motordreaming

there's something about little india that makes it a great joy working here at the inncrowd. it's the swash and the wash of humanity; the lingering of body odour from foreign workers, watching them tired, sweaty, dirty but very happy (or terribly unhappy and Angry sometimes); it's the vagueness of what everyone else is saying, and the opacity of even the language which they speak; it's the romance of baskets of unknown produce from an unknown land feeding an unknown man with an unknown family in an even further land. the streets on sunday become the campus for thousands of foreign workers, who gather here like posing schoolboys, to see and be seen and to eat and drink and look at the local produce of the female kind; five-foot ways lining the streets become opium dens for friends to gather around a spread of thali, cheap beer and the kind of mirth that comes with long-awaited idle.

it's no wonder then, that something always happens while i'm making my way to work every day. it's in the smile of a bemused traveller, the different way a shop looks today, the concert down in the open space, or the man dead pissed and out cold on clive and campbell. tonight on the bus 67 there, i fall asleep as always and dream of the road. im running past a busy road, but am too slow, and am knocked down by a motorbike in the last lane. everyone gathers around to help me and i laugh because maybe i'm dying. the crowd clears for the motorcyclist who knocked me down and it's... rudy.

Dunce Dreaming

I'm rushing into the PAC at RJ because I think I'm a little late for this staging of Macbeth. As I burst through the double doors, they're already announcing cast credits at the curtain call, so they call out for me... and put a dunce hat (it's more like a pail) on me. I'm determined to not be late for the next staging so I rushed to Mac's, but lo and behold, they're already well into the Porter scene.

At Mac's (not the same one, it's not a dream, and yes, what was I doing there?), I bump into Agnes where we start to yak about regular catch-up stuff. Turns out that she's in UNSWAsia, and still trying to decide if she will go to Sydney. So I ask her how she took the news that school was closing down, because that's always one of our secret wishes back in primary or secindary school. True enough, she tells a tale of how she gets into class late to see her classmate alone in the classroom, who then shouts to her animatedly, "No need to come school la, no more school, school close down already!" So be careful what you wish for, because it might very well come true, just very much later on... at the wrong time.

Nikhil Dreaming

School's over and Nikhil and I are walking through Ghim Moh towards Buona Vista MRT Station. Nikhil's half-Chinese so we talk about being mixed, and he likes it quite a little. He loves studying Punjabi too - in Punjabi, there are many different kinds of words for jewellery. Precious stones formed from heat and pressure are called this while precious things like gold and silver are called that.

R Dreaming

It's been too long and R asks me to come out, so I do. On hindsight, I'm surprisingly calm, without any of the palpitations or constipation I'm so familiar with. The smoke's too thick to breathe, but his proximity is apparent. After two years, he finally says what I'd been holding my breath so long for. His arms are around me, and I'm feeling like a foetus. It's as if I was never alive until this moment, and now everything's coherent, it all falls into place, and I can let go of this cosmic sigh, the first breath that gave life to everything.

For real now, R has really asked to meet me, though I know that this time, I'll need to breathe a little first. And know that there isnt any point, really, in holding my breath anymore. All in a dream, all in a dream

Gunshot Dreaming

Well mates, I've a gunshot to my right foot. It's frickin' painful but really please dont call the ambulance or anything, it's only a gunshot. Someone nearby says let's all go have the operation now! But no, really, thats quite a bad idea, because i'm so tired and all i want to do now is to go to bed. And yet the wound will prolly get infected right? Maybe if i sleep this way. Or that. Tomorrow I'll go to the doctor's. I promise.

Fire Dreaming

I'm in a fire station, one of those new ones that look more like office blocks. Say, Bukit Batok Fire Station. RJC is located in this building (ie it's a school, not a fire station) and it's about 2004. We're going about our normal school day when the school catches fire, from the parapets to the ceilings. Some Rafflesians escape by climbing over the school fence (post-dream note: ha! how typical!) into the surrounding fields. Me, I'm just standing there, talking to someone as the fire spreads down the false ceilings and classrooms. Rafflesians are still everywhere, picking up books, picking up desks (What? Yes. The kinds we had for exams in the hall). There's a girl on the sixth or so floor walking towards the spot where there once used to be a parapet. She's crying and slowly she just walks straight off it. Everyone stops and screams, the kind of anguish the school felt that Friday morning in 2003. At the ground floor where the corpse is splattered, councillors - I see Lindy's face - are recovering the body and all the other matter. There is a sense that students are jumping because they're trapped by the fire so all the councillors keep looking up hoping they wont get squashed by another jumper. Immediately I tell the person I'm speaking to that I'm going to that part of the sixth floor to stop people from jumping. On the way there, I meet Alina who tells me that, oh, it's not a surprise that girl committed suicide. Apparently she had a huge acne problem and thought falling from height was a better solution to it than burning her face off.

China Dreaming

this dream was a big motif throughout my australia trip. this was from a few nights after the dream on the train.

Chinese watchtowers are rapidly sending smoke signals with fires from the tops of the walls. Rafflesians are all around dressed in evocative Chinese armour with bright red streamers waving from the top of their helmets. We're all fighting for the one noble cause - Chinese independence. Sword in hand im fighting with all the rage of the universe but around me comrade dudes are falling like paper mache figures. These are people like Sherman (!) and loads of faces from the O-Team. Finally the battle is over and we've won the war! The victory parade is at the spex gal where the Chinese populace wish to idolise us. But i have no wish to go, not when so many of the comrades-in-arms are dead. So i cry the cry of a thousand widows, echoing on and on in the halls of history.

So what was that about? Maybe I'm not afraid of dying anymore!

Leaving

Perhaps it is one thing that is making me very happy this past month. Sleeping on the floor below Jana, with a towel that she has specially laid for me, I have a dream that keeps coming back. It is the one with the O/A Levels and I do not study for my Geography/ History/ Economics/ Literature and I'm sweating in my proverbial panties. But that is over now. I have left that frightful space, I have left the days of being a cadet in CDA, and I have left Jurong Fire Station. This is very important - I'm no longer stuck in whatever I have to be doing. For now, I'm in a place and time entirely of my own volition. I'm no longer the left but the leaving. I have a choice of going, staying or returning. Like the day I got my driving licence, there is an inexorable feeling that I'm no longer The Driven. NOW! It is my purpose that propels me, my destiny to fulfil. On a train in the middle of nowhere on this Southern continent is where the adventure is final, the road is the destination and life is at the ends of the world.