Bookmarks

I have not been on this blog for a very long time. A long break from the monotony of work should have fixed that, but when things like this fall out of habit, it is not something that comes to mind.

The impetus for this post stems from a friend leaving Singapore today and from another friend's writing sometime back. Of course since today is a no work, lazy afternoon expanse of time, mass media has its hand in it too. What else can fiction do except mirror real life?

It will be another year before I follow the footsteps of many a Singaporean student. Taking a flight that lasts 6 to 24 hours may seem a necessary evil for a temporary stay. Make that stay more permanent and a flight becomes more than just stepping on a plane.

I am not one to use bookmarks - the physical piece of card, often with a frilly tail - to remind myself where I have stopped in a book. I rely on memory (I am on page 142 in "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson) or in most cases, reading the book till the very end before putting in down.

Chapter is to book as ________ is to life. Word associations aside, I can only fill that blank with a single word. A flight next year would change that altogether, flipping the page to a new chapter. Thinking about it now, I am desperately looking for something, somewhere, some-when or someone (a combination of everything listed would be nice).

Just to be a bookmark, to be here unchanged and unrelenting, tucked between the pages to let me know that I still have something left behind that I have to come back to. No matter how deeply in love I fall with London.

And I looked over my shoulder at the people still standing there. I wave my goodbyes; they can't hear me anymore.