What lies beneath the MAC foundation...

Make-up is something you put on your face.  To hide things.  Among other things.

I got up late this morning.  A phone call from Mama got me out of bed.  I cleaned my sleepy face with water and pat it dry and look into a mirror at myself and look, I looked at its reflection long and hard.

This face doesn't look anything like the one on stage last night.  I was belting out happy tunes and when I walked into the audience to sing, a lady whispered loudly to me over the music and say, "You are so beautiful."

Good make-up hides many things.  Signs of aging, results of lack of sleep, not-so-flawless complexion, a skin break out, etc...a bad life style.

It's karma all right, what you do to your body (or not do to your body) will manifest and sprout signs of bad karma all over your...your face.

That's my morning today.  Part one of the story was my dream.  I was idling in a house, it felt like both my house back home at parents' and J's house.  It felt like days after a funeral, my folks milling about doing chores, or some cooking, something...to try to get back into some normality of life. There were visitors around whom we were trying to send them back to their normal lives too, arranging transportations.  I remember desperately trying to help a lady go back to Johor Bahru.

I remember telling my dad (or was it his dad) that my big iMac has stopped working but I would like to use the big screen on a new computer.  I remember walking out to a wet market, a square that I have never seen in my life and watch trucks driving away with their wares and little wind of dusts circling round and round the square.

A few moments later I notices a change of time - it signalled to me as the end of a school break and school season was starting.  I saw droves of school buses full of kids in blue and white school uniforms driving into the market place, I saw a private car driving towards me, in it sat a parent and his two teenage school-going boys.

I wish somehow by strange fate, or some out of the planet (out of the dream) magic would bring him back to life.  I told myself it doesn't matter even if he doesn't know me or love me.  Maybe he could come back as his silly and younger self, like that uniform-clad school boy in that car.  I don't mind.

I stood there with emotions and stared, stunned by what I felt.  Then my phone rang and I woke up.

It was Mama.  I was part relieved, part happy to see the caller ID on my phone.  It was like she got summoned to get me out of that poignant, melancholic situation.  She called to tell me that she's made some fried peanuts with ikan bilis and want me to have some.  She offered soup.  She knew I have a show today.  She asked me if I have time to go over to drink the soup and take the peanuts home.

This would be another long day out on the field, doing my thang...like how he used to put it, he liked watching me doing my things: singing class, rehearsals, talk a lot...singing, hair appointments..

Lunch at Mama's, singing class with Cecilia at 1pm, hair appointment at 3pm, sound check at 5pm, vegetate till showtime at 830pm, catch a show at No Black Tie at 10pm.

The signs of undesirable life style is showing on my face.  Late late nights, skipped meals.  Mainly just these two vices, big ones.

I have to tell myself I have to keep this body well, for him...because the music has to keep playing.

Routines and bag habits are tough to break.  But the hard work has to start somewhere doesn't it?