the one responsible for hauling a family out of their rented home. She will curse me (She thinks I am rich), and my family (I have none), and my ancestry (I don’t know who). The children- they might look at me with helplessness, their faces might be blank with seeming indifference; they might be missing sschool tomorrow morning (obviously), but they are learning their harshest yet life lesson in return. God knows what.

They will be separated by night- the boys will be at a home, mother-and-daughter will be at a shelter. If she allows their break-up. If not, they will all be at the park, against elements, against all odds.

And I will be uncomfortably glad that by tomorrow night, their things will have disappeared. All of it will be gone, save a lonesome fold-out table they will leave behind, forgotten perhaps, at the void deck. Or perhaps it will be intended abandonment- too big to haul away, of no use anyway. Who needs a table in such circumstances?

The table doesn’t stay. The people don’t sit. The food will not be served. The clock and its hour will never pause at dinner-time. The family cannot be sustained. Because their things cannot stay.

But my kindness no longer has means. God knows.

Filed under: daily grind, heartaches, written word

Canon in D: Variations

Friday afternoon. One empty hour. She’s finished marinating the chicken, she has her soup on slow double boil. The washing has been folded, the house has been upkept. The children are napping. She knows at least the hour- this hour- is hers.

She fingers the curved veneered wood and places her fingers where it parts. Her fingers crouch and she lifts open to life – latent chords beneath a soft red cloth, protecting notes and chords that will invite music to sooth her ears and heart. The velvet red train is slowly rolled away to reveal slender black against white keys. She composes herself and flicks the mental songbook and decides, Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Firmly and rhythmatically, she coaxes the sleeping giant to life. The keys get lighter, her fingers fly and flirt, the tune emerging- a clear, strong and crisp manner initially, then achingly a repetitive song plays out.

The children must not be awoken. Her memories suffice, for there is no real melody. It is a silent hour of the afternoon, a piano lies only in the window of her soul, the music that soothes her heart comes from within, not from anywhere else. A bird cocks its head on a tree branch on a tree a hundred metres away from the four-storey building, it hears the silent melody. The insects stop their chatter- they pause and observe a tune never as loud as this. The lizard under the sofa opens a lazy eye and sees through the crack, the reflections of its lady owner’s feet against the sofa. Her foot taps.

Music like this, the lizard notes comes rarely in this house these days. Once, when her marriage was fresh as a bouquet and her babies were meek and her world was a lot less routine, and all her time was hers. Now her own laughing nineteen-year-old piano-playing-self is all but a ghost, except on rare afternoons like this. Rare hours like this…

Filed under: written word