golden grey
Too soon, it is midnight. Too quickly, it is time to sink down into the sweet molasses of slumber. Yield to an enclosure, hide beneath comfort, and haul yourself out after an internal promise for five more minutes. Give in, give up, it is too easy to lose track of an Ultimate Purpose. When days are to-do lists and deadlines and putting out fires in a forest of parched barks, every strike-through feels like a home-run, you forget it was a game you never wanted to play in the first place. It is hanging on like a rubber glove, smooth to the touch, fitted but flaky. Chemicals, and the smell of inorganiks, the artifishuh, I pull it on anyway, and allow it dress me, cloying and cold, and feed me with a wrinkled nose. Some days, I warm up to it, but it gets sticky and suffocating. I already feel stuffy enough in my own skin: I pick and pull at it beneath the second surface, and the people around think it is an insect bite or jumpy beans. But maybe everybody feels the same way; it just gets muffled under the layers.
I have forgotten how to write about things that are not grey. Nowadays, I fall asleep thinking that the bed is a coffin, and sooner rather than later, I would wake up and realize that this is the piddling end, and it is game over, because I hadn't wanted to play the whole time and I had squandered the golden token. It gets colourful with you around, but I must be my own palette too. What had I cared for before? Many things were moving, but recently, I have been filing away my emotions and memories, flagging them as KIV, to be reviewed another day, when I can sit down and breathe and not gurgle with water. (I later spend those hours before a screen, because autumn means tv, and it is my favourite season of seasons). Long runs drag on for too long, and I grow annoyed at the glistening faces, because surely, one of these people are Horrible Petty People, and I am getting astounded at how many there are out there. The HPP has made contact with civilization and infiltrated the ranks; prepare for combat with word-pons of passive aggression! Good, you've succeeded in only blowing up your own heart chambers.
Given the hours spent away from home, I try to make it up by observing my grandmother more. She tucks in the creases of her dress, and tugs its edge towards her knees. It is a shade of deep purple faded to lilac, smells of Softlan and daytime naps, straggly threads that hinted at un-hemmed lines. Home is home, but modesty is always. She spoke of the fair manners of her granddaughter-in-law, beaming with pride, before setting it up with a take-down of other people. It is a heart-shaped cushion for needles to stick into, that's always how I feel: lovelovelove stung with the suddenness of vitriol. I still haven't gotten used to it, although I can foresee the trajectory of fresh-eyed wonderment curdling into a bitter cheese. Give in, give up. She clapped her hands, at one of the many dramatic plot twists in Taiwanese soap operas, as I was reeling. "I have been watching shows since I was fifteen", and my mind drew a blank. Televisions in Singapore during the 1950s, that mustn't be very common. "Where?", I asked before scuttling off to gather clothes for bathing. "Street performances! It was only five cents last time. My mother used to", the end of her sentence was drowned out as I dragged the bathroom shutters across. I was pulsating with perspiration, and onions in Indian curry hadn't helped my general fragrance; I had to bathe! The noise from the TV had been dulled to a mere hum. I creaked the door open again: "I'll ask you about it again later!", shut the door, and sighed with satisfaction as rivulets shimmied down the inner skin. I have not, and I have been only feeling half bad about it.
Maybe I write so much about my grandmother because she has spent her youth and earlier years in brackets and question marks, never full-stops or exclamations. I owe it to her, my debt to her time, my hope for her existence to be prose and permanent, borne of an era that could not read and sang with the radio to get through the day. Maybe I want the same for me too.
I have forgotten how to write about things that are not grey. Nowadays, I fall asleep thinking that the bed is a coffin, and sooner rather than later, I would wake up and realize that this is the piddling end, and it is game over, because I hadn't wanted to play the whole time and I had squandered the golden token. It gets colourful with you around, but I must be my own palette too. What had I cared for before? Many things were moving, but recently, I have been filing away my emotions and memories, flagging them as KIV, to be reviewed another day, when I can sit down and breathe and not gurgle with water. (I later spend those hours before a screen, because autumn means tv, and it is my favourite season of seasons). Long runs drag on for too long, and I grow annoyed at the glistening faces, because surely, one of these people are Horrible Petty People, and I am getting astounded at how many there are out there. The HPP has made contact with civilization and infiltrated the ranks; prepare for combat with word-pons of passive aggression! Good, you've succeeded in only blowing up your own heart chambers.
Given the hours spent away from home, I try to make it up by observing my grandmother more. She tucks in the creases of her dress, and tugs its edge towards her knees. It is a shade of deep purple faded to lilac, smells of Softlan and daytime naps, straggly threads that hinted at un-hemmed lines. Home is home, but modesty is always. She spoke of the fair manners of her granddaughter-in-law, beaming with pride, before setting it up with a take-down of other people. It is a heart-shaped cushion for needles to stick into, that's always how I feel: lovelovelove stung with the suddenness of vitriol. I still haven't gotten used to it, although I can foresee the trajectory of fresh-eyed wonderment curdling into a bitter cheese. Give in, give up. She clapped her hands, at one of the many dramatic plot twists in Taiwanese soap operas, as I was reeling. "I have been watching shows since I was fifteen", and my mind drew a blank. Televisions in Singapore during the 1950s, that mustn't be very common. "Where?", I asked before scuttling off to gather clothes for bathing. "Street performances! It was only five cents last time. My mother used to", the end of her sentence was drowned out as I dragged the bathroom shutters across. I was pulsating with perspiration, and onions in Indian curry hadn't helped my general fragrance; I had to bathe! The noise from the TV had been dulled to a mere hum. I creaked the door open again: "I'll ask you about it again later!", shut the door, and sighed with satisfaction as rivulets shimmied down the inner skin. I have not, and I have been only feeling half bad about it.
Maybe I write so much about my grandmother because she has spent her youth and earlier years in brackets and question marks, never full-stops or exclamations. I owe it to her, my debt to her time, my hope for her existence to be prose and permanent, borne of an era that could not read and sang with the radio to get through the day. Maybe I want the same for me too.