i'm home

Prelude

I thought a lot throughout my entire milling process, how I was to write in words my Cambodian mission trip experience.


One thing I do know: I really love writing.


Pastor Brian mentioned that while on a mission trip to a third-world country, we somehow end up being on a fast, not from food, but from our habits, like he does of reading the newspaper daily. I fasted from the internet - msn and blog-reading. But I never fasted from writing, it is too large a part of my consciousness.


I took to consciously writing when I could, not just about the mission trip objectives, but also about the minutiae of my travel, especially apparent during the prelude of my actual journey, on my way to Bangkok.


Consciousness - something many of my favourite writers write about. D.H.Lawrence, Haruki Murakami, Milan Kundera, Emily Dickinson.


Words and writing them, are so a part of my consciousness, I think I almost cannot live without. Without words, love, communion, details of experiences, strata of human theories, cannot exist beyond a human brain.


Calvin wrote to me, before I left:


"... this letter is as much a letter to you as it is a prayer of thanks, my prayer to God, thanking him, for you..."


(Thank God for a man with good grammar).


When I left Singapore last Wednesday, I had to force my adrenaline rush, amidst writing in the pockets of shared solitudes. Here I pen my prelude and post-journey thoughts in between.


"Will I be this tired and lacklustre the whole of today?

In the morning before I got ready to leave, with the malingering viscous mucus-phlegm situation still prevailing (carried over from the last flu bout it seems), I took a Telfast caplet to okay the situation - hopefully once and for all.

Now I am on the plane - Jetstar Asia, en route to Bangkok. Have napped, and to be honest, still headached from air-travelling.

I think about the seats, something I cannot help for it having a noticeable trait, for when I slipped in my row and sat down, my first thought: 'Wah, very squeezy.'

I am claustrophobic. Manageably, but only if consciously. I sit with Yizhen, our knees graze the backs of the seats in front, even while we are seated upright with good posture and all. "

I realised how I abhorred small spaces, when I found myself consistently getting a sick stomach when in small aisles of shops like provision shops or bookstores. Somehow whenever I entered and browsed shops with small aisles, I got a tummy ache and I didn't know why I did, for a really long time. I hated it when people came into my space, in crowds, or into my room, or when doors closed on me in darkness. I felt constricted in small spaces like, aeroplanes for one. Now that I know why I felt odd, I control myself and disallow myself to feel discomforted any more.

"While I nurse my headache - by ignoring it - I revert to awakenness, and here I write. If one were to ask me why, or what am I writing, to that person I would answer this, 'When you stop writing, you stop thinking.' That, of course does not mean to say that all of us should be writing all the time. It simply means, if there exists a moment - any moment - where it is possible to conceive a worded thought and thereafter pen it down, we should do it. Even in a situation like being in a plane, doing nothing but waiting for it to arrive at your destination. If we think about the things of that moment, in order to write it down, we perhaps truly really live that moment. If I did not write this now, I would perhaps merely have been waiting to arrive. And aren't we already doing that too many times.

We may eventually arrive, and find ourselves, slower in thought already, one step too late."

During this trip, I stayed awake even when I could have napped, save for the journeys to and from Kampuchea to Bangkok. I was tired, but I knew that if I slept, inertia would creep up on me and I would lose my alertness and state of being sober and vigilant.

"As we sat in the short depth of a seat, I sat next to Yizhen, occupying two out of three seats in our row. Yizhen hoped very much that no one would occupy that third seat, and none did. So we are rather less uncomfortable now, her in her striped toe socks, anti-social earphones and book, both of us with feet on seat, listening to the considerate conversation behind us, between Pastor Brian and SB.







































Sometimes conversation is difficult. If one tries and is considerate to try well at conversing, but the other does not, there is no longer any consideration in the conversation.

I do suppose listening to their conversation about uni life and apologetics - we all eavesdrop even in the best of times - helps me feel human and part of the group we belong to in this mission trip. It also helps me forget my headache. It betters the option of me looking out the window, although the clouds and sunset sky in the horizon, are beautiful momentous creations, I think I will feel sicker admiring them with my eyes.


I have run out of minutiae to discuss write and think about for now. I hope to train my mind to awaken despiteTelfast and sleepiness, just so I can think and write and live the moments that compose my trip ahead."


Further on I thought about what I do not enjoy about flying in aeroplanes:

1. The dehydration that makes me thirsty, dries out my skin and lips, and drains whatever radiance I might have emanated before the flight.
2. Needless to say, headaches.
3. The flat hair that results. Urk!
4. The static electricity, related to point 3.
5. Of course, the cramped seats for us economy class and budget airlines proletariats.
6. The Singaporean uncles and other kiasus that come along as passengers too.
   

There are of course, likeable things, perhaps the view, and the good service.



To be continued...