In Continuum.

Escapism


Alone on a train aimless in wonder
An outdated map crumbled in my pocket
But I didn't care where I was going
'Cause they're all different names for the same place.

Nobody is at home now, only me. Me, alone in this comfortable prison cell, no chains to my legs and bars, no locked doors or carvings on the wall, counting down the days to the prisoner's release. I wonder if there is a prison in this world, for the willing and the voluntary. There must be such a place, a place in everybody's heads. We all have walls built around our hearts, bars on the window and locked doors with lost keys. Even in the most familiar and comfortable place such as your own home, you can't help the feeling bursting at the seams, the urge to break out and run away.

The urge grows with every passing minute, the way I can count the number of tiles along the corridor, from the start of it to the door to the bathroom(Eighteen). This is definitely a sign, showing that you've been in the same place for too long. So the bags and suitcases in the storeroom becomes alluring all of a sudden, the emptiness of them seems to be calling out to you, to fill them up with clothes and other necessities for a long trip away from this country, this prison, this life. The zips opened making them look like decapitated heads, with their mouths gaping opened begging to be filled with something, anything. Where would I go from here? Where would I go from here?

I picture myself grabbing the luggages while nobody is at home, and packing them with clothes for the warm and the cold. Then stuffing the remaining space with books, my notebook, and other daily necessities like toothbrush and toothpaste. Oh, the goodbye note. Don't forget the goodbye note. I would tear a page out of my notebook and write a brief letter about why I left the house all of a sudden, write where I am going and when I shall return just so that my mother wouldn't call the police. Yes, the goodbye letter. How could I have forgotten about that?

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun
And I knew no words to share with anyone
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed
And all the different names for the same thing

Then head towards the nearest ATM to draw out enough money and have them changed to US dollars. Head down to the airport and pick a random country to go to, and then go. I can picture myself sitting in the airport's waiting room, surrounded by strangers. Strangers knowing where they are going, strangers knowing where they are heading. I'd be the only person there, a coat in my hands and not knowing how the country is going to be like the moment I alight. Hot or cold at this time of the year? Will I be robbed the moment I step out of the airport? Will be shot, killed or worse?

But the idea of an adventure is too desirable, too tempting. Into the rural places of the world, to the highlands and the deep jungles, to experience a life completely different from the one I gotten so used to. The suffocating life, the walls around your heart closes in with every passing night until the column of air above your head isn't enough to breathe anymore.

I am probably too idealistic for my own good, and perhaps need a reality check. Somebody slap me with a giant baseball bat, or shake some sense into me just so that I'm not going to pack up and leave the moment I click on the word 'Publish'. Just leave everything, leave it all. Take a stroll in the wilderness, then fall asleep in the green fields alone with somebody around, the somebody being nobody. To fall asleep under a great tree with a big crown above, sheep grazing in the nearby field. Somebody slap me, please.

But I am still here in my room, before the computer, my mother and sister returned home. I am still here, breathing the same air, drinking the same sorrows, suffocating just as slow. I need alcohol, alcohol of any kind. Like a friend of mine posted on his blog," Alcohol is not only for heartbreaks. It's just a vice". I just need to get away from this place, anywhere.

After all, be it an untamed wilderness, be it a tree for me to sleep under, be it a green grassy field with sheep or a bottle of whiskey in the middle of the night. I guess all these things are merely different names for the same thing: Escape.

There are different names for the same things
There are different names for the same things...