It gets harder and harder as the climb ascends. Now the question is how much do I want this, and how much do I want it my way? I think I'm at an exciting time in my life where I can really build this for myself, and control my direction and journey.

I just don't want to fight for the sake of fighting. I need to choose my battles and ensure they are in line with where God is working.

Horkay.

When you sang with me, 'I find I'm scared to know I'm always on your mind', you got that darn right Tristan. Especially with how you're screwing all this up. Checkered shirts and checkered history, whatever. I'm making an effort to remain your friend.

Dennis has lost you, now me?

The Lord of the Rings speaks more of Christians then it does of Christ and Christianity. It's a communal story of faith taken by people who know no absolute truth but the love they experience. It's a tale of a journey, not with doctrinal facts but with the little that you know and the many that you love. And ultimately it's a brutal revelation of the true cost of goodness, and of love that bleeds.

I cannot carry it for you, but I can carry you
~ Sam to Frodo, at the foot of the mountain. Where he showed that you needn't answer a person's questions, or solve his problems to do what you should be doing as a friend.

And then there's the process of irreversible pain, as Shirley Lim states "some hurts are amputations", they never heal. In my journey to Canada and away from Dennis, and back here again only to find myself further from him, I realise as Frodo does that there is no returning. There are some wounds that time cannot heal. I know I've said this a thousand times and I will keep saying it, it's over.

Now here I am coming to the recognition of my need to geographical permanence to establish myself.

My dear Sam, you cannot keep being torn in two. You must become whole and one.

Alright. I will try. And soon, perhaps, I can be one, in two places.

Today I found a new peace, a new heaven.

Andy, Jiayin and myself (sans Lingu, darn it) spent over three hours at Carl's Jr in PS and talked the night away over 5 cups of iced tea and 2 toilet breaks. There was such beauty between us, very diverse people who, save for the fact that we were grouped together by Lofty and Poon, would otherwise not be hanging out. It was peaceful and healthy, no cannibalistic emotions or silencing barriers. Just the memory of a close knit theatrical family and the present safe distance, neither too close nor too far. Just. Perfect.

And we'll keep meeting up this way, friends foreign to the usual routine, too far to threaten, too close for fear. And we'd share, and challenge and laugh and love. Like a Church.

It takes love to move one to love. And love is decisive, it is conviction. And after tonight, I think I can love my Church again. Albeit in this way:

I am the harm which you inflict
I am your brilliance and frustration
I'm the nuclear bombs if they're to hit
I'm your immaturity and your indignance

I am your misfits and your praised
I am your doubt and your conviction
I am your charity and your rape
I am your grasping and expectation

I see you averting your glances
I see you cheering on the war
I see you ignoring your children
And I love you still
And I love you still

I am your joy and your regret
I am your fury and your elation
I am your yearning and your sweat
I am your faithless and your religion

I see you altering history
I see you abusing the land
I see you and your selective amnesia
And I love you still
And I love you still

I am your tragedy and your fortune
I am your crisis and delight
I am your profits and your prophets
I am your art, I am your vice

I am your death and your decisions
I am your passion and your plights
I am your sickness and convalescence
I am your weapons and your light

I see you holding your grudges
I see you gunning them down
I see you silencing your sisters
And I love you still
And I love you still

I see you lie to your country
I see you forcing them out
I see you blaming each other
And I love you still
And I love you still
[Still ~ Alanis]

This is my church in all it's entirety. The church I am called to love, and will struggle with, to love and to be loved.

School, Angeline, Kelvin Chia Partnership, and a few bee-lines in and out of colourful clothing stores, dripping with cold contempt for the less-then-fabulous. I was flying high, walking on air, being THE smile on the face of the earth. My future is too bright, too possible, too blessed and too beautiful for me to grasp the weight of the now. And sure enough, 6 hours later, I am here depressed.

No, but that doesn't negate the amazingness of what is to come and what is now. Being surrounded by beautiful beatuiful people, with the promise of being surrounded by more.

Tristan Siu, whatever it is, you're my friend.

You will always be a part of me,
I'm part of you indefinately.

"What does this song remind you of?" Sarah asks one lazy day in our living room in Walter Gage. "Tristan Siu, when we were 12. I had a huge crush on him and he had one on me."

silence.

"TRISTAN???"
yes let the world curl up into that little ball that it really is.

This is family. Sitting around complete strangers who all wear the same wrinkles, as if bearing their mother's stories in the folds of their skin. The same story flickers across each face as each recalls a story, his story, her story, their story.

I walked into my Lau Dua Kong's (my grandmother's oldest brother) house and gawked at the number of relatives that have successfully evaded my knowledge. I mean, since when did my Grandmother's 9 siblings have children and grandchildren of their own?

I gingerly stepped in, and word got round that I was doing a school project on my family history, and before I knew it everyone was sitting around the tea-stained table shouting out their stories for my western Macbook to pick up. All in teochew. I would've fallen asleep during the three hour session had it not been so emotionally charged with laughter.

Laughter that fell in tears.

And at some point, when they laughed the hardest, my great-grandfather's ghost rose from behind my left shoulder. He thanked me for rousing the memory of him in his children again, that he might once again live in their togetherness.

----------------------------

For the Chinese, eating is both material and cultural. We feed our hungry ghosts before we may feed ourselves. Anestors are ravenous, and can die of neglect. Our fathers' children are also ourselves. The self is paltry, phatasmagoric; it leaks and slips away. It is the family, parents, siblings, cousins, that signify the meaning of the self, and beyond the family, the extended community.

This is the meaning of blood - to give, because you cannot eat unless the family is also eating... Oh Asia, that nets its chidlren in ties of blood so binding that they cut the spirit.

Exerpts from 'Among the White Moon Faces' by Shirley Lim