The Poet

Sometimes a storyline pops into my mind and I find myself expanding on it, indulging in the plot, its details and characters. But more often than not, these moments occur while I’m on the move, walking to a destination or simply hanging out on the public bus with no pen or paper on me but my trusty feature phone. The thing is, I don’t even use the Notes feature of my feature phone to record my then-current thoughts. I just let the ideas run through, and hope some will stick long around enough to translate to writing, though more correctly "typing", when I next come in contact with a keyboard and screen.

Time like these, I think whether it would have been different had I bought myself a smartphone with dictionary-referencing features on-the-move and a proper typing interface. But these ideas that run through, they do not run concurrently with the act of transcribing them.

So perhaps this is an example of men being unable to multi-task as well as ladies?

A Sentimental Man

Change will come to work with the turn of the calendar quarter as 2012 heads into April. After three years and six months, I will be moving on to a new area of work in my present company. Change is welcome, even if I did not initiate it, and in spite of all that has been said and done. Maybe I have reached a narrow stage on the road that all forks are perceived as boons, and that the alternative option to find a new road has yet to surface itself as a better boon.

This shift in duties comes with it a shift in physical space as well which means having to clear all the personal clutter that has accumulated over the years. There’s that single poker card — a ten of clubs, that was given during the Liaison Officer training course to split the attendees into groups based on the random suits received. Black and white magnets resembling keyboard keys, a gift from a source I can no longer remember, will continue to be useful for holding pieces of random paper in place. That cut-out of a black piece of cardboard from that of a university assignment, I just might have to bring home instead of moving it since it is unlikely I find a use for it in my new area of work given I have not done so in my current job. That souvenir from San Diego Comic-Con 2009 — a poster of the movie 9 will have to be rolled up and put up at my new cubicle, to join the scores of fridge magnets accumulated through each of my trips since I began my foray into working life.

So much waiting to transpire but so little time for everything to fall into place.

Something Kinda Ooooh

Well, talk about courtship and invitations. Like opportunities, one should not expect trouble to come knocking if one does not put himself or herself out there to attract trouble. Yet unlike opportunities, no one really wants or expects uninvited trouble.

In fact, the idea of putting oneself out there practically applies to almost anything in life be them relationships, money, career, etc. I believe however, the biggest stumbling block to change is that sense of security and the familiar, how every so often we love status quo and for a good reason too. One has little incentive to rock boats for the flipside to opportunities in most instances, is trouble. Corporate mumbo-jumbo speaks of mitigation and post-action reviews but to put it plainly, it is all about the game plan, whether a scheme meticulously-prepared or simply improvisation.

I believe, change comes subtly.

The Man Who Can’t Be Moved

2011.
Christmas came. It left.
New Year came. It left.

2012.
Two days of Lunar New Year came. They left.

Then there is the slew of other milestones such as gatherings and birthday and pieces of news, some not quite significant, from various sources that have largely gone by unrecorded save for snippets on Twitter. And so it seems I have lapsed into another period of blog-writing-drought…

Even as I write this, the first month of the "new year" that is 2012 is coming to its end.

Perhaps the result of the piling of ages, perhaps a consequence of an expanded circle of social interactions or perhaps change, I have come to realise this almost-hollow feeling growing inside of me, one that can neither be accurately described as dissatisfaction nor general lack of patience. Life carries on as it has always been but this awareness has been eating at me, something I think I have long known or come to terms with but have yet to find the courage nor word then to express it explicitly. Whether I was running away from it, or avoiding it or maybe even having once professed it but with no present recollection, I now feel it is perhaps the time to place it in writing again.

"Hollow", yes. I have mentioned this before.

Some people have a theme song, others some iconic phrase or string of words in English, Latin or otherwise, or a sliver of experience that resonate deep with them akin to a personal motto or even the very summation or definition of their existence. I had one once, I think, but that must have been too long ago for I am not sure of it now. These years of life, they don’t leave without an impact and they don’t leave without taking something away and leaving behind something else in its place.

It will seem, in the basest way I can hope to express this, that I am "searching". Not particularly for a person, someone or something, I am searching for what I believe is an abstract or to be as precise as I possibly can, a "quality".

Yes, I am searching for a quality.

Like a puzzle piece missing from a greater picture, incomplete, in need of meaning and self-understanding. Like that aforementioned theme song, lost in expression over time. Like a gear dislodged from an intricate series of similar gears. What am I lacking and perhaps, hence looking for? And of silly questions: how does one know they have been answered if they do not know what the answers are?

My only faith is that I will know it if I find it, even if I take a lifetime to reach this "quality". That if I am meant to receive it, it will be found even with eyes shut. That I will come to accept that I may never find it. That after all, ex nihilo nihil fit.

And that miracles, they do exist.

Turn Back Time

A different life.
An alternate past.
Change that which we have no control.
Meet people who would otherwise have not met.

Different lives.
Indeterminate future.
Unpredictable consequences of the action.
Not acquaintances any more.

I am not Legion, nor do I have such aspirations.

Is time a resource, a commodity, magic, or perhaps simply immaterial?
A giant clock hangs in the sky, ticking the seconds of all life away.
Perhaps even gods will advise against rewinding hands.
If only there were somehow another way…

Everybody

A nice refreshing swim after the drudgery of a day’s work sounds good, in theory. The actual execution and experience can be said to be, less.

After all, since the early opening hours of the public pool, many have had their dip in it. Come evening, the water in it had been constantly passing through and washing bodies and constantly pumped to be cleaned to wash more swimmers making their way through it. One can almost feel the water, grimy and slightly salty in taste. The common chlorine smell no more and one is but painted a mental picture of perspiring bodies from the swimming experience.

Well it really isn’t all that bad. I did my laps, got myself a good workout and worked up an appetite for dinner thereafter. And one can’t really complain about the lack of sun when it is past eight in the evening but at least it did not rain and the complex was very well-lit.

Cannonball

And suddenly, we are approaching the last quarter of 2011. It’s like eight months simply whizzed by before one can barely recognise January of 2011. The old saying goes about time and tide not waiting for anyone and how true it is. Waiting is but a foolish venture played by idle individuals.