The fear

There's been a bit of upheaval in my life, and I only just decided that I would start blogging again.  I don't know if anyone still reads here or even remembers it, but I thought it would be cathartic and besides, I'm starting to get back into taking photos regularly and this is as good as place as any to display them.

Six months ago, I went and met someone and lost my head.  Again.  

I didn't see it coming.  A year of painful, unsuccessful online dating (one guy emailed me about the female orgasm after the first date) was enough to make me swear off men forever.  And just as I was starting to appreciate the solitude, my whole life tilted violently on its axis.

Of my last relationship, the one that ended in a heartbreak I thought I would never recover from, I talked constantly.  After years of having my guard up, I was so determined to experience and live it fully that I waxed lyrical to anyone who would listen.

This time, I am frightened beyond words.  In six months, I don't think I've truly talked about any of this with more than a couple of friends.  I am dumbfounded by the thought of explaining things to my family in detail.  My standard answer whenever people ask me things is, "I can't answer that right now."  Because there are a lot of things that I don't dare to say but I will say this: against my will and better judgement, I'm in love.  And if you've ever been in love second, third, tenth time around, you know just how terrifying it is.  You understand what it's like to worry that it's going to sour or disappear any second, just like the fourth time, the fifth, the seventh.  You've felt the way your heart quickens in the late night darkness when doubt is your only bedfellow.  You know just what I mean.

The thought of having to get to know someone new and growing and learning together all over again can be anxiety-inducing.  This isn't my first go-round.  I know what happens at the end and how difficult things can be.

What can I say though?  It happened.  I'm in love, and he is wonderful.  He was single for a long time too, and things took some getting used to.  After all, we're both older, more wary and all too aware of how things could go.  But that also makes us more careful, more gentle, more willing to try.  In the last half year, we've managed to weather death, job issues, disappointment.  Every day, I'm working on being more practical too, teaching my head to balance out my heart.

Unlike the last time, when I naïvely trumpeted the idea that things would spin out into a dream future, I am now more circumspect, the caginess of a dog kicked one too many times.  But you know what they say: if it's worth having, it's worth fighting for.  And something tells me this is absolutely worth fighting for.

I know that he understands.  "I'm scared," he said suddenly to me one night.  He tucked his chin into my shoulder and I felt the kind of butterflies I had forgotten even existed.  I took his hand, large and warm in mine.

"It's okay.  I'm scared too.  We can be scared together."

158900...

(... or, excuse the scuzzy aspect ratio of my phone camera.  I don't know what's up with this thing.)

That's the number of metres I've struggled, plodded, walked, you name it, since the beginning of this year, and believe you me, I felt every single one.  

The number looks set to diminish now that I've added swimming to my routine, but as long as I largely stick to the exercise-three-times-a-week New Year's resolution I set myself last December, I don't really mind.

Plodding was becoming pretty stale for awhile, though, and together with work, waking up so early in the morning and straggling along the roads at dawn was starting to exhaust me.  Moving changed all that.  Now I can pretty much run at any time that I like and Thomson is such a warren of little roads and interconnecting neighbourhoods that it'll be a long time before I get bored again.

Last week, I plodded a refreshing 5-point-something kilometres along newly rain-washed pavements scented by leaves and night air.  Today, I took one of my favourite detours in a 7.5 click route along Chancery Lane.  I don't mind running here, in part because I'm obsessed with houses.

I love looking at yards and gardens and façades old and new and planter boxes and swimming pools and swing sets as I plod.  I even love tall condominiums, glowing pillars in the gloaming.  I am especially fascinated by the double-storey plate glass of soaring light in the penthouses and the lives behind them.  So, running through estates means that it still feels tough, but I am rewarded by the sight of living and children playing and the sounds of distant dogs.

But the nostalgia these routes awaken is the biggest gift of all.  When I was just 16 years old and the whole family used to live in Thomson, I would take Chip out for long walks down Chancery Lane.  I remember being breathlessly, beautifully surprised by the empty stretches of field and old black-and-white houses with red doors.  Each lane we turned down was a fresh discovery and even now, just seeing those old road signs brings back the sound of Chip's claws clicking on the asphalt.

It's a wonderful feeling to see that so many of these houses are still there and look exactly the same and each detour makes me want to explore even more.

See, I guess I hate running, but I like getting somewhere.

Cool as

"...You send a poem, and observe wisely that poems are worth all the cucumber-sandwiches in the world.  So they are indeed - and yours most particularly - but you may imagine the perversity of the poetic imagination and its desire to feed on imagined cucumber-sandwiches, which, since they are positively not to be had, it pictures to itself as a form of English manna - oh the perfect green circles - oh the delicate hint of salt - oh the fresh pale butter - oh, above all, the soft white crumbs and golden crust of the new bread - and thus, as in all aspects of life, the indefatigable fancy idealises what could be snapped up and swallowed in a moment's restrained greed, in sober fact."

-- Possession, A. S. Byatt

It must be confessed that few things are as delightful as finding some such recipe in the book one is reading, developing a raging craving for it, and sneaking home with a grocery bag full of things to quell said craving that very night.  

And the luxury of adding cream cheese, purple potato Jagabee and a hot mug of tea!  

Life cannot get much better.

East of Patagonia

This is a silly, childish story, and I'm not even really sure it's one I should tell, but I'm sitting alone at home and I need to unload before I hunker down for the night.  So here it is anyway.

Ten years ago, when I was overseas, I met many people who were also living away from home.  One of them was a French boy I'll call Pierre, and as my interest in the language was already blooming then, I hung around him a lot and we became fast friends.

We talked incessantly, shared stories and meals and went off exploring places together and because we had so much in common, we got along surprisingly well.  

And of course, all that's neither here nor there, but the truth is, even though we were seeing other people, we secretly fell in love; in love in the way that people who will never be together are.  We never said it, we didn't have to.  We never kissed, or even so much as held hands because back then, it was important to us that we honoured our relationships, and each other.  

There are simpler ways to love.  Once, for example, he found a way to buy me a ticket to a sold-out concert of an artist we both loved.  He presented it to me on my balcony and for moment I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  We had to sit on opposite ends of the stadium at the gig, but he wore a flashing button on his chest so I could see him blinking at me across a sea of heads all night.  Another time, we visited a famous cemetery together and drew what we wanted our graves to be like in his notebook.

Things like that made our time together that much more special, because it was easy, limited and innocent and somewhere between all the dreams and secrets and laughter that we shared, Pierre stole a piece of my heart.  

French made it into all our conversations of course.  I learnt silly phrases and my first set of conjugations from him.  I remember lying on my stomach on the floor as he patiently explained, "Je suis, tu es, il est..." and wrote carefully in his curly, boyish hand.  "Fais de beaux rêves," we would type to each other in conversation at the end of every night.  And on my birthday, he bought me two sets of the same books in English and in French so that I could teach myself through translation.

When we finally had to say goodbye, I was heartbroken.  We casually air-kissed before he was ferried off to the airport and I laughed cheerfully and waved as the taxi pulled away and then hid myself in my room and cried.  Pierre called me from the airport and left a voicemail message saying that he had something to tell me.  "I..." he began, and then couldn't continue.  We both knew anyway. 

_______________________ 

Of course, nothing happened afterwards.  Our separate relationships took centrestage once more.  We continued to be close friends for a few years, and then not so close friends and now that he's living a completely different life, perhaps not really friends anymore.  I met him once, a couple of years ago in Paris, and he shyly pulled me aside into his bedroom and showed me some old letters we'd written each other.  He still had the drawings of the graves in his old notebook, but that was all.  

I was sad that we drifted apart, but not surprised.  After all, as we'd agreed, all we would expect was to enjoy our time together.  What more could we want?  

I never did use those books to teach myself; it was too hard.  But I thought of him, and of French, often and with fondness, and when I finally had the time, money and courage to go for classes, I found myself falling quite easily and breathlessly back into it as if my spirit had been waiting for me to return to the language all along.  

And then, one week ago in the move, I found the French version of Dangerous Liaisons that he'd bought for me.  I remembered, even before I opened the book, that he'd written a message within, probably friendly enough to be innocuous.  I remembered thinking, when I first saw it, that I would probably never learn enough to understand.

But last Saturday, ten years late, I found the page and those words came to me, easy as speaking.  You see, he took a tiny piece of my heart, but I suppose he gave me something in return as well.

Only, I don't know if I can tell him this anymore, and so I'm telling you.

Home sweet home

After doing a full top-to-bottom house clean on Friday morning (I'm becoming my mother and googling how best to clean floors) I thought I would take a few quick photos to test the windows-as-lightboxes here.  

As you can see, I was also stuffing my face with cookies that my friend, Jenna, got me as a housewarming present.  Naturally.  

I've been saving up for a couple of years to buy a computer with a bigger screen and I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to see all the photos that I'm editing because they are now bigger than postcards.  

Another useful (?) present from Eddie and Shirin - sex dice.  Thanks, guys!

I also finally, finally managed to finagle a reading corner in my room.  The furniture is all Ikea (even the stuff we moved over from my parents' house) so it's fairly cheap, light and pretty easy to take care of.  Shlomo Finkelstein came along with me.

And the new hipster lights I bought from Balestier, the sultan of all neighbourhoods when it comes to lighting.  They were on a 40 per cent discount and I thought they would go nicely with that one cucumber green wall in the corner.

One last bit of nonsense: I am growing very fond of my furniture.  Every day, I say good morning and goodnight to it and before I leave for work, I give it a pep talk.  ["Come on guys!  Be brave!  And make yourselves unappealing to cockroaches!"]

The person that I knew would understand this was Amanda.  Even though she's miles away in Perth, chasing her dreams, she immediately agreed that it was important to whip the furniture into shape and told me that hers, being veteran fixtures, were already well-primed to resist intruders.

"Don't worry, Bff," she texted, "Just keep talking to yours and they'll become experienced very quickly."

So far, it seems to be working.

The nest

So I've been kind of busy.  I've moved!  By which I mean, I'm not living with my family anymore.  I love my family and I miss them something fierce but this was one New Year's resolution I just had to fulfil.  I've wanted to live by myself for a long time, to just learn how to be more independent and see where it takes me.  

My parents wanted to be involved in the process, and after we sort-of put the flat together, it was finally time to say goodbye.  I'm no stranger to living alone, having done it in three different countries, but this was somewhat more permanent and I found myself mourning and celebrating in equal measure.

I'm really close to my family.  We've grown up in each other's pockets our whole lives and for eight years, my mother and father single-handedly raised the three of us - a 24/7 job.  We never wanted for anything and we always felt safe and loved.  So on my last night at a home that is now not exactly home, I hid away in my bedroom and packed with tears running down my cheeks.  

I was furious at myself for still feeling melancholic when my parents finally left; I was so lucky, I knew I still had their full love and support and besides, wasn't this something I'd wished and hoped for?  At my age, it felt foolish to be so morose.  I'd been worrying about dealing with pests on my own as well, and that first night, the Universe sent a finger-length cockroach my way, just to remind me that I was truly alone.  I'll be honest here and say that I've been toting a can of orange-scented Baygon from room to room at night.

Since then, I've felt mostly happy to be on my own, but occasionally panicked about the prospect of frightening things to come.  The place is beautiful and much nicer than I deserve, but my time has been mostly occupied with sorting, cleaning and full-time work and even though the thought of living alone is exhilarating, I've been a little too tired to fully appreciate the feeling.  

This evening though, I came home late after work to a pile of things I'd gotten from Ikea.  After conducting my preliminary nighttime cockroach checks, I settled down on the floor with a cup of tea, put on some music and got to assembling my (auspiciously named) Skanka cookware set.  My father urged me to buy this cute, self-contained toolbox and I was enjoying discovering each individual screwdriver head and what it did.  The pots were coming together beautifully; none of that creaky kerfluffle you sometimes get from reading Ikea directions upside down.  And quite suddenly, in the midst of singing along loudly to the King and I soundtrack (am I right?) I realised that I was finally feeling relaxed and having fun.

I think the transition will take a little while to get used to yet, but sitting here, looking around at a place that I helped to put together and that is slowly starting to feel like a safe haven, I'm feeling pretty damn optimistic about it.

Five senses

The pale light of the house on the end of the street against a sky melting to black.  The taste and smell of smoke, the last of the Chinese New Year barbecues.  My dog's claws clicking on asphalt as we blunder through the dark.  The pinpoint of a rising planet.  Tepid wind drawing itself along the street, up my legs, over my nape.  Here, still warm macadam.  Here, a fleeting touch from earlier today, the accident of a warm hand on mine. 

There, voices calling out wishes.  The dying embers of February, the lamplight like a swollen star.

Sleepover

Our dining table at six this morning, slow, good-natured waking round crumbs of peanut butter toast and hot tea.  I sat in the right corner, veins fizzing, amazed that the mere suggestion of wandering along a boardwalk at dawn had been met with such enthusiastic response.

The night before, four of us had piled into my parents' room, three of us huddled on the king-sized bed, planning our adventure for the next morning.

Earlier, I'd settled Bear, Edie and Wei Shun into the master bedroom and made to leave for my room for the night.  "Wait a minute," Edie protested.  "I thought we were all supposed to sleep in the same room!"

Bear sat up on her elbows, "Isn't that the point of a sleepover?" 

Yes, but I wanted to make sure they had plenty of space, I pointed out, and I didn't want to disturb them if I snored or kicked out.

Wei Shun grinned and patted the empty space next to her.  "Come on, Shuli, get in."

I demurred weakly for awhile and then after a little more cajoling, huffed off to grab pillows and a duvet.  Maybe I'm too old for this, I was thinking slightly embarrassedly as I wrapped my arms around the bed clothes and came back into the room, maybe there's some kind of age limit for hanging out in pyjamas.  But the girls were already comfortably piled high with blankets and setting their phone alarms for the crack of dawn and when I crawled into the space that they'd left me, I couldn't help smiling to myself.

We giggled until almost two and only settled down when Eddie laughed explosively and Wei Shun, thinking it was me, attacked me with her elbow.  The alarm rang us out of bed at five thirty, when the world was still and cool and silent.  And by the time we'd quaffed a quick breakfast and were driving down the Changi coast road, the sky was just beginning to turn colour.

Past the edge of the wooden boardwalk, Bear and I set up our cameras, settled our tripods in the sand while Eddie and Wei Shun sat on some old lounge chairs and talked, their faces turning golden in the soft sunrise.

We shot through the watery, ascending light and the fish-scaled sky and then we all walked backwards over an outcropping coated with thick, curly lashings of sea moss.  Eddie and Wei Shun found small snails creeping through the green carpet while I sank down into it, soaking my shorts completely. 

It was the most peaceful moment of my week on that miniature promontory, not talking much, feeling the salt-damp of the sea under my palm.  When we'd had our fill of the sea air, we clopped back slowly, stopping to look into houses and buildings that lined the boardwalk.  One structure with arched mustard walls and a brightly lit altar particularly intrigued me.  I can't imagine being a caretaker there and living in a house slowly caressed to pieces by rust and salt.  

After heaping plates of nasi lemak and fish at the nearby food centre, I drove us back to the East Coast, laughing and protesting as everyone shouted over the radio about my terrible sense of direction. 

It was only a little after ten when we finally got back to my house to gather belongings and pull on work skins and in the car, on the way to work, I glanced in my rearview mirror and couldn't help but smile at us, sun-warm and sleepy from the simple morning.

I'm ready to turn in now, and beside me, the mattress is still piled high with all our cushions and coverlets.  I'd love nothing more to dive right back in and I know two things: one, as soon as my head hits the pillow, I'll be out like a light and two, come on!  You're never too old for a good old-fashioned sleepover!

So far, so good

Among the eight (yes, eight) concrete resolutions that I have this year: to plod at least three times every week and to become "fluent" in French.

Of course, I sincerely doubt that I'm actually going to be able to speak eloquently in a language I've been learning for all of six months, but I'd like to be able to understand and read as easily as possible and to be somewhat conversational by the end of this year.  

As for plodding, well, to be fair I haven't actually stopped since I started but with language lessons five days a week, three hours a morning last year, my exercise schedule ended up being unsatisfyingly irregular.  

The solution this year: French once a week on Saturdays, which leaves me (hopefully) time to read and learn and explore on my own and mornings to test drive my new plodding gear.  C'est chouette! 

The first on the first

"What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art."

      -- Virginia Woolf's journal                      

This year: more writing, more learning and more sight.

Europe, Episode 9: Cinque Terre, the agony and the ecstasy

The one place Bear wanted to go to in Italy was Cinque Terre.  We had seen the postcard perfect view of the warmly painted houses above and she wanted to recreate it for herself.  Roughly translating as "five lands", Cinque Terre is a gorgeous cluster of five villages located in the seaside hills of Northern Italy.

We were staying in the southernmost one, Riomaggiore and while we were in Nice, Bear's friend very kindly emailed us a set of suggested activities, including an easy half-day trail walk between the five villages.  "That sounds great!"  I told Bear.  After all, we love walking and we love scenery.

Yeah.  Bear's friend?  A massive fitness-buff-marathon-runner type.  The trails?  Anything but easy.

_____________________________

We crossed the border from Nice into Italy on an early morning train.  Getting into Ventimiglia, our first Italian stop, was like going blind and waking up all at once.  For Rebecca, who speaks neither French nor Italian, the move between both countries was seamless.  But I went from being able to read signs and ask basic questions to feeling completely childlike and lost once more.  There was no doubt about the shift across borders, though; where the French talk in pinched, quiet vowels, the Italians we encountered... well, yelled.  At Ventimiglia, large, warm families boarded the train with voluminous voices and everyone, from oldish hausfraus to young girls dressed like they were in Jersey Shore, held loud, intense conversations.

After switching a couple of trains, we finally got into Riomaggiore and installed ourselves in a big, airy room over the main village street and its restaurants.  The view was instantly charming, but the noise didn't stop here either.  At all hours of the day, tourists shouted to each other across balconies.  Laughter floated up from the street and one morning, we started awake at the sound of glasses crashing violently under our window.  It was a little like living inside a very laidback beach party.

I greatly enjoyed Cinque though, it was touristy in a pleasant way.  It wasn't overly crowded and there were no touts or rip-offs, just the sense that there are people from so many different places around the world that you never exactly feel lost.

Our village flanks a dangerously sloping, cobbled street that runs like a vein from mountain to sea.  The walls of the buildings are painted warm, bright colours that glow in the sunlight.  We had our first meal in a trattoria where the playful, friendly proprietress taught us how to ask for the bill over some seriously piquant anchovies and Bear's first delicious, real Italian coffee.  I can still taste the smoky, fishy firmness of the lemon-laced fish, slippery with olive oil.

After lunch, we strolled down to the sea and watched boys leaping off rocks and kicking up geysers of salt spray.  When we felt sufficiently digested, we turned to each other.  "Shall we try walking through the towns?"

At the little tourist office, we grabbed a map and traced the softly undulating sea route to Manarola, one village down.  The woman at the counter saw us and shook her head.  "No.  Coast road is closed because of landslides.  You have to take the mountain road to Manarola.  Is a bit longer, maybe forty five minutes."

"Oh, is it difficult?"

She shrugged.  "You just follow the road up there and make a turn and you'll be at the start."

Forty five minutes didn't sound too bad, so we loaded up our camera gear (for the famous views, you know) and on a whim, thinking it might get hot, I changed into a pair of shorts.  The walk started off pleasantly enough on a real pavement and then suddenly, everything went to hell.  The path should really have been lined with guide ropes and traversed by sherpas.  It was at least one kilometre of fiendishly steep, dusty steps cut into the rock, sometimes with sheer drops on one side.

(This lock business is just too much.  Do we need to declare our love even on random fencing at three hundred feet above sea level?!  Fences collapse, people!)

I kept making dangerous, heartstopping slides on loose rocks and dust and Bear was obliged to walk in front of me so that I wouldn't kill myself.  Panting and swearing violently, we struggled upwards for about 20 minutes in the searing afternoon sun until the path briefly plateaued at a (surely ironically named) Picnic Spot.  Heaving as we tried to catch our breath, we threw up our hands and stared at each other, "Who the fuck wants to picnic here?"

Bear, a seasoned athlete who had been waiting to see Italy her whole life, yelled into the wind, "What the hell Italy?  I'm not sure how I feel about you now!"

 
The walk's difficulty was somehow emphasised by the fact that there were stunning views at every turn - craggy, sun-warmed cliffs dropping away into an endless, vast blue sea dotted with pale boats.  The water stretched into a perfectly-curved semi-circle that made me feel like I was looking at the edge of the world.  And we were fighting so hard to stay upright that each time we paused to appreciate the view, we were simultaneously gasping for breath and snapping ferociously.

There wasn't much time to pause, either, there was enough traffic going both ways that meant that we couldn't stop for long which was a pity because I wanted to capture everything - the flaming orange poppies by the roadside, a mysterious blue door, even the field mouse of glistening eye who burst suddenly into a little grass clearing.

We were swindled by signs announcing Manarola's presence at every turn and actually ended up struggling along the dusty hillside, clinging, at times, to staples and ropes in the hill wall, for about two hours.  Worst of all, we had forgotten to bring water.  

Actually, I like hiking but only when I know I'm going hiking in advance.  Had I not gone plodding consistently for a good six months before the trip, I'm pretty sure I would have been on my knees, begging Bear to leave me for dead.  Thankfully though, I just about managed.

Most amusingly, we kept running into people coming the other way.  We would meet each other's eyes, realise we were all dead tired and panting, and laugh together in sympathy. At one point, we met an elderly French couple and just after we had commiserated with each other, they were stopped by a Chinese lady just behind us.  The poor thing had also underestimated the walk and was togged out in ballet flats, a skirt and, unbelievably, a Chanel handbag.

"How much more?" she pleaded of them.

The husband said, "Fourty five minutes," in an encouraging voice while she let out a cry of anguish that almost toppled me.  As she floundered on dispiritedly, I heard the wife say to the husband in French, "Fourty five minutes?  I thought it was much longer than that!" and I had to stop and walking and lean on the hillside because I was howling with laughter.

At the highest point of the climb, we were looking down into the valley of Manarola and realising how much further we had to go.  Even in my despair though, I had to admit that it was gorgeous. 

Finally, finally we hit pavement once more and staggered down the winding streets into the town.  

My tiredness was assuaged by the picturesque lemon trees, the sight of elderly people playing cards by the sea and at long last, the ice cold bottle of sparkling Primavera water we inhaled after collapsing into the nearest cafe.

Rebecca had a coffee, of course, and we passed a very amusing hour seated across from the gap in the wall where the mountain trail ended.  It was gratifying to watch dusty, dishevelled people burst out into the street, realise their ordeal was at an end and triumphantly high-five and hug each other just as we had done earlier.

"We can go back again that way you know," Bear teased me, her face deadpan.

"Oh of course," I said, trying to sound nonchalant.  "That little climb?  Please, I can totally do it again."

Eventually, we were fortified enough to explore the village.  We scrambled down to the seaside just as the sun started its long descent and found ourselves face-to-face with Cinque Terre's most famous postcard view.

(Earlier, we'd asked a man in a shop to recommend a good time to take the picture.  He smiled sagely, pointed in the direction of the sea and said, "The moment is now".  The phrase became our slogan for the rest of the trip and we still bark it at each other today.)

While Bear set her tripod up, I walked up and down the along the railing, taking pictures of people and birds lounging on the rocks.  At one point, what looked like a pair of geese flew low over the water and I caught a couple of pictures of them before they completely disappeared.

While waiting for the sun to truly set, we explored a random courtyard and found our very attractive waitress from earlier that afternoon playing with a child.  The girl was fascinated by a compass tiled into the ground that pointed out the distances to famous cities all round the world.

Eventually, as the air cooled, we went back to the railing and sat down at the edge of the sea, content to watch bathers climbing and leaping off the rocks.

When everyone started packing up to go home, we looked for a restaurant and rewarded ourselves for the climb with a fantastic seafood platter spilling over with tender calamari, fish and sweetly charred octopus. 

As we washed it down with a dessert of biscotti dipped in sciacchetrá, Italian sweet wine, Bear leaned back and said to me decisively, "I think I love Italy".  

I grinned at her, having made my peace with the terrain.  "Me too."

"Great.  Shall we do the rest of the villages tomorrow?"

"And this time we take the coast road?  Like normal people?"

"Perfecto."

And then, we finished our meal, paid up and like two intrepid explorers with a taste for challenge and adventure, we took the train right back home.