I have to wake up in about three hours to call a taxi to get to the Greyhound station and later Arlington, Virginia to crash with Jen's friend Natalia, and the reason would be frantic last-minute packing that would not have happened if I had not scintillated in post-exam sloth, trailing through ice with armfuls of laundry that came to such an alarming quantity that two round trips on the slippery Hereford steps were required, triggering accelerated fear of falling because the bulging basket obscured a clear view of my feet (and once I cannot see where my feet are I must fall down). Then deciding it would be nice to listen to never-will-be-afraid-to-be-selfish-bastard Robbie ("If you should die before I leave / What on earth becomes of me?") while I assembled my suitcase, the Devil Laptop sucked me in. I must and probably will not be able to touch the Internet for the next three days, at least, so this is the last note before I pull out the cables and stick it in my backpack for the crazyass flight home.
No one here believes that we will be literally in transit for two days. They do not understand the many things Singaporeans do to move off in trajectories towards their ideas but more importantly, somewhere off the island. I do not feel that way, but when travel becomes preciously familiar, it is easy to daydream about gathering the world within your reach.
My last final was Physics and it brought my worst academic experience, unrivalled, ever, to an abrupt and happy close. That is all that will be said about that, an end. That was Thursday, and while my tentative idea of catching the alter-raised Brokeback Mountain (not showing in too-small Charlottesville theatres) when we first considered stopping in DC from the 16th before our Dec 19 flight will have to die, I can only say all this ties in very neatly with the fact that I was still in school yesterday, because there was a major power failure. Sudden black, stunned silence, but all good because
- there were people on my floor resorting to hauling couches and foldable tables into the dorm halls to study because all the lights in our rooms had gone kaput, so thank God my exams were over,
- I would not have been able to pack in the dark, or do my laundry for that matter, because the weather was particularly slushy and I did not want snowy clothes (the sun reappeared today).
Helen will be frolicking in Anaheim by now with her boyfriend on true dream vacation which she totally deserves, I hope it will be fairytale-like. It was for me, even without the boyfriend :). Remembering California made me remember the whole May journey, and its wholeness, and the wildly beautiful drive to L.A., and sitting in the Penn Station at the bagel-and-coffee place during 9am Manhattan rush hour, thinking, "This is it," and that was the whole beginning of touching America. That was a holiday, blessed in its easing of length and responsibility, and that is perhaps how Singapore will become to me over the next four-or-so years, the stopover, while Virginia becomes concrete. America the ideal! In my favourite case study, even your enemies think that. But we have branched bewilderingly, nothing less, by being here.