Shoulders

My fingers pace
the gradients of your skin that dip and ascend
outlining the perimeter of your stature,
the creases that chronicle your fleeting aches,
around your eyes, elaborate patterns of transient joy,
the contours of your neck, prison marks etched by former lovers, 
the oblique lines sewn like thread into your features
pressing your limbs together to form contortions,
mimicking bronze sculptures.

Time clips my tongue
and it curls in on itself.
I'm maddened by hunger
but as it surges,
fills the tiny nerves
enclosed in the structure of my sinews,
your shoulders hold me in place.

Enough, Catullus.

I've grown so accustomed to earning love -be it by favours, self-sacrifice or total self-annihilation- that when it's given to me too easily, I value it less than I would have had I toiled to feel its cold, gangly limbs in my choking grip.

I would give up plans on request, swallowed anger as it crawled its way to the tip of my tongue, tolerated being shoved into the 'option' bin for weeks on end, forgive apologize forgive apologize forgive apologize (repeat), all for a chance to feel indispensable to anyone who was willing, or foolish enough, to board my crazy train. I gave so much because I wanted to be everything, all at once. We would both be so wrung out from the constant battle for control that, in the end, no one even bothered to steer anymore.

If choices were only simple dichotomies of pros and cons, much care would be put into making lists of evaluations on over-sized yellow Post-it notes. But there is no way of stopping the rational mind from deliberating the ripple effects of precarious endeavours. Guidelines are adjusted to fit my fears and my skepticism, so much so that the bar just keeps getting higher and higher.

The basic breakdown of this is you can't tell if someone has a tight grip on life just by holding his hand. It takes valuable time to measure the worth of anyone's word, time which can be spent in idle wonderment of the world, with its abundance of unassuming affection. So why risk it?

I don't know exactly what is at stake, but I know something is; and I'm in no position to give it up.

4-121112

It is impetuous as it is rash, for someone to step into a house occupied by swindling gypsies, hymn-singing maidens and screeching birds, without prior understanding of the concept of madness.

It is a case of either/or; either you choose self-restraint and lose yourself, or you redefine insanity and participate.

Oy vey.

Mind The Trap.

It was my first time in London.

You know how people say that when you travel you learn substantially more about yourself than the place you visit? Well, after years of idyllic ignorance I realized that I, in fact, do not understand a word of English. After having seen three seasons of Skins, two seasons of BBC's Sherlock and several re-runs of Brian Cox's Wonders series you would think setting apart their British accented Is and Alrights would be kid's stuff. You'd probably try to sneak in a cockney accent and turn your Thank Yous into Fank Yous. That is, until you face a ticket instructor who has an accent heavier than a pick-up truck, whose initial courteous tone slowly starts to escalate into something that can easily pass off as a violent threat.

"Cuhn oi sey yor tecke' plaise? CUHN OI SEY YOR TECKE' PLAISE? Da yuou speahk English?" No sir, not at this moment in time, it seems. Also, could you repeat that please?

Sorry, let me get back to where I left off.

I had never been to London. Strangely enough, the only thing I was looking forward to was riding the Tube. Levels upon levels of underground railways, housing 270 stations linked together almost seamlessly, all summed up in a colour co-ordinated topological map. Tunnels not meant for the claustrophobic, underground passageways that went on forever with artificial lighting; exactly what I needed for optimum naturalistic observation, or as the hip folk say these days, 'people watching'.

That's the great thing about massive crowds. Everyone gets so caught up with what they have to do and where they have to go that everything else turns into meaningless shapes and shadows. You can look at anyone as much as you want to, bore a hole into their skull and they'd get off at the next stop without so much as a flinch. Spaniards, Germans, Brits, Indians, French, Norwegians, Chinese, Africans, Nepalese, Bengalis, Persians, Hybrids - just about every ethnicity imaginable. Also, is it still considered eavesdropping if you're only listening to the way they say it instead of what they say?

While these people knew exactly which line to take, where to stop, which coach to avoid and if their train rides were long enough to permit a nap, I suppose each of them were, just like the rest of us -in one way or another- hopelessly lost. That despite the time difference and cultural semblance, (hey, you have an iPod Nano 8th Gen too?) we had no idea where we were heading; not only geographically, but organically as well.

In a way, we're all following a simplified topological map; thoughtlessly cruising from one point of our life to another without a clear image of how we'll to get to the next juncture. Just a stretch of darkness until we reach our final stop. It's a comforting thought.

London sort of grew on me. 

A Short Love Letter to The Moon

If you teach me how to shift the shores, I will teach you the ways of the sun.

Too Late

ǵhu-tó-m

What you wanted was an image of God. Your speech was thick; spun with words marred by years of believing; a belief without conviction. Believing without ever really knowing why you had to put it all in one place. You seized devotion like it was a threadbare rag, and with it you tried to wipe me clean.

"It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."


And so it continued; all of your careful little nuances gently stockpiled in the corners where we sat, on soil patches sullied by our footprints, behind that worried sigh you let out when I lost my way. Did you tell Him about my gritty fingers? Go on, tell Him. 

You looked at me like I was a revelation brought down to you in complete darkness. I was as curved as the Arabic scriptures you grew up singing; rhythmic liberation. We traded worldly verses in the prickly heat and you lost yourself in its familiarity. I tried to love you.

But faith isn't etched on rib cages. Divine intercessions come to me through other means - through sculptures, portraits of those long dead and gone, that first hesitant touch, melodic whispers of my qarin; through freedom. My hair exposes my follies as it cascades down my back, tumbling like wisps of weed. It bears a warning: I will leave you behind as I have done many others, in my blind chase for free will. This is why I cannot love you.

New Things.

I miss this space. As of late, I have been ambling through life with a rekindled love for Science, spectacular company and better life lenses. I've never been more sure of what I stand for; after years of contemplation, I finally let go of something that was a central aspect of my life. Which, surprisingly, has prompted a new found deep respect for the mechanics of chance, and the way chaos seems to knowingly find structure to instantly put itself in its rightful place.

All is well, save for the brief stints of sorrow that try to scrape their way through. But just like most things, it will scamper off, according to its own beat. I know that now. Honestly speaking, what else is there to say?

P.S. Caramel pudding really hits the spot.

Spirits, Part 1.

My late grandmother was a seamstress. I was a fairly new addition to the family, the firstborn of two wide-eyed individuals; and to top it off, both of my parents had 9-5 jobs so I was left in her care on most days. I remember having to spend hours in her little shop in Petaling Jaya, surrounded by pieces of clothing suspended on the ceiling beams like frail skeletons, watching her rusty sewing machine stab multi-coloured pieces of fabric; the needle narrowly missing her wrinkly fingers. She would give me small pieces of kain and we took turns on the sewing machine table. Her feet and hands orchestrated an effortless set of movements that I was unable to imitate no matter how closely I paid attention. To this day, I still don't know how those things work.

Her shop was in a two-storey marketplace, right smack in the middle of the upper floor. Sometimes, when I felt the need to escape the musty smell of damp cloth I would walk to both ends of the floor, just to spy on the other tenants. This was back in a simpler time, when toddlers could get away with these kind of expeditions. There was one Chinese uncle who sold fruits two shop lots away from my grandmother's shop. When I had luck on my side, he would flatten tufts of my curly black hair and hand me free apples. I'd spend the rest of the day annihilating my story books with streaks of crayon and ink doodles, sharing my looted treasures with my grandmother in that suffocating textile den.

When I grew a bit older, she replaced our sewing lessons with one-sided conversations of her past. The happier stories encompassed her stint as a teacher in a public school and stories of my father's antics when he was a young chap. Remnants of the educator in my grandmother was kept alive by her constant assessment of my school work. If I kept my work in check, we would take the bus to Jalan Masjid India and she would buy me ABC in the city, so I never really minded any of her inspections. Whenever my late grandfather's name came up, I had to brace myself. I never looked forward to these recounts. My grandmother married at 15 and was widowed before I came into the picture. I had a hard time believing that marital commitment necessitated so much suffering, but she made it seem like there was no other option. I would go so far as to say that her recollections of marriage gave shape to my current standpoint on relationships.

Writing this down has left me with an odd sense of  guilt. It feels as though I've broken a glass safe which was previously set aside in the shadowy recesses of my subconscious, but I've awoken from dreams of spirits one too many times to leave these tales untold.

Halved.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Janglin

Bombay Bicycle Club - How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep

Third Eye Blind - Palm Reader

Aretha Franklin - Ain't No Way

A less scientific way to explain prisms:

When your fingers are intertwined with another's and you suddenly see different parts of yourself with laser clarity. You are no longer pure light.  Flesh to flesh, you are a forest fire, wiping out acres of land, desperate to be rid of your thirst for thousand-year-old sequoias.  Your flames grow taller than folklore giants and for one tiny fraction of a second, the embers appear to dissolve into the empyrean sun.

That unsettled heart which was once so green, muddled with jealousy and distrust, now thrashes against your chest to spring out of it's skeletal box. And when you look at the blue veins on the back of your hands creeping up to your fingers -his fingers- that seem to carry on all the way to his wrists, you understand that this is the closest you'll ever get to the gospel truth.

Under a sheet of indigo sky you lay, surrounded by splitting asteroids and indiscernible vortices; there is no safe way out of this galaxy. In the dark, his voice makes every word sound like rich purple prose; there is no safe way around that either. But you hold on to those glass fingers nonetheless and tie up the loose ends of his sentences like you would on any other day. This time, you're ready to be split into pieces.

Langkawi Chronicles. (Sort of) (Maybe) (Maybe Not)

Day 1: Flying makes me nervous. This is a known fact. Even as I traced the faint outlines of mountain ranges in the distance on that sad excuse of a window I had to consciously remind myself to forget about the frailty of the aluminium can I was on. A plethora of accidents ran through my mind; engines failing, bolts coming loose, someone forgetting to pressurize the cabin. Murphy's law; need I explain? I took a deep breath and watched the wings glide above miles and miles of clouds that bore an uncanny resemblance to snow covered trees. Indiana Jones had his snake pit, I have my aeroplanes.

Day 2: The novelty of cycling never wears off. Furious pedaling as the bicycle chains violently rattle against its rings, so desperate to break free. Palms marked redder with each tightened grip on the rubber handlebars. Balancing my entire weight on a thin metal frame. And when those spokes shimmer golden in the sun, I swear to you, there is no other feeling.

Day 3: "Dah cuba?" (Have you tried?) I thought of my life as the sun set a purple hue to the evening sky. How many times have I claimed ownership to another person's heart and yet refused to step up when the going got tough? I've lost count. How many times have I whimpered in my sleep, left at the mercy of a telephone call? I've lost count. At the time, I was too engrossed with my past to realize that the islander was talking about jet skis and not my attempts to love wholeheartedly without losing my footing. I answered with a swift, "Dah cuba dah." (I've tried.)

Day 4: I'll let you in on a little secret: a part of me never came back home. Breathe, survive, repeat.

Cyan Skies.

 

 

 

Khasma.

You passed by and I breathed in butterflies. Their razor wings leave incisions, so delicately tearing away fragments of the past buried under hardened skin and coiled eyelashes. Inside of me, I feel ivies scaling jagged cliffs, creeping inside ravines; across the vast canyons in my heart where faith once gushed like secret rivers. In the deepest chasms of this weary land, your voice ricochets off stony walls; I hear it in my sleep. I saw you and I felt life take root.

And if the words I speak were written down, your name would appear in parentheses between frivolous professions of truth; like bubbles of thought that dare not escape the spiraling labyrinth of my subconscious.

****************

Thank you for leaving your secrets with me. You can read them here.

It's only fitting that I seal this project with a secret of my own. I met him once on campus (another time, a little while after) and I was stuck in a daze for weeks. Months later, the thought of him still gives me this weird feeling in my gut that I can only describe as a cross between exhilaration and genuine anxiety. This post is about him, obviously.

Happy birthday, Thickety-Split.

Looped Tracks.

Passenger Seat - Death Cab for Cutie

"Then looking upwards

I strain my eyes and try to tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites."

Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machine
 
"And it's over
And I'm going under
But I'm not giving up
I'm just giving in."

A Comet Appears - The Shins

"But the lonely is such delicate things,
The wind from a wasp could blow them into the sea,
With stones on their feet,
Lost to the light and the loving we need,
Still to come the worst part and you know it,
There is a numbness in your heart and it's growing."

Better Off Without You - Summer Camp

"He doesn't want you, can't you see?
He doesn't love you, why won't you listen to me?"

Leave a Secret.

My blog's turning a year old soon so I thought it'd be cool if I could commemorate its one year anniversary with a semi-interactive post.

I've enabled the 'anonymous' feature on the comments' section so feel free to drop a secret about yourself/someone you know/a situation you're in that you just want to let out or/and have been harboring for much too long.

Conditions are:

• You can write as much as you want.
• It can be in any language, as long as the message gets across.
• DO NOT leave any sort of identification. No hints, no initials, not even inside jokes. 

I can't track down IP addresses for the life of me,  so you can rest assured knowing that this is a safe space.

Thanks for reading my blog. If this is your first time here, hey whassshappninnnn?! Grab a chair. 

Oh and Happy (pre) Birthday, Thickety-split.

Harsh.

Hi. Have you met the filtered, idealistic, always upper-half, never bottom-half side of myself that I have specially moulded for the internet? Pleasure's all mine.

Science Fiction.

Imagine experiencing one thousand years of life, without the uncertainties of youth and the pains of old age. Personal aspirations would be rendered meaningless, making way for dreams based on sudden spikes of interest in any field of study available to us now. We would be released from time's restrictive clutches.

The concept of fate has us all believing that we will only do one great thing in our entire life. A politician can deliver riveting speeches that inspire great movements of freedom, but his musical endeavors and analytical journals on the human psyche would only appear as footnotes in historical accounts. What would transpire from an extended lifespan is a super race -unaffected by the absurdity of seeking veneration from the masses- with a blazing curiosity that rivals the fiery depths of Dante's inferno.

Ultimately, what limits the scope of our ambition is not our incapability to learn, but our swift and inescapable mortality.

Scratch That Thought.

Late at night, I see projections on my bedroom walls; still images of tomorrow, the next day and the seemingly endless days after.  I'm sitting at a kitchen table with three mouths to feed -with hands so terribly small- and I am fueled only by a half-hearted sense of obligation. Their father's eyes, drained of its wonder.

I come back to the present in a cold sweat, writhing in an empty bed, with my hand placed under a pillow as a miserable replacement for body warmth. With each of these untimely fits of panic, I feel a longing (longings similar to that of a school girl, a washed out bachelor, a distressed damsel, and the like) that is incongruous with my instinctive nature to doubt the follies of love.

I don't know what my permanent stand on monogamy is, but at the moment I do not wish to actively pursue it. Loneliness is such a bitch, though.

Landslide - Fleetwood Mac (Cover)

Change has a way of pinning my wrists down and leaving me helpless.

Jumbo Japan Trip Update.