In Continuum.

The Swallow Lady

I walked in the rain today, and I don't know why I did it. It's been a while since I did so, and it is kinda stupid if you think about it. My gray t-shirt is supposed to be plain, and after that walk in the rain it became polka-dotted. Even the lone coffee session that I was supposed to have with myself was rudely interrupted by myself. For some reason, that seat in the corner of the Coffee Bean didn't feel right on a rainy February afternoon. It was too cold there, too cold to be alone. The harmonica the old man was playing in the corner was too cheerful, a stark contrast to everybody all around. I wonder if anybody paid him, with coins or attention. I hope somebody did, I dearly hope so. Because at least I know, that even for a person like me, somebody in this world might give a shit, they might pay a little attention on me too.

I care so much about my hair it is disgusting. Running out of umbrellas at home, I covered my head with my bag only because I didn't want to ruin it. Strange to think that in the case of a rainstorm, all somebody cared about was his hair and nothing else. That was me, trotting down the side of the road in the rain with a bag on his head, heading towards the bus stop. I ignored the natural weather forecast outside, the window of my room acting like the frames of the television, forecasting the coming of a heavy rainstorm. But I went out anyway, probably just desperate for the unfamiliar air outside. Sick of the air at home perhaps, sick of breathing in the same room of air I breathed in times of depression and self-sympathy.

At the bus stop, I met the swallow lady, my college Maths teacher. The only reason why I call her the swallow lady is because of her name, for it is the same word as the birds that fly in the skies. She couldn't recognize me at first, until a few seconds later when she finally did, and waved back at me. "I'm sorry!" she said, "I couldn't recognize you! But do forgive me, I am pregnant."

"I noticed," I said. "Again, too. Congratulations!" I remember her presence in my classroom back in those days, and back then she was mostly on maternity leave because of her pregnancy. For half of 2003, she spent the better half of the months away from the classroom, and at home resting. That was the second child, she explained. This is the third.

She asked me what I am doing now, and if I am still in the army. With astonishment clearing written on her face, I was certain that she did not expect me to be out of that dreadful lifestyle already. "Time flies, and I am feeling old!" She gave a loud trademark laughter, and I remember those frequently resonating around the walls of the classroom. I used to be infinitely annoyed by her laughter, but right there and then in the cold bus stop as rain threatened to invade the dry spots, there was a surge of warmth from the old familiar days of school, as much as I hated my stay there.

Seeing her brought a bunch of emotions back to me in a way, particularly because the image I had of her when I left the school was one with her pregnant. Of course, she already had a second child when I left, but I'm not too sure why the bulk in her belly never really left my impression of her. Two years later and she is still pregnant, and it seems as if it hasn't been more than a day since I walked home in the rain with the result slip in my bag. It seems as though nothing has happened from that day and now, that everything has remained the same, just a day older that's all.

I thought about this on the bus with her to the interchange, all the way talking about the old times and school politics. The air in the bus was freezing, and I found myself shaking uncontrollably as she went on and on about how the new principal seems to be more academically focused than the older one, the friendly grandmother Mrs. Ho. But anyway, as we went to different ways inside the mall, I thought about how much and how little I have changed, and a dilemma came across me as I was caught in the middle, unable to make a decision about myself. So much and so little has, and there I stood in the middle of a bustling crowd and the rain falling down, caught in a time capsule and paralyzed.

Desolation was the word to describe my imagination, as I sat outside the Coffee Bean avoiding the air-conditioning. The seats exposed to the rain remained where they were before the weather changed, and no one bothered to remove them from there. Puddles gathered upon the white tabletop, and rolled off the sides like little waterfalls. It got me thinking, that if nobody touches that set of table and chairs, it is probably going to remain exactly as they are, a hundred or two hundred years from now. The fact is, if that really is the case, then what is the difference between then and now? What is time, if it isn't more than just a measurement conjured by humans?

It was a strange thought I admit, to have as one lean against the giant windows of a Coffee Bean, right in the middle of a Coffee Bean. I wondered who the hell has such strange thoughts after meeting their old maths teacher, and was later answered by the voice in the back of my head, soft and sharp: Only you.

People cared nothing more than where their next step is going to fall all around me, or where they are going next in the raging storm all around. But there I was sitting, missing the old times I had back in school no matter how much I might have hated it. So much have happened, looking back at the old archives on my blog and so little, for I have changed little as a person and what a failure I am in terms of that. I saw the breaking down of myself and the people all around me, and there I was left in the middle of an alien crowd having no one to seek comfort to.

I wanted to grab the Caucasian lady next to me who was reading a book about Dinosaurs, and scream into her face. I wanted to throw a chair through the giant sets of windows so that at least somebody is going to notice my existence. I was that desperate, and then then, I hadn't the guts to do so. I failed in that too, and as cold as I was I made up my mind to head on home.

Because the meeting of the swallow lady reminded me of something, that life goes on with or without you. People whom you used to know, people that drifted away, they are going to live their own lives on their own. They still got to work, they still have to eat, they still have babies and more of those despite your departure. That is the brutality of life on you, because not everybody is as sentimental as you. Being that sucks, being sentimental. But I hate to lose that in me, that part of me that still screams to the irrational, less sensible side of me to regain consciousness and sanity. Life goes on with or without you, and that is something I have to learn my own way, even if it means that I have to have my shirt vandalized into an ugly pattern of polka-dots after walking in the rain, so be it.

Too much thought on the same day, too much to think about. It still seems to be raining out, and I don't seem to have a reason to go out anymore. Not for my books, or to meet the person that I love. What is left, if not those simple purposes in life? I guess I just want to fall asleep, a deep long sleep that will last me till the end of the year, the end of the beginning of adulthood. There are too much at stake, too much to lose and I don't think I am ready to lose all those yet.

Just let me sleep, take a good long nap. Because like John Coffey from The Green Mile which I am watching now, we are both awfully tired. Dog-tired.