the past

I went running today. And took another route, other the the usual canal, Ghimo, Commonwealth and Clementi rd route. I ran up Buona Vista... on the way back home down holland road. I was passing Coronation Rd West.
I just had to run down that road.

As i did, something broke within me.

So much attachment to that place! So much meaning is embued within those streets. in the neighborhood i grew up in.

I walked back to Jalan Ampang. My whole body was heaving with sobs. The past was indelibly gone. Yet it lingers on in my mind - in me. I walked past 33 Jalan Ampang. I glanced at it and cried. And cried and cried.. and walked on. just kept on walking down the hill... turned left down lim Tai see and was going to the playground or back to Sunset way.

My home.

so familiar - so far, so near, lost ...

I was overcome by my emotions. And had to stop for a while by the green railing along Lim Tai See. A voice told me, "Deb, you need to go back. Go back and have a good look at 33 Jalan Ampang. Deb, the past is no more - it's gone. And you need to let go of it in order to move on. You need to let go of it all... to live in the now. To live in the present."

I went back. just stood there for a good 10 minutes, and cried my heart out. I've been dreaming of home for the longest time now... in my dreams, i'm sitting at the table in 33 Jalan Ampang with my brother and my family... the sunlight lights up the room.

Now 33 Jalan Ampang is a 3 story edifice - very LA looking... complete with a louvered rooftop and a basement for 3 or 4 cars. As i stood there looking, another car drove in and an American man came out with someone else. I couldn't see clearly... he same something, it was quite indistinct, but i caught the words, 'it's like you're living in 3 realities at once'. How true.

I remember when I was 9, when i had just got back from school and was still in my Nanyang uniform, the doorbell rang. I went out and was greeted by a middle-aged caucasian couple. They introduced themselves and said that they were the previous owners of this place. They asked if my parents were home, but no one except me was in, so they just took a picture of me behind the gate, (with my permission), thanked me and then left.

A couple of weeks later, we received a letter from the couple, who introduced themselves to us and who also enclosed that picture of me behind the gate and other older photos of 33 Jalan Ampang and the neighborhood before we moved in. In those photos, there was no housing opposite of 33 Jalan Ampang, just empty grassland. My mother was abit shocked that they had taken the photo of me, she felt that it was quite dangerous that I let them take the photo of me. Haha.

Anyways, that just reminded me of myself. OF the 9 year old Nanyang girl. Of the adult me now that came back, needed to come back to revisit the house. I thought to myself, 'well, now, who am i?'

I am the girl that walked up this hill almost everyday as a child,
I am the girl that likes the color green,
I am the girl that had her first boyfriend at 16,
I'm the girl that's crying now, revisiting this old place in her heart.

Most of the memories associated with Jalan Ampang are penciled with grief and angst and a general sense of loss and abandonment. But it's still meaningful to me. It is precious - somehow ...still.

Nostalgia is said to be a grammer lesson where you find the past perfect and the present tense.

The past for me was far from perfect.

I say that nostalgia is a longing for a place where we can belong. A place that no one can ever find on earth. It's a longing for Home.