howdiditbegin's journal

I can imagine you've heard
this before read them perhaps
in a bathroom scrawled on the door
Some days can repeat like the days gone before
Did they begin with
heavy a slumbering then
Fumbling in chairs
which you've sat in for years?

The poor they will climb
are made to find purchase
are made to find love

My fingers they button
But gone are my wits
And you live in silence and bury your gifts
I can remember
But they fall away quickly then quickly
they go, they go into the ground

So the road as it clears my
feet shift in the dirt
Will the flowers still bloom
When the bees disappear?
The verse and the rhyme
I wrote on my shirt
Were meant for no ears
I hear a whisper

I have left something familiar and now I don't know how to get it back. Lately, it has become a fantasy to simply remember. I spend my days dabbling in things to arouse nostalgia: video games I played from when I was young.

I used to find them in gaming magazines, would read reviews and hunt for them in malls. Video game stores in Singapore, as I recall resemble the settings of the types of games I played. Inside large buildings, blacked out windows and dark corners hiding empty shops, the open few identifiable by the pale glow of fluorescent tubing from inside. On busy days a small gathering would spill out into the corridor watching a game demo set up at the shop entrance.

These were the times I could just stand watching aimless for a length of time, and afterwards emerge bleary-eyed and head full of stories and possibilities.

I don't think I was happy then, but if I was sad then it is something that I must have forgotten.

I had a dream tonight, from which I only remember one scene. I was in a theatre, not for a movie but for church. It could seat about 90 people. I sat on the stage with someone: I don't know who, but I remember being close to. Someone introduced Ben to everyone, there was about 20 people on the front row, 10 people where I was, and another 10 in the other corner of the stage, where strangely enough there looked like there were seats.

There was a pillar in the centrespace of the three groups, and Ben stood next to the pillar. When he began to speak, someone yelled out from the front-row group, "Hey, Ben! You know me don't you?" He responded, but I forgot how. Then notes were handed out, and he began talking to us.

He spoke facing my group, then he turned to face the front-row, and as if he just remembered he had people at the back, he turned round and addressed them before coming onto the stage so all three groups could see him while he spoke.

Halfway through his message, there was a line in the notes that I read as: "9:50..." then something else I don't remember. It wasn't a schedule, it was formatted in stanza and verse. Then Ben broke into song; he sang from his notes, then I realized it was a lyric sheet I was holding and not sermon notes. Instead of "9:50", he sang it as: "10 to 9", which made sense in the dream but, I guess, not now as I am recalling it.

As I was trying to figure out whether he was adlibbing the entire song on the fly he started to rap the second part. I remember being uncertain about him doing this then, seeing that he was doing a decent job, conceding to his rap being alright. At this time the person I was with turns to me and tells me the group that wrote the song. The name of the group was the name of a girl; the title of the song was: "Of gold and wild men".

This post was edited by howdiditbegin on Apr 07, 2008.

While they slept in their rooms, and I in my bed I threw off the blanket. In a few moments the air slowed and stopped; flattened out and covered me. And like a wire pulled taut it carried the gossamer silence of the entire street in its dampening shroud.

I drew a breath in my unease and could swear I caught your scent drifting pass and out into the hallway where I followed it and crept down the staircase and into the kitchen where I lost you on the cold tiles. The phone rang and rang on your side, but when you picked up I had not called because it was at the piano where I sat recalling the digits that separated us.

It caught me then, as the darkness poured in through the glass window above the sink. It caught me as I sat at the piano thinking of you, that I would walk out of the kitchen, into the foyer whereupon reaching the front door, I would open it and walk out into the street. I would walk down the street and out onto the highway where the air was unstirred and carried nothing but the sound of my footsteps. They would hardly know I left as I stepped covert into the mute breeze, slowly diminishing the distance between us. But, I lie on my bed in feverish cold, and warm my pillow with tears instead when I catch once more, your passing scent and the piano plays a song that you used to sing to me. I try to relax as the breeze ushers darkness in from the window, and steals your song into the night.

This post was edited by howdiditbegin on Nov 08, 2003.