ok day

ok,

we'll find a reason each day to live, to love.

ok.

day 200

To cut my hair (and to shave) is to relief me from the dilemma of choosing to be either the renegade artist (mostly the desire to be a film-maker) or the clean-shaven pseudo-academic with a blazer to match the ambition. Frankly, those two archetypes are just visions - of a future-to-be who I am not. Next, try guessing.

This mis-match of external identities is perplexing to the eye. I've given up, trying to be. Not because for lack of want but a lack of purpose and my innate disdain for categories. After all, I could very well still film my own performance as a teacher and teach it in same class afterwards.

(Performance of Pedagogical Discourse - How to watch and read such performances)

The truth is that I am truly lazy and ambitious at the same time. I love my aspirations simply because I can imagine and dream of them. And each time, repeat the sequence of events, right down to the costumes I will wear and the montages of me behind a huge-ass camera. At the same time, I would imagine myself vexing and walking up and down the black box, pushing myself for the punctuation-ending that I so crave for each of my creative work. Frankly, they are all full of shit. The often lazy and self-gratifying me will excuse myself, laugh at my image on the mirror while I hide from the person in public and in dream, and tell myself how I am wasting everyone's time and effort to understand what I am doing. Frankly, I never quite know. I mean, knowing in a kind of efficacious manner that truly touch the lives of others, instead of spending money on electricity, space, and manpower. I am truly blessed with people who once believed in me. I don't mean to disappoint, but I am really full of shit.

Maybe, that's it. Giving up - to give so as to rise - is what compels me to move forward. I can't resist. I just give up each bit of my existing life so I may rise for the one sweet moment of irony. Each time I become, I un-become. It is like participating in something worthwhile that I may later know it is futile. Ah, the irony. But I like. Because I get to play pretend that I could be Don Juan only if I was more good-looking and cruel to women. Or I could be a contemporary pastor only if I weren't so boring, reserved and so not charismatic. (After all, the sermons I wrote and probably would have preached were all extremely depressing, degratory and devouring, it's scary.) I stop pretending that I know, or at least I want to think that I've stopped. I just rise to occasion when it happens, and somehow I know, that I will be. I will be what I least expected to be. Because, no repetive imagination can match up to the actual event of being there and not there at the same time.

It is frightening and exciting, simultaneously.
I can think of no other way to feign death and life at the same time.

And so I cut my hair.

day -

I had this sudden vision of everyone looking alike both in mannerism and appearance.
Then they disappear, as they stand in a line, line by line.

nike, adidas, puma
LV, prada, chanel
you, you, you
- - -

day 69

I used to wonder what orthodoxy really means according to Chesterton. Perhaps, the proper question to ask is what orthodoxy means to me. But what is proper? I'll leave that to some other time to answer.

I never grew up with the experience I often hear today about teenagers. I think I was different, at least, I was sheltered in an environment that was kind, generous, safe and consisted of mostly ignorant nerds. I was almost oblivious to other experiences I heard often but had no means or guts to pull them off. I still had the urges and the temptations. But I think I never could believe I was capable of harming myself, giving up on myself and hurt someone else in the process.
Maybe I did. But it was really trivial compared to what goes on outside this little safe bubble I had.

My brief brush with being an outlaw, or rather the brief moment of being locked up with suspected convicts was a humbling one. The impression a heavily tattooed man who comforted me had on me and the kind gesture of a lady offering me 50 dollars so that I wouldn't steal again convinced me to never be looked upon and onto others with suspicion, with contempt, and with pity. I don't think I'm still so particular about impressions I make. (or am I deluded?) At least, that experience had the effect of bursting one of the many bubbles I have. And it opened me to the world that I could never imagined prior to my arrest.

The next bubble I notice recently, forming around my rather thick and protected skull is this thing called pre-marital sex. I'm often amused and perplexed by my seemingly religious adherence to keep my virginity. And that amused a few and I gamely received a thumbs-up (pun intended) from my senior (gay) lecturer, in a rather blunt manner, for embarrassedly proclaiming my intact childhood, and my unorthodox manhood. Of course, that seems rather premature to say that it's unorthodox. Perhaps, that's my form of orthodoxy. But I'll come to that later. It occurred to me recently, and I'm reminded that it did come across me when I was younger, that many of my peers would have slept and performed 5 minutes acts of mournful gasps and fake orgasms. The rest would have a sex partner for some time, break up, cry like a river, and find another sex partner as a rebound, and repeat the cycle with increasing nonchalance. Frankly, there was nothing religious in my attempt to keep my virginity. It used to be due right down to my incompetence to melt a girl's lonely heart, and/or to sweep the feet of many scantily-clad but dancing awkwardly ladies in the house. (Frankly, I thought they really looked pitiful trying to shake their Asian assets.) But that was before I accepted Christ and then I thought it was due to Christianity. How it was admirable and honourable to keep the faith and to meet the woman of my life. It was pathetically idealistic. And that increased only my urges and my intense self-guilt.

But my platonic, romantic, and extremely loved lover, is beginning to teach me one simple fact that in my childish ignorance could not possibly had learnt: frankly, sex is only credible and worthwhile if it is done for the benefit of a love union. Not because some excel worksheet that you list the number of girls you screwed both physically and mentally. Or how you fill your empty self with more emptiness. Or how you get back at your ex-girlfriend for sleeping with a lesbian. Or how you just needed to know that your penis is still intact, potent and justified for being obtrusive and desperately in need of a hole. Or simply to perform an unforgivable violent act on your own kin and children.


I think I miss out a lot in life. Not envy. But the experiences of acts so common and prevalent now that have completely passed me by as I grew up. I could never know how it must have felt to violate a woman's private. I could never know it felt to impregnate a girl and force her to abort; or in my foolish manly ego, ask her to marry me even though I'm 18. I could never know why and how someone could take glue and jump off the building while they're at it. And I could never know how it feels like to have a sexual disease for the rest of my life. And I dare not pity them. I dare not say they were stupid. To those who live on, they are courageous. To those who did not, I only regret not knowing why and what they were thinking.

I do not have sex because I am timid. Because I dare not take up that sacred responsibility to myself, to the girl I fuck and the baby I may potentially create after the act. To have sex is to make myself vulnerable and to become someone I am not ready to be. And it dawned upon me that that is precisely orthodoxy - that what was orthodox, that is, to be religious and keep my virginity for the holy matrimony and union with my wedded wife, is now actually subversive and extremely transgressive. It is what keeps me apart and alien to others. It makes me feel alienated. Frankly, if I put religion aside, I have absolutely no reason for not trying it once. But I am thankful that I have not. That is my private orthodoxy - which probably derived from my rebellious character at work.

There are little happy-a-fuckers. I know for sure. Never once did I know of someone who fucks outside of marriage happy. Pleasurable and desirable no doubt. But definitely not simple and loving happiness. And so it is as simple as that. And as hard and difficult to keep faith to.

(Keeping faith to Faith)

Perhaps, orthodoxes are no longer orthodox. As we loosen our grip to what was once orthodox, we may want to now revisit the ancient virtues that makes us now different from the majority.

But yes, how (fucking) perplexing!

day 316

I would like to trade words for a moment of silence. As they escape, the words I mean, I find myself listening to myself, as if they refuse to leave just yet, and I am there, listening to my next word, as the previous just disappears.

Perhaps, I like the word perhaps, because I feel like the next to come after perhaps does not really exist, does not really mean what is written or said. Perhaps, I am like an empty vessel. I listen to a foreign word, remember it, and at some point later, use it. Perhaps, I was born to just listen, and learn what I am suppose to say and behave in the manner of purposeful communications. Perhaps, the word perhaps, is just too demanding of me, that I must somehow commit to ambiguity. Why can't I just be?

I soon learn the word 'maybe'. Don't you sometimes get the feeling that you are expected to may-be someone? Maybe, what I mean here is that you may be, because maybe you never were, and so you will/should be, and maybe, there is the future in which you can reach and be.

Well. enough of perimeters. I sometimes feel that the most tangible and material aspect of my identity is my body, instead of words that extend out of our bodies. The body that I feel and use everyday. The body that I satisfy and feed everyday. The body that excretes, defecates and inhales, absorb. I learn, as much as my body grows, that maybe this is all I can be - a decaying body that is just like any matter in this world that takes up finite space. Alright, another word to use here is entity. But again, I find it extremely frustrating. Entity, unit, Body, they all don't make sense to me. What I truly understand about myself is that I can feel and sense. I cannot take away the fact that I grow up and learn - especially the fact that I will die. And so it makes a kind of strange sense to me. I feel invincible. I feel as if because I know my limitation, I shall be who I am always meant to be. A child. A child that is always meant to learn. Even if I should take my last breath, I shall learn what it feels like to die. The infinite possible moments of learning. That I think, seems to be my calling.

Alright. That is rather optimistic. But the brutal truth of life need not be so dark and twisted. You then learn to like your body a little more. It is more than a lump of fats, or protrusions and intrusions that needs satisfaction. One need not think of bodies as gross and rotting. Perhaps, if one loves the body a little bit more, we could prevent them from being piled up next to mass graves. The body - busy it really is - is a marvel. It is like an expiring but almost perfect machine that does so much to keep you alive (some don't) for the passage of time. To put it bluntly, though a baby may just be a small little body that is now taken away from another body, it brings to its parents the emotion of choice - between endeavouring to love this foreign body no matter what, or to cruelly abandon it or abuse it. We find then the double (or more) bind of being a body. One way or another, we end up always to make a choice with regard to bodies. It is almost taken for granted that when we face a body before us, we have to make a decision - to walk straight into it, to avoid it or to just stab it and watch it fade and die. Bodies. Whether we like it or not, we react and respond to them. I find it hard then to separate bodies from perception and decision. I have to think, within my body, in relation to embodiments.

Now. That is not actually what I mean to write about today. Writing is like this stubborn act of resisting the frail truth of being a body. Writing is like this indulgent act of persisting to live on even if I should die and decay. But I know writing is also to be someone other than myself. To be disembodied. But really, apart from writing with rigid keyboards, there is a sensory experience that often makes me more real to myself - the sense of touch. I touch, that I may feel the pulsating and reverberating truth of a living body. I touch, that I may know we are alive. I touch, that I may be and experience the common truth of us humans. I cannot unbecome my body even if I surgically alter my appearance. But I can imagine, as I touch, the alterity that I will never be. And that I am actually capable of loving this utterly foreign body. The comfort, the familiarity and to some extent, the similarity - bodies touching - is like having invisible bonds that connect us by virtue of touch. The skin to skin, hair to hair, air to air, the tenderness of being alive; of being loved.


Perhaps, when I die, or when I touch a dead body, I will then learn what it means to miss the living body. But now, I just wish to share something I am only beginning to learn. To touch love, and not the hypocritical worship, eating of sacraments kind of metaphorical touch, is really to touch love knowing it is always not to be touched. There is a reverence in touch. To touch, is to know that a gentle stroke can easily be a violent penetration. To be able to touch, either as the actor or the recipient is to be vulnerable, to be changed, to be moulded, to be touched and to temporarily or forever leave a scar, a mark, a stain, a trace. We know then, that to touch is to learn what needs to be learnt in its immediacy and intimacy. The kind of wisdom that can only be touched. And then we know how fleeting touch is. How it lingers. How it disappears as soon as the body is removed. And that is why we learn to long for. To long for the eternal touch that is to come. As we touch the living word, we don't ask what foreign flesh it is to touch to learn about love. It is our own bodies, the face I see every morning and the faces I look at everyday, that brings me closer to Him, via a foreign body.

Perhaps, we touch, that we may touch Him and may be. Perhaps, to touch, is to remind me that someday I will cease to be able to touch.

day 205

Walk, don't fly.
walk, that we may take our time to see, and hold the hands that matter.
and wait a little bit longer to be.

animal day

I hate words.

and l e tt er s

I hate them because we lie with them.
Every complete sentence is a potential disaster, a cursed dishonesty that may or may not be entirely consciously willed. But a sentence, as we manipulate them (and as they manipulate us), causes us to lie.

And so I hate words. I hate the formalities of addressing. I hate the words that try to say too much. I hate the words that fly up and mean nothing to a transparent and transcendent imaginary.I hate words that come out of our mouths as we kneel down and pray. I hate the thoughts that are in conflict with the words we say. We can do nothing, but lie.
Words mean so much. That is why we believe the lies we create. Never out of nothing, but lies are the spells of our nature. We lie so often that we can no longer differentiate. We lie with a potency and an urgency not to be caught. And yet, we listen, listen ever so attentively for a lie. And so you can say what you want. And all you leaders and shitholes can weave a narrative so fine that we have no choice but to submit to your lies.

I have nothing more to say then. And I conveniently undermine all that I have written so far. But does it matter if we lie, crash and burn and go to hell for the wagging tongues. Better we cut them off?

We still lie. With a vengeance. With the patient desire to have paradise after all we have done. And so paradise may become this nothingness in which we disappear and never exist.

I don't believe a single thing I say. I count them as shit.
And with that, I begin at the level of a dog. And I am at peace at the fact that I can count myself bestial and only capable of being honestly animal, that I am. I can be honest that I need to pee and shit.

And so, don't expect me to believe a thing you say. I won't. Come to me as a beast...and we will smell each other.

day yad

We cherish
our moments of
wasted wastelands.
They perused
the faces of
known unknowns.
We stare at the
mirrors of
lengthy texts.
They licked
the silvers of
haughty syntax.

Who was it we saw - Mallarme? mallarme.
Sounds like a jam.
An expired jammed bottle of jam
served on
a crooked pram.
(Forgive me for my slam and spam.
But -
We all serve our dues in tombs of tombs of tombs.)

We demand something more - more of an unpolished ore -
not roses
and proses
of doses
of moses'
long verses.
Who are we they see?
Jesters
who pesters
the yester's westers and resters.
And
We,

/ to break the mirrors.

May\be. \.Be what may la.

day 309

My grandmother visited us the night before. The same green butterfly (I always associate a green butterfly with my grandmother, for there was one that landed on top of her coffin) flew past me earlier in the day towards my room. I figured that she decided to tell my love what a little boy I was to her and what a little boy I will continue to be. Apparently, I have a boy with her, who we left behind back home. I imagined myself to be lying next to my ah Ma, as I used to while she smoked, and my love would be listening, with blurry pupils, the tips from our older generations. (After all, she wouldn't get to see my future wife.)

In between the dead, who have passed, and the to-be-borne, who is to come, we are the ones still together. Perhaps, it is a little vision that came about by virtue of our togetherness. A shared and charged moment in time when my unforgettable image of a green butterfly met the unforgettable image of the future. Perhaps, to her, it's just a dream. But to me, it meant that ah Ma is always with me. Perhaps, not in the way that they like to say, as a spirit, but as a future memory, a relentless charge towards the familiar unknown.

To meet her again, or rather, as the absent party in a dream, and in a foreign land, was an extremely heart-warming experience. It is an approval - to what I cannot be certain. But as my love lamented the fact that it was all too haunting but sweet, bittersweet, the real lament is that I cannot say hi myself. The tears probably dried up long ago. But if there is a reason why and how I come to become who I am, and will be, it was because she filled up a large part of me when I was. And now, and of course, surely she was curious to see the person who will now be the one to fill up another large part of me. It's not rivalry. I hope. Instead, I hope they had a good talk - ah Ma to her little girl. The same kind of conversation I had when she sat at the edge of her queen size bed, and I, behind her, lying, or sometimes massaging her, and telling her repeatedly, how she should stop smoking. She never did. But it's ok. We all never stop being stupid, drugging ourselves, being ourselves. I'm glad she came to see her and not me. For I know, I would have certainly cried.

day 100

It's nothing much really. It's only going to be my first disappearance...this year. My tenth disappearance in total. It's nothing really. nothing much.

day 66

I have the usual habit of writing before I sleep. Faintly, just before my soul gives up living and takes her nightly rest, she gives me a little spark to write of words I didn't think of in the day. I definitely have no prior knowledge to what I will (am writing) write, and you most certainly will not know when and how long my pauses are before a sentence is complete.
So if daylight leaks in, and the morning storm ends, I will lie on my bed, hours before daybreak, repeating what she speaks in my mind, and ending the day with a slight fever while I touch some mechanism into life, giving it existence in default black colour.
Perhaps, she's just teasing me. She refuses to let me go to sleep that easily. Appearing either as a page in a book, or a page to be written, she slips easily in and out of my body. Sometimes, she sounds like a pure shadow, hiding at the corner of my room. Sometimes, she changes gender and speaks with a thick French accent, and bores me with French phenomenology. Sometimes, (which happens to be the worst scenario) she preaches to me Hegelian dialectics, in an all-suffocating and spitting hoch Deutsch. Of course, there are favourable moments, when I listen to the tales of malayan tigers, over a glass of sherry, knocking me out immediately into a kafkalesque dream.

sometimes though, she sleeps with me. touches me. and caresses me. confused as it were, I remain speechless, and no voice is heard. my fear overwhelms me and during those moments, I really feel I could never again write or speak. Of course, what seems an hour, is actually five minutes. I shiver with a feverish desire to abandon her. Perhaps, I don't need her. And then I realise, during each nightly ritual, how much I really need her - so that my words can flow, and my stories can be told. These stories are hers as much as they are mine. And so, I can't live without her. Or rather, she's always a part of me. A dangerous and bittersweet, part of me.

So I never switch off the lights of my room. I'm afraid she would be gone. (I'm afraid I'll stop writing). I cannot write in the dark. I have no praise for the dark. such emptiness. the shapes disappear. and the sounds take over. I don't dare to anticipate the dreams that will come. I like to be told beforehand. Hence, I frequently stare into the oblivion and with luck, I find her standing, pouting, all gorgeous and yet so flirtatious. Her allure is poison. Her gift is marvellous. If I masturbate, it's because the words are dying - she's not there. If I preach, it's because the words are also dying - she's screaming. If I keep quiet, it's because she's with me - we are doing nothing, just soaking in the stardust of the early morning, and breathing in the washed swirl of the air. And she reminds me ever so often that I'm still a boy. A boy in this world he thought he could abandon. But the world will never abandon you. To the world, you're just a crying baby, kicking and needy - the need to be controlled and led -and so the only thing I can do, is to wait for my lover, and write my way out of this world, even as the world opens her arms around me, waiting for me to fall with abandonment. To carry on, I must know who she is. To carry on, I must wait for her, every night, every hellish night.

And as I am writing this, I can peep with the corner of my eyes - she, standing still, with a slight tilt of her head, staring at me, as if I have been naughty...

day pause.

I read the words written by a youthful me.

I wonder what I will write.

then I hear that awful voice that says:

You can't write.

And so I write.

day nice

scream, ice-cream, dream, i lean heavily on a wall, almost diagonal. that way, that again. teasing those eyes again. have we merged, not quite, not yet, savouring the moment to not stand straight. don't see the link. it's easy. scream - that which my mouth can make some noise. ice-cream - that which my mouth can gobble. dream - that which my mouth has no part in. come again? let him be, he worked too little, and heard too much. inside, it's full, full of shit, hit with a panic, anxious to see, be the man they see, behold and told, she behaves differently. don't get the joke, don't either, say anyway, pretend to choke. come again? let her be, she says too little, and act too much. outside, it's full of bubbles, tubbles and hubbles and gubbles, and nothing of substance, fence to keep, us at bay. what a day, me and my wall, almost mine. rabbit and his sinking hole. ah ah, don't chase after him. you're not prepared, bare to be, dare to be, the teeny tiny, go away, make my day. we don't see it. we don't see him. the longer this drags on, up or down, rabbit-hole, the longer the period. come again? the period of loneliness. Mr Rabbit gave me earlier a pill to swallow. hello, are you there - we can share this sorrow. you do the screaming, she eats the ice-cream, and no one does the dreaming. those lifeless words, a penny for each. a couple for a phrase. and a million for some nonsense. don't say much. preach no more. been too still, killing her more. twisting twister, wisps on windows, invisible eyes watching visible wind. come again? we make this up. we make this bullfart up. so there you are. another slanted link to think. SCREAM - muted silence, ICE-CREAM - slurping pretence, DREAM - numbed absence.

it's a nice day. it's a hell of a nice day.

day dream

Dreaming, Reading

I remember the first stories I read were actually not read, but listened to. There I was, lying horizontally, with my father then lying perpendicular to me. He would frequently visit this tattered red book, with silverfish and mouldy pages, and related little anecdotes of handsome rajahs, exotic spice islands, mythical lions and colonial hostilities. To him, it was history that he studied as a student. To me, it was really just my bedtime stories, read by my dad.

Now we can read these stories as dreams, the companions of my childhood, and now twenty years later, as companions in writing that you read, which I am writing, in a dated pattern, as I am remembering. I remember the impressive imaginations, the storms and sails that negotiated with the winds, that transformed the humid night into a fantasy that seemed to carry me through the night without rest. I placed my head, smelling occasionally my also tattered grey towel...and I, slowly but surely, merged the worlds together - dream and reality. And it always surprised me, that in my inner darkness, how bright, shiny, and colourful the tiny pinholes were, that opened a kaleidoscope of bubbles - each a moment that once pricked, returned as another sultan, another kris, and another fallen kingdom. And so, every night it repeated, a story after another. It didn't matter that I heard them before. Each night it was different. He was different. I was different. And the deficiency of our inherited language, the error-prone and simple English he spoke, made perfect sense to me. Because it was not the story I was following; I was following the grain of his voice, and the rustle of the night leaves. And the annoyed mother who wanted to sleep.

I remember the pitch-dark bedroom, with furniture forming silhouettes everywhere. As I got used to the darkness, I seemed to hear a courtly Malay, a nearby whisper that sounded like a secret to be eavesdropped on. I listened, as children would, and heard a language I didn't understand. Again, it didn't matter. It was a speech that intrigued me for the impregnability - its distance was what made it attractive. I was safe in the knowledge that I didn't have to reply. I didn't know how to. They spoke a language that was not mine. I was listening in a language that was not mine too. But this secret language, took me along, translated me to somewhere I felt I could reside forever; into the depth of its subtle imagery, finding my own entrance to this realistic fantasy.

Then, the awakening was a similar flight - the sleeper more asleep - another detour towards another dream that fades as the sun is veiled. Perhaps, passing clouds take us again unto another detour, but most of the time, at least in our part of the world, the wakefulness and dreamfulness are all determined by the humidity and temperature of our surroundings.

And yet, these rajahs and sultans didn't seem to mind. It was as if they thrived and lived precisely for the climate. I can't tell you who they are. It was a time that they didn't have a religion, a proper name and a face. No Asia, no Southeast, no Chinese. I wasn't part of them. But they are always part of everything imaginable. They murdered, they plundered and they loved. And they resided in stars, with palaces as bright as the golden cosmos. I took my pick, drew a few lines, connected the cities together and formed my warring kingdoms. Even if I was only awake for an hour to listen, my dream continued into the sleeping world, and there, it was pure release.

I remember, I was there and not there. I, seemed to be part of them, a volunteer in their courtly proceedings, and the witness to their killing spree. Or, it was like 'I' watching a black and white film, with music and dance and the halo around spiritual men. So how do you attribute the I in such story? I remember, my mother snoring. I remember next, how I would ask for more, only to hear, in response, my father's own snoring. (I am snoring nowadays as well.) And so, I followed that pattern, that tiny and excited voice that no one was hearing except the muted Malays. We didn't understand each other. But we still played to each other. A strange mix. But I repeat - it didn't matter. Where my mind wandered, there I went.

I forget, what it was like to listen to my father as he told his stories. We don't talk much. I just observe snippets of a younger him, and the occasional reminders of his short temper in the form of my own manifestation of this trait. I am sure I won't hear him talk about a Malay History written by an Ang Moh. Instead, I hear the now softer voice, and the routine "Buy food 4 u" on my mobile. Perhaps, I lost what was imaginative for a stagnant mobility. It is easy to say that I have lost my childhood and my former dreams. But it is always more productive to think of it as a struggle, of which a reward comes with this struggle to move and to be still. Between the ease of just being alive for each other to be in relation to, and the difficulty of communications in this era of silence, I must roughly know what it means to be a son. It is as if, by questioning, by remembering, I forget what it means to be a father. I wonder if he remembers. I wonder if I know enough to remember the way to bring up my offspring. And if I next remember to be a father myself, what question will I next ask myself? And what stories will I tell my child?

Perhaps, I can only talk about stories I inherited from strangers. The ugly ducklings and the prodigal sons. But there are always a time and place for these episodes to be repeated. However, it is really the stories we can never retrieve that makes it worthwhile to live, that we may, in the act of remembering and forgetting, understand and discover the double discovery that there is an occasion for words to be heard and spoken, and another occasion for that struggle to be as it is There can also be an occasion when no words can be heard and spoken. And yes, you can say it is a kind of impossibility. A kind of inconclusive experience. A very different thing actually.

A present and a past, with a future that disrupts them; a real and an imaginary, with a body that entangles them. We must come face to face with them, that in the detailed reminiscence of our past gifts, we miss the reward of a tragic presence that always already loses its past. Our poverty may eventually prove to be the one reason that makes us innocent for trying too hard to remember and to dream. Then again, I am giving too much credit for our depravity. As we continue to wake and dream, to wait, we manage to come to a point that man's illusion can no longer be ignored. So much unhappiness, so many dreams! And between the great rift between reality and dream is really just the animated body, affirming your presence. Or, as one hates to put it - affirming our violence.

Instead, just pay attention to the rustle of any imperceptible speech; e.g. the voice of a father you cannot see while horizontal. And in the vertical state of a rational being, we find the axis of our entire existence, as creatures really just made to enjoy the rudiments of everyday life and love. To just imagine without need of physical materialization. To hear and to speak the language of invisible God.




in other words, imagine love. that we have all forgotten.


dream, read, and dream

days

I always have an image of a girl, dressed in bright red, (it immediately sounds like a scene from Spielberg's list), sitting in a toilet bowl seat, holding a barbie doll dressed in bright red as well. Then, the whole image of the room will be washed red, till it becomes a bloody blur and she screams a muted cry. And the image will then dissipate and quickly disappear as soon as it was appearing.

Perhaps, that's why she hardly wears red. Perhaps pink. Perhaps the diluted flashes of trauma forgotten. I can't remember how often I imagine this image.

I tend to remember as if I have to replace her memory; and the more she forgets, the more I remember. I guess, that's fine in a way. But the image of the red girl won't disappear. In fact, as I gently cuddle her or stroke her hair back, I imagine her eyes tearing, a transparent blur, instead of a velvet paint which will not show.

Maybe she tears to forget. Maybe each time she tears, the red colour is diluted. Pink. Pink rosy cheeks. All warm and alive. She is alive.

I know that I do not know her. Perhaps, that is why that is the reason for our familiarity. The deep understanding of not having to know any deeper, as if each day is a new canvas recycled from those thrown away.

Those fingers, breaking plastic, tearing the fabric, all torn and tattered. Imaginary friends in far away places. She did not know. She does not remember. Then again, people do the remembering for her. While she does the suffering on her own.

I don't know what I am doing that would make it easy for her. Perhaps, I refuse to believe that we can be easy with life. I would prefer to be told that we can be, through some form of endurance test and that there is some higher purpose we are serving.

when she hugs me, she is actually letting go of the past and embracing the immediate present. fading is the new high.

So as I stand still, and she stands still, we are actually breathing in tandem and in reaction to each other. We do not breathe alone. We move with the rising and falling of our chests. I will be warm when you are cold. And you will be warm when I am cold.

Then I see a new image - an old lady, trotting by the beach in a red summer dress. As she turns back to stare at the horizon, moon spills sun fades, we begin to realise that there are truly miracles that do not have to take the form a material presence. Instead, it is just about being there for each other, however small or insignificant it seems at first.

moon falls, sun rises. red sea, red sea, then a rustle.

-- the simple language of lovers' grace.

day reflection

what is a blog?

today, I want to say...

what is a space for us to express ourselves?

sadly, my words, fail me, soon after the utterance.

I should write an apology.

what for? to whom? we stop knowing what it means to write to someone.

I should write a love letter.

And we find ourselves, deep in love, but shallow in saying, writing the words...

what are we writing about?

severely handicapped, patience is a sought-after virtue.
After writing, I often ask myself where my words went.
and to my horror, I have been mute all the while.

who do I write to? The finished article eludes me.
honour me in a manner that means less to the present.

shadows surround, round the pines that twirl around the former trunk.

Many have come and go.
soon, we find it, hard to let go.

i, pursue, the.
the, definitive, article.

maybe, that is why I write.
a treasure without a treasure map.
So I invent one, I chart out one, one that takes over the image in my map.

let us navigate,
the syntax, the structure, the semantics,
and the coordinates of meaning...

will still elude us.

patience, I say.
everyone will have a last word, a last voice.
(they are different.)
I write, patience.

remind me again,

what am I writing?