Today also started out as a terrible day. Went down to Braddell to sign up for a stall for a flea market, and on the way out, it rained. I hate rain. Everything becomes ickily wet and you're forced to walk under shelter, and wait under blocks until the rain is over and you can walk in the open space again.
And even though the rain is over, the humidity gets cranked up several notches. You can feel the bouts of warm, moist air literally floating off the pavement, like some weird outdoor sauna. The moisture sticks to you like an outer film on your skin, and you get headaches from all the steam. Damn damn damn.
Then you run into the library for a reprieve, and the aircon makes you feel as if you just stepped straight from a tropical jungle climate into a dreary wintry one. Little men start taking hammers to your delicate brain. And of all things, the library you went to doesn't have the books you went there to look for in the first place, despite you searching the shelves frantically.
And while you're there, familiar cramps tell you that a monthly visitor is about to make her presence known, even though your calendar told you that morning that she's not due for about half a week more. Despite the scheduling differences, your visitor stamps her feet in annoyance, insisting that she's right, and dammit she's gonna come and go as she likes. You're forced to cater to her wishes, and cancel a student in the afternoon so as to accomodate her, bloody bitch that she is.
Crackers. This day stunk. So now, change subject:
Time of the Ghost
Once again, the Gates of Hell have been thrown open, and its denizens let loose on an unsuspecting public.
Well, not exactly unsuspecting. From the numerous joss sticks stuck on the ground these few days, and the offerings of food left over the place, you can see that there are a number of people who have been expecting the arrival of these spectral visitors.
Joss sticks stuck lazily into the grass, their flames lighting up the pavement beside them. Men and women throwing sheafs of joss paper into bins, the flames leaping up hungrily for their food, the people standing around the bins, their actions robot-like, as they take one piece of joss paper after the other. Little pieces of black ash floating hazily in the air. The perpetual smell of incense.
The Seventh Month is upon us.
And besides this, the smell of the incense also evokes a sense of nostalgia in me.
Grandmother kneeling in the balcony, facing the sun early in the morning. A pair of joss sticks in her hand, she shakes them with short, quick movements, murmuring prayers for her family under her breath. The scent of the joss sticks, blown by the wind, enters and fills the living room. From then on, the scent of joss will always remind me of Grandmother.
On a lighter note, though, the Seventh Month is also when I start playing my strange games of hopscotch around the void decks. This is all thanks to the first volume of True Singapore Ghost Stories, which I read at the highly impressionable and imaginative age of 8. [or around there, anyway]
In that volume was a story about a man, who had stepped on some ashes from a burnt pile of joss paper. Now this was bad, because according to the story, the ashes were supposed to show errant spirits the way to Heaven and eternal bliss and all. And when the man stepped on the ashes, he apparently stopped the spirit from its rightful spiritual path towards eternity.
So he was stuck with this justifiably-pissed off spirit, always following him, because it had nowhere else to go. And he had this unshakeable feeling that something was always following him, until one day he spun around and looked into a pair of very ghostly and upset eyes.
He went to a medium, and all was sorted out. The medium persuaded the spirit to better pastures, and the man went on with his life.
Now, I'm a chicken. And I'm imaginative. [See previous post on exorcist] And when I was in primary school, I was an even bigger Imaginative Chicken. And this story freaked the livin' shit outta me, even till this day.
So from then till now, everytime I see a bunch of ashes on the floor, I take care not to step on them, to avoid being hooked onto some spirit. If the entire void deck has been scattered with these ashes, I tip toe gingerly, murmuring apologies to any passing spirit under my breath, hoping that they'll accept them and leave me to my peaceful mortal existence.
So if you're a innocent bystander, you'll see this big buffalo of a gal, hopping away in the empty void deck, all the while, muttering, "sorry, sorry, so sorry, didn't mean that, sorry sorry, duo jeh, duo jeh, excuse me, sorry ah, bu xiao xing" and so on, all the while with her eyes to the floor, and her long fringe covering half her face, Sadako-like.
Gee, after writing that, I'm surprised no one's ever run away in fear from me before.
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