Mirror, seashells, clear blue glass bottles
Tinkling windchimes
The smell of the sea breeze
Fragments forgotten by the ocean
left as traces of her short term memories
stranded on beaches
like illegitimate children longing to be reconciled
to that detached past
Picked up by foster parents scouring the wasteland
Where crows pick around for food:
like old placentas shed
left to dry and stain the ground.
As crabs burrow their way in and out of these trinkets.
Here’s an old watch a father once lost while teaching his son how to swim
There’s a plastic bottle which temporarily quenched the thirst of young girl in pink bikini
And look, a piece of jagged stone which once stood proud on a mountain
castrated
Washed out by rain
Baptized by the sea
floundering in frictions between the wave and the sand
pushed by currents half way across the globe
tossed by the pull of the moon
finding its way onto an insignificant island coast.
Where it still beckons to the mountain
its lost vital part.
While the mountain forgets and heals its own loss.
The jagged stone waits and remembers
as its memory is worn thin
with the coming and going of the tide
A young girl picks up this jagged stone
flings it back into the sea
watches as it gets swallowed up in that collection of displaced memory.

Colourless and bland, it tried to be yellow
but failed as grey crept onto edges
and blankish whites dominated.
Maybe it was brown.
She smiled, did she not?
Or was it a frightened stare
meeting my eyes.
Frightened? no,
emotionless
Empty
except for my interpretation.
Next to the mother serious straight-faced.
A tinge of artificial rose on the cheeks and lips.
Was the face hiding a smile?
Nothing was, is revealed.
A captured moment that said nothing
escaped when the flash ceased
when the image became transferred onto paper.
The lost person, the lost hour
Standing infront of me
holding the picture up against her daughter's face
asking if she resembled her.
As the daughter exclaim
"I don't remember having this dress or this hairstyle"
She don't remember being that girl.
Strange.
How did the image escape her? Where is that memory?

She loved stories. Ever since a child, hearing the hypnotic rhythm of her mother's voice reading illustrated books. Like old poetries, like water flowing, like leaves falling, like so many things. She wondered if the stories were magic. Where was that princess,or her evil step-mother. She would find them one day, the apple trees, the golden stairs and the glass slipper. When she grew old enough, she would journey to find these wonderous places, she would touch them and live with them, for she knew that they were real. It was in a world that was lying just beneath our everyday one, she thought and swore to remember. This is the secret that all children know, but will forget.

And she did. She went to school, studied, made friends, had crushes. Grew up. She forgot, turned her back on the magic world. Letting it slip away. It once breathed beneath the living world. Now it was lost, trapped in pages, became a ridiculous child-thing. It was faraway. Fairytales. She still loved them and haunted fairytales sections in libraries, hoping to catch a glimpse of the entrance to that world, she once saw, felt, heard, was certain of. Somehow along the way, time became a commodity. Broken up into measurable segments. Her life was governed by these things. Responsibility took the place of childhood fantasies. Her mind sometimes stretched back to those earlier times, but always there was a wall. Somehow, she had crossed an invisible line and could not return.

That magical rhythm of the voices, of the stories became mechanized time slots for her day to day activities. Work, lunch, work, knock off. Study, break, study, study, home. She was awake, but she slumbered; Sleep-walked like many others. On rush hour trains, in school libraries. Hoping one day, she would wake up to find that dream world of hers, now replaced by another one of another kind. And like many heroines in her favourite stories, she will. One day, with enough determination or prehaps desperation, she would.

On that day, she would be in the midst of working on some seemingly important frivolous document. Then in a strange momemt, she would drop her work. walk out of her office. She will keep walking. She walked past her present life, walked out of the demands of the people around her, crossed that bridge of her teenhood, entered that garden of her childhood, still as it had been, unchanged. Cross a river of consciousness, fall into the abyss of her unconscious mind. Walk to the other side of the forest where a grandmother once waited for her granddaughter's visit in a red riding cape. Where a wolf stalks. Where a wood cutter is hard at work. Then at the end of her journey, she would find the source of all stories. The one story teller standing in that meadow, dressed in lights, weaving dreams. She would slowly appraoch the figure at once both infinitely old and a new born every second. She would ask him "If he is god or if he is destiny and if she is dreaming or dead." He would just take her hand without a word and smile.

Are they lost? The moon I once saw from a bus on my way home
peeping through the buildings,
the cat leaping across
from one building to the next as I sat there
taking an exam.
That old phone in my grandparents home
I dialled for the police and then
waited in fear.

Fear was then still formless, possessing things in convenience
Dolls, wind, boogies, clowns, policemen on the streets
School teachers and homework.
How I liked the neighbour downstair's sunflowers
and killed them when I kept pouring and pouring
from above
And guilt in its intensity
never could understand why
I felt bad, just did.

Is it now gone? That fish pond I once loved
Queueing every recess to feed
perhaps they are gone now
Trophies I could have won, lies I told or did not.
friends I have found and forgotten
Countless bags I have left on the streets
remembering later, much later

How the world glowed with curiousity
everything was wonderful, terrifying
a mystery
I never tried to solve
Gone. But this is new.
This remembering. Salvaging of the fragments of colours
To ponder over. Nostalgia like Michael Jackson's song,
not of the past.
Only of this search to put back into some whole. These things
fallen apart
washed to foreign lands
picked up by others as some new toy
or locked in some box
covered with dust next to the dead moth
waiting for one to stumble upon them
once again like magic.

Show host: Well Hello again to all my viewers. Today, I am going to have an exclusive interview with none other than the big man. The BIg Guy. No, not the president of the United States as many of you might think, But even BIGGER and BETTER. I am having an interview with none other than, Mister....(drum rolls) GOD himself. A big round of applause!

music and lights flahses
(figure in white robe, wihte hair and beard appears)

Show host: Good evening. And welcome to my show.

God: Why thank you, it is a pleasure.

Show host: I have to say, your, hm how should I say it, your looks and your outfit surprised me. It almost looks like a cliche, if you'll forgive my bluntness.

God: Well I thought, it might be better if I appeared in a more familiar form. Well, I could have razzled dazzled you bunch more I supposed. I have thought of appearing in the form of a pineapple, but really, I thought you having me here would have caused commotion enough.

Show host clears his throat : Well, now that I have you here admist your busy schedule, I am sure I have lots of questions the viewers are dying to have you answer. We will take a couple from the floor, and from the email at the end of the show. And don;t forget the phoneline. If YOU have a question for GOD on this show, don't forget our number is 1900-ask-god. I reapeat 1900-ask-god.

show host: Now. You've been busy, I see.

God: oh, of course, always the same old things, I have to do.

show host: so do you ever get bored?

God: Well, there's a tough question, I can't really feel bored, I suppose that is a purely human emotion. But if you go on the premise that you are created in my image, I suppose you can say so. But..

show host: Really? But how did you come up an idea like that to create life? Surely not out of boredom, I suppose?

God: Well. It is rather a secret, and you wouldn't understand even if I told you.

Show host: Oh come on... I sure the viewers at home are dying to hear more on this. Come on. why create anything and furthermore, what inspired you to create humans.

God: Well, it might have been a bit of an accident or maybe inspiration.

Showhost: Good Gracious! Accident! that's heartening news! To hear that you make mistakes and worse, that we're one of them? Oh alright, let's go on pretending that you indeed make mistakes, which would you say was your greatest mistake out of the following? Responsible for creating Satan, planting the tree of knowledge, creating human or having tested them?

God: Well. I really.. can't say for sure... I have never seen things from that angle before. Maybe letting the human race go on for as long was a blunder, you are always destroying things, dying here and there, excreting, drooling, sweating... Oh, I don't know, rather nasty sort of creatures. But amusing I would have to add.

Showhost: Now..I'm sure many in the audience today wants to hear some message from you in these commercialized and superficial times. If you had one message, what message would you give them to these people?

God: I would just like to tell everyone that..

[Show interrupted]

The show is interrupted for a live news report outside the studios. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

News reporter: I am here, outside the studios where a live show of an interview with God is still recording. A large crowd has gathered here. And police and riot controls have arrived at the scene. It is chaos here. Here protests have been going on since the starting of the interview. I have with me, atheists protesting the existence of God.

[camera shows banners, and protests calling slogans]

reporter: Christians and catholics along with believers of various religions have also gathered to show their disapproval.

Supporter:This is the work of the devil! Blasphemy!! A Fake! All Lies! More money grovelling dirty work of the media!

Reporter: Scientists in support of Darwin's theory of evolution have just arrived at the scene Bringing with them two apes to make their point. The peace lover organization has also appeared in protest against the impingement of the freedom to religious thoughts, and international good will through the appearance of only the god representing one religion. They demand the others to appear.

peacelover: This is an outrage! We have fought long and hard to promote international and inter religious friendship and look what this God fellow has done!

Reporter: It seems as if the protest may become violent. The situation is tense. More reinforcements have arrived and as the show progresses inside the studio, the corwd has gotten worse. Fund raisers have also arrived to promote their own causes, such as the red cross and green peace. Others are selling souveniers for the occasion. Some are just here to look in on the commotion. Just now passing in the crowds there has been talk of storming the studio. PIlgrims have started flooding the whole area. There simply can be no easy end to all this m.....

[Because of an emergency at the broadcasting station, all live telecasts have been cut, we are very sorry for inconveniences caused. Following this, is the high action drama with the babelicious cast of, Bay watch. Stayed tuned]