podeam

The time it takes for the horn to blare.

I’m scurrying, printing schedules and papers and documents and speeches and notes and cases, and reading the schedules and papers and documents and notes (but no, not the cases just yet).

Tiny scratches of ink, squeezing four pages on a single side of a paper, double-side printing, save the trees! But it’s all right, really, that the text is tinier than most periods period. Because it matches my handwriting, period.

I’m panicking, checking and rechecking everything I have. Neat little piles that become messy piles after I try neaten them out, looking at the weather and the distance and the little fiddly things that tickle the side of your hips when you wear a pair of jeans that are just a little too snug.

I’m leaving for New York in the morning, to pretend to be grown-up. While pretending to be young and bold.

I look at my schedule and look at my calendar and look at myself. It looks like I haven’t left much time for New York in New York.

Still. I’m off to New York in the morning.

Run Spot, run.

Today was the Standard Chartered Marathon 2007 you know, maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t have picked a full marathon. It doesn’t really make much sense to attempt 42km at your very first try, does it?

Well. I’m glad I don’t have sense.

It was bloody amazing. Absolutely brilliant fun. My knees are screaming bloody murder, but I could be floating on clouds for all I know. I fucking love the endorphins!

The absolute best part of the run was coming down Shenton Way, where you speeding down the road, the glorious office buildings looming all around, with a blissful breeze whipping in your face, and a band joyfully blaring a march, and spectators cheering you on.

I had the stupidest grin on my face the entire time, I swear.

Only bit I regret is not giving a good ol’ TP OEI when I saw Temasek Poly’s Blazers cheering for the runners, but hey! Next time!

Of course, it’s not to say that the run was a breeze. It was a walk in the park, but very literally so: I hit the wall for most of the East Coast Park route, and ended up walking. Still, that bit was glorious fun, for chatting up with random peoples and making promises to meet at the finishing line (that I never kept, but only because I couldn’t remember who was whom). Helps to have long legs, too; I didn’t lose too much time with the brisk walking.

Next year next year next year. Maybe I should try something new. Like actually running before the marathon. That might help! And getting a bloody hair-band. My ipod died on me 5km in (all the jiggling, I bet), but I had to keep my headphones on: it kept the hair out of my eyes! Shh, but the end of the ‘phones were tucked into my shorts.

Yes, there’s very little coherence to this, but I’m still bubbly and excited and achy and high. Damn.

doodels (har har)

citrus

This is getting ridiculous. One dream is enough, thank you very much; I’m aware enough of my current status without my subconscious pounding it into my brain.

I understand the whole trip ending in a romantic kiss (sad lonely bastard, duh) that I actually had to reach up to receive (sad it’s only a dream, eh?). I even understand the trip being an investigative reporting thingum (see what happens when you ponder assignments?).

But the bloody swimming in bloody marmalade? I don’t even like marmalade.

space explorer

I went to Jupiter today, how exciting. The air was different, the land was different, the people were different. I wonder if you could call them people, but I’ll call them people. Jupitians doesn’t roll off the tongue. Jupes? Jupites?

But back to the air. It smelt different and felt different; like there was more in the air than just air. The ground too, was just air; Jupiter is a large gaseous mass, isn’t it? There are many other gaseous masses, but that’s usually just because of beans. This, now this, this place was special. You could still splooge around the soggy ground, feet sinking and staining, as you make your way around.

I think the Jupitians have a special sense, another sense; there seemed to be something I missed. I was never able to figure out what it was that got them riled and got them wild.

I’ve been to very many planets, an alien on alien worlds. This was the first time, however, I wasn’t afraid. I was an alien on an alien world, yes, but I was there only because a Jupite had brought me there.

And I trust that silly Jupe.

reprieve

Yes, it has been a long time, and yes I have been neglecting this. It’s hard to fall back on the rather sly I’m-too-cool-and-busy-to-have-time-to-write excuse of being too caught up with life, for life seems to be passing me by.

Being too young and too old all at the same times seems to be a rather flaccid joke played by gods too bored with the chess-game manipulation of life; if The Life of Meâ„¢ were a game, it’ll be one of those; you know, with alcohol and naughty doodles in red markers and not a trace of lucidity involved.

How’s that for teen angst?

–

It is good to be free of certain shackles, to grow and see and wonder what it is that one can do. If life were worth living, is it worth examining? Rushing for meetings between meetings before meetings after meetings, I can’t help but very sedately reflect that all this had bloody hell be worth it.

–

I’ve started running again, I’ve missed running, the thumpathumpathumpa of feet thumping on cement, in the middle of the night when you’re the only one running in the midst of prisons and camps where you’re the only one running with the amazing freedom one feels when you’re the only one running where you’re the only one running, and there’s nothing to distract you from you, other than you.

I haven’t truly realised how little I’ve thought in the past months, little thoughts or big thoughts. I worry I can’t think anymore, and that’s worrying, for all I have to redeem myself is the think.

If I were a poet or an artist or an artiste – the e makes all the difference, trust me – it wouldn’t matter, for aesthetics shields cognisance. But if the prose won’t flow, and dribble words as does the mind dribble thoughts, the ugly have no reason to exist.

You know what, I really am too busy with life to write about it. My main preoccupation is wondering where it went.

Aatha.

The conch was sounding, this booming foghorn like cry, except more plaintive and more musical; a foghorn I guess it was, parting the gloom into the afterlife, as we carried her body after the conch bearer.

Cries of “Govinda” filled the air, to be echoed by those of us carrying the body. I had no idea what it meant, have no idea what it means, but it felt like the most fitting thing to do. I cried out “Govinda”, my voice ringing with the others’ and echoing in the corridor we were in, and with my voice left anguish and pain and sorrow.

Tiles felt cold underfoot, and the airconditioning was freezing my bare body. Bare-bodied, I was wearing only the traditional Indian veshti, a length of unstitched cloth tied around my waist.

Or, in my case, around my hips. It was almost funny, for if I had wrapped it around my waist, it would have ended mid-calf. So around my waist it was, a cheap lavender thing provided by the casket company, which left cheap lavender smears on my legs after being ritually doused in water, and with holy thread slung around one shoulder. Sacred ash had been applied to me, three lines across my forehead, and on both forearms and both elbows and both pectorals and both ribs, holy ash that gleamed white grey against my brown flesh.

I was carrying an ornate silver pot of water, and with rosewater and flowers ornately added. Hoisted high above the heads of others, on my shoulder, and walking in a line with my cousins, also with their pots hoisted high above the head of others on their shoulders, our heads brushing the cloth we were supposed to walk under, the cloth that others were struggling and failing to lift high enough so that we could walk under it.

But now, hours and hours and hours and hours after we carried the pots on our shoulders, we carried out grandmother on those same shoulders.

I carried my grandmother in a cloth, to be ritually cleansed. I carried my grandmother in my arms, to be adorned with garlands. I carried my grandmother in a coffin, to be burnt.

She deserves an eulogy that is so much more articulate, she deserves the best writing I can write, but right now, I am dead. For she is.

I love you.

Murakami-ism

Have you read Kafka on the Shore? I met Oshima yesterday, or as close to Oshima reality can get. A librarian in a billowing white shirt, too soft to be crisp, black pants too dark to have shadows, and a black tie neatly cutting his torso length-wise.

He was interesting, intriguing, acerbically funny – I wish I got to talk to him, as opposed to merely witnessing him talk.

And all that I could think of is that I’ve met Oshima. Oshima is here.

–

Humour is something very personal, very intimate. You’re putting a part of you into another person, investing bits of your soul, with the sole (har har) intent of making that person laugh;

You have to care enough for that.

I am a funny person, I am; when I’m alone.

Coasting to a Stop

Not having anything to do forces you to actually look around and see what it is you are in, what it is you are, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

I get cranky and annoyed and be generally a bitch when I am home; I think I regret giving up just about all my duties in order to be free for internship.

I have been cranky and annoyed and generally a bitch to someone who has been there for me and for whom I have been there for and who takes the trains with me in the mornings (though we’ve managed that just twice so far) and I know it.

Virginia Tech

I passed out at the laptop after work, to wake up at three in the morning to see missed instant messages of HOW WAS THE FIRST DAY OF INTERNSHIP and dozens of the emails I fell asleep while replying and news that twenty one people had been shot at Virginia Tech.

Flipping on the television, the number’s believed to be bumped up to thirty two, by congressmen, and twenty nine in hospitals, with no numbers yet on the other injured, and anchors saying it is “a matter of worldwide concern, because there are 2000 international students in the school”.

I don’t know why this is so intensely, personally, excruciatingly important.

The American Elegy was enough to move me to tears when I first heard it performed live, before I found out its provenance.

Bush is about to give a statement, and the university is holding a press conference and. and. and.

This is more blood to the list. At least it’s blood people know about.