Would you spend the days with me
In the half light of dawn
In the half light of the setting sun?
We would go the dusty roads
Catch the wind in our sails.
We may tumble and fall
You say,
But my dear,
The roads are a-calling.
Let the western wind jostle our soul
Let the tides toss us to shore
Throw caution to the wind
We are running into the storm.

The hardest part is often having to pretend that everything is fine and that you do not care. Sometimes we care too much, looking for clues just to confirm our greatest fears because, just because. Jealousy... in the past, I chose to be upset but now, I guess I’ll have to let things slide. Some things, they are beyond your grasp, and it’s better to let go. I think maybe some things and some people are not meant to be owned and perhaps, we are better off just knowing that that thing/person could make someone else happier.

You were only passing through.
Fleeting,
A wisp of gentle air.
My heart skipped a beat or two
When I heard your breath
But I remember now,
You were only passing through.

You were only passing through.
Swiftly,
You sent your heart away.
But for a second or two
I thought you belonged to me,
But I remember now,
You were only passing through.

You were only passing through,
Fading,
Like the last rays of the dusty sun
I long for an eternity or maybe two
But the night falls
And I remember now,
You belong to yesterday,
No longer a part of my tomorrows.

Living to tell the tale -gabriel marquez garcia

The memoir started with Garcia’s mother asking him to go with her to their hometown to sell their old house. Garcia’s life just seemed so unreal and dramatic that it felt more like fiction at times. I am also amazed at how he could possibly remember conversations and events which happened decades ago.  One finds riots, ghosts, assassinations, love, family, friends, poverty, deaths, passion, and so much more in his life story.
His father was bent on sending him to law school, which he obediently obliged for 2 years before deciding that there’s no way he could live being any other thing except a writer.  If he had not had the courage to rebel against his father, I guess we wouldn’t have 100 years of solitude and love in the time of cholera.
Garcia was an avid reader who was fortunate enough to meet other voracious readers who introduced him to the classics like Sophocles and the likes, which helped shaped his writing. I remember he was deeply impressed by kafka’s Metamorphoses, and thought the opening line of the story was the greatest thing ever written .
I guess I wasn’t quite as taken as he was. Went to borrow Kafka’s metamorphosis and I’m not exactly sure what’s so fascinating about a guy waking up to find himself having morphed into a cockroach. I guess the idea is startling and beyond imagination but the prose, I’m not so sure. The read was to be fair, intriguing enough to keep the reader entertained and the writing was moving enough that I felt the sorrow of Gregor and the frustration and impatience of his family at the end of the story. But was it something that blew me away? Not really.
Anyway I digress.
I love garcia’s Memoir and was moved by his passion for writing so much so that he was willing to go hungry for it. How many people in our time and especially in a place like Singapore, would be willing to make that kind of sacrifice?
The society has shaped our values of what’s important. We care too much about others’ opInions and the price tag they put on things. What is it that really matters to us?

The naked tourist -lawrence Osborne

I actually can’t quite recall if I finished reading The Naked Tourist before leaving for the Philippines. I think I did but after more than a month, I’ve forgotten what it was exactly about. All I remember was the author traveling to far flung places like Papua New Guinea and visiting some fierce and almost extinct tribes in Indonesia. And then going to Bangkok for some colon cleansing procedure and visiting a sex change clinic, etc. I think the gist of the book was about understanding what it meant to be a tourist vs a traveler. What’s really the difference between the two?
Is one better than the other?

How do we keep our souls from being stolen?
By the silver lights of the city
And the serenades of the sirens?
They call to us,
Peddling their wares,
Singing a chorus of sweet deceits.

I wander the black and white city,
Streets paved with gold and precious stones,
On the faces of passerbys
Were eyes that glint with a hunger
That can never be satiated.
They run from places to places,
Seeking,
But never finding a home.

Am I in a lucid dream?
Wide awake,
Or on the brink of sleep?
Straddling the worlds of dreams and realities,
Never knowing the veracity of either world.

This blog is so neglected. Just returned from a month long trip to Palawan, Philippines. I should have documented more of my thoughts, the sights, feelings, etc. I guess I didn’t find the time to. It felt like traveling back in time when I was there to the 60-70s Singapore.
Houses were made of attap leaves with no telecommunication network, electricity, flushing toilets (some still practiced open defecation). In one village, the only water source was a polluted river. It’s tough having to live in conditions like that But I suppose over time, one can get used to it.
I might have enjoyed myself a little too much over there that there’s this dreary feeling when I had to return.
There were nights where the entire city was shrouded in darkness and you could see the stars so much more clearly. The sari sari stores in the neighborhood were lit by candlelight. It was both fun and not fun at the same time.
Anyhow we even saw fireflies in the tree next to our apartment for one night. They are truly miraculous to watch, like magic stardust floating around.
I enjoyed the quiet but  the sounds of tricycles and the motorbikes broke the silence most of the time.
I brought along Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Memoir living to tell the tale. Quite an amazing read. And I find myself yearning for that kind of lifestyle- whiling the time away in cafes chatting about everything under the skies with people who share your passions like books, arts, whatsoever. Will do the review soon.