distant dreams

new years backwards. loss in sugar.

It does not feel like any time has passed. At the bottom of my gut, there is fizzling glow of excitement, puffing up now and again in a cloud of bloom. Bloom? I make no sense. My apologies.

My friend came by to stay with me during Christmas. I wonder if they will read this and think back to that time the same way I do. It was a good time and there is not enough patience in you for me to get through all of it in this chapter, so I will list two or three times of what I can recall most clearly. Just to give you an idea. To fill your time, and these small cracks between us.

Memory one of three. Foods.

She roasted sweet potatoes for both of us, having learnt from the roast dinner she had eaten prior to her visit. In my mind, she prepares and cooks that roast with her friends and colleagues and flatmates, smiling occasionally with her heart light the whole time. I remember peering into the warm orange mouth of the oven, half wishing I was part of something similar, half glad that I was experiencing the embers left over from a stranger's happier nostalgia. When she opened the oven door at the 15 minute mark to turn the pieces over, I was hit in the face by a wall of spiteful, hot air. It took a split second for what was inviting to turn threatening and I was forced to step away, to turn towards the darkening sky through the window of my room. We ate the sweet potatoes with chopsticks, paired with spicy ramen and sweet custard buns. The mismatched bowls and plates seemed to me endearing in how clumsy and helpless it all looked, my culinary incompetence covering our mealtime in a muted sort of colour. For some reason, I was not able to fully enjoy myself and blamed it at the time on an innate demand for perfection. Still, it seemed things would be fine. Things would be just dandy.

Another evening, we ate glutinous rice balls. Two kinds of flavours: red beans or peanuts. The sweetness of the sugar broth mixed well with the ginger sting and pandan fragrance so it lent the fillings a kind of familiar warmth. Rolling the rice ball around on my tongue (bad table manners but we were not eating on tables), I could have smelled the uncooked onions and medicinal oils of a grandmother's house, felt the embroidered plastic table covers under my fingertips, the creaking doors of the wooden cupboard where too many plates and cups have settled into a thin layer of disuse and dust. It dawned on me that all I had to do to time travel was to close my eyes, holding the solstice food melting thickly over the bottom row of my teeth. Instead I kept my eyes open and chewed quickly, washing the stickiness down with spoonfuls of the broth. I made some comments on the agreeable taste of the tang yuan, and discussed plans for the next day out loud. In hindsight, those rice balls were overcooked, soft floury skins splitting - about to burst - the hidden darkness of the sugar inside of them impatient to blossom. By this time, an odd impenetrable silence had lodged itself in between her and me.

Memory two of three. King of the evening hill.

We visited a park. Four of us. It was a spontaneous decision, bolstered mainly by my curiosity and need to stretch out the joy I felt that day, those few precious hours. The top of the park was well-known for its view so it was a natural, unspoken decision to climb upwards. Being nighttime in frigid cloudy weather, the entire path up was near pitch darkness if not for the measly glow of three streetlights. They hovered over limited patches of the gravel and stone, circles of light devoid of any personality. Maybe I was too preoccupied to notice, or care. I was just happy to be there at that time, in the clothes I was wearing, with the people I was with. When we finally reached the top, I was the only one breathless but I tried to reign it in by breathing in a suppressed way. Imagine someone pressing down on your lungs with a flat ungiving slab of concrete and lifting the weight incrementally to allow some air in before pressing down again - never allowing full relief. That was how it felt. It doesn't matter in any case. I forgot about it as soon as I saw the cityscape. 

Red orbs of light blinking and pulsing in a scattered uneven row, the skyscrapers barely visible against the overpowering navy sky. Not much colour could break through the stubborn urban winter. We all breathed in white mist, the greyness of the grass a sloping expanse at our feet. There was a bench at the top, and we all ended up sitting on it. I tried to take a few pictures, but the best ones were when she helped. I trusted her with it, the same way I trusted her with the sweet potatoes. It felt right to do so in the moment. It was almost new years after all.

There was a curved stone plaque with an inscription. A fragment of somebody else's grand idea, somebody else's mind racing to capture whatever they felt. Then I saw that none of it belonged to me - the joy, the pictures, the way the lights felt both intimate and unbearably distant. Only the breathlessness and my hair pressing against my cheek because of the strong breeze. I turned back around to face them: her, and two other friends. I heard a camera clicking, my own phone trained directly at me as it captured whatever I looked like. A soft, rising attempt at a funny remark escaped me, and I could only push forth a laugh - a little too loud than I planned, and let it shoot towards the sky the way a gunshot might - sharp and final. I was glad I was not alone on top of that hill. Strangely I don't remember any of us smiling, but somehow we laughed a lot.

Memory three of three. Before her arrival.

I went shopping for Christmas gifts in the last week of November for all the friends I knew I was going to meet over the next two weeks. I had saved up a pretty sum from what my parents had originally given, and from my part time job. Bubbling with a secret kind of eagerness, hers was the only gift I knew exactly where and what to get.

An art magazine in the souvenir shop opposite the law school I attend. It was a pleasant little corner, full of expensive stationary and a quiet sort of learnedness lingered over it. A tourist attraction with the soberness of a private library. It always felt like I was being invited to look at other people's possessions whenever I perused the shelves of paperbacks, the soap bars on display, the greeting cards. The magazine I had in mind has an orange cover. I had not even considered the contents beneath the cover but it called to me and I purchased it. I had to do it quickly and without fuss, otherwise doubt would set in. Being a student at the law school meant I redeemed a discount. There was a postcard I had saved up for her as well. I remembered she enjoyed postcard collecting. Personal touches here and there. A week later, when I would give it by way of feigning surprise and manipulating her to discover the gift herself, I received a gift in return. She chided me for unearthing the surprise prematurely but in a way that meant she didn't mind it too much. Neither of us cared. It was a good start.

A hat the colour of mustard and earth yellow. A mug with little rounded bear ears on the rim. Chocolate truffles from M&S. A hand drawn folded piece of shiny silver card. I liked the card best (I usually do). I finished the truffles within a week. The mug I use for either coffee or Milo, rarely tea. I have not had the chance to wear the hat, but still did so one morning when the hair iron proved useless.

I remember what I bought my other friends too, now regretting some of it. The lack of memory attached to these other items evokes a sense of dreaming of a deserted island and then waking up with a parched throat. Yes, thats what it feels like. On second thought, it might be better to resign myself to think it was worth it after all. Christmas never hurt anyone intentionally.

The rest of the Christmas we spent together into the new year stored various other nice things. Cream ceilings and white lights. Bitter, iced coffees. Board games, card games, tv games. Movies on my laptop. Late nights. A musical theatre show full of sparkles and hope and love.  The deliberate lack of art museums and galleries. Makeup. More food. (Twice more she made sweet potatoes.) Restaurants that tasted better because I wasn't eating alone or at least, with people that made me feel alone.

I felt something sad and frustrated towards the end. It was surprising. It stung a lot because neither of us talked about much during this lull. Then I had to leave a day before she was planning to, and there was short relief. Still, it was good time. I wanted to say thank you properly but once again did not know how. This is an exercise in reconciling that failure, I think.

Thats it from me. It was a good thing we talked today. These moments might have become too distorted and inaccurate otherwise, having been turning around in my mind until they settled at the bedrock waiting to be stirred up.

So. Till next.