day 366

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day 365

And the days go on, the world repeats itself, and we reproduce ourselves until our last days, and the days go on.

I





there is nothing left.

H

day 364

I don't know when to end.
all paths are there.
You decide yours.

The span of the entire corpus -
escape the grasp of the writers.

bleed gently,
I lost the will to write further.
bleed profusely,
I lost the will to read further.

You repeat my acts of literature.
But you cannot repeat my faith.

(Wishing I was never born, as I.)

day 364

I don't know what else to write.

He who believes
He's written something has never written anything.

You who reads,
believe the inscriptions, etched deeply
as a dedicated letter to you.

We now say our names, slowly and eventually.

I never write anything.

He writes nothing.

And you read everything.

day 361

Editor's notes:

I've tried to compile these writings - left behind by 'I' and 'H' - to the best of my ability. Many of which remain missing.
Writings by 'M' are not included in the collection as they have gone missing.
I apologise for the incoherency and inconsistency of the order, the structure and the flow - these issues are beyond me as I am not a trained story-teller. I just present them as they are - as and I when I got hold of them. In fact, I apologise for not being able to differentiate the authors. I am just sure they must have been written by various authors.

I have with me only a few more entries - the last dated 13 November 2009. I will post them soon.

yours,
Editor

day 261

We let fly the sprinkles,
slip by, bypass the air
And unto dry skin.

Trinkle, twinkle - curl like a ball
flow down, shot through
But empty from within.

Wrinkled, rekindled, tears to mind,
and before they dropped further,

you raise your salted chin.

And dry the words to begin akin


We let fly...

We let fly... ...

day 262

the foreigner gazes upon the open city.
He asks, "where may I purge my sins?"

He receives a reply from a woman: "in the domain of love."

And so he falls in love with her.

In love, he asks, "where may I find my bread?"

An uncle replies with a scorn, "not till you feed me."
And so he buys a bread from him.

He eats, not knowing that he is disappearing.
The city closes herself around him.

He now asks, "Where is the next plane to my holiday?"
And his child replies, "after I grow up."

And he waits his entire life.

In the final minutes leading up to his death, he asks his children for an answer to his last question:
"where may I purge my sins?"

One replies, "in the domain of love."

..."not till you feed me."

... ... "after I grow up."

He sighs, and takes his last breath.

Right up to his final moments, he is still a foreigner.

day 263

I recall a general outline -
furnished by an unforgiving Rule - a thumb to press upon another thumb
and bloody sign my death upon the paper.

I imagine a particular dot -
stained by my blood - a drop from which all future words are tainted
and my canvas could never again be white.

And so we write, all about unicorns and cyborgs.
And so we dream, all about draconians and sunday school teachers.
I balance with my toes, and counter-balance with my tongue.
A fiery exchange of words and everything else shunned.

Mr YHWH called me aside - and said nothing to me.
Every word I recall, a foolish attempt to describe him.
Every phrase I string, a hasty knot I tie.
No words then are exchanged - just the honest shake of a head
and my worlds explode and nothing is left for me to salvage.

My words - His silence
I'm but a piper who plays his pipe without blowing.

day 264

What is Truth?

(to write what others have written; and to write what they tell you to write.)

day 265

There are approximately another 100 more days to go before we can leave enough traces for us all to disappear, live long and prosper under the million stars that die at night.

days 1,2, ... n

One may define a concept of an n-person reading this text in which each reader has a finite set of pure reading strategies and in which a definite set of interpretations to the n readers corresponds to each n-tuple of pure strategies, one strategy being taken for each reader.

Any n-tuple of reading strategies, one for each reader, may be regarded as a point in the product space obtained by multiplying the- n method spaces of the players.

One such n-tuple counters another if the strategy of each reader in the countering n-tuple yields the highest obtainable expectation for its player against, the n - 1 strategies of the other players in the countered n-tuple. A self-countering n-tuple is called an equilibrium point.

The correspondence of each n-tuple with its set of countering n-tuples gives a one-to-many mapping of the product space into itself. From the definition of countering we see that the set of countering points of a point is convex. By using the continuity of the pay-off functions we see that the graph of the mapping is closed. The closedness is equivalent to saying: if Pi, P2, ... and Qi, Q2, .... Qn, ... are sequences of points in the product space where Q. -n Q, P n P and Q,, counters P,, then Q counters P.

Any two equilibrium points lead to the same expectations for the readers, but this need not occur in general.

(Adapted from Nash, John (1950) "Equilibrium points in n-person games" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 36(1):48-49.)

day 8

At precisely the stroke of 6am, and not midnight, we change sides and cease to be monsters. At night, while asleep, while dreaming, we are probably digesting our food, weaving a fanciful tale, or we have completely blanked out and are done imagining our non-existence; then we wake.
As if a rude shock, we wake.

Do you know who you are?

As you piece together the vague images and the bubbles popping before you, you realise you are once again alive. And perhaps, you remember who you are, what you are supposed to do - choose between dread or excitement - and then you sleep.
In between those activities, you push yourself through, sometimes in touch with yourself, sometimes not.
You drink some water. Eat something. And then you ask yourself what you are doing here. (Writing?)
Or you stay up till 6am, and battle your own metamorphosis. Defy as you may, there is no escape. Pure breathing (whether you are conscious or not of your own breathing), you are strangely familiar in this unfamiliar environment.
And all for what? One part monotonous, one part restful, you could somehow recognise yourself in the foggy tale. Are you there yet?

I reached the enclave and did not know what to do with myself. I cannot hear. This punishing silence, and yet I floated through. Everywhere I went, I saw a shadow of myself - no time, no presence - I was not myself, and yet I was nothing. Constantly mobile, I cease to know if I was moving or not.

You are never there. You can never finish your story. You wake to repeat the dread and the excitement. You wake to see someone or something, again and again.

I saw once again, the enclave. Without pause, I flashed across the barren space and hit a wall. No pain, no sound, just a mighty implosion, a warp of space, and there I was again, at the beginning of my concussion. I exploded, or imploded (it does not make a difference) and found myself not myself.

Night by night, you repeat the cycle of death. You can cheat life. But you cannot cheat your slumber. Before you, this strange embodiment of a world with sounds, sights and sensations, you can live for seasons beyond. But you can own your dreamscape. It owns you - even as you feed it with memories to manipulate.
Someday, at precisely 6pm, you will be able to sleep and wake later at midnight. But it will not make a difference, because somewhere else, the moon and the sun change places, and you are just a tiny fragment of this world of tiny particles, elements and atoms of infinite quantity.
Perhaps then, you can fashion yourself into a splitting image of a celebrity or a world governor - but you can never escape the silent scream of your own splitting image in your dreams - because that is where you cease to be yourself, and die at the hands of your disappearance.

I saw for the first time, you. I had always longed to see you...until now. I could not imagine how dreadful it would be to see you. I knew then, that I saw you before. You were here to take over me, just as you were about to. I was sorry I didn't know earlier. But right then, I was ready to be taken over.





At precisely the stroke of an unknown time, he wakes, only to find himself as himself; not part of a universe, but wholly himself and alone, as himself.

day 1

We were all there at the same time of creation. How else do we explain creation? You, they, we, I, everyone, from beginning to present, we were all there. You too dreamed of there before. I certainly dreamt of it occasionally. I met you there, certainly I did. You were me and I was you. Then, once we established our identities, we stopped dreaming of there. Instead, we believe in now and here. Have you truly left there? You moved on, but we were confident that we would return.

Return we did. But there was nothing much to remember about. What use do we have of a rare glass container of sweets - the precious little that our parents gave us for being children? Now, you can get sweets in plastic bags off the shelves of a supermarket. As many as you like. As little as we like. How does it now feel to pick a stone out of millions along a beach? Just another stone. Another piece to an already complete puzzle.

One day, we wandered off the borders of our childhood. We then ceased to be You and I (us) as one. I have my own identity and you have yours. You went on your way and I went on mine.

Then, you and I met our beginnings. You fell into the pit, as bottomless as you could remember. I fell up into the sky, as infinite as the height of heavens. I cannot remember what happened in between - but I met you in between - for a split second. And the cycle repeats. I saw you again, a second later. Again, we met; you looked different, each second of our encounter. Perhaps, I used to remember how you looked. Now, you have become a stranger. And I am one too.

There are many ways of falling. And there are many ways to react during each encounter. In that one split second, you and I each had a reaction. Sometimes, I screamed at you. Sometimes, you laughed at me. But each scream and laughter was different. I cannot remember exactly the permutations of your expressions. Nor can you.

After all, we both cease to be ourselves. You are someone else. I am no more, no less of myself.

And yet, we repeat the same falling - so much so that we cannot tell who is falling up or down.

But who are we? It does not matter anymore. Someone else will repeat you and be you. I will always have another me to take over. It will serve no purpose to remember our identities - we simply do not exist. We shall, in another split second, do our little part to fade away, and perhaps, this falling may somehow cease to continue - as we finally touch ground and blow our brains apart.

Adrift in the universe, independent of human signs and signification, we can at least be one again - as if creation repeats again, and we find ourselves united as one. But that is a distant dream. And this is a wistful writing. As it is, when you count another second, the writing ceases to exist and you and I can continue dreaming and pretend that you and I never existed; just as this writing will soon be a distant memory - fades - and disappears over the horizon of our disappearance.

Day 000

I can't string a proper sentence.

I used to think it was easy to write - how horrific the revelation was when you're told nobody could understand me!

Perhaps, I can excuse myself for the ignorance that surrounds me;

Or I can, perhaps, admit that I cannot write.

(Then what is this writing about?)

It is hard to imagine a world where no one writes.

There will be fewer misunderstandings, and fewer misinterpretations.

It is probably easier to string a mathematical equation together.

But, no, I cannot string a proper sentence.

What else can I write?

It must be extremely boring to read -

 

Ceaseless, there will always be another word.

I actually prefer speech over writing.

Because, when I hear her speak, I know she's there, before me.

When she writes - she dies.

day 67

Our faces split the world into unequaled

    parts;

Perhaps, one to give us a firm standing,

And

    another to submerge us in perpetual

drown            -ing.

 

Our minds merge the coasts with the crushing

    waves;

Perhaps, to wall the mysteries with sand,

Or

    to unleash the fucking, common typhoon

- oid

 

        don't hold back,

    cry.

The worst is yet

                to come.

Day 100

Am I there,

    When the river flows

        From there to here,

        With its highs and lows --

                    ?

        The quiet meandering, less tortuous to the

Eyes --- nothing much to be said, except

What you wish to hear

Yes, I'll go easy on you.
Yes,

I promise.

I promise, to be there when you need me.

I'll flow, all the paths and boulders before

Me; From me, ----     To you.

        You sense, the sequence.

        How they all channel to the stream of

            Consciousness; according to the nature

Of you, and me, and all those

                    Around me.

                Around us…

                That way

It won't

end

.

 

It won't end.

 

                

day 131

I don't know what to do with my body -
all tall and cumbersome.

This limb goes to here, dark elbow rings, extended to fingers that hurt and touch.

This limb goes to there, dark elbow rings, extended to a middle finger, scarred for life.

This organised face - almost symmetrical and blessed I am, for that is the case.
other than that, stuck beneath it, is my jelly brain, most of which gone to waste.
(eyes that judge)
(EA- can't...stop...the..m.fro...m he.....aring...WHAT... I...i..i...heeear....-RS)
(nose that sneeze)
(mouth that swallow)
|fragile|bones|
My chest, hotspot for pus - sometimes I breathe too hard.
My penis, all stained and dark in complexion. He does not know what to do with himself.

That limb goes down to here, a hairy affair and most of my weight leaned towards it.

That limb plus titanium goes down to there, contract, expand to the atmosphere.

These toes,

I can only move them so much.

THIS GROUND, THIS IS WHERE I STAND, NOWHERE ELSE.

What impressions have I made so far?

day 66

I assert that there is no way to know Truth - You live the truth.

(which recycles the doubt, and refurnish the lie.)

Day unknown

[     GOD         Religion

Faith     Culture

Hope                     Social

Politics

God

LOVE

History

Society

Literature         Philosophy

Time

World

Theatre     Film

Chinese

World

Psychology

Space

 

Science

 

Nature

Shakespeare

Mathematics

Peace     Hope     Hell

Heaven         Female

Sexuality         Globalisation

We

Economics

One                             Two

Three

Poetry
Being

Matter

Male

Performance

 

Language

Linguistics

Capital

Ideology

god

]

I

day 200

I'm getting closer to the dead-line.

(it's just easier when you know when the line will be crossed)

I'm always closer to the dead-line.

(then again, it can also be more difficult when you know when the line will be crossed)

I pass a dead-line - only to find another one before me.


At some point, I think I prefer to deal with just the line.
(Death does its own burying.)

day 111

I've never seen them before - these ghastly apparitions.

I'm perpetually haunted by them - night and day.

I'm fearful of being devoured by them - soul and body.

I'm left with myself to ward off their advances - all of them.

I fear I.

Day 177

I had words to write

;

Dropped

From

The

SKY

I showed an intense need to manifest my thoughts, which soon - they will escape me and you.

I showed an intense need to manifest my thoughts. which soon - they will escape me and you.

I showed an intense need to manifest my thoughts? which soon -they will escape me and you.

I showed an intense need to manifest my thoughts! which soon- they will escape me and you.

I showed an intense need to manifest my thoughts! which soon -they will escape me and you.

I showed an intense need to manifest my thoughts; which soon they will escape me and you.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

 

Yes,

YOU

I

Came

C    

r

        a

                    s

 

                        h

                            

i

                                    n

 

                                                                        
 

                                                                                                                                        g

 

DOWN

FLAT AND WAITING; TO BE PICKED UP. IGNORED FOR A SEASON. TILL THE RAIN FALLS DOWN AGAIN.

Beneath.the.surface.I.discover.a.neatly.tied.series.of.expressions.-once.hidden.now they.appear.to.me.as.quivers.and.burrowings.as.if.they.penetrate.deep.into.my.skull.one.by.one.

I.

Think.

I.

See.

You.

At.

This.

Point.

Pain, is beyond,the surface- skin deep.

Something else comes after                         after.

 

(Don't ask me what something else is.)

Day 4

Si

 

I love the sound of

Si

Si

Si

Si

 

 

COLLECTED

In the mute sense of the word

Bet    -ween the     white                     spaces

 

AS IF,

 

            It doesn't matter how ' sounds

YES,

How                         ,             sounds

Or, how death sounds

As one threatens the image with writing,

Numbering and multiplying it four times

 

You'll get a long passage

Tall enough to almost reach Heaven

standing

 

slanted to the

touch
of my
teeth

 

And possibility erases itself to the bated breath of my hiss-ing

Yes

 

,    And -

I     

will

give     IF

up

to

a    I    r…

 

 

 

day 149

(fragments from a diary of a Pastor)

Maybe...
Despite all my measured criticism of Religion in general, I write to mask a simple truth about me: I'm afraid that they are actually true and I'm the one wrong.

"I love mankind," he said, "but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, that is, as individual persons. In my dreams," he said, "I would often arrive at fervent plans of devotion to mankind and might very possibly have gone to the Cross for human beings, had that been suddenly required of me, and yet I am unable to spend two days in the same room with someone else, and this I know from experience. No sooner is that someone else close to me than his personality crushes my self-esteem and hampers my freedom. In the space of a day and a night I am capable of coming to hate even the best of human beings: one because he takes too long over dinner, another because he has a cold and is perpetually blowing his nose. I become the enemy of others," he said, "very nearly as soon as they come in contact with me. To compensate for this, however, it has always happened that the more I have hated human beings in particular, the more ardent has become my love for mankind in general."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. David McDuff, p79.

All the same, it boils down to my insecurity: of not knowing what to do with myself. Of not knowing who to love. And so I write to the general (pretending that this does not go out to the particular) that I may somehow participate in some higher realm and escape from my personal jurisdiction and punishment for my impatience with the particular 'enemies' around me. Yes, I write, that I may be left alone. And ignore the person right next to me. I address instead to an invisible reader...



How I love this cruelty! I love how I reduce particulars to a general whole - and hence, address to no one but myself.

Now, don't trust me when I say, "I love mankind." Because, I love the person next to me not.


signed,
Renegade Pastor (who is against all other Pastors)

day 1 and 8 years later

The truth is - after so long - we still don't know anything, except that we are somehow trapped in our bodies.

day 1

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of miracles as if everyone is given a right to live to the fullest and the grace to achieve such a lofty fantasy.

I'm too sceptical for that. There was never a thing as grace to live - living is itself a long tiresome dreary progress from birth to death - and everything in between a promise of a single premature death.

I'm also too bored of that. Beneath the surfaces of all charismatic speeches and pedestal performances about grace and earthly blessings are mere distractions. The thing I need is a death notice - of the specific time and method of death. Then perhaps, I may be thrust into some desperate attempt to live 'life to the fullest'; Or, I may just sleep through the waiting time and wish for the last minute to come sooner.

I've desperately tried to live long enough to know when the day I die will come. The fact that we don't always get a death notice is because we already have one noose tied around us. I probably don't need to know; I already do. And I'm bored of knowing the certainty of death. I'm really left with the waiting time.

And that is what makes it so perilous or so exciting. I choose, in very simple terms, between danger and excitement; between loving life or hating it. After all, there are tons of things I can't decide for myself. My innate will to sin, o so desperate will to sin, is one of the many. Between a curse to die and a blessing to live, I am stuck in the moment, crying with all my might, the same force as a baby crying for the first time.

I'm nowhere closer to knowing if I live to die, or I am dying to live.

I maintain, thus, that all promises of a wealthy and prosperous life are ludicrous and are absolutely lies. To clarify, all material gains are mere distractions from the inexplicable demand that living produces. I kick, with all my might, to exist. At the very least then, don't tell me that I am free to choose - even my kick lands its blow on the immediate surroundings to which I have no say or control. The truth is, I'm pretty much thrown into this world - and all the world's stuck with me.

It, therefore, irks me to be told that we can be totally free from the shackles of this world. Or, worst, pursue the things of this world because it brings us closer to some form of immortality. If, we cannot handle mortality, do not, I repeat, do not even fathom the thought of immortality.

There is nothing more saddening than the appearances of certain people who look on with dreamy eyes, perform shallow performances of faith and try desperately to be supposed recipients of some form of grace. They cry, in some form of gibberish, as if they are born again, as if they can once again be tenderly caressed and cradled. They fail to understand, that the first cry of a baby is the call of fear:"Why am I born?" "What am I to be?" "What am I doing here?" Or, it is just an announcement to the world: "I demand to be known," leaving a trail of blood, sacrifice and the painful scream of a brave mother.

I don't believe in this call to arms against death. I believe, fundamentally in the romantic notion that death sets us free, but, not without the pilgrim's progress in life doomed to the martyr sceptre. I believe, that life is a parody or an imitation of exactly the same foolish behaviour of our predecessors.

Don't read me wrong - we do not need to be martyrs and foolishly seek for the elusive stigmata on our foreheads and wrists.

They won't be from Him.

The only credible truth anyone has taught me is my ignorance - and the rest are just my futile attempts to justify my existence.

And I believe that is the amazing beauty of life - the unknown. Enough of boxes - "God consists of four sides and think 3D." Enough of some grand narrative of how great and wonderful your god is. Faith works not because it has been thoroughly explained to you. Faith works when the trembling of the soul demands (not miracles) the explicit humbling of human pride, and the confrontation with our stinky oily sensation of sin. Thereupon we can only give up on our humanity, our lives, and confront our mortality.

The fundamental difference that sets us apart from every living thing in this world is that we sin and we actually have a notion of doing something wrong. (Keep a pet long enough and the poor dog also knows it's wrong not to obey a master's call for it to sit)

There is nothing more cruel than life itself. And so all plain and simple messages of peace, love and hope are just acidic pamphlets of ignorance. Life again, demands more than giving up certain material things. It demands giving up on yourself. It means giving yourself up to death - o fatal death, where is your sting?

Until we shed this mortal coil, do not expect a miracle. Your life alone, as long as you live and given the chance to say 'I believe', is enough a miracle. Anything else just distracts. Anything else just cushions the blow of our childish kicks.

signed
I (18 years of age)

day 111

I have two scenarios (or scenes of writing):

1.
behind the lush vegetation, stood man, against the wind and beneath the clouds. I cannot see him. I imagine him, first the trees, then the man.

The trees are between us - the man and I - and yet I know he is there.

(What is a tree?)

And I imagine, he is short; a dwarf, not quite a man, but resemble one enough to be called a man.

He now stands behind one tree - the tree.

He is not looking at me; I am looking at the tree, before I am looking at him. the world is before us - with that he leaves, 'Farewell!'
'I'll see the shade that you become.'

It does not matter if he is there or gone. I see the tree.

And the longer I wait, the more the tree disappears - by dominating the landscape.

and there I am, alone, with the world - faced with my own white decay of a rotten bark.

And the wind carries the tree's enduring message, "I live on, somewhere else."
IT mocks me - for IT endures longer, somewhere else.

And I, alone, with the world - with my vengeance.

I prune the remaining trees before me,
so that they may never look like the big domineering tree again.

"Farewell!"

2.
There is no tree but its bare trunk and branches.
The trunk is rotten to the core. I know, I chopped it.

The branches are full of life. I know, I ate the termites.

And there is no one except me.

Until, He stands a distance away and stares at me.

I flee.


After which, I am able to imagine a third scene:

3.

No one is there. No tree; no man.

day 311

-

it's hard to decipher the code embedded in the appearance of a line.

every moment of thinking reveals the line.

And if I think of you, it's because I draw the line -

and we can happily believe that we can see the line, the line does not see us, and immediately, we have to do something about the line.

Is it a separation?

No, it's just a stupid line.

Perhaps, by drawing a line, I highlight the space in which a line can be drawn.
But that will be an appearance - and dialectic.

(Did I tell you that I hate dialectics?)

Instead, let me choose something else to talk about.

I talk about the space in between two lines of sentences.

Notice or Read how we are organised to read and notice.

By choosing to write, I have given up the choice to remain silent, and thus, started with a line.

That is an example of how a line can appear.


without it, I doubt I am able to write anything.
It will just be gibberish, meaningless without principles.
So draw each new line, gain nothing but its exactness, definiteless and distinctness - the method that leaves nothing out.

So by leaving nothing out - with all the subtle divisions - we have no need of new inventions
but vaccines to keep us immune to nonsense.

And so I end up writing all over again

Body fuck mind
Emotion fuck physical
Good fuck Evil
etc.

Don't bother with the rest,
the motion is passed
and we're left with the fucking intercourse
and a fuck-ed up Kant
say it again,

Kant.

day 245

Afraid, each sound a random piece of warning that floats in corners, cul-de-sac, bouncing off, here and there, we cannot understand. Loud enough to be heard. Mumble-Indecipherable. This wall has a rough surface, that wall has a pastiche of glued up posters girls and boys, looking like shit, looking like barbie dolls cut up for alternate universes that our world already is/are - the sounds here and there. We listen. Nothing else matters. It is wet; or dry, every space has a hole that the sound can fill - then it disappears and, prematurely, we reach the end of this noise. And when that noise ends, it coincides with a flashing light - Don't be stupid, it's not an epiphany. And the nascent state of a silent moment is filled up immediately with shrieks and shrills of people thrown into the corner, uninvited, passively a-------------waiting, throwing up since they're here and there, just ten centimetres from the floor to the wide-open mOuth. It passes from one end of the void to the covered gutter. The only substance worthy of space is waste. Don't look far when you stare at a mirror. Cavities on your teeth are evidence of my earlier statement. Your attempts to be calm are fine - we're already mad to think that we know. We know, however, that next weekend we'll find you lying on the ground. Do you feel closer to God? Bless you! The reason why you're still alive is only because you're too drunk to kill yourself. And yet, I'm not entirely clear why I'm mad, since I'm equally calm to retrieve this piece of memory from the white noise that is in my mind. It's not hard to associate my anger with noise. IT'S HARDER TO DECIPHER THE NOISE. gloating at my bad luck, that I'm deaf to my own production of AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaH
and we can take our time, just long enough, before the noise disappears, to decode the message - that there is nothing to understand except that infants cry just as hard. Maybe that's all there is to our noises. An old folk holding the hand of a toddler - and skip everything in between. Yes, it's easy to feel tired, very tired, very tired of being tired, very tired of having to say one is tired. But unless we have truly lived enough to look back at this corner of an alley, and listen to the noises we have made so far; yes then, it will be remembered that all the intervals when apparitions and ghouls had appeared because they are inclined to clink on to us for a last puff of the wretched smoke, and to tempt us to a premature death, so that we might befriend them and live out our poor lives as spectres. Indeed, this evening, we hold true to the merest quiet sounds, that it may forge a void. Suspending the belief that it will be fine. Instead, we are afraid, so that each vertigo passes off eventually as a chuckle, and wholly quiet thereafter. Fade to mute. And cease to exist.

day 85

reload the gun,
but you'll run out of bullets to fight me.

don't reproach the postman,
I ran out of letters to write.

repeat the motion,
we're too tired to go on.

If you write 'FUCK' a thousand times,
I reply with ONE 'FUCK' - the rest's just excessive.

no, don't wake up as if it's a dream: the dream's just starting
Pessoa: (Do I know more about God than God knows about himself?)
Ah, you hit a soft spot, a vital point and all it took was not the gun, it's a speech bubble.

And all the rest, I repeat, And all the rest, are excessive ---

without which I wouldn't be here, alive and crying.

day 71

Pouting, Kissing

during

the minutes you take from me
Whispering, linking

before

the seconds I steal your air
perpetually pouting

after

the wind messed your hair, the shadows departed
and the world belongs to two pairs of Lips:

this is where
those moments without each other collapse into a single moment:
and time catches up, and we stay still:

till lovers' lips crossed and seconds, minutes, and hours uncounted:

brushing,
again and again
awaiting,

(the colour of red to return to your cheeks.)

day 155

Indent    the space that separates,

And     time    the    time    taken    for    small    talk.

All in All

A conversation lasting fifty minutes,

And yet we do not know each                other

-

 

Oh, yes,

Oh yes

Oh no.

day, unknown

this is a rare instance, which has a picture to begin the letter.



I saw for the first time, my eldest brother. Or, the brother I never had. Which, to lessen the mystery, could just be a fascination for a black-and-white photograph.

In the true sense of what is now commonplace about our fear of Photography (how it captures your soul), I fear this photo.

Perhaps, it's not only my soul that is captured, but how the photograph evades any form of personal memory - a memory that is not my own. I am reduced then to an imagination of several threads. One of them is the whereabouts of my dead brother, never to reach adulthood, but still haunts my family via a photograph.

I cannot think of him, because I never knew him. And he, being dead, perhaps left with a soul, does he then have the cognitive ability to know me? Does he, at the corner of my room, rock with my breathing and makes known of his haunting existence with a wail? And yet, I probably imagined that - just as I imagine the shadows in my rooms, as I frightfully turn the lights on and off.

The photograph does not reveal who he was, instead, it reveals the inexplicable gap that is forever lost. It is a black hole that sucks dry my own blood, (of which he once had, the same blood that flows in my Father) and manifests itself as an assimilable valley, deep with forgotten memories, (not mine), and looms around this house like a mockery, a memory, of what it means to live - that is to die.

My brother is without a shadow, reduced to a fading piece of paper, no breath, no dreams, no sound to say "I am here". But this photograph always contains the imperious sign of my future death. No, not only that, it contains as well, before my birth, the unpredictability of my inevitable birth. It sits fittingly in a lacuna (whether mine or his), between the possibility that I could never had been born, and 'I am born, face me, because you live on without me.'

We meet, at last; the photograph as the medium. It does not capture your soul. It captures, instead my imagination and the moment before your death. And I could hold you, without cradling you and rocking you to and fro, and ask if you know me.

Perhaps, I could be great friends with you; in compensation for the brotherly love I never had with my only brother alive. But, my brother, you also once threatened my existence.


if he were to be alive now, I probably wouldn't be.


And yet, my happiness is dependent on the possibility that my family was ready to love me excessively (before my birth, but in the womb) because they never had an elder brother but the youngest. Never the twain shall meet.

Then again, I should never dwell on what could have happened, because the absolute truth is that I am now alive to meditate on a photograph - that which captures nothing, but my anxiety and your past existence.

Surely, it is as they say, "I am looking for someone in the photograph." It is with certainty that the photograph captured my brother as he was then. Instead, what is not certain is that how the photograph captures me. I am staring at myself, as I lift up the photograph and stare at it. I am staring at a labyrinth of my identities, the circumstances given leading up to the the moment of encounter - between the photograph and I.

As I stare at it, I know I am staring at an eternity that is not mine alone. I am staring at a lineage that I can no longer trace. But more than that, I am staring at my individuality - that which is developed in place of my brother's that never would be. There is definitely a connection there, despite the fact that we share little similar physical traits, but that connection is given by virtue of a passage of time.

So, even if I should one day misplace the photograph, or treat it as refuse; the simple fact is that I once had a brother that I have never met and never will. In between the decades as well as the states of life and death that separate us, the intractable reality is that I live on, he did not; and that is the indissoluble bond between the dead and living, between us brothers, whether we love or hate, touchable or untouchable, the loyalty to the dead is always stronger than flesh and blood. Because I can no longer tell him that I love or hate him, which only makes sense when my own voice reflect and reach my own consciousness. Instead, I can only stare at him, and know that I live on, he did not, repeating this story until I cease to live, even if I could take a thousand more photographs than he did. In the end, we are reducible to a single photograph, but each with a different story to tell. I have been given the chance to take a longer time to tell mine, but that does not mean you did not have your story.

This leaves me with a regret, so profound, so entrenched and conditioned since young - I never met my eldest brother. I wonder what influence it had on the childish mind of mine but it certainly had an effect on me (and definitely on my mother). The bond then is not of the usual sibling love/rivalry. It is, instead a bond that collapses all bonds into a single infinite moment that terrifies my existence - I am still living but I must die that someone else lives on, one after another: He died, I live, then I die, Someone else lives on....till it realises Time as much as it de-realises Time, imploding in this moment when we meet, you and I, without touching (and never will) in the same way as the moment of touching have been. In short, love it or not, every such photograph of a dead person related to you, tells you to be utterly yourself; that you are utterly yourself. There are so many things in excess, including the fact that I am idealising my dead brother.

And Time is not one of them. It is credible down to the infinite Photograph - is now and forever was.

Sometimes, the best stories are those told with less words, less pictures. Because they tell us how to live in the now, as everything else disappears.

day 79

It is easy to reflect on things furthest from us. We don't have to feel its grip, its terror, its emotional charge, or, in other words, they don't belong to us, so they don't mean a thing to us.

We can easily conjure up something to say about objects of study: the weather report, the political column, the survey of ageing and its social effects, and etc. But when the events and memories closest to us happen or are brought back to mind, we are crippled, and shocked out of our usual composed selves. We simply go blank. I simply went blank.

Do not despise photographs and seemingly cold and distant objects. They may just be the triggers to a concealed emotion.

H, M and W disappeared,
that I may step up onto the pedestal.

Which I?

day 1, 1093 years later.

It takes 1093 years to get to the planet H-0131310 from Earth, such that no one from one end to the other has managed to communicate with each other. The sky is blue in planet H-0131310 because the oceans are blue. And the oceans are blue because the sky is blue. The difference then between planet H-0131301 and Earth: the dwellers live within a capsule, and all around them, a thin foil covers the atmosphere, creating a large surrounding mirror that reflects the blue all over. No one knows if the sky reflects the ocean or the ocean reflects the sky. To answer this ancient question, a committee of geo-politicians have been established, which is called Main Committee to Uncover the Mystery of The Blue Phenomenon. To facilitate the main committee in its administrative processes, a sub-committee has also been established, which is called the Sub-Committee of the Main Committee to Uncover the Mystery of The Blue Phenomenon. To provide logistics to the various transportation for the sub-committee, a sub-sub-committee has been established, which is called The Sub-sub-committee of the Main Committee to Uncover the Mystery of The Blue Phenomenon. To provide technological assistance to the logistics sub-sub-committee, a sub-sub-sub-committee has been established, which is called The Sub-sub-sub committee of the Main Committee to Uncover the Mystery of The Blue Phenomenon. To establish the infrastructure of the main committee to the sub-sub-sub committee, a sub-sub-sub-sub-committee has been established, which is called The Sub-sub-sub-sub committee of the Main Committee to Uncover the Mystery of The Blue Phenomenon. Before all these committees meet, a committee of various secretaries from the various sub-committees have been established - they hold enhancement courses to write minutes quickly and efficiently. These minutes of minutes of the committee meetings may just be the documents needed to establish a framework in which a significant study can be conducted to unveil this blue mystery. To date, however, after several meetings to discuss the scheduling of meetings, inter-committee meetings and meetings with other Main Communities, The World Government of Planet H-0131310 has yet to confer and come to a conclusive discussion on the proper method to conduct the scientific research. And since 1092 years have passed since the call for the study, a new sub-committee must be established to provide the bridge between present and past.
If only the people of planet H-0131310 could meet the people from Earth - they could learn from Earthlings that many steps could have been avoided if they collapse a few sub-committees together to form a whole. That way, they could concentrate on refining their handwriting, invent computers for that purpose and not have formed a sub-committee of Legible Handwriting. I believe that once they manage to discover the reason behind the infinite mirroring of the blue, they can next discover space travel. A lot can be learnt from an exchange, 1093 years later, when the grandson of the grandson of the grandson of the first astronaut reaches Earth and reports his first findings:

No one is left on Earth.

day 12.12.12

It's a projection into the future.

And the future is such that I have no future -

as long as I am one half of a WE.

day 8

An infinite Tale

Like all grey-beards in the woods, I have been a little girl; Like all little girls in the towns, an old woman. I have also known many little kids; Like them, I have been many stones. I have indefinite ways of being a fox; Likewise, a lamb. And they all like to say, "Why are you such a glutton?" Likewise, they also ask why my father is a fox, and my mother a man, who is also an old soldier, a schoolboy and a huntsman.

I owe this atrocious number of identities and variety of characters to the mere sum of one plus one.

And because I hardly count, I leave most of the counting to the smart brothers of mine, who are all aptly named Hans, Hans, Hans, Hans, Hans and Hans. One of them (I can't remember who) is Danish. Four were Skilful Brothers, and the last one is not even human. Together they can be known as the Six Servants, which Hans (I can't remember which one) once bragged about.

So between the dark hole (that is my tummy), and the big Forest that is the world, there lies an infinite number of possible ways to weave my identities into one coherent narrative.

There are 12 ways to be an Apostle. (Likewise, a Servant, a Huntsman or an Animal)

There are 11 ways to be boys and girls.

There are 10 ways to be stones.

There are 9 ways to be dead.

There are 8 ways to be the cupcakes.

There are 7 ways to be the flowers.

There are 6 ways to hate and love each other.

There are 5 ways to sing.

There are 4 ways to come back alive.

There are 3 ways to be Infinite.

There are 2 ways to be God or Devil.

And infinite ways to be The One. (Likewise, to be forgotten.)

 

And my story will always repeat and restart such that no one single story about me is the same.

My tale is done, there runs a mouse, whosoever catches it, may make himself a big fur cap out of it.

But remember to leave the door open.

day 99 plus one

If it takes a millennium to read a blog entry dated 09-09-09, then it takes only a day for it to pass you by - by which I really mean an actual day, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the moon.

But a thousand years and a day ago, there were no blogs!

Don't give blogs too much credit.

the passing of the day demands more attention.

teachers' day

The one aspect of teaching that scares me the most is that fact that you have almost no idea what your students will do with your words in future.

The pedagogic higher-ups like to think of learning outcomes. The truth is, you can determine the teaching guidelines and materials; but you cannot determine how a student will relate to your theories and lesson plans later. What scares me, really, is that I could tell/teach/impart/share with them something, and at any one point, I may be challenged by my student. (The most famous being Einstein's answer to his professor about the existence of God.) This really leads me to question the role of a teacher - is she or he really in the position to teach this student? After all, a mere degree only suggests that you have survived (or excelled) in the system.

Students are not wrong. They are just caught up in the moment when they have to listen to someone more senior or supposedly more learned than them, by virtue of succession, roles and...well we are just configured in that order of things. If teachers are right, it's only as right as what the students want to believe so. Definitely, it is a teacher's responsibility to teach to the best of one's knowledge and capacity. But the truth is, some lessons can never be taught. And some mistakes unpreventable. Some outright wrong lessons cannot be untaught. I, for example, certainly cannot teach them what and how to react when faced with an artistic dilemma - your audience members hate your show, but you want to be honest to your vision.

So as I relate my dilemma and fear in class to you, I am equally mindful that I cannot control what sense you make of my words, and how you will quote or misquote, read or misread these otherwise sincere words of concern.

Once, we could only think of the world as flat.
And the disciple then realised it is round, and is persecuted for that discovery.

I don't dare to say: "No, that's WRONG!" to my students.

I'm afraid that one day I will eat my own words.
I am also afraid to one day discover that my students have been completely misled.
I have been misled.

Mentor/Disciple is an extremely terrible dialectic. One ceases to be a mentor, if there is no disciple to teach. Even if the self can be Mentor/Disciple simultaneously, it must constantly fear that 'I' knows nothing; What is there to be taught/learnt?

- perhaps, the one lesson we all should learn (and hence, the irony) is the lesson of that there is nothing to teach.

It is not only a student's desire to say something smart and when it fails to sound smart, you roll your eyes; it is the fear that that something not smart may just turn out to be the closest to truth - by which I mean the love for wisdom.

"Never cease to learn - that you know nothing."


My students are my mentors.

day 95

September 19

My Silent Confidant:

It is with great trepidation that I write to you again. You are both a savior and a curse. You mock me and yet I depend so greatly on you to live through this quiet pain. And you do so by being so silent, so confident and assured of knowing everything - Everything! I do not have to confide in you. Instead, I am finding solace in speaking out. It is an indescribably dependence on you - you know what I am thinking - and this is also the reason that I must escape from you one day.

Alas, I am still here, writing this letter to you. Please do not reply. I dare not know what you think of me. Perhaps, I am such a loser; I cannot be depended on to pull myself out of this abyss of depression. Please! Be patient with me. Let me once again pour out my worries and anxieties.

I remember how once, after severing (or so I thought) ties with my ex-lover, I spoke to a dear friend. I broke down and threatened to lock myself forever in my pathetic room, with my books and my soaked bolster. And yet, this dear friend was there for me and came to hear my complaints. With that one meeting, I could draw strength to face another day. Till this date, I have my dear friend to thank; and I betrayed her by getting back with my ex-lover, even though my friend made extreme efforts to convince me to leave her once and for all. I did not. Only if I had! Now, I lost that dear friend - (more than once I did!) I lost my ex-lover as well, who true to my friend's forecast, rained her acid dew on me and left me for a richer man. Poor me. Poor o me. What can I do more to hurl myself deeper?

And yet, such a 'poor me' irritates me. This vulnerability sickens me. I thank you for being silent - not telling me what to do or say - and your silence along convinces me that any amount of imagination will never help me grasp the infinite depth of your thoughts. I know you laugh at such a suggestion. If only I knew what to do! I hate how a broken man cries out for some help, at the expense of someone who genuinely wants to help. But broken, this man cannot listen, but listens only to the grain of his voice. But torn, this woman cannot hear, but listens only to the sobbing and her pathetic nature to fall for lies. But I lie too; I lie that I am strong, mighty, variations of the same, and I could get out of this stumble. Alas, I cannot! And I write as evidence of this. Please do not reply. It irks me to be reminded that I am equally pathetic as all those crying souls. What a sick and tormented world! We all share this innate need to be heard - crying, screaming, gnashing of teeth and the shaking of bones against bones - pain of the trembling kind, slow to go away but as sure as the wind blowing against the midnight glory. Please do not reject me when my next letter comes. But if it does not, I am dead. Heed no more from me. And I quiver at the mere thought of my next letter.

I still remain,

Your devoted, nameless friend.

day 80

hoped you never said so.

- crossing fingers, rubbing palms, palm-to-palm, vis-a-vis an impatient glee -

teach me to say, no.
push me to the brink of non-existence;

I exist, still.

- reaching out, for more, for less, nothing is always too much to behold -

then we find some frivolous reason to go on

- a shared ice-cream, a raw fish, and mono-sodium-grated flour -

no matter, passivity rules. something else demands us to move away from something
so,

some things left unsaid, undone.

and we cross our hearts, one against the other >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

bursting forth - delirium!
and we die, in the hands of Yesterday's passive force.

- air in vessels, water in lungs /

too late to say, enough.





enough said.

Day 123

next meeting…

A, B, and C are three different voices but from the same person. They speak one after the other.

A: never ask for more, never ask for less, but can never avoid, asking, for the next meeting, in summer, always summer, when trees are always green green butterflies in time for birds, trees to shed brown brown leaves, leaving nothing on the roads, swept away, in time for the next meeting, meeting someone beside the tree, if the tree is still the tree, where the someone will recognize and approach me, in summer, where the skies are blue blue rain raining in summer, and postpones the meeting to a next occasion, waiting, with brown birds, accompanied by the occasional black ones, never ask for more, still waiting, the moment of the next meeting, comes, will come, in time for the next meeting

B: with my old man, the grumpy uncle who drinks less than the number he boasts, desperate to dig more coins from his pockets, to pay for the next cup of tea, prolonging his stay at this seat, that seat, through the day, alone, drinking more tea, flipping coins, and have them drop, to hear the sharp disturbance in an already noisy environment, only then to slip into a routine, a painless addition to the surroundings, a site where the old man, this old man of mine, where he can only imagine, having no one but himself to have a drink

A: With you, in time to witness, the rain is about to stop, the leaves are still falling, and you will see, someone old and grey, the scabby scruffy face leaning on the brown brown bark disturbed by the crawling red red fiery ants, with you possibly gently touching my arms, maybe a shy wave to announce your arrival, but the rain pours again, in summer, pouring, to drive us away from the tree, to lose ourselves in the blurry falling water, cleansing, to find us a new place to meet, a place, a concrete building to shelter us during our next meeting

C: And I will tell you the story of the child who I think I will have, who I want to have, who I will groom him into a perfect child, my aspirations and my dreams, my aspirations and my dreams, the accumulated, of a past I cannot have, so he or she must be blessed, with a hope I always have, to the future, the next being who comes into being, clumsily I have lived, therefore he or she will never be, and I will prepare the plan

A: In time for the meeting again, to do what we must, to say what we must, the words unspoken, long before we set the date to meet again, always saying less than what we prepared, in a contemplative mind, running to our next meeting, in the rain, cold rain, never stop pouring, still pouring, still running, along the stone stone pavement, the green green grass, and little to see beyond, only the place of our next meeting

C: at a time when it does not rain, instead, a rainbow shall appear across the blue sky, to welcome the unborn child into this world, close to nature and marvelous landscapes of today, the present glories and the everything that you will inherit, the child, the bringer of hope, all hope lies on the child, the love I give so freely, what I can only give, will give, and he or she must have, where one would most certainly be deprived of

A: In another place, far from the tree, where you do not know where the birds will be to hide from the rain, where there will always be another place for us to meet, to imagine, you in the shabby grey tee and blue blue jeans, (pause) by the lights, the flashing red reds and green greens, the stumbling across black black roads, to the next place, you and me, together and apart, one and one, one after another, to our next meeting

B: that never happens for the old man, who waits for no one, does not want to be disappointed, convinced that the tea will never disappoint him, absolutely certain that the cup of tea will taste the same always, and people who pass him by, know as well, how the cup of tea should taste like, and suddenly he is aware of my arrival, as I sit down, and soon, though we speak nothing, we recognize each other, and we nod in admission of this fact, and so I order a cup of tea, this meeting with him, him alone, and somehow I know, the cups of tea are different, but it does not matter, because this is our meeting

C: love, (pause) the skies paint a different picture every moment, but how I will carry the child, a little angel, to soar up, my raising arms, to lift him or her, to see the sky change, over the perpetual season, in the course of the day, on the wood, wooden bench, we sit, and stand next, the tree to cover the coming rain, but we see, the winds are blowing the clouds away, and when we walk away, pausing occasionally, the sky changes to a grey shade, before we can ever have our next meeting

A: Where the joy of seeing you again and again, in our previous meeting, does not deter me from asking for a next meeting, in a life so short, where it is always a luxury to ask, for a next meeting, and what can we say in our next meeting, where will it be, all cold and wet, the hour hits nine, before long it will be a minute past nine, what to say, before we stop, the anxiety of nothing to say, before our next meeting

C. and lately I ask if I will ever see my child, on the day we are going to meet, and that will be such a painful reality, if there is no child to born, maybe I depend too much for a future, long time ago, waiting for you to be real, you make me real, is there something lost to hope, but there is no harm hoping, a perfect excuse to stop me at my tracks, to stop walking in nonchalance, and makes the strangers disappear from my sight, out of sight, with only our next meeting to look forward to

B. with the old man, I could almost understand that he is not actually waiting for anyone or anything, but it is about the empty cup being removed, and replaced with a new one, the drinking and the finishing, and the filling that comes thereafter, a rhythmic end to the day, to watch no one walk past him, to lament on nothing and no one, to be ignored because he has ignored the world, and I am just glad, I can sit down, safely next to him, before my next meeting, and know I am not even seen

A: (pause) With God, to thank Him, after this joke, perhaps the joke of putting us together, the millionth time together, always a new meeting, a new death, when He leaves, leaving us two, the running two, to find the place to go, to stop, to thank Him when we must, the sky turns a darker shade, that time the shade was brighter, the time before the next time we meet, we must already know, we have to, know, when is our next meeting

C. Because I do not know if he or she will grow to be healthy or not, and this anxiety I shall ignore because there are more pressing things to consider, of which the thousand possibilities cannot dissuade me from fulfilling that one hope of seeing come to live, your birth, my salvation, you life, my mission, the only thought I shall have and must have before we meet,

A: Before ten, if we drag this, and has already dragged this end, we draw closer and further, from the next meeting, and the cars depart, in a solemn march, a movement of precision, to ignore us, to abandon us with grey grey invisible damage, and do not take us, bring us along on their journeys to places, where we can have our next meeting

B. by the old man, and silence ensues the last hour of our meeting, and soon I know we must say goodbye, and of course I can always visit him again, but how many tomorrows does he have still, and life is too short for him, and too long as well, for perhaps all it takes is an instant for him to declare that he has lived life to its fullest, simply because he has lived it, so perhaps no next meeting is ever required because to meet is really to not meet at all. I said goodbye.

A: When the hand strikes eleven and we are still running, in the long raining, the land covered by a refreshing baptism, to purge the surfaces of its filths, the impurities that perpetually cloak the openings of other worlds, and into the drains they hide, away from us, the wind cannot blow, in this noisy rain, but somehow, perhaps the perfect picture of a moment of us together and not, we somehow reach, somewhere near our next meeting

C. with all the future and dreams we can ever project and imagine, before the instant of manifestation, when they all become tangible, and then perhaps, I will suffer from a panic, a slight uncertainty, when I hold the living body, that is not of my labour, but alive; I then realize, all I ever did before, was to shamelessly believed I was the master of this life, and I shall look at time..

A: When the clock strikes twelve minutes before midnight, the apparition that is time, the monster that greets us called new day, and all I could, was to gesture to the wrist, and hand her the gift of death, when the day has ended to prevent us from finding, still finding that next place for our next meeting

C. and time will convince me that I shall have to let go, this life, this birth of monstrosity, the crying breath of life, that is of mine and not, has a pulse of his or her own, and exists and lives, with a bloody force, and once alive, has every right to oneself to be, being, the being that I cannot fully shape, and forever we are in relation to each other, for better or worse, that inescapable reality, such unrest, a peace of uncertainty of which, I know not,

A: which will happen, at the moment she leaves, watching her back, a step from the platform to the train, the moment of departure suspends, aching in the rupture of my linear consciousness, feeling nothing, cannot feel, asked too much, only to feel the growing pain, anticipating, leaves me breathless, calling out to the now empty platform, she left from the present meeting, and all my hope rests blindly, in the next meeting, which may never happen after this

B. (coughs)

A, B and C:

(long pause) How to say, how to say I love you, you, you…

How to know, how to imagine, death and birth collide, the end and beginning of this emotional journey, but

perhaps we shall meet, again and again, till death.

Gently we sleep. Our arms not touching,

The wind whispers our quiet voices, words we cannot articulate, but they cover us, like a scarf around our necks, the blanket of the dead night spread around us, falling gently down from above, it is time to sleep. Time to rest.

How to say,

I love. You.

Day - 300

Please Forgive Me | 2008

 

My grandmother once told me, "Seeking forgiveness is just to make you feel better."

Please forgive me for reading this.

day 77

A Little Step    

I stood a little distance away from him when it occurred to me that I should not speak out my thoughts to him. That little step back was the beginning of the deterioration. Our friendship ended that day. There was little left for us to continue this. It seemed to me that all I could do was to keep quiet. He had no idea that the step back was so symbolic. But it did not matter since what I was about to do after that meeting was always going to difficult for him to notice. To put it simply, to him, my existence was not one of friendship, but of convenience. I just happened to be there.

The little step, a small step back, raising a foot back, and firmly placing it on the ground, was the beginning of everything. I did not know what gave me the instinct and the courage to do that. But I did. Everything was not planned. I just did what I did. The rationalizing of the motive and the later plan to destroy this friendship came very much later. I had to do what I must. But the resolution was made without thought. It was done unconsciously. I just happened to do it.

To make matters worse, he did not notice that fatal step. He smiled and continued to relate to me his story of his success. My flaw was to be jealous. For it did not occur to me till then that friendship is a jealous affair. It ripens what was envy to jealousy. If he was less successful, perhaps I would not have been so resentful to his success. All I could see at that point was his wonderful delirium written all over his proud face. I just smiled, and stepped back.

To make matters simpler, my conscience pricked at me. After a faithful five minutes, I could understand why I was so irritated. I did not have his success. To be friends, usually it means there is some equality of status or some even ground in which two can share a space and time together. To achieve his level of success, he has instead removed himself from that share space. And I also realized that it was beyond me to achieve what he has achieved. I had to leave. And so I did.

That little step was the beginning of a huge drift. My departure went unannounced. My immediate reaction, though, was to excuse myself for the most trivial reason. I had to go. But he would not allow me to leave at first. I said, "It is time for me to go". It is always time to go. I blinked. And then he looked at his watch and said, "It's still early and I have many things to talk to you about." I was sure he did. After all, we all have many irrelevant things to talk about. But frankly, none concerns me. And so I smiled, and gave him another five minutes of my life. And I nodded repeatedly for the next six minutes.

The last minute was the longest one minute ever. It was never easy saying goodbye to a friend who was not going to be your friend after that minute. Such moments meant that I became nostalgic. There was a time when we were equal. We didn't have chips wagered to see who would be the first to jeopardise the friendship. Somehow, things change when you grow old. Somehow, the same things you said to a friend in the past, don't make the same immediate sense in the present. We laughed, but it was all nostalgic superficiality. I could not forgive myself for my hypocrisy. I could not.

And the last minute finally went and he took the initiative to say, "It is time for me to go too!" And then he left. And I wondered for a second who was the one to initiate the goodbye. The strange twist of event was shocking but it was almost as if I had no strength after the encounter to push the matter on. It was almost too convenient for me. To this day, I still think hard about what I could have done to prevent that. It was out of my control. Utterly. And I did not anticipate his strange reaction. Didn't he have a lot to tell me? I would never know. But he disappeared since then. Despite my faithful intention to lose him as a friend, his disappearance was still shocking to me. But I had to move on.

I can't go on. The pain of losing a friend was unbearable sometimes. But the last minute of his departure still haunts me. The fact remains that we cannot be friends. But I did not like such an open conclusion to this friendship. I need a complete closure. But I did not know how. The words that hide in my mind won't flow. My thoughts fly up but they do not materialise. And now I do even know how I should contact him. It seems as if he has completely disappeared from my life. Completely. Indefinitely. I need answers. But I can't seem to get any.

It would seem as if I was the first one to betray this friendship. I was the one with those sinful thoughts of ending it. It could have been shown on my face; how I felt. It was not pleasant reliving those moments in my mind. I could not quite extract those moments in exact details. It seems my memory fails me sometimes. But I did my best. And nothing has changed with regard to how I felt that I should end the friendship. Although from time to time, I would regret my decision. But never once did I reveal those thoughts to him. Never once.

I conclude that it could be my face. That half-hearted smile and the accompanying blink were to blame for his last reaction. That farewell was too tailored to go unnoticed. I thought I had everything under control. I was supposed to be the one to initiate the final goodbye. After all, I was the one to begin the farewell. At the very least, I should end it. Or so I thought. He took over the situation completely. He probably knew I wanted to leave. He knew. So he tortured me for six more minutes and left me at the seventh minute to reflect forever those last moments. I can't forget them.

And so here I am, alone and forgotten by him. Somehow I wished for it but having to experience it right now, I am not happy. This friendship came to me without warning. And now, it ended just as such. I am clueless. I feel powerless. This is hopeless. Strangely though, I hold on to this faith that someday I will see him again. His success is well-known. His success ensures that he must someday come back and acknowledge it. Right now though, it is so well-known that he must have decided that he needed to rest. That must be it. Sometimes, we have so much success that we don't really know what to do with it, especially when it is unwanted. I must have mistaken him. Maybe he didn't want that success. He spoke to me with the intention of letting me into his inner world and that I would make the effort to understand his pain. But I did not. I selfishly believe that I must be on equal ground with him to accept him as a friend. Perhaps, at that moment, it was not a friend that he needed. He needed a soulmate; a soul that did not question intentions. I was not that soul.

The success he has was not achieved by him. That much I know. However, I must have been deaf to fail to notice his loneliness. I had no time, or so I excused myself with that lousy reason. But to be frank, I had too much time.

Though I wish to reconcile with him, it is not friendship that I seek now. I just want to know, if I could once again, spare that 7 minutes after taking that step back, to step forward and embrace him, without questions, and to tell him that everything would be okay. Life is a little step forward, with many more steps taken backwards.

Day 8 1/2

8 ½

I would say Yes to 8 ½ and take hostage of it as significant, making it submit to my verbal summon.

Why another text to express thoughts about 8 ½?

There is always a guilt, my guilt for being unfair to 8 ½.

Will there be any other way to relate to 8 ½ besides calling it a number?

And yet it is always the next number (before the previous) that comes to mind before I can conceive 8 ½.

Each number is at the confluence of innumerable mathematical permutations of calculation – how do I get 8 ½?

Is my writing of 8 ½ fundamental to my personal intention? Accused beyond any fault, 8 ½ has no chance to offer a self-defense in language, because it has its own form and purpose beyond what I intended.

8 ½ is a number and is not.

½ of 1 that comes after 8?

Where did the 8 come from? Will it ever be 9?

I am left to prove that 8 ½ does exist, beyond any doubt.

Must 8 ½ reveal itself as itself, eventually and inevitably?

I cannot break a 9^th stick to prove its existence.

I feel responsible to it, and I shall save it from dying.
Each line I write of it, it shall prolong its death; or so I thought.

My fingers struggle to keep it alive. I can't quite bend one of my fingers to form your ½.

Do you exist to die immediately, doom to a certain time and space to die with a flourish?

Is there a heaven for you up there where those below shall look like dots to you?

There is a particular aesthetical value in you, 8 ½. It is as if / is not a boundary but the signifier of a possibility or an impossibility – the before or the after.

Is it closer to 8 or to 9?

But let us not go so far to say that it projects itself. 8 ½ is always 8 ½. That is all it can be.

 

8 ½

"A smelly bitch that has brought forth plenty of young, already rotting in places, but that to me in my childhood meant everything, who continue to follow me faithfully everywhere, whom I am quite incapable of disciplining, but before whom I shrink back, step by step, shying away from her breath, and who will end up – unless I decide otherwise- forcing me into a corner that I can already see, there to decompose fully and utterly on me and with me, until finally – is it a distinction? – the pus- and worm-ravaged flesh of her tongue laps at my hand."

Franz Kafka

 

At some point, I feel that there is no turning back once I had summoned her and given her that name. She was always going to die but she could not stop lashing her saliva at me just before her demise. Her speech alone was enough to chain me to this visual prison and all I could do is to isolate this memory into the existent called 8 ½. If that image haunts me, it is really because I allow it to. Her voice with the flying saliva. Though a part of this haunting is still involuntarily, the least I am doing is to claim ownership and authority of it. I name her 8 ½; a specific moment in time; of my life.

In remembrance of things past, I can only resort to a spatially decisive methodology to arrange my scattered memories, though linearly experienced, into pockets of space and in between holes or lacunae.

As the worms burrowed out from their cans, they forced me to a corner that was always there. There she would be, always there, always at the corner. She remains a number I cannot count to under normal circumstances. She always seemed to shun me even though I have named her. I am desperately counting to the next number but I always skipped her. 7…8…9.

But more accurately, I can no longer smell or hear her. What remains is really an ocular experience, embodied into 8 ½.

Will you be so kind as to tell me which corner to turn to now?

I miss 8 ½.

Before I take my life, I shall know that it is my fault that all my life I am trying to fit into a number that I am not. In fact, the mere thought of fitting a number to my identity is absurd and meaningfully meaningless.

I feel more attached to ½. The neither nor.

At least I can no longer complain that there is a side that I can never be. Then again, I suffer an impasse of sorts when I realise I am neither. Where am I?

I can expect, at this point, that by the 8^th page, I should end this narrative.

In a sense, I have to accept that what I am writing (have written) have nothing to do with 8 ½.

8 ½ is really not about 8 ½.

As time passes, I begin to understand this and image 8 1/2 in the enclaves of my mind and these black words on a page.

It should and must meet its natural end. But allow us to defer her death till later.

 

I would say No and release those shackles on her and let her be. There is no lack of sleep now, when the wind will somehow blow her ashes away. And I simply ask myself these questions at that moment of release:

1. Where is she flying to?
   
2. Will God take her soul?
   
3. Is she still, somehow, residing in her ashes?
   
4. Who is she without her frail and old body?
   
5. What did she look like when she was alive and young?
   
6. Who was she?
   
7. Who determines which Paradise she might go or is it an eviction from this Paradise?
   
8. Am I still related to her?
   

There is no 9^th question.

From the 9^th year on, I stop asking these questions. It becomes less painful to ask. I refused Yes and I am entirely comfortable to remain a No.

Somewhere in between, though, I still imagine myself occupying that space, as if it is the only way I can go about remembering her.

In between those spaces reside the intangible meditations I had of her and as the number of years went past, every imaginations becomes a deferred idea of her. I can't meet her like I used to. But I still meet her. In between.

 

1982,

If there is a comma, is it that comma before that long hypen that pre-empts my end?

Lately, I find it impossible to write an obituary; for her and for me.

If possible, may someone write a combined piece for the both of us?

We grow weary as the years pass but we can never get used to saying goodbyes. It is like having an illegitimate child and not knowing how to acknowledge it, yet alone take care of.

Witnessing my own death has become a ritual; a ritual to make the pain less painful. And writing has become a masturbation that replaces the orgasm and it is never the actual thing. What is the actual thing? I fall short from the actual experience of intercourse. I fear that whoever I will sleep with is never the bone that came out from me. But I swear I am not a male patriarch.

Instead, every page of the story is like a pre-cursor of a pure event that will never occur. I despise the moment when I must replace a pure event with something else. Perhaps, I have been too mechanical and have devised a linear equation to understand and define the event. From start to end, there is just this long trail and ties of texts that is the result of a tedious act of stringing and quaking the type into an eventual end, repeated and simulated.

Not many would be able to do this publicly. But some can.

At least not in its raw sense. Somehow we make it into a beauteous act and imagine ourselves a world that never quite live up to its promises. Dystopia or Utopia, there is no world except ours. We make do with it. We live it. Before a realm of Paradise or Hades, imagine first a world where many of us are just masturbating, publicly and privately. But it is not about the act, but the aftermath. Pure presence defers from the actual intercourse to a representative act that takes over. It will always bring about the manifestation of an original (sexual) intention but not the actual creative copulation. It is always that glorious bridging of the impossible into the realm of creative possibility. Simply through a pure, repetitive and egoistical act –self-gratifying and self-glorifying.

How could we have the ideal sexual intercourse? We no longer know our partners.

Perhaps, that is also the nature of writing – it's an inevitable act that leaves us weary and breathless. It is an act which we no longer know our Reader. And vice versa.

After every simulated orgy, I don't quite know where to go (imagining a mama-san encouraging me to come back every day).

I could leave my position and find my rest.

But I have no desire for hypostasis or dialectics, and I have not read Mani's texts.

All I have is 'I', every bit and breadth of it.

Perhaps there is always confluence where I find myself trapped in. But distortion always creeps into it and I am manifested in eights and nines.

There is never that true sense of the in between. We always fail in writing.

I will never acknowledge that there is a simple way to relate this tension. There is no way but the narrow way. And yet what I have in front (and back) is entire world at its anxious; as if it is always ready to devour me. I can't be myself. I am left with the medium of writing.

Perhaps, then, it is not about being myself. Is it then a mysterious respect for the other (side of the 8)?

Perhaps.

One way or the other, isn't that what screws us all up?

I don't suffer from a perpetual mononucleosis but I can't help but feel the need to make a clear distinction between one and the other, before I have that intimate caress and kiss of death. (is that why I write/masturbate?) But can I actually "have" these physical acts? With whom?

But eventually, I find myself, instead, in an I-and-the-rest-of-the-world situation. I-and-Others.

But let us not go into depth into an ontological study of this supposed phenomenon.

It is often true that we are much lonelier than we imagined.

Surely now, this is no longer a writing about one or two.

I can only imagine that there is someone, anyone, who is reading this text. There is first 'I' in all its variants that read this text. But who is the next to read? Who am I when I read?

What comes after writing?

I would say [fill in the blanks] and find no one waiting for me except the thousand faces that haunt me since the day I was born. Every cry, tear and the sound of the outside rain will be there to greet me.

How excruciating! I cannot understand why my first greeting must be a loud wail and at last a silent oblivion that marks my last slumber.

I cannot be there at the end to write about myself. My death comes after the orgy; after the masturbation and simulated orgy. My end comes at the moment life is take away and no cleaning can really remove the stains.

Perhaps.

I am preparing for that final ritual of death, which death is the amalgamation of all imagined ends.

But this ritual, once internalized, is merely indifference. I am going to die anyway. I am indifferent to this fact. Or am I?

Wait.

½ is that indifference!

It is an indifference to the final referent.

It is an uttered silence of the in between where all majorities can be bundled up into a final referent.

HALF.

That is precisely the power it wields – the speculative power of being polemic or having multiple perspectives. There are always alternative answers, by way of clarifications and not truths. "It is a place of absorption and implosion."

It is to create that reservoir where all rivers will flow to and one is safe in the knowledge that nature will function according to one's intention, and not overflow.

Perhaps.

The thrust of life is that indifferent power and energy that we as creative being are finally left with. I am left with a mirror that reflects my face and absorbs everything that I project onto it. Hence, I am left with the choice of masking my face within the limitations of my physicality.

A disappeared Father best exemplifies that sense of post-1/2.

But it is that void, that mystery of absence that compels the ½ to exist. We cannot leave anything unattended. Everything needs a proper name.

A Father is that proper name; the Father who masturbated and imagined that a virgin child came out of that activity.

That is what that haunts me – an evil that we cannot give a proper name to.

Some things never existed until a name is given. In this case, this existed before any name was given to it.

HALF.

That is what I shall call it.

It is the curse of the infinite sign ∞ that signifies nothing except towards itself till it reaches a state of implosion. Meaning loses its source and floats around as potentials. However,

8 has to remain upright, forever a symbol to our hopes and faith. Hence, it ceases to be the infinite sign. It is a number, a definite signified of some identical entity. A potential becomes a definitive, no matter how illusionary that is. Perhaps, my doctrine of speculative-power is now a myth. And I seriously do not know if religious myths are truths.

God has that (human) signification of being that silent indifference. As if to predict his disappearance, two silent signifiers accompany a presence. Perhaps that silence is actually what pronounces his presence. God in this sense, remains in the realm of the imagination and dreams. After all, we never quite 'listen' to sounds in our dreams.

Only in writing do the silent signifiers appear. But I am not keen to impose a reading to what is already loaded with meanings and significations. Writing in the aftermath of Writing, unfortunately cannot be the same as it was once conceived as.

Am I embarking on a fruitless journey to discover something that I do not even know what it is?

Perhaps, I am expressing a paradox that has no answer.

On one hand, we behave with a powerful indifference, which is speculative in its general use. (To us, it may not even be speculations!)

On the other, God has that indifferent attitude towards our speculative-power to signify.

"Say what you want about me. I am who I am."

Who is perhaps, Half.

We are always, almost correct. We can't help it. That is the destiny we have created for ourselves when dialectics befell us.

All I can now do is to suspend my teleological impulses. I cannot avoid my ethical impulses though. There will always be an Abel I will to slain. There will always be a Hagar who will give an eldest son I would later cast away. My sin will be impatience. My sin will be idolatry at its most banal and yet imaginative sense. My sin will be my masturbatory words that attempt to erase the most holy of words.

One cannot imagine away these impulses. Half way there, half-imagined, in between two definitive signifiers. One a presence, the other an absence. And yet we try. We categorise them, de facto.

My body is 8. My spirit is 9.

In between I live and die as ½.

½ is sex.

Half is a child.

½ is alive.

Half is dead.

Don't ask me what that final referent is. We all make a lot of noise when in fact, that is a silent indifference. Seriously, do we really expect heaven to fall down on us in perfect harmony and perfect embrace? What do I have left? Where is 8 ½?

 

 

 

 

Where the final word or number is never quite finished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Ricordati che è un film comico."

(Remember, this is a comedy.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2008