In Continuum.

Hey, Balcony



I stayed on the phone for a while, the constant humming ringing through my ears. It was nearly 1am at that time, and the whole house was a little too quiet for comfort, save for the trickling of the water down the back of the fish tank. Other than that, it was just me and my thoughts, bouncing around the four walls and down the corridor, submerged into the quiet darkness. Nobody was online at that time, nobody whom i had a mind to talk to anyway. Besides, the idea of telling somebody about how i felt didn't exactly appeal to me at all, since nobody was capable of understanding, i reckoned. So i took a stroll out of my room into the living room, feeling the cold white tiles under my bare feet. I like this feeling, i thought to myself. A little consolation on this cold January night. I don't remember January being so chilly at home, but then again it's not like I've experienced the January nights here for the past two years.

With the lights turned off and the night creeping into the house, the furnitures and the plants stared back at me like confused strangers. The colours were different, almost made me wonder if my mother purchased new ones again. All of a sudden, little details like that caught my attention, and this familiar feeling came back to me from the older days. I remember it was a little more than two years ago, when i used to take the same stroll through the house alone like that, wondering where to go and what to do, immersed in my own thoughts. I never told anybody about them, and it's not like i had a proper avenue to do so. As much as i treat my blog as the best friend around, there are just some things I'd rather leave out of the cyberspace, but to the air around myself alone in the night.

The only light came from the balcony, the yellow light from above always turned on. My mother likes to keep a couple of lights turned on at night, since she is not a big fan of a dark house. So the lamp is always turned on, and i remember back in the school days, i used to take refuge right there on the straw benches, just sitting there and watching the world grow quiet as the clock ticked by. The view from the 19th floor is drastically different from anywhere else's, and i liked it very much. As i stepped through the glass doors, i murmured under my breath to this old concrete friend of mine. "Hey, Balcony" i said, as i placed the cushion on the bench and sat down alone, with the notebook in my hands and jotting down random thoughts once again.

I used to study here, i remember. Lots of times, just trying desperately to cram text and information into my head. But of course, from the endless lines of a textbooks, my eyes usually drift off the edges of the paper to the scenery beyond the brown railings. The street lights lining the empty streets, the lonely lights along HDB corridors, the drunkard stumbling out of his posh B&W, the middle age man catching a late night soccer match alone in his living room, a couple in the opposite block minding their own businesses, the wind blowing against my cheeks and penetrating my thin t-shirt. It was a night too cold to be alone, i thought to myself. And i rubbed my palms on my arms to keep warm. January nights, i thought to myself. January nights...

Walt Whitman was a famous poet in the late 1800s if i am not wrong. One of his most famous body of work revolves around ideas that dealt with humans' relation to their environment, and how everything - including the non-living things - had a life and soul of their own. The pots of plants in the balcony, the chair that i was sitting on, the notebook that i held in my hands, everything. Michael Cunningham elaborated on that idea in his book Specimen Days, and pushed that idea to a further realm by actually suggesting a working mind of their own. It was a far fetched idea when i first read it of course, but yesterday night on the balcony i sort of understood the need of being open-minded about it.

There are things that I don't or can't say to people, things that people will not understand. Even if they do, it wouldn't help at all by voicing my thoughts. There are some people, or a person, whom i desperately want to tell my thoughts to, but can't. Not even my blog, not anywhere. But with the company of those plants at the balcony, for some reason, i didn't feel all that alone anymore. You might think that i am a little loony for doing whatever that i did, but i actually spoke my thoughts there to the things around the balcony, as if they were old friends of mine.

But true enough, i remember when i was a kid, i used to bury my toys in the soil, or make them climb the stems of the plants and the pretending that i was the king of the jungle. I buried a dozen dead fishes from the fish tank there, and i remember one rainy afternoon when i wept over the death of a pink fish we bought for merely three days. I sort of grew up with all the familiar objects at the balcony, and with age i left them there in the cold nights while i retreated into the room of mine, locked up with my own thoughts and suffocating under their weight. I forgot the liberating feeling of telling my thoughts to the rest of the world, through the balcony on the 19th floor, and it was a great feeling to do that all over again.

Well, you might think i am a little psychotic to do such a crazy thing alone in the middle of the night, but to tell you the truth i don't even care what you guys think about me anymore. It made me feel better after an emotional outburst, and who cares if my audience is a bunch of cancer patients or pots of plants? Because really, there are some thoughts of mine, that i can never tell to anybody.

So i sat there for a full two hours last night, until the roads were emptied and the night grew colder. I couldn't take the temperature anymore, taking refuge back in the house. But the leaves continued to nod to the beating of the wind, the yellow light continued to shine without dwindling, and the cushion was left there even till the early morning. I said everything that i wanted to say to somebody, and to nobody at the same time. Isn't that some kind of experience by itself?

I cannot elaborate on what i said, because that would defeat the purpose. But to me, my balcony is just one of the many friends that i have neglected as of late. At least there at the balcony, i feel brave and sane enough to voice my thoughts, knowing that nobody is going to be judgmental or hurt by my comments or thoughts. Because there, on the 19th floor, everybody speaks the language of silence, and silence to me at times like then, is more precious than any voices that could possibly cheer my soul.