Lyrical Recollections

• 38. Talk about songs that remind you of certain people

"Lately, I've been.. I've been losing sleep... Dreaming about the things that we could be..."

Me, walking on a pavement in CBD in winter time Sydney, the night air is crisp and I'm surrounded by a group of laughing friends. We are on our way for a quick dinner at the harbour - it could've been Pancakes on the Rocks. I shrug my thick coat closer to my small self and look around at the city lights. I'm in Australia but this is somehow so familiarly European, recognizable in weather, temperature, architecture, fashion, even in how I am reflected in this environment.. and my heart strings tug at my brain and I think "please God please, let me live abroad one day." 


"With you with you with you with you with you.. Ohh... And I.. Will never thought to deny.. that you were my whole life..."

We were that polaroid snap of a pair of young, reckless and stupid teens. Face flushed with that feeling you have when you meet someone new and begin a friendship, a radiant mingling of excitement easing into comfort and relief with every increasing compatibiity. We'd drive through McDonalds in Section 2 in your Kangoo to buy cheap Sundae ice cream cones, as we did every Tuesday night after our physics tuition. In between getting our lips sticky with sweet dairy, we flit through topics about life, family, our future concerns .. well, as concerned as two sheltered sixteen year olds living in Shah Alam suburbia could be about the future. 


"So I pack my bags and go... As far away as I can go... Cause everything ain't what I used to know..."

I'm clad in black beanie, a white jacket, grey leggings and my studded boots, (important because I feel my ootd was kickass) leaning backwards onto the window of this Keio-line train. We're exhausted - it had been a long day of extensively walking around Odaiba, and we were finally on our way back to our little homestay in Chofu. You're sitting across me, just mildly scrolling through the photos on your samsung camera, and I smile, thankful that I made this trip with my best friend. I take in the moment - the computerized announcements in Japanese, the tangy smell in the air, the other patrons in the carriage looking like a Bingo game of typical Japanese caricatures. There's a boy with spiky hair and glasses reading manga, men with stern expressions in dark grey suits carrying their briefcases, weary women with face masks obscuring their small mouths. I could do this foreign life forever, I think. 


"And I don't want the world to see me, Cause I don't think that they understand..."

You were that boy in school - that quiet, pale boy that was so good looking but so unattainable, and more importantly, so uninterested in mingling with the mainstream class, choosing instead to fund your passions for Naruto, computer tech, and sometimes skipping subjects for a rogue game of rounders. You grew out of your shell and became a whole man of your own, blooming within the framework of your interests. 

"We're a thousand miles from comfort.. We have traveled land and sea.."

I'm standing, feet cold on the metal flooring, on a balcony in Victoria Docks, a modern housing area in a more industrial part of London. Definitely, this is not the white walled, iron fenced Kensington townhouse I had in mind, but it's good. Different good. A man-made river, extended from the River Thames, stretches out in front of me and it's my first week here, so far from home. The sky is gloomy, already ushering me into future forshadowings. I can't quite get a grip on the feeling but I know I'm completely displaced. There's a whole new world of possibility just hanging in the air.

"Wait for me to come home..."

It's this tiny, 4 inch iphone screen that becomes a portal for our realities to connect. Me in my room in Greenwich, all drenched in a dim yellow light, facing my laptop. You, lying down on your side on  your bed in Serdang, and for some reason this memory is at a time where your duvet covers were maroon. Sometimes I play this song falteringly on my ukelele, but you still take it in with a smile. Otherwise the sentiment of its lyrics hang in the air, as we flow through our conversations and catch up, trying to make the most of the present. 

In the past few years this last song is probably on repeat in the background of my daily life.