In Continuum.

Chasing December

Meet me on the other side
Meet me on the other side
I'll see you on the other side
See you on the other side

Oh God, it is December all over again. Don't we all have a sort of love/hate relationship with this time of the year, the first day of the month. It is not exactly the first day of the month now, but certainly close enough to mourn for the coming of the end. As the public alarm system mounted on top of selected HDB blocks around the island blared the sound of church bells at noon yesterday morning, we knew that the first of December was here to stay. It was like a reminder that the year is coming to an end, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. There are endless people out there pursuing the end of the year, chasing December like it is the last bachelor on Earth. After all, December also means a lofty bonus for those office workers stuck in their dead end jobs, and Christmas for those who really believes in the spirit of Christmas. Some of us are just glad that the end of the year is here, because it brings about the new year ahead, a new year of possibilities and opportunities. People always say," Well, next year is going to be a whole lot better than this year!" But let's face it, this year sucked as much as last year, and it probably didn't change your life all that much, now did it.

Humans are just being incredibly optimistic most of the time. The pessimists - like the optimists - feel the way they feel to make themselves feel better, and it further proves that we are selfish creatures no matter how you see it. In essence, pessimists and optimists both work pretty much the same way, and always guiding themselves towards the same goal to make themselves feel better, even if it means that one of them has to paint the world in a darker color. The next year is not going to be a better year, that is for sure. There are probably going to be a few high points, perhaps a few higher points than this year. But there are going to be low points too, and some of those points being even lower than this year's deepest pits. It is all relative, and nothing gets better and better infinitely with time. So the next time you think that we should celebrate Christmas and the new year, think again about the low points awaiting you in the days and months to come. Not so happy anymore, are you?

Honey now if I'm honest
I still don't know what love is
Another mirage folds into the haze of time recalled
And now the floodgates cannot hold
All my sorrow all my rage
A tear drop falls on every page

Meet me on the other side
Meet me on the other side

A friend of mine reminded me last night, told me just how fast the year of 2007 has been for the both of us. In truth, I think it is the case for everybody out there reading this post, the way we still remember vividly what we were doing at the very beginning of this year. Some of us were probably working at a random office before school officially began in August, while some may have been out there looking for more temporary jobs. Some might have spent their time taking a break from doing something, while others might have spent their time taking a break from doing nothing. Whatever ways you chose to spend your January this year, it is a little disconcerting to think that you still remember it so clearly, because it seemed like only yesterday. You have already flipped so many pages on your calendars, wrote down so many meetings and events to remember in those boxes and crossed them out one by one until this very point as you are reading this post. Things have been moving really fast, and it is exactly like the feeling of being tied to the front of a Boeing 747. Sitting inside the plane, you don't feel just how fast everything is outside those tiny windows. But if you are tied to the front of the plane as it is traveling at 260 meters per second, the only emotion you have is a tremendous amount of fear. And that is kind of how I am feeling right now, a tremendous amount of fear, and more.

They always say that life slows down when you are closer to your thirties, and slows down even more as you get older. For now, life is passing by one event after another, back to back to back. No time for breathing, because the world around you does not allow that to happen. No margin for mistakes, everything has to be perfect. Rooms are not going to be available for reservations, everything has to work before you start working on them. At least that has been the case for me, the last few years of my life going by and by, and I am tied to the tip of that plane I mentioned earlier. It's not a fun thing to witness the world go by so fast, because you feel like you are wasting your time fearing the speed and not admiring the view. People advise you to stop in your tracks to look at the flowers, but you can't because you are traveling so fast. I was talking about it with a friend online just now about wasted time at the beginning of this year, and she claimed that she wasted her time slacking at home, with a few jobs at a local tuition center. Slacking to me isn't a waste of time, and it does has its catharsis effects one way or another. In January, I truly wasted my time, perhaps to a greater degree than doing nothing at home. I, fell in love.

Maybe I oughta mention
Was never my intention
To harm you or your kin
Are you so scared to look within
The ghosts are crawling on our skin
We may race and we may run
We'll not undo what has been done
Or change the moment when it's gone

I remember that it was a tradition of mine on my blog to make a sort of review, the events that happened in the past year and stuff like that. The last day of the year, always a time full of resolutions and reflections. December beings along not only the end, but also a mirror and a new beginning - which can be terrifying if you think about it. Who knows what we are going to expect in the coming year, because the endless possibilities in the unknown future is always the scariest thing in the world. But looking back through the mirror isn't exactly an option either. When we endure through a painful period of time, after conquering a certain fear or pain, you just want to tell yourself," OK, I'm done with this. Let's just move on." You are not going to learn much by looking back at yourself at the end of the year, not going to find new meanings in those meaningless tears in the hollows of my pillow(I like the sound of that). You are probably not going to find new meanings, feel enlightened just because you are looking at your own reflection through the mirror, both figuratively and literally. That mole is still going to be there, those claws at the end of your eyes and that scar you have on your forehead ever since that biking accident. Everything is going to be the same, and reading too deeply into the past is only going to dig up old dirt.

Looking back now, just briefly, I see my own failures flashed out before my eyes. Of course, I have succeeded in a lot of things, exceeded my own expectations in a lot of things. But in a society when everybody demands that you achieve your goals and more, making it somewhere is just not that spectacular or memorable any longer. In contrast, the failure becomes so glaring and impossible to miss, sort of like taking a shot at a cow ten meters away. It's just impossible to pull the trigger and miss the cow, the same thing. It is the way you avoid seeing your own naked body in the mirror when you take off your clothes to bathe. Unless you find it absolutely necessary to check yourself out, most people are going to avoid looking at themselves in the mirror because it's just...well, strange. Because the mirror is way too honest for its own good, and it forgets just how vulnerable it is. It scrutinizes you in your most elemental form, with you standing there stark naked and all. You feel uncomfortable after a while, and feel like throwing a bottle of shampoo into the mirror. Nobody likes what they see in the mirror, nobody is ever satisfied. I am not satisfied, and thus I hate December.

Meet me on the other side
Meet me on the other side
I'll see you on the other side
I'll see you on the other side

I hate December, I hate it all over again. I tried to like it last year, fell in love with it for a month. Now that I am here about three hundred and thirty odd days later, I am hating it all over again. The last month of the year forces you to look back, and looking back I see a lot of laughter and a lot of smiles. There were a fear cries, but they ended with even more tears of joy and a lot of...well, warmth. The kind of warmth you get when you take a bun out of the oven after starving for the whole day. The warmth when you feel the hot water from the shower head streaming down your naked body as the snow falls outside onto the window sill. It was the kind of warmth you feel when you come home, and it did feel like coming home. It felt safe, and it felt like I could die in any moment of December last year because I didn't have any regrets last year, I didn't have any more to lose because I had...well, I had. And in contrast, this year's December is just not nearly as spectacular anymore. No more Christmas Carols being sung in hotels, no more whispers in the blankets and no more candlelights fleeting in the December wind. This year, nothing happens and nothing will happen. This year, December is a month of death. The death of what was, and the dreadful sense of a new beginning coming my way.

Sometimes I just wish that the man that came up with the idea of having a calendar would have started the calendar idea a month earlier or later. After all, there has got to be a moment in history whereby a person said," Let's start quantifying our time." Somebody must have introduced the idea of making each dusk and dawn as one day, and three hundred and sixty-five of those dusks and dawns as a year. Time is only relative, and the last day of the year and the first day of the next is technically no different from one another. The making of the first calendar must have set in motion, all the days and the months that came afterwards including the date today, the second of December. If that guy started a month earlier though, it might have already been the second of January now, two days into the new year. In that case, I wouldn't need to worry about looking at my own reflections and all those failures that ensue.

It is a strange time for the both of us I'm sure, at least for me. It is so strange to look back in fear when much of this year has passed by without any major glitches. Well, save for that. Save for that. It is always going to be a wound that will not heal in proper, no matter how many Decembers we are going to endure. I don't expect myself to think differently of the last December, in the coming Decembers. I am still going to look back and tell myself," I loved her. I truly, loved her." I still ask myself what happened to that December, the only December in my twenty-one years on this year that I fell head over heels for. Perhaps in the future, I am going to be one of those optimistic idiots, chasing after the next December for the end-year bonus and a new love. Or, maybe just the end-year bonus. Whatever it may be, December just seems like the longest month of the year, and almost the most painful as well. Now, I just wish it to get by as soon as possible, hope to get it over and done with before the remaining days successfully devours me whole. It'd be foolish to wish for anything, want anything in the coming year. I am caught in this dilemma, a dilemma that prevents me from looking forward into the future or backwards into the past. But looking at myself right now - right now - I seem to miss...I miss you, all of a sudden.

I know it would be outrageous
To come on all courageous
And offer you my hand
To pull you up on to dry land
When all I got is sinking sand
The trick ain't worth the time it buys
I'm sick of hearing my own lies
And love's a raven when it flies

Meet me on the other side
Meet me on the other side
I'll see you on the other side
I'll see you on the other side

Honey now if I'm honest
I still don't know what love is