#190 - Serangoon No Gardens

Lorong Chuan

In the Gardens direction

Shade

Yesterday I walked to Serangoon NEX from Gardens - it took me 25 minutes. What surprised me was how close it was - so much in Singapore is invested in creating these 'identities' which make places seem further than they are. But really, the villages around here were all within walking distance of each other and if you see Singapore as a string of villages all connected by walking road journeys, you realise how there are no distances. Of course you couldn't walk from Changi to Jurong in a day - well, maybe you could... maybe two days, but certainly, when the expressways were built, the sense of distance became weird because you didn't have a feel of how places were really connected to each other.

Also Singaporeans have this neurosis around time. A 25 minute walk in Ireland is nothing. It is literally the distance between Ardmore and Holywood Town Centre. Whereas 25 minute walk in Singapore is unthinkably long. Tell anyone you have walked for 25 minutes anywhere and they will look at you as if you have lost your mind.

The distance between Ang Mo Kio and Gardens is also the same. As usual they were two villages which would have been beside each other - and I have literally realised how Serangoon Gardens is so central to both. In fact to many places - Hougang, Upper Serangoon - I'd reckon that I could walk to Serangoon Road within two hours if you followed the Upper Serangoon route.

It is odd that it has taken me twenty odd years away from Singapore to have some kind of understanding of its geography.

After we had dinner which was a lovely meal of very reasonable Japanese steamboat, we went back to Gardens and had a Thai dessert. Then we went for a walk and chatted and talked - and we saw an old Gardens house which still had a garden - I said, Serangoon Gardens should now be called Serangoon No Gardens because the new houses have now all overbuilt the gardens and there are now literally no more gardens. To think that the single most defining feature of the place is now no longer there. It is heartbreaking. 

However, there are small mercies. The village feel of Gardens is still there and that's something. When everything else is gone... that's still there. I walked out today, this morning with Ghin. It is like walking in a filmset. Everything was still, very calm, very clean - it was the perfect temperature. This was Singapore remembered at its best. One day, we will not be back here every year - who can tell the future - but for now, this is were we are. 

This is who we are.

Ghin had three fluffy pratas and I had a prata plaster. He had a Milo dinosaur and I had a kopi o ping, less sugar. It was busy despite being 4.30 am, We talked about how it seemed no time at all since we were last here. The year has gone by so quickly. What is time after all? I said, it feels like we have been here for three weeks, not three days. We have seven weeks - it feels just... wonderful. After that we talked about Oisin's business and I explained to Ghin how what he was doing was different but the same as the merchants of old, but with far less risk involved. I reminded him of Beauty and the Beast and how that story must have come from the Age of Discovery. How the word venture comes from the word 'vent' which was outlet or opening or going out. And that also had its roots in the idea of taking risks, of going out to see the world. Our mornings begin at 4 am, that's perhaps why the days seem so long... This time next year everything will have changed. This year, everything will be different - but the same - but also I begin a new phase of my life. 

Singapore - like myself, Lianne is experiencing this sense that she has finally arrived at exactly where she was supposed to be. After all those weird turns, and mistakes and explorations - the two of us have kept true to our purpose. And that struggle, that initiation means that now here we are - finally exactly where we are supposed to be. I am seeing her next Tuesday to do work with the elemental beings probably in MacRitchie. MacRitchie, my other forest home. My life is printed on my body - a series of experiences, some so familiar that they have literally become part of me. As I have spent hundreds of hours running through MacRitchie and Belvoir these places have literally shaped my body. 

Women experience the world very differently I think. Our bodies are our destiny in any case - and women's bodies do dictate their experiences. But they have never been experiences which have been free. That has been our task, to reconnect. To self-actualise. As the  years pass, everytime I return to Singapore the sense of perspective is always brought back into focus. I remember things, I am reminded. And I recapitulate, I am allowed to reformulate. I never an allowed to forget because so much of my body when I was young was made here. I can see that Stephanie so clearly. In perhaps a way I may not be able to if I stayed in the same place all the time. I think in Singapore too, the body plays such an important role because place changes constantly. So we must fight to keep our sense of place within memory, within the body.

When Serangoon Gardens can become Serangoon No Gardens, who we were, who we were meant to be, these - all of these - are held in the body. And every year, I revisit these places, I time travel from the past to the future - and I am reminded once again.