In Continuum.

Dance, Dance

Life's a dance we all have to do
Why does the music quiet?
People are moving together
Close as the flames in a fire

The message finally came for her, after waiting a whole night for it to come. The silence between the two of them was like the first merciless wind of the coming winter that blasted through the the opened window and into her room - her heart. It wasn't the first time the boyfriend decided to shut her out of his world, for we have all seen the way she crumbled under the weight of his immaturity and ignorance. The incident in the car was probably the third time it happened in the past month, and we were all pissed off about it. But it's not like she could be moved by our constant persuasions, for her mind is already dead set on keeping the relationship alive. Only, to the rest of us, it was as good as dead in the first place.

She buried her face into the cushion at the back of the car, while myself and another friend gave her a warm hug. That was as much as we could do - as friends - to comfort her wounded soul. Every time the boyfriend decides to pull one of his childish tricks, we become the cushion for her to fall on. The worst part is probably how this friend of ours almost always thinks that it is her fault, and not anybody else's. The truth is, there is a line when your partner's stupidity can be crossed, and he has crossed it a dozen times before our eyes. Still, she is still holding on to something, something almost invisible. It is this stubbornness, like the stump of a dead tree rooting itself into the soil, unable to let go of the nutrients that are no longer keeping it alive. Or the picture of the Indian woman holding on to her dead husband after the tsunami two years back, clinging on to his corpse and holding for a miracle to happen. That is how I see her as a friend, the way she is clinging on only to prove something of us herself, and not something between them anymore. Sure, there are still the romanticisms and the theatrics, but they only last so long.

Feel the beat; music and rhyme
While there is time

As common practice, Ahmad and I made our way down to Serangoon Gardens on a Sunday night two weeks ago for our supper rituals. His stomach was yearning for some Japanese food goodness, and there was not a better place than Sushi Tei to fulfilled his hunger. It was the same Japanese restaurant that we usually visit for our supper trips, and the late-night diners were there just like they used to a couple of weeks back. We found a seat in the corner of a line of seats, and started our seemingly endless prowl through the dishes of raw fishes that were circling the whole restaurant on a conveyor belt. It was the perfect way to end the night for the two of us, as we spent much of the time talking about my school and his, and also about our lives back then.

It was out of the blues, when he told me that he wanted to tell me something. He told me about 'the question' that he told the girl he liked for the past eight years or so. It has been a topic of much interest in the past, but the long delays in his confession forced the interest to die down over the months. Even when we were both in the military, he has been telling me about 'waiting for the right time' when it came to the confession, and September soon became November, and dates were being constantly delayed ever since then. The lot of us have been urging him to ask the damn question, seeing how suitable he was as a bachelor. However, the passion became lukewarm over time, and it just seemed as if he was never going to ask her at all. He did however, on a Friday night below the block at her place, and he asked her the question which she has probably been expecting for years now. It was a straight out no in his face, and that was the end of a very long engagement.

We all go round and round
Partners are lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All I know is, we're all in the dance

Subject number one, male, late twenties or early thirties, well-built and handsome in a rugged way. He had a Bluetooth headset attached to his ear then, and his polo t-shirt revealed that he must have been a golfer. His collars were flipped so slightly upwards towards his chin, and left elbow rested lazily on the table while his right hand busied itself with the fried prawns. Subject number two, the woman, plump and almost too heavy for the chair below her buttocks, the wrinkles on her face made her look ten years older than she was. Her hair fell messily on either side of her face, like the way a housemaid would look after a hard day's work. Unlike her husband, she was dressed in a random shirt that must have been grabbed out of the closet in a hurry, and people would've mistook her for her husband's mother. Subject number three, the child, sat in between the two like a wedge in the door. Like any other child, it spat out most of the food that his mother tried to stuff into his mouth, and it made strange gurgling sound throughout their dinner together.

A phone call came for Subject number one, and he picked up the call with his Bluetooth headset. While talking about an overseas business trip, the chopsticks never stopped fiddling through the bowl of rice before himself, with the half eaten prawn laying within. It was a standard sort of phone call, with the person on the other side barking into the receiver about his displeasures, I'm sure. Subject number one was obviously annoyed that his dinner was being disrupted, but at the same time he couldn't care less about the dinner at all. It was a good reason for him to look away, to do something other than being in the awkward and uncomfortable situation with his wife and child, as they sat next time him and minded their own businesses like total strangers. The child in between felt like a bridge between the two person, a broken bridge that linked the two lands of conflict together. But the child, being so innocent and young, knew little about his importance in the matter. He was the reason - perhaps the only reason - why the three of them were together in the same restaurant that night at all.

Night and day, the music plays on
We are all part of show
While we can hold on to someone
Even though life won't let us go

We got out of the car after the driver made a few attempts at the narrow parking space. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and the basement car park at Marina Square was as empty as a football pitch. The mood at the back of the car was still in quite a gloom, and I swear she could have died there in the back of the car if not for the hands that supported her for the most of the way. There is something in common in between the both of us, in the sense that our partners never seem to appreciate us enough. They are always saying just how unimportant they are to you, how insignificant they must be and all that stuff. Only, I made my choice and gave up on holding on to anything, she is still clinging on the the cliff's edge after two years and a month - and counting.

We slammed the car doors shut, and made our way towards the lift lobby at the end of the rows of pillars. We were just talking amongst ourselves, chattering away aimlessly when she screamed - out of nowhere, and for no reasons at all. Her scream echoed through the walls in the parking lot, making the silence that ensued even louder than the scream itself. We stopped and turned back to her, standing there in the corner with her hair falling all over the face. We couldn't see her very well, but I must have saw a sparkle or two in between the strands of hair that were in disarray. Those must have been the tears that dyed her eyes red later on, the tears that fell for that idiot of a boyfriend she has. The scream of frustrations and agony, reached further than the four corners of the parking lot, but also the room in our hearts that were filled with much sympathy for that friend of ours. She is not in a relationship anymore; she is trapped in a routine she cannot get out of. Sooner or later, it is going to be more than just a scream in a parking lot or a buried face in the pillow, but something more - something worse. Who knows? When you are in her stage, anybody could be driven over the edge.

Feel the beat; music and rhyme
While there is time

Ahmad has a talent, or a gift perhaps. If there is a medal given out for the man that is able to maintain a healthy relationship after a break up or a rejection, it has got to be him. There is something about him that is able to say," Let's be friends" and mean it after a break up. Most of us usually say such things like a part of a script during a break up because we want ourselves to have hope for the future. We want to know that there is a possibility of things to reignite again, a fire to rage once more. Remaining as friends would be a guarantee of chance, at least you get to remain close to the person in the future. I was guilty of that phrase when I had my own nasty run-in with a bad case of break up, and I also remember using that phrase while being on the phone with her, talking through my sobs and my tears. But I guess, as things are looking now, neither of us kept that promise very well and everything just faltered as time went by.

Ahmad however, is not the kind of person to lose that promise - which is something admirable I suppose. There are times when I can't look at him, and imagine how it is possible for him to maintain a certain friendship with old loves - something that I'd like to do myself. I guess, sex complicates things. It really does, and it is not something I'd like him - or any of my friends - to experience at all. If there is a person you don't need to worry about in the case of a break up, it is going to be Ahmad. It's not that you can throw him aside in your circle of friends and have him lick his own wounds. You have to watch over him, but words need not be spoken in his case. He is the kind of person who can deal with his own problems, and is probably not going to allow anybody else to help anyway. It is a dance that we are all doing, falling into the arms of a person and then falling out of it. It seems endless at a point, until it becomes a routine of sorts. You learn to stand up when you fall, and Ahmad has mastered the art of doing so ever since the very beginning when he took his aimless stroll around the neighborhood deep into the night, on that cold December night two years ago.

We all go round and round
Partners are lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All I know is, we're all in the dance

We're all in the dance...

Subject number one looked uncomfortable as he peered at the other two subjects at the table. His face was that of a stranger looking upon another, unsure of their names or their business sitting next to him. Despite being the father, his child seemed more like the child of a relative, or a friend's child placed under his custody. He stared about the child in much strangeness, observing his every action as I was observing his, and watched his almost mechanical arms toss around the air wildly at every strange noises that subject number two made. Subject number two fitted nicely into the picture with herself and subject number three, the kind of picture you see in hospitals with a mother nursing a child. Subject number one ruined everything, casting a bad light on everything subject number one was trying to uphold. Even with subject number three at such a young age, it almost seemed as if the 'love' between them has gone to hell altogether, if that is what they got married for in the first place.

Of course, it may have only been a bad night for the both of them, or maybe subject number three just vomited all over the car on the way to the restaurant. It might have been all of the above, working together in a giant conspiracy to make me feel whatever I felt about the subjects. But either way, they reflected what I see in people these days, the kind of cold and bitter relationships that married couples share these days. The child is almost always the reason for the couple to remain together, to pretend to the rest of the world that they are happily ever after. In the past, it is almost always about pleasing the parents, making them feel good that their sons and daughters are getting married. Nowadays it is about keeping the children, because it becomes irresponsible and almost a sin to divorce somehow. The kind of social judgments you'd have to suffer, and the kind of accusations you will receive with being 'divorced', is not something a lot of modern couples are willing to put up with. So like Subject number one and subject number two, so many couples are staying together for the sake of staying together, because a day together would sound better during a conversation over a cup of coffee, when you and your friends are talking about how long the relationship has lasted. That is the case everywhere, even in the corner of a Japanese restaurant. And the victim of this cold war is almost always the people caught in between - the innocent people very much like subject number three.

We all go round and round
Partners are lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All I know is, we're all in the dance

And as for me, listening to Feist's voice calms me down every time. The song reminds me of a really patient piano teacher, guiding you along the keys always with a smile on her face, even if you play a wrong note every once in a while. Or in the context of the song, a dance teacher trying to teach somebody like me how to do a Swan Lake. I am a self-proclaimed dancing idiot, and the only dance I can do are abstract dances and the dance steps to Backstreet Boys' 'Larger Than Life' video. My abstract dances involve me just standing there, and people don't usually understand it because they are so complexed. I usually explain to people that we have creative differences, and that my form of art is just too difficult to penetrate. But in truth, I have problems mastering the art of dance, and that is the same in the context of the song.

I guess it is still hard for me to stomach that love is like a dance, when you spin in and out of your partners' arms on the dance floor. It all seems too pretty to picture, to picture-perfect to be real. Be it a stranger in a Japanese restaurant looking upon your own wife and child in wonder, be it a girl screaming in the middle of a parking lot, or a boy who just had his face slammed in by a closing door, it is all part of this show - this dance. It'd be nice to believe in that every once in a while, to know that every spin that you make out of somebody's arms is going to translate to a spin into somebody else's. Ahmad has clearly recognized that for a fact, but there are so many other dancers around me, who are still looking for the perfect partner to waltz with. It is all a dance that we are involved in, and on the dance floor it always seems so easy to bump into people, and bump out of people.

Like pinballs in a pinball machine, there are times when we just wish that we will settle down in a slot, that we are not going to bounce out all over again into the wild. But this is a dance, as life and love, we are all dancing endlessly to the music. And the music never ends, not like the ones in a game of musical chairs. The dance lasts forever, and there are times when that word scares even the loving-est of couples.

We're all in the dance...