In Continuum.

A lady looks into her handbag for a box of cigarettes and a light. She cupped a hand over the tip while she lit the cigarette, afraid that the wind would catch the flame and extinguish it. She's breathing deep on the cigarette now, with the smoke escaping from between her lips, and she does so again with a deeper breath just so that she'd finish the entire length of the cigarette before the bus comes. The boy in the corner is reading a book, going through the pages just to kill time, as if it was a creature to slaughter just to save the princess. The girl next to him was on her feet, looking into the reflection in the glass window, the one mounted on the bus directory box. She combed her hair with her fingers, adjusted her bra straps and then combed her hair some more. I was on the other side of the bus stop, just watching the people there and tapping my left foot gently to the music in my ears. I went through my playlists one by one, and then followed by the list of artists I'd like to listen to for the rest of the journey to the train station. Though we were all doing very different things in the same bus stop, we were all, for a period of time, waiting together in the same place, for a same purpose, to get to different places. Isn't that how life is, now?

The title of this blog is the first line of the song "Waiting" by City and Colour, a man with a beautiful voice to match the equally beautiful song. There is yet another line that speaks of how we are all, in fact, just waiting to die in life. It isn't particularly encouraging to think that way, in fact it is rather morbid if I may add. Yet, if you think about it, life is about waiting to die somehow, and it is always about what you do during the waiting time that matters the most. You know, make the best out of it, and kill time and do something productive. That is probably what your parents have told you before during your holidays, on the second day at that, when they want you to get a job and stop lazing around the house and live off their retirement funds. The truth is, even when you are not lazing around while waiting for something to happen, doing something in the mean time is still an act of waiting for something else to happen. The truth is, I think, we are all waiting for something to happen while waiting for something else to end. There seems to be a duration for everything, a time tagged to all things in our lives. Some are visible, like the length of a song we are listening to right now (15 Steps by Radiohead runs at three minutes and fifty-seven seconds), or the film you just watched the day before (The Reader runs at one hundred and twenty-four minutes). Everything has a duration, a time stamp when it will run out. Like life, like death, everything is so absolute and definite. 

I had this thought while being on the cab home today, with the song "Waiting" plugged into my ears, and the car traveling down the expressway at five past eleven. It was a smooth ride, but it still took some time. The first line struck me as being true, in a somewhat disturbing way. A coma may indeed feel better at times, than waiting all the time, you know? There I was, at the back of the car, just waiting for it to bring me to wherever I wanted to go. Before that, I was at the side of the road, just waiting for a cab to come pick me up. Then it was off the cab and to my lift lobby, where I had to wait some more for the elevator to come down from wherever it was to bring me up to my floor. Everything just seems to be a series of waiting, you know, even the really small and trivial things like turning on your computer or waiting for a SMS to load on your cellphone. We are almost always waiting for something to happen, and for something else to end. They almost come hand in hand now, those two things, like the way you are waiting for death to occur and for life to end all at the very same time. We are just passengers underneath a taxi stand, just waiting for the cab to come pick us up. In the mean time, we do whatever can to kill time, because it just seem like this really horrific creature from the depths of darkness, or something. 

The people at the bus stop, we weren't so different from each other, really. One was reading a book, one was smoking a cigarette, one was tending to her hair, and I was tapping my foot away at the song I was listening to. We jumped from a series of waiting to another series of waiting somehow. From waiting for your hair to dry in the morning, to the elevator, to the walk to the bus stop, to the bus waiting. Then it is queuing up for the bus, waiting to get a seat on the bus, then even more waiting to get to wherever you want to go. We always talk about how much we have accomplished in life, about our achievements and everything like that. Isn't that what the society preaches though, how it emphasizes on the measurement of our value by the amount of achievements that we have. But when you take all the waiting time into account, aside from all the time spent sleeping and doing nothing at all, what are we left with really. We are always waiting in line for something to happen, and it's not like the queue you find outside ticketing booth or video game retail stores right before a launch. Most of the people in life are not exactly in the know of what they are waiting for. So we wait for something to occur, something to happen. And when we get there, we figure out more ways to wait for something else.

I started to wonder how it'd be like to live in a world without waiting, you know, if the world would go by at a blinding speed. I mean, think about it, it'd be something like having fast food pop out from your table when you want them, that'd rid you of all the waiting time at the counter, or the delivery guy to come to your house. Everything will be almost instantaneous, whenever you want and wherever you want, because waiting is no longer an option in this hypothesized world. You don't wait for anything to happen, because you don't have to. Everything will be crafted to what you want and what you need. No more waiting ladies and gentlemen! Get the latest version of iPod just by thinking about it! Credit transfers will be done automatically, and you'd hardly need to wait - allow me to correct myself - you won't need to wait at all! Thank you for shopping with Apple Mr. Tan, here is your brand new iPod. Everything will be going by at a blazing speed, and public transports won't be needed at all. Hell, private transports would be obsolete as well, since teleportation would rid everybody of the need to wait. And as for that whole life and death thing, humans would invent pills for you to take in order to live forever, and that'd mean that life would no longer be about waiting for death. Life goes on for eternity, and no more waiting! Press "Buy" right now for our exclusive "Immortality Pills" and get a lifetime supply of sponges absolutely free! 

But I don't want my life to go by that fast, you know? As much as I hate waiting time for the most part, I don't think a world without waiting has to be about lightning fast fund transfers and immortality. It'd probably appeal to the working class people, the office workers who are almost always rushing for time. But that doesn't have to be the world without waiting, because the term "waiting" almost always involves a period of time. Like, while you are waiting in the dental clinic for your turn, there is an amount of time. While you are waiting for the escalator to bring you down to the MRT station, there is an amount of time. Waiting involves time, and waiting is only a terrifying thing when you recognize that time is involved - it doesn't necessarily have to, in my opinion. I mean, time is really a creation by mankind to, well, tell time. The sun comes up in the day and then disappears in the night, and then we have the four seasons every year and then the planet rotating around the sun. It just seems as if the concept of time has been built into the entire system of nature, when it is not! I have blogged about my concept of time before, and I feel that it is merely an invention of the humans and nothing else. It is no more sophisticated than, say, an electric shaver or a can opener. Time is an invention, and it doesn't need to exist for time to carry on. 

I don't think we are moving forward at all. In fact, I feel, we have always been stagnant ever since it all began. Time just makes things easier for us to choose a date to meet, pick an hour of the day to see each other, give history a perspective, so on and so forth. But I think time does not have to be about things that were, things that are, and the things that have not yet come to pass. I think we just are, if I am making any sense. I think we exist, and that is about everything that goes on in this world. The moving of the sun in our skies and the orbit of our planet around the sun is merely an illusion of time, and we gave those celestial movements a name - time. If you could recognize that time does not exist, and that we are just staying still in one moment that lasts forever, then the idea of "waiting" isn't all that scary any longer, now is it. I mean, constantly waiting for something to happen can be a scary thing, or at least incredibly frustrating somehow. Nothing in this world ever happens when you want it to occur, and you just have to get to the back of the line and wait for it to happen to you. All this waiting can really get on your nerves, unless you eliminate the need for time and acknowledge the fact that there is no time at all, just a single vivid moment that lasts forever into eternity. It is a very there-is-no-spoon concept, but at least it makes sense to me.  

I think a world without waiting - a world without time - would be slow and yet, astounding and beautiful. It wouldn't involve things moving at blinding speeds, but rather a chance for us to sit back and observe the world around us. That is because, without waiting, we no longer need to wait for something to happen. Then everything is happening right here and right now, and this very instant would last till eternity. Do you get those flashes at times, those moments in your life when you know that it is happening right now, and will last forever? When you look into the eyes of your loved ones in the dark, when you catch a glimpse of her staring at you lovingly just because she loves the way you talk about the world, the universe, and whatever happened in a dream of yours last night. That look in her face and eyes, you almost feel as if time freezes and stops, and that moment would last forever? I think that is the magic of the world without any waiting and time, when you feel as if something would last for a long time to come. It may not last for a long time in real time, like a split second thought and it is over. But still, I believe, it is still happening in a parallel universe, you know? 

It is a very warped post, I know, and I don't expect you guys to really understand what I am trying to say. A lot of things could come out from a song coupled with a cab ride, I can tell you that. One thing is for sure, though, is that amidst all this waiting in our lives which are inevitable, we really should try to make the best out of things by eliminating the "waiting", you know? To do something while waiting is the only way to make the waiting feel less like a wait, if you know what I mean. That is also why, in truth, I am really thankful for so many beautiful people and events that have happened to me, these people coming into my life - into my waiting line - and sharing the hours and the days and the weeks. Some of these people eventually leaves your line and joins another, but a handful of them always stays behind, they always do. Some become friends, some become more than friends, and these people give you a reason to believe that time does not exist, in fact, and that you are just in a beautiful moment with these beautiful people, that lasts on forever and ever into an infinite obscurity. I like the thought of that, and it comforts me to no end.