Monday. I wanted to go to work today. I really did. I had changed into my uniform and was already waiting to board the bus but suddenly the strange sickness attacked again. This time it made a pain in my abdomen which also hurt my back. I spent the entire day at the polyclinic and then the hospital, which was frustrating, because the wait was nine hours long till the evening and the doctors were unsure why the sickness came and all I wanted to do was get out. In the end after I repeatedly pressed him the doctor let me go with an excuse for two days, which I don't think I shall use.
I have three days left until I am officially a civilian—two and a half, to be precise. The fact hasn't quite sunk from my head into my heart. Two years ago this Wednesday I broke up with Alyssa on a cold Sunday and wandered through Haji Lane to Arab Street to stand outside the mosque in the rain, while they made the prayer call for noon. Afterwards when the sun was out but the hot afternoon rain was still coming down I walked an hour and two train stations to the museum to watch obscure local films with Mel while she stole worried looks at me. Two years ago. Fucking hell. Two years later Mel hardly speaks to me anymore and I'm different but still very much the same. Perhaps I should give thanks for that. I don't know.
Anyway. I've been part of a National Arts Council/Ceriph project called 10 x 10. The fancy term for it is an intergenerational literary equation. I don't know what the term is supposed to mean but the project is a pairing up of ten young writers with ten senior citizens in hopes of talk and friction and chemistry and I guess, art. Di talked me into it and so far it's been interesting, although the first session Thursday we lost ourselves terribly in the wrong direction, walking long and clear down Old Airport Road with the station at our backs and then crossing over to the food centre until we were across the road from Broadrick Secondary School.
By the time we realized we were far removed from the destination and hurried back up the wide road and left past the canal into the Goodman Arts Centre we were close to twenty minutes late, which made Diana upset and the programme hosts snarky, though they did it dry and without malice so you know it was good natured. One of them was a pale Chinese girl named Amanda with large round eyes and full lips that made her look simultaneously fragile and comely. Later on I would find out that Wang from Monster Cat used to love her. Lemon lips and sunset walks, I thought, breathe with me while you can. I'd spent a fair bit of time listening to the record and building up an picture of the mystery girl from the songs in my head, the one who would turn and sing into her lover's ear and press her skin against his arm and thigh. The session after I couldn't help but press the image in my head over and against Amanda to see if they matched, which they did like a ghost in old clothes. Diana thought she was very pretty and said so.
My partner for the project was assigned the first session—Rita, she said her name was. She had a buzz cut and an uneven grin which appeared often and full moon spectacles that half-reminded me of Dumbledore and half-reminded me of my grandmother. Rita came earlier than most of the writers and by virtue of that took the couch at the centre of the room, which was sparsely furnished to comfortably accommodate a party of twenty with low coffee tables and wooly grey sofas and shelves that parted us from the office computers looking out at the sunset over the canal through the window. Rita claimed the couch together with a friend of hers who had introduced herself as Carena, spelt like the name of that Spanish dance song Macarena which she could do but would not unless you asked her very nicely perhaps. Carena was wonderfully mischievous and knew how to read body language. She was assigned to be Diana's partner, which of course made Diana terribly self-conscious. If she saw that you were shy though she would refrain from teasing and soften because she was rather kind really. With Rita however she was merciless and Rita would return the favour. One could see it was because they had been friends for the longest of time and had with intimacy passed from all risk of complacency.
It was great fun to watch them bicker and they made me feel young, which is an odd thing to say but Rita's name made made me think of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The association seemed to fit because even though they were all senior citizens they had much more mischief and rock and roll in their bones than the youth in the room. They had lived their lives and came out kicking and breathing so none of them had any pretensions about maturity. By contrast we the youth writers carried ourselves with measured painful self-awareness, afraid to appear juvenile and naive in front of the seniors. For much of that first session we hadn't yet learnt or otherwise forgotten that to become an adult and to put away childish things involves putting away the desire to appear grown up, because maturity means regaining the seriousness that one once had as a child at play. Otherwise it was great fun. We wrote haikus and traded stories and nibbled on peanuts and celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins on them. Rita declared that the snack had turned her on to celery again. Carena quite sensibly pointed out that it might have been the peanut butter.
The next session was the day after and I came down from work, having ran and played soccer with my squadron mates for what ought to be the last time now, on hindsight. I took a bus one stop too far and had to walk at least one klick back and halfway through stand on a traffic island in the busy intersection for at least five minutes while the traffic changed, which made me grumpy and flustered and also sweaty by the time I arrived. Diana was already there and so was Rita and Carena. The theme for that session was synesthesia and we were to riff off memories which particular colours evoked and call upon our senses. Rita had no trouble at all with our colour—yellow—but I spent some time searching my head. Find something strong and clear and quick of feeling which you can't keep away, Rita said. Like when you told me about your father and the airport and the blood. Don't you have any more memories like that? No, I said quickly, not wanting to dwell on the subject. Tell me about yours.
So Rita spoke of her house and her bed and of the sunrise, which was obvious, but she also spoke of when she travelled. As a young woman Rita had travelled often, to Oceania and Europe and to the United States. Once on a boat out at sea travelling from Seattle to another island, she had prayed. Surrounded by miles and miles of water with no land in sight upon the horizon she had prayed. For what, I asked, deliverance? Protection? No, she said. Confirmation. Because in her soul Rita had had a compass but no needle and questions but no answers, so in the middle of the sea she asked for a sign, and in the middle of the sea her sign came as a yellow butterfly that fluttered before her eyes right as she made her prayer. But she was disbelieving. So she asked for two and a second butterfly came and when she had descended from the ship and took to the markets at the port she saw a long dress white and beautiful with a yellow butterfly printed on the side and then it was undeniable. The sign was three.
Like the bird with a leaf in her mouth after the flood and the colours came out, I said. She twinkled. Yes. Confirmation. A promise.
I don't have any memories like that, I said doubtfully and enviously after her account was over. That was the kind of conversation with God I had always wanted to have. Rita gave me a look that suggested that, perhaps, I had not been listening out for an answer when I asked the questions, or that perhaps my questions were wrong. The day prior we had talked of hopes and dreams and she had asked me what I wanted to do if I had the chance. Music, I'd said, I'd be doing music. She'd asked what stopped me and I had shrugged. Responsibility. Finances. Family. Not being good enough, that was a big one.
She frowned at my response. You don't really want it bad enough, then. When you do none of that will stand in your way.
I didn't know how to react to that and I still don't. Rita is a spontaneous livespark even at her age. She had travelled everywhere with her passport as a young woman and would leave the country on a whim, leaving her life to her friends for weeks that rolled into months into years. Age hadn't dulled her spontaneity at all and it showed in her writing. Her poetry was clear and clean of decoration and simple and born of the moment in the first stroke of the brush. Yes was her favourite word and it had ended one of her haikus and three times ended her poem. I on the other hand laboured over mine, scratching my pencil against the pad in edits and in cuts to write and rewrite. Even in poetry we were really quite different.
I learnt later that the dichotomy was similar all through the room. You could tell the youth writers by the designs they made at sophistication and their attempts to lay bare emotion in their writing. We used our words as bludgeoning rams against feeling but the seniors had used up enough words in their lifetime to know their true value and used them sparingly as currency instead. What we fought to reveal they concealed and what we confessed they compressed. It was fascinating but also humbling and it made me rethink my language. It seems obscene to talk about truth or honesty in front of those who have bled more than I have sweated, and to speak of love to those who have made flesh from the word almost seems vulgar.
The weekend after that was lovely. Diana had a gig at the Litup Festival together with Illya and I went the first day where they were much too quiet and withdrawn. It made her morose. I thought she looked pretty though with her new cut bangs kissing her forehead and her eyes naked and her arms showing in her white-blue striped top, and told her so. So did you, she said squirming, because like every other introvert she suffers compliments lightly. So did you.
The second day was better and Pamela came down and we sat and talked with a yoga teacher under a tree who told jokes and taught us to meditate with the singing Tibetan prayer bowls that would vibrate with clear ringing sounds all around our heads. We wore them as hats and took pictures and giggled.
