Through The Filters

With him everything seemed to have that tinted glow. Not rose tinted. But as if viewed through muted yellow filters. The colours were richer, her laughter louder, her hair shinier and her skin glowed. Like the old Dove ad. There was something about that time made it seem as if everything was tinted with that slightly fuzzy happiness that made everything ok. It felt like a time shot in Vaseline shots.

And now the filters have changed. Everything now was a dull boring brown. Nothing was funny anymore. Not even her. How unfair that that glow went away with him. How unfair that he left and the brown came back.

In My Place

Out of all things that she could have remembered from that book, what she did was a paragraph that didn't matter. A young truck driver drops everything to accompany a strange 60-year-old man who talks to cats. Another falls in love with a girl in a picture. World War II soldiers lost in a forest have remained the same ever since. But what she remembers are half forgotten lines about a girl the truck driver could have visited. The truck driver wonders why he is going along with a strange 60-year-old on a strange excursion. He could have visited that girl in Tokyo "who always made time for him whenever he wanted to meet her," he thinks. Which is when it hits her.

She is that girl, she realises. There is no mention of that girl in the book again. Just that one line. It's easy to identify with that protagonist in a book who conquers all kinds of odds to get to his goal. Easier still to identify with the best friend or the sidekick, and like Kate Winslet in Holiday, feel like a side character in your own life. But nothing... nothing quite puts you in your place like the realisation that you aren't the best friend. You aren't even the best friend's other option. Yours is not the situation that could have happened. You were never an option.

You are those twenty words that people won't even remember.

Unidentified Coloured Object


So my very obliging girlfriends gather at my place to welcome me back after my three week hiatus. One of them has suddenly developed something of a social life in my absence. And has had an obvious pedicure and is wearing nail polish. Her pedicures would always come sans nail polish before so I obviously take note. Toe flirting, I accuse. And well, if a girl is dating anything she does is attributed to the sudden appearance of guy. Hair serum? Aha date with boy huh? Eyebrows done? Oooh date night. Dieting? When is date? Shopping? Going anywhere fancy with boy? Of course all of these things are stuff we'd do irrespective of boys but it's generally fun to watch them squirm and blush and deny start a general banter. It's like small talk. But better than talking about the weather. I mean with the weather all you can say is "Oof it's so hot" and it ends there. This on the other hand offers us endless possibilities for a conversation.

So yes nail polish. She demurs. "Yeah I finally went for it, because they got me a white nail polish," she says.
Girlfriend 2: "That's not white. That's more peach."
Me: "Yeah, a very light diluted with white sort of peach."
The one with a social life: "Han? I thought it was white."
Girlfriend 3, arrives later and the topic comes up again. "That's white," she agrees.
Girlfriend 2: "No actually it's sort of coral."

A day later, we're walking down the street to grab a bite when it finally hits me. "Aha! I know. This is shell pink."
Her: " Han? I thought it was white"
Me: No... think sea-shells. It's that sort of pink.

(We are very good at that stating the obvious. What's OCD? It's this compulsive need to do something obsessively, she wrote. What's shell pink? It's the shade of pink often spotted in sea shells!)

So now the matter is resolved. Shell pink. So there.