Beginning the repatriation

"Meh-leenda, Meh-leenda!"
"Si?" I reply, pitifully ignorant of anything else Spanish.

My host mom/landlady's eldest daughter delivered twins today -- her third and fourth children. I have until now thought that she is cow-like in many respects, that she is vulgar and harsh, and yes -- she is rather bitchy. But she just gave birth to twins! Last night I had another few moments of bonding with Tito, the eldest son, and I laugh with her own rambunctious giggle when Rosario (landlady) reveals to me that she has a sty in her eye -- as do many of her friends who all live in this building. It seems like just when I am getting ready to leave, I am beginning to feel much more at home. And if only I spoke Spanish ... I suppose I dream that I could have been more meaningful to this family, and they to me.

But it seems that the world is conspiring to send me home -- if a China Airlines one-way ticket in September only costs $571, including taxes and fees, then I believe God has spoken. God ... how he becomes such a daunting figure in my conception of what life will be like at home ... were I to suddenly face an American judiciary in the attempt to receive asylum, I would claim religious persecution in the form of traditional, hierarchical religious familial social structures that make my love life impossible and my own spiritual quests faddish. Oh yes -- doubt not the invasiveness of the Methodist public eye.

I jest -- I obviously released it and myself from our awkward relationship, although in light of my current career path it will somehow be made known that my directorial debut was for a Christmas outreach musical at the Drama Center on Fort Canning Road in December of 1999. Various house plants from my home served as setting, alongside a few risers (for the angel choir, of course) and some fancy scrim hanging from the flys for some heavenly effect. It seems fabric on the stage was my motif at the time -- note massive white cloths stretched across the UWC stage, black-clad (what else -- my piece was modern dance after all) younglings crawling beneath. Oh yes -- these are the memories I face in trying to return to Singapore as an artist. These are the tales of ambition without true knowledge or guidance, that I have nursed yet tried to forget while I've been away de/reconstructing myself. These are demons I face, alongside my fear of not being any thinner than when I left.

Stupid!

At least Andy has left, stranded himself back in Seven Oaks in order to booze with his now married friends and write and attempt to publish his first novel. It's really his third. My name, my Chinese name, was used in his first one, which he says was of course shit and will let no one read it. Should I have found it inappropriate for my high school drama teacher, who I of course was semi-in-love with (except that he talked rudely to most anyone brown, which I will not forget), took the name that I had never really come to associate with myself for his first, shitty novel? Should I be madder still that he never let me read the second one?

I suppose I can wait until this third, or the fourth, or never and he will relent on his death bed. Then again, this is the man who stood before an assortment of 200-odd 12th graders to proclaim, "If there is a God, let him strike me dead." I don't think I was alone in thinking at the time that Andy was only saved by the fact that he did not end with "now."

So Andy, the teacher that carved out my passions during my four years in Singapore as an adolescent, is no longer there, which is good because I will have to stand for myself, and not so good, because I would like to have a beer and banter with the man. The older I got, the less I took his bullshit, but the back and forth is always fun, and he will always win because he simply has more facts. Obscure facts. British facts. I really do wonder what Andy was like at a young age. I would like to be able to picture his interactions with his first girlfriend, and his first boyfriend. I expect he is very much in the gay camp now, but I recall him never denying that he has liked girls. Oh, then there was that cast party at his place when Amanda Mitchell gave him a genuine, sincere hug, and somehow that was scandalous. Other scandalous things were going on then. Angela was in love with him. Scandalous things were the lifeblood of UWC seniors reason for existence. And I will admit, I was almost proud of the fact that I managed to weasle my way into the club, even if it was only justifiable to them and to me under the acting umbrella. Don't adolescents take themselves too seriously ...

I am praying silently to myself that Andy and Amanda never read this blog, although Christina-now-married might, so I hope she will laugh. THe rest of you -- my American friends -- will just know more of how bizarre, or rather, tabloid-like growing up in an international school on a tropical island can be. And you doubted I was superficial ...

All that said, I am excited to meet up with Russel Britton for dinner tomorrow night. He was an excellent, fucking hilarious comedy actor in our time at school, and also reliable and trustworthy as a colleague and friend. I believe he was editor something-or-other when I headed the yearbook. He's Australian. Has a sister. His mum was the master school bus lady, and liked to wear large floral print, particulary with colors that augmented her crest of permed silver-grey hair. Russell is one of the few from UWC who came to the States rather than to Australia or England, and ended up in hotel management. That's what he's doing now. He came out in college -- see what the Americans do to you? JOKE -- though I don't know what's up with this girl he's visiting here in New York is about.

And so all this stream of consciousness to say that I am closer than ever to actually leaving in a month, and I'm scared. I'm frightened most of all of having any sort of responsibility, which is funny, considering who all the people I mentioned above have always conceived me to be. Smart. Ambitious. Reliant on responsibility to keep her sane and unalone. Quoting Shouri, another "lost-and-found" friend: "You, of all people, could have been anything you wanted to be." Weren't we all, when the future was nothing but possibility and hope?

And now ...?