Juliette on Tombstones;

It’s been a passage of time since the last entry – I use ‘passage’ as it seems as though so much has happened, romping through the good times like a little joyous foal! It is my country’s National Day and so I hear little children singing songs in the background, and I remember my childhood days swinging little flags.

I met up with S and A last week in Arab Street- and fell in love with the stranger streets, the way we could slip up to a random restaurant and find Morrocan lamb dishes with all sorts of tea that taste like the same apple concoction. A rendered us with beautiful stories of Nepal and trekking. She also introduced me to Yasunori Kawabata, a Nobel prize winner in literature pretty much unknown to me, but the poignant titles stir a little something in me of many things said in very little words. S’s conception of beauty is newly bound up in a mermaid, and we talked about living in Japan and hiding away. These are two of the people I love the most in the world – and listening to the soft curls of A’s laughter (”kikikiki”) and the clip of her bangles (Scottish, even if they are ethnic, she says) seems to stir something magical. It feels sometimes that the time spent in between meeting such people as A and S is sleeping time – and the secret part of me awakes again in a dream. There is a little of the past – Celine Dion plays in the background as I dabble in some source and observe the little plate of dates and the shopowner seems to have emerged from an Asterix/Obelix comic / and yet the feeling is modern familiarity, things have changed but I am not able to discuss how and in what manner, and all we can do is share a hint of stories that have shaped who we have came to be.

A says I follow her like le’ detective and I seem more curious about people moving through streets. But I love the soft warm orange highlights of the night and the streets which I do not know. The shadows mimic a little film noir adventure. So many things are closed at night and yet they run their own stories in the morning, and it has been this way for years.

J drove me past his old home, a little shophouse, recently. I imagined him as a boy, climbing up and down the stairs, and looking down from the window, of him running away from the vacumn cleaner. He has always told me that he felt that he had lost his childhood, and when I look up the window, I think of years passed with that impish face pressing against the window.

We trooped into a little shophouse because the shopowner told us to. There were little Aladdin-esque corners with rainbow cushions and elaborate carpets, and people smoking shisha in a decadent sort of way. You take off your shoes and lose yourself.