In Continuum.

Things happen, things happen all the time. By telling it to somebody else, it makes it real, it puts things into perspective and into real-time. There isn't time for you fool around any longer, you have to get your ass off the bed and do something about it. Find another job, call a funeral home, make divorcing arrangements, find a lawyer. Verbalizing the situation into words makes things harder to deal with, but at the same time easier as well. It's contradictory, and ever so curious to observe. Humans are complicated the way we want two things at any one time, like the Suzanne Vega song that goes "It won't do, to dream of caramel and think of cinnamon and long for you". It's true, we can really have this or that, just one choice. It is either we do something, or we avoid it forever. The initial is harder to accept, but it is also easier to deal with. The latter is easier to accept, but you can't possibly deal with a thought when it is just swirling around in your head in an endless loop that keeps you up at night in the form of an insomnia. To deal with something by not dealing with it, haven't we all dealt with situations like that? I have had my conflicting moments, the dilemmas to verbalized or not to verbalize. It takes a lot of courage to admit, with words, your defeat at times. But the truth, as always, sets you free. 

The moist afternoon air brought about with it a hidden malice. Like a veil being pulled over the city, everything just feels a whole lot sweeter in a strange way. Towns on public holidays, like a giant funnel of human beings, cramming our carbon-based bodies into tight metal carriages and concrete buildings. The sidewalks are being taken over by moving versions of these carbon-based beings, busying themselves in between point A and B, sometimes just wandering aimlessly from wherever to whatever. That was us, lost ants without our feelers. Some evil five year old decided to test our sense of direction by chopping off the only parts of our bodies that could tell left and right. Now, one of us has to check with her index and thumb forming a right angle to check for directions, while I had to base our next destination on pure intuition. But like most outings with friends that I know and love, the destination is hardly the issue most of the time. Just as long as they are around, it really doesn't matter where you go but really what you do when you are there. I remember how Corinna and I used to sit by the side of the road, literally, and then talk deep into the night simply because we could. Those were good times, and it is a pity that her face-time with her significant other's parents took up our little escape to the neighborhood cafe. 

I dislike funnels, and I dislike the town even more. Somehow, the term "Monday Blues" registered nothing with the people that went to town today, and even an ordinarily boring place like the library turned out to be just another place for the likes of us to run away to. Running away, everybody is running away from something or someone now. Underneath the softness of the skin and the subtle curl at the end of the lips, there seems to be hidden some thoughts that are better left to synapses in the brain late in the night. Leave it all to chemical reactions, leave it all to forgetfulness and perhaps just a tad of laziness. As long as they do not materialize into words, then nothing is going to happen, nothing matters. I've been there before, because I've been you. I've been in this self-delusion for a very long time, simply because I refused to accept, because I didn't want to deal with the truth. It was enjoyable for as long as it lasted, even if it meant that our presence at the subway station had to be scrutinized by a hundred different pairs of eyes on the trains that passed by and by. It was nice, it really was, even though the laughter in between your breath felt like that of Mrs. Dalloway's - a way to cover up her silence. 

Simple things, like snuggling up in the corner of a Starbucks that played horrendous music, a random corner in a subway station, or just random chats as we weaved our ways through the bustling crowds. These are my escapes, these are the ways that I run away from my own responsibilities, even if the rest of the world is going on in real-time. For a couple of hours, I find peace and solace in normal everyday activities like, talking and relating to a person I have a connection with. That is my avoidance, but it could be so so sweet if you give it a try at times. A leap of faith perhaps, to not think of the consequences of your actions at times. The risk is dangerous, but the rewards could be fruitful. I have ran away so many times, and I suppose right now I still am. A cowardice act you might say, but I suppose I have been born to live for someone, or something else. At least not something as intangible as a "country" or a "nation", and most of you might already know or guess what I am running away from. At least not now, it isn't happening anytime soon. But it is bound to happen as long as the whole world follows a synchronized timing, the day will come when I have to face the picture, or flee. But for a few moments in a day, I get to have my escape - and the most beautiful thing sometimes is to find a fellow escapee, running away in a different direction from everybody else. 

Last December, I ran away as well. It was a playground next to a hill with monkeys, a grotesque electric tower stood at the top there, a red glow at the tip like a great eye over the rest of the world. We were hidden behind the plastic walls, underneath her windbreaker and darkness of the night. It was almost midnight, the moon hung brightly like a lamp in the sky. I ran away into her arms, or more like her windbreaker as I pretended to be somebody I was, and I saw her as who I wanted her to be. She was my rebound, even if it was for a little while, and the hands held and the closeness of her skin felt so good, it was horrible. It was me taking a step too far, it was me going overboard. It'd be unfair to me to pretend, but even more unfair to treat her as a replacement in my escaping trick. To have somebody take over my role in the tank of water while I rise onto the stage and receive the applause of the audience. It'd be unfair for her, but that was what I did. I realized that soon enough, and I pulled back. I ran back home, no longer a loner out in the wild wild world. I ran back home because I became afraid of what my cowardice could turn me into - someone pretentious, someone hideous. 

So I shall thread my way lightly, test every puddle to test for hidden holes. I remember watching the video of a kid jumping puddles after the rain, and then his whole body dived straight into one of the puddles that turned out to be a great hole in the ground. He wasn't hurt or anything, but it could have been worse if it was a manhole or something. I laughed so hard, but then on second though, it could have been so much more dangerous. What if the hole was deeper, what if he had fell in harder? He would have broken his leg, smashed his nose, or drown in a muddy hole without anybody knowing at all. It is a dangerous road, to run away and to pretend. You lose yourself out there, you cannot recognize yourself in the mirror at times. Remember Into the Wild? The main character grew a beard and became skin and bones. He burned his credit cards and left his home. He was running away, we are all running away from something. So we throw parties, we throw parties for people around us. We make preparations to throw the best parties, when in the end, really, we are just there to cover up our silences.