.... and I Will Be Flying On a Broomstick

I like to build castles in the air. It’s mostly a silent affair without any fanfare. I don’t need anyone telling me it’s a waste of energy or staring at me with their eyes full of pity. Maybe it’s an act of folly and they can call me crazy but I like to think that it could also be a case of jealousy because they don’t know how to build castles in the air like me. These castles I build, they are made from the ruins of the walls you tore down. Like a knife, you sliced through my defense mechanisms, laying bare my insecurities and fears. I waited with bated breath for you to walk away because who would want to get their hands dirty and deal with this wreckage anyway? But you stayed. And showed me that what I thought was damaged can be salvaged. So I started to build castles in the air with these broken pieces of mine. They may not be the most beautiful out there but they are strong. They can hold the promise of forever long enough to make me smile when things go wrong. They can

People look at you and see something that needs to be fixed. You are a broken radio, never in tune with the emotional wavelengths of others. You swing like a pendulum between two states of being - incomprehensible static and awkward silence. Some nights, you think of dismantling your own heart under the moonlight. You want to find out what is broken just so that you might have an answer to questions that are left unspoken. “Don’t you feel anything?” “Why are you like this?” “Do you even have a heart?” Sometimes you just want to fit in. You are sick of standing at the sidelines, watching other people cry. You imagine their hearts full of emotion, spilling out into the world and making a statement, “Look at us, we are human”. To have the courage to be vulnerable and to be able to find comfort in other people who share your feelings. If their tears don’t drown you, you think your jealousy might. Once or twice, you try to fake it. You pinch yourself hard enough to bruise. You t

You can play a game of “Guess Which Side of the Doors Will Open” before the train’s PA system announces the answer. You can count the stitches on salary men and women’s business suits during the morning rush hour. You can dance your own version of the Macarena when you forget where you put your tickets or IC card. You can listen to announcements on the train. On rare occasions, you might hear the train drivers stumbling across their words or saying the name of a station wrong. You can expect profuse apologies immediately afterwards. You can marvel at a world turned pink when it’s sakura season. As the train stops at different stations, you can look out for signs of seasonal change in the menus of udon shops on the platforms. You can close your eyes and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations if your Japanese is good enough. If not, it’s more exciting because you can try to catch familiar words and construct context and meaning out of guesswork. You can throw disapproving look

There is a place in this concrete jungle you call home. A retreat from the waves of modernity threatening to swallow you whole. A sanctuary that can soothe your tired old soul. People call it a park. You call it your makeshift heaven on earth. The first time you came here, you ran along a footpath that cut through the trees and claimed it as your own. You learned the contours of the ground beneath your feet as the stars started to come out one by one.   It is hard at first, running in the park. Your muscles scream and your heart threatens to beat out of your chest. There is a voice in your head that tells you to stop every few minutes. On some weekends, you don’t even want to get out of bed. Some days, other runners overtake you – they look so effortless in their running that you can’t help but be envious.   Then it gets a little bit better. You find that you can run a little bit further and breathe a little bit easier. Still, your body rebels and the voice in your head is a