Today I sit in the the shared kitchen in the dorm I live in in Hong Kong, gazing out at the mountain of endless trees some 200 metres away, as I do ever so often. The depth and immensity always makes me a little dizzy. I don't think I've lived so close to a simultaneous view of thousands of trees and sky high buildings before. The landscape here is a curious thing.

Most evenings in Hong Kong I pass a little crowd of men watching each other play chess, just by where I live en route to the MTR. It is an eclectically composed community. Their age range span decades. Sometimes there is someone with a violin, sometimes another with an erhu. Sometimes there is a lamp for when dusk comes to illuminate the chess board, but sometimes they simply huddle over in the low light. It is like a little world in the corner. I smile to myself every time I pass. A little wonder for every day.

do I simply pass in and out? a sojourner with no place to rest my head. over and over again, i am reminded that i am an outsider. but of course, what expectation can i have - for someone so new, so temporal? who will invest in this person that is so transitionary?
days like these exacerbates the longing to just settle - for me to settle into a place, into people's lives, and they into mine.

who will listen to my heart? who will understand this heart? Lord, you know my heart.

Every day is an exercise in translation.
I make mental notes:
'Cut out the lahs; proper sentence structures; none of that broken slang.'
As a fellow Singaporean half-jokingly responded to my question of 'Now what time?' -
"Who can understand you?"

Here I must remember:
That the toilet is the bathroom,
That queues are now lines,
That the lift is the elevator.
Who can understand me?

I feign understanding at temperatures in Fahrenheit,
At distances in miles and weights in pounds.
How should I understand them?

My tongue learns to adapt. It rolls and drawls, it enunciates.
Sometimes it is unrecognisable to myself.
Sometimes I hear it and I cringe inside.

What would the old me have said?
So adamantly Singaporean, so insistent on who I am (or was?)
But you gotta do what you gotta do -
Who can understand you?

Soon though, these words, these meanings, these vowels become a part of my everyday.
No longer all that foreign on my tongue.

Now will I catch myself saying crosswalk instead of zebra crossing back home?
Or gas instead of petrol?
Would that be a mark of homage to these places and people?
To the life that I've lived?

Soon this will seem all too far away.
Even now the dreaming spires and cobblestones of a year ago are faded in my memory.

But the marks of these years I will still bear
Perhaps in the most unexpected of ways,
Finding that

I have become foreign;
Lost (with)in translation
?

Written towards the end of my time in the US - on the plane from Philly to SF I remember distinctly. But these ideas had been mulling in my head for some time now. How do I describe some of my daily thoughts and feelings? This is one attempt.

Playing music truly makes me happy. It's gotta be with people though. Need my own crowd of people who can "spur me on". What a sense of exhilaration and excitement and satisfaction!

Something to remember the seasons we were in, as well as the constancy and steadfastness of he who neither changes nor flickers.

in autumn the world is at perpetual golden hour
but still, the turning earth -
its darkening days, its distinctly colder winds;
our coming of age

in our world, perpetual seems the opposite description
but still, quietness and trust that is our strength -
his steadfast love, his unending mercies;
our lips utter, sometimes in silence

bless the Lord, bless the Lord.
perpetual hope, perpetual peace,
love and light that will guide our days;
grace that blows all fear away.

Some goodbyes are filled with much fanfare, and much a deal is made.
Others are quiet, a little awkward, not many words,

Backs turned, the car pulling off,

Gone.

I think existing is giving me a headache