Thursday, December 20, 2007
11:51 pm
We are the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the light and the dark, the individual and the whole, the magic and the miracle. Not alone. Just not together. Never alone.
- Timekeepers, sequel to Waywalkers, both by Catherine Webb
Yes!
Three books down (finished Fragments, by Jeffry W. Johnston today during data collection at the FYP company) and... One more to go! Well, five, if I include the books that my sister borrowed, recommended by me.
And by recommendation I meant me reading through the blurbs at the back and on the front book jacket. If I am intrigued enough to want to read it and it's not too complex for a twelve-year-old, I let her read the blurb and see if she wants it.
It's about time she starts reading materials other than illustrated children's book.
I'm going to the Secondary School registration with my mother and sister because, well, she got accepted into TK and I wanted an excuse to go back there at least once this year, seeing that my friends and I missed that chance on Teachers' Day.
I think I'm a person who lives in the memories.
Good or bad, or even those I'd rather not remember but thanks to Murphy's Law, they'd resurface every once in a while just to spite me of ever creating them.
I like memories, those that make me smile stupidly before I realise it, or even those that make me blush and mentally berate myself for having been so embarrassing once.
Memories truly are the only few things that cannot be tainted by time, only becoming more revered and treasured, the way years temper and seal a wine so that it will taste that much better when you needed a reminder of it in the next decade.
I've begun to imagine, if there weren't so many people tomorrow, at the registration, that if it was just me and that building that had been my home and refuge for those four years that lasted too long and ended too fast...
I would stand at the Assembly Plaza, facing the flags and looking into the canteen from four different angles; the four classes I've been in as each year pushed us to the next. On the right I'd have an obscured view of the walkway leading to the sidegate. In the mornings there'll be latecomers running in, late mornings will show students mulling about after recess, and from the afternoons to evenings, people will leave in sparse groups. Opposite the flags, I'd see the Design and Technical Block and know exactly where the Choir notice board is; first on the right, next to the staircase, updated only in about- oh I don't know- at best two times a year. Facing the board and turning to my right and up, there'll be the rotunda, where THE music room is.
I'll climb the six flights of stairs up to the thrid floor, walk around the music room (because the first door is always locked at first), shake out of my shoes to put them at the entrance, walk in the semi-circle room, and lie down on the wooden floors. Light brown, a shade darker than wheat, I can still see it in my mind. I'd look up at the highest point in the ceiling- it's haunted, it's said. I'd imagine it'll concern the conductor more, seeing as he sits right under it while he teaches us songs. Or, pronunciation of songs, since we don't usually speak Latin when it's got nothing to do with choir.
Then I'd walk back downstairs and across the bridge/walkway that hangs below the belly of the music room to get to the school hall. The wooden floorings are more darkly-coloured there. I'd hear the squeaks of school shoes when P.E. is conducted there during rainy days. I'd hear how bored we sound during the necessary but still boring emergency fire drill lectures.
I'd leave then, using the corridor outside the staff rooms, past the second floor entrances to the auditorium and the heritage museum between those two entrances (and it sounded so... impressive; Heritage Museum. It's merely a nicely done plastic/fibre-glass wall of events dating back to when the school was first founded. All right, I won't deny that it is nice), turn left to the staircase when I reach a corridor on my right that will lead to classrooms E, F, G, H, down the stairs, turn left, walk straight to the end, first class on the left: Classroom 4D.
I won't bother looking for my name that I've writting on my desk prior to graduation. It wasn't there the last time I looked. I think I might still find KY's though. Smartarse wrote it on the underside of her desk. I'd find a seat closest to where mine used to be. Then I'd look at the whiteboard and I'd see the memories of leftover Geography notes, an orderly chaos overflowing the finite board. I'd see the after-image of the words written in blue, green, black, hardly red, because we've compained that it's difficult to read red words from a distance. "Oceanic plate... prevailing winds... monsoon... population density... Why the estate in CBD costs higher than... New Towns are..."
I'd hear our Chemistry teacher's not-funny-at-all jokes, our Maths teacher's "Are you all alright?" which sounded more like "Aw-lite?" I'd remember singing anime songs with KY under our breaths to pass the time when our Chinese teacher had once been annoyed enough to make the whole class stand at our seats. Not forgetting, of course, our History teacher's sarcastic and sadistic mental illustration to demonstrate the deathtoll in certain wars of the past. Oh, not saying that it wasn't entertaining; I'm very welcoming when it comes to sarcasm and fatalistic thoughts.
Reminiscing felt good.
In those moments that I remembered, there was a marginally larger lack of care for the world and the foolish things mankind was doing to it. Less care for the unforeseen future. More of the Here and Now. More madly self-inflated confidence about the universe that lay under our feet.
I guess there's a reason why you only get to be an adolescent once.
It's a drug; an addiction you don't want to lose when you come to understand how good it felt, and you only want it to go on and on and on and on...
You can escape from anything, if you know how to go about it.
- Sam Linnfer
Waywalkers, By Catherine Webb
Labels: Book recs, Phrases, TK