In Continuum.

Three In The Ante Meridiem

She says its cold outside and she hands me my raincoat
Shes always worried about things like that
She says its all gonna end and it might as well be my fault
And she only sleeps when its raining
And she screams and her voice is straining

At that time of the morning, people who are awake think little about the next hour, or the next minute. People think little about the hour that came to pass, but the moment that is - the moment that is right now. Time bottles itself up into a capsule at that time of the night, and you are a speck of dust in the middle of it all. Just floating in the center, stuck in the gel of time, unable to swim forward or backward. At least that is how I feel in the midnight hours, staying up late on a Thursday night thinking about life, death, and everything in between. Then looking out of my balcony, I started writing this little entry on my notebook, scribbling thoughts that flowed like water from a broken tap. Overflowing the brink of the sink, trickling down the white porcelain, over the blue-tiled floors and drenching the carpet.

She says baby
Its 3am I must be lonely
When she says baby
Well I cant help but be scared of it all sometimes
Says the rains gonna wash away I believe it

At 3 in the morning, the security guard lights a cigarette. Simon, that's his name. Everybody calls him Simon ever since the day he started working in the estate. At times, he wonder if anybody remembers his Chinese name, or his last name. Sometimes, even his own name slips his mind, and he sits in the green stool position right outside the guard house downstairs, wondering where did that man go - the man with the rest of his name. That man left just Simon behind, leaving him there to guard the estate all alone at three in the morning. Simon wondered where that man went to, that man and his partner. He's been gone for a long time, making his rounds around the perimeter of the estate with his torchlight and walkie talkie. Simon tried to radio to his partner, pressing the black button on the side of the walkie talkie. But all he got were feedbacks, the sound crackling into the deep night. Simon let out a long sigh, and sucked on the end of his cigarette, making the tip of it turn into a speck of gold.

The air smelled like it was going to rain, the kind of smell that resembled a lawn of trimmed grass. But it has been like this for too long, the humid days reaching into the pores of Simon's skin and tugged at his nerves. He took out a purple handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his forehead, groaning under his breath at the suffocating weather. He remembers, he remembers the days when it used to rain every night, when there'd be a puddle of rainwater right in front of the front door of the guard house. But the depression in the ground where the puddle should have been, has sand gathered in it into a small mount. With the tracks of car tires running over it, Simon started counting the tracks and intentionally miscounting them whenever he reaches close to twenty. He was bored, and his partner has yet to return from his rounds. He radioed him again, but all that came through was the constant sound of static and the sound of his heavy breathing.

Simon examined his watch, a little less than an hour before somebody else takes over his place tonight. The second hand on the face of the watch ticked away slowly, counting down the time to the next hour when he gets to go to bed - when he gets to take the midnight buses home. Simon hates to take those buses, the way the neon lights above would flicker at every violent jerking of the bus made the already morbid bus even more morbid. It reminded him of a waiting room at a hospital he was at, where he sat minutes before the man with the white scrub - the doctor - came out and told him about his mother's death. The last of his parents, gone from the face of the Earth, and never saw him making it anywhere more than being a security guard of a housing estate. Simon started to wonder if his parents were ever proud of him, if they said his name to others with pride at all. Probably not, because it has been a long time since he heard his own name being mentioned by the others for purposes more than a favor.

His partner returns from his round, tired and worn out. When asked about the silence over the airwaves, his partner confessed that he fell asleep on one of the benches in the corner where the barbeque pits are. Simon was furious, but in a way he understood; for he was there himself, in the same shoes and falling asleep on the same bench years ago. He has been working here for so long, seeing the houses rising all around this old estate, breathing in the smell of mixed cement and broken rocks. He forgave the young security guard, shoving a cup of coffee into his hands and asked him to take a break in the break while he manned the entrance. So his partner went to sleep, and under his breath he mumbled "Thanks Simon". Simon, he repeated to himself. What about the rest? What about me?

It was the fourth cigarette of the hour when the first car in the last hour pulled in. The blockade was raised and the car drove through quietly without a wave this time. People in the late nights are less friendly, Simon thought to himself. But he cared little about little gestures of courtesy, nor the fact that his partner was snoring too loudly in the back, overpowering the music on the radio. Simon started ticking off the months in his mind mentally, the months that came to pass. He has worked here for so long, and still working under somebody else's eyes and too old to change to a new job. Despite the world coming to a stand still at this hour, Simon still felt the fleeting of the world, the blinding speed at which it is traveling by and by. He wondered about the little things he did in life, or the things that he didn't do. He listed down so many things to do when he was younger, when he still had dreams - in a time when dreams do come true. But most of them, most of the dreams, are lost in the sands of time, lost because he started drinking and strayed from the course of his life.

Stuck in the dim glow of the guard house with the insects buzzing around the plastic cover of the light above, Simon took a last drag at his cigarette and extinguished it under his carefully shined leather shoes. Perhaps that is the only thing he is good at now, shining his own pair of shoes. Something - hopefully - he is going to be remembered of, to be worthy of remembrance . Simon: The Man with the Shiny Shoes. But so what? Life for Simon is so trivial, so unimportant, so useless.

Shes got a little bit of something, God its better than nothing
And in her color portrait world she believes that shes got it all
She swears the moon dont hang quite as high as it used to
And she only sleep when its raining
And she screams and her is straining

At three in the morning, I rolled my chair out into the dining room and played a tune. My mother was asleep then, and so was my sister. I was the king of the dining room, the living room, and the house. In the darkness of everything else, there was me and no other. With my guitar rested upon my right thigh, I began a tune that lasted for ever. There was school tomorrow, but I cared little about the minutes and hours that went by on the clock. I just had the urge to play on and on, and sing a sad love song. To play until my fingers start to turn purple, to play until I wake the neighbors. That's all I wanted to do last night, sitting there in the middle of the house and hearing my own voice bounce off the walls.

My fingers danced, like tiny dancers rehearsing for their last show on stage. Running up and down the fret boards and skipping from this note to that. All the while, I pictured myself in a lounge bar of sorts, the kind that opens at this ungodly hour of the morning. There is a light above my head, and probably the main source of light for the room, save for the flickering candles on each of the tables below. There were people watching me in the dark, with their chins supported on their palms or a cigarette in between their fingers, they were watching me from where I couldn't see properly. But they were there, they were all there in the darkness of my living room, just waiting for me to play the next song, and then the next, and then the next.

I played Jolene in the dark, and couldn't get pass the second verse. For some reason, the rawness of Ray LaMontagne's lyrics got to me then, the way he described the pictures and the dirty ditch. It was all too familiar, and perhaps just a tad bit too uncomfortable for me to sing in the dark. So I rolled myself back into the comforts of my room and crashed into bed, with the guitar in my arms and the air-conditioning quietly doing its job, blowing away.

I remember the scent that was caught in the air by the spinning blades of the fan. The closeness of it all, when you intruded my space and I didn't mind. I played a tune too, softly in your ears with the guitar in your laps. With my arms around, we played our favorite song and whispered quiet words into each others ears. Tears formed and fell onto the wooden body of the guitar, rolling down the side and then disappearing into the bed sheet. It was three in the morning then, and three in the morning now. The same time and a million miles apart, with just my chest to the back of the guitar and not yours. It was a strange feeling, to be there and not there at the same time.

Because at three in the ante meridiem, everything is just in a standstill, everything is just a moment in time.

She believes that life is made up of all that youre used to
And the clock on the wall has been stuck at three for days, and days
She thinks that happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway
But outside its stopped raining