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| by comrade commissar | Thomas | @ Tuesday, October 03, 2006, 2:37:00 AM | permalink |
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Sitting at home on a Tuesday night I realised I haven't been out on a thorough all-nighter cycling trip in months. Of course I could head out this instant with the trusty 2-wheeler, but back then I was fuelled by insane volumes of caffeine concentrate, and a maddening desire to escape the weekday limbo of secondary school math equations and formulas that I never did get in my head. Out in the night, alone to my thoughts, it did feel like if I pedalled harder I could get away from it all, if not a couple hours at least. Substituting a real trip I recall memories of past ones, recreating an ideal version. It was boys' playground games made more serious, we moved at times in roving packs, as dashing knights on iron steeds, as a howling gale personified. We barked instructions and warnings to each other, zipping through the lanes - the junctions - the useless traffic lights angrily flashing at an empty midnight void of traffic. I imagined at times a nocturnal post-fossil fuel reality, at others having somehow surviving and experiencing post apocalyptic world, the silence a testimony to the lack of any other sentient life. On a downhill steep slope Edison balances himself on his bicycle, gingerly stands on his pedals; he raises both hands outstretched away from himself and flaps them like a bird, all the while dashing at breakneck speed down the long empty slope. I cycled alongside, taking my eyes off the road to look at him. He seemed motionless, instead everything hurrying past him in immaterial blurs and whirls. It was craziness, it was defiant, it was unbelievable. The surreality of the moment engulfed us and we hooted and screamed with primal tribal abandon, at the night streets where there were no one to reprimand us. We were insane, young, reckless, hopeful, defiant, invincible. We felt the future's potential and sensing our destinies as rulers we were awed. We were a self-styled motley crew of brothers, chatting hour after hour as neighbourhoods idled past like moving wallpaper. Casual conversation and pensive reflections aplenty, but then silence would creep in unknowingly and everyone is lost to their own thoughts, the things that they are unable to express, and the things that they will not tell. Staring down at the lines and dashes painted onto the tarred road I imagine them as some kind of hidden message, like hieroglyphics or morse code, or a trail leading to location of buried riches and wonders; marked with an huge 'X', just like typical pirate maps shown in cartoons. At other times, all semblances of decipherable meaning are discarded, double yellow lines and zebra crossings ambiguous like dodgy roadside palm readings. As the predawn hours passed by the black darkness is diluted by increasing hues of sky blue. The effects of sunrise weigh heavy on our biological clocks and the first feelings of fatigue begin to set in. We pressed on, fighting back this muddling haziness, the blurring of vision, the accidental eye shuts and micro-sleeps. Morning commuters to work and school grow ever more in numbers as the skies continue to brighten, in our barely maintained consciousness they all seemed generic and at once faceless, foggy outlines and ghastly shadows. The peak hour rush is now in full force, the lumbering hulks of buses rumbling past our frames of flesh and aluminum by only inches, a drift of wind and exhaust in our faces they left in their wake. The major roads are now teeming with malevolent cars that all seem to be painted in identical silver black or blues. I can barely keep my eyes open, I- We reached home. |
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<--latest post-- yea yea i was caught--short story: alternative reality--helter skelter--backdated: GSE @ suntec--i see the light--this modern twist--something to try the next thing around--between raves and beliefs--backdated: girl from katong seekers--farewell yap & LBB, i love GSE-- --last post--> |
