you know how it is like, when you're rushing for time and you refuse to take a cab, and you're at the bus interchange, waiting for your bus to come and take you away.. at that point of time, every man (or woman) dressed in their green uniform is like an angel, a carrier of hope.

we watch intently as they loiter around, and the moment one of them walks in the direction of your bus, your heart swells with hope and then you think they've finally come to rescue you from your pit of damnation for being late. every step they take causes your heart to beat faster, and your pulse beats harder, and you hold your breath with anticipation, thinking, "finally, finally, oh. my. god. finally!!"

and then this person clad in a green long sleeve shirt and black pants walks past you, past your bus terminal, pass the long, snaking queue of anticipation and he steps into another bus and signals for the people to board it. your heart crashes and you are devastated, you think, "damn it. i'm gonna be even later." and then you tell yourself to hold fast to your faith and hope that the next captain that comes along will save you. and the viscious cycle of hoping continues. you spot, you hope, you anticipate, dangled on a string, only to find that the string is cut and reattached a hundred times over before your saviour finally arrives and you reach your destination an hour late for a meeting with $200 000.

sometimes, you're that bus captain. causing others to watch you, your every move, and you cause them to hope, to anticipate, to wish.. and a million times over their hope is dashed to the ground, the very thing they feared. their only saving grace is that they're not the only one. they look around and they see, before them, after them, beside them... there are hundreds of other people who do the same foolish thing as they. fools. where we refuse to take a cab because we keep thinking that the next bus will be ours.

and sometimes, i am that bus captain, refusing to rescue myself, unwilling to signal to the others and drive my bus away. i don't know why i do that, but truth is, i do.

foolish damnation we cast ourselves into, but we find that we do not have the willpower to snap out of it. we see others fall and we shake our heads and wonder why they do what they do. we mock their clothes and ask ourselves why they wear what they wear. only, we do it ourselves too.

we look back at old photographs, memories of our tragic fashion sense. we think back on old thoughts, and are marvelled at our pathetic stupidity. we look in the mirror and wonder how we became what we were. and we ask ourselves, if we had a second chance, would we do it the same way? but we realize that a majority of us wouldn't trade our past for anything, and we also realize, that it doesn't matter what we think--there is no second chance.

i wish i could blot out my past, yes, even the recent past, but sadly, that isn't exactly possible, is it?

aye, indeed, time is a cruel thing. it makes you think that you're okay, when in actual fact your just numb to it all. it makes you forget precious memories, feelings, smells, sights, sounds. time eats up everything not protected by mothballs.

time slips by you without your noticing. time allows you to be comfortable in a certain position, and then it pulls the rug out from under you. time robs you of details, time mocks you, time steals your delight.

but no one can catch it. time, it is sneaky. it makes you run after it, only to find that you've lost even more of it, that even as you are running after time, time is slipping from your fingers.

time makes you believe you can count it using grains of sand in a shapely glass, it makes you imagine you can calculate it by two ticking hands, digital or otherwise. but you see, no one knows the true value of time.

time is a mystery, never to be found again, never to be unearthed. as archeologists spend so much of their lives searching for the stories hidden by time, they themselves are losing their stories to time, they too are losing it, losing time.

Grace ♥ 5:11 m.d.