Listening to: the special two
missy higgins
I'm singing in the rain,
Just singing in the rain,
What a glorious feeling I know.
Glorious rain, the sweetness of the sound of cascading drops, pelting down hard on my windows. I'm always happy when it pours. Even an overcast sky turns a weekday a holiday. I've always had a fascination with water; large expanses of seas, small reflections on puddles. It's always good. I never wear mascara anyway, and i'm not averse to running through the rain. I never did maintain a glamorous image anyway.
One of my first memories.. I must have been 3 or 4. I learnt how to swim before i hit kindergarten. The father had left me on the steps of the adult pool to get a little something something. Being the fool girl that i was and still am, i decided to take a little unassisted walk into the cool blue of the pool. A baby step at a time, i walked. Slowly because of my stubby legs (some things never change), calmly because i was too young to panic even when my nose was below the water; I continued to the pool floor, and i remember.. I remember.. looking around at everyone's legs, eyes wide. I felt no distress at all. In my naviete, i breathed in. I wasn't in the slightest discomfort. There was a feeling of immense calm, the muffled gurgles of distorted sounds you get when your ears are in the water, a warm feeling of being cloaked in.. comfort. The next thing i remember was being hauled up by my arm painfully, and staring at my dad in confusion, wondering why he was so flustered. I'm pretty sure it didn't last for more than a minute, but it felt like a private eternity of deja vu.
Another memory. In a living room. No parents, siblings in church, hormones in a tizzy(some things never change), whispers amid my manic giggles.. Our warped conversation, of my dares and your promises.. Into the garden we walked barefooted and with my hand in yours, a slight drizzle adding to my goose pimples. To the pool we ran, looking out for the neighbours over their high wall. Once again i was carried down the steps, as in my toddlerhood. I swear i never felt cold even as the sodden cloth of my clothes left me, all wrapped up in the shine of your eyes as i was. I was drawing a parallel even as you moved nearer to me. This time i wasn't just submerged in the deep waters of a pool, but so much more.
To draw parallels in life from even the most basic and mundane happenstance. Whether 23 or 6 years ago, they strike at the most awkward and incongruous of times. Someone mentioned he was a karang guni of belongings. I guess that would make me an equally avid collector, but of memories.
How long will this written memory last online? Will someone stumble upon it when i've all but forgotten this blog? Will whatever inadequate read i've provided here spark off someone else's memories? An unwritten, unquantified meme.
Carl jung maintained that all consciousness and symbology is a collective one. Is it possible that we all feed off the exact same stream of emotions, the same niagara's of bliss, the same pale dredges from the deep?
When i think about this, i don't feel quite so much like a legal alien anymore.
