#quasifiction

[peculiarhours]

Kid gloves

"Do you think I will be forgiven?" "It depends. There are things that you have no control over." "I hate that fact."

"You can’t change what has already happened, so choose to look ahead instead of looking behind you. Don’t stress. Do your best. Forget the rest. Your past mistakes are meant to guide you, not define you. Life is a beautiful circle. You’re strong because you know your weaknesses. You’re wise because you have been foolish. You can laugh now because you’ve known sadness."

It’s crazy how I always end up where I'm meant to be, somehow – and how even the most tragic and stressful situations eventually teach me important lessons that I never dreamed I am going to learn. Oftentimes when things are falling apart, I realize that they are actually falling into place. Just because I am not where I want to be today doesn’t mean I won’t be there someday. My trust and intuition never failed me.

Everything is going to come together – maybe not today, but eventually.

[peculiarhours]

Babel

"i'm not asking you to fix me. I just need you to be there while I fix myself."

Those were the last words I heard from Firefly. I admit that I have been a control-freak. I understand that in one way or another, we are all flawed. And when I know that I cannot fix myself, I tend to fix others. When I cannot control myself, I try to control them. The tower of expectation that I built for myself is so high, that when it crumbled, the people close to me, this time, Firefly, got caught in the falling debris. Our line of mind-thread snapped in an instant.

This is why I am not a very good person as you thought I am. I hurt others out of the things that hurt me. I suffocate them with my pursuit of perfection.

But you know, I have feelings too. I feel scared. I feel vulnerable. All the time.

[peculiarhours]

Sodium lamps

I headed to the bench, cleared out a few dried leaves and sat on the damp concrete. It was 12 midnight and there was no one around except us. The sillhouette of acacia trees loom over the yellow-washed asphalt.

Firefly was running like the first time we met, on such fashion that reminds me of running on treadmill.

"You were so fast I had to run double time." Firefly said while panting. "I think my past trainings paid off a bit". Trying to be modest.

The sodium lamps that line the oval stood like sentinels that guide a departing spirit headed for the afterlife. One of them flickered from the distance.

"Have you ever had a time in your life where your feelings shoot up to the skies and almost abruptly plummet down at the same time?" "What do you mean?" "I don't think anyone would understand it." "That's quite a drama." "Ha ha. You think so? I don't know either." “Besides which, one would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

Firefly tapped my back. "That's alright. It's a good-bye anyway. The good thing is we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

"I don't want a goodbye yet." I said.

[peculiarhours]

Journal entry no. 00054

As the dawn approached, I gave up trying to sleep. I threw on comfortable clothes, padded out to the kitchen, and made some tea. I sat on the terrace chair and watched the sky grow lighter by the minute. It had been a long time since I'd seen the dawn - given my irregular sleeping habits and waking up on a scorching 9 am sun.

At one end of the sky a line of blue appeared, and like blue ink on a piece of paper, it spread slowly across the horizon. If you gathered all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, epitome of blue, this was the color you would choose. I rested my elbows on the table and looked at the scene, my mind blank. When the sun showed itself over the horizon, that blue swallowed up by ordinary sunlight. A single cloud floated above the suburbs, a pure white cloud, its edges distinct. A cloud so sharply etched you could write on it.

A new day has begun. But what this day would bring, I had no idea.

[peculiarhours]

Firefly

"You seem to have a good, strong grip on yourself." Firefly said. I shook my head. "Not me." "When I was little, I had no self-confidence at all. Everything scared me. Which is why I used to get bullied a lot. I was such an easy mark. The resentment I had back then are still here inside me. I have dreams like that all the time." "Yeah, but I bet you worked hard over the years and overcame those things little by little—those bad memories." "Little by little," I said, nodding. "I'm like that. A hard worker."

"You just keep at it all by yourself—like a village blacksmith?"

"Right." "I think it's great that you can do that." "Work hard?" "That you're able to work hard." "Even if I've got nothing else going for me?" Firefly smiled without speaking.

I thought about what Firefly said. 

I do feel that I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world…over time…little by little. This little world protected by an emotionless shell, layered with indifference and selfishness. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I'm a weak person, that I bruise easily, don't you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It's like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.

[peculiarhours]

The Gates of Hell

Dawn has set in Manila. We are flying. What we see now is a gigantic metropolis waking up. The kings of the road-- those smoke belching buses gather herds of people from the suburbs to bring them to the city. Commuter trains of many colours move in all directions, transporting people from place to place. Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective entity. Each is simultaneously a self-contained whole and a mere part. Handling this binary philosophy of theirs skilfully and advantageously, they perform their morning rituals with deftness and precision: brushing teeth, shaving, tying ties, applying lipstick. They check the morning news on TV, twitter, facebook, exchange words with their families, eat, and defecate.

With daybreak the stray cats flock in, scavenging for food. Their fur shine in the morning sun. These topics are not as important an issue for the cats as for the human beings. Their single most important concern is securing sufficient nourishment for individual maintenance. The garbage trucks have not yet collected all of the garbage. This is a gigantic city, after all, and it produces a prodigious volume of garbage --literally and figuratively.

The new sun pours new light on the city streets. The glass of high-rise buildings sparkles blindingly. There is not a speck of cloud to be seen in the sky, just a haze of smog hanging along the horizon. The crescent moon takes the form of a silent white monolith, a long-lost message floating in the western sky. A news helicopter dances through the sky like a nervous insect, sending images of traffic conditions back to the station. Cars traversing the city have already started lining up at the concrete bottlenecks of EDSA.

Chilly shadows still lie over many streets sandwiched between tall buildings. Most of last night's memories remain there untouched.

[peculiarhours]

Platform

She swung her cloth bag from her right shoulder to her left. Then she said,

"It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognising and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character."

I thought about her words. "I am a coward, though," I said.

"Now there you're wrong. A cowardly person doesn't go out alone like this in the city at night. You wanted to discover something here. Right?" "What do you mean, 'here'?" "Some place different: some place outside your usual territory." "I wonder if I discovered something—here."

She smiled and looked at me.

"I don't really want to go back," I said. "Here in Singapore?" "Uh-huh." "Why not?" “’Cause I'm scared." "That's only natural," she said. "You're going to a strange, far-off place all by yourself." "I know." "You'll be fine, though," she said. "I know you. And I'll be waiting for you here."

I looked up. Then my eyes drop to my feet. I am checking to make sure my white sneakers are still clean.

"Thanks. But I want to go home now." "I'll write to you," she said. "A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel."

"Okay." 

I went through the ticket gate, walked to the platform, and disappeared into a waiting express train. Soon the departure signal sounds, the doors closed, and the train pulled away from the platform. 

[peculiarhours]

On why you need to sleep before midnight

Our point of view, as an imaginary camera, picks up and lingers over things like this in the room. We are invisible, anonymous intruders. We look. We listen. We note odors. But we are not physically present in the place, and we leave behind no traces. We follow the same rules, so to speak, as orthodox time travelers. We observe but we do not intervene. Honestly speaking, however, the information regarding this person that we can glean from the appearance of this room is far from abundant. It gives the impression that preparations have been made to hide their personality and cleverly elude observing eyes.

Near the head of the bed a digital clock soundlessly and steadily renews its display of the time. For now, the clock is the only thing in the room evidencing anything like movement: a cautious nocturnal creature that runs on electricity. Each green crystal numeral slips into the place of another, evading human eyes.

The current time is 11:59 p.m.

We wait. We hold our breath and listen.

The clock displays "0:00."