Drive: Part Two

Markers in our lives come in many forms, shapes and sizes. Sometimes they're things we have, the clothes we wear or the people we meet. Often they're most noticeable when something feels different even when it's familiar, the way a song means different things when you're alone after some time being with someone. Whatever they are for the individuals, markers (like bookmarks) usually herald the end of an era of sorts, and the beginning of another. They're transitory placeholders to remind us that we're moving on, even when we don't necessarily want to (the way almost all change begins anyway) and that inevitably life DOES go on.

In a way, I think I encountered two such markers today. The first was when I was watching Malaysian Idol this afternoon, and saw that TV3 will be turning 20 this year. To a lot of people, it may not mean much (understandably, of course) but to me it suddenly made me realise how much time's gone by since I was that chubby faced kid sitting impatiently in front of the telly in my family's rented house in Kajang, waiting for the first signal from STMB (what TV3 was originally known as) to be broadcast. Everything came back in a rush, from the colour of the walls (beige) to where the TV was placed in the hall right down to what I'd had done since I came back from kindergarten that day (made friends with a boy named Ronald, him and me loved Spiderman). As I waited for that first telecast (can't you just tell I'm a TV addict) that would usher in series like Automan, Matthew Star and Knight Rider, I was so...excited, breathless even. Back then the future was still far away, in that cloudy space where cars flew, people shot lasers out of their armbands and like in every other show, there always was a happy ending.

How different things turned out to be.

As I came back from the jaunt into my mind's Vault O' Memories, holding my Xbox controller and gaping at the scenes from Oshin that was being screened, something in me let out a soft chime, or maybe it was a beep. It was as if a curtain fell at that point along with a card saying "that's all folks" on the stage that is my life, and no matter how much I'd have loved to feel so excited like that again, regular programming continues in this continually broadcasted story that is Ash's Life.

The second marker I passed as I was driving earlier this evening with a group of friends back after running some errands. As the car swung in and out of various areas in PJ, I couldn't help but think of my previous entry on roads, and how though we pass through the same tracks at different parts of our lives, the meanings become different. It's as if the needle on the record player reads the grooves differently, sometimes until it feels like we never really knew what was recorded in the first place.

I remembered, though. Remembered the breathless excitement of going to fetch someone, or to see her at a particular place before she had to leave again. Driving through the rain, racing against time, getting lost and then laughing about it over supper, those long treks not knowing where we'd end up, the unfamiliarity of the area (back then) and then always, the sense of coming home.

Something I'd not felt, not in a long while. But then someone honked, the curtains fell and I was back on the federal highway trying to remember that feeling, and realising that that period in my life was already over, and that like a well-loved book we always go back to certain pages in our lives, if only to re-read our favourite parts (so now I guess at least some people will know what some of my favourite parts are).

So here's a toast to markers, those unspoken, sometimes forgotten milestones we place (or are placed for us) in life. Nights like these, when it's cold and the silence looms (does silence ever do anything but loom) so oppresively you feel like you're the most alone person in the world (or at least your apartment block) they're always there, carrying little bits of sunshine and stolen, golden moments of bliss, forever in freeze frame, and as perfect as we remember living them.

Goodnight, folks.