Dahnny Walker
Time is not on my side and I'm still wading in the middle of the ocean, no compass in hand.
The finality of it.
Last night Jae and Feng came down to the hotel where I've been holding up in the past few nights. It was a night I would like to attach more meaning to than it really had.
We got a couple of bottles of wine, a few beers and we sat on the plush beds throwing our woes at each other and replaying lives lived a long time ago. Alcohol has a way of breaking away months of disassociation built up between people. We talked about things I wouldn't go back to. Things I love to regret. Stupid things I still love to miss.
We talked about ever-undulating friendships, never having enough money, and how guys are getting cornered into becoming the new girls in relationships.
Keith and his fleet had just ported and a handful of them were heading to Boat Quay for drinks. I knew it was an asinine call but I supported the motion for us three to join them. We met an old friend there by chance and the dead of night developed into a drunken blur filled with too many pints of lager and too many belted out choruses in Chinese. (I think beer improves my embarrassing Chinese literacy.)
The night ended in quite a comedy because in our stupor, the three of us sped off with somebody else's Martell bottle that was very much half-full, not half-empty. Keith called later when we were drenched and back at the hotel, telling me that the bunch of faux-gangsters saw 'the guy with the hat' running away with the bottle, and that I should lay low because they threatened to stab me if they saw me again.
The fucking hilarity of it all reminded me of someone I'd long forgotten. Because those were the absolute in-the-moment-ness he'd plunge into without thinking twice.
But when it was all over and I was face-to-face with a man with the sparkle of a boy's eyes, I felt a crushing surge as much as that seeming liberation. One of the differences between a 22 year old and an 17 year old is that nothing stays in-the-moment anymore. You do this whole after-activity evaluation process, kicking 'the moment' into perspective.
I felt like I wanted to be two different people. And I had assumed all along that I already had myself all figured out. Dani A is an unrestrained spontaneous fire with an invincible fervour for life and dreams, and he cannot stand Dani B's monotone boringness and nagging fear. Dani B is the sole force that is pushing this heap of bones to places, charting directions and setting in motion the things that matter, and he thinks Dani A's baseless dreams will never be nothing more than what they are.
These days I'm so ready to throw the Yin and Yang philosophy of balance out the window because it starting to not make sense to me. Sitting on the fence in the middle of everything splits your ass wide open.
I cannot say that I don't think of her. I do, a lot, but I'm too proud to admit it. In fact everything I do is still in reference to the both of us. She fell in love with A but she inspired B. A could charm Hitler into marrying a Jew. B's not cool, but he's definitely something to be proud of. Something a girl like her would be proud of. Something she can depend on. That's quite a something innit?
Sometimes, more than anything else, I enjoy walks alone after work to nowhere with my satchel in hand and The National in my ears. It's a simple solace I find.
It's ten and I'm the only one left in the office. I took a smoke in the backdoor lift lobby that comes complete with a view of the Singapore River, Chinatown and beyond. The city looks like an overturned sky of stars from way up here. But from this vantage point in pocketed silence, it makes you feel unnervingly alone.
In that moment, I kinda felt really alone.
Right now, the only thing I want in the whole world is a roadtrip.
For now, I'll just keep on walking.
Turn the light out say goodnight
No thinking for a little while
Let's not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We’re half-awake in a fake empire
