Returning to School

I went back to my faculty’s library on Thursday. I had to get a few books for a case. It felt so familiar even though there was construction going on (there is always construction going on in Singapore). It was very quiet, which was what I always loved and disliked about libraries. The quiet gives one the extra intimacy – you can almost feel the books breathing. But when it’s too quiet, it seems like all of life has fallen still and nothing feels real… and only when I exit the library again do I feel that something is returned to me.

It’s been a year and a few months since I graduated. Oh, lots of thoughts flew in and out of my head. I looked at the students around me. I wasn’t out of place. There weren’t many students around. It was early evening and the semester has after all just begun. Sometimes you get caught in your own life, you forget that you are only one wave of a big ocean… and the ocean will repeatedly repeatedly return to the shore, carrying with it greater and greater waves. I wanted to tell them so many things. Ask lots of Questions. Have Long Lunches. Take Conflicts of Law. Enjoy yourself. It’s true, the grass always appear greener on the other side… so sleep in your grass while dreaming of everything (oh! The things the things!) that lies ahead.

Yearning

On days when I’m feeling down, not just the average low, but the equivalent of a minus two hundred and eight, I think of a pond with ducks. Perhaps pond is the wrong word because it evokes images of something round, circular, manageable. Bigger than a stream, but smaller than what I imagine most rivers to be – wide enough for a proper-sized bridge. Actually, now I’ve started to imagine it again, its a wide river, wide enough that the houses on the other side are about the size of my palm.

We were going to have our first picnic. It was late September. The Autumn that year was unpredictable, sunny one moment, frosty the next – so instead of guessing how good she would be feeling, we just planned it. I don’t remember the logistics now. We went to the supermarket. We made sandwiches. We bought chips and juice. We laid out a mat. G was late. We were hungry and ate first. I don’t remember the conversations now.

G left. We remained. I remember the large bag of bread we had left. We started throwing crumbs to feed the ducks that surrounded us. We started to name them. Oh, you gave such bad names. Two-face to a frowning duck. On hindsight, it was the only name I remember… not so bad after all I guess. We remained until it was too cold not too. I didn’t even bring a jacket that day.

There were so many happy days before and so many happy days after. Why do I always return to this day? The pond that is not a pond, the river that is not a river? Why every time I close my eyes and ask you if you miss this place, I think back of this moment? I think this was my last few moments of freedom.

I didn’t know how you felt then. But I was falling in love. Only starting to be aware of it. I had the choice. To continue falling or stop then. So, whenever I feel the equivalent of minus two hundred and eight, I go back to this moment. I would choose to remain even after G left. We would decide to feed the ducks with all the bread we had left. And, I would choose to fall for you.

House

I find out that House finally confesses his love for Cuddy:

Dr. Gregory House: I've made a decision... Being happy and being in love with you... makes me a crappy doctor.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy: Shut up! You're too drunk to end this relationship.
Dr. Gregory House: I am drunk, and I am also right. You have made me a worse doctor, and people are going to die because of that... and you... are *totally* worth it. If I had to choose between... between saving everyone or loving you, being happy. I choose you. I choose being happy with you. I will always choose you.

AND! That the actress acting as Cuddy is leaving House!

ON THE SAME DAY.

The pain of it all.

Heart Ache

Every time someone I love gets hurt or falls sick, my heart aches. It is a lie that love means sadness divided, for love multiplies everything. On some level, I believe we were born to get hurt. To learn about finiteness, that the physical state only lives so far. And only when one understands one's limits can one really face infinity - which lives as a seed of possibility in all of us. Knowing this, even an inkling of this, does not make it easier. We'll love, we'll fear and we'll hold hands in the dark.

The Appearance of Destiny

every tale in The Thousand and One Nights begins with an 'appearance of destiny' which manifests itself through an anomaly, and one anomaly always generates another. So a chain of anomalies is set up. And the more logical, tightly knit, essential this chain is, the more beautiful the tale. By 'beautiful' I mean vital, absorbing and exhilarating. The chain of anomalies always tends to lead back to normality. The end of every tale in The One Thousand and One Nights consists of a 'disappearance' of destiny, which sinks back to the somnolence of daily life ... The protagonist of the stories is in fact destiny itself

- Pier Paolo Pasolini

Westward Adventurer Satchel

I have a huge crush on Kate Spade's Westward Adventurer Satchel. I don't know if the crush stems from the bag itself or the idea of all the adventures I can go on it. It's such a good size for a weekend trip. A passport, a book, a wallet, some toiletries and a change of clothes. Sometimes I don't know if we love things for the things themselves or what they represent. At the end of the day, we may be only buying intangibles. One thinks if only I had a bag like this, I would be going on more adventures. And, I close my eyes and play a little pretend.

EDIT (16th August): I saw the bag in real life. Sadly, dreams are never what they seem.

said King Lear

so we'll live
and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies

Yesterday, a bunch of us gathered at C's house to celebrate her birthday. I couldn't recognise S. But when he started speaking, I practically screamed, "S!" Some people we recognise not by how they look like, but how they speak. I like that. I wonder if people recognise me by my hand actions or as another S once described, "mini forcefields". Later, in the night, after the security guard reminded us to keep our voices low, we were all very quiet as S told us his love story. Full of the freshness that only relationships that just started can have - the uncertainty of it all, the reinterpretation of all the past events to figure out when the thread of love started or even how it will unravel at all - will we last? Oh, please do. That sense of shared urgency and hope. His story went straight through my heart.

Another moment that made me smile was when He looked with amazement at Carrot (too many friends to initial as C) after she explained her thesis for her postgraduate studies. He said, "None of my friends are as cool. Some engineers, some bankers...." I laughed.

Oh, the un-coolness of how I have turned out. There was enough of the old, enough of the familiar, to see and remember our much younger selves running and laughing along C's house. As we started to pack up (because some of us had work the next day), our feet became completely wet. A group of very young teenagers started diving rapidly into the pool. Loud splash after loud splash. Someone said you had to be very young to do that.

And so we left, tupperwares and half-finished cakes, our feet soaked, our stories still unravelling.