In Continuum.

Last October

'Hello?'
'Hey,hi.What's up?'
'Hey,thanks for letting me call you at this hour.'
'No,it's okay.I'm outside now.'
'Yeah,me too.And barefooted too.'
'Barefooted?'
'Can you see the moon?'
'Yeah,yeah i can see it.'
'We are looking at the same thing,then.'
'I guess we are.'
'So we are not as far as we might think.'

Damn,it was an awful party.Thinking about it now makes me feel the awkward feeling involved,sitting by the side of the sofa,watching four guys shifting Mahjong pieces upon the table,a lame movie playing on the 32 inch television,and the vibration of my handphone dead for the past hour.There i was,in a friend's place,a supposed 'party',sitting on the side of his livingroom sofa,feeling out of place like a sore thumb.I remember a neighbour of his,i think her name was Amanda,or was it Alicia?She came in a maroon top and shorts,and those pair of shorts probably defined the term 'shorts',because they WERE,in fact,SHORT.She was cuddling with her boyfriend in the corner of a room,with the host's laptop before them,playing some lame online game,popular at that time of the year.Her legs were curled up before her chest,toes curled inwards a little bit,and i remember her fingers running ever so gentling over her thighs,scratching where the skin ended and the fabric of her shorts began.

I had to get out of there,i told myself.I had to get out of there.

I stormed out of he double doors,and took off my socks.The floor was wet,the rain stopped only moments ago.I ran my fingers through my carefully tended hair.Even then,alone in the front lawn,i felt strangely out of place.It must've been my feet,staring at me with grass sticking out from between my toes.I took a deep breath,the humid night air attaching itself to my skin.Uncomforting and distracting.But at least,far better than whatever that was going on inside the house.

It was a party that i am never going to forget.Not because it was,in any way,memorable,but because it was too damn forgettable.I know to some,that probably didnt make sense,but just wait till you attend a crap party,and you'd know what i mean.You dont invite four groups of people,who dont know each other at all.Relatives,neighbours,Poly friends and JC friends.You just dont put a bunch of people who dont know one another into the same room,and expect them to interact to the same piece of music you are playing in the background,and join in a game against one another,because these bunch of people dont give a shit about one another.It's all smiles during the photographs,but does it matter really,at the end of the day,after the slicing of the cake and the blowing of the candles?

It didnt matter,not to me then.That was what i thought,the awkward feeling creeping up my back like a million insects.I didnt care,if the bottom of my pants were wet,or the fact that the grass on his front lawn felt sharp beneath my feet.I didnt care,and i strolled around his front lawn looking at the moon and the stars,the surviving ones of the night,the ones between the clouds and the distant haze.I was out of the house,out of the crowd of strangers,unaware and careless of one another.I was out of the way,and because of that,upon the sharp grass of his front lawn,i found a strange moment inside me,a little peace.

But it wasnt just peace i found,but a swing as well.It was white,hidden in shadows beside the house.It was the kind of swing with a landing and benches on both sides,and you could stand in the middle if you want to and test your sense of balance while the swing went back and forth.I had a swing like that when i was in Taiwan,i remember.I have a photograph in the album,of myself sitting in the bench and the daughter of a family friend in another,in her flowery dress.My sister was in her summer dress too,her eyes squinting to the summer sun,holding onto the metal railings,smiling at the camera.I had one of those swings too,and for nostalgia's sake i started swinging on it.

It was when the metallic sound of the swing was echoing through the neighbourhood,and the soft whispers of the girls in the back of the house by a coffee table,i gave her a call on my cellphone,almost exactly a year ago from today.It's already been a year,since last October.His birthday is on the 17th,and i remember celebrating it a couple of days early.Which would mean that being reminded of the same scenario by a friend of mine today,would mark a certain significance to the whole...reminder.I've forgotten about this part of our relationship - or lack thereof - but now that i think about it,it probably was the only time when 'distance' didnt matter between the both of us,and was when 'distance' stood no chance taking over the space we shared.Still pure to the pollution of the physical and emotional distance,still innocent.

You were outside your church,or was it your church?There were mosquitoes,and your parents were late.Your handphone beeped to the battery,threatening to go flat halfway through our conversation.But i insisted,wanting to talk till the very end of the life of your battery,wanting to keep you entertained before your father arrived.Yeah,entertained.Guess that was what i did throughout our little relationship.To keep you entertained,before the next guy came along to take over the job of being the jester of the court.But this jester - me - didnt have bells on my head,or pointy shoes in a dozen different colours.I was in the suit of just one shade,and that shade had you written all over.

I asked you if you could see the moon from where you were.It looked like a ten-cent coin back then,and a side of it was chipped off,a fat crescent.You could see it from there,and for a moment there,as we both looked at the glowing sphere in the dark weekend sky,we were for that split second,next to each other.We werent all that far now,were we?Since we were looking at the same thing,only from different ends of the country.Like i said,that very night a year ago,in that strange October night,'distance' didnt matter between us,not in any form.Because right then,it was like a triangle between the three points.From me to the moon,the moon to her,and between us,the distance marked 'X'.'X' is not defined,'X' is unknown.But because of the completion of the shape,the triangle,'X' didnt matter.Not to point 'W',or to point 'S'.Not then,not now,not during that strange October night.

A year later,after a night out in town,a friend of mine sits on a white swing outside the host's house.'It was too happy',she said,when asked about the reason why she left the commotion.She was barefooted as well,and i imagine that the tiles felt moist and the grass felt sharp.I imagine her sitting on the metal bench,talking to me like i did a year ago with somebody else,and probably was happy and careless about everything that went on inside the house.It reminded me of the time that past,that it has been a full year since...well,then.And it was nice,and sad,and a whole lot of other feelings,as i sat on the curb at the carpark,alone and being stared at by a passing old lady.

It's already been a year.A year,that's a long time for you to be so far away from me.