I saw it all – the changing of the winds

Most people don’t sense the changing of the seasons. I can only imagine to most folk back home, they’re really aware of two seasons – the rains and the hot spell. Other than that life in Singapore just ambles along in the industrial cool of twenty three celsius produced by air conditioners.

Last night, I continued living my double life that no one suspects of running with the wolves in the pale moonlight – to be stripped completely of the world like a naked savage. Primal man. To sit around a fire with the tribesmen and peer intently at flickering shadows as they slither along the uneven wall of a cave – to look up at the stars and wonder what tomorrow holds. Above all to drink the juice of the jungle – that bubbly fermented tapioca brew that plunges one into the abyss of one’s primal consciousness.

To let go completely of the world in the way a man releases a heavy weight. To allow one’s consciousness to melt like a cube of sugar in hot tea. To feel the coil of the hypnotic beat of the drums encircling the walls of consciousness. To stare unblinkingly at the flicker of the fire as it dances, crackles and spit for hours….as the jungle brew weaves it’s mysterious spell drawing one deeper and deeper into another plane of consciousness.

I join a knot of braves dancing around a fire. Soon I am into it like a stylus finding the smoothness of the grove. I can feel the texture of the ground as the feet thumps into it ryhtmically sending a shudder down my spine with every step – dancing around the fire, like a moth circling a tongue of light, drawing closer and tighter all the time….to the very source of all its fears and fascination.

Then suddenly woosh! The moth charges into the flames – my mind’s eye sees it all in slow motion. I am aware of the every feature of the before, during and after. The momentarily feeling that comes when one knows it’s futile to resist – to allow oneself to be raptured till the only thing one desires is to be part of the very essence of what is the sum of all our fears and fascination – to charge like a screaming aeroplane as it ploughs straight into the jaws of blinding oblivion – to feel a thousand arrows pierce the skin…………to die and be reborn again as the mythical albino monitor lizard.

I can hear one of the braves turning to another and saying, ‘he’s turned into that lizard again…make way.’ They all dance around me, I can see it all – the blur of the wheel. To be in the eye of a mysterious storm………as the mythical albino monitor lizard.

I find myself standing on the edge of the cliff all by myself – the winds have died down. There’s an almost surreal fluorescence in the way the leaves glow in the dark – for a moment, I find myself struggling to understand how I got here – I look at my hands. I count my fingers. Ten. Or is it eight. Are thumbs fingers?

I look up the moon is full – then it came. The changing of the seasons.

I saw it all in that mysterious land last night….deep in the jungle….through the eyes of a mythical albino monitor lizard…saw the before, during and after.

Sensed the moment when air would be so still that not even a blade of grass moves…to be in that moment when the wind shifts ever so slightly like a whispering hush against the cheeks – to see it unfurl like some giant bird spreading it’s wings and kicking up the air.

A new season has come……