belgrade deja vu

it just struck me today. i did lunch with that friend of mine, with the mad rain that got me half drenched. saw the folks for dinner. something felt like it. what are the odds of that.

belgrade

i was in belgrade. with my family, in winter and snow. i’ve never seen belgrade before. seemed another typical eastern european sort of town. i don’t know why we were there. some sort of holiday. we got a nice hotel, huge. a little stuck in time but otherwise impeccable in service. we heard there was actually a good italian restaurant somewhere and decided to try and find it, hoping that some summery italian food would help with the cold. from the hotel we took a cab and then a train on a rather long journey, or perhaps it is just that everything moves very slowly in belgrade and so it was just the time that was long. we got to a shopping square of sorts, like a busy old cobblestone town with shophouses on both sides on the street. near the corner and a little further off was the italian place. lovely.  

when we got back to our hotel i spent some time exploring it since it seemed endless. down in the basement area were the huge function rooms and service kitchens. there were many people coming and going, not just the hotel staff. i wonder where they went so i trailed the relative flow of people, past some rooms, through a service entrance, round a corner and out. curisouly i found myself in some place that seemed vaguely familiar. then i realised i was next to the italian restaurant. how peculiar, that a long journey we took to find it in avery different looking neighbourhood should also be no more than round a corner from inside the hotel. i retraced my route and find myself back in the function room basement. i went back up to the lobby and it was bustling as ever.

next meal, the folks wanted to just stay in the hotel and have the hotel’s dinner special for the day, which was an outdoor banquet feast of local fare, in the snowy weather. i wasn’t too keen but they were and they left me to my devices. almost nonchalantly. then i somehow knew that a friend of mine was also staying in the hotel. initally i followed my folks out into the billowing snow where benches had been set up with sturdy wooden tables. countless numbers of them for all the multitudes of people who wanted to eat. they seemed spread out on differing levels and slopes even and looking down i realised that a steep almost sheer ravine was below. some peole had ventured along the barely foot-wide narrowness of a slip that ran along all the way down in the windy snow. everyone seemed light and happy but i found the place to be rather disconcerting.

so i decided instead to look up my friend for dinner and was thinking of the shortcut to the italian place. after all my folks had seemed to morph into strangers and hardly seemed to notice me at all, as if they suddenly did not know me. even my friend seemed a bit odd, rather hyper and merrily scaling the ravine up and down. something odd was at work, i couldn’t quite get a fix on it, but it was certainly something about the place. and all the while the snow just billowed around us.

switching sides

we lived in a futuristic world, almost utopian. a world of cool blue and silverered buildings and inventions and sleek gleaming contours. work however was as dystopian as ever and thankfully we had just wrapped up a major project much to our satisfaction and that of our bosses. afterwards, we felt lighter, happier, relieved, almost celebratory as we drifted around the vast complex of offices, lounges and galleries.

strolling past numerous identical doorways, save for the lettering on each that identified what lay beyond its threshold, we came to 32 after passing i + i. we usually didn’t pass this way often but since we were in a good mood we figured we’d venture into this gallery paying homage to modern art. the door slid open soundlessly, effortlessly with a touch to its panel and inside it was dim and cosy, with the main illumination saved for highlighting the behemoth canvases of vivid swirls. it was quiet, calming, peaceful, but all broken by the long nagging cough you had been having which crept up to gag you unannounced again. the coughing fit worried me as it always did and pained me for not being able to do much.

suddenly before realising what was happening, someone came over smiling, friendly, concerned. he tried to soothe you, calm the fit, patting your back. surprisingly he started massaging your neck in a particular fashion which eased the cough immediately and you stopped hacking. he kept massaging, pulling you into an embrace, gently caressing you as he tried to nuzzle your neck. perhaps out of shock, you turned wide-eyed and unmoving, not responding but not turning him away.

then for a moment i was you, feeling your consciousness even as i was aware my body remained where it stood, staring at what was happening. i felt your confusion but also the sensuousness, the warmth, the comfort, the reassurance that emanated from him. i could smell your scent and his, heady, lulling, tempting. your heart raced even as you remained unflinching.

then i was back in my body, staring. you remained in his arms, stone-like but for every fibre in your being in tumult. so you’re resisting eh, he said to you, genuinely amused. but he left you his contact anyway and disappeared.

some time afterward the question you asked didn’t surprise me at all. i guess i almost expected it coming after feeling what you felt when he held you that day. you said it was only fair to ask me since you still wanted me to be with you. and, i guess if it made you happy, i agreed. there wasn’t much point running away from it i figured, since 32 was after all a well-known unofficial gathering point for that community and they had a reputation for liberally doing what they wished in there. it was their territory and they were the masters of its space so it wasn’t totally untoward that one should make a move with the powers he would have. we were after all, out of our element and far away from our own.

on a different day, i walked out on the chilly, broken cobblestone streets. this was a different quarter but i had been here before. for mel it was her first time, out of curiosity. actually i had only been here once before but it helped i could remember the route. the lamp posts held no lights and the low buildings were old, designed to a different era, some looking like they had been shelled out in previous war bombings. she stuck close to me. it was not safe here. everywhere was the same, low buildings laid out in grid-like fashion, some of them with entrances to underground passages like staircases down into tube stations. but these were the most menacing. they were but pure pools of black, sumptuous mouths of darkness that could swallow you into the abyss, unless you knew which one to take.

problem was, i couldn’t remember which one was the right one. someone else brought me here the first time. fortunately as i was wandering closer to one such entrance i heard a harsh whisper from behind. mere strangers huddled together looking for the right passageway signalled to the one in front of them. mel and i quickly followed after, it was too dangerous not to trust a fellow human being in these parts, however unknown they may be.  before we could barely catch up they had turned down into the blackness, their dark clothes and hooded jumpers blending almost indiscernibly save for the flicker of a light they carried and the frenzied shuffle of footsteps.

i fled down the steps after the light, pulling mel hard along with me. it turned suddenly so often that it was impossible to comprehend the passage sequence which seemed to go on endlessly. we were running so fast chasing after the light, afraid that if we should miss it round a corner we would be lost forever. the stair passages were endless in all directions and turns, the only commonality seeming to be that they all went indefinitely downwards in the darknesss. should we linger a moment too long or be lost we would become a part of the dark maze.

we ran so fast that after awhile i realised i was practically floating and skimming over whole flights of stairs. it didn’t seem humanly possible to keep moving the feet so rapidly on end. but we remained focused on the light.

finally we came to some sort of bottom. i could see only one doorway in front of me, lighted, warm inviting. i saw the hooded shapes pass through and i knew we were finally safe. or at least safer.

this was da jie’s place. it was the only name anyone knew her by. she looked chinese, bit like a lian and of slight build that would easily deceive those who think she looked harmless. but this was just the shape she chose for a place which was made to look like a chinese curio shop, just far bigger and almost endless and selling everything you could think you want, worldly or not. we were in the underworld and there were few safer portals that humans could traverse in without relative harm. da jie’s place was one of them and the people who came here were always looking for something, whatever it was they couldn’t get or achieve or find top side. but this was one place you wouldn’t come to for a shopping binge, not with the usual trade clauses on wagering your soul.

i wasn’t sure what i was doing here or why. mel wandered off, entranced by all the knick-knacks in the shop while i sulked around and stumbled upon da jie herself. i greeted her and she could sense i was troubled.

this is no place for you tonight, she said. you shouldn’t be here in this state. come… and before i knew it she tugged me by the wrist and led me to her car of black growling sleekness. she drove us out of what seemed like an endless winding car park passage. we kept driving down-slope even as i found it strange since i already went downwards for an enternity to reach her and all around us there were other cars but they wound upwards. finally we seemed to reach the exit and we drove out onto a street near a square that seemed familiar to my side of the world.

it was very much an old-styled piazza with a grand spraying foutain in the centre. it was night and the area lit warmly in pockets by the scattered streetlamps. i stumbled out of her car and i was crying. i don’t know why. she caught up with me and tried to hold me even as i kept stumbling randomly like a dull corpse. finally i stopped, and just broke down. and she held me. and all i could think of was you.

forgetting what’s key

i popped by bestie’s new place the other day and both she and jon forgot their phones when they left the house to send me on my way. and i had forgotten to pick up the pendant i left with her also. that night, amongst the hotch potch of random fleetingness i dreamt briefly that when they both got back they realised that they had forgotten their housekeys as well. i told her about my dream the next day and surprisingly she said she had been having this dreaded fear of late that she would really forget the keys one of these days.

oops… i better not dream anymore of those then.

age and decay

i was supposed to attend some major seminar but it was held in some school with a whole bunch of students in pinafores attending as well. i saw academics, industry people, some familiar, many not, but they all seemed older than they should be. everything seemed like yellowing parchment, like a past age suspended in a slow dusty animation. i ran into callum but it was not the callum i once met. he was older, wrinkly, wider around the middle, his face didn’t even seem like the features i remembered. he said he and his girlfriend had just bought a house and were moving here. i just felt strange. he spoke like how i know but sounded odd when looking twice his age.

the seminar had begun, kicked off by a procession of VIPs and uniformed school girls into the older chapel-like area. almost like how a priest is followed in by altar boys at mass. i could just about smell the incense and hear a gregorian hymn. inside, everyone took their places wherever seats could be found amongst the mess of grimy school tables and chairs strewn around a hall. after the first speaker, we all got up to move to the adjoining room for the next speaker, and so on. in one of the halls i got in late but found a seat next to denise. by the time we reached the last speaker and the last room i was next to ram, cramped with others in this place full of windows overlooking the river along clarke quay.  

evening and i got a ride from mum in her car on the way home. when we approached the usual corner where our house stood our fence had become higher, the bars thicker and blacker, looking like part of a prison compound, our garden replaced by a concrete basketball court. instead of our gate there was a long driveway sloping up into a block of old apartments. mum said we lived here now, having moved from our house into an apartment although to me both still sat on the same address we’ve always had.

the lift took forever to come and in the lobby there was a washing point with a drippy tap. the block was huge with dirty, peeling paint and i wondered how a small plot of land like ours could house such a behemoth.  the lift was such a narow space, like it was only comfortable for 2, and the ride took forever as well. after awhile i noticed we weren’t going up anymore but sideways down the block to reach our particular unit. along the way it stopped outside a door that wasn’t ours. the lift opened and the apartment in front of it was open as well. it looked like there was a fight, things broken and strewn. i saw lau approaching. he looked older and angry, nothing like the ever-genial lau i know. and someone called out his name differently although the surname remained the same.

mum and i got back in the lift, not saying or doing anything, as if we were just meant to see that like an exhibit.

death and the maiden

didn’t sleep well at all last night. this is why… 
__________

i was supposed to meet a long-time friend to catch up but we’d both been busy. ran into her and we said we’d set a date. i was supposed to get back to her as to when since i was rushing around more at the time. she was chirpy, lively, happy. next day i was busy again, running around, didn’t pay attention to any news or newspaper like i usually did, didn’t think there might be anything major. 

then someone told me that she died last night. 

didn’t you read the news? it’s all over the papers, that someone said. 

i was too stunned to do anything. scrambled for the nearest copy of the papers i could find and there was a big picture of her on the front page of the home section. she looked chirpy, lively, happy. i was too much in a state of shock to even read the thing properly. some traffic-related incident… last seen by her boyfriend…

everything was in a whirl. i only remember rushing out, tears rushing down. i didn’t even know why i was crying so hard. i only knew it seemed like although all the people around me saw me they just seemed more like vacant souls passing through thin air, so transparent and incapable of sensation. 

somewhere on the street i ran into teck ann. it was pouring. he never struck me as being a sincere guy but she liked him. i yelled at him, blamed him. he grabbed me, tried to say it had nothing to do with him. i didn’t believe it.  

when i got home i finally made myself sit down and read the paper proper. on one of the pages inside there was a small article, a piece she had contributed for some dance-related event. her first, and it was published with that same chirpy, lively, happy face. 

later everything changed. as quickly as swirling mists of varied hues i was standing by a pool. some gal pals were in the water. a man came up to me in a fine suit. a scandinavian prince. someone i knew but he looked bit like a young jfk. he asked if we’d like to try one of his summer houses for a day since it’s never used much and the pools there are left to waste. 

the place was sprawling, seemed part country on the outside and part mediterranean on the inside if that’s even possible. 

the waiting staff will take care of everything and serve you dinner, he said. he didn’t join us but said he’d be back later. we were informed of what the menu for dinner would be. apparently royalty tries very hard to be more commonplace nowadays as the theme was supposed to be “stay home take-outs”. all sorts of warm, comforting, spoon into mouth sorts of easy TV fare, some scandinavian some from elsewhere but they all looked like different versions of omu rice.

the prince returned and a gal pal and i sat with him and chatted. then he tried to make a move on her and she brushed him off. he wasn’t pleased. he rose and went out suddenly, returning with a rifle. we were watching him from down the corridor. panicked, we barred ourselves in and tried to find a different way through to somewhere, anywhere else in this labyrinth. the amusing maze of a palace we wandered through had become a death trap. 

he started shooting, the staff were alarmed. all hell broke loose. he tried to blow up everything. some of us stuck together, tried to hide. he didn’t show any mercy.

and then… and then, i don’t know what happened anymore…

__________
i don’t know any of the people i saw in this dream in real life. except the friend who dies. she’s a long-time good friend. and today she called me out of the blue after work and said we gotta catch up more…

your dream

an unhandsome robbie reaches back from the future to tell you that i’m…

i can’t believe i dreamt of GE dates last night! i…

i can’t believe i dreamt of GE dates last night! i mean how friggin freakish is that!?!? in the dream i saw a calendar for april to may with certain dates marked out for key events and in that dream i thought to myself that it sure didn’t look too far off from what i was predicting…

went to bed with an irritated stuffy nose, woke up with a throat lashed in pain and in the office with a runny nose and massive sneezes… i think all this is proving too much for me, maybe i’ll be better off dreaming of winning lottery numbers…

i miss words… good words… such a beauty is thi…

i miss words… good words… such a beauty is this human creation called language. and such a wonder are the stuff of dreams… you always said i was morpheus’ favourite child… =D

again just for records some stuff at random that’s cropped up of late…

[ A Dream of Fires ]

i awake and i can hear the sound of distant bombs outside my window. it’s almost surreal as if i’m hearing the dull thuds far off from behind a soundless wall, like one who is slightly deaf or just had a gun go off next to their head. i look out and i see the neighbourhood of houses i know changed into dark slopes of illuminated only at random by blazes burning bright and getting closer. i run to my door but it’s like i’m moving in slow-mo like i’m in shock from having that gun go off next to my head, and downstairs i’m screaming for my family. all the while i keep thinking that i can’t believe such threats would ever appear on our doorstep. the bombs get closer…

My 1st Record of Wandering Around Morpheus’ Realm

well obviously not first ever dream, but first time i’m logging a dream down in text form. i’ve never recorded them before, always kept them in my head where i still feel they best belong… but here goes… and i had been thinking lately of an ancient egyptian dream interpreter who helped his old friend’s twin daughters after their mother had their father killed and threw them out of the house… the twins also told him their dreams which he recorded as he did of countless others he had heard and which are preserved still to this day…this one, though, i juz had couple of nights ago…

[I: A Dream of Italy & Old]

i dreamt i was in italy out in the countryside with my only grandaunt left to me and a few others… i cannot make out if the rest are kin or kindred but i know them and they likewise and we get along well… it seems we’re on some sort of a holiday juz wandering ard the countryside, stopping over at a monastery to spend a few nights… it’s a beautiful, quiet, prayerful monastery atop a sharp cliff, its windows opening out to a seeming abyss below, its inhabitants accustomed through history to sheltering travellers and keep us more than comfortable enough by austerity standards…

i shared a room with my companions but my grandaunt had her own and once we decided to go into the city while she decided to stay behind… she had said some things to me earlier which i didn’t agree with and grew upset with her and she with me… still i left for a day out in the city and when i reached there it was a town that was as urban and metropolitan as any major city in the world though i don’t recognise it as a city i’ve seen before… we’d been shopping and turning a corner in a store i saw a loungy area crowded with pple like they’re at some club… but yet its a lounge that somehow seems without walls and is in fact situated on the side of a street… and i’m looking up the street and i see nothing but two overtowering walls of buildings on either side so high that when i look up the sky seems but a narrow strip as narrow as the street i stand on… and further up the street i see what looks like a huge mask floating over it, its design like the old bronze battle helmets and face guards of those eons ago and the same shade of green as the rusted bronze artifacts are now… yet this mask looks more fluid like it was made of runny crystal and it seemed to hover closer towards me…

as it approached i was fascinated and tried to get a shot of it but it moved too quick and as it came closer i saw that it was somehow turned an ambulance that carried this mask hovering over its rear and it sped past me to where i do not know…

returning to the lounge on the street, on a couch i saw shirin, a friend i hadn’t seen since childhood, and i spoke to her like i had seen her yesterday… suddenly we’re up and dancing salsa to the beats before betty, another friend from as long ago, suddenly cuts in to dance with her all dressed up in a suit like a man…

then i get a text msg on my phone in italian and english which said in so many words what it just didn’t say in plain – my grandaunt had passed away…

me and my companions rush back but somehow upon arriving at the monastery and here on i seem to be alone… and the monks will attend to her funeral and i am remorseful and guilty for the way i brushed her off juz earlier in the same day…

now it is a different day much further forward in time but still in the same italian region and i am in a lecture theatre of a design i’d never been to before… it is a huge place and i’m seated abt halfway up, or down, whichever you choose, and i turn to my neighbour on the left and it’s chris and i’m not surprised he’s there… he turns to me and smiles, talking happily, a thing in life that was so rare, a thing so different from the chris i knew when i’m awake… and so we’re at a lecture together with another mutual female friend though i do not know who she is really…

after the lesson we walk out together… it’s a hot, bright day and i ask chris where he’s staying now… he says he’s got a house over on the far side of a lake and i’d heard of the place for it’s reknowned for its beauty and he asks where i stay and i tell him it’s the monastery… we continue to walk and chat and outside the lecture theatre the building we’re in is modern and of the lastest architectural style full of glass and aerodynamic structure… and it’s crowded with pple dressed in suits like they’re there for a convention… downstairs there’s a small orchestra playing soothing strains for the heat as pple bustle ard walking talking eating laughing and we reach a cab queue where the cabs are all 4WD SUVs and we get into one that’s already got pple but had space for 3 more and we tell the driver the places we’re going… i tell him that i live at the monastery on the hill… he knows it, there’s only 1 but i say what it’s called too… “le hombre” for some reason and with that exact spelling too… and we drive through dusty parts of countryside town, dropping pple along the way and onwards…