I'm Sorry.

Today I saw a Thai lady on the bus.

I know she was Thai because she was reading a Thai comic book and she wasn't just looking at the pictures.

She was on bus number 2.

It comes from Changi Village.

So I looked at her crotch.

To my dad.

I'm blogging this from my phone. From camp. And I'm only doing this because I know very well what kind of person I am. I know I'm definitely not going to blog when I get home at least.

I'm doing this because I need to tell someone how much my dad means to me. I've never told him, and I think I might never have the courage to tell him even if I was given a chance to. So I'm doing the cowardly thing and blogging about it.

He just told me that he might be going somewhere else. I can't say much about it because of our employer. But it's going to be on the other side of the island and trust me when I say that I don't want him to go not because I'm remaining at his current workplace.

I don't want him to go because he drives a weekend car and he'll have to leave the house early and come back later. Which means I get to see less of him. I want to be able to spend more time with my dad, even if we don't do much besides staring at the television.

I owe him too much to possibly list it out in a single post. But maybe it isn't about the number of things he's done for me, but what it all adds up to. My dad is dead set on making me a better person.

I know that he is a good person and an excellent father. Too many relatives have told my mum what a great husband he is. And now that I am at his workplace, I hear of even more people telling me the same thing. I would like to think that the position I am in now was granted to me because he has proven himself time and time again to be a true and loyal friend and that his friends are simply doing him a favour.

Despite all the protocols of the army and the rigidity of rank, my dad still remains my dad. While I might avoid calling him Sir, he still watches over me as any father would. Not in the workplace context, but the way every father watches over his child when he or she is stumbling into unknown territory.

I hope someday I can fill his shoes. They will be very large shoes to fill. I have the feeling that I will have to start soon because he certainly isn't getting any younger. And he isn't as fit as before, which means his worth to the service is diminishing. I want to do a good job where I am to show all his friends that he brought me up the right way. And I sincerely hope that I can be that capable.

I love you, Dad.

Asura.

Been busy for some time. Well, not really. Just in the middle of some changes and I feel too bored to update. I'll write some stuff that I've been working on when my life is more stable. Boo change!

And yes, boredom begets boredom.

Dreams.

What are dreams? Are they visions of the future? Or are they your innermost desires trying to surface? Are they simply memories of the days that have passed? Or the days that have yet to come? Are we all engines driven by these dreams, by what we see and interpret, hopefully in the correct fashion?

I rarely have dreams. And even when I do, they are but fleeting synapses that vanish upon waking. Yet, I turn away the dreams that I do recall.

Why?

Is it because they are too wanton? Or that they involve other women? Or that everyone but me dies in my dreams?

Maybe if I relate my dream to you, you can tell me what it was about.

I was walking down an alley, alone, for my friends had left me there, too eager to rush to the venue we had decided on. Where this venue might be and its significance to this dream, I do not know, but I do not go there in the end.

I walk until I see a girl. A malay girl with a cigarette in her hand. Her hair is left to fall on her shoulders and she is dressed in a simple white tank top and black jeans. Her eyes captivate me. She looks at me as though I am nothing, in a lazy manner that suggests I am insignificant, worthless.

But I walk over to her. And ask, "What do I have to do to get with you?"

She lifts her hand with the cigarette. "This." It is almost as though she knows that I have never smoked before, and I wonder if it is because of the way I look. I take the cigarette in my mouth, trying not to embarrass myself the way people on the telly do when they have their first stick.

I breathe it all in, exhaling slowly through my nose. Then I remove the cigarette and release the poisonous smog in my mouth. She smiles, and then we make out. It is a liberating moment, but it does not last.

Suddenly, her insides explode out, as do mine. And the dream begins to take a turn into fantasy land. In her last minutes, she is no longer beautiful, only desperate. Her nails clawing my arms as though I am her last hope. But I have the same wounds. She falls to the ground, and I stand up. I ask myself why I am not yet dead and the answer dawns on me.

A magical blade that I had, sheathed and strung to my right side. The mere sight of which would grant the viewer a horrific death...

And then I am jolted from my dream, hoping to not recall anything.

Yesterday night as I lay in bed, I asked myself why I turned away from my dreams, when I feel the most liberated in them. All my life I have been hiding under illusions, imprisoned by expectations. My dreams are everything I long to be.

So why am I so afraid of them?

There are nights I want to dream a dream that never ends.

And those nights are visiting me more frequently these days.

For A Leaf.

a leaf floats in a pond
slowly pushed about by ripples
it warns of a tornado.
but it cannot stop it.

a tree is uprooted
in a tornado that destroys the land
and like the leaf that fell from it.
it cannot stop the wind.

a house is blown down
crushed by the tree that could not stop
because it had no say in where to go.
the wind was not sensitive,
because the wind cannot stop either,
but the tree does not know.

a home is destroyed
by the roof that they had built
in the house that was crushed by the tree.

the leaf
the tree
the house
the home.

how a little leaf could bring
the same devastation
a thought could sing
if it thought that it could not stop
the wind.

but a thought is not a leaf.
and a friend is not a wind
that wants to blow you down.


Written for a leaf that I know. Who isn't feeling too sure about itself. =]