we are constantly constructing our pasts

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof
falleth away

       "It is just a hat," is what I would say, and have been saying. It is just a hat. The others say they know that, but I do not think they do. They still worship it. From the way they endearingly tend to their berets, don them, adjust them while looking intensely into the mirror, it is so obvious. It is (literally) their rose-tinted ideal. They choose to materialize their dreams and what nationalistic pride they can muster by pinning them onto that lump of red cloth like a golden button. Or is it a trophy, a symbol of their triumph. Over what? it is hard to say.

I say it really is wearable ego. They like glorifying it because they can glorify themselves too. Our berets are empty hats, not to be filled with bloodsweat, nor aspirations, but the largeness of our own heads. Their heads.

Maybe when the novelty wears off, they will understand.


       It was during one of the nights of our first eight days outfield. Tekong, it was. There was a confidence walk, one hundred meters through the night jungle, alone. It probably sounds a lot worse than you think. For starters, the night sky there never went pitch black; there was moon, if not Singapore's light pollution; the vegetation was far from thick, with the occasional cylume stick hanging off some branch to idiot-proof the route. Staff Sergeant Chay, if I remember correctly, did the dispatching of individuals for my group. When it came to my turn, he put his hand on my shoulder to hold me back. "So, before you go, tell me: Why do you deserve to be a commando?"

I paused. I would have rather not answered him. It was a stupid question. I would have attacked his assumptions right away and started a debate had he not been a higher authority. But that question demanded verbal slapping anyhow. I chose to be honest, and to deliver my response as bluntly as possible. The military always preferred statements over questions.

"Staff, I did not choose to be here. I was chosen to be here."

For a moment he was hesitant too. "What?" he asked, nearly choked by his surprise.

"I did not choose to be here," I forced back in an attempt to speak up. "I was chosen to be here."

After that he was no longer sure how to react. With his left hand, he then pointed the bearing I was to take while tapping my shoulder twice with his right. "Okay, go," he started again. I looked back at him once more, then began my journey into the darkness.

i have never felt so eighteen.

Life has taken on a new vividness
for me, in technicolour clarity
People are no longer fuzzy,
but are just people, with personalities
as just personalities
They still have intentions, only that
all of them are obvious
I have discovered a love for colour
full and solid, no longer pastel
And sunshine makes me feel strong
I have drive now, in a form of lists:
movies to watch, books to read,
things to do - they don't stop growing
I'm hungry for brainfeed,
I want back to school, badly
Suddenly, it no longer frightens me
that I know so many people
and the like, people know me
It feels good to have run
and it feels good to have stretched
I don't entirely not like exercise,
these days - it makes one feel alive
I feel comfortable with me, confident
I feel young
This must be what it feels like
to be at the brink of nineteen.

the consumerist in me.

I must confess that I have taken to impulsive spending. There's something very comforting – liberating, even – in being able to spend frivolously, just because it is so frivolous. Mind you I have not gone to the stage of where I deplete all my savings and resort to credit card fraud to dress up exquisitely boomz. I still make the effort to set aside some rainy-day cash slash school fund stash.

Okay down to the real point I want to make. I am with the retail-therapy school on this. I like to think that my experience in the army so far has had some sort of a pendulum effect on me: the harder I push myself, the harder I spend. Think "work hard, play hard". Spending money has become a sort of outlet. I get to buy things I like, things that make me happy. Usually to the effect of consoling myself, or compensating for my sufferings past. Sometimes I see it as rewarding myself, which is also something I never really did before. But in more basic terms, it is a convenient form of release. I would prefer it that I channel my thoughts and energy through a more creative medium, though. Not only is it far more satisfying, it would save me the occasional guilt too.

derailed

I am getting dreadfully forgetful, of late. I find myself lost in my own head a lot more often now. Consequently I have only been able to come up with stray phrases and drabs of writings, or excuses for the lack of coherent thoughts. Anyway, something today reminded me of a poem I wrote a long time back, and I felt like sharing it. It is an untitled piece, with nothing spectacular or interesting about it either.

A lady once told me, swallow your tears,
Never a drop should you spill.
Magpies would feast on your lonely sorrows,
Enjoying each watery pill.
I believed this woman, silenced by fears,
Heartbroken, that tears leaked out.
So sorry I felt, my sadness to swallow,
Until I had learnt to shout.

i think i have strange ideals...

I want to lead a life filled with rolled oats and barley and wheatgerm and granola, freshly-baked wholegrain loaves, unpolished rice, raw greens, virgin olive oil and balsamic vingar, sea-salt, vanilla and cinnamon, soy milk and organic dairy, homemade brews of coffees, teas, ginger and honey; plain yogurt, unsalted nuts, fresh fruit and lots of dark chocolate. Yes, I want to grow old eating gardens.

to the marvellous you:

It is in more recent times that I have realised that you have always been some sort of role model for me. There was something in your personality — or simply its existence — that intrigued me. Maybe it was because I could not understand my own individuality then. But you had a better grasp of yours, and I admired that. As of today, you are still quirky, only more robust, more insomniac, more of whatever you are than ever. Spunky, is the word that you remind me of. And though there really isn't anything of a friendship that survived these years, I feel that I owe you, in some obtuse way: You gave me the courage to be me.

don't want to change the timestamps.

Much to read! I've posted some stuff that I was holding back as drafts, which for some strange reason, don't seem like drafts anymore. Enjoy.

up the wall
at the touch of science everyone becomes a psychologist
freak moment

we all deserve throphies.

With an initiative that came from nowhere, he twisted to face the back, where I was sitting, and nudged his sketchbook of sorts in my direction. I leaned forward to get better look.

"It's just something I came up with," he said, almost straining to sound casual. Or humble... and when I had not even seen it. I could tell, though: Inside, he was beaming.

As to what the drawing really was, I could not tell. There were some faces in succession with captions or speech tags, fashioned with the intent, I suspect, of some comic effect. But the artistry itself was too indistinct, and plain for all the melodrama he had injected into its presentation — quite comparable to that of seven year-old girls'? (from whom his drawings always gained much admiration.) Otherwise, the effort put in was fully eighteen year-old.

I looked back at him.

His smirk was still hanging off his face, and his too-long neck seemed crooked at an awkward angle. He was waiting for me to look impressed, and I wanted a camera so badly. I made a snapshot in my mind.

"Oh," I replied, flatly. That was the best I could reciprocate without scoffing. I eased myself back into a slouch and tried to compensate by pressing my lips together in attempt to appear comtemplative.

It must have been his best sketch yet.

maybe she had'nt had her morning coffee?

"Hello, this is the Coffee Lounge at Goodwood Park Hotel, how can I help you?"

"Yes, I would like to make a reservation for High Tea."

"Okay. Can I have you name and contact number?" I gave her my details. "What time...?"

"Two thrity."

"...and for how many people?"

I hesitated. "Uh, twenty people."

"Okay, Mr. Tan. So it'll be a table for five at two thirty, is that correct?"

"No, twenty," I articulated.

"Sorry? Five...?"

"Twenty. Two. Zero. Persons."

"Oh okay so it's six people at two thirty."

a glimpse of the swamp

We slowly removed ourselves from the boat and were planted waist-deep into the waters. It was a vile and filthy water, dark and dank like a dodgy backalley nobody visited; tumours and granny hairs floated about. The air smelt sourish and drainwateresque, with undertones of rotting wood and attap fruit. It would have been hot, too, if it were not for the fingers of leaves that shielded us. Slowly, we formed a single file and started wading. It was not long before some of the floaty things in the water had found their way into more obscure corners of my pants and boots. I shuddered to think any of it alive... But then again I was left with not much choice besides ignoring the thought. And I did.

i promise you, this is not insanity.

Once, in Tekong,
I had a strange impulse
to eat
a wild leaf.

I plucked it, ate it.

It tasted fresh;
It tasted like
life.

The other day, I saw
the same plant.
I ate another leaf.


Now, I know
this sounds strange. But,
honestly,
you cannot imagine
how bad it can get
eating two-year-old
dumplings
that, mysteriously,
hasn't rotted yet.

it is foul.

i've heard they don't like the jc kids.

I asked myself some days ago, once more, why am I doing this? It occured to me that all this bloodsweat training, suffering, and every other thing that falls under the shadow of this great umbrella of the government's investment in the military, is done because the state of the country — without the army — is already assumed to be at war, or at risk of. Peace is not default.

We live in a sad and angry world.

in a moment

We were in sparse jungle, waiting — in and with the surrounding silence.

Then, a sudden stirring. A passing gust unsettled the quiet of the leaves such that they rattled like a gossiping crowd — exciting — a building whisper — something was happening — something fell from the trees — it was

Once, twice, trice, it bounced; it's fall broken. Silence again. Almost abrubtly so. And in that moment the scene resumed its original stillness where everything was brown and stale and dusty and the rubber seed was not to be noticed. Anymore.

new perspective

This is overdue.
This was once a fluent, coherent thought.
I have lost it, or most of it. It is no longer the same thought.
I can only write in the semblance of it, which I eventually might not do at all.
It would be cool if I knew how to write all this in Latin. Or French.

Seven months. Almost exactly, now. Looking back it seems like those months have just, snap, gone past — when each living moment then, whilst it was the present, crawled. Time is a strange thing. But memory is stranger.

Everything about this year feels so new. I feel new. And I don't mean new as in fresh and liberated; I feel alien to myself. Being forced to adapt in an environment far and well out of my comfort zone has changed me so much — in a literal, physical sense. I hatehatehate to say it, but it is fact: I am much stronger and fitter now. I see myself completing two point four click runs at timings that were previously ridiculous and impossible to me. I find myself not getting burnt out as quickly, or not sweating as much after certain training sessions. These little signs of progress that I notice are just so inyourface and seem to happen so suddenly that it scares me. What was or is more awkward was (and I say "was" vaguely as "is") the incongruence between my projection of myself and the truth of the matter. I was denial, believing that I was not a "athletic/ exercise-a-lotsy" person, though that is continuously getting harder not to accept. Or reconcile with. Which makes it all the more poignant how my unsportliness is out of a willed resistance rather than a genuine inclination in the opposite direction.

More importantly, though, this experience so far has shown me how powerful an open mind is. Even though it was uncomfortable. I have learnt not to be afraid of my insecurities — or at least this insecurity. In some way I also feel I have become a better-rounded person, since my fitness is not as much a weakness as it was before. Go me.

*

Lately the déjà vus I have have lost its eerie, sublimal effect — that woozy gush through the spine (I don't know if it's the sawe for everyone?). That inkly feeling has always been the indicator of a déjà vu for me, such that I had subconsciously associated the magic woosh to be the déjà vu itself. Now that it doesn't happen anymore the déjà vu feels... unspecial. I suspect it has something to do with how the unexpected doesn't really surprise me anymore. E.g. Michael Jackson's death.

august too quickly.

Time has never felt so sparse before. It's quickly slipping past my nose and I can hardly keep up. And I'm just saying this just so I can stay relevent to this space.

I'm hardly doing a good job of it.

when the going gets tough

It's another new beginning for me. I am again displaced. Unlike moving houses, my new home is not one that is changed to suit it's tenants. At least not for me. Here, I am the subject, to be altered. The landlords have made that clear, painfully so. And they will continue to emphasize that point for some while longer.

It is better for me not to resist.

That way I can be preserved. That way I too can preserve. What I would keep is my mind. I will use it to strip them clean, translate their actions into thought, reduce them into the very thing that drives them — understand them, consume them whole. Their prerogatives will be justified, in their own context. Then when the why behind the what is finally understood, things would become easier, or more tolerable; It will not be meaningless.

Then they can crush, but I cannot be defeated.

empty like a cloud.

I sat here for at least five full minutes to find everything I was saving up to say over the weekend vaporous and lost. I'm losing touch.

another sleepless night.

I am faced with decisions I am too young to make. It is not fair that our lives, our adult lives, are to be determined in our lesser years. It is like choosing a house to stay in when you can only walk up the driveway. We see too little in our years, and what we do see is merely superficial. Nothing much beyond the surface save for some imagination.

I know when I was younger I craved that liberty — the liberty to choose. I wanted to carve out my own life, though only out of what I later realised to be childish thinking. And some imagination. Now I have that liberty, somewhat, and the choices scare me. There exists streets, neighborhoods, and cities of options. It is that sheer boundlessness of possibility, the explosion of millions after millions of what-ifs that leave me helpless. And the older ones keep saying, "widen you horizon." But it is not just a 'horizon'. It is a space of possibility with a depth plunging as far as its breadth. Even if you could compress a sphere of choices into one plane, where do you start looking? Then there are moments when I think it would be simpler if our lives were completely defined by our circumstances, and we were forced to adapt to them. There would be no concept of good choices and bad choices. Life would happen for us, we would be subject to fate, nothing would be anybody's fault. No chance for regrets. Life has always been unfair, anyway.

But then again, that too is childish thinking, isn't it.

i am king of the junkyards

I'm starting to realise just how much of a collector I am. I can't call it a hobby. It is above that. It's a propensity, a habit. Or some chronic illness. I have boxes of little nick-knacks, and boxes simply for keeps. And cupboards full of them. Things people gave me, things I bought, things I picked off the floor. I also happen to have a tendency to keep food past their expiry dates. I am probably hogging the most storage space at home for useless things. What's more amazing is things have accumulated without looking like a huge lot — until now. I'm such a rat.

By the time I grow old I'll have an antique shop.