Three Green Lights

Outside my window, in the distance, where Hougang Avenue 2 meets Yio Chu Kang Road, at that junction where chapel and mosque stand almost side by side, I say, as I have countless time before, three green lights. They glow amidst traffic, tell drivers it's okay to go ahead, and illuminate a slice of quintessentially urban asphalt, traced with lines white and double yellow. They glow as beacons, of modernity marking its presence beneath old rain trees.

One starts flashing. I can't make it out from this distance, but it's that little green man perpetually caught in mid-stride, all of a sudden hesitant, undecided, lingering at the edge of the sidewalk.

The lights turn amber, then swiftly red. A parenthesis in the ebb and flow of the city night. In cars paused as though for breath, drivers adjust the volume of their stereos, tune into FM93.3 or Class 95, change a disc, lean back into their seats. Couples clasp hands, exchange quick glances, smile at some familiar tune chance sent their way on the airwaves. I'm listening to Django, letting Paris blend with Hougang and its lights, wondering what Jean Danker and Glenn Ong are up to these days. Everyone's strung together by music.

The lights turn green again and for the millionth time the cycle is complete. If Bob Dylan had grown up in this city he'd have written odes to peace based on the never-ending repetition of traffic light cycles. In it's chaotic clutter and mad scampering the city finds its own regularity, its little mechanical islands of peace.

I wait for the lights to change, more patiently that the drivers behind their wheels.



- 9 February 2008