:: Cinders ::

The furnace sat like a patient monster, a vision of brick-and-mortar ugliness, in the middle of the crematorium.

I would set its belly on fire with my stack of offerings; I would burn up all my 'hell money', and the greens and reds and golds would rustle into black ash as flames from my gas lighter hiss to life.

I would burn up my 'hell money'―and I would discard all logic and trust in the strange spiritual concept that the cinders will become discarnate, and they'll somehow transform into money for my grandfather in the next world. To buy another pack of fags, maybe. I thought wryly―ah, there it was, the winded sense of loss.

I talked to him as the pyre grew from a flint to a small inferno. I told him about Europe―and how sorry I am for missing his death anniversary. I told him about my father's grief and my mother's plight. I asked that my family will always keep his humour. I laughed a little, inwardly, at my awkward public sentiment. I teared a little as well, when I ripped open the lid of a can of beer, the way I did when he was alive. I poured him half―on the floor―and I drank the rest in a silent toast.

There is peace in my sadness.

The rain raged, as did my fever.

But nothing was going stop me from spending a Sunday afternoon with my grandfather, even if he is all but spirit ash.

***

11.16 p.m: I made my mother laugh. I couldn't hear it, really―she's lost her voice to the flu bug―but she hid her face in her hands like a child, and her eyes shone behind her reading glasses.

She cut me an apple. I made her toast. We took each other's temperature, and then we sat together in tender unison as I churned out yet another report for her, and she ploughed through yet another class of unmarked worksheets.

***

I had a good Sunday.

:: Nectar Dreams ::

"I'm a finger print on the window pane of a skyscraper...I'm so insignificant, I can't even kill myself." - Miles Raymond, Sideways.

Truth always has its way of becoming slightly hilarious. You laugh at it, with it; you become intimate with its immediate meaning, and you become entangled in the perspectives you draw from it with allusions to your own―usually unhappy―life. Perhaps happiness is like a brilliant bottle of Pinot Noir. An exclusive bouquet of taste, expansive and expensive, delicate in theory but resilient in its lingering fragrance. And always, always a little tart to the palate, before the woody notes of sweetness swirl into consciousness.

But happiness can also be a small thing. And for me, there's nothing more victorious than being in a darkened theatre, lost to noise, and being sucked into the dialogue of the movie. Thank you, Daniel―you've taught me more than you know, but the most legitimate and the most useful lesson from you is the ability to enjoy the script of a movie more than its visual exhibitions.

What did we used to say? A movie is a dialogue between the script writer and the audience, but the script is a monologue of the writer to himself. Artistic licence, you said. Artistic ego, I replied.

(And then you smiled that smile of yours―pale and pallid and almost shy―but your eyes sparkled with a prodigal satisfaction.)

And so, yes, Sideways is a brilliant script more than it is a fabulous movie―don't watch it for entertainment, but if you can, watch it and be entertained by the cutting, irrelevant humour that erupts from the characters who have been caressed tenderly by the same sad truths of life we all can identify with.

You see, that's why we laugh.

***

It's mental inertia taking over the flesh. Such a beautiful line, soulmate.
As for me: it's metal inertia taking over the flesh.

:: Smoke-choked closet ::

I feel curiously strangled,
When I laugh;
It’s like my soul doesn’t want to
Doesn’t care to
Can’t bear to
Erupt into that sort of cheap humour.

It’s a clown-faced doll that weeps
Or a clot of a tumour that keeps
Haunting, taunting me.

I have been robbed, it seems
Of my ability for small pleasures –
It’s all very difficult now, to bow
To the mirthless faces slashed with smiles;
Stop your air-kisses, I’m listless,
I bleed above my brows
When I laugh.

I don’t care to entertain, ascertain,
How you find my social health,
I have no wealth when I laugh,
You don’t make me rich – here and here,
I hear you knocking – you’re mocking
With that leer.

And when you laugh,
Perhaps you rumble inside
Or you grumble despite
That slash – a gash – yellow sash
On your face.

Oh we learn, how we learn
To laugh like that mad nettle that stings
We laugh at little things,
Oh how we laugh.

***

Madonna is the goddess of Caprice, I thought to myself irrelevantly as I sipped my wine. You're right though. I've fallen off the orbit; I am extinguished by a distant starquake. The music became torturous octaves of lyrical madness after a while, and my tongue was completely numbed to the taste of the wine.

3.09. Why why why. Fuck me sideways, Father Time, and get me out of here.

***

I'm still in fragments. My thoughts, my logic, my strength. They are all over the place today. Where are you? Are your wires shot too?

:: Elysium ::

Today. This day, last year.

My grandmother carassed his feet, swollen and useless, gently. "Jin,"she called him in the familiar, slightly commanding way. "Easy come easy go. Your children have grown up, and you have enjoyed your grandchildren long enough. They will take care of me. I want you to understand that you can go. You are in pain, and so are we. Easy come―" her voice cracked and tears came "―easy go." And that―his wife's permission―was his final call. He cried for the last time, his tears staining his sunken, weathered cheeks. Death closed its fingers around the room, its pale digits sad but firm, small in force but immeasurable in impact. His hand was still in mine. "Good bye, Gong gong." I said, smiling through my tears. And then my heart broke with loss.

My dear Marlboro man. I hope you're enjoying that stick of methol and that shot of whiskey in an elysium that is free of pain and our stupid human struggles. And there are times―when I'm on the brink of making a silly decision―I can almost imagine you slapping me across my head, the way you used to when I was a child, with tender exasperation and that paternal twinkle in your eye. I could never lose you, because you're in all of us.

公公，安息吧！

:: Satire ::

I fell and banged my shin and my flesh screamed with pain.

Dazed by the wind, only the wind; The leaves flying, plunge: you who have wilted by the wall, the twilight uncertainty of an animal―

(Poem by Allen Tate, what was the title now? Ode to the Confederate Dead, after World War II―I think.)

―'Jean, the budgets have to be done now.'―
―'How do you get this to them again?'―
―'Lunch with Mr. W. 12 p.m., Kuria, under your name.'―

(But then we speak prose of business necessity―not quite so pretty, and no need for imagination; business routines can stink like the carcass of a dead animal.)

Those midnight restitutions of the blood; you know―the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage―

(Tate continues in my mind, his chapped verses charfe and sharp and broken. He mixes imagery beautifully. My shin throbs with cheerful obstinancy. Oh, the word shin―did you know did you know―shin is also the 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet? How artful, our language.)

I flip on excel―money in cells. How apt! We are formulas in our own prisons. I grinned inwardly at my childish satisfaction―I am a study of passion when it comes to my random philosophies. Pity passion doesn't pay.

―'This was designed to get customers to buy cars!'―
―'CPT prices...up by 250 percent...increase forecast!'―
―'Jean. Now.'―

(It's very distressing really; a turbulent wave of thoughts is weaving a crown of thorns on my head. Pain is a chorus, everyday now―the kidneys, sometimes; the afternoon migraines, the rumble of a chest pain, and yes, now, goddamned it, the throbbing of the shin too. Post-scriptum to self: but I like pain though. Never like a lightning flash of pain to remind you how useless this flesh, this form, really is. Why can't I be a cyborg? A metal sheet of robotic perfection.)

Dream Song 29! By John Berryman. Strange one, him. Bit of an Auden soul to his lines though, even if he is―was?―a macabre master of abrupt rhythm, and doesn't―didn't? ah fuck, whatever―write with Auden's poise. Graceful but grim. What was that line? "And there is another thing he has in mind / like a grave Sienese face a thousand years / would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of / Ghastly, with open eyes, he attends, blind." Do you know? He's writing about an axe murderer.

―'You didn't mark my English homework for me!'―
―'He's very upset you know. Talked abot you and how you're just going away...'―
―'Jean! Jean, that's your phone going off.'―

***

All relationships, when they die, should be buried in a proper grave.
Then when the time comes when you need to mourn for its passing―say, when the turn of time flips, in that inevitably polite fashion, to a date that once held so much significance to you (and you!), you could go and read a nice little poem (When You Are Old, an old Yeats favourite) to the ashes of a forgotten love.

:: Bottleneck ::

Most women in their late forties fend off Father Time with fear and sour melancholy―ah, lost youth―but Ms. K is a cheerful exception. She welcomes him with opened arms and heaving bosom―fuck you, Mother Nature―and while she hides the middle-age spread under brightly-coloured jackets and matronly skirts, she spills her ample cleavage with generous joy, and snaps on jewellery with the loud energy of a misspent youth.

I like her. She's our receptionist―and she's a joshing antithesis to the straightlaced ways of our business world. Her voice is polished to hotel-desk precision, her Os rounded and her Gs firm and sharp, dipped low for a certain British emphasis. She isn't clipped nor accented, and she's not naturally well-spoken, but she's been here too long not to be good at what she does.

'Hello, sayang!' She sings at me, her eyes wide with mascara. I look at her and I see Boy George sometimes―the same edgy sexuality, and the same pent-up electricity. She's a live-wire, a doll with a string, a woman longing to be loved.
'Hello gorgeous,' I reply, narrowing my eyes with fake sultriness.

We giggle. She wriggles in her seat.

'My boy, you know―he's giving me such a headache. I found an empty cigarette box in his drawer yesterday. Susah lah. Marlboro Reds, you know―the really heavy kind.'

I grimace sympathetically. Ms. K lost her husband eight years ago, and she's been bringing up her two kids―I use the term loosely; her son is probably older than me, and her daughter is just a few years younger―by her lonely, repressed self.

'No father, what to do. No role model, you see.' She continues, fingering the plastic hoop earrings she has on. Those eyes. Always blank after the ripples of brash laughter have left; sometimes hued with strangled hope, sometimes keen with hurt when she knows she's being patronised. But mostly blank, with a famished sheen to them.

I try to draw her out―talk to her as I collect an overseas parcel, joke with her when I walk pass her, praise her style or her taste in jewellery. I sometimes sense her jealousy, when she hands me a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates―'You know, when I was your age, I also had many admirers'―but I know she genuinely finds me harmless, and young, and she indulges in our conversations with a languid voltage, charged with loneliness and reluctant neediness.

Perhaps she's strange, by our bigoted standards of normalcy; maybe she's unattractive, when measured against our impossible benchmarks of beauty. But aren't we all?

***

Leave me alone.

:: Dog days ::

Oh, the weather. I'm tired and parched; the sun is a cosmic heathen, a lunatic mad with rabid power. My grandmother made ginseng tea, sweetened with figs, to ward off the heat―her maternal instinct to overcome nature is both tender and amusing. 'Must drink ah, to keep the heat down,' she instructed over the phone. 'I put in extra red dates for you.'

Two hours of effort, three flasks of tea, and one very loving grandmother.

***

11.38, p.m. I placed a cup of ginseng tea―heated―on my mother's work desk. She nodded. Her exhaustion is poison ivy, tangling, dangling. I patted her back―bony, as it has been for years now―and I told her to sleep early. She shook her head no: a mother's work is never finished, and a teacher's duty is never done. Class 5K is not doing well, she said. She needed to plan a remedial syllabus for them. And then there's the Level Meeting to plan for. And then a Cultural Trip to budget for. And then―

'Are you very busy?' she asked suddenly.
Guilt grabbed at me with its rigid fingers. 'Well―yes.' Busy with social platitudes. A dinner here, a coffee there, friend after friend after friend.

I wanted to remind her about Europe―my trip is less than three weeks away―but the knives of my hedonistic selfishness were cutting flesh to bone. How can I help, how can I make your life better, how can I bring that girlish grin back into your eyes? Mechanically, she flipped open another exercise book, and in her gentle, absent-minded way, she smiled goodnight to me, her eyes watery with sleep.

Four units of workplan, two classes of worksheets, and one very selfless mother.

And a daughter who can't mop away her mother's exhaustion; a daughter who can't iron out the kinks in her father's life; a daughter who can't tutor her sisters in the discordant lessons of growing up.

:: Villainy ::

If there is nothing to write about, today, can I just write about things? Just things, you know―like the way the air outside is a lethal sheen of hot smog. I imagine the dust particles as dancing, torrid atoms, sticking to my skin, whispering into my hair, dripping sweat down the nape of my neck.

Like the bunch of grapes I bought from the supermarket―deceptively attractive, firm and plump with purple promise, but they turn out to be cutting and tart, as though the vines from which they were harvested from are heavy with sour tragedy.

Like the old lady slumped against the wall at the smoking lobby seventeen floors beneath my corporate (penal) colony, dragging on her cigarette with the passion one reserves for a lover or a child. She sits squarely on the bench, her loose, flowery blouse running over her thin body with distaste. Her cheeks sink with effort everytime she takes a puff; her lips are cracked with nicotine and flaky lipstick. I have never seen her without those old-fashion sunglasses, so I can't say what her eyes are like. But I imagine they tell some sort of story―she doesn't seem wretched or angry, just barren with lucid waste. Once upon a time―when I was an occasional worshipper of the nicotine god―I would have joined her. Perhaps I would ask her for a light; we might have ignited a conversation, along with the poisonous whorls of self indulgence.

Like the bird I saw the other day. Its song was eclipsed by the evening traffic. It was darting through the sky―low flung; the weight of the air was clamant pressure, and it couldn't struggle free―not with ease, but with animal intent. Sometimes you have wings, and you still cannot fly.

Like the pleasure of watching evening give way to night. When I flicked on this screen ten minutes ago, the sky was a child's painting―unkempt with fiery colours, broken in places, and smeared with the afternoon haze. Now the sun has ebbed into a gentle grey. You can still see an arch of daylight over the skyline of buildings, but not for long. I sometimes think Darkness is the sensible elder brother to Light, and when one embrace the other, it becomes a gentle homecoming.

You know, just things.

***

Girls―I miss you. I saw a bunch of school girls the other day, on the bus―they reminded me of us, years ago; our youth was green and gregarious, and the only thing blue about our existence then was our turquoise uniform. When I think about us, I can't be bothered with pretty prose or stylish words, because it's all very simple―we have laughed and cried ourselves into familiarity, and I can only hope time, distance and our adult distractions wouldn't erode our friendship.

Come over soon. We'll order pizza, guzzle down bottles of green tea, and we'll have our heart-to-heart talks until sleep takes over.

:: The Dreamer ::

For a moment I didn't believe that A had created that. It wasn't that I doubted the creative genius of my friend―I've always known A to have magical fingers, burning with artistic impatience, their nerve endings raw with talent―but that. It was a crucible of allusions to some of the greatest Masters―Da Vinci, Sisley, Monet, van Gogh. It was coloured with care, created with meaning and crafted with me―of me―in mind.

It was beautiful, and it was for me. I choked.

'Happy belated birthday,' A said. His eyes were bright with casual happiness.
'Does thank you even begin to cover it?' I asked, half-bewildered, looking at my gifts. The Nabokov book―bless his heart, he remembers―was a great testament of our connection and shared interest in prose stylists. But his little masterpiece was a precious piece of his art and his heart, and I felt small and undeserving and very close to tears.

His canvas was a postcard, his medium was watercolour, his advocacy were the post-impressionists of a neo-Corot era, and his inspiration―this is too much―was me. Or more accurately, he was insipired to put on canvas what he's tried to tell me so many times before.

'I want you to tell me the meaning behind it,' he said, almost forcefully.

I looked at the caricature of myself―A had married my corporate reality with my ethereal faith, and the result is a distorted dreamer, staring out to the world with lopsided eyes, her sight twisted by the clash of passion with logic.

He infused the high renaissance conceit of Da Vinci by painting in code; he combined the lazy emotions of French painters and the modern niche of cartoon art to become a van Gogh with the soul of a Joe Sorren. He painted with me in mind, and he created a revealing portrait of a Jean I never thought anyone knew―a Jean that has been buried in her business plans and crushed into a literary coma by the weight of her Inbox.

'I need to run,' I said finally. Her eyes―my eyes―that look―those colours; I was in awe with the beauty of his creation, and I was ashamed of the meaning behind it.

'You can't love your art unless you hate it,' he said, severe in point, but tender in tone. He shrugged in boyish wisdom. 'It's like an ugly relative―a cranky old aunt or a senile cousin. You need to hate their existence but love their being.'

'Biological. We have to make our art the thing we breathe.' The words ripped themselves from my mouth; inside I was bleeding because A had set an empty dream on fire, and the ashes were scalding sense from me.

He nodded. 'You know the words, Jean. Put them down and believe them. Make sacrifices. Write for writing. You know what's important.' He grinned and polished off our rucola salad, while I felt like tearing up my employment contract with a titanic vehemence. 'It's not that hard. You shine when you write, so you write to shine. All very simple,' he sang, a Peter Piper of his own brand of truth.

'You're an angel, Apollo,' I said at the end of the night, using my favourite nickname for him. We held each other for a while before I boarded the train home―A was going on a self-imposed artistic hibernation, with ten hours of work each day and six hours devoted to his craft, every day, until June. I envied his freedom, and I admired his courage to suffer for his love. Could I?

'Well, send me a postcard. Those things are much better than an SMS,' he said, cheeky but enlightened, a sapient scholar in a cheap T-shirt, as he waved goodbye.

I went home with my head in a spin, clutching the promise of his unwavering faith in me, and the beautifully haunting reminder of who I had let myself become in his artistic pansophy.

Thank you, Apollo.

:: Ethnologic ::

Time is Charon the Boatman ferrying one existence to the next, and as I swiped my access card with unthinking practice this morning, I realised how I had crossed the threshold between my clueless student perseity into a white-collared dimension through these very doors three years ago. I was so young it was almost pitiful, and I had the same shiftless faith that cloaks the Dead drifting to Hades, even if the death of my student life was nothing to cry over.

The only difference between then and now―other than slightly smarter looking clothes and wiser choices in shoes―is that my energy has been displaced with experience. The more I gain of the latter, it seems, the less I have of the former. I am a waned moon sometimes; has my corporate blood run thin?

When the glass doors of Audi were first opened to me, I had stumbled through them with the fresh-faced excitement of a young soldier. I was barely twenty, freshly-minted from school, and wide-eyed with the thirst to learn. I didn't know what my battles were, exactly, but I saw my battle field, I trusted my commanders in chief, and I adored the little badges of corporate warriorhood―my first personal namecard, my first working lunch, my first big presentation, my first overseas conference.

I sucked up the routines of a so-called professional like a sponge―upon Cem's undying advice, of course: 'Jean Tan, be a sponge!'―and I became surrogate mother to projects and people, perspectives and prerogatives. I struggled with the passing of my childhood ambitions for a while―I splattered virtual blood in email after email to René about the dissonance I had in working out financial calculations and marketing strategies when my calling was in print and publishing, rather than cars and capitalism.

But the thrill of novelty was hard to ignore. I was working. I was out in the world, it seemed―and it was all so impelling. I was a baby taking my first steps in the corporate world, and although I wobbled unsteadily in my new universe, I was giddy with rapture. My financial independence was only the icing. I had my corporate cake―a terrible metaphor, I know―and I ate it with greedy relish.

And the people. I had Cem, who was a terrific mentor, and I had a fantastic team of passionate professionals, who despite their differences in cultural backgrounds and functional expertise, were crazy about the brand. I was taught and praised, and I taught and praised. I made mistakes, I got into scrapes, I missed deadlines and I fumbled in presentations. But I also laughed with like-minded colleagues, and we shared lunches and drinks and the same desire to elevate our brand to the level we felt it deserved―even though we didn't benefit tangibly from it.

My confidence grew. As did my lethargy.

It all went downhill after Cem's sudden departure. He brought a rare humility to the team, and we all indirectly or directly suffered from the void he left. I was glad when D came onboard―he was firm, but kind, and he had the vision, but also the compassion. But his swift promotion was one of the many knee-jerk decisions of a global structural overhaul; even as I type this the swirls of change are curling like venin around the office.

I feel it. We all feel it.

Or maybe it's just me. This―this―is no longer quenching my voracious thirst for new experiences. I am becoming pallid, you see. I don't come alive anymore, and people have noticed.

'Next stop wonderland―to work with me?' asked DK, raising a half serious eyebrow at me. He was part of the original team―DK had been responsible for some of the most challenging countries of our region, and he's also responsible for some of the best advice anyone could have given a 20-year-old greenhorn a few years ago.

I sipped my iced coffee in contemplative agreement. 'Doesn't make sense does it? You flash an ad there and you get hordes of locals wanting to work for an MNC. Can you justify me?'

DK grinned. 'I'll call you,' he said mysteriously, his voice laced with the lilt of candid power.

I shook his hand but shrugged my shoulders. In this world, where change is the greenback of businesses, I believe in little and hope for even less. I'm a mistress for my business, and my business, unfortunately, is a master of change.

You see, in a time where love affairs are like business transactions and business transactions are my love affairs, I embrace change as I would a lover. And as with all relationships in this eclectic, erratic time of ours, I can only hope that my head wouldn't be turned, and my heart wouldn't be dashed by the fickle, careless offers by lovers and employers alike.

:: Ambrosia ::

There is something very clean-cut, very je ne sais quoi about E―perhaps not quite the man you'd want to bring home to mom, but at the least the boy you and your sister can have a giggle with.

Having dinner with him brought back memories of a simpler time―a time before infidelity is the poison du jour and romance is served with love, rather than a side of perennial fuck-ups. The cocktail that we drink from is a lot more dangerous now―we throw in generous shots of self-gratification, and we garnish our perfidious concoctions with pallid excuses and whiny pretexts.

But it suits the raison d'etre of our time. Our ambrosia is our need to suck up the essence of the intangibles―love and connection and need and soul-food and romantic entrants and other blah-blah buzzwords we let slip like wayward spells―and inhale the idle smoke of madness and Marlboro.

Yes, E is earnest and sweet―he's always been. His bright eyes were keen with regard as we bantered about the inconsequential things that make casual conversations an intellectual let-down, but a social respite. It was fun. We didn't debate or debunk, we didn't argue or expostulate―we merely talked.

He reminds me that I'm still only 23―a whiplash realisation sometimes―and that it's all perfectly natural (to borrow a Hemingway) to hum along to Latino-pop and giggle like affable idiots at the couples drunk on red wine, and of course, the self-taught cocktail creations of love and the like.

***

Today I read Oscar Wilde
'Of Burmese Days' in dusty verse,
I think of you and your mother,
And how we are all novice of this earth.
Until the Great Hour comes along,
And drags our sullen hair
Into sleep.

:: Exigency ::

I was stoic as I examined the consequence of Valentines, spread like dead bodies on my desk. The roses are begining to curl at the tips. The lilies have lost their lustre. The sunflowers had sparkled with vivacity when they arrived―now they are heavy with death. Even the ferns are drooping with patient exhaustion, waiting―quietly, wantonly―to die.

Flowers are beautiful things; they are the fortunate accidents of nature, and when they bloom, they surge to life with an inconscient, but purposeful, blindness. How they bloom, and then, how they die. The only blueprint nature follows is the inevitability of death―even life seems like an accident sometimes, a collision of fatality, a slipup of kismet, a Hamish haze of mortal luck.

'You're so morbid,' my intern declared, hands on her hips, after hearing my random comment on the uselessness of life when it comes in a bouquet, ribboned and regnant.
I smiled unapologetically.
'And you're so...bitter,' she continued.

I thought of Nietzche. It's not just my task to make the individual uncomfortable, it seems. It's my bloody nature.

'I just―don't like flowers. It's a nice idea, but.' It was twenty minutes to ten. I ached for another expresso, a book in bed, and a way out of pseudo-philosophy.

RT continued to look baffled, slighted, even. 'But what? Oh I know―you don't like the men behind them,' she said in a sing-song voice.

My head ached. I mumbled feebly about needing a painkiller, and she burst out, suddenly and in girlish fervor, 'An aspirin a day helps the roses stay!'

That line. It's from that sappy Hong Kong movie, isn't it―City of Glass. We watched it together, and I cried with brisk sentiment as Leon Lai swept Shu Qi into his arms and they kissed with hungry passion in the driving November rain. I wasn't crying because the screen lovers were reunited after their first brush of love had died an icy, adult death. I was crying because I was late. And I was scared.

***

Long ago, I asked: 'Is love a many splendoured thing?'

And he looked at me with tender exasperation, before answering: 'Sometimes you are fool for love, and sometimes you love a fool.'

Not quite the accurate quote, I don't think, but its purpose is dutifully understood.

:: Arrows ::

You. Playing games suits us, because it gives away nothing, takes away nothing, and it makes light of everything. When you call―when the electric tension between us cackles along with the spit-fire song of long distance static―it reduces us to puppets stringing lines for show. When you write―when the few sentences of vacuous intimacy become lines of lies―it hurts the honesty I try so hard to retain, for myself, selfishly, if not for both of us.

We can't win this game. I'm not poker-faced enough, and your cards have long been tossed―open-faced and grinning with mirthless menace―onto the table long before. I'm not stupid enough to ask what exactly we're doing, and I'm not smart enough to want this to stop. And because I cannot romanticise concepts, I conceptualise romance. You are a concept, and so am I. Stay close, in the distance.

***

It still baffles me that the pop-culture reality of Cupid is that of a cherubic prepubescent, winged and curled, ready to chuckle with childish satisfaction each time he lets an arrow of love fly into the unsuspecting back of a lovelorn mortal.

How laughable. Cupid, in my view, is really one of the most tragic characters in the plethora of Greek myths―he's the very mirror of our humanly delusions when it comes to love.

Cupid, the god of love, was the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. Beauty mothered Love, as it were, thus giving birth to an intrinsic understanding that love cannot survive―cannot be―without beauty.

Cupid's calling was to unite men and women in love. His weapon, oddly enough, wasn't was beatific as his calling. No―Cupid didn't sprinkle lavander-coloured potions or cast dreamy spells of enchantment. He shot arrows―arrows; weapons of war, meant to pierce, made to kill. Such a delicious twist of truth―they knew it long before. Love hurts. It draws blood and squanders life, and we wilt like December daisies in its power.

And since Cupid is doing the random shooting, aiming at us mortals with the languid wisdom accorded only to the gods, it renders us―his victims―completely blameless. Our lack of responsibility when it comes to romance cannot be cussed, nor helped. This surrender of human spirit is so typical, so effortlessly selfish, that again, it makes me want to laugh.

But what do I know. One phone call, and I buckle.

***

'And she bolted for the window; her family couldn't stop her. She jumped to her death―22 storeys. Her torso was broken by the impact of landing on the van. When we finally found her, her eyes have been punctured and we couldn't find her heel―she was like a doll, shattered into bits.'

It wasn't quite the conversation you'd expect over a Valentines' Day lunch, but since the commercialised glitz of the day is sticking to me like acrid sweat, I actually found suicide a more engaging topic.

'You're smiling,' I observed. H's eyes were serious, but a tinge of macabre humour was lurking on his lips.
'I've seen death so many times, in so many forms. I just don't know how to react anymore.' He said matter-of-factly.
'So you laugh it off.'
'Sometimes. I have to compose myself before I could tell the family. The Chinese van driver had parked his vehicle illegally because he wanted to buy 4D; in the end the woman died above his van. I couldn't get the irony of the situation out of my head. He prayed for divinity, and got answered with death. How funny.'

Of course, we didn't laugh; we drank our respective overpriced coffee concoctions and smiled in unison, the strangeness of our conversation adding to the strange dimension of our relationship.

Stranger with each day isn't it; stranger than strange.

I wish I could be sated with normalcy. These are my eternal failings―my need for the unspoken, my want for the intangible, and my fear for the fixed.

:: Birthday Grace ::

We both watched the fly buzzed with verve against the window pane of the Italian restaurant R and I were in yesterday afternoon.

Its wings flitted urgently, humming with a consistent velocity. Such ugly energy, I thought. It's another useless testament of how the weak will always be defeated against the strong―matter against matter, and you realise, like a child's nameless rhyme, that hey-ho, nothing really matters.

But I looked up and met R's eyes and know instinctively that she also saw the fly, and that our thoughts might have spun in different directions but they circled around the same object, because we see the things many others simply wouldn't.

She smiled with the same secret acknowledgement, and I returned the smile, because that matters. Trite as it may sound: happy birthday, soulmate. Your existence is a graceful, timeless accident, and our friendship is the height of serendipity.

:: Appetence ::

With Our Eyes

So we make love
All the time,
With our fingers and our eyes―
Because I cannot
Consent, I do not
Deny;
I become a puppet.
'What if' you ask, so casual,
Your mask.
I smile, I'm tender, you're benign―
You touch, slightly, a sign.
'Let's not' I counter, I'm sly,
I know you're primal, but shy.
So the moment's gone, and we
Become contented just to be
Debating on about politics and the like,
While we continue to make love
With our eyes.

:: Strings and Shadows ::

The kitchen was an orchestra of labour. The running tap did a water-dance over the fresh vegetables. The chopper drummed dully against the wooden board. Hot oil sizzled; metal spoons clinked against porcelain bowls. The soup gurgled with random rhythm.

I was closed off from the world as I hunched over the bubbling stew of sea-cucumber and Chinese mushrooms. My mind was strangely blank. I only cared about the state of my stew: are the sea-cucumbers succulent enough? Do I stir in the cornstarch now? Perhaps a few extra drops of the Chinese wine would bring out the flavour of the meat. Or maybe I should use Cognac instead, since the tangy-spice of the sauce―thickened with black ground pepper and oyster stock―would go nicely with the strong aroma of hard liquor. The fire must be turned down now; I should add in some water to temper the stew...

'Cornstarch,' said my grandmother, not looking up from the prawns she was patiently shelling. I smiled to myself: thirty years of practice didn't account for nothing. My grandfather might have lorded over the house when he was alive, but the kitchen was clearly my grandma's kingdom.

'Two more minutes?' I meekly suggested.
'One,' said my aunt, her eyes not leaving the fish she was carefully deboning.
My grandma broke into a chuckle. 'The chief cook has taught her disciples well,' she said, half jokingly, but not without maternal pride.
We met eyes and smiled―three generations of women united by culinary sensibilities, and a passion for unbridled humour.

'I sharpened all the knives myself, this year,' said my grandma suddenly. 'Your grandfather used to do that for me.' Her wistfulness was matter-of-fact; my heart got caught in my throat.

'You teach me how, po po―I'll do it for you next year,' I promised.

She flashed me a toothy grin. 'Silly girl, I still can do it. I don't want you to roughen your hands!'

'She wants to remind herself of Ah Gong,' my aunt interjected. 'They used to fight all the time during Chinese New Year. Who buys what when―who does what how―they'd tear the house down, her with her cleaning, and him and his screaming.'

We laughed, but our laughter was hollow with his absence, even as his presence continued to be the way he was―comforting and familiar, and larger than life.

You see, I bought the tiger prawns after all. And we're making the soup just the way you like it―with extra lotus. Grandmother still puts in more diced scallops in the stew than it's necessary, because you used to complain she was 'stingy as hell' with it. No ginger in the abalone sauce―you hated the lingering taste of ginger. More garlic in the asparagus―you were a typical Canton man, you used to joke. Garlic was the mistress in your diet―always tempting, and always leaving you wanting more.

You're gone, but not quite. We're keeping you alive in the way we live―and in your death we realised the price of your life, the way you've done little things to keep us in order, and the way your big voice became the glue that held us together as a family.

Thank you. I miss you more than you know.

'I miss him,' I heard my mother whisper to hers later. My grandmother gave her eldest daughter―who will be 51 this year―a clumsy pat.

'He's here somewhere, laughing at us all because we started dinner too late, the fish was over-steamed by about two minutes, and the naughty nephew of yours is eating his drumstick on our new sofa. He's here, Fong, and he'll always be here.'

Her strength is her genius. After dinner, we toasted to health and happiness―and even as we struggle with our own nuclear-family dysfunction, for a moment, we were picture-perfect as an extended family, united by tradition and food, under my grandparents' roof.

***

Somewhere between my third glass of Riesling and H's recounting of his latest book purchase, I realised I was staring couplehood in the face again.

Nice cafe. Good bottle of white, chilling in the ice bucket (that he'd taken the liberty to order because you were unfashionably late). Starters and desserts to share―maybe you'd eat off each other's main course as well. 'How was your day?' would be a question that was bound to come up. And the assumed familiarity would mean you could start talking about how you really wanted those tennis grips but that particular sports shop didn't bring in the brand you fancied, or how you wanted to do some quick new year shopping, but Chinatown was an asylum of vehement last-minute shoppers scrambling for bak kwa and pussy-willows.

That was it. If I ever took the plunge and got myself a new boyfriend to brandish around―like one would a pink-strapped Gucci tote―I would also have to content myself with the nuances of being part of a couple again―the countless 'how's your day', the routine sex where one minute you were close to orgasmic heaven, and the next minute you're plunged back to hell with sudden thoughts of his mother / your mother / work / the fact that he might find you boring / fat / a dead-fish in bed, and of course, the proverbial 'where are we going with this'.

I'm being shallow, of course. I'm forgetting the perks of having a Significant Other: the way your heart can leap and tumble at an inane SMS. The physical intimacy and the emotional support. The fact that you're loved unconditionally. The fact that you're loved.

But even as the Riesling made me light-headed and H's smile became strangely more charming in the setting sun, the hurt of the breakup hit me with instant clarity. I suddenly remember the feeling of being stifled and being sucked dry even while I was proudly proclaming to the then-better half of my undying love, and I found myself questioning if all of this―the dating, the dining, the dancing around innuendos―wasn't just some stupid accident we got ourselves into because we needed some other way to justify our paltry, urbanised existence.

My heart is dead. Even as I'm physically out there―meeting him and him and him―I have locked my emotional availability behind an avalanche of cynicism and fear.

Fear that I could never want to put myself through that again.
Fear that I could never be selfless enough (I could never forget what you said).
Fear that I could never reconcile my preference for the spontaneous connection of minds over the slow-burning security of routine.
Fear that I would break, and I would be the one broken.

***

E.E. Cummings and his satirical words couldn't say it better:

'Let's go,' said he
'Not too far,' said she
'What's too far?' said he
'Where you are.' said she

:: Misspent ::

Complaints

I have a headache―
My eyes are starting to fail.
My fingers fly and flirt,
Sky captains of mission and fission,
Across my keyboard.
I type―oh, the hype―this and that,
Goes a voice; we need a sale,
A form, a fax, a mail.

I need a coffee, yes another―
My head is pounding steel.
But the phone rings and the fax sings,
Crying babies with scarlet fangs.
I answer―oh, hello―this and that,
Goes a voice; we need a brief,
A bill, a file, good grief!

I crunch out numbers, quickly―
My brain has fogged to chill.
But time tricks, like worn bricks,
Crashing down on my spine.
I cringe―oh the singe―this and that,
Goes a voice; we need to sell,
A car, an idea, all's well, ends well!

And the day arch from the weight
Of hours filled with minutes―
Meetings within dreams,
Dreams within minutes.

:: Vanity of youth ::

When you're in your twenties, life is a lethal cocktail of hedonistic pleasures. You've just broken the chains of parental control. You're earning your own cash, you start making 'grown-up' decisions, your priorities are spun around libertine distractions, and the world is an enthralling playground of possibilities and options.

How else can we justify our wanton routines―and how else can we pacify our torpid need for material gratification? We buy. We eat. We drink. We want. All with the careless disregard of our twenty-something easy-living years.

We enjoy the freedom our monthly paychecks bring, but we falter at the responsibilities that follow. We proclaim to the world―in the way we dress, in the way we behave, and in the places we choose to throw our money at―that we no longer care about how our parents think, but at the end of another hard-drinking, swank-eating day, we slink back into our parents' house knowing that the pain of living with them is compensated by the money we save on rent. We moan because we don't get to travel the world. We consider ourselves poor when we can't afford that car or that bag or that spa-getaway. We're miserable because we're overeducated. The state of our hair or bodies matter more than the state of the world.

And I'm guilty. I'm young and I'm stupid. I'm chasing after the bubble of paltry perfection. I'm never contented; I'm constantly dissatisfied with my job, my family, my friends, my hair, my lack of lack.

I try to embrace this as the fleeting madness of my salad years―I try to believe that eventually I'll turn my whims into adult fancies. I try to wipe off the dissonance about the amount of money I spend to have my hair chemically coloured and straightened. I try to convince myself that I deserve that trip to Europe. I try to tell myself that it's all about balance―I work hard, I play hard, and I reward myself because we can't helped but to be punished by the little things in life.

But I feel small, because I'm not big enough to live with myself―my curls, my cubicle-existence and my consistent appetite for change.

***

My father will turn 55 tomorrow. I look into his eyes and see a defeated old man. What is your saving grace? And will my riotous youth ensure that I will never grow old the way you do? Because if it does, I have every reason to want that trip to Europe. To stop working so that I can write my book. To run away with the first man who brings that twinkle back into my eyes. Your regret scares me. And you know what? If living it up now means that I will never spiral down the way you did, I would.

Except I think of my sisters, and that streak of rebellion will remain what it is―a momentary paralysis of sense―and I will recover.

:: Broken Skin ::

I watched with fascination as the nurse deftly slit the syringe into my vein. Clench, release, clench―and then my blood, dark with life, swirled into the plastic vial with clinical speed. I remember G with sudden clarity, her words as stark as the stench of medicine in the little examination room:

'So much blood in the first cut. The razor just slit across my skin. There was a numbing tingle; and then there was blood.'

Life and its prodigious turns have a way of shrugging us off the edge of reason. G―she's a beautiful girl, with marble-bright skin and the shy, hesitant smile of a dreamer. She plays the piano and the violin with voracious talent, and she carries her fraility about her like a fallen Nordic angel, lost in our tropical reality.

But her wings have been clipped by a broken marriage―he was abusive, and they were divorced a month before her 22nd birthday. And his abuse became hers. She drew a strange, odious satisfaction everytime she drew her own blood. Her left wrist and her thighs are covered with a network of pencil slim scars, a spider-web of crimsom histories.

I held her in my arms and we cried together the first time she showed me her self-infliction.
I dried her tears the second time, and made her promise she will never bring another rusty blade to her skin again.
I had to stop the hard edge of anger the third time I found the blade-scars snake themselves over her arm, her inner wrist, the gentle slope of flesh of her thigh.

'See somebody, please,' I pleaded once. This was my childhood playmate. This was the girl who built fairy-dusted dreams while giving Ken and Barbie their dream wedding. This was the G, my G, who wanted to play her own wedding march.

But her wings are clipped; the wedding march has become her death-song. I'm not Superman, I don't have my cape, and my familiarity as a friend cannot catch her fall from the fallacy of love. I had to watch her plunge, and see the light of hope extinguish like a reedy flint in her eyes.

She's with a married man now. She's 23, and he's 32. She's got scars, and he's got kids. She's got a past, and he's got a future. She's got a dream, and he's got a wife.

'And every time I think of him, with her, with the children―I think of his lips on hers, not mine―I slide a little deeper, just to see if that pain can possibly be deeper than the hole I put myself in.'

'All done,' said the nurse, pulling me out of my reverie. She snapped on a plaster over the neat little incision where my blood has been drawn, and the alcohol-sting of the antiseptic wipe lingered on like the image of my broken friend.

If only there could be an emotional blood bank where we could go to for transfusions each time we bleed ourselves dry. Then perhaps we never need to split our skin open for the sobriety of life again.