In Continuum.

My Perfect Weekend

I am driving up 85 in the
Kind of morning that
Lasts all afternoon
Just stuck inside the gloom

Time is passing by too fast these days, and it is especially depressing on a weekend. For the whole week you've been looking forward to the two day break, the days when you have the right to be lazy, to be careless about anything that you do and nobody is going to chase after you with a whip. The weekend is sacred to most people, working or schooling, and that is especially so for university students. Through the week, we pray and we chant, we tell ourselves that the boring lecture is going to be over soon, and every passing second is a second closer to the weekend. But when your weekend goes by faster than you expect, you look back and you start to wonder if you took the weekends for granted at all.

April and I were talking about our perfect weekends just another day, but we weren't just talking about any weekends. We were talking about the kind of weekends we would like to have when we do have a partner to ourselves, and a career to boot. We were talking about the future after our schools, once we are satisfied with being alone and wants to settle down with somebody permanently, that was what we were talking about. I guess in a way, when you put two single person on either side of a coffee table, this is the kind of conversation that you are going to get. Both of them are going to delve deep into their fantasies and dig up unrealistic projections of their "Perfect-Whatever". That is not going to happen when you are talking to somebody who is attached, because he or she is probably just going to go on about how he or she usually spends the weekend with his or her partner - which only makes you feel worse about your single-hood.

Four more exits to my apartment but
I am tempted to
Keep the car in drive
And leave it all behind

When you are talking about weekends, the first thing that comes to my head is endless hours of sleeping. The right to fall asleep and wake up to the sound of your fan spinning next to your head instead of your cellphone alarm is a beautiful thing in life. The sad part is that it happens only for two days a week, and all the other mornings are usually dominated by irritating sounds of your alarm. I remember back in the school days when I had a radio clock, my mood of the day was greatly depended upon the genre of the song the radio station decides to play at six in the morning. If they are going to play a ballad, then the rest of the day is going to be a smooth ride with a smile on my face. If they are going to play Linkin Park or Simple Plan, then you shouldn't expect me to come to school, beaming with a million dollar smile. And as if a Linkin Park alarm is not enough, my sister had one of those alarm clocks with bells on either end of the small hammer. That was the alarm clock from hell I tell you, the kind that wakes the Devil up from his slumber.

So "Thank God it's Friday!" has a radically different meaning for me. People think of Friday as the beginning of the weekend, the start of all the partying and all the fun people usually get on weekends, which usually ends way over midnight. But for my case - and for April's - I prefer to spend my weekend sleeping in, and getting out of the house for a small gathering or a coffee. I guess we are both lovers for our quiet times away from town, or maybe we are just passionate about the kind of peace we get when we leave our work behind. The kind of silence you hear within your head and not your room, when you sit with your legs crossed on a Saturday morning. It's probably the most beautiful thing ever, but most people are just party-hungry animals. But who can we blame, really?

'Cause I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdict-less life

My perfect weekend is interchangeable in the sense that it doesn't matter which comes first - sleeping in or going on - just as long as the both of them happen for me, then I am fine.

The important thing about the perfect Saturday is always the beginning. Because it is usually the morning after the weekday, the first taste of what it is to come on the weekend. The perfect Saturday would involve me waking up to the sight of my wife - or girlfriend - with a tray of breakfast. Or, it could be the other way round if she insists, and I can make our favorite sandwiches or something, coupled with ice-cold orange juice and probably some kind of salad. I have no idea how to make a salad yet, but sandwiches I can manage, and that is actually a very real possibility.

By the end of breakfast however, I am probably going to stay in bed a little while longer with her and talk about our dreams the night before. Be it a nightmare or a good dream, we are going to have a good laugh about it, then talk about all the implications and the meanings of those dreams, feeling childish and stupid for no reason at all. The thing about lying in bed on a weekend is that since you don't need to get our of bed as quickly as possible - as oppose to weekdays - you get to really feel the warmth inside your bedsheets. I mean, who cares about the warmth under your blanket when you are trying to fall asleep as fast as possible anyway? Nobody is going to say," Wow, my bed sheet feels warm today, and I love it!" in the wee-hours of the morning, an hour before you get to work. Because a minute late is another dirty mark in your boss's black book, and you are probably not going to risk that by rolling about on your bed with an idiotic smile on your face. No sir, no way.

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia why?

At least on weekend mornings, you can stay inside for as long as you want. There is going to be a television in my room too, and we will watch the news or some silly morning cartoons until we decide to get out of bed. Lunch will be made by the both of us together, and if we will take a stroll down to the nearest convenient store to get our groceries if we do run out of ingredients. It is going to be a simple meal every weekend, and nothing too extravagant or elaborate unless we have friends visiting. Anyway, it is going to be chess or cards after lunch, or even boardgames if we have any. Sitting on the front lawn with our bare feet, we will play card games and spend some time in the sun. The soil would feel slightly moist to our feet from the lingering morning dew, but then nothing beats a good roll-about in the grass, in my opinion anyway.

Towards the evening, dinner is not going to be made at all. We will head down to the nearest hawker center or something for a meal, or a better cafe or restaurant nearby if we feel that we need better food. It'd be nice to just walk to wherever we want to go, because it's hardly a conversation if your eyes are going to be on the road half the time you are talking to your passenger anyway. Then at night, we are going to watch some silly movie on HBO after a bath, followed by small talks in the bed sheet until we eventually fall asleep to yet another lazy, Sunday afternoon.

I rent a room and I fill the spaces with
Wood in places to
Make it feel like home
But all I feel is alone

It might be the quarter-life crisis
Or just the stirring within my soul

Sunday morning, yet another round of roll-about in bed. I forgot to mention the part about coffee in the morning for Saturday, but I guess it is not to late to mention it here too. We are going to have coffee on our balcony, or front lawn, and then eat a bunch of biscuits until we have bread crumbs all over the place. Sunday will be the day to go out, and we are probably going to catch a random movie in town, or probably hang out at a random cafe to look at other couples until dinner time when we do visit a restaurant or something like that. It'd be nice if we can explore places we've never been to before either, just walking endlessly until the path goes out, then turning back to go to wherever we came from.

Returning home, if we don't get to watch a movie in town, we will watch movies with Audrey Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman. Or if she wants, a movie with Clarke Gable or James Dean. It'd be nice if we have excess to our home's rooftop, so we can count the stars over and over again until our eyes are crossed. If the coffee in the morning was too strong, perhaps we can take a stroll around the neighborhood until we are both tired like dogs. But there will always be a sense of loss on a Sunday, the way you would feel on the last day of a holiday. Tomorrow would be Monday, the start of a new week. And the last day of anything almost always has melancholy written all over, no matter how fun or how beautiful it may have been. So in bed that night, we are going to whine and sulk about it under we get tired of ourselves, but never each other. Awaiting for the darkness to take over, the last scent of her hair would fill my nostril, followed by a slur of those beautiful words before falling asleep.

Either way I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdict-less life

And then of course, I am back in front of my computer, doing what I do almost every weekend for the past few months. My weekends are pretty much dominated by textbooks, school notes, my own books and probably a hell lot of sleeping. Friends do ask me out once in a while, for a good film or a cup of coffee. But more often than not, the heat in town with the amount of people bumping into your with every five steps you take is a good enough reason to reject them, sometimes. In my perfect weekend, there is no such thing as summer, or winter. It is always going to be spring or autumn, and the weather will never be hot enough for you to break a sweat, but enough for you to get a tan - though the two ideas will never marry in real life. I guess reality will never suffice for the imagination of our minds.

This is the same thing that happens every weekend for me, and it is not helping that I am single and considering a place in a monastery as mentioned before. Sure, I do save a lot of money, now that I am in school and single. Most of my money is spent on school food, and probably just the occasional gathering with friends and stuff. I no longer have to pay for whatever the girlfriend wants to eat, whatever the girlfriend wants to do, and wherever the girlfriend wants to go. I remember the way my wallet emptied back in those days, and the kind of disappointment I find myself whenever I finger the notes in my wallet - or lack thereof. But I guess, for my perfect weekend to come true, it is not going to be a cheap dream either. How great it would be if I do have someone next to me, at least it'd be an incentive to make it happen. That'd be the hardest part I suppose, aside from the fact that I don't have a bloody house to begin with.

So what, so I've got a smile on
It's hiding the quiet superstitions in my head
Don't believe me, don't believe me
When I say I've got it down

A perfect weekend is easy to attain, only if you have the perfect partner to fit into the picture. Any painter is going to tell you how easy it is to paint with the right kind of brush and paint. But they are all going to tell you, that the hardest part about painting a picture is the first stroke. After all, you need an inspiration to make that first move, don't you? Sure, I get a lot of time to myself these days, a lot of time to do whatever I want, whenever I want. But then there are times in the night, especially those 'hours' I mentioned to April just last night, when you start to question yourself," What if?"

So, what if?

Everybody is just a stranger but
That's the danger in going my own way
I guess that's the price I have to pay

Still everything happens for a reason
It's no reason not to ask myself

If I am living it right
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, tell me why?
Why, why Georgia why?