powericious, yo.

[spiderpig]

Just when I was about to give up on school, an e-mail came in.

I've lost count - but I can still recall, if I count on my fingers - how many times I've left the stale air of the aeroplane and stepped into manufactured air so full of that feeling of comfort. It's strange but I've never felt more me after stepping into and out of an airport. After a brief moment of apprehension, I'm entirely back to myself.

Everything's tentative at the moment. The plan's on tenterhooks. I'm wishing it, on April showers that bring May flowers, so hard for it to become a reality.

It's only there that I don't need to be afraid of making mistakes. Somehow here, I'm terrified of using the wrong piece of grammar or placing a particle in the wrong situation. Back there, my point comes across. Even if I'm making errors, like little bits of weeds in a garden, people don't judge me because hey - they make mistakes too. It isn't cut-throat. It isn't "oh hey I'm better than you".

If it doesn't materialize, I don't know what I'd do. I can't possibly wait till the end of next semester any longer. Everyday's slow torture for me. Like those agonizing three minutes of waiting for your cup noodles to be cooked; or that one minute to be over before you can jump up from your seat and dash to the loo after the exam.

My heart was left there and now it's calling me to join it. Not to take it back here, not to retrieve it from there. I need to be with it. To be there, that's all I need to continue surviving for another semester. It's my Viagra for Life, it's my Prozac, my Want-It-Larger-Look-Here remedy.

10 days. All I need is 10 days. To ask anymore of this would be too much of a desperate gesture - something that I loathe to make.

I sent the reply with a little too much enthusiasm. I am interested. "I am interested, in keeping me alive. If you don't want a dead scholar in Chatterbox, you might want this to happen," I wanted to add. But they would think that I belong in the Chalet rather than there so I omitted that part out. I think I'm already far into my descent as a crazy cat lady. (I just need cats, that's all.)

Those 10 days will save me from every kind of ruin that has plagued me thus far. I will stop speaking like a Singaporean trying to speak Japanese- Note: TRYING - and regain that wonderful accent I used to have. I will, hopefully, run up to a tofuya and ask the kind old proprietress which bus to take to the hanamachi and having her understand me, and me understand her. It's communication.

It's communication.

I can't communicate in here.

It may be all psychological but I might very possibly need somewhere that's even more rule-bound and tradition-oppressed to survive. Anywhere but this farcical place I'm in. I don't think I'm even living at the moment. Not when all I can think about is elsewhere.

Elsewhere and curious habits of chain-smoking in a neat line. Elsewhere and painful ignorance of racial differences. Elsewhere and temporary solace - until I find it time to return back here again.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Don't give up even if you run out of caek!