Last night, in the depths of dreams I was struggling to remember the well-hidden route, the location being marked by a very big tree on the horizon. It was tall, parched and devoid of leaves. It had been a very long while since I’d last been there—many nights ago, many dreams ago—because I’d forgotten that it existed. Hours spent being awake and occupied had eroded this fragile, momentary memory. Knowing where it was, yet unable to find my way there, I was swallowed by grief. It meant too much time had passed, too much had been lost.
Waking into the hazy, early hours of the morning, I stared at the top of the curtain rail in our bedroom where the sun had begun to glow, chasing down the remains of last night’s shadow.
The secret route to this place began next to my parents’ house, through a plot of land which for many years was covered in tall grasses, home to snakes and scorpions, a good number of which had sometimes ended up in our living room. A monstrous white house had since been built there, stifling the population of wandering creatures. Instead, we were infested by regular human shouting: mother to son, father to mother, son to father. They were loud and uncouth. Their TV blared, their gates creaked and their car roared—every day.
In my dream journey that would have happened at an impossible time, I’d fought my way through the grasses, found a way to cross the stream, but was distracted by having to stop and comfort a friend, undertake mindless chores, consumed by a myriad of other little things that I must do. What was done could no longer be undone; words that were said have now stained the earth.
In those last precious minutes before waking, I found myself at the edge of the grassland, glancing once more at the tree on the horizon. Where long ago, its trunk and branches shone white and smooth like that of a eucalyptus, it was now covered in deep green masses of stranglers.
]]>It is too cold to go out, so I stare out through the window, but only for a little while. These sash windows are old and they let the cold air in through every seam. They fog up if I stay there too long.
But the weather has gone strange. The daffodils on the green that were sprightly just yesterday now look limp and lifeless.
The foxes are quiet tonight. If you were to close your eyes, the occasional car driving by sounds almost like the roar of ocean waves, flowing in from somewhere much warmer, more alive.
]]>At the intersection, a young Hispanic man approached me — could I take a photo of him and his friend? I asked him what he’d like for a background, and he pointed to the small church steeple on the opposite corner. Between the rush of peak-hour traffic and the resolute pace of people freshly released from offices determined to get home, I captured a tiny slice of time — both of them smiling at the camera, slightly awkward but happy.
The city seemed full of unnecessary things. The shops were still open for another hour. We can’t possibly need all these things. Once upon a time, we created images of ourselves from wire and wood; sometimes, we kept real mannequins in windows for amusement. Eventually, we replaced everything with plastic bodies. Now, we are busily replacing ourselves with plastics.
A truck driver honked out loud because the cars in front of him weren’t moving. The pedestrians on the roadside yelled at him in protest. The cars didn’t move. The truck remained stuck.
The light turned green, I looked up to see the young men I photographed crossing the street at the same time. One of them gave me a gentle smile. I felt an odd little twist inside.
I willed the roads to shrink and break down to rubble, the street lamps to grow branches so that the light they cast could be leaves under our feet. Of course, nothing happened.
Men and women walked, shopped, sat on terraces and drank afternoon coffees. Few were smiling. The season had turned and our souls went into hiding.
I see you in their faces. Yes, you. How they could have been all like you, all shameless with courage and exploding with dreams.
]]>Some of the shop-houses have since been converted into modern shops, advertising “antiques”, but a careful eye could pick out that antiques make up for less than a small percentage of the items on display — many more objects have been imported from Thailand or Indonesia, where the labour is cheap.
When in our history did it happen that our shops need to be full of things? Was it meant to convey a successful business? Wouldn’t it have just shown many things remained unsold? Was there a point in the psyche of selling and buying where we realised no one would ever walk into an empty shop?
These shops are far from empty; they are overwhelmingly full of trivial, useless things with little physical value. One assumes the value of things is what the acquirer places upon it at the time of purchase, and that value bears no relationship to the price one actually pays.
We walk down Heren Street, where the old nyonya houses are mostly derelict, looking cold, old and empty. Any similarity to Herenstraat in Amsterdam has probably never existed. Occasionally, a tired, old face would peer out from within an open window, staring into the no-longer human space they might soon inhibit.
This street has the weight of ghosts. The scent of a violent past still lingered. I took his arm and steered him towards Jonker street, where the soft lights from the waking night market has begun to keep darkness at bay.
Where are the young people? Have they left this ancient town for sprawling skyscrapers? All the ones we have met were either travellers or visitors from other towns, intent on spending their money stuffing themselves with famed, local food.
One gets the feeling that only ghosts live here now.
]]>So it was deep into the madrugada that we walked, in this city whose streets were neatly divided into rectangles, and whose buildings followed suit for the lack of creativity; at best they turned at a slight angle to introduce an isosceles triangle at their entrances. It was quiet, the late night taxis have evaporated, and all signs of life were tucked away where people preferred to dance in close quarters to one another, drowned out by loud music, sweat and beer-tinged breath.
Our destinations were known entities of finite distances, but I was entirely conscious that your destiny was not mine, how we differed not in speed but in velocity, and that our paths were diverging at the rate of an unknown constant, faithful only to the beat of time.
It was deep into the madrugada that I sought peace from the night’s demons, as its shadows stayed still, held back by fearless streetlamps. The taxi we finally hailed rolled to a silent stop at a red traffic light, even though there were no other cars in sight.
]]>Aware that thoughts once uttered are irreversible things, our words crowded up against one another while time eroded us from the inside out. What power we have, slicing open our own histories with sharp blades of rhetoric, making incisions over where memories have long healed over.
The streets were not familiar. For one thing, they were far too wide. The featureless buildings that defined them were too tall, too cold, too everything. To compensate for the lack of scale and perspective, they lined the middle of the streets with lifeless trees strangled by speckled lights. If it were not for the road signs that glared large and green, we would have been lost getting here.
There wasn’t time for all the stories needed to be told. The traveller knows that magic belongs only to moments frozen in a time and a place, that new memories are reborn by means of hastily scribbled words in a notebook, or a photograph captured like a butterfly in mid-flight.
When I returned to my room, I went to bed with the same song in my head as the one that crept into my consciousness in waking moments too many hours ago, long before I became who I now am.
]]>Even as your shadow cast longer than mine on the autumn pavement, I wasn’t reassured. This is a city I have never loved. But we talked like old friends, joked like old friends. It sometimes feels as if our existence were determined by dice. A pair of sixes and it would be 6 hours together. Or perhaps it had to do with who held the full house?
]]>An immeasurable spell of seconds ticking in a day, defined only by arbitrary footsteps walking down a side-street, where the unmarked doors remain soundlessly closed, their mysteries well-locked on the other side.
I stare out of my window and watch the clouds make shadow patterns on the leaves of the chestnut tree outside.
On sunny days, the concrete city soaks up all the warmth, storing the heat deep within its cracks, in case winter comes early this year.
]]>When friends travelled, and asked if there were things I wanted, I’d usually asked for a wayward token like a seashell from a beach they visited, or perhaps a particularly unusual stone, or a leaf from a tree. The souvenir that comes back often bears the imprint of the one who has acquired it, their soul’s pattern reflected in what they deem worthy to keep.
Or perhaps, I may have just been subconsciously wanting to impose my uncomplicated joys onto those around me. My best memories of beaches have always been the treasure hunt – looking for seashells and stones that other travellers might not have noticed; the special token, shaped just in this way, just this colour, waiting for me to eventually arrive here to find it. But the kind of shells I choose are the ones that are broken, imperfect. It seems more magical somehow, to be able to imagine what the rest of the shell and its sea creature might have once looked like.
I don’t usually like cars, but this is possibly the only sensible means to get around the island. I resist the urge to count poppies – they appear like red punctuation amongst the cistus, the Corsican lavender, and numerous other little flowers I haven’t yet had the privilege to be acquainted with. But poppies are not found everywhere in the world, and the surprising sight of the crimson petals make me deliriously happy. In higher altitudes, you get the occasional very large, purple poppy, and every time I catch sight of one, it is like a private, purple blessing.
]]>I’d always believed that we should keep an ample supply of dreams and pick them off like apples.
In the early morning the secret in our hearts stayed home under the covers while we travelled in opposite directions, over distances that don’t match, stretching time at different speeds.
]]>