Juxtapose Is A 9-Letter Word

October 30th, 2007

the sun rose a few hours ago. the neighbourhood aunties must already be at the local wet market, chatting loudly amongst themselves as they tuck into a hot plate of wantan noodles, satisfied with their morning’s purchases of the choicest meats and vegetables.

how nice it would be to be part of that picture, to once again be the wide-eyed little girl sitting in between all these other people’s grandmothers who smell like her own grandmother, having breakfast before school starts, meticulously picking out the vegetables from her own bowl of noodles and hiding them discreetly under the plate. how nice it would be to fall back into that sepia-coloured world. but it is a life left behind in a forgotten pocket of time, discarded alongside bicycles and Enid Blyton books; moved away from, in transition to the bigger adult world of cars and RSVPs. this here is quite now, and i am very aware of it. when did the comic section in the paper become a reprieve, when did food suddenly taste like it had one tablespoon too much sugar, when did it become an option for corners to be cut?

it seems like it’s always morning. i open my eyes, it’s morning. i close my eyes, it’s morning. i take a shower, go for a swim, wash my underwear, it’s still the freaking morning. either i sleep too much or sleep too little. the chicken-flavoured instant noodles and chocolate chip cookies i’m munching on feel so real right now that i honestly feel this is not reality, but a very, very lucid hallucination. it doesn’t get any better than this… it just does. not. 8.25AM is a time for the gods and their golden goblets.

i missed an extremely important deadline 2 days ago, and i was just really, really angry at the circumstances. i thought to myself - cmon, let me just trip over my own feet and then when i stand up and brush the dirt off my skirt, i will find that it’s yesterday again and i will not have missed this deadline. but i didnt trip, and i didnt find that it was yesterday. in fact it was still today, very much so, painfully and realistically. okay fine. whatever. in the cab on the way home, i continued wishing i could turn back time, entertaining myself with the infinite possibilities of daydream.

rewinding ONE day was all i wanted, really. but the farther i drifted into this fanciful time-traveling fantasy, the greedier i got. i found myself wanting to go 2 months back to fix that other one thing, then 1 year back to not have missed that other deadline, then another 4 years back to right that relationship, then another 6 years to revamp my high school life, then another 11 years to that first day in first grade where my whole world was just right before me in one long paved path lined with trees. yeah - 11 whole years, at that moment in the year 2007, i felt i could re-do and do it a whole lot better. shameful. maybe it’s a good thing we dont have the ability to turn back time.

life is a time for us, our golden goblets, and no regrets.

8.42 AM, Sunday morning while waiting for episode 5 of Grey’s Anatomy to finish downloading

Entry Filed under: Musings