walk run sprint stop
Walked around my neighbourhood last night, trying to appreciate what it is I'm in the middle of, rather than treating each day as a chore. It's hard sometimes, but there are times when I'd rather be no place else. Past those shops selling cheap clothes that play tapes announcing prices, items and a going out of business sale that seem to have no correlation to the actual shop I'm passing. Past the restaurant guy whose mouth moves faster than sound, so the lips are going before the words can come out, like a badly synched movie, and his words are so fast that when they do come it's like a waterfall of sound and the letters are all mixed together in some string like binary code nicefoodverycheapairconditioningupstairsyoulikeyesNICEFOOD. Past the tourists in Bugis junction who seem to come to this city solely to shop and will buy just about anything, from the cheapest Buddhist kitsch, to the finest southeast Asian silk, and the vendor who cater to them, and they're all packed in like sardines. Past the Rochor "canal" that is more gutter than water. Past the disco era puke green shopping malls, past these shopping malls built in the decade of greed (which seems to have extended its stay indefinitely), past the malls built ten years ago, past the malls of today. Past the lines of trees stretching into the distance, with branches so wide you look to the horizon and think there's a park that you want to walk to, but it's just a desert mirage that never gets any closer no matter how far you walk, cause in the end its just a line of trees that decorates the sidewalk. Past the banyons, and god they're beautiful, their branches hanging down to the ground, stretching to form new trunks (they actaully do: when they hit they take root, and what was once a vine thickens into a trunk, so you get whole groves that are really just one big tree, like redwoods, who sprout new trunks off their main ones, only in reverse, all upside down) that ring this hollow, a little cave or hanging garden, where people leave prayers and messages and offerings because even in Singapore, even in 2003, people recognize something magical or sacred or holy which is really just something that defies our attempts to contain it in our cultural walls, something that's beyond the monotony of mechanized traffic and synchronized lives and the whims of the market. I stop for a moment. Past the red light alley where the unhappy looking men pace up and down, like they're window shopping, and you can't see what's in the windows but you know it's human, trying to delay the inevitable purchase, resist the desire just a little longer cause when that desire's gone you're just left with a void, cause you're still alone, and it hurts so much that all you want is your desire back, so you return, night after night, looking for a companionship that can never be, a plug for the hole that will never exist. Past the stray cats who only get fed secretively, furtively, by the old man in the morning whose eyes dart back and forth because what he's doing is illegal so it's not bad but it's still wrong, and the cats look as suspicious as him because everyone else just kicks them, and there are dogs around and they have kittens, I've seen them, and no one else is going to feed them, so they dart out of the alley at night and look for anything they can find. And the crows are sweeping, swooping down picking up sticks and soft stuff to build and line their nests with, and they yell at me in the morning while I'm eating breakfast, but I don't mind cause I like crows, they're smart, and they make use of what we waste and that just proves how stupid we are for thinking we have the right to consume nature, because in the end nature will just consume us. And I'm home and I stand and listen to my body and look at the wall, at the ground, which is blank and white like I wish I could be, but my mind is still stepping, running, sprinting even when my body's so still my head's gonna explode cause I have this urge to run to a rooftop somewhere and scream at the world: STOP!! JUST LOOK! Cause in the end all it takes is a real look around, and people will see, but right now no one's looking so no one thinks about what's happening.
And I don't. Instead I go upstairs, and sit at my desk and pour this out, so today I can send it to you and you can see my mind splat against a white wall, white ground.