Wednesday, December 31, 2008

day 1/366

Today is the last day of the universe. It shall be that the universe implodes and everything we come to know disappears and we start again from the first instant the universe began and the universe begins anew. I will be as I was in this new universe, and I will know exactly the same things and persons as I knew before that end of the universe.
Only that the universe is not exactly the same universe as it was before. It is entirely new. But it is the same in exact minute details, and number of galaxies, stars and substances in the previous universe. You will not even know that the universe has changed. In fact, every repetition of the this implosion goes about without much of a fuss and you experience absolutely nothing. No change. It moves so quickly that in the speed of light, it moves so rapidly forward (in a retrograde way) to exactly the same moment it imploded earlier. Only that the universe is now able to progress slightly forward until the next implosion. And this goes on, despite a present chronological and linear progression of our consciousness and human history.
Never mind the technicalities.

Today is the first day of the universe. I met you. And I am in love with you.

day 31

for once the purple clouds, lavender fields and the cold foggy night felt so distant.
the endless dreams that once haunted me, a vague memory that no longer persists
I could with wistful and sad gratitude exorcise the demons that captured me in paintings never drawn before.

for once the purple flower, growing alone amongst the thorns of her family, felt so real.
her lofty dreams dead as she dragged her being through the snow, dreadfully reminded by the mantle that her entire existence is dependent on
I could with faithful and angry music banish the angels that were never with us when we threaded the stone pavements in an adventure.

what a filmic end it came to be. Though dead and immortal, we would forget, in time to come, what it meant then, and treasure the fact that it didn't continue.
Jostling between two (always two), the dreams we share, momentary, fleeting as soon as the reel is used up. no more to film. no more to tell. One and one, two separate.

We visit the graveyards together, one last time, meeting unnamed tombstones and forgotten bones. And there would be a single purple morning glory, tainted by the grey landscape, all alone in her despair. And then even the image of me would fade and nothing will be left for her to cling on to. I am gone. And she is different. What new visions and dreams she still has, I have no idea.

I thank the stars for those short days. Stars, because they will burn up and drop from the sky one day. We'll be too dead or late to see that happen. But it will. As definite as our own short lives.

If pain reminded me of anything then, it reminded me of how precious you were, until you fell short of that image. I'm sorry for that to happen. I truly am.

And then the chimes sound, the lonely walk down the aisle. I, uninvited, the figure abandoned in a lila-filled dream, materialised in the hall of my bane. This is no matrimony. This is no blessing. But I shall do what I do best - I bless her. And open the gates out with my invisible hands.

Again, the bells ring in my head, altogether surreal and far. I dare myself to look back, and I did, and the church crumbled before me.

I find myself, in an empty white room. And I am excited, and weary, of the future and the unknown.











Here I stand, what more to expect?

Love, in all the unexpected places.

day 70

It is a cold night. The kind of cold that deserts you once the new morn rushes in. I know it's not a good night to be out. While the rest of the world lives on in abandonment. Ok. I made that out. Some really believe that there will be a tomorrow to believe in. But I don't.

I am in my office, presently. Looking out of the glass shield. I feel more of myself, obliterated from any direct gaze. I don't feel watched tonight. I am reluctant to step out; to expose myself to the usual forays into the night geography. Neither do I want to expose myself to psychological dramas and high-key tasteless conversations with strangers. As it is, my life is dramatic enough. As it is, my friends are strangers.

And one of them just died.

It is the kind of nights when you reflect upon the inner mechanism of a human being and despise it utterly. He died of envy. Or is that me, in my bewilderment, seeking an explanation where there is none? I lament the fact that I know him slightly more than just a stranger. But I won't call him a friend. I don't have any friends. But the desire for the truth, and to solve this crime, burns in me a passion so sick that I could puke right here, and now. I know I am not doing this for him. The radio is playing a familiar track from the late sixties. Of course, I didn't vomit but the compulsion for answers is still there. Frankly, I don't give a damn how his friends and family must have felt. You see, he left me a letter, an hour before he was found dead. I have no idea why he chose me. Not that it matters who he was trying to contact and who might prevent the act. What I am bothered by is the trust a soon-to-be dead person had of me; I, who has severely given up on the living world. Now, must even hell come knocking on my office door?

He wrote:

Dear Friend,

I know we were never close to begin with. But listen, I'm going to die.

Find out who my killer is. I can only trust you.

Good Luck,
XXX

I take another good look at the letter. Then I tear it up. Nothing is going to change. I can't do anything for him. He was actually on the right track. He needed all the luck he could get.

I turn around and walk out of my office. I need a drink. Something to clear my mind. Maybe I can do with a stranger tonight. Maybe I just need a companion on a night like this.

The cold wind assaults me just like I expected it to. Just down the street are some boys suited up. I ignore them. As I step into the street light, I stop. I think I know what I want to do tomorrow. I think I will kill someone.

It's New Year's Eve.

Time to meet new friends.


Tuesday, December 30, 2008

day 66

DELUSION,

is the new

DOCTRINE.


is the old

DELUSION

Monday, December 29, 2008

day 60


We are tempted by possibility.
Absolute Possibility.
The universal, single notion of Possibility.
From whence we conceive a thousand trains of thoughts.
From whence we grow weary.
From whence we narrow down to our determined paths.
From where,
we reduce Possibility into possibilities,
finishing us with a master-stroke of actuality.
We are reduced by Actualities.
Pluralistic Actualities.
The infinite entities of actual things with properties.
From where we grow strong.
From where we broaden our horizon into the great unknown.
From whence and where, we can laugh and cry.

day 355


shades of purple. you're so beautiful. holding up the white sheet. I'll be there to admire. the mirror fades into the background. (it's still there). but we'll fade away, together. we have a moment to pause. let me feel you. you're so beautiful. killing me so softly. I'll be there to admire. we're closer than we imagine. you're so beautiful. run away...

run away.

we pause a moment to run away.

He can only hate himself.

run away.

We.

held me up, when I was lying on the ground. a thousand depths down. hold me. when I'm lifted up, flying, and running away. suspended with all the thoughts paused for the moment and I rest on the words of faith, which will not fade away - we fade away - and we will survive the ordeal of the sirens' songs and sail away in an invisible ship. tell me, when I'm about to die, where will you be and where should I wait for you. I won't leave entirely. I'll wait. Do not kill me with words, white is sufficient to cover me with warmth in the cold, cold world, where no one really cares, no one really knows, blinded and feeling our way through all the mess. stop hurting ourselves. stop lying to ourselves. tend to our immediate wounds. heal our deepest scars. we're torn and battered. we had enough. we don't need peace. we need a rhythm to follow. we need songs to sing. we need dances to forget. but we won't forget. we'll remember. we're remembered. we are known. we are always there and here. we hear. we listen. we don't know what to hear. we don't know what to listen to. but we're here. and there. jump in, the deepest pit. slip and fall. die and perish. but we'll still live. somewhere. somehow. kill me. kill me with the most violent methods. and you're still find me. when the wait is over. I come. Come. We have more to do. Always more to do. wave to us when you're here. we'll be there. we wait. Do not kill me with your shows, black is sufficient to draw me to the infinite end in the warm, warm nothingness, where we sleep. rest. our burdens are put away. we're home. we're home.

don't stop. don't stop hating myself. don't stop hating yourself. I'm reaching. You're reaching. We're reaching. the rain is pouring. the blowing wind; I know You're there. tender. harsh. soft. pain. gentle. rough. safe. perilous. but we're near.

Together, You, you and I.

We.

We don't need to hope.

We can't run away from the light.

We...

(fill in the blanks)


day 30

'We were the binaries of ancient stories - the poet opposing the philosopher. I wished we met under different circumstances. We could have formed a synthesis of astonishing potential. You are my antithesis. vice-versa. You were my nemesis. The poet who did not understand. I was your nemesis. The philosopher who understood too much. With each inadequacies, we ventured into darkness and returned with a difference. You are no longer a poet. I am no longer a philosopher. We become our own antitheses. We become our own nemesis. We no longer needed each other. So this is the umpteen time I shall say the words again: I die, to say goodbye. And you shall live to find consolation from Sophie, and you shall learn to love wisdom. You shall meet her, again and again, till she grants you the solace that Solomon had from his songs. You shall sing with her. And write the songs of your dreams, formed as bubbles and rainbows. You shall glorify Him, not with the things of the world, but with heavenly nothingness and measured gardens that He will lead you to. Don't pretend to know. Know (translated from Hebrew) because you've been led by Him.'



And 'I' plunged into the deep abyss and H never heard from 'I' again.

day 346

lend me your courage, thy ancient courage,
and to the depths of hell I shall venture, to slay the three-headed canine.
lend me your yarn, thy bloody yarn
and to the maze of shame I shall venture, to slay the bastard bullhead.
lend me your pen, thy ancient pen
and to the depths of white libraries I shall venture, to write the epic myths.

We are only capable of writing. That is the curse/blessing of being God-images.
We are only capable of piercing. Pens, needles, nails and stakes. Choose your objects of violence.

lend me your needle, thy modern needle,
and the gowns for yours banquets I shall knit, to impress the economic vampires.
lend me your nails, thy modern nails,
and pierce our Saviour anew, again, again, again, bloody again.
lend me your stakes, thy modern stakes,
and the dead bodies of every martyr I shall exhibit, in museums and camps.

And then I shall pierce myself, die with my own bloody hands,
than let this world stone me, for being nothing like them. eventually.

I lie, with my own ancient lies.

day 57

come, the merry messengers,
whose letters undelivered, they don't care, but with tipsy-mugs of foamy-ale
they cheered the Sunday and slapped the asses
'Ecce, convertimur ad gentes';
from earth to hell, mere passengers.

go, the petty pilgrims,
whose filthy loins, they don't care, but with jovial-costumes and jester-masks
they cheered the monuments and kissed the relics
A tomb for all, a sainthood purchased;
from heaven to earth, mere Grimm's.

donkeys and fowls, domesticated animals of various shapes and sizes.
think not the cruel acts, think so fully of ourselves.
monkeys and fools, human masters of various sins and sundries.
think not the passions, act so fully of ourselves.

we live so full. so full. so full.
we think so high. so high. so high.
we want to be free. be free. free.
we then hate. only hate. not love. we hate.

don't say we love our neighbours.
we only threaten them. (and whip them)

(feuerbach)

Saturday, December 27, 2008

day 79

I'm sure,
the stars
I'm looking at
Now.
are the
same ones
you're looking at.

and some
s
t
a
r
s
fall
too.

Friday, December 26, 2008

day 302

No hearts are crushed and cherished
by invisible fingers;
pen to white sheets,
the loincloth bears witness to the bleeding
ever present ever after.

No hearts are crimson red
when the palms spread out,
and the piercings disappear like red roses,
soft and dry kisses
that never pressed us
prayer by silent prayer.

No hearts are fools,
knowing fools.
And because of that,
words.
living, perpetual, words
red letters on the finite book
behind a cover of spirit fibres.

No hearts are needed.
Human hearts come to a stop.
And because of that.
we can love.
without hearts.
with Him.



I is too human.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

day 125

I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
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I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

day 322

ahh. ah. haha. hee.

I think he is saying something.

mmmm m m ha ah mm

He is playing. He is repeating. he is not following. he can't be bothered.
Who cares. Nothing gain. No one there. no one understands. They dance. to what. a music someone else plays. leading. mis-leading. we care. we care too much. be like us. we hope. we pray. who are they. too much attention. too much.

woo ahhhh wooo ahhhh

reduce to a silent majority.
be useful. be someone. be there. be normal. too normal. we love. just be normal.
we can deal with it.
we can live with it.
hello. your name please.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

no one there. nothing said. nothing heard. we speak. again. no one there. don't bother too much. don't try too hard. we try too hard. we do too much. nothing gain. no pain. we gain. they gain?
/dance/repeat/paint/repeat/water the plants/repeat/love/repeat.

Our faith shall last.


(dedicated to autistic children)

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

day 144

he opens his eyes.
He sees nothing.
No, he sees darkness.
He is in a dark room.

He thinks, this must be heaven.
It must be.
No one to disturb you.
Nothing materialises.
Are there demons and Robin in there?
No. They won't be there to whisper dreams to you.
Imagine, nothing.
He must be in heaven.

Nothing there.
nothing to believe.
nothing to feel
nothing to sense

No worries, everything is fine. We'll go on. We deserve this.
He prays. He cries. He weeps. He hugs himself. He prays.
No worries, no pain. Everything will be fine. We'll go on. We did it.
he prays. he cries. he weeps. he hugs himself. he weeps.
it is dark.

no one is trapped in there.
he likes to think that way.
no wind. no sun. no one to say hello to you. no wind. no green. no tall grass brushing against him.
you happen to be there. somewhere in the corner of the room.
he won't see you.
I like to be there.
somewhere.
She is also in here, somewhere.
we are in a dark room.
we pray. we cry. we weep. we hug. we weep.
it is so dark.

Monday, December 22, 2008

day 66

I'll find time.
He will find nothing.
I'll find space.
He will find nothing.
She will find for him.
She will not measure for him.
I'll find nothing.
He will not find nothing.
There are always more than nothing to be found.
We don't have to search far.
They come to us.
We live in a country for young men.
There is no country for old men.
There is no land for the men who fight their secret wars.
There is no land for the men who cross borders to return home.
There is no land for the men who yearn for the final rest.
There is no one who really knows what it means to live to die.
There is no one alive to tell us what to do.
All the dead men, all the bones and fossils buried underneath our wrinkled feet, and all the dust collected in forgotten libraries; we won't find the place with the answers.
Instead, we grow older, and younger, and find that we have yet to explore every corner of the universe.
With you, I can see everything because I see nothing.
I hear nothing. I feel nothing. And I sense nothing.
With you I can grow old again, young again, die again, live again, and still find the hauntings more relevant than before.
I dread my helplessness, and the despair just gets deeper each night.
So is the romantic irony that my transgressions have a deeper purpose to fulfil.
I con myself to sleep: "Aha, I'll live another day to correct this!" Or "Aha, I'll live another day to be corrected."

We have no country to sleep in.
No paradise left for us.
No dreams to materialise.
No hope untainted.
We imagine the worst things and live by them diligently.
Life is like the bile that is stuck in your throat, a second before you puke.
You can get rid of it, but it won't go without leaving a horrible taste.
I cannot count the amount of excuses I made for myself.
Perhaps, the only thing left that I can depend on is this consistency.
Who are you?
The sphinx with the answers?
I slept with blatant comfort.
When will I face the evil that is my existence?
What does it feel to face myself?

We'll never know. We won't be alive to know.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

day 58

It is difficult to be alive.
It is tough to be there.
It is tiresome to be say hello.
I can't speak a foreign language.
It is impossible to fall in love.
It is tedious to die.
It is laborious to be thankful.

No thank you.

day 68

I encountered an ironic situation today:

I just came home from a backpacking journey, during which I constantly thought of the many ways I could die during the trip.
I came back alive.
But at the void deck of my HDB block was the set-up of a wake service.
Sometimes I think life (and death) has a very profound way of reminding how ridiculous and exceedingly short it is.
I represent the future possibility that anticipates my abrupt end at some point, while the dead man in the coffin cannot even consciously represent the future impossibility of his existence. I wonder who is in a better position - the future me or the past him.
Somehow, I find a weird connection to the dead man.
I could almost reach out to him and tell him how much he is not going to be missed but will absolutely diminish his own existence through mediation, representation, and remembrance. I don't know how we could live so peacefully without having a honest outlook of this irony.
I really think, it is the infinite possibilities at the moment of being alive or dead that is at the heart of this basic irony of life.

What comes after is really performance. (Contrary to what some think, performance kills.)

If you send me off with music accompaniment, you are anticipating that I will be forgotten.

today, the void deck is void.

day 25

I believe, the faithful could be hiding in places I know not of.
Perhaps, they have already gone to heaven, leaving us poor souls vying for places no longer available.
Perhaps, they could not reach us, cursed with dumbness they suffered for having their names written in blood.
Logocentricism's preoccupation seems to suggest that the Word is dead; a done deed. I cannot be dead certain.

Instead, I could sense the coarseness of my skin that reminds me of my perpetual presence that could, in a swift and accidental moment, be taken away from me; at least biologically speaking.
Of course, there is nothing biological of the things that we speak of in abstract. The attraction of certain debates lies in their inexplicability. We say what we can imagine, replacing the unfathomable; making visible the invisible.
Perhaps, biology seems equally abstract to me. I cannot see and observe cells splitting and viruses destroying. The whole sphere of our existence is so complex and unfathomable by mere human comprehension that I cease thinking about these questions.
Let us return to the first statement.

I believe, the faithful could be so quiet, that their passive inactivity is a resistance to this world, so profoundly silent that it is oppressive.
The priest's engraved laws are not oppressive.
The rituals repeated infinitely are not oppressive.
The incitements of prosperity doctrines are not oppressive.
The cameras capturing every image of us are not oppressive.
It is the absolute non-representation of the faithful that is oppressive.
I cannot find them.
I cannot know them.
I cannot see them.
I cannot hear them.
It is as if they disappear without a trace, even if they are supposedly known, translated, repeated and preached all over again as saints, apostles, prophets, and the voices of yester-years.
Faithful, who we think we know.
There is one concept that I cannot understand.
Everytime I try to measure it, it immediately escapes me.
Faith.
I cannot understand how one can preach of absolute goodness.
One speaks of the Gift.
One writes of the Gift.
The gift of salvation has a precursor to the actuality of salvation.
That is to suggest that we are already cursed; or we are in need of saving.
You give, but in giving, you sacrifice my humanity; my finitude that makes me all so human.
I muse, again:
You give, but in giving, I am no longer the former self; I sacrifice myself to be less of myself in order to be more of someone else.
You give, but in giving, I know that I have to be given unto; without asking, You give, what I am in need of but know not of until You give.
This gift, is such a double-edged sword.
To receive the gift, you are saved.
to reject the gift, you are cast away.
I cannot explain this paradox.
It is an aporia that remains the most elusive of all paradoxes.
But let us return to something more fundamental, which is the absolute mistrust I have of my humanity.
But that is precisely why I trust to not trust myself, that I can in some sense, reach out to the gift in its duality.
I am oppressed.
and yet, I am free.
In some sense, most of us do not acknowledge the oppression and pursue freedom.
Others seek diligently the almost ritualistic oppression to reach the infinite freedom that is eternal salvation.
Whatever our purposes may be, there is never a way that is narrow enough to encompass the duality.
But is this duality essential?
The essential and fundamental observation I can safely make is my own subjective human experience.
And I know that, one is always capable of faith in this realm.
It almost comes without thinking.
Or perhaps, it does come with thinking, but one does not know exactly how and why we must think of faith.
You believe, as you go to bed, that you will wake up the next day.
you believe, as you think, that you should be able to think of the object in the manner useful to you.
You believe, that what you speak should in some sense be understood.
You believe, you are alive, since you are conscious of your existence.
I'm not absolutely sure.
To believe is really to be beyond that pain that haunts me, safe in the knowledge that I can believe what I believe.
But believe me, I don't know myself.
And it is because of this ambivalence that makes me positively sure that faith is a human principle and act.
It is the last given gift to us that makes us almost divine.
And yet, it is this faith that makes me so vulnerable and capable of failing and falling.
What is the worth of faith if it fails you?
Faith attempts no such thing.
Faith instead demands something so simple and deep of us that I cannot describe it adequately.
My feeble attempt is to just suggest that faith demands our surrender of life and death as a concept.
Instead, faith demands that you die each day such that the struggle is not a objective experience in which you can reason, but to die is to find no word to say, when all that could be said has already been said and done.
you find absolutely nothing to say to the burning bush.
You hide.
With Him.
As if the will of the world could strive in all ecstasy and euphoria to be what she desires and yet she will not be able to seduce the faithful.
I believe that - where the faithful dwells, there will be no towers and universal language. There will only be diversity and ambuigity that remind us of how small we are.
It isn't even about how abstract ideas.
There are no Platonic ideas or materialism.
There will only be silence, in which you wait faithfully for the trumpets of glory.
But it is not glory the faithful seek.
It is not even about christmas trees or passion plays.
The real passion that moves me, breaks me,
is the Gift, the blood on the void that is nothing, which nothing came out of nothing and the Word was the beginning right through to the end.
I am almost ready to speculate that the first Word God uttered was
Silence.
so quiet that it hurts.
like the tomb that is empty.
like the Second coming on the white horse with a wail of divine punishment.
obliteration at its most divine best.
I wouldn't know.
But I know that the Word is blood, flesh blood that begins the body.
Do not slit your wrist.
That blood is precious.
It is deeper than the ocean.
It is in the air.
It is in the water.
your father's blood.
your father's father's blood.
Add the blood of every human that once lived, is living and will live together.
I am sure, that is as deep as hell and heaven.
There are too many words in the world.
So I am tempted to talk about the Word as the dried blood that will never be represented again.
It is the Word that evaporated and never to be seen again.
And yet, this Word is imprinted in us; the mark of faith.
I wouldn't know.
But imagine, how the blood dries up when we die.
As if the Word left us.
All I can have faith of, is that the drying of my blood in future, would disappear forever
because the Blood that I want left in me, is the eternal Blood that faith has donated to me.
The book is finished. I am finished.
And no other book needs to be written (with blood).
Anything else written (including my passages) is nonsense.
(I'm not making sense)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

day 300

17 Dec 51

I hanged myself that night. After the initial struggle, my resistance ultimately futile, I finally could stare out into the night sky peacefully. My body temperature began to drop; with the cold breeze gently rocking my corpse. I could stare into the sky for eternity, knowing that no one would see me; at least, not tonight. In the distant backdrop, there were lanterns released into the night sky, merging with the blinking stars; I could not tell if the lights came from fire or from the distant galaxies. I searched, unsuccessfully, for my birth star. Instead, I saw a shooting star dropped from the dark canvas. A stroke of the sky has been removed, unable to even remain as a mark or a trace. Soon, the star would be forgotten. I will be forgotten. My body was limp and the swaying continued. Lifeless as I might look, there was a little vitality in a dead body. Like the gunpowder that exploded into the distant heavens, that vitality was the last before I gave up my body. I had enough of it. I wanted my soul to soar with the wind and over the mountains and to blow the rivers to their natural end. I could continue, as waves and there would be no end to my existence, only to hide in places unseen and unheard. How would you know I am there? By listening, by feeling. But it is eventually not the wind I want to be. I would give up my soul too. I would cease to exist and disseminate into the language of Genesis. I will be with the Word.

The body is language. The body is the Word. I return back to the Word.

I breathed my last.



This last page of his journal was found in a cottage hut in Pai, north Thailand. The owner of the journal was nowhere to be found. No body, no soul.



day 28

She: How are you feeling now?
I: I...don't have the words to express my feelings now.
She: Why!
I: Don't Know!
She: Orh.
I: ...So what do we do now?
She: I don't know.
I: Orh.

(365 days later)
She: How are you feeling now?
I: I...
She: Why!
I: Don't Know!
She: Orh.
I: So...
She: I don't know.
I: Orh.

(sometime and somewhere in a future we know not of)
She: Mmm.
I: Mmm.
She: Mmm!
I: Mmm!
She: Mm.
I: Mm.
She: M.
I: M.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

day 85

It is simple to be alive.
It is simple to be there.
It is simple to be say hello.
Es ist ganz einfach, mit einer Fremde zu sprechen.
It is simple to fall in love.
It is simple to die.
It is simple to be thankful.

Thank you.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

day 126

He sent a postcard today.
He didn't write much.
He couldn't write what he felt.
He's miles away.
He writes anyway.

Monday, December 15, 2008

day 73

Dear pen pal,

He used to tell me: "Life is truly and exceedingly short with long intervals. Your train passes a new tunnel, and another, and another; one tunnel after another. Most of the time, you sleep through them! I don't believe you can miss your stop, as long as you buy a one-way ticket from point A to B."

We meet so many different people, with different faces that it scares me to think about how I'll never see them again. I can't imagine how my face is so different from them and still share something in common.

Have you then thought of how you forget the faces of people you know? You will recognise them when you see them but you can never form a perfect image in your mind. Their faces are always different from the faces you imagine. Already, I forget your face.


Bubble-like.
Yours,
Nameless Pen Pal

Sunday, December 14, 2008

day 65

happy, smile.
choose one of the above.
sad. cry.
choose none of the above.
above,
where we can have choices.
none of the above.
why must it always be above?

Friday, December 12, 2008

day 0

we'll conquer.

day 99

Like all men on this island, I have been a politician; Like all, I've been a slave. Like some, I've been a food critic on a blog page. Like some, I have criticised. But nothing is worth complaining nowadays. The reminders of our inability to write pile up ceaselessly on forums. The same could be said about queues outside lottery stands. We shade - papers that decide our futures. This is also when I like to imagine how the mosquitoes fall like musical notes as we gas them. No, I'm not making a direct reference to Jews "zum Baden". There's a limit to dark comedy here. We don't understand that here. Instead, we believe in "Arbeit macht frei". That is as close as I could get when I think of our affiliations to an altogether forgotten generation. When we disseminate ideas of such to a general press, we restrict ourselves to a impoverished method of self-justification and self-pity and delude ourselves with a future (financial) freedom. To be more precise with my statement: we cherish altogether poor/rich versions of the impoverishment of society. Instead, the papers are dominated by figures, numbers and the occasional disbelief that people can jump into a cage of white tigers.

Indeed, we can. Potentially, we're all in cages of white tigers. Besides white tigers, we can jump into wherever captivities we want. And indeed, we can be front-page news. Frankly, we labour to find some free way of expressing paradoxes as paradoxes. Instead, we go around masking, diligently, the (paradoxical) truths of the quotidian.

The best news are actually the unintended ones:

"AG Woon says there's only one law for both the rich and poor" - 11 Dec 2008

Indeed, there is only one law. Many have discovered, post factum, that all news are meant to be forgotten. In fact, the piles of National Geographic and Newsweek in our storerooms remind us of this mere fact. I'm certainly not inheriting any of these magazines. They rightly go into second hand sales. People tend to be in despair that our generation's vernacularism consists of vulgar idioms. That is not surprising if we consider the "second-hand" inheritance of cultures here. After all, if you cannot master the "Mother" language, you rape your "Mother" in an innovative manner.

If there is a way to exhibit our anguish in the lack of proper journalism, I believe it must be founded on principles of an Emergency State. At least, we could easily discover how there are two opposites - the State and the Resistance. The transparency of our present journalism makes it impossible for the dialectical relation to be played out first-hand. There are too many voices now. There are also too many exhibitionists here. From vulgar musings, intellectual meditations, to codes of law, we often rely too much on useless chatter. Try giving a pen to a single-room flat occupant on financial assistance, and you will be amazed by the quality of poetic literature he or she can conceive. After all, it is not flowery and fanciful language that reflects the tensions of this world. More often, it is a personal vehemence to the unseen forces and the invisible hands that drives us to write the simplest of expressions.

As one old uncle once beautifully reminded me of the One Law:
"等死咯."
(wait to die loh)

It is to admit that one could feel fatigue, cold, hunger and thirst. But we often express our wants as a lack of sex, money, more sex, more money and the lack of luck in the lotteries of life. In a very fatal way, we seem to believe in chance more than any other place in the region!

I can't seem to believe whatever I write or say nowadays. The truth is that inherent in my discourse, is my mistrust that I'm veiling an obvious truth - that is, by stating the obvious which we choose to ignore.

Now, the crux of the matter cannot be postulated (knowing it will somehow be rejected!) by just words alone. After all, how lamentable a tragedy (of Hamlet, Lear, Romeo and Juliet) is, is never judged by the heroes and heroines in the play, but by the ruly plebeians and higher-ups in our society. They strictly and passively behave as they should, and give their rounds of applause to well-done lamentable tragedies performed in costly architectural disasters and symbolically shaped exhibits. We pay to justify that. We pay to forget. I tell you, the actors on this island don't get all the credit!

At the same time, the choice to complain is a useless endeavour. As we begin to express an idea, the idea flees immediately, and we are unable to fully grasp the extent of the argument and its representation of our everyday. Everyday is such a vague concept! I tend to believe that the perpetual construction around us is definitive of our society. This island is vibrantly (and irritatingly) alive and under construction. There is a metaphor in there to be exploited and to chance upon. If I can throw a dice, and earn myself a chance to throw the next, then perhaps, the One Law can divide itself to more laws other than Death. I shall buy myself a chance and integrate my chances into the singular experience of my life. Perhaps, I can then justify my complaint that there are always separate laws for different sections of a class society. If I have a dollar to bet, compared with a million dollars to bet, who will have the higher chance?

To hit the home run, I feel compelled now to illustrate how discourses end with an extravagant flourish (something like fireworks heavily used here) after the prior construction and destruction of stages and sets on this island. It now seems incredulous to suggest that "Arbeit macht frei" is our national pledge when it should be "Meine Chancen machen frei". I can't be sure. Freedom is still at stake here.

Freedom or not, the One Law still applies. But before it can be applied, someone must give birth to us to be part of this integrated resort of an island. If you believe that the island has to be measured from Tuas to Changi, and Woodlands to Esplanade, then you're missing the point. The Emergency State suggests that our movement will be restricted in such an event and the law will free from the clutches of our enemies. As we perpetually try to make the transition over to democracy, we are reminded once again of the rational 3-tier structures in place - I suspect it is Aristotelian in disguise! - that protect us in events of emergency (or what is deemed as an emergency). Democracy at its paradoxical best!

I think, freedom of expression is impossible here. And I don't see how it should be argued for. To be a rational being, one must be founded on an capacity to define rehetoric. And with a formal definition of rhetoric, we can then anticipate our course of action, through character, disposition and argument. I'm convinced, that politics found us as an entity (with a bit of tearing to do!), as much as we found them. The facts can be imagined later to furnish the rhetoric of the discourse. So this island, if you ask me, is full of politicians. We master a bastardised form of rhetoric and performativity and I'm proud of it. It is our vulgarities! Even Lacan must tremble at the mere thought of his symbolic order being satirised by the Hokkien metaphor - which we do not mean it most of the time.

So don't believe a word we say. This island has nothing to say except vulgar expressions. But I am proud of this island - self-parody and irony as manifested as an entire nation is often not a common global phenomenon. We get a lot of Marxian analysts here, but let's stop that Hegelian crap. The Ah Beng is the new philosopher. The Ah Lian is the new poet. They don't work for Capitalism and Democracy. I think they work for a higher cause. They work to live and die. They are entirely aware of their alienated status - as living beings more than slaves of the State. They can be as indifferent as they can get, contrasable to the increasingly frequent and active Agu Casmir and Li Jiawei in our national teams or hand-holding-hand migrant workers that build our fəˈsɑːd. So, with their foreign tongues, the State of Emergency (of bi-polarities) can be declared and we will know what the paradoxes of this island are.

(There is no need for Journalism. They won't read blogs like this.)


day 108

have you been to the top
or almost near the top to know
and conclude that you've done all you could
where the slow steps up have been taken and done
where the edge is behind you and you can see what is ahead
where we will only to look in front and pray that it is the very end
and what awaits you is flat land, vast land, open land, beautiful land
you will forget, the tripping and the crawling; the crying and the bleeding
and you will forget, how high and narrow the steps were but you scaled them
even if it was tough, you bit your lips and refused to cry out for a helping hand
sometimes, we get our momentary rest and all we crave for at that moment is plain water.
However,we must always remember, how it was like to be at the bottom; so before you look ahead;
before you forget and jump off the cliff and soar through infinity and eternity, with new holy wings
take a moment to look back and remember how it was like to step over blood and earth; and thank Him.
101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010

Thursday, December 11, 2008

day 77

Es war Weihnacht.
Ich ging über die weite Ebene.
Der Schnee war wie Glas.
Es war kalt.
Es wehte ein kalter Wind.
Ich griff meine Jacke enger.
Ich ging.
Meine Beine waren unsichtbar, als ich gegen den dicken Schnee kämpfte.
Trotzdem ging ich weiter.
Zum Ziel musste ich gelangen.
Ich konnte nicht sehen.
Ich wollte warm sein.
Ich sollte dort ankommen.
Dort konnte ich ein Paradies finden.
Eine Feuerstelle gab es dort.
Einen Kako konnte ich trinken.
Auf dem Sessel konnt ich sitzen.
Meine Augen schlossen sich.
Ich ging weiter, obgleich meine Augen geschlossen blieben.
Ich wusste noch, daß ich geradeaus gehen musste.
Der Schnee war wie Glas.
Meine Beine waren wie Steine.
Sie schmerzten nicht mehr.
Wie lange war ich gegangen?
Keine Ahnung.
Keine Stärke.
Nach Hause.
Zum Paradies.
Für Weihnachten.
Zu Hause.


Ich ging weiter.

day 30

be it purplish-tinted skying, the glowing belongs to forever changing flying fishing going the wayward wayed the walking golden seaed cherishing hearted palelifying whatever left of the golden-seaed hearted cherishing the moonated faraway zealous passing by eternally blessed quieting the soul.

be it secondary secondated timeless windy homely broken mozzied high roofing the sheltered poor humanized the richly foolish minuted rewinds of the losing slept wee-houred loving and useless chattering of lingering voicing the ageforgotten loving the past secondated living, still living lived the momentary requesting to see love.

forwarded momentary boring timed hourated timing the nightly must come the returned moonated skyed the glowing less than the forever left to disappear and hoping waiting, mostly waiting, the nauseating spinning other but rejoicing the seemingly eternally rubbing of an intangible warmed faith.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

day 43

whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.
And if one cannot remain silent, one must poetize.

Monday, December 8, 2008

day 21

I: I ask myself: How to say goodbye? To leave without saying words. But. I write, profusely. without the end at sight. I'll probably write till my last hour. I wonder what that last word will be. Our soundtrack played its last track. goodnight. I'm changing the CD.

They: ...

I: It's all in my imagination. It's all for their benefit. And so I tell myself each time. But we grow; we grow up, I suppose. We'll always find a theme song for an ending.

When I die, please playback Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Movement 1 to 3. Don't speak an eulogy. Let your silence be the end; my end.
There will not be an epiphany. I'll go so quietly, you'll recognise my trace. As everyone has their own endings, we will be forgotten.

A toast to the health of our beloved!

I will not live irony right down to my end. There is no irony in death. That is the only exception I will make.

Instead, I beg you to close your eyes, switch off the lights if any. Close all the doors. Listen to the music, and we will come very close to be together, as if together, and you may for 34 minutes, peek into my world, hell and heaven; feel and touch me; imagine yourself standing with me and listen to the deepest secrets I have to offer to you. I will draw you, like never before, to birth, life and death. Don't cry, don't smile, don't have any emotion. If possible, just maintain that one thought in your mind as it comes to you, and in your own darkness, you will see what you have to see...light will naturally flow into you. No irony. I won't leave you alone. You are never alone.

They:...

I: Yes. Nothing is to be said and let me die peacefully. You will die your own peaceful death. That mask of death shall be all that is left as you make your own transitory journey. That is as quiet as we can get.

I say goodbye. Adieu. To God I commend us to Him.

I say goodbye. To the moment I am perpetually escaping from.

I say goodbye. To whom I trust the ending is subjective.

I say goodbye. To you.

I say goodbye. To performance. The epitome of anti-theatricality. So please don't theatricalise my death.

I say goodbye without saying goodbye. It is pure accident.

I say goodbye in a Pauline fashion. IT IS DONE!

Don't answer my prayers. Don't do anything more. Don't remember me. Don't find me a graveyard. Burn my dreadful flesh and release me from my mortality.








I will survive this.






I will survive this when I say, goodbye.




I truly love H.



goodbye.

day 363

The Lord loves Lucifer.

The Lord loves Saul.

The Lord loves Satan.

The Lord loves Paul.

Forgive us for thinking too much or too little of Love.


Sunday, December 7, 2008

day 22

gently the breeze takes us up to the heights of the night sky.

the breeze breaks.

there is no breeze.

requesting time apart.
here,
is where I want to be.

surely, the flooding stream dries up. the people disperse. And the stars hide behind the clouds like we all do.

here,
is still where I will be.
purge us of our filthiness that cling unto us daily; tempt us not, we are at your mercy, so let us be who we are, here, only here is the moment we deserve to be, otherwise, no sense (kein Sinn auch), the wind will mean nothing to us, the moisture means nothing to us, the ground means nothing to us. I care about the touch.

here,
is where I dare not touch you.

I was afraid to burst the bubble.
I was afraid you would disappear.

here,
I didn't want here to be when the stars disappear, the magic to dissipate, the hope to kill.
I am so close to touching you,
here.
so I wait for,
stardust

falling
down
gently
but
they don't

magic
us
to a beautiful evening,
to a beautiful calm
And to a beautiful peace.

we manage to die,
to die
to die,
to die
to die,
leaving nothing
to
chance.

here.
always,
almost
here.
but daily

the phoenix,
and
the bean-curd.
but soft, she speaks.
I listen.
she speaks.


EVERYTHING



All thoughts, no dice is thrown.




finite playlist of the unspoken mind.



Saturday, December 6, 2008

day 55

I-hate-connections-.-Each-tie-reveals-another-;-endless-ties-!-that-make-connections-out-of-nothing-even-if-they-are-not-meant-to-be-together-.-endless-ties-!-joined-up-impeccably-;-like-pearls-strung-together-in-a-forced-manner-;-beauty-artificially-constructed-and-made-to-manifest-coherently-.-When-will-the-ties-break-off-?-Revealing-them-has-not-given-me-any-relief-.-On-the-contrary-,-it-just-shows-how-foolishly-bound-we-all-are-to-ties-and-how-deeply-connected-we-are-.-Endless ties !

Friday, December 5, 2008

day 156

ah! how the morning hoists herself up and confronts my puny existence - with me in the centre and Earth stationary - and humbled immediately by the bird that drops its poo on me. Things do move!

day 113

A parenthesis ( ) breaks in upon my life in various ways and in diverse manners, (figuring much by breaking in the confinements that one erects around oneself for benefits only oneself knows), and I see my entire life itself as a parenthesis. Before I exist, (I exist) comes my death. That is an (easy) formula to follow. I enjoy using parentheses as a style in my writing because it breaks up my thoughts abruptly and (there is often many pauses in thought as we write but that process is never expressed on paper) I find great joy if I can express the choices I have to make when I write. But let us not be restricted to stylistics as ( ) is not always the only option of expressing parentheses. In fact, dates, time, spaces in between (or frames of different shapes or sizes) are parentheses. There seems to be great liberation when one knows what life consists of. The objective of having parentheses (I have described earlier as expressing choices) can be noted as a kind of self-reflexivity that obscures the true intention of an author. Now, that requires some (thoughtful) reflection: Are parentheses really so useful?

Instead, you find that an author is often at odds with himself or herself when a parenthesis is used. More than anything, (or less) a parenthesis actually teaches us that in emancipation (of a mind spoilt with ideas), one actually find the foreignness of a writing or authorship. Surely this is paradoxical (or obvious) that to make obvious what is supposed to be veiled, you just worsen the circumstance for understanding. Life is a such complex conglomerate that falls into this great hoax of a boundary called birth and death that to create extra-parentheses in life is precisely the paradox one undertakes; one becomes less assured of life and its meanings. Instead, we build more and greater boundaries and content to fill up these gaping holes - something like this:
{[( I )]}
and so the core is deeply concealed and often remains undiscovered till we meet the last frontier which is death}.


Think about how life can be less complicated if stylistically, we have less to deal with. But then again, without an immediacy that confronts the often misguided mind, we become ignorant, blur, and dumb enough to believe answers that are thought out from nothing, without human experience (in the strictest and most straightforward sense). Often, we give ourselves too few pauses to complicate life as it is, and manufacture a luxuriant and pertinent resolution to deal with problems (at the root of them). Instead, we are content to deal with just parentheses and not get down into the abyssal content. We become like orators and rhetorical sophists who love their style more than their truths.

Reveal the lie before you speak the truth.

To write (behind a proper name) is to lie.

day 278

You pushed me to the depths of profound madness with your recourse that to save me from it would be a serious insult and selfish thing to do.

now I prefer to remain mad.

day 363

You stood around like melting icicles that refuse to fall immediately.

Only when I die, will you finally pretend to understand me better.
Because I won't be around to confront you.
Before, my existence is a sore thumb to you.

Take comfort then; the end is near.

My fire is burning out.

May my anonymity when alive and dead bless you with a posthumous trigger that gives you pause to bother understanding. Then, you shall stop melting because of me.

day 207

brilliance of the random thought!

not done reading Cicero read Plato read Socrates read...

we'll go for makan when the weather is fine. Just the four of us.
I'll be as quiet as possible.

Please accept my apprenticeship without reading you extensively.

Oh. And as you vanish over the horizon, after a swerve of my thought,
rest well, though you shake, and we will meet again in another banquet.

I'll forget you.
And in doing so, I remember you.


Wednesday, December 3, 2008

day 303

A letter to Kierkegaard:

Enchained to the supposed realisation of a representation, I realise I am not representing anything. It is beyond representation. I am not manifesting anything. I am, also, not simulating anything. What remains to be represented? Simulated? The implosion of meaning presupposed that the ripeness of meaning must eventually self-implode as the outside is filled. But is the outside empty? Is there a possibility of an outside to even occur? Must meaning venture inwards that is finite?

Instead, let me make that leap and think outside/inside as only a pretext for something indescribable, indeterminable and in other words, unknown. This unknown is ecstasy. This is a venture that knows no infinite end, but paradoxically must only be experienced while alive.

Am I then encountering an aporia, where the general space we can encounter is, in a sense, not general but limited? There are limits, no doubt, Cartesian as it may sound, but there is some value in the Cartesian mindframe in that the limit of doubt makes possible the potential of reaching some other narrow way into the discourse of Encounter. As a primary rule, we find ourselves dealing with aleatory encounters that apart from making an appearance by chance, we find no way to thematize it. What is left is precisely the doubt that affirms its existence. The trouble usually occurs at the point when we refuse to allow it to be chaotic, and to run its own destructive course. In other words, we doubt doubt. Is destruction really that bad? We find ourselves, from time to time, and from place to place, exercising destruction to the very things we love and hate.

I am not championing doubt as some divine rule in which everything must be met with doubt. The ruling principle here is that in everything there is always an element of surprise and doubt, depending on how you wish to view it. The aleatory nature of encounters is its interval when and where a subject encounters a supposed Other within the infinite framework of the Encounter. In other words, we imagine the other, in spite of it being strangely close and familiar to you.

If you ask me, I think it is self-satire and self-irony that makes the encounter so insanely beautiful and deliriously evil. One actually finds him- her-self embodying both the satire (laughing at oneself) and the melancholy or despair that accompanies doubt. Within each reference, is that parody and truth. Truth must be ironic. It is as if we cannot escape the consciousness that if we take ourselves too seriously, we immediately unveil our insincerity. How true can we be, when we venture to present a universal and general answer to all things and all encounters? The utterance of an answer, immediately makes us vulnearable, just as I cannot predict when and where a lightning will strike the ground.

If I am not making sense here it is because I do not know what sense I can make of my encounter. Paradoxically, I must both assert a point by virtue of my wordy venture, and ultimately sacrifice my presence to another presence which is a mediation - which includes my own death that mediates my presence into an absence. I try to make a point now, but I must also doubt that the point can transcend and be immortalized into an eternal and absolute outside.
But I must prevent it from being outside.
To be outside, I lose the chance of being inside enough to deal with the immediate context and circumstance of my presence and surroundings. I would have made it irrelevant. One cannot escape the responsibility of being thrown into the inside and being fundamentally present to oneself as long as one consciously lives. The irony is that the responsibility is also one that is responsible to a future death. Why live if the only end is death?

Perhaps, death is the enclosure that makes the outside impossible to thematize. But rightly so, since we can never know what lies beyond death in both the figurative sense as well as the literal sense. I am doubly responsible - to live and death. The in-between consists of my labour and rest.

Therefore, let us no despair. The leap occurs precisely at the moment of non-theatricality and non-representation. Each repetition of the circle somehow seems to both enlarge and shrink our possibilities. We other ourselves as if that is the an unspoken imperative but surely, as deterministic as it may sound, we are given into chance, in a very determined and temporal way.

There is, thus, no such thing as an Other, other than our imagined sense of something or someone present/absent we possibly and ethically are responsible to. The actual responsibility one should be busy with is actually the indwelling possibility of surprise and doubt. Without any doubt. That is temptation or the potential to do exactly what a human being will do. Temptation occurs just before the movement, whcih is the post-event of an encounter, whether internally or externally.

What this movement leads us to, only time will tell. Perhaps, it is temptation that is responsible in creating the Other - which we must master or avoid. The choice is yours.

At this moment, I have no answer.

Yours,
your Other

day 201

An unknown preacher begins to preach in the remote part of the city:

Rise Peter, kill and eat.
Act 10:13

Those who wrote about alchemy have the same inclinations towards mixing substances up. They believe in perfect harmony and the interval in which the grander element could be formed by the fire of their imaginations. They believe, idealistically, that what is said or written, means exactly what it is said or written. what is said and written is not what is said and written. That much you can read. That much you can also repeat after me. The-belief-that-things-tie-things-together-to-reach-a-cohesive-and-cohesive-proof-of-that-belief-is-precisely-a-precise-chain-of-words-arranged-to-be-repeated-for-proof-of-that-belief; whatever that belief might be. Basically, you add elements up. The stone; the gestalt; the limit that totalises or narrows down the elements into what is gold or precious, is a device to provide that advantage that rhetoric, in a sense, does for beliefs.
Others, at the same time and space, believe in precisely the opposite of the above - the fall, the trip and the slip of the ideal. You basically do not get your gold. These are the skeptics, without realising that they create the oppositions that provide proof of the beliefs in their opposites.

well then, let us assume something here - that perhaps to rise is not to ideally reach up into some infinite, indivisible end that is immortality. Also, it is not to rise to some ideal world in which all things can be resolved peacefully. Rather, could not that rising be the rising to commit violence to which would give us life, in a very finite sense - that of human sustenance. So that this movement (ascendency) is simultaneously a violence and the gift of life through death.
Rise, in its very human sense of the word, is the physical movement of raising one's body from the ground. Whereas the fall of man, or the human condition that physically chains us to our finitude, predicates that the violence is always done to us - to rise to do violence (violence to the Messiah) is exactly the prerequisite of salvation; creation and restoration. To explain this a bit further (always ahead of itself), for us to rise to heaven or supposed immortality, one ultimately kills or sacrifices the giver of life; for us to rise as a human being, one also kills or sacrifices the animal object. To rise, is also to kill oneself, in which the rise to heaven can even be imagined or conceived, and perhaps achieved.

at the heart of this above assumption is the destruction that is embedded in nearly every encounter of elements - that of the alchemic tradition as well as the Word - in its universal sense.
But this destruction occurs simultaneously with creation. No addition is possible precisely because division is perpetually at work.

The spirit that is divided from the whole is the almost completion of the precious gold in the phenomena of rise. To rise, in the way like yeast in a oven, is both destruction and nourishment occurring. But this rise, is not the completion in that the rise is the precursor of the end that is to come - human death. To return is at the heart of the matter. To return the spirit that was missing to human is the rise - the aftermath of the violence, which in itself (as spirit) consists of both the violence and the nourishment. (Violence to the human; nourishment to the soul)

Which matter? No matter. We cannot even begin to talk about matter without assuming that there is something matter about matter that matters. That is to say, matter actually exists. But must everything be called matter?
To return is to return to somewhere. But this somewhere ultimately is a nowhere. Nowhere could we have any vivid idea of what that somewhere could possibly look like. The digression of imagery here may seem highly forced. But consider again, that I have moved from one assumption to return to the fundamental assumption of rise.

To rise is to kill.

In a very cyclical and vicious way, the repetition with the difference is violence and nourishment, simultaneously. There is nothing dialectical about this. The rise of the image is only to commit violence to it by disturbing it with blood and gore. The flesh is ultimately torn apart and eaten. This sacrifice (for ascendency) is a betrayal to the human flesh, which is whole and simultaneously entraps the soul as well as allows the soul to seep into the outside. We do not know what soul means or what it is as substance. Frankly.
The departure from the flesh, that violence potentially does to the body, is the rise. To die, as part of grace, is to the rise, simultaneously.

To further such a thesis, one realises that it becomes a rhetorical question without explicitly knowing what that question is. To put it simply, who can thematise death unless one truly experiences it? Therefore, to rise, simply put, remains just death. What you get is always, perpetually, an almost complete whole. It is incomplete. I mean the process - a tie that endlessly ties us to the incompletion. While it is complete, i.e. the rise and the sacrifice, it is also incomplete because many more out there living are still not dead. What is produced here is an assumption that we can simultaneously believe in the repeatability of the rise as well as the repeatability of the violence but these repetitions do not ultimately point to the end; if there is one.

but we know there is one. One in Many. Because the idioms of cycles and repetition actually assume that any one cycle must come to an end; an end of a cycle in order for the next to occur. In a peculiar logical explication, a cycle is simultaneously the end and the beginning at any given time and space. We do not explicitly know what ends and what begins, but in order to thematize this, I call it Almost. Actually, I almost thematize it. But what is it? That I do not know.

To make the most out of all there is, the only in most is also lesser than what we can grasp.
Perhaps, at the heart of the issue is really, literally the heart that is always threatening to stop. To die, is precisely to stop blood from flowing in us. It is a time bomb as much as it is the muscle of life.

At the same time, for one to live, one must stop someone else's blood from flowing.
At the same time and space, for one to rise, in application of the word, we simultaneously kill and sacrifice what must be sacrificed in order that something new (the trace) is produced and reproduced before the final, the end of what must eventually come to an end.

The rise of the next coming.

Monday, December 1, 2008

day 22

I have a vision of a train, that runs through tunnels and tunnels of various dreams.
In between each tunnel, is an open space, and the train will slow down or speed past,
depending on the mood and circumstance of the captain.
The tunnels themselves are usually dark, with occasional flashes of red, green or blue.
So much for the tunnels. One does not dwell there for long. It is like a transitional space-time.

The open spaces, which interest me more, are nightmarish, mysterious and amusing. They can be gory, temptatious, lustrous, playful, joyous, nostalgic, and most of all fleeting. But if it so pleases me, I can stop at each interval. I invite the people and animals I see. I hold parties and tea sessions with them. I can also persuade the train to run faster, as I hide in my cabin, as the ghouls, zombies, werewolves, aliens and vampires search for me. The landscape always changes. I find white caps of mountains, the great canopies of forests and commercial buildings, rows of wineyards, barren deserts, vast oceans and breaking waves, starry night and shooting stars, men in arms, men in beaches, or just empty space.

>>DARK TUNNEL>>

This particular space, which I would like to talk about, consists of a white room, a pillar in the middle, and an odd looking marble that refuses to stop running. I chase after it, seeing how elusive it is to me. Perhaps, it is because it runs (ever so quickly but eloquently) that curiously I see something in it and of it, that reminds me of myself.

"Hop on my train, will you?" I ask. "I have nice books that I can tell stories to you with."

It does not respond so I take a step forward in anticipation of it coming near enough for me to grab.

But it stops.

It then jumps into the train, just as the train screams its whistle of departure. I follow the marble and I begin my search for it again. But there it is, in the cabin I hid earlier, as I entered the last dark tunnel, after a series of panic attacks. Now. Somehow, as the light shines in, the marble reflected a brilliant glow of rainbow colours and sparkles. And in a distant, which seems to come from the white room, a gentle lullaby flows into the train cabin. The captain, on hearing the tune, falls into a deep slumber, waiting for the song to end, giving the marble and I some time, as long as possible, to know each other. I didn't need to grab it. I can't.

I am a marble too.

We are bubbles too.

>>DARK TUNNEL>>

Sunday, November 30, 2008

day 100

on the 100th day,

we came out from our hiding, beneath the subterranean mines, where depleted of its resources, we could no longer keep our silence.

on the 100th day then,
we made an impression.
henceforth, we spoke, at length - these words:

We, as witnesses of this generation,
speak, with great trembling
of fear, lest we commit the cruel act
of leading astray more who are already astray.
Listen, then, those without your ears
and think, with as much wit as you can muster.
what is left is little;
what is to be said, even more pertinent
with as little words as we can,
we declare -
a generation of plagues
ruthlessly constructed by
a hyper-reality of the transparent world.

This World, always has been this World,
is where we believe in false teachings of
democracy,
liberty,
superficialities that only mask our true vanity
concerned with our health and wealth
we hide behind closets of gold chests
and mascara faces
we lie to our souls that the present age has hope.
we have had hope for centuries
and generation after generation of abyssal repetitions
one monster after another
how many more babies are there left to embrace?
only minefields and graveyards of mutilated bodies
declarations and manifestos of deluded ideologies
do we have enough populations to sacrifice
yet another massacre?
yet another silent mob?
No, we do not fight our wars with hijacked planes
and golden palaces
and staged rallies
we fight our wars with classrooms and manuals
our children are our arch-angels of wrath
our children are our Pucks with mischievous magic tricks,
inherited not only from fathers
but grandparents and dead people.

Do not listen to us say more,
what is said has already been done.
you will stone us, you will mock us
you will think we are foolish
you will think we are just pretenders
You will listen to the well-dressed wolves
you will listen to the men who cry Change.
you will listen to the women who seduced with Change
what has changed?
more men charging down the crowded streets with erected statues
banging on doors to enter the garden of Eden
and to violate the only last messenger of hope.

Alas,
We have no gospel to preach to you
We have no glad tidings to tell you
We have no ships to deport you from this hell
We only have more words, like your words,
on monitor screens
Ones and Zeros and in between,
to regurgitate what has already been foretold
You will hate us
You will shake more hands
hug more bodies
rape more bodies
and wear nice gowns
and praise more people
and crown more princes and princesses
hold more balls and banquets
shoot more fireworks into the dead sky
cover the great constellations of the universe
and impatiently wait for the sun to die
to implode
to disappear.
You will, with thanksgiving, await
News of new kings
of new devils
of kings against kings
of angels against demons
of one-sided narratives
among 1000-fold manuscripts,
derived from fearsome warlords
and equally fearsome peasants.
who only take our turns to stand on stage.

while you sleep,
will you dream?
what will you dream?
of the serpent again and again?
entice us, ensnare us, endure us
returning nightly to lay with us
to bite its own tail
to give us presents
which drop from the sky
which drop into windows
which we step on
which follow us
which teach us
which clothe us
We cannot run or hide from gifts
What is the Gift of this world?
Alas!
It is sin!

We are ending this soon
Sin, das Gift
a poison but also the pretext for salvation
Thorns that come with the roses
The bile that comes with the excretion
It stands before at every door
at every entrance
Help us,
We cry,
suffer
but we also suffer for lesser things
we cheat ourselves that the Gift is long gone
but the World and the Gift remains
Not even as a trace.
They are solid.

CHANGE is their name.
CHANGE is their banner.
CHANGE is their rhetoric.
We become sophists and polemics
that make us fools.
how many must die?
how many must be chained?
more heads will roll
more tongues will be cut
while princes sing and crown us with jewels and diamonds of the world
Extract us and pull us away from them
we want our voices back
to sing songs that You know
to dance with bodies only You gave
Find us again, find us again in the desert
we abide there,
nightly with our crying silent voices
only You hear
only You witness

Find us again, find us where we are least expected to be found
as prostitutes
taxcollectors
adulterers
thieves
lepers
murderers
as people who have long given up hope for salvation
as witness to our own gifts
now, let us be witnesses to the outside world
to the world we don't belong
let us not jump down buildings
let us not make the train tracks bloody
let us not swallow pills
let us not create images that haunt people
let us, instead believe
we are not meant to fly
but to remain as we are
here, there,
to not illuminate a broad path to some faraway place
but to illuminate this already too bright world.
We will find the needle in the haystack
we will fit the camel into the eye of the needle
let us stop talking
we talk too much
as we did.
let us be hated
for it is not us they hate
but who we stand behind for.
Let it be done
as it should be done.
Not anywhere else
but here, there
in us, outside us.

erasure.
deconstruct
us.



day 81

winterreise.
die Menschen war tot. nicht da.
diese grosse Landschaft, wird nie weiss sein.


so sang the old senile countryman.

he began this cold tale of men dying for unknown causes.

he forgot what were they.
he forgot who they were.

"weiss du?" he asked.

"nein. sag noch mal bitte."

This world does not have the language to translate what he said then on.

This world has lesser than it promised once.

We never felt so lonely till then.

Die Kinder sind schon alle tot.

Weiss du?

he bid farewell.

Friday, November 28, 2008

day 41

as if the days don't leave you.
No. They leave you behind.
No. They bring you along.

Wait, Wait for? Wait, we wait, gently we Wait. Wait for. Waiting,
there are many ways to wait.

so often we subject ourselves to endless debates to find a solution. A hermeneutic compulsion. A romantic love for fiction. A desire for resolution. In fact, we wait. We are just merely waiting.

come now,
kommen,
ankommen,
zukommen
auskommen
every coming has a way of announcing itself.

we just don't know why.
We are the Masters of the Universe.
We are the He and She Man of the World.
We stand united to destroy anything that stands against Us.
We are the Revolution.
We are the Change.
Believe Us.
We never quite change.
Because,
We are CHANGE.

THE WAR HAS BEGUN. 20 days later.

day 19

A.lpha - ω-Omega
In between the finite properties, elements, atoms, alphabets, possibilities.
Mix, permutate, restrict
the chance is yours.

do not be fooled by the punctuation.
The compulsion to continue, is always there.

Think of this compulsion in relation to the journey to reach a point of understanding
an encounter of I and You.

It is the full stop. Period. Moment. Pause. Rest. Stillness.
then I continue.
in relation to you

do you follow?
The moment in between A and Z
always in between.
It is always a restricted economy.
How do I exist beyond this? Otherwise than my being that encounters my other?

Today, I wrote a song for you.
Let it touch you, as I speak less,
and may it, put to right, and left,
a place to start after the beginning,
when it rains, the words fall, as they rain, we move to touch (or avoid the touch)
.
.
.
yes, no one understands. We won't move for others. We're caught in the moment.
Nothing is as lovely as that moment.
here is the song, that demostrates the touch.

Today, I wrote a song for you only
let it touch you, as I speak less and less
and may it, put to right, and left, hiding
in a place which is always already there
where and when we cry, as we cry, we find,
our home, in between brackets, we are
we are home, we are home, we are in love.

Tomorrow, I had written a song for us
let it fly away, as I write less and less
and it might, have flown up and down, disappeared
outside places which is always out of sight
nowhere and when can we cry, we only smile
no home, outside the brackets, we are
already flying, we fly, we are in love.

( ) ~

there.
my last attempt to make sense of our situation.
I hope it persuades you to stay.
but I can predict you won't.
A change is in the horizon.
A change,
once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
(or close up the wall up with our dead.)



song continues; killing us softly with this song.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

day 17

Dear Friend,

You hurt me. I shall cease to exist.

Yours,
You.





the letter was found torn and left behind before I left.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

day 10


1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101001010101010101010011010101010101

it was at that moment, when I saw the message behind on the back. It had been etched into her skin. I dare not touch her. It is a message of:
revival, death, renewal, mourning, life, death. The gift of death.

0101010101010101010101010101010101010101011001100110010101010101010101010101

the modern wrestling of a human being and a divine being consists of two digits - 1 and 0.

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I can't choose the difference between life and death.
But from time to time, good luck and chance can still determine the outcome.
This outcome is a change of name.

Today, I call myself 'You'.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

How often do you dream of wrestling an angel? How often do you dream of wrestling a demon?

It always begins with a touch - between two.

The ancient examples always revolve around two and one.
1. Adam and Eve; in between, the serpent.
2. Abel and Cain; in between, the earth opened to reveal the brother's blood
3. Jacob and Him; in between, the touch of flesh and the Judge. (Was there a camel then?)

Then the stake. the blood. In between two sinners.
Next, the Holy Ghost that haunts two living beings.

The contemporary examples also revolve around two and one.
1. 1 and 0, in between, the computer that processes the digits
2. Performance and Audience, in between, the gaze, the paint, the frame, the act, etc.
3. You and I, in between MSN, Facebook, Mobile Phones, etc.

Angels have departed. But the purveyors of truth still remain.
We can't touch as much as they could. But remember how it feels when your parents touch you. How you lover touches you. How your murderer touches you.
The touch is intimate. It is always suggestive of both love and violence. Now, what we have left is mediation. We cannot remember how love and violence were simply touch - with it, every sensation and event within the moment of touching. The face, the breathing, the proximity, the groan, the sensation of you and I, tied in that moment. It is just us and the one in between. As close as we can get. As far as we can get.

1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010

Do you lead me to death or life?

What is your password?

(empty space)

Amen.







where is my angel to lead me to you?

day 16

Dear Nameless I,

I'm extremely sorry to hear about your predicament. I reply with the intention of telling what I should have told you earlier. Please give up on me. You know I am not coming back. When I left, it was to be forever. I need to be away from you. We could not live on those invisible links. I need something concrete. I could not see a future together. Hence, I disappeared altogether. In fact, for me to write back, I have already disgraced myself and broke my own promise never to talk to you again. But the fact that I did, shows how much I need to tell you once and for all, the reality that you must now face.

I do not exist. I am a figment of your imagination. Just as you have imagined that we could be best friends. Do not habour much hope from now on. The further you continue with this, the harder it takes to forget about me. Let me go. Let us go. Allow me to be as I am: non-existent. We will be happier that way. Be that way. So please do not reply. I will pray for you. But do not reply. You won't hear from me from now on. This is our last communication. Reality hurts this way. But you must be strong. I promise you, after 5 days, you will be fine. Absolutely. Wait for that day. You will be renewed. The day is coming. Wait patiently.

Adieu.

H.

day 15

Dear friend,

Once, I imagined we could be the best of friends. Now, it has finally occurred to me that it is impossible. Whether it is more laughable that I should leave the arena and find myself all wasted but enjoying myself with my self-pity, OR I should just crash, burn and fall into the depths of the world, suspending by what I call the ecstasy of forgetting; frankly, I can't make up my mind. When this letter reaches you, and you have read the above lines, I hope you would have decided by now to burn the letter and forget that I have written.

Now. If you read now, then you have decided to give me another chance to violate your peace and torture with my thoughts as verbatim. I try to be honest here. Frankly, the past two weeks have been absolutely horrible. If words could describe my predicament, I would say that an infinite amount words would suffice. How could you leave me? What have I done to deserve this from you? Alas! The days grow stale, and I stink from the useless words I churn out every midnight, as if the clock refuses to stop and repeats itself, night after night. I hope you read this. Even if I know you will hate me. But where were you the past 14 days? Where were you when I needed you, a listener, a reader of my words, that I might have another chance to resurrect and breathe anew once again? You disappoint me. Alas! The nights haunt me, and I drown in my ocean of regrets. What have I done to deserve this? How slow you are to reply? Already, I expect a reply even before I post this. Must I send you a postcard to preempt the main course? I grow anxious, awaiting the result of my latest endeavour. How would you react to this letter? You must regret now. You want me back! Say you do. I know you do. That can only be the case. Oh! How I hate and love you! All the same.

But why do I even bother? I shall not send this letter. I shall keep my thoughts shut. You must never know of them. I only hurt you. I only break our trust, of what is left. Our friendship dissipates as I write. As if I am reaching that final destination as the words flow. It is like an eulogy of the death of our friendship. I cannot stop this ending. Every word I hear reminds me of you, the 7 days we had together. Alas...it ends today; which day? Should I find someone new to treasure? Teach me to move on, loneliness. When we strive and fall prey to the ventures of loneliness, we find ourselves in deserts and hallucinations. Alas...I must venture to new places and torture new people with my presence. I always think I am taking up time of somebody, each time I appear. It must be. How could anyone stand me? You did, as much as you could. You were always there, as long as you could.

What if, all along we are in a desert? And we have always been building sandcastles and sand beaches; great towers and cathedrals of worship, without resting, without stopping; flattening some, rebuilding others; and more people join us, in unison, with a common goal that is to reach the heavens with our tall towers; perhaps we desire to speak the same language; once and for all. You are at the other side of the desert. I know. But I dare not go to you. I must remain where I am. Away from you. Even if that takes us both to opposing poles. I believe in you. You must still exist somewhere. In silence.

I miss you, my friend. teach me this silence. and I will someday come to you, without moving.
The way is always there.

Yours,
Nameless I.

Monday, November 24, 2008

day 9

inventions of the other,
the days are set to separate us from once we were together.
watching a tape on rewind,
the days are hell-bent on reaching the end.
who can we blame but the far-reaching desire to conquer everything?
no, we can only blame ourselves for loving ourselves.
out of this world, while in this world, that is the problem here isn't it?
our predicament is produced by a joint effort of chance and determinism.
We just forgot how they interact.
are we looking at variations of the same order of things? or are they inventions of thought and effort?
This order, more likely ancient and contemporary simultaneously, consists of tautologies of the same:
this world - that world
nature - man
subject - object
I - You.
But frankly, are we so heterogeneous?
the same and different,
nothing much has changed. Only the content and media in which we invent or borrow.
There is nothing.
Hence, nothing becomes the order in which something must come out of nothing.
There is love.
Hence, love must govern us as if that is the only virtue that would redeem us.
There is nature.
Hence, we must co-exist with nature even if we make serious alterations to its nature.

la question, that is a 'she' we violate and rape repeatedly.
But she is babylonian, and repeatedly visits us and seduces us.
are we to blame?
But we give ourselves, in being, to the touch.
to the seduction and the touch in which the contract is sealed.
(once we had the possibility to touch. Now, we touch virtually.)
how are we to redeem ourselves?
The human touch is the most profound action.
For a simple handshake could both mean a greeting or a hostile desire leading to violence and mastery.
How are we to touch? To kiss or to rape?
There is nothing else that contains more potential energy than the touch. Without touch, nothing moves. Even if this touch is lesser than a human physical touch. It is a touch, nonetheless.
my touch, and my gift to you, both a sin principle and the potential for the touch of salvation and baptism, is my virtual writing. These words that touch you, without contact except the rays of light that bounces off your pupils. Reflected touch. I am always mediated. But if this touch can reach you and force you to stand in between sin and redemption, it is enough as it is, 'We' as churlish messengers.
let us then return to the letters, as we open each entry to read and to pretend to enter into a msyterious contact with them, and we should then find, how the touch is at the heart of communication, even if language fails us more often than we hope.

Once, we touched, embraced and truly loved each other.
im Paradies, the garden in which all could touch and feel as freely as we liked.

out of touch, that is the theme of these writings.