Out of a can of fruit and nuts, I happened to pick half a hazelnut. Not broken, you understand, just a whole that was a half, for unbroken brown skin covered it.

And I think that must be how we all are, incomplete wholes. Short of confidence, for some; too much frustration, for others. How do I navigate this life so when I leave it, I’m complete? Can I live it, complete?

I wonder what being whole is like. Perhaps that nut was put there to remind me that life is beautiful and fascinating because it is incomplete, and trying to complete ourselves is that by which we become complete.

Because we would be working towards personal fulfilment.

Insects have hearts.

A tiny moth stayed the night on Friday, quietly watching as I slept. Twenty-four hours later, a beetle stayed the night, though I switched on the light outside for it. They turned up when my fiance had left and everyone had gone to bed, when I was all alone, as if to tell me, “hey! we’re watching over you.”

I know they leave when the sun comes up, because I never see them the next morning. And I’m grateful the universe sent the tiny ones to keep me company.

Insects have hearts.

Every time I fall ill, my body gets a chance to reset itself.

And it always tries to, even after three and a half years of working irregular hours. It always tries to.

I – mercifully – stop worrying, because there is only one thing for me to do: get well. I sleep lots, and I sleep early. I wake early too, have breakfast at breakfast hour, and would have done so much more by the time the clock hits 12pm, then I normally would have.

Everything’s great, including – and very possibly especially – the wallowing in self-pity, which feels totally justified. Until of course, I start getting better. Then, bugger all, everything returns to the way it was.

I cannot seem to relax, because I’m hyper aware that there is an expiry date on leisure time. These thoughts stick in my head: What are you doing with your free time? Are you wasting it?

No matter what I’m doing, I am consumed by the manic thought that I must make full use of this precious time. Time is not for wasting.

So, while on medical leave, I can be trying to take things easy, just lazing in front of the TV, spending time with my pet rabbits etc… but I’m in a sort of frozen panic mode. Then, when I look at the clock after any activity, I kinda unfreeze into full-blown neurosis – realising that two hours have passed, for instance, and I have achieved nothing.

I have nothing physical, material, to show for it. Nothing to show myself.

Which is not to say that I find relaxation, intrinsically, a chore. I merely find it incredibly difficult to let go of the notion that time is limited, and if I don’t maximise its use, it’s gone and I have to go back to work. Especially as this is the time I wish for myself, every single day, five days a week.

Constantly aware time’s slipping by, I mentally police the passage of time by recounting what I did since square one, while I’ve physically moved on. Like recounting what I did from the moment I woke – to drill into my skull that I did do something. Sometimes I recount, minute to minute. Yes, you can’t relax at all this way.

Let me tell you right away that this has unhealthy repercussions, because you lose trust in yourself. And you begin to really exhibit signs of medical neurosis, repeating certain actions unnecessarily to demonstrate to yourself that, yes, you have indeed done something.

I am clear on what is most important to me in life. Yet this happens to me often, even when I’m on a holiday. Therefore I extend my “me” time by sleeping late, so I can do more.

And my health gets affected again.

I guess if everything is a matter of perspective, maybe the viral infections I keep getting are actually blessings, and it is I who is the virus.

And maybe, like all bugs, I flourish in contamination.

Aren’t many things in life this way?

People, sharing a space in time, for a brief while. You and a friend meet, then your friend leaves to meet others, and you wander off. You see them pleasantly gathering, and this leaves your field of vision as you go where your feet takes you. And your feet takes you away…and then they carry you back; you peer to see if your friend is still there, but he has left. ‘Where have they gone?’ you wonder.

But you realise that in that space and time, the moment you both shared is no more, and time moves on, and the clouds carry on drifting, and traffic continues its buzz and hum in the red and green rhythm of motion. The space remains but everything is fleeting as time carries people away; people continue meeting friends, and gatherings upon gatherings replace the gathering you saw…

You stand there wistfully, but the world has moved on.

So you move on.

When I was a little girl and my mother took me to school on the occasions I was late, I felt such a deep impregnable sense of sadness, standing within the school compounds as I watched my mother walk away. It was a feeling very hard to bear, I felt so vulnerable and alone, with my mother leaving but I – staying. I didn’t feel this way when I boarded the school van, only when I missed it and my mum had to take me to school herself. I knew I would still see her at home in the evening but, still, when I stood within the compounds of school and she remained on the covered walkway to wave me goodbye, I remember feeling miserable at her departure. I would walk a bit, stop, then look back and long towards her diminishing figure.

And when I came home, I felt relieved and happy to see her waiting as I alighted from the school van. And she would take the weight off my shoulders and comment on my untidy hair.

Some things never change, and we are all little girls and boys inside, aren’t we?

I put on my red earrings, shoved my feet into black Nikes, and left for work.

**********

They skipped along for attention in that bit of atmosphere beneath my earlobes; those glass beads along the rhodium hoop partnering my footfalls. If you squinted and peered within the multi-faceted beads, the trinkets would have laughed and played with the young light of morning, giving you glimpses of a rose-tinted street lined with trees and neat doll houses, along which the bus gently purred.

“God has not promised
skies always blue,
flower-strewn pathways
all our lives through;
God has not promised
sun without rain,
joy without sorrow,
peace without pain.”

My feet waited patiently on the dark blue of the bus floor, my workbag and file balanced on my lap. The beads grew solemn and moved more gravely as the rose-tinted reflections of my quiet neighbourhood gave way to the hard gray of construction and underground tunneling. Like a metallic caterpillar, the traffic crawled, till the feet deposited me at the makeshift bus stop, with the hands assigning between themselves who would hold the bag and the file. My feet hiked towards the stolid orange temple as they had for the past two and a half months, every footfall appealing the blue sky which was denied me in my daily confinement, and returned to me only the following day, in that fraction of time constant.

“God has not promised
we shall not know
toil and temptation,
trouble and woe;
He has not told us
we shall not bear
many a burden,
many a care.”

The hours trudged, slid and shied around me, as I tossed about in the kerfuffle of work and human relations. Like a pendulum, that single marble bead swung from its silvery grip pierced through flesh, and it seemed to bleed a tiredness that pooled atop my shoulders, drawing them inwards in a curvature my spirit resisted. My feet folded themselves beneath my body, and the red earrings chimed a stoical rhythm each time my eyes flitted to the inspirational poem placed on my desk.

“But God has promised
strength for the day,
rest for the labourer,
light for the way,
grace for the trials,
help from above,
unfailing sympathy,
undying love.”

Sometimes at work, I would pick Andes up and he afforded me a measure of cheer, knowing I have cared well for him. Andes, the cactus with the tiny pink flower atop his prickles. At home, my guinea pig had passed on on Wednesday morning. He was barely a year old, a cute long-haired variety with a shock of brown fur on his head. He had a face of a teddy bear, and had been given a clean bill of health by the vet. I had not taken any photo of him, and he had left.

I walked home at the outset of the weekend, my exhaustion eased in the night air. Two pairs of eyes followed me, and I smiled, at two cats curled up on neighbouring steps. In dappled ash and ginger they sat, as I wondered if they were sibling felines, and if they would flee if I sat beside them. I did not, their languid poses astride a flight of steps were plenty comforting enough.

**********

The girl in the Nikes tramped around purposefully, and her earrings anchored her in the femininity she shut out as much as she could while at work. And in the weekend, the red earrings lay quietly inside the doll house, ignorant of silent tears that crept out of her windows when no one was around.

(September 3rd, 2006)

Today I chanced upon a tree, a flame of the forest, and it was magical entering the little clearing it enclosed; it was like a little world the tree had made. I felt that I had entered a different realm when I crept past the outstretched branches and came to stand beneath its shade, its canopy. In its heart.

What a delight, to come into something I had pictured about before only in my head. And there was a breeze drifting… And there was the open water, open sky.

At times, we grow so happy till the heart feels like it really could burst. And I wish I had the power to collect every blissful droplet that spilled over so I could pour them back and none would be wasted. Then again, how delightful it would be if they all seeped into the earth and watered the scene that has moved me so.

It has moved me so.

(May 26th, 2004)