nOt MuTUaLLy EXcLusiVe

Would someone who had never known democracy or political freedom miss it? Would you feel the loss of something you never had before? Would happiness not be happiness if there wasn’t also sadness? Would the darkness not be so painful if you did not know the joy of light?

Perhaps, it is because we have the capacity to be happy and sad that makes life. Maybe, it’s about mutual inclusion. That life only makes sense when you take the good and the bad together.

A friend once said, “You can’t just want the birds singing at your front porch without them also shitting on it.”

jUSt BrEAtHe

I made her a butterfly the other day. I wanted to give her something she could remember me by.

Actually, every time I visit, I would fold a paper crane for her. And she would keep them in this little box that she carries around with her. And she said she could count how many there are some day.

A friendship forms, over time. I tell her secrets I don’t tell anyone else. I feel safe with her. I trust her, with my life sometimes.

And she said, “Just breathe.”

dEliRiuM's dRaWiNG

aLPhaBEt SouP

Campbell’s Chicken Alphabet Soup. When I was little, I’d pick out letters to form words before I ate them, which made the whole soup-drinking experience that much more enjoyable. I don’t remember if I really liked the soup actually, but it was definitely fun trying to scoop all the alphabets that made up my name into the spoon (all 21 of them, and they all had to be in the same mouthful).

I don’t like beansprouts. I remember when I was in school, I would painstakingly pick out all the beansprouts from my fried noodles before I ate it. And then with the pile of beansprouts left behind, I would shuffle them around to form my initials and leave them on the plate like a declaration.

And every time I go into bookstores or gift shops selling bookmarks or keychains or magnets or notepads or stickers or any of such paraphernalia with names on them, I would always check if my name is around.

I am such a narcissistic freak!

fEAr

Fear is a strange and wild animal. It is a creature that roams mysteriously inside you. Sometimes, fear wears itself like a protective armour on you, keeping you safe from dangers unknown. Sometimes, fear rears its powerful head over you, making you do things you otherwise wouldn’t. Yet fear, is always so hard to grasp. At times irrational, at times logical. At times emotional, at times physical.

Fear, it is almost as if you can taste it in your cold sweat, feel it in your trembling tendons, see it in your eyes alight with fire, hear it in the pounding of your heart, hold it in your open arms.

What are you fearful of?

bLiND SpoTs

It is a little past 1am, and the night air is cool. Cold, in fact, my arms are sporting goosebumps. I hear crickets and cars. And the voices of toads after a day full of rain.

My spectacles cracked the other day. A deep angry line runs right through the middle of my right lens. I now peep at the world through two fragments of the lens hanging precariously together by the force of the frame.

And my blind spot prevents me from getting too giddy. The crack is so right in my face that I sometimes don’t see it. Like a lot of things I don’t see about myself. Perhaps because I don’t want to acknowledge that they are there. Perhaps I don’t know they are there.

But it’s important to confront your blind spots every once in a while.

fRieNDs

It is very misty today. Outside my window, I can’t even see the rooftops of the houses opposite me clearly. Like someone veiled a piece of white lace over the landscape. It must be terrible for burn victims to live through all the gauze and bandages.

Yet that which protects also prevents you from experiencing the world. Like loving yourself too little, or loving yourself too much.

And he asked, “Why do you have friends?”

a BrOKen-WinGeD biRD

I am a bird with a broken wing
I am a mockingbird that cannot sing

Life is heavy, life weighs me down
Life is sad, life makes me frown

She said to fight
But the light’s too bright

I am a bird that is too tired
I am a wind-up bird that’s come unwired

Please let me sleep
A slumber forever and so deep

dREaMs

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly

-- Langston Hughes

bEaDinG

Beading, is a skill that requires much focus and attention to detail. Looking through the pattern books, selecting a pattern that you like, counting out the beads, threading them, working with the beader’s tools… Often, it is an all-consuming task.

Beading, is also a very solitary skill. It is just you, and the beads, and nothing else matters while you are working on that project.

I like to be alone, but I don’t like being lonely.

cOMinG aGAiN

The darkness is coming back again. I can feel it. In my bones.

Isn’t it strange that in a world full of lights, that darkness can come creeping upon you so silently, stealthily, scarily? You would think that with all these artificial light that stretches our days into nights, that the darkness would retreat somehow, somewhere. But it doesn’t. It never does.

The darkness lays in wait. Always. For the opportunity to pounce again.

And I can feel it crouching, unknown, unknowing.

I wonder what the darkness will take with it this time?

dEaTh

We were discussing death the other day.

How suddenly some people die, and the regrets of those left behind.

How slowly some people die, and the pain they have to go through.

How some people don’t want to die, but cannot escape death. How some people want to die, but cannot escape life.

Like the man who jumped down 35 stories and did not die.

You know what’s worst? Life sucks, and you don’t die.

a QueStiON oF oWnERsHip

I was on the train today and I saw a lady studiously looking through various pieces of paper. She was all focused on the task at hand, and it intrigued me. And I realized she was looking for a maid.

The pieces of paper had things like height and weight and colour description (light or tanned or dark, I think I saw). It also had things like “What I can do” and “What I want to say to my prospective employer”, where the maid writes down things like “I can cook and look after kids and clean…”

I did not realise that this is part of the process of looking for a maid. Like looking through their CVs.

And suddenly I’m appalled. Since when have we earned the right to own other human beings?