The Lengthy Rainy Season

I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

                                                                                                                   Marguerite Duras

I didn't know that the tropical rainy season was that long. I didn't know that I really hated my life back then. When I went to the beach, I always felt the waves were fierce. It would have swallowed me up if I was not careful enough.

I took my first night flight alone when I was about six years old. I mistakenly thought that the city lights outside the plane were the stars up in the sky. I loved that plane so much as it has taken me to the galaxy. Such freedom. I looked around at the people sitting around me. Some sleeping, some talking, and some snoring. It seems like no one gives a fuck of where we are. Nevertheless, I felt that pride. I was the only one who noticed we were so close to the stars!

When I first slept on a wire bed without a mattress on a forty-degree night no air-con or fan. It took much effort the next day to separate my butt from the wire bed. In addition to the spider web-like pattern inscribed on my butt, there was also a thin layer of dark green rust stains. It couldn't be wiped away or cleaned by hand. There was also that kind of smell of blood in the air. The harder I tried to clean the rust stains, the more pungent the blood smell spread.

When I first encountered the rainy season, I had it spent in the wooden closet. Day and night to avoid the loud and bright thundering and lightning. Ultimately, the little cracky wooden closet couldn't help me much. Sound and light had penetrated like an octopus from the deep ocean, grabbing my arms and legs and trying relentlessly to pull me out. The octopus and I had a momentary glare at each other. His eyes were as bright as the stars in the sky.

He asked: Why hide?

I thanked the tiny closet. For being broken but protecting me. Sporadically, I still walk in there.

Singapore has given many firsts. It is the place where the dialectic dynamic between dreams and reality begins.

I still don't like the rainy season in the tropics. Still dislike my life intermittently. But I don't go to the beach anymore when it rains.