neither does he know how far he has come. Neither does he know if, by walking in any direction in this night, he will stay on this road, or instead end up somewhere completely unexpected in the morning.

Neither does he know what the times for morning are like here.

'So how did you come here? How... I mean... you're alone, right? People rarely come to the villages alone like these, they don't even come in tour groups.'
'I did come with a tour group. I left them behind... I came for the monument of the Tropic of Cancer, the boundary of the tropics thing.'
'That pillar down at the seaside? The one beside the highway?'
'Yes.'
'But why did you come here from there? It's quite a long walk from here, it's at least half an hour.'
'I was looking for the perspective from which this photo was taken. Here. See, it says "Home" behind, and I've wanted to-'
'I'm sorry, but where did you get this photograph from?'
'My mail. It's one of hundreds. It's one of the few with words on them. I don't know where the photos are coming from, that's why I'm here.'
'Are you from Singapore?'
'Yes.'
'And you are the one who got these photographs.'
'Yes. Why?'


The Chens' house has a balcony on the second floor, an extension of the room where they finally agreed to let her stay for the night. On the face of the person who had obtained all her answers, on his parents' faces, a strange, slow sadness has settled; they are kind enough, but everything is tinted with the caution of being hospitable to a guess who brings a telegram announcing a death in the family, in a place where the rest of the family has never been.

She still knows nothing, except for what the photograph and her own eyes tell her. The camera faces forward, onto the monumental pillar far in the background, it says nothing of the photographer behind it. How old is this photograph anyway, was it taken and then sent immediately? By coincidence the paddy fields are at around the same stage now as when the image was captured, even though the sky suggests a different time of year. Here she realises how completely foreign she is, she does not know either the habits of paddy farming or the way seasons move in Taiwan.

She only knows - or she doesn't, she senses - that something irreversible has happened.

Juvenilia

After a long enough period of time nothing I write appears to me to make much sense. What was I thinking then? Or, if I remember well enough the idea, why did I frame it this way? The wrong words, the wrong atmosphere - some chain of thought that seemed solid then, but in retrospect has not been welded together at all.

Juvenilia. (Of course I'm not *that* old, but age is still relative. Youth is a time of swift aging.)

But I don't discard the pieces from three or five years back when I clear my store of documents. The things that do go are those from three days back, which have already lost their apparent coherence or rightness after half a weeks' revisions and redecisions. This habit of clearing things out is an old one, from my high school years.

Therefore the conclusion - whoever I was at the time of writing my oldest crap, I must have thought it truly worthy then. Errors of judgement aside (also, I don't do drugs) I must have loved then the same thing that makes me gape in embarrassment now. Why did I love them then? And why do I keep them now?

I suspect the latter is to convince me that I am making some sort of progress, that what was 'good' then is indeed egregious by now, which must mean that my constant process of maturation has brought (is bringing, hopefully) my skills in creative writing to new heights. Onward and upward. But now even that seems a misconception. I think I have a better answer now - that I am simply a different person than I was before, and that my self-righteousness, whether deserved or not, requires as fuel the writing of another person to mock and be ashamed at - someone who was young, and has since failed to grow up while remaining the same person.

乌节路

(This piece came to me in Chinese, and I cannot see how to put it in another language, so there we are...)

I.

圣诞节到朋友家
就在乌节路后边
自从初院时代就是我们聚集玩耍的老地方，
我也是第三次来这里过圣诞了。

是这个地方让我领悟
新加坡真的是个小地方
乌节路这条名街真的只是一条街，
后街宁静的私人住宅，
离购物中心也就五十步而已。
我很喜欢这种反差
当然也很羡慕他
“楼下” 是个带有些许谦卑的地点名词，
可他的“楼下” ，
就是我得长途跋涉才来到的市区。

据说他父母买下这公寓时，
这里还只是一条普通的购物街，
没有现在这近乎神圣的地位。
所以算是赚到了。
然而时代的改变
最终也赶上他们，
整栋公寓大楼即将被“重建” ，
过不久他们就要搬家了。
外来的计划有时让人身不由己，
这就是市区的善变，
可能也是我们留恋它的理由之一

这次的派对被一箱一箱收拾好的各种东西环绕

时时提醒正在玩乐的我们
又一个藏有回忆的地方
即将消逝

II.

傍晚
期待狂欢的乌节路被封锁
只有巴士没有车

凌晨
过了德士特别收费的时候
德士司机们也已败兴而归

晚上的狂欢，拥挤，一切一切
我都错过了。
难得一见的，空荡荡的乌节路
我竟然一夜间看到两次。

这是生平第一次
独自拥有这一整片
就要被拆下的圣诞灯饰

我很想睡
很想把景象拍下
改次再看
可是拍得很朦胧

明年也可能没有
清晨离开派对踏入沉睡的闹市的机会了
所以只好睁大眼睛
努力看
努力记

Second winter

All of a sudden, the winds piped up. Leaves began to shift in unease, like many birds. The blinds of my window began to converse together, all at once. Someone’s alarm went off.

Then, alarm stopped. The leaves settled back into the night’s silence. Downstairs, my housemates were laughing, the way they usually laugh.

But I knew, the way one simply knows. One knows when he steps outside and witness the loss of green in the smell of the air. The days were getting shorter. Winter’s shoes were outside my door. One morning he would knock, at I would open it, as though embracing a long lost friend.

softblow

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The view from outside the house

On the day of the sunset,
you sat on the roof of your house
watching the night lights of Shanghai
rising to a sob.
On early mornings in Ithaca, the deer calling,
call me to the window.
I meet the view from my house like a girl in love all over again.

In search of kites,
we walked down the boulevard,
and found none. Left
a square filled with the overwhelming presence
of unflown kites.
In search of the creek behind my house,
I step outside.
The trees gather to hold me in their presence.

In the view from my house, the wrestlers who live next door
are playing football with beercans again.
I wash my feet in the creek behind my house.
I live here now.
In the view from your house, there are fewer leaves.
There will be none when the days grow colder.
Then, perhaps, you,
meeting your city of black, wet snow,
will abandon the view
from a balcony overgrown with cigarette butts
to look out from other windows.