Chewed Longing

          I envy my grade five self-made papier-mâché project. I can’t believe that it will still be ‘alive’ up to this day considering my age at that time and that it was my first time making it. I remember that we were just generally told of what to do. And so I gathered pieces of used bond and manila papers and a piece of tin can. Firstly cooking gawgaw (cornstarch) so I can have plenty of paste, then cutting the papers into small pieces and finally pasting as many as I can so that eventually it becomes so thick, I foolishly paved my way towards the first part. After it completely dried up, I laboriously cut it into halves, removed the tin can, pasted additional layers of paper again and voila, my very cheap paper mache pen holder was done. And for beauty’s sake, I managed to add designs into it by painting it royal blue and pasting bits of egg shells shaped into flowers. 

             Weirdly enough. Yes. I felt resentment towards it. I saw it in my box of abubot, touched it, noticed that some of the egg shells were gone, then impulsively threw it across the room. But nothing happened. So I did it again and again, until I just grew tired. It won’t even soften, or break or just something. It’s so thick and hard it was able to survived my fit of random anger.

          Memories of everyday encounter invade me. And my foolish belief resurfaces - that despite living in this artificially constructed paper mache world of feigned friendliness, as time pass by, those smiles might become genuine. But like a hastily constructed paper mache object, it wasn’t unusual that cracks would start to appear over time. Those cracks were probably a sign that it was about to crumble. See. That’s why I really envy my grade five self-made papier-mâché project. If only I could swap it with mine, so that I can finally have a sturdy friendship.