antara

petang-petang lepas maghrib, aku lalu kedai-kedai yang dah tutup. rolling shutter separuh turun, lampu dalam dah padam. tapak kasut aku dah hafal jalan ni.

the mrt took me almost everywhere if i let it. sometimes i'd board and realise i didn't know the station i was going to and there was a specific feeling to that. not quite lost.

chlorine before i even got through the gate. then the sound that echo, big indoor space, water and kids bouncing off tiled walls.

aku tak ingat banyak pasal bahagian ni. mungkin sebab terlalu banyak bergerak orang lalu-lalang, benda datang dan pergi, semua rasa besar.

antara n. —

between; in the middle of; in the interval. interstitial space; interior. [malay/indonesian antara < sanskrit antarā (अन्तरा), interval, interior < psroto-indo-european *h₁enter-, within, between.]

memory does not preserve a place. It does something stranger, more tender: it arrives unannounced, bypasses will, and becomes sensation long before it becomes name.

antara contemplates the shared spaces of a singaporean life: thresholds that hover just beyond geography. through voxel reconstruction and fabricated atmosphere, the quotidian is rebuilt as recollection holds it — quantized, abstracted, rendered strange. the familiar is made unhomely. these environments can no longer be found on any map, yet they return with the gravity of somewhere you have never been, carrying the residue of use without the use itself.

and if they belong to one person's memory, why do they feel like your own?