In Continuum.

Smiles Of Old Strangers

You were the mother of three girls so sweet
Who stormed through your turnstile and climbed to the street
But after conception your body lay cold
And withered through autumn and you found yourself old

By the time you are in your mid-thirties, I don't expect it to be a difficult task to imagine yourself in ten, twenty years' time. I cannot say that I know how it feels like to be meeting the halfway point of the country's life expectancy, because I am still twenty years old and still has a world's worth of life for me to live. But then again, it is not hard to imagine what it'd be like to have deep scars carved into the end of your eyes on either side of your face, and the wrinkles on your forehead as well as the ones around your mouth. This is the brutal process of getting older, the process whereby one loses his or her youth, her vitality. And that is the deterioration of life, no matter how much you want to deny it.

You'd first notice the loose skin under your chin and eyes, the way your eye bags become large enough to conceal a ten cent coin. Then the skin above your eyes will start to sink downwards and obstruct your vision. Your cheek will sag downwards as well, giving you a sad and depressed look to anybody that looks upon you, and your hair will start to turn silver as well, and the color will only grow paler and paler while the color of the veins around your ankle become deeper and deeper. Not to mention the loose skin on the back of your hands, the spots that grow underneath the surface, followed by the losing of your 6/6 vision. For women, your breasts would start to sag with age, slowly towards your stomach area until they look like two over-ripe papayas. But it's OK, some men get it worse. They GROW breasts. That is how we are going to be like in a few decades, and it is happening one second at a time.

Can you tell me why
You have been so sad?

On trains and buses, they are everywhere. Old people - remnants of the distant past - roaming the country just like you and I, but at a much slower and leisurely pace. I've had my fair sure of interactions with the older population of the country, but never have I found any of them to be particularly memorable. After all, the first time was when I had to perform in a group in kindergarten in front of a bunch of old folks, trucked in from an old folks home nearby. The second of which was the time when I had to do voluntary work at Ren Ci Hospital, the time when I fainted in front of a bunch of them. The truth is, neither incidents changed my perspective of old people. Not to say that I hate or despise them of course, but I have never placed any emphasis or particular attention to them before. Forgive me for sounding so cruel and cold, but I've been away from my relatives all my life. Where do I start loving the aged?

Yesterday was an early day off for us, and the gang decided to hang out at Vivo City for a while. That was part of the reason, but the other was really to exorcise the place, since I have yet to do so myself with other friends since February. Felicia, ShiYi, Joyce and myself had a blast taking the long bus ride down, all the while talking about our past relationships, the ones that made it and the ones that didn't, and the story about my sister biting my ears that made Felicia exclaim in shock was particularly memorable.

He took a lover
On a faraway beach
While you arrange flowers
And chose color schemes

We parted with Felicia after lunch at the Food Republic, and the three of us hung out at the bookstore while the rain started to fall outside. Sentosa just laid across the straits then, and the lazy boats sailed across the clear waters quietly through the thick glass windows that lined the edge of the bookstore. There was a wooden bench there, and because we were all tired from the window shoppings, we decided to take a break and just talk...about anything really. Beyond the glass windows was a walkway, and beyond the edge of the wooden pavement was the view of the sea, with the rain slowly gathering strength and pouring down like never before. So with the thunder far off and the sound of Joyce's desperate attempt to keep her running nose at bay, we had a good time talking to one another, finding out the meaning of dreams and had our palms read.

Just then, there was a pair of old ladies that walked down the walkway from the other side of the glass window. One of them caught Joyce's attention, and for some reason she started waving at her. I thought she knew that old lady, but there wasn't a point of recognition between the both of us as well. So I waved back, and gave the old lady a thumbs up. She did the same too, all the while with a million-dollar smile on her face, which transcended through the thick glass windows a sort of warm fuzzy feeling. I couldn't explain it, but there it was as I hugged myself under two layers of clothes, feeling all of a sudden - happy.

Can you tell me why you have been so sad?
Can you tell me why you have been so sad?

They came back a while later just as the rain was about to fall. With no words to communicate with each other at all, we started to use hand signs to do so instead. The old lady pointed into the sky with her index finger, and then with a wavy motion of all her fingers she told us that it was about to rain. I, in return, opened an imaginary umbrella and asked if she had one back then. She gave me yet another thumbs up, and I smiled back at her and mouthed 'Take care', just as she walked away around the corner. We laughed at the incident a while later, and started waving at random strangers that came by. But in my heart, I thought about something that I have never thought of before.

You see, it is so easy to imagine how a little girl or boy would look like in a decade or two's time. But it is impossible to imagine - at least for myself - how I'd look like as an old man. I cannot picture myself with a droopy face and an old smell. It's not the old people's faults to look sad and depressed all the time, but that is the kind of image I have about most old people. The way they sit alone at bus interchanges or in the corner of a train in the mornings reminds me of us how lonely we are all going to get by the time we reach our own sunset years. It is a very shallow thought, I understand. After all, I am sure a lot of older people are just happy that they have a family behind them, a bunch of good old friends and a chess set to accompany them in the afternoons. I wonder though, sometimes, if I am going to end up like one of those sad looking old people at the bus interchanges. How am I going to look like? Smell like? Am I going to be just like any other old people, forgotten and left aside in our constantly fleeting world?

The girls were all there, they traded their vows
The youngest one glared with furrowed brows
They tenderly kissed then cut the cake
The bride then tripped and broke the vase

On our walk on the open-air terrace on the third floor, we were met with a young lady and her grandmother. The girl was about my age, her long hair draped across her chest, and she came running towards me with a digital camera in her hands, wondering if I could take a picture for herself and her grandmother. As I focused in on the both of them, her grandmother said something to me in a foreign tongue I did not recognize. When I asked her grand-daughter, she told me that her grandmother wanted me to stand further away, so that she'd look slimmer than she is in real life. I laughed, and stood a little further away to take the shot.

The three of us, the girl, the grandmother and myself, gathered together to see the finish product, and I commented that her grandmother looked beautiful. She smiled, the scars at the edge of her eyes deepened and folded. She blushed, and as I waved goodbye to the both of them, there was a certain sort of sadness within my heart as I watched their silhouette disappear around the corner.

The one you thought would spend the years
So perfectly placed below the mirror
Arriving late, you clean the debris
And walked into the angry sea

The truth is, I've never had the chance to make anybody older than me, happy before. Sure enough, I remember the smile on my own grandmother's face so many years ago when she was still alive. The way she would brush her fingers through my hair, and then commenting on how tall I have grown. All of those, with her million-watt smile hung upon her face. But those joys were so temporary, so fragile in a way. And come to think about it, there are so many normal childhood things that I've missed, simply because I moved away from my relatives when I was young. The part with the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, the grandparents, all robbed from me because my family decided to move to Singapore more than a decade ago. I don't blame my family, because they did it for my asthma condition in the first place. But still, to see myself putting a smile on an old stranger's face, made me wonder what happened to the old people closer to me, the ones that I should have loved a little more.

People have been telling me about karma, and the fact that I believe in the balance of the universe taught me to believe in that existence. I wonder if in a few decades' time, I am going to end up staying in a single room flat all by myself, just waiting for death to come knocking on my door. After all, I've paid so little attention to relatives much older than myself in the past, what makes me deserve a better treatment than them in the future?

But I guess, all I ask for, is to have random teenagers wave at me from bookstores in the future. To have a stranger take your picture and then comment on how handsome, or how fine you look in the photograph. Because really, I must admit: I fear death. And just second to that is the thought of getting old. Despite that, however, if I am going to be received by others the same way I am receiving people right now, then the thought of being old wouldn't be so daunting and intimidating any more. After all, nobody is really old at heart. Just, older.

It felt just like falling in love again
It felt just like falling in love again

Can you tell me why you have been so sad?
Can you tell me why you have been so...