Home Sweet Home

Coming back to the house itself is pleasant, I suppose. The bed here is the most comfortable one I own, and the space in which I can laze about extends beyond the door, to the outside where there's overgrown grass and wet soil. But in my eyes, the mopped tiles and replaced bulbs are signs of aging, where loneliness is disguised as a presentable home.

A house may be presentable and that might as well be called a home. What is the difference? As long as its front is welcoming enough, it would turn into a home eventually.

Someone I used to talk to once shared with me his frustration of being surrounded by people incapable of thought, those shallow beings whose minds do not wander beyond the here and now. I want to let you know that I finally felt it, that frustration. Whether or not a sardine thinks like one is of no interest to me, and it can indulge in its simplistic musings until it dies a satisfied death, but when such a sardine goes out of its way to confront me, ridicule my unconventional temperament based on its own judgement, I have no choice but to acknowledge it. After 21 years of life, I've finally accepted the fact that people, a whole lot of them, have terrible insight.

You can beat me, rape me, then rip it out of your memory because you're a creature of the present and nothing else, but unfortunately for us all, my reclusive development created a broader mind, a whole new world which could take me in when the real one refused. And in there, time isn't measured by the ticking of a clock, the changes in minutes and hours, or even days. So I see what had been, what is, and what will be.

How long more do you think we can all be like this together?

Personally, I dread family gatherings. I can barely recall one where I am happy. All of you act if you cherish this time, and maybe you do, but it takes a special occasion for you to do so, doesn't it? What about waking and sleeping from day to day without even seeing each other in the eye? We don't have long together, right, then why don't you put down your fucking phone? Remember the dinner yesterday, where we had to wait for our food for more than 30 minutes and all the tables around us, the families and friends that were gathered, they held actual conversations. Our table, silent. I looked at all three of you, then up at the sky, and at the neon sign of an old hotel I couldn't locate. Suddenly, I miss our mother, whose overbearing goodwill is the only nourishment for our waning bonds.

Ah, disappointment is in the air. I am a selfish being who underestimates my own worth. Then again, nobody reassures me otherwise. Before I come to defend myself, I've already given up. I have never been taught how to speak to properly.

Youth with a Hair Dryer and Damp Laundry

How many instances in life do you find yourself sitting on the floor, blow-drying your damp laundry with a compact 1200W hair dryer? Is this youth? It must be. 青春っていいな～

This year, the gods are in a rather good mood, playing with the weather and flooding our islands in the tropics. Granting the wishes of us sweaty tropical organisms, the monsoon season graced us with temperatures that we wish would last for many months to come. Because I am an indoor parasite of extreme indolence, the storm, the flood, and the traffic jams are but newspaper cuttings and Facebook posts to me-- which is also why I am able to lie here in bed, snug, enjoying the chill.

Without the sun in my eyes, I'm really happy these days. However, laundry days, while already a hassle, have now earned the title of most dreaded days. The cold and damp, against the cold and damp, is it even possible for the water to evaporate? So I sit there, with a hair dryer in hand at 9pm.

Standing on where I was sitting, I realise how much warmth I've lost.

Did I ever think of buying a proper iron? Well, other than using it to make toast, I don't know how I'd go about ironing my clothes. Buttons and folds, laces and frills, creases, creases, CREASES! In the past when I'd attempt to be responsible and iron my clothing, I somehow permanently press the wrinkles into the fabric rather than smoothing them over. Perhaps I am fundamentally flawed to always do whatever the wrong way.

Lining dry the laundry under the sun gives it a distinct scent that reminds me of home because home is the only place where I could hang them outside, in the garden. High rises in the city, a student dormitory with a narrow balcony; even if it is the same UV rays that's cutting through the wetness, it just doesn't feel like home. Mother's mixture of too-much detergent, the smell of overgrown grass with German Shepherds sleeping close-by, all seep into the seams to create a scent that would push every dependent 20-something to run back home and reflect on their own incompetence while mother does all the work.

The only smell from the hair dryer is the smell of burnt hair.

It's okay though, because I'm going home tomorrow.

鏡花水月

Sometimes I have to wonder, whether is it beating or is it hurting. Between a Thump and Throb, who can tell anyway, right? Shivering under cotton blankets with only a window left unclosed, a rooster crows down below. In this hour between dawn and memories of the new day, the sounds of the night remain in the cricket's continuous chorus.

Daylight approaches, but I still dangle between the darkness of yesterday, unable to cross borders, that bridge which once crossed, one cannot look back.

Oh, I wish, behind me crawl those who weep for me that their weight may ground me down in place. Not a flickering flame, but the hardened wax of a resolute impermanence.

Te-no-hi-ra-ha-na-re-ta-ta-shi-ka-ni-ma-da-ni-gi-ri-shi-me-ta-i 

And they say that it is impossible to see in the dark. Within my rejection of its encompassing acknowledgement, I know now, that a distorted reflection can feel pain.

A pond is not a flowing river whose essence is passing time.