winter escape.

[. from landscape ]

thats a suitably bleak picture. and many will find it romantic and lush, full of insinuated meanings and vague, blurry, triple-layered nuances.

sometimes you wake up feeling like that picture; a sharp, uncoloured awareness of yourself, and all around you. and of course, itll never feel abundant or happy or gay. you'll realise you are you, and there wasn't much to you. and that it was your own unintended fault.

or you'll feel coldly alone. except, as those who've lived homeless for long become 'used to', you'll see again the bonds that tie us all. there's the obligations and the indebtedness; the love and familiar.

there's those you held above change, above time, above physical movements and friction. those are the ones you start to wonder about in the wintry time of your soul. you muse if you let open your hand just a little, will it lift and be away, gone, to its own cadence and purpose, and/or lured away by the persistant sweets of other trains.

another feature of this wintry awakening is the incredible distance. things once held near seem far, or missing. or maybe, for the sake of longterm sanity, discovered unreal or misconceived. all directions from you, you see the lapses.

in judgement and in perception, you realise perhaps you have not failed, but oh what a distance to make up for.

of course. the landscape around you is not empty. it shouldn't be, for you are never alone in your context, but inevitably tangled in engagements, in relationships - all markers of your position in time and space. ...to see not even the physical blots is a whiteout of the soul. you're blind and dead for a time, a worse kind of winter, for you lose even perspective of your perspective.

these winter times are when the winds around me howl the greatest, and my senses demanded to be painfully acute.

fly.

[genting highlands. malaysia]

to the new year,
spinner:
of dreams and renewed energy,
of hope and exuberance.

round and again.

the tree and the building.

[singapore. tampines, construction site]

is all belief

[singapore. ]

a girl among christmas decorations set up on a square outside a mall.

now tell me, is all belief make-believe?

santa or god, the love of your life or your coming promotion. tell me, how are they different?






but we must always make-believe, to have in our lives, as our lives, a little more than bricks and mortar, toothbrushes and suits.

through the square, past the wall, across the threshold, into the next

[ singapore. boon lay food court]


was sitting there waiting for the other to return to the table, all around was chatter, noise, consumption, motion. a convenient outpost set in a blank wall, half bodies moving, making, giving, in a continuous captivating production. one in uniform would flit to the post, picking up and taking away, a well-practiced manoevre, a confident assignment. warm sustenance appears, swooped up for its destination, nameless, one of many.

so was the inside, one of many. concentrate. and each was an individual amongst many. hands, hips, waists moved to different beats, but all keeping within the same rhythm- making, moving, giving.

and the uniformed making their rounds.

the other returned, and those not to be seen receded.

sustenance magically appears. and all that mattered, and very lovely indeed, was one's chatter, noise, consumption, motion.