Let's Talk About Love - Celine Dion

Everywhere I go all the places that I've been
Every smile is a new horizon on a land I've never seen
There are people around the world - different faces, different names
But there's one true emotion that reminds me we're the same
Let's talk about love

From the laughter of a child to the tears of a grown man
There's a thread that runs right through us and helps us understand
As subtle as a breeze that fans a flicker to a flame
From the very first sweet melody to the very last refrain

Let's talk about love
Let's talk about us
Let's talk about life
Let's talk about trust
Let's talk about love

It's the king of all who live and the queen of all good hearts
It's the ace you may keep up your sleeve till the name is all but lost
As deep as any sea with the rage of any storm
But as gentle as a falling leaf on any autumn morn

Let's talk about love - it's all we're needin'
Let's talk about us - it's the air we're breathin'
Let's talk about life - I wanna know you
Let's talk about trust - and I wanna show you
Let's talk about love

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:D

Back in primary school, I was always inclined against lending my erasers to my classmates. And they probably thought I was being selfish. But it was merely that I had my principles.

You know, I still enjoy running my finger over the clean-cut regularity of a new eraser's edge. It is a delightful feeling, is the unfettered sharpness of such edges. It always reminded me of completeness, wholeness, pristine perfection. It was something like a crisp, blank sheet of paper; or else a glass of water standing perfectly still, full almost to the brim, without loose droplets clinging limply to its sloping sides; or maybe a newborn baby unadulterated by the delusions of the world. To an eight-year-old, this was so joyful.

Sometimes I reflect with pity that the things of the world disfigure themselves in service of the purposes for which they were ordained. White sheets of paper must forcibly be vandalised by ink, lines and coffee stains; water must slosh against the sides of the glass, and deplete itself, en route to a man's penis; and we must live. It was something of a wrench to apply an eraser to use for the first time. (Well, everything hurts the first time; just ask those who're* losing their virginity.) Reluctantly, hesitantly, slowly, delaying the moment as long as I could, my eight-year-old fingers would gently press the prized eraser against the surface of my worksheet, hoping to minimise the visible damage it incurred.

And always, I made sure to use only the same corner of the eraser. I wanted to leave the other three intact as far as possible, notwithstanding how being knocked around with the other stuff in my pencil case invariably made them marginally less perfect. Such efforts left my eraser, which started out as rectangular slabs, with an odd shape that resembled, more and more with time, a quadrant. I liked it that way.

Usually, I never got far with shaping my erasers into quadrants. People always intervened. They always remarked that my eraser came in a funny shape - but obviously not funny enough for it to be worth keeping. They would borrow it, peer at it for a split-second, and then proceed to erase whatever it was on their sheets with which they were unhappy. They would start with one of my unblemished corners, and rub vigorously for a mere few seconds. Then they would give a short sigh or exhalation, and apply another sharp corner to the erasing of a finer point or detail that eluded them the first time. Satisfied, they would return the eraser to me with a smile, and perhaps a cheerful "Thank you!" I never shared their enthusiasm for destroying perfection, but I never told them so either. Hiding my feelings and being emotionally opaque are not new traits to me, you see.

A substantial proportion of you will call me irrational, ludicrous, or a lunatic for this. And quite frankly, I don't care. I choose to find your pragmatic preoccupation with achieving end results (at the expense of a pretty eraser) equally misguided. Just because one wishes to rub off a tiny corner of a diagram without obliterating the useful bits of it, one irreversibly spoils the sanctity of an eraser's corner. He also disrespects the perfection whose preservation has been the preoccupation of a tender soul. And to be oblivious to this - to notice the eraser's shape is odd but not realise that it is deliberately and wilfully so, and should therefore be left as such - reeks of tactlessness and insensitivity.

When you next see me rubbing away with the blunt edge of an eraser, I am not insisting on doing things the hard way, but merely preserving what little morsels of perfection we haven't yet soiled with traces of our endeavours. You - that is, the world with its collective nag - may ask: What's wrong with trying to achieve the best using what we have, sacrificing the unblemished sanctity of numerous items in the quest to create one perfect composite? Well, you may not succeed; nobody guarantees that your best efforts are positive. Sometimes, perfection is meant to be received, not achieved, bequeathed, and not won. And that's all there is.

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* Any seeming similarity to other words is fully unintentional and acknowledged only in retrospect.

When You Say Nothing At All

The municipal bus pulled into the inter-city bus terminal. The morning was grey and sullen; and perhaps it was just as well, for that made it easier to pretend the plumes of nauseating smoke were part of the innocuous foggy landscape. To say I found the place unpleasant in even the absence of this olfactory assault would be putting it mildly. The cumulative frustration of my previous experiences in the noise and filth of this disorganised jumble sagged in the pits of my heart. I observed a curved tyre mark on the light tarmac of the berth into which the bus moved; how it looked like a sneer! The rancid air of the terminal compound had so ingrained itself into my memory that I felt those familiar bouts of irritation well before I was due to step into it. As the double-doors swung open, I braced myself for a sensory onslaught.

Ticket-touts lined the narrow walkway leading from the berth to the main terminal building. This shabbily-dressed guard-of-honour produced an unintelligible cacophony of repeated place-names, and furiously waved pink and yellow slips of paper in the agitated faces of the travellers whose passageway they were clogging up. I eyed one of these touts with particular distaste as I approached the area where he was stood. Perhaps it was the way he energetically thrusted his wad of tickets at the travellers who passed him by, perhaps it was his penchant for making direct eye contact with anyone who afforded him any more than a cursory first glance, or perhaps it was the audibility of his voice above the general din of his colleagues, that drew attention to him. Perhaps, also, it was how he alone seemed to be perspiring profusely in clothes made scruffier by his exertions. I was immensely relieved that someone ahead of me took his bait, for it meant he had to busy himself issuing a ticket during the split-second it took me to dart away from him and his colleagues.

I heaved a sigh of relief as I entered the relative sanctuary of the building. Not that there weren't any touts in front of the stalls and littered about the aisles; somehow they were just less intimidating here than at the berths. I took rapid surveys, in all directions, of my immediate vicinity, and only then was I sufficiently satisfied to unplug my earphones from my iPod and save them for a rainy day. Right, down to business; I needed a ticket to Melaka.

I ambled along the aisle onto which the front row of ticket stalls looked. On their glass frontages were displayed names of the nation's major towns, along with a smattering of times and ticket rates. I snatched furtive glimpses of each of these glass panels, trying to get hold of a price without having to enquire of the overzealous stallholders who would subsequently be difficult to shake off. As a procedure of habit I walked to the end of this first aisle knowing full well the cheaper deals were to be found along the second aisle; stalls at the front, somewhat confoundingly, tend to find justification for being slightly more exorbitant in their pricing.

I pivoted and did a double-take onto the second aisle, and it was at this moment that a tout chose to haunt me. "Boss, nak pergi mana? KL, boss? Ipoh? Segamat? Seremban? Mana, boss? Boss?" I wanted so badly to pretend I had my earphones plugged in and was unable to hear his diatribe, and I did. Without glancing his way, without breaking stride, without even the slightest acknowledgement of his presence there, I walked on. Even so, I could not pretend to have missed his sensory assaults - I heard his raspy voice, saw his grimy clothes, smelled his cigarette breath - and this frustrated me. Under my breath, I grumbled something he had probably heard a million times over from other commuters. Still, "Nak pergi mana, boss? KL, sekarang?"

Thankfully, it wasn't long before I found a stall offering a decent price for a one-way passage to Melaka. Relieved that the daunting experience of wandering the ghoulish aisles of Larkin Bus Terminal was soon to be brought to a conclusion, I chose an agreeable time of departure, completed the formalities of exchanging sheets of soggy paper on which was printed the face of a certain monarch, and tried my hardest to listen to check-in instructions I knew I wouldn't really attempt to heed. Then, ticket in hand as a sort of protective charm against the pesky touts and their unworldly harassments, I strutted along the aisle, back the way I came. My mind drifted to more placid and sanguine places. I began to plan my itinerary for this upcoming trip, making mental notes of the people at whose homes my visit was due and of the food I wished to delect my palate with. I thought also of the gifts I needed to go shopping for prior to the trip. I reminded myself to call my uncle in Melaka who was to receive me at the bus-station there. Things were falling into place.

And then I spied, out of the corner of my eye, ten feet diagonally in front and to the right of me, the same fellow whose advances I had purposefully remained oblivious to mere minutes ago. It was then that I considered how this was his livelihood, and I knew seeing me hold someone else's ticket in my hand would disappoint him; I tried desperately to avoid being seen. "Boss!" - I had failed. A feeling of dread came over me as I awaited the next developments. "Dapat?" Surprised by the mild tone of voice, I wondered how I should respond. As it turned out I dared not make eye contact, and directed a barely perceptible nod in his direction. I hurried along, but not before stealing a glance at this man. He had given me a thumbs-up, accompanied by a generous smile.

The Daily Mail

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter,
And dark splotches pattern my grey jumper.
The sky rains down the blessings of heaven
To mark a brand new day in London.

Skyscrapers crane their necks of concrete
As you and I walk abreast in the street,
Barely glancing up or breaking our strides
To notice the tens and hundreds of people besides;
A pity - lovely women in lovelier raincoats - oh, it is such a sight!
(Black, brown, grey, blue; dark, though occasionally light)
I reckon these women must think so too,
Or why spend their gazes downward the way they do?

Do take a breath of the exotic air,
Of the awakening city and exhaust pipes needing repair.
A bus' engine sluggishly groans, then the brakes emit sprightly hisses
- there's the old man and, it seems, the missus.
Tyres squelch and frantic heels click. Voices yell,
Doors slam, and off goes a schoolbell.
Front row seats for the London Orchestras:
Tickets, anyone? I've got extras!

I stand beneath a masterpiece
A visage of immeasurable height
An endless stretch of shades of grey
A seamless composition without fault or fold
Infused with fluffy old dark fleece
And odd, miraculous cracks of light
The rooftops in rows that guide the way
They stand stock still as their story's told

And now that the rain is palpably heavier,
I run for cover.

Oxonians use the 2-minute respites in their reading schedules to write crap like this:

I like the pattern of irregular dark splotches the falling raindrops make on my grey cardigan. They seem to have a significance I really should know.