Passing Over

Last week, bits of Summer gate crashed into the dissipating spring and I started crashing into spider webs. Time for prey and play and mutant reproductions in the animal kingdom.

The trains are starting to pong of a day's hard work. The pollen filled air was replaced with slithering heat on my neck in the garden pub where I had lunch one afternoon. Just as well, V says the pollen fragments floating everywhere were so bad she felt like picking out her eyeballs and running them under a tap. I made my weekend walk in the park with my eyes partially closed and taking an occasional peek just in case I miss Mr. Murakami.

I imagine that a lot. Meeting Mr. Murakami in the park. I know I would recognize him immediately. The bushy brows, the stout back, the tan. He would be jogging, practicing for the yearly Boston Marathon. I would trod up to him cooling, trying to put on my least psychotic stalker face and ask him how he was doing. If I could I would invite up to my place for tea and sign my hard cover copy of ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ and we would have a quiet chat over Yorkshire tea and then say our good byes.

C tells me that Murakami has a new book out. Surprisingly, I wasn’t very interested. I remember waiting 2 years for ‘Kafka on the Shore’ to be translated into English and was deeply disappointed when I finally finished reading it. I haven’t finished ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ either. It is a collection of short stories and I pick it up occasionally when I feel like a change from my bedtime reads, but all in all, my fascination with Murakami books seems to have ceased. Even so, his books influenced me greatly and played a big part in my interest in his persona per se. That period of time when I read his books represent a whole era of thinking tagged onto so many youthful emotions. I still believe 'Norwegian Wood' is one of the most important love stories written in modern literature. In that sense, even though I may no longer follow his books with great interest, everything pertaining to him and his books hold a raw spot in me.

This week, rain gate crashed into the dissipating summer and I started crashing into bed without proper baths. Our hot water boiler went on strike and I would much rather smell like pong then take a bath and risk hypothermia.

We managed a delightful BBQ in the rain with a bunch of Architects trying to build a temporary shelter over the BBQ pit with a mop and army green plastic rubbish bags. It was hilarious. For the BBQ, I baked a lemon cake with double cream and am still wearing spatters of cake batter on my PJs. It’s ok to be a bit sloppy every once in a blue moon and I think this week is ok for that (no hot water is a valid excuse too).

Effectively, it rained all weekend, even on the Monday Bank Holiday. Fickle is the weather in London. I spent the holiday lying in bed, munching peaches. Sleeping and reading. I know I should start studying for my exams but it was just the right weather to drift in and out of sleep.

There was a fresh punnet of peaches on the kitchen table that I had bought from Portobello Market. And a whole bag of coriander as well. I only needed a bunch, but the lady gave me a whole box as she was winding down for the day.

I met W online (He’s going to save my pathetic little ass this year by passing me his notes to study). That rainy day, I told him about my coriander over supply and he suggested putting it in soup.

He went on to rattle off a recipe for soup to me. At the end of it, I realized that it didn’t have coriander in it. So I asked him just to make sure,

‘So when the soup is done, do I put in the coriander?’

‘.....No’

Black Crow flies pass crowing loudly.
Spaz. Moron. (W...I know you are reading this :P).



Bye bye Mr. Murakami.
Bye bye Spring.
Bye bye Rain.

Hello New Era.
Hello Summer!


On Player ‘ Make This Go On Forever’_By Snow Patrol

Stories in a City_Finale_Happy Town

Flickr Update

Last shots on my dying SX-70

No relationships are ever over, just abandoned. Like parallel dimensions of time, like meteor stars dislodged and separated from mother meteor, they are just fragments separated but still of the exact same make up. What I am saying is that you may no longer want to be friends with a certain someone, but the very fact that you register that friend as not a friend, is a form of acknowledgement in itself. You can’t run away from it / them completely. You just abandon them for the time being. It’s a daunting and amazing thought at the same time about the very people that you meet and form relationships with who stay in your life in some form or other.

Its’ been a tiring month. My body and mind have not been getting their act together as well as I hoped. Not with multiple body ailments and wasted nights and weekends working. Up front, I try to hibernate in my Happy Town. Its like I am smiling and looking at the person in front of me moving their mouth but some of the time my mind is elsewhere. If I didn’t go to that place called Happy Town, I think I wouldn’t have been able to smile.

The month has been peppered with many events and encounters. My SX-70 is dying. We continued freak encounters with our landlady and some money lost there. I also take the opportunity to apologise about another previous entry regarding work which I have removed. I always try to refrain from specificity about my work or private life.

Happy Town ingredients of the month were mainly books and friends. I managed to start and finish Amy Yamada’s Bedtime Eyes which was as good as a bad imitation of a combination of Ryu Murakami and Anais Nin. Disillusioned Japanese girls looking for love with black run away sailors is at best interracial porn. I finished Ha Jin’s Waiting yesterday night. It disturbed me very much and broke down any remaining romantic notions about love I was still harbouring. My second last chapter was read in the park while waiting for JW to come by but he stood me up!!! It was too cold to finish the rest of the book in the park so I upped and left. I’m starting on David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green now. I’m glad that I have been reading again. It keeps my head from running away from its neck and it’s the only little space in my head on the train, before I sleep and sometimes at lunch when I can get away from work and a real life.

On the first day back at work. I met JW in the print room. We said an awkward ‘Hi’. He flew off to Oslo soon after, but brought back a gift which is sitting on my office desk now. It was a rather strange gift of a Viking monster riding on a ship with bedeviled hair but it was a goofy reminder of a new friend made as well. When he doesn’t stand me up in the park, he’s an ally for late work nights. I had dinner with V the first week I was back and a rushed late Saturday night Spidey Man 3 laugh-out-loud-session after I frantically ran from work, along Battersea Bridge, Beaufort Street all the way to Fulham Broadway because I was late. Another week, I helped her with shopping and building beds and shelves in her new apartment. We had really good talk over dinner a couple of times after as well. I am delighted that we are still discovering so many things about each other. One another's families and our upbringings. We even realized we both studied Music and Art as subjects in school. She's left F+P now but she understands what I go through at work when no one else can. In a way, we use to form our own support group. I’m no good with words, but she’s one of the few people who can understand, even without alot of words.It feels so right. We have the same attitude towards work and many other aspects of our lives. She loves her cat and I love my dog. She’s always been there for me eventhough we’ve probably only known each other for 6 months. She had the patience to look through all my HSMP forms, help me with my appeal letters when I was busy and stressed with work even when she had enough of her own problems to settle. How many people do you know who would read though 60 pages of guidance notes and check your forms for you then help you write an appeal letter when all hope seems lost? That is how good she is to me. True friends show themselves in your worse times. Best of all, she is so damn cool. She drew a tattoo on her arm in junior college just to get away from swimming lesson. The rule then was no one with tattoos would be allowed to enter the pool, so she did just that and drew one all across her arm. She’s just the type of person who knows what she wants and proceeds it with action and commitment where necessary. I admire that the most about her. Best of all, she doesn’t even read my blog. She’d rather just hang out.

Two friends, YE and XY from my parallel home town dropped by for a couple of days this month and it was good to see familiar faces. JC has arrived to start life anew in London. SJ dropped me an email when he came back from his holiday and we say our hi-byes in the office when we cross path especially during late morning tea and late afternoon tea at the bar. Its been good to know more people in the office. Close encounters make for a better day in Happy Town. L flew in from Shanghai, but neither of our busy schedules could make for a meeting. Still, it was good to hear his voice again and know he was still there. A’s been working late too, but in a twisted sense its good to suffer together and to unite in the simple understanding of work weekends and exchanges of ‘are you at work too?’.

One late night after work, I had a conversation with an Afghanistan cab driver. He talked to me about memories of his beautiful war torn country, his very own Happy Town. He asked me if I was single. I said yes. He said I should find someone. I told him I thought about it but stopped hoping long ago. As I stepped out of the cab, he wished me well and that I would find someone soon. I smiled, thanked him, stepped out into the wet night and walked to my apartment without looking back at him. As always, happy town was close by.

Happy Town is where it's all good and great. It's the little things big enough to form a blockade against the worst. It's my make believe place. Its my dream world where I never mess up. Welcome to my Happy Town.


On Player_'Tumble and Fall'_By Feeder