forgetting to dream.

I’ve always been a sucker for romance, a hopeless romantic. Hopeless. I sit here, alone in my apartment, watching the Singaporean romance-movie “The Leap Years” for the second time.

I rarely watch a movie twice, at least not by choice. But tonight, I did.

Friends used to shake their heads at me for being the Romeo-lover. Overly idealistic with love, Petrarchan, stupidly romantic, believing in true love. I used to dream about love, and falling into its cauldrons willingly. Poems, flowers, hidden post-cards in bags, singing love songs in the dark, writing love tunes…But I’ve forgotten a lot of that now.

Sure, my lips still speak the same language, one that sometimes rolls of the tongue as how we sometimes never do us consciously how do we actually know how to ride a bike, but just get on and go. My poems, the rare occasions that I do write, are more mechanical than art. My pen just writes a few words and instead of completing the sentence on the same line, just moves to the next with practiced, numbed instinct. Poetry. I have forgotten how to dream about love. Pride and lust have filled the place where pure romantic love used to reside within me.

I don’t know why. Or perhaps I do know parts of the answer already. It could simply be a natural part of growing up, dampening ideals with the cynicism of adulthood.

But whatever may be the reason, or reasons, I want it back. I want to dream about love again. What hope does this cruel modern world hold if we cannot even dream of beauty in love? The relationship that we share with our loved ones may be imperfect, but that does not prevent the love we share with each other as whole, complete and perfect. And when we dream, when I dream, we’ve got to let the chains of coy schooled-trepidation fall away, and just dream all the way. Dream as though you’ll live forever, live as though you’ll die tomorrow.

I want to dream about love again. When I write a love letter, say I miss you, I want each word to have that same warm-glow in me as it did when I was 15. Now I have another chance, with my café girl. I’m going to take it.

Uncle T