Friends. I have found a cool awesome place in Singapore where the city shows its wrinkles of age and lets decay bloom. Here there are remains of the intensely personal and untouched: graffiti of sunshine kids and the peeling skins of a retired water tank. I imagine the water tank sinking on its eight legs and sighing after a long day of work (perhaps the last ever day of work before retirement?) and the makeup just peels off and stays off. We have come to the barnacle clad base of a ship way past its maiden voyage and it reminded me of some things that I had never thought about in a long time.
This photo-shoot was so long ago, but bless Zhi Jun, the talented photographer, for bringing me into contact with this kind of nostalgic trip back to the fearlessness of childhood. We climbed onto this giant gnarly tree laced with the trails of giant nasty ants. I was reliving the vague tree-climbing memories from childhood, the kind of irrational impulse to climb any and every tree that looks possible to do so, the meaningless kind of success in clambering up the back of an almost reluctant giant.
Younger me was way more fearless: I would have climbed higher, dangled on branches if I could, and my shoes and clothes and everything would fade into my skin and nothing would stop me from getting as high as I could. I used to wear dresses and cute little shoes to climb trees. I used to have invisible wings that I was sure would save me if I toppled and nearly fell to my death. This time though, I am vastly different. Less agile, cautious of falling, ultimately starting to question why should we bother to climb trees anyways. When you start questioning the kind of impulse that drives us to be boundless and happy, you know that you’re jaded and done in.
((Look at this cool magic-trick photo. It is a metaphor for us toying with our numbered days and attempts to play god and resist the fate of our lives, cast like dice. I’m stretching it and this is such a meaningless metaphor but my point is: JUST LOOK AT HOW COOL THIS PICTURE IS))
My mum says that there is something essential in humans: the kind of glint in their eyes that shows that beneath the shell they are alive. Alive.
To have that something sucked out is to lose that kind of appreciation, perhaps becoming what I presume means jaded. She calls it 童真. It is difficult to translate it but I always imagine it being the fleeting moment a smile just cracks open on a face, unexpectedly, and the child in that person is transparent and shimmering like a rainbow, vivid before your eyes, and you just know that you would be able to recognize them as a child even though you only know them now.
There is something I think I could take away from this photo-shoot. I have lost some bits of me in the process of growing up, and I will only lose and lose some more inevitably. I just hope to retain that rainbow bit that will still enjoy some sort of adventure.
I swear I will periodically go tree-climbing to save this special little bit if that is what it takes. There is so much more in Singapore for me to find this kind of recluse, where it is a crime scene of the things people drop and forget about and never return to get it back.
Recently I realize I have been laughing a lot more than I used to. I think that the magic still exists in my world.
Updates 
Leave a comment