Stories in a City_Finale_Happy Town

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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.


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