in quiet solitude
listening to: zhang hui mei - zhen1 shi2

my friend's mother called me 2 weeks back. unexpected, but i surmised that, perhaps, she wanted me to have a chat with him or something along those lines. she wanted to meet up, but i've been busy, so i suggested january. my friend - her son - on the other hand, had remained silent then, but that was not entirely unexpected; all these years we had maintained the slenderest cords of friendship, since our schedules seldom met. but he had said, sometime earlier this year, that i was his sole remaining link to his past, a more innocent time. still i was a tad disappointed that he didn't show up on my birthday: he had promised me, that no matter if the world abandoned me, he'd be there to show me the joys of chivas regal (this was the last time we met, when he attempted to explain to me the differences between whisky and whiskey).

i happened to meet a friend in orchard today, not a close one, and he mentioned that this friend of mine had died. and in early november even (it was the 6th, i found out later).

fuck. first word out of my mouth.

i called my friend's mother just now, took a cab and went down to her place, sat quietly and listened to her trying to make sense of the madness, to come to grips with the harsh reality of the situation. some tears, but mostly, slight bewilderment, a slight railing against heaven. we sat in his room, she showed me his old photos, the handout with the songs for his funeral, with a photo of him that i remembered very well in the front: of a preacher who was laying hands on my friend, back when we attended church camp in secondary school, and that man had said my friend would do great things (he had pointed to both of us that day, i recall, and everyone thought he was pointing to me, but it turned out that he was pointing to my friend instead).

i won't know the answer either, i guess. just hints of problems here and there. and through this small incident, the happiness-es of this christmas all fade away, but its meaning shone through. a gentle sadness, one that i've felt all these 5 years, everytime i got dumped/jilted/cheated/abandoned. foolish of me to think that things could be any different this year, except that the bitter taste in my mouth is far unlike the tired resignation on my face that i wore in previous years. still... perhaps the sadness, resignation to fate, but facing reality with the bravest of faces, in the gentlest of moods, perhaps that really is what christmas is all about.

a-mei sang, "heartbreak is more real than happiness". maybe that's the simple answer to this most simple of questions, "why?" perhaps that's enough, to know that one day his heartbreak became so real that happiness seemed a distant memory, or a beautiful dream. i could live with that i think.

for one who, despite all our silences, was as a brother to me, i'm sorry i doubted you when you didn't find me on my birthday. to the one person that i had unshakeable faith in to follow me, to bia zui, and even to the bitterest end - farewell.
--------------------------

all things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful:
the Lord God made them all.

hymn