Arbor Vitae

This wasn’t what I expected you to like at all.

I had you pegged as someone who embraced the alternative, who practically relished the quaint, with the exception of broadband Internet and other creature comforts perhaps?

Although knowing you, you’d probably classify good, cheap Asian eats as alternative if it worked in your favour.

But whatever I was expecting, it was certainly not this.

This pensive, pop-pey little cachet full of alliterative repeats, lilting notes, and words prettily enunciated with an almost child-like earnestness. There is more than a whiff of Julie Andrews and Mary Poppins lurking about this little number I suspect.   

But the other day, in the record store, you’d pronounced her awesome. So forgive me, but I just had to see if it was so.

And that day, amidst the welter of blues and jazz, tucked in somewhere between that flurry of comparisons between Ella Fitzgerald and Eric Bibb and Harry Connick Jr, you let slip that you also had a fondness for Webber’s Phantom of The Opera. 

And pulled up, mildly embarrassed.

I’m just giving away all my secrets today, aren’t I?, you said.

You were. All except one.

But the answer to that last enigma I’ll find out soon enough. The day after tomorrow, in actual fact.

That’s when I will find out if all this was merely a figment of my fevered imagination. Or not.

But there’ll be no cramming strangely shaped pegs into standard sized holes, promise. In all honesty, there was no a-ha moment that day; the missing pieces that made up the whole did not magically appear and fall into place.

If so, so be it.

It’s nice to be reminded sometimes that the world can be bigger than you and your minute concerns.

It almost feels like spring tonight - it’s neither cool nor warm, and the air is still, as though with anticipation. And as you do when it is springtime, you strain and search for signs of life, whether real or imagined.

Then I spy the bloom of that something, so delicate and ephemereal, so very far removed from me and what makes up my world. Its very tentativeness and its joy at being alive is making me feel almost austere in my reservedness.

There is no need to stretch out a hand, no need to interfere. It will be what it was meant to become. I can remain austere, but I hope, not aloof.

其实，你下一 次去图 书 馆的时 候，不用再替我借课 本了。

也 许你说的对，含 蓄是我 的专长。

That accidental rendezvous today served to remind me of this: the biggest leap we’ll ever take is the one that bridges that yawning chasm between a friendship and a relationship.

Right now I feel so exasperated I want to say: Breach these walls then. Let’s see what happens. To hell with everything else.

But I do not.

Because I know I’ll live to regret this moment of rashness. The doubt will set in; I’ll fret myself to bits. 

Even then doubts and frets won’t change the fact that there are things in your past I will never be entirely comfortable with.

But who can lay claim to an unblemished past - no regrets, no do-overs, no indiscretions and no casual encounters? That would be unrealistic in the extreme wouldn’t it?

I might not have a chequered past, but it’s by no means pristine either. 

The only certainty in this morass of uncertainty will be this: I was once guilty of complacency and the sin of hubris. Never again.

Q: How many colour wolves does PMOBACO/ PCCO have?

A: A heck of a lot more than I thought! XD

Too much honesty lah guys, now how am I supposed to look these people in the face when I go home in July?  =P

I don’t know why I find this endearing, but I do.

ps: In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a YouTube bender and this is stuck on repeat on my playlist too  =)

"I feel restless," you said.

You said that instead of sleeping, you had spent the night wide awake, listening to music.

"A quickening of the blood perhaps? Like when you’re so restless you feel you can’t wait to be away?" I replied.

And instantly chastised myself for the banality of that remark.

You knitted your brow, and looked at me. Quite perplexed, perhaps mildly stymied.

What to make of this strange person who interjects with such random utterances? 

What indeed.

"Never thought of it that way. But I like it", you said.

An acerbic reply or even plain confoundedness would have done us both more good in the long run.

We are not half-way to understanding each other. Not even part-way, truth be told.

But it is as I told you. There was no coquetry in all my reluctance, believe me.

This is not my way.

There is no room for uncertainty right now. I’ve struggled so long to comb out all the tangles, undo all knots, clutch at each thread desperately to keep it within reach.

I am indeed, anal, as you so quaintly put it yesterday. I do not deny it. It is what I am and it is reflected in what I do.

But what you do not know is that when those threads come apart, so do I.

If I cannot give you what you want (and I am sure I cannot), there is no point to all of this anguished soul-searching and fruitless overtures.

I was angry because I felt misled. I was angry at myself. Because this should all mean nothing to me. You and what you did should have meant nothing to me.

When we were on the train on our way home, I was sitting next to you, trying to puzzle out what it was I was feeling. It eventually became clear when that vague and far-off ache consolidated in a rush of clarity: I felt hurt.

I have not felt like that in a long time. The last time I felt hurt it ended in a pool of tears and broken-everything-ness.

Which is why I hate it. I hate having to cede up control. I hate having to acknowledge that I let someone get close enough to wound me like that. Most of all, I hate how I never saw it coming.

So I did the only thing I could. I turned my back to you. And I chatted and smiled and teased and laughed and conferred with everyone else bar yourself. And if anyone saw through that pretense, I was none the wiser.

My (self-directed) anger had subsided by the time I saw you this morning. You looked much as you did the day before. Tired, vaguely worn-out, perhaps slightly blurred around the edges.

Nothing a good sleep and a hug wouldn’t fix.

And just like that all my resentment went away. Suddenly I was all softness and solicitude and concern.

Damn it all to hell.

"Are you alright?" I said, "You were a little quiet yesterday."

And in my head a churlish little voice added "Just not me with me, oh no, you were a barrel of laughs with someone else, no?"

And again, you said: "I’m just a little tired"

So am I. More than a little tired of all of this.

I could have cried when I saw this. In fact, I did.

Which is a bit of an odd occurence really, since I’ve been brought up to believe that tears were purely a waste of time, energy and plain ole H2O.

But I am feeling a little vulnerable right now. Hence the emo-ness.

Dearest BB, I don’t know what I would have done if it had been you in that picture. That poor thing died after the photo was taken.