of cats, and conversations.

To adapt sabrina's opening sentence in her now extinct post, I announce
"today, karma decided to slap me in the face".

Well technically today, but not conventionally. Meaning to say, some time after two in the morning a certain person entered surath's room and asked if he knew beatles' songs.


Look at him. Fringe dyed blonde, worn jeans hanging on a shirtless body. Speaks with hesitance. Restrained. Lips forming slow words, deliberate words. Unsure. of his words, of his footing, his standing in this arrangement of bodies. Eyes straying nervously steadfast [I mean my choice of words] at the room's owner. We other three are naught but aliens and strangers. A rounded insolence wafts now and then. Repressed. What's that; a heavy chain with the cross hangs from his neck. Comes into the room, complies with the process of introductions. I shake his hands, he looks straight in my eyes. I approve. I never could bear the other. Retreats, moves out of my space and establishes his own near the door. We might make a good cast, one day. It was brilliant use of space by all of us. Stage directions, a leader to mobilise us. Anyone?

ahbeng

Undignified sounding words surely, but that is the truth. I make my call, and then proceed to what my olinda chu lookalike tutor calls selective perception. That is, I notice only stuff that supports my stereotyped judgement. Never knew I'm such a textbook case. Either sociology's remarkably perceptive, or I'm. what's that word. -frowns for a bit-
ah. mediocre.
He goes off somewhere and we resume our music.

Enter he with his own guitar. surath calls him his third girlfriend. and The guitarist. I look up. He enters the music making, and fingers flow guitars play and there is the sound of song.



What faculty are you in?
What?
Which faculty are you in?
Guess.
Science.
becky jumps in. says,
Computing, engine.
How old do you think I am?
Year TWO.

Perhaps her volume was unintended, but the confidence was clear.

and well well. Looks like my slurred speech sloppy swathed somewhat disdainful youth is a law student in his honours' year. The egg's on me, I allow. Me and my tendency to stereotype everyone into scholars into atheletes into artists into bimbos. Didn't the gothic teach me that archetypal characters are the failures of the romantic period. and don't I have ahbeng friends who are true, and know the meaning of friendship. Honestly, woman. Don't shift the blame, bear it honourably. I am at fault, and will offer my back to the whip. But I would like to talk about the players now.

The night passes merrily, and surath's confidence in him is not in vain. He is good.

And then something strange happens. The guitars and their masters, they undergo change. Human hands are now the instruments, used by the genteel wooden forms to shape sound, and command song.

Beck and I, we take on what A. Bell calls auditors; the fully expected attenders in the continuum of audience segmented between the addressees and the eavesdropper. I feel like an eavesdropper sometimes. What right have I to be part of such glorious conversation. It's unhuman, it's mellow, it's the easy-going intimacy borne out of four friendly hands. Strings are so exquisitely plucked, so furiously picked and notes so delicately brought forth that the guitars take on life and start talking. They do. The exchange of brilliance between the two goes on, and shifts with the wind, sways with the breeze; they harmonize, they gossip, they thrill.Sometimes their tune has a distinctly international flavour; we travel from jazz to rock and back to mere talk, sometimes one of them makes an observation, and they chat on that for awhile. It metamaphorsizes into an elvish conference, they take turns, they parley. It's an indian pow wow, it's a curious questioning, it's cozy pillowtalk, it's a talkfest a tete-a-tete a repartee. Sometimes they fence, sometimes they snuggle up in each other's treble and base clefs so that two strains are intertwined, melded and beauty abounds. It's melody's dance, it is. Here I pause to give credit to dolmetsch for the clefs.

ah. 'twas a pleasant night, 'twas a sweet night of song.