Letter one hundred and twenty - The days go on

Dearest J,

This is a really interesting time...if you let me indulge a little (you had always indulged me) in recounting the days and the years of this life of mine.

Two years and over since the long goodbye.

I moved into Viva in February 2010, those fabulous nine months of togetherness here in this gorgeous space of friendship, romance, and music.

You loved spending time here, it's so quiet and peaceful, you said.  Though the crazy roads are right under our windows with all the buzz in this city, it was quiet and peaceful for you because there was just me, and you.  Sometimes it was just you and your friends and the single malt in the hall, many nights there were just you and your beer at the pub downstairs.  And so many nights of just you and I and conversations in this space.

When you left I took in Thursday, on Nov 18th, 2010, from Peter & TP.  It was a `try-out' at first, to see if I could live with her and her furry existence.  Very very quickly we made our co-habitation work.  I grew to really really love her.  My mom still think she is you in other form...quiet like you (still no meowing from her unless she is really really upset), her white fur coat like your staple white teeshirts, her favourite spot to sit - on your leather reclining chair.

December 7th, 2010 we added another housemate - Ah Lian senior.  An all-girl troupe down here in the increasingly hip place to live.  The baker downstairs now has a big group of cult following, of very chic, eclectic, cultured, tasteful people.  There are musicians, singers, actors, designers among others in the building...in fact this place is so incredibly inclusive and international we also boast tenancy of a group of very very scantily clad ladies who go out to work in the evening, speak dialects that I don't understand.

I have been making use of this space for various meetings and rehearsals.  Thursday adds to the flat of this air of homeliness and quirkiness.


A busy busy place, for two busy busy ladies, and the feline who doesn't have any playmate.  She spends a lot time looking out from the window to the earthlings below..

I've always wish I could get inside of her head and see what's going in there.  I want to know if she is lonely.


Finally, after more than a year of half being the only cat here..she was faced with Clara, incredibly friendly and younger than her - whom I brought home after much much deliberation.  I want to provide a playmate for Thursday.

I didn't work, Thursday was very very upset.  I was too untrained for the work required to put in to make the meeting work.  I sent Clara back to Peter's the morning after I put Thursday through hell over the Clara episode.

Clara


Back to being alone, Thursday remains the young white queen in this white castle, a tall castle all the way up here...cool and breezy.

October 6th, 2012.  Ah Lian moved to her new studio in the morning.  She said she came to my flat with just 6 big bags of clothing and belongings.  In a year and ten months, her stuff grew to about two car-full.  I drove to her new pad with my car full of her clothes and some bags.  She now has a new queen size bed in the new pad, and her very own Unifi internet.

My parents came to stay for three days, in the now vacant guest room.  My dad mopped the floor to kill time during the stay, as usual.  The floor was incredibly clean, result of having been mopped twice a day by him.

Thursday watching a rehearsal in session

October 9th, my parents went home to Taiping...left me with very very clean floors and kitchen.

Now I am truly, really alone, at last.  In our home.  Without you, without Ah Lian, without parents doing the weekend stay over.  Just Thursday, and me.

Still, there are reminders of you all over, even after two years and beyond.  Your single malt collection looks over the hall from the high book shelves, your spare helmet is right next to the collection...your books.  Your biking boots still sit inside a bag under a chair in my study.  Your torn and very worn black denim jacket hangs inside my wardrobe next to my short dresses...that blue jeans of yours hangs inside our bedroom behind the door since middle of 2010.

Yet they are clean.  Sumathi comes in every week to take care of my need for a clean flat.  She cleans the whole place, yet your stuff stay where they are.

I am very excited about this brand new chapter, this truly, truly alone living space.  I will embrace it and love it and treasure it, care for it and yes, I will miss you a lot still.  I will make new friends, I will travel and read, and cook more (hopefully), I will even try to flirt more.

Just want to tell you about these.

Alone, but very loved, and missing you,

B

How to love

Am going to tell you something very serious - how to love someone.  Am not saying that I know all of all there is about love, or that I have prefected the art of loving, or that I have loved enough in my life to tell you and to lecture you what it's all about - but I can tell you that I have experienced a good kind of love, and from my experience and through my living example so far, I think it is the best kind of love, and the best way to love.  And I mean to say that that was how I was loved, how I was loved, was the best kind of loving.

Thanks to a young friend who asked me yesterday over a chat, "so what is the way to your heart?"  It sounds like a simple question in passing when someone is flirting with you but somehow I paused and thought about it very very seriously and I didn't want to answer it lightly because I knew then, everytime am asked a question about what I want in love - I will be serious about it and for now, that's the way I want it to be.

So I thought about it for a while and I think hours later, many errands later and with the question at the back of my head, it came upon me that I knew the answer all along; just that nobody ever asked me like that that got me thinking about it.

So here it goes, let me tell you what I think is the best way to love someone wholeheartedly and with all your heart.

To love her, you want to make her happy, is to understand why you fall in love with her.  You understand her dreams, her passions, her hopes and her nightmares.  

You want to see her happy, you want to see her living her life in fulfilling her dreams and hopes, you want to share the love she has for her life and doing what she loves.  It's very pure and simple, you love her so that you just want her to be happy, you know what makes her happy, you do all that you can to understand her dreams and you do all that you can in your might and your will to make her dreams come true.

You encourage her to work hard for her dreams, you support her in all the ways you could and you share her happiness when she achieve something, a milestone, etc on her road to success, her path to greater heights in her ambition.  You do all you can to inspire her, and to make her want to be better in her craft, her work, her career, her arts.

You also share her pain, her doubts, her demons, her nightmares.  You hold her in your embrace and your strong belief that if she just work hard at her dreams and plan a working system together, nothing will be left behind.  You reassure her that brighter future is ahead, and that her hard work would be rewarded.

You also bring laughters, silliness in her life.  You share your values and your positive outlook of life with her.   You show her living means making the best of the situation she is in, after working hard and trying her best, what she is to do next is to just enjoy whatever the work brings, and enjoy the moment after the battle.  You show her how you love other people, how you always find the best in others.  How you always choose to see the good in others.  

You may say that that is not a job of a lover, a partner, that sounds like a jobscope of a mentor, a person trainer, a company leader...but why not?  Why not have a love like that?  What do you want from your partner and your lover?

Anyway, that was how I was loved once, it will remain in me for the eternity to come.  The life I live now is an extension of his love, everything...my values, my music and my singing career, my friends, my families, my outlook for things, and things I've learned to care for - are an extension of the love I have experienced from him.

He saw my love for singing.  He saw it the first time he watched me sing on stage and decided that he wanted to help me - to sing, just to sing. Because he saw how singing makes me so happy.  So he just did what he could to help me sing more, he was really just a clueless boy about showbiz who got it all correct, he said, "I just want you to sing, and help you sing more."  For that was the most important essence for our love. He wanted to make me happy, he knew what makes me happy, he wanted to help me do more of what makes me happy.

Everything else came naturally.  He made me take driving lessons so that I could drive myself to all the auditionas there were to come, to all the rehearsals that I would need to attend.  He bought me a keyboard so that I could learn to play and help myself in music.  He bought me the best seat in a theatre show so I could watch the show and learned a thing or two, and to enjoy the show.  But he only bought one for me so he could save some money (because the ticket was so expensive) and he knew that I didn't mind going to the show by myself...the list goes on.

When I failed an audition or did badly at a performance, he would hold me and let the tears flow.  He would then tell me not to worry, "Don't worry, now you just need to do it many many more times.  Yes you may fail again but you will always be better if you work at it ok?  The important thing is that you will never be in the same place tomorrow, you will always improve if you practice, ok?"

He also shared his passions with me, he made me see how much he loved his bikes, his work, his silly friends and his family.  Through all that I learned too.  I was learning how to love, and live, without knowing it.

He also taught me the importance of making the best of the moment we are in.  He taught me how useless it is to stay angry over something petty, and how unhelpful it is for anything.  He taught me how to walk away from a bad situation and focus my energy on something more useful and positive.  He taught me the importance of speaking softly, the wonders of getting something done by just smiling sweetly and request softly.

He taught me how to enjoy a simple life with simple joys of eating simple food, reading quietly, enjoying someone's company without needing a conversation.

He taught me the joy of enjoying one's surrounding, by jogging, cycling all around town and beyond.

The joy of photography, writing, reading, eating, sleeping...

I will end here, I hope I've said simple enough for my thoughts to come through.  Love doesn't need to hurt, love can be simply glorious, bright abd full of joy.  So I urge all of us to love well, love deeply...

Janet

October 7th, 2012

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Justin aka Sitting Ducks, was my, I quote W. H. Auden:

He was my North, my South, my East, and West, 

My working week and my Sunday rest, 

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song...

He departed on Oct 3rd, 2010 while doing what he loved.  I hope to continuously commemorate his love through my singing and life.

Days Flying Passed

His anniversary tomorrow.  Two years.  Nell and I are going to volunteer at the soup kitchen with his mommy tomorrow morning, like last year on October 3rd.

We bought secondhand aprons for the occasion.  It's my first apron since my school days.  I remember mom had to make me an apron for the Kamahiran Hidup class in high school.

This song by Pink Martini (Everywhere) sounds like a dedication for he and I:

Everywhere I go I know

Everywhere I go will glow

The sleepy summer sky

The lovers passing by

All the cities too 

Make me think of you

Everywhere I go I see

A world designed for you and me

I always realised with every new sunrise

That you are with me everywhere

I've never ever known a love that lasted

Beyond the thrill of a first kiss

This love of ours has utterly surpassed it

And now my bliss is this

Every time I'm far from home

I am never quite alone

Whenever we're apart

You're always in my heart

For you are with me everywhere

Every time I'm far from home

I am never quite alone

Whenever we're apart

You're always in my heart

For you are with me everywhere

I have moved on in so many ways with my life since two years, I feel.  I have learned so many many new things in the two years, and so many things I still don't do well enough.  I wish I knew more about his family on how they are doing with the two years, though kept in close contact and I see them most every week, I don't get a peep into their inner lives...inside worlds.  Still there is a nice and warm comforting feeling when I spend time in their house. 

Still I wonder the meaning of moving on.  How do you move on after you've had the best one?