It’s a funny feeling, one that I have difficulty describing, walking down the streets of Clark Quay in the afternoon, on a Saturday no less. A moment, an opportunity to see, i mean really, see how different one place can be, depending on the time. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t intoxicated for the first time, in Clark Quay, since it was in the afternoon though i highly doubt it’s that simple.

No electricity in the air, no cheers, smiles or cries, just the usual sounds, the cars, the leaves and the birds, in contrast to it being possibly the loudest place at night and in the wee hours of the morning, especially during the weekends.The ground was dry and arid, but my imagination was not.

Well, not that it was a good thing, I’m not saying it was superbly inspirational or anything, my mind wasn’t dry, it felt like a soggy piece of cotton wool. Heavy and moist. Thoughts entrapped in my mind, thoughts that I am unable to express in any way, so as to understand them myself. Was it reflection? Contemplation maybe? Or could it be anticipation?

It’s like in one of those novels, how they like to say, ” you can almost hear the silence itself ” , I saw people deep in thought, but their thoughts were not voiced or foisted, like they would be at night.

Perchance it’s the alcohol, which they say, brings out the honest man in every snitching Bill and Steve. On a Saturday afternoon in Clark Quay, people keep to themselves, we and they adhere to social ethics and preconceived notions of how to act and be. ‘Scripted performances’ so to speak.

I found it disturbingly distasteful. Dry, quiet Clark Quay in the afternoon. Could it be that I saw myself having a drink there on the parched stony ground? As much as I didn’t like it, I was drawn to the place. Maybe it was because my perception of Clark quay was challenged and brutally shaken, from one end of the spectrum to the other, from it being cool, breezy and bustling to it being dry, humid, warm and desolate.

It made me think about how everything falls into place so nicely, whether it was meant to or not. ” Let the chips fall where they may ” so he says, the chips will fall either way, whether we stick our nose into it or not. It’s true, we can try to control the outcome to a certain extent, but there will always be a degree of ‘random’ that cannot be altered or modified. The random factor, the one that we try our hardest to change, always sticks.

Uncertainty, possibly, a better word. It makes life fun. It makes life what it is. You could be at one place at one time and have a totally different experience from the other guy who arrives at another time, maybe even if it was just a minute apart, and through these experiences, we form opinions, about people, places and things. Time defines, I guess I could say.

Time also desensitizes. Your first breakup, you’re crying, screaming and throwing things around. Your second, you’re more controlled, you try to go out and have fun (that’s what they always suggest, don’t they?) and try not to think about it, but you do sneak a cry every now and then.

By your third serious breakup, you’re desensitized, emotionally sedated. You’re upset for a day and then you’re back to doing what you usually do. Maybe that’s why I choose not to get into a relationship at this point, partly because I’m more realist than romantic at this stage of my life, being that I look more at the daily divorces and breakups than love stories of how old couples celebrate their anniversaries.

It could be that I have the desire to feel again, really immerse myself in true human emotions, not tainted by past experiences or hurt, because if I open myself to another person and foist my pre-formed opinions of love, of relationship and cause hurt because of my own past, how different am I from a vampire, cold-blooded and unfeeling, forcing his past onto every innocent other, maybe them replicas of himelf. Putting in them the insaitiable hunger, the dreaded feeling of wanting something, yet never being able to hold on to it long enough.

I guess it’s because I’ve been going to Clark Quay  a little too often, that i have been desensitzed. I’ve become used to the place, so much so that I get disoriented when I see the place in another light, sunlight, in this case. Though I can barely remember how it was like being there for the first time, I know it wouldn’t be wrong of me to say;

” It wasn’t always like this, no, not always. “