Thursday, August 17, 2006
Change
"yes, maggi mee hair," she confirms.
i chuckle and pay her a compliment 12 years late.
-----
my sis and i were on errands to bukit bintang. her friend was free, we met for lunch, and at the car park by jalan alor, they hug and twitter and squeal.
"u're still not married? i'm already divorced!" she laughs to my sister.
it sounds much better in concise cantonese, with its stronger flavours of the flippant and the ironic. i am mildly surprised and interested, yet feeling that i should not be. she looks... different, so much that i think i've got the wrong person. i am mostly quiet throughout. they catch up over lunch and coffee. we 'catch up' over cigarettes on the balcony at her place. sis sits in the closeted living room browsing photos on the comp, her back to us, skinny, shapeless, bamboo-thin arms on two knobs of shoulder.
"has le ever put on weight? she's so skinny," she says.
"we never expect her to," i reply.
smile, pause, pull. twin jets of smoke cruise toward the skyline and disappear into grey evening haze.
"u're skinny as well. i couldn't recognize u."
she nods.
"did u used to have curls? curly hair?" my finger illustrates a coil beside my left ear.
a little calculation and we come up with: 12 years. since we last met, since that singular dinner with my family and sis's college friends, when she was that cheek-y girl with the lush hair. now she wears it short with a full fringe, and i am taller by a whole head, then some. again i am struck by how paths conjoin and flare, away and out, to converge again like a tangle of maggi mee on that sunny day in jalan alor. when u jump a chasm in time like that, the stark contrast of wild Change offers u a taste, just a glimpse of the supernatural workings beyond mortal imagination.
her son is 6 years old.
i chuckle and pay her a compliment 12 years late.
-----
my sis and i were on errands to bukit bintang. her friend was free, we met for lunch, and at the car park by jalan alor, they hug and twitter and squeal.
"u're still not married? i'm already divorced!" she laughs to my sister.
it sounds much better in concise cantonese, with its stronger flavours of the flippant and the ironic. i am mildly surprised and interested, yet feeling that i should not be. she looks... different, so much that i think i've got the wrong person. i am mostly quiet throughout. they catch up over lunch and coffee. we 'catch up' over cigarettes on the balcony at her place. sis sits in the closeted living room browsing photos on the comp, her back to us, skinny, shapeless, bamboo-thin arms on two knobs of shoulder.
"has le ever put on weight? she's so skinny," she says.
"we never expect her to," i reply.
smile, pause, pull. twin jets of smoke cruise toward the skyline and disappear into grey evening haze.
"u're skinny as well. i couldn't recognize u."
she nods.
"did u used to have curls? curly hair?" my finger illustrates a coil beside my left ear.
a little calculation and we come up with: 12 years. since we last met, since that singular dinner with my family and sis's college friends, when she was that cheek-y girl with the lush hair. now she wears it short with a full fringe, and i am taller by a whole head, then some. again i am struck by how paths conjoin and flare, away and out, to converge again like a tangle of maggi mee on that sunny day in jalan alor. when u jump a chasm in time like that, the stark contrast of wild Change offers u a taste, just a glimpse of the supernatural workings beyond mortal imagination.
her son is 6 years old.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
ghost of crushes past
i dreamt a mishmash of dreams and awoke with a start.
i flipped the laptop on and typed.
just like how it should be.
the stage: sri kl. the players: people i've not met in a damn long while. no spreadouters, but friends of the hi-bye with whom i've forged no real connection.
i remember no colour from the corridor. no courtyard of two-toned brown, no jadegreen tables, no faded gold roof. it was like it was all there, yet not there, the sort of things too routine to be noticed. we leaned on the low whitewashed wall and looked out pensively, as if to scry the future from the bow of a ship.
in these exact words, deborah said, "there's no option that we could be together."
it took me a while to interpret that. yes i remember a sentence - word for word - in a dream - from a girl i've forgotten about in years. the irony does not stop there, for i know i went to sleep thinking about wl, yes even in my dream. so what i did, i told her about her, and she knocked my head softly with hers and gave me a mysterious smile - a smile feminine and sinister, the kind a male cannot hope to understand. i went on and on - which was a lot, too much really - and after a while she walked off seemingly uninterested. i trailed after, telling what she would care to listen. we passed roland, and she went on back into class.
in a corner outside a classroom, roland was repairing a typewriter. i stopped with a o_0, then asked if i might take a photo of it. i went back and hollered, stopping the classroom chaos, "anyone has a camera?" two people volunteered. the first person was a blur, he held a generic digital camera, while the second belonged to waiseng: a professional manual big thing only he could use. i chose the professional manual big one, which had a telescopic lens which looked kinda phallic.
i never knew what happened to roland's photo or waiseng's camera. we engaged in a water fight with the teacher, some alien guy i cannot place. and in the aftermath deborah took me aside, arm over my shoulder. i threaded mine unthinking over her delicious waist. she was still taller than me, damnit. she gestured to this notice on our communal corkboard, "let's go to reluctance camp and we can make a free speech."
the fuck? totally surreal. then it hit me it might be a church camp. was that what she meant when she said there was no option? i've known of vehement, idealist christians who do think like that, 'i can't be with a non-christian'. what the hell's reluctance camp anyway? who knows? who cared? for that moment...
kamala walked in. the stately poise, the grace, the perpetual smile, the beautiful, almost ethereal, and tall, very tall, kamala. she spoke to everyone, bathing them in her warm smile like the queen of hearts. "kamadevi," i stammered. she hugged me in a kinda maternal way, which was kinda disturbing becoz i suddenly realized i was damn short. and i saw her stomach was flat. "the second one's here? come and gone?" peeved, she snapped, "what are u saying?!" and i had to rephrase nicely, "i mean, has come... into the world?"
she did not say anything, but went to the wall with notes on it. notes of the stupid things i've done, silly things i've said to girls, the culmination of all my embarrassment. these two went through them, chuckling and chiding, "still a little boy." it was then i saw i was truly a kid still, although imbued with my adult memories so far. and it was then i awoke, in half a cold sweat, their laughter still ringing faint like a spook.
i flipped the laptop on and typed.
just like how it should be.
the stage: sri kl. the players: people i've not met in a damn long while. no spreadouters, but friends of the hi-bye with whom i've forged no real connection.
i remember no colour from the corridor. no courtyard of two-toned brown, no jadegreen tables, no faded gold roof. it was like it was all there, yet not there, the sort of things too routine to be noticed. we leaned on the low whitewashed wall and looked out pensively, as if to scry the future from the bow of a ship.
in these exact words, deborah said, "there's no option that we could be together."
it took me a while to interpret that. yes i remember a sentence - word for word - in a dream - from a girl i've forgotten about in years. the irony does not stop there, for i know i went to sleep thinking about wl, yes even in my dream. so what i did, i told her about her, and she knocked my head softly with hers and gave me a mysterious smile - a smile feminine and sinister, the kind a male cannot hope to understand. i went on and on - which was a lot, too much really - and after a while she walked off seemingly uninterested. i trailed after, telling what she would care to listen. we passed roland, and she went on back into class.
in a corner outside a classroom, roland was repairing a typewriter. i stopped with a o_0, then asked if i might take a photo of it. i went back and hollered, stopping the classroom chaos, "anyone has a camera?" two people volunteered. the first person was a blur, he held a generic digital camera, while the second belonged to waiseng: a professional manual big thing only he could use. i chose the professional manual big one, which had a telescopic lens which looked kinda phallic.
i never knew what happened to roland's photo or waiseng's camera. we engaged in a water fight with the teacher, some alien guy i cannot place. and in the aftermath deborah took me aside, arm over my shoulder. i threaded mine unthinking over her delicious waist. she was still taller than me, damnit. she gestured to this notice on our communal corkboard, "let's go to reluctance camp and we can make a free speech."
the fuck? totally surreal. then it hit me it might be a church camp. was that what she meant when she said there was no option? i've known of vehement, idealist christians who do think like that, 'i can't be with a non-christian'. what the hell's reluctance camp anyway? who knows? who cared? for that moment...
kamala walked in. the stately poise, the grace, the perpetual smile, the beautiful, almost ethereal, and tall, very tall, kamala. she spoke to everyone, bathing them in her warm smile like the queen of hearts. "kamadevi," i stammered. she hugged me in a kinda maternal way, which was kinda disturbing becoz i suddenly realized i was damn short. and i saw her stomach was flat. "the second one's here? come and gone?" peeved, she snapped, "what are u saying?!" and i had to rephrase nicely, "i mean, has come... into the world?"
she did not say anything, but went to the wall with notes on it. notes of the stupid things i've done, silly things i've said to girls, the culmination of all my embarrassment. these two went through them, chuckling and chiding, "still a little boy." it was then i saw i was truly a kid still, although imbued with my adult memories so far. and it was then i awoke, in half a cold sweat, their laughter still ringing faint like a spook.
