sunday sunset over Bedok

全部的爱都已回来
全部的恨都已离开
我站在朦胧的站台
等待最后一班车到来

晚风吹拂
生命的全部
在穿梭的梦里面
拼命的追逐

“All the love has already returned /
And all of the hate has already left /
I’m standing at the dim-lit stop /
waiting for the last bus

The night wind stirs and sways /
everything in this life /
shuttling through my dreams /
chasing it desperately”

HEDGEHOG/刺猬 – The Last Bus/最后一班车

The Invisible Fish’s Fallen is playing now, with distant claps of thunder, slate-blue hues colouring the walls, staccato reverb in the first few seconds, crystal acoustic guitar and Ssoro’s plaintive voice in a language I can’t understand; echoes of 最后一班车 and the pictures in puts in my head, the dimunitive girl with raven-coloured bangs in maryjanes and buttoned-up dress and weathered suitcase fraying at the edges, a chill night breeze blowing through the empty streets, pale fluoroscence and tungstens and a brief flicker of light somewhere in the blurred-out distance; the ease of which I have His joy, smiling at how easy it is to fall in love all over again, and realising that there is really so much I have to be thankful for.

Thank You for favour to shoot Pastor B and his family when I relinquished every chance to shoot for the other features. You always had my portion set aside just for me — and I’m amazed, grateful and blessed.

2009 is gonna blow minds. Wait for it.

Listening to Bluedawn’s 보옴이 오면 album — which plays out with heavy piano melodies, electronic beats, a dash of drums — along with the female vocalist’s gossamer-streaked tones, reminds me of Sigur Ros; it’s a bad analogy, really, going by how I’m only listening to the tracks for the first time and haven’t got a sense of what the band’s really about. But I listen to a couple more and I see dark smoky lounges, blue-hued with lights and shadows slashed across the singer’s face. Full lips in tarnished red, shoulders swaying and moving, tearing music from some secret place within.

It’s been three months.

No more words tonight. The last two days have been a bit of a rollercoaster, something that’s better left kept for the both of us. There’s no use pretending we’re perfect or that everything’s peachy-keen every moment of every day. It’s plastic, it’s not real; like it or not, we will fail. We will disappoint. We will eventually show ourselves to be utterly human. The real question is how we choose to respond. Flesh or spirit? It’s your call.

What we do is we let go. We let Him take over. And like today, He shows up, full of grace, letting me see that He is real.

The three-fold cord is not easily broken.

How do you get used to death?

“Death is always more painful for the living. The dead leave behind a hole in the lives they’ve encountered through their own, a gaping absence that no one else can fill.

We have to carry on. To continue living. Even when it seems impossible.”

We will mourn. Scream wordless and soundless and eyes clenched from someplace so deep and dark within and so full of hurt. Grieve, whether it’s with silent tears streaming down the sides of your cheek. Or whether it’s being surrounded with friends who take turns to hug you. Or sitting alone with the white tables and white chairs and white paperplates and finally learning how to breathe again.

I can only talk of death and grief and moving on and carefully walled-in anguish but I can’t really talk about it. There always seems to be something missing, something impoverished, in what I say or do whenever I try to put it all down in words.

But I think we can all agree on something about death. It never gets easier. It doesn’t. Never in a million years.

But those of you who are like me will also know this like I do: we will always have hope. And that nothing, absolutely nothing, can take it away from us.