Love is so short,

forgetting is so long

pablo neruda (1904-1973)

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And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire...

the winding light, the universe.

And I,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

translated by alastair reid

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to other letters and pictures:

vine & branches, novena church (1989 - 1994)

catholic students' society, nus (1995-1999)

and years, like shadows,
fall away...

the pile lies on the floor, a collection of xmas, birthday and goodwill cards, a stash of letters, the yellowed lines and scripts detailing how we write our lives by hand before the age of the internet, one tracing the years all the way back to 1992.

i wanted to clear my drawers during the holidays. unknown to me, i had collapsed these years into one drawer, having sorted the letters and cards i wanted to keep a long time ago. this time i was disposing more of them again. empty postcards collected from serial continental trips abroad, unused, unsent. a near-fetish for travel & place- a useless tribute to places where you merely visited but never quite lived in.

a stock of letters from my platoon mates signalled out for attention. i now could backtrack and revisit the past. the winding nonsensical notes we wrote to another, complaining about post-bmt unit life and wondering in a very raw way, where our lives would go, or (are) going. there are a several lines that tug the conscience. and i sometimes wonder why we haven't found the time to keep our lines open, clear and stable. perhaps we were too young, too impetuous to hurry by, confident that our common experiences in bmt would eventually pull us through, for many seasons to come. we were wrong. so awfully wrong. everyone was eager to change, some quite rapidly, convinced that ns was merely an utter waste of time, a temporary stop for other roads ahead in exploring and revising other values, beliefs and outlook to small and big futures as yet unseen and unheard. we thought we could answer these frightful questions by doing; imagining and chasing gals, streetwear, clubs, other communities. and into religion and university. one thought he was heading home to family, while others wanted a complete break from God, whatever that word meant, then. several embraced new faiths, two landed instant careers and a handful eventually drove or flew away to some fashionable distant place. what we really longed for was stability, a pinch of luck, and some vague notion for an ambition we had not even begun to craft for ourselves.

among the lot are 2 whom i want to be in touch again. to anil and weiyong, if you happen to chance upon this blog by some rare twist of grace or fate, let me know. i hope we meet again. you were / are my best buddies in the army. it's been almost 15 years since we last booked out of nee soon camp together, sharing a cab to cck before feasting on simple home-cooked fare at humble Hans. we didn't even know much of ourselves then. but the familiar tug and raunchy jokes helped us to sail thru' some of the toughest and most amazing times we felt in green...mass pt, soc, night range...mess tins and night snacks...area cleaning.

there are somethings, some persons in life you can't put away, no matter how hard you try.

a splash of rainlight-
traversing pulau ubin 20 jan 07

it was my third trip to ubin since i returned. and always, gladly taken with no regrets in sight, despite the long distance travelled from west to east. it was an unusual reunion of sorts, with 3 former students from 03 and one from 04 batch tagging along. they clicked in unison, having shared common woes with their subjects as well as jolly entanglements with the same tutors. yours' truly. they hit on many topics from the start, complemented by an unusual blend of energies and personalities fit for any summer camp: annie and her electric ability to receive, deflect and retort hidden barbs and teases from the rest and her simultaneous tendency to demand the most exclusive and harmless dose of attention from all of us. there's gungho piow who is perfectly at home with herself, never giving up her individuality no matter how unglam the stalks and seeds might have done to her enigmatic purple-streaked hair. maybel and her messanic overtures who will always reserve a quiet blessing for everything that turned dull, dirty and sour. we regaled with fond old stories of college days: annie still berates me for the nasty comments and grades which i splashed on her essays while ziz chomps on mee siam serenely, possibly critiquing and deconstructing our inane mindsets and self-depreciating humour from the side.

we did everything that made Survivor a series to be scoffed at: ploughed through blotches of mud, annie writhing in pain as her Birkenstocks got drenched in double-blows of saltwater and clay as we cycled past flooded pits, shoreline and always in rain. we also peeked into abandoned shrines and haunted houses, remotely thrilled by the many alternative histories the island offered to passing spirits. we even chewed on lallang stalks after running out of creative energy for photoshoots. spotted 2 rare hornbills in flight. 2 unlucky grasshoppers were ambushed and tossed to the enemy, as we witnessed, nat-geog style, the sharp jaws and elegant legs of a golden-web spider stalking, piercing and chaining the hapless prey in coils of web. everyone. raptured by sheer silence of raw wonder.

these people made me laugh in the rain. we made each other a keepsake much more memorable than the schoolday memories we used to define our moments by. and they were the same folks whose essays i marked, stomped and slashed...only to see them grow into self-confident, bold and delightfully open individuals who take pleasure in exploring rustic roads, pockets of green mangroves and other ghostsongs of the jungle...the same people who forge easy conversations with ubin islanders conversant in dialect. they wanted to move inward, daring to see deep into things- the dying lores and practice of kampung living and etiquette.

i stand aside, smile and instinctively know that i am proud of them; joyful in their company...moved by their effort to touch base over the years, helping me to rewrite my life, and inspiring me to map these moments on the open field as a further blessing, a special song to sing on rainy days, remembering with fondness, the relational gifts...the hours my vocation is giving me.