Painted Silver
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Painted Silver
To understand the mind of a person who likes to vandalize walls in an escalator, you should give up. Because there isn't a practical way for you to do that. Personally, looking at the deep carvings on the walls of the escalator while going home or traveling out, confuses me. I wonder what tempted those people to use their car keys or loose change to scratch vulgarities or random lines on the beautiful stainless steel wall. It is not like they have an issue with the management board of the condominium, or that they write anything worthy of public acknowledgment.
There are other ways to vent your frustrations about life really, or to leave your mark in the public domain. Every time I get into the lift and have my attention fixed on those graffiti, I imagine the faces of those idiots scratching the marks on the wall, with a smile in their faces and taking frequent peeks at the camera above, hoping that the security guards wouldn't notice them. I feel like punching at those imaginary figures, strangling them and then stuffing the keys or the loose change up their butts. But that's not going to happen, and the security guard who catches me doing that at the guard house through the monitor is going to be very disturbed, for sure.
Running my fingers over the scratched marks, feeling the depressions and fissures on the walls as the lift travels slowly down, reminded me about scars that never heal. Emotional ones don't, though more often than not, they don't hurt anymore. But they will always be there, jutting out of your heart like a sore thumb, waving banners lined with neon lights, blinking vigorously. That is how those scratches and marks are like to me when I enter the lift, they take away the attention of everything else and catches my attention, however much I want to take it away from them. They remind me of my own scars, and even the wounds that are still healing, still roughly stitched up by my own hands with the remnants of blood still in between my finger nails. I am healing and in repair, I am not together but I am getting there.
Today, the most miraculous thing happened. All right, perhaps I am exaggerating the observation, but for once the lift did not remind me of my heart, and the scratches were not there to remind me of the scars within. They were not there anymore, painted over in silver paint. Covered, the walls look strange now, no longer having the old shine to it, replacing those a dull ugly glow. But the scratches were gone, they were indeed!
So there I stood in the middle of it all, the four walls on all sides making me claustrophobic. I just returned from a brief dinner with Ahmad a while ago, good old Indian food down at Serangoon Gardens, under the raging rainclouds up above our heads, with lightnings shooting through the towering gray masses overhead and dead leaves fluttering through the air like a dozen brown butterflies, spiraling downwards into the paths of pedestrians and cars, borne away by the wind and into the darkening skies. I filmed a part of the scene with my cellphone, and took a couple of pictures while waiting for Ahmad. I must have looked like a tourist back then, but I didn't care. I got my time out of the prison for a while, and the air outside smelled fabulous.
I walked home in the rain again, and I didn't know why. It was just a slight drizzle, the voice of Damien Rice playing in my head as I avoided the low hanging trees on the road back home. The chilly drops of water ran down my neck and into my shirt, but as ticklish as it was, I felt refreshed. The storm was over, and through all darkness there will be light, always.
That was how felt in the lift that represented my heart, and the old scratches on the wall like the wounds of distant past. No matter how deep they reach into the core, no matter how ugly these emotional scars are, there will always be a can of silver paint for me to cover everything up. Sure, the wash of paint might not make the walls more beautiful, nor will it restore the beauty that it once possessed. But at least it did cover up the wounds and the scars, and that is all that matters. The lift was my heart, and the vandalisms were the emotional turmoil that I've been through. But like the silver paint, the love from everybody else managed to cover up these flaws, and here I am thanking everybody who gave a shit, who tried and loved.
Fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, the lift slowly rose in the shaft. Renewed and refreshed, I was ready to face the rest of the world. Broken heart mended, old scars healed, I am ready to fall all over again. This might sound too optimistic for my own good, or too idealistic. But a bit of it doesn't hurt, at least not as much as what I have already been through. Too much optimism hurts only the pride, and not the heart.
Seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth. The lift - my heart - rose in the dark shaft, the cables jolting to a sudden stop. The doors opened, the last of the day's sunlight streamed into the narrow space inside. There I was, before the gate and on the door mat, smiling and mumbling to myself under my breath...
..."I'm home."
To understand the mind of a person who likes to vandalize walls in an escalator, you should give up. Because there isn't a practical way for you to do that. Personally, looking at the deep carvings on the walls of the escalator while going home or traveling out, confuses me. I wonder what tempted those people to use their car keys or loose change to scratch vulgarities or random lines on the beautiful stainless steel wall. It is not like they have an issue with the management board of the condominium, or that they write anything worthy of public acknowledgment.
There are other ways to vent your frustrations about life really, or to leave your mark in the public domain. Every time I get into the lift and have my attention fixed on those graffiti, I imagine the faces of those idiots scratching the marks on the wall, with a smile in their faces and taking frequent peeks at the camera above, hoping that the security guards wouldn't notice them. I feel like punching at those imaginary figures, strangling them and then stuffing the keys or the loose change up their butts. But that's not going to happen, and the security guard who catches me doing that at the guard house through the monitor is going to be very disturbed, for sure.
Running my fingers over the scratched marks, feeling the depressions and fissures on the walls as the lift travels slowly down, reminded me about scars that never heal. Emotional ones don't, though more often than not, they don't hurt anymore. But they will always be there, jutting out of your heart like a sore thumb, waving banners lined with neon lights, blinking vigorously. That is how those scratches and marks are like to me when I enter the lift, they take away the attention of everything else and catches my attention, however much I want to take it away from them. They remind me of my own scars, and even the wounds that are still healing, still roughly stitched up by my own hands with the remnants of blood still in between my finger nails. I am healing and in repair, I am not together but I am getting there.
Today, the most miraculous thing happened. All right, perhaps I am exaggerating the observation, but for once the lift did not remind me of my heart, and the scratches were not there to remind me of the scars within. They were not there anymore, painted over in silver paint. Covered, the walls look strange now, no longer having the old shine to it, replacing those a dull ugly glow. But the scratches were gone, they were indeed!
So there I stood in the middle of it all, the four walls on all sides making me claustrophobic. I just returned from a brief dinner with Ahmad a while ago, good old Indian food down at Serangoon Gardens, under the raging rainclouds up above our heads, with lightnings shooting through the towering gray masses overhead and dead leaves fluttering through the air like a dozen brown butterflies, spiraling downwards into the paths of pedestrians and cars, borne away by the wind and into the darkening skies. I filmed a part of the scene with my cellphone, and took a couple of pictures while waiting for Ahmad. I must have looked like a tourist back then, but I didn't care. I got my time out of the prison for a while, and the air outside smelled fabulous.
I walked home in the rain again, and I didn't know why. It was just a slight drizzle, the voice of Damien Rice playing in my head as I avoided the low hanging trees on the road back home. The chilly drops of water ran down my neck and into my shirt, but as ticklish as it was, I felt refreshed. The storm was over, and through all darkness there will be light, always.
That was how felt in the lift that represented my heart, and the old scratches on the wall like the wounds of distant past. No matter how deep they reach into the core, no matter how ugly these emotional scars are, there will always be a can of silver paint for me to cover everything up. Sure, the wash of paint might not make the walls more beautiful, nor will it restore the beauty that it once possessed. But at least it did cover up the wounds and the scars, and that is all that matters. The lift was my heart, and the vandalisms were the emotional turmoil that I've been through. But like the silver paint, the love from everybody else managed to cover up these flaws, and here I am thanking everybody who gave a shit, who tried and loved.
Fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, the lift slowly rose in the shaft. Renewed and refreshed, I was ready to face the rest of the world. Broken heart mended, old scars healed, I am ready to fall all over again. This might sound too optimistic for my own good, or too idealistic. But a bit of it doesn't hurt, at least not as much as what I have already been through. Too much optimism hurts only the pride, and not the heart.
Seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth. The lift - my heart - rose in the dark shaft, the cables jolting to a sudden stop. The doors opened, the last of the day's sunlight streamed into the narrow space inside. There I was, before the gate and on the door mat, smiling and mumbling to myself under my breath...
..."I'm home."
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on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 12:18 AM.
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