In present tense
8th January 2001, 1737 hrs
Location: my room
In the vase: yellow pom-poms
Weather: obligingly bleak
Where do you go when you need time alone?
Time and space alone?
There are too many people about today, and the corridors of NUS too familiar. The air's thick with exhalation, warm and wet and steaming; like jungle mist, only warmer.
I find myself thinking of a lonely countryside, and hills covered in grass. I think of the bleak grey downs of England, possibly the most cheerless landscape in the world, and black boughs sticking stark against them like the arms of a scarecrow. I think of the soft thin tapping of fatalistic rain. Old dusty trophies of a forgotten greatness.
It is not a place one goes for merrymaking. But when one gets tired of riots of noise, and incessant conversation, and the thickness of leaves and the greenness of earth, then comes the desire to step away from all that colour for a while, and see the world for once in black and white.
Or, as it were, in shades of grey.
But I can't go there now. I'm on the other side of the great Eurasian landmass, in the heart of the equatorial climatic belt.
Equatorial, but hardly equable.
And there are people everywhere, and the city looms up all around. People people roads people concrete people people people.
So where can I go? Not to Katong with its earth and laughter; it's aloneness I'm after, not loneliness.
Not to the beach where warm thicksweet water grinds along the coast, where children yell and run.
Not to courteous Tanglin, nor fireburst Orchard, nor the chugging heartlands.
I consider a moment more, and choose the Northwest Line - the train line that links Jurong East with Yishun. It's a route I have taken several times before, and one I particularly enjoy, though it's a detour from my usual travel routes.
I like the views this journey affords. Everything appears somehow larger, here in the northwest: train tracks are higher, HDB blocks taller, spaces wider, vistas broader. It's not countryside - the signs of urbanity are everywhere surrounding - but it is perhaps the closest this island'll get to it. Spaces between the blocks are wider, and through these gaps I can see long straight roads, jagged tree-covered hills, even at times a glimpse of the coast. And sometimes even a horizon of sorts - even if it's merely the line of the treetops - and unbroken sky.
The train empties out after Bukit Gombak and Choa Chu Kang, so even the long empty carriages add to the effect. No more the forest of arms and legs and bodies pressed against one another like jungle creepers. Light through the windows, broken only by the occasional head. Mostly silence.
There is rain outside, but a firmer, warmer, stronger rain, like the drumming of fingers on a table.
I drift off to quiet sleep as the train begins to fill once again, at Sembawang.
And wake at Ang Mo Kio, in the familiar rumble of the heartland, stilled.