Dear Diary,

 It must be painful for you to exist without having any control over your life, right? How pathetic! Now I’m etching my spontaneous, messy ideas into that white belly of yours, and you have no alternative but to absorb them. This thought alone pleases me and encourages me to write more 🙂

I would like to begin my monologue by telling you that I am finally allowed some freedom from my mom and dad, just to aggravate your existential dread. It has been raining rather industriously over the past few days, and many ants have drowned. This morning the weeping finally died down and the sun unveiled its face for the first time in weeks, so I can finally take you out for a walk with the parents’ consent that I begged so hard for. Where should we go, diary?

Please keep in mind when you choose our destination: we can’t leave my neighborhood because I have neither the money nor my phone with me (that’s when you know it’s a real zero-budget trip), plus my parents will cry their eyeballs out if they don’t see me return within two hours. Also, please don’t be content with a stroll in the concretes and aim for somewhere fun. I know them all too well, and whether we choose to shuttle between HDB buildings, play with the lift, or sit in the lobby, we’ll end up feeling just as empty.

Common sense tells me that: you can’t dig any fun out of the cement, just like you can’t get blood out of a stone.

But where else can we go, mon ami? The playground downstairs is filled with noisy children at this hour so that’s a teeth-gritting no from me; and based on our past sessions, I don’t think you enjoy stalking people with me at the crossroads either. We’ve never gone to the park connector of my community though. Rumor has it that it is an ecologically sound pace, so we might as well give it a try. I’ve previously heard from my relatives that the river in this park flows straight into the ocean, and if you and I have enough patience to walk for two miles to the end of the stream, we will be able to watch where the clear water meets the sky and all the ships coming and going.

Yes, I live awfully close to the sea, yet I have never seen it before. Should I blame it on my  parents or myself?


To get to the river, I start from my block, moving westward under the shades of numerous other buildings until gladly leaving all of them behind. Now I’m walking along an open road approaching the entrance of the park. While there isn’t a sign that explicitly informs me that it’s the entrance, a dusty directory of the park stands on the right side of the road, which shows that I’m at the beginning of a very long but straight path. Ahead the open road becomes much narrower, sandwiched by woods and a river. I suppose this river is the one my relatives were referring to. There are few people on the path, mainly middle-aged couples who are tethered to their dogs.

I see a weeping tree. Under the shelter of lush leaves, a hose leans erect against the Camphortree trunk, water cascading down the bruises of the tree. It forms a small puddle in the mud in which two bouquets of withering chrysanthemums float, one yellow and the other magenta. I don’t know who and why they put them there, but I tend to think these flowers were for someone who recently died just because they are chrysanthemums, and when the funeral was over, they were moved here and left decomposing ever since. I find them somehow romantic. I’m not trying to romanticize death here, but I just think that from the wilting of the flowers, you can see there is an incredible acceptance in the cycle of life in them—as well as other beings in nature—that you don’t find in people. Humans, who always refrain from the topic at the dinner table, look away when their loved ones are near their death and pretend they still exist years after their death. Maybe it’s just a matter of personal experience, but I always feel like what we call “nuances” and “subtleties” are purely justifications we made up for hiding some very simple emotions behind the bricks. There might be deeper reasons why people feel necessary to act like this, and that’s why I admire the flowers even more—they’re so open to death and the emotions implicated that they treat all living things equally and intimately, sharing the process of approaching an end with everyone, that it’s almost surreal.

I am shocked into stillness when a monkey swings past my head. This is the first time I have encountered this creature outside of a zoo or a monkey island, and I must mention that my past dealings with monkeys have not been the most pleasant ones. When I was five and on a tiny island, a monkey snatched the banana that I was eating and mocked my reactions. I never ate another banana, and I suppose I still am terrified of those creatures. Now it crosses the road to the side of the river, perches on the railings, and begins to smooth out its furs with saliva. I want to move away from that ogre, but somehow my legs are nailed to the ground, and my eyes are unable to tear away from its profile. It’s becoming evident that the monkey gets uncomfortable under my gaze, for it suddenly stops licking its back and winces at me. It has such sharp canine teeth. Then the monkey starts to make some yodeling noises which I usually find amusing, but not today, as they are about to become my death knell.

—that’s when a passing stroller comes to our rescue. A woman who is making a call parks her child’s car next to the monkey, not realizing it is there. I want to warn her, but seeing that she is shouting at the person on the phone and pacing around with a frown on her face, the rational part of my brain decided against it for fear of being scolded. So instead I remain in my spot and watch the monkey slide its paws under the canopy, almost touching the poor girl’s hair. To my surprise, it doesn’t mean any harm to her. It simply motions its hand back and forth as if to amuse the child, or perhaps to entertain itself? I don’t really know, but I can hear the giggle of both the human and the monkey. Anyway, their interaction is so cute that I can almost picture the monkey’s face on a powdered milk tin, with a gold-rimmed sticker next to it that reads “Approved by Pediatricians and Mothers.” But not necessarily the mother over there, for when she hangs up the call, she suddenly sees the peril and propels the pram away from the monkey.

I kind of like that monkey now. Without the child, it looks as miserable as I am and soon goes back to licking its balls.

A middle school boy with his head down and walking at a tight pace passes me by. He is the first teenager I have encountered and whom I assume would be interested in monkeys, so I ask him, “Wanna see a monkey?” He rolls his eyes without ever looking up and hurries away. He probably thinks I’m playing a prank on him or hitting him up, or doing both at the same time. But I’m no James Dean, and he’s no Natalie Wood—I’m only a monkey ambassador. I wonder what that makes him?

Just then another explanation for his indifference emerges in my head. Perhaps he has seen more rare creatures in the park? Like otters or monitor lizards which can make monkeys relatively unimpressive by comparison. Maybe they can take me to the sea.

By Hele