Morning Sickness

A wave of nausea swept over him but he remained in bed, curled under the sheets. The sound of the alarm pierced through the room, signalling the beginning of a new day. But he wasn’t prepared to face it, not yet. He pulled his knees up to his chin, locked his fingers around his ankles, and lay wrapped up in his own self. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed hard to stifle it.

It wasn’t meant to be like this, he thought bitterly. Things could have been different, he could have been happy. He could have sailed through life purposefully and not wandered like an aimless vagabond. He could have been up and about right now, rushing to seize the day with fervour. Instead, he lay under the sheets, eyes squeezed shut, hoping the darkness within would blot out the oh-so-mockingly cheerful and bright light that spilled into his room through where the curtains on the window parted as they billowed in the gentle breeze.

But as the morning wore on, sounds from the neighbourhood began to pierce the tranquillity of his bedroom. The street dogs barked and yelped as the neighbours’ children came out to play with them. The children shouted and laughed and clapped, and occasionally, their parents yelled at them to keep the noise down. The parents themselves were mostly busy shouting at each other or pulling up housemaids for their slapdash jobs or haggling with hawkers over the prices of vegetables and fish. Somewhere, in the distance, church bells pealed. But right beneath his window, a toddler began to cry. Softly at first, but quickly gaining in intensity and soon the cries became alarming bawls.

He buried himself deeper in his bed to shut out the noises but to no avail. The tyke’s squalling wrecked his fragile composure and before he could pause to restrain himself, his hand shot out, grabbed the alarm clock from the bedside and hurled it at the window with great fury.

The clock struck the steel frame of the window with a clanging sound. Its delicate parts shattered and fell to the ground. But its silver-plated casing bounced back and caught him square in the forehead before he could retreat under the sheets. The shock of the injury was the last straw. He could no longer hold it all in. He barfed, a little at first and then some more. He dragged himself across the room and heaved into the sink. He retched so hard he thought he’d spew out his innards.

 He splashed cold water on his face. When he looked up, he caught sight of his image in the mirror, looking pale and washed out. His head spun and at the same time felt both heavy as lead and light as a helium-filled balloon. He felt half dead yet aware of his own wretched life and his failed attempts at ending it. The bottle of sleeping pills had barely sufficed, he reckoned. Tears of misery pricked his eyes as the enormity of his failure dawned on him. Even death had mocked at him.

“Oh, God!” he cried out piteously.

“Yes, my son,” came the answer.

He crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

And now...

... why is the colour scheme on this blog all fucked up?

An absolute mindfuck

         I have forgotten how to write. I have been sitting here for the past hour, typing out elaborate paragraphs of nonsensical prose, only to delete them all in one go. I haven’t written much in the past four years, and I can’t fathom what prompted me to attempt it now. Perhaps it was the spooky thunderstorm that shook my neighbourhood on Saturday evening. But it rained again the next evening and the next, so now the novelty has kind of dwindled down and the gloomy surroundings are fucking my mind.

         The only good thing about today so far has been this: I was forced to get out of the house to buy me a pack of Marlboro Lights and on the way back I realised I had a credit balance of about SGD80 with a nail parlour. On a whim, I went in for a manicure and pedicure session – the moon is going to turn a violent blue today I predict. What tickled me to death was a client there who spent an hour trying to decide the colour she wanted her nails painted – she was still undecided by the time I left. And I came back thinking some people take their nails as seriously as I take my life. And it immediately put me in a dilemma because so far I had been under the illusion that I was taking my life far too seriously – enough to spend weeks moping over what could have been and what was not.

A tells me that I think too much and too often, he is right. I often ponder over abstract stuff. For instance, I often mull over corporate slavery and what – other than house rent and bills – compels people to ignore their fucked up lives at work and still trudge into their offices on a wet Monday morning. I’ll be following suit tomorrow, except that it will be a Tuesday morning, not necessarily wet, the sun may be out and the entire neighbourhood would be ablaze with colours and I’d wonder if I unknowingly OD’d on a narcotic that I don’t even possess.

Sometimes I behave like an armchair philosopher. I like to think of myself as a pipe-smoking fireside thinker who dispassionately rationalises and solves problems people don’t even know exist. Maybe I am just not thinking about the right things. Maybe I should spend more time worrying about the colour I want to see on my nails!

It rained at sunset today.

That it rained this evening was not unusual in itself. Least of all in Singapore, where the weather simply alternates between balmy and sultry, downpours provide intermittent relief. But today’s cloudburst was a fitting finale to the hot and arid week that just went by. Startling flashes of lightning and roaring thunderclaps rent the skies mercilessly. The rain poured down in torrents lashing the trees that swayed dangerously while the towering residential skyscrapers stood obstinately still. For nearly an hour, the incensed skies heaped vengeance on the land below where we cowered in the refuge of our homes.

And just as unexpectedly as the thunderstorm had started, it died away without any warning. An eerie silence prevailed. As the dark grey atmosphere of the storm faded, the neighbourhood was suffused in a ghostly golden glow of the setting sun. Had we been unconscious of the time of the day, it would have been nearly impossible to know whether a new day was beginning or the night was taking over.

I think, sometimes life is like that. At times it is hard to know whether one thing is coming to an end or another is just beginning to take shape. Sometimes there are no clear boundaries, no distinct demarcations, as one event segues into the next. Perhaps there are certain events or incidents that tend to divide our lives into before and after phases, but those are rarities. Mostly, it’s about bouncing along until we reach those defining turns. And when we do, we simply call them new beginnings and hope they’d be just that.