rambling and babbling

[methrowrock]

It is times like these- blue skies with hints of grey, soundscapes drowned out by acoustic chords and a twee, saccharine-laden voice, promising bubbly giggles and days spent gazing in each other's eyes- when I wonder, maybe I would have been better off in a faraway country, in some farflung village. When the nearest cinema was an hour's cycle away- an hour of putting arms around his slender waist and cheeks plastered to his strong back, safe in his warmth-; when heavy rain meant seeking shelter in rundown wooden bus-stops where buses hardly ever stop; when puddles meant mud-streaked knee-high socks and girlish laughter shared with a best friend; when dinners meant the whole family seated around a small wooden table on rickety wooden chairs, feasting on love, joy and salted vegetables; when school meant cloud-gazing on the rooftop, home-made lunchboxes, non-threatening drama about life, friendship and love, being hit on the head with a paperball during diligent note-taking; when after-school clubs meant searching for aliens, espers and time-travellers; when home meant hours cycling past meadows of corn and sunflowers, past electricity lines upon which black birds perch against the saffron sunset, past undulating plains of the carefully tendered, and races and giddy laughter lost in the wind and snack breaks at small noodle-shops at midpoint. When romance was high and nigh. When natural beauty was all abound in the surrounding dreamscapes. You didn't have to seek far or long to be inspired. Poetry was written in your best friend's gentle smile, in the fragrance of thousands of tulips nodding in the breeze, in the scenary whipping past in a blur of tranquility. How unlike Singapore, this small, densely built-up island. Perhaps, I'm not looking for beauty in the right places. Maybe, I've been trying too hard or maybe, I'm too inflexible in my mindset about beauty. Maybe all I need to do is to believe and look through another pair of glasses. Or maybe, I'm just too fixated on what could have been, instead of what is. Yeah, that's the fundamental problem about me, probably. And I need to fix it soon if I ever want a shot at being truly happy. Or passing CTs for that matter. And I'm not a love-crazed idiot. I just happen to buy into the soft-focus illusion sold by Taiwanese dramas and Japanese serials and Korean soaps. What could have been, and not what is, remember?