The Morning After

I frequent the streets that lead up to the square
where a motley of men congregate
to speak their minds
but never their hearts.


Here is where it began
Climb up, climb up!
The rusty steps of the fire escape ladder
(Ten thousand)
A twist and a turn
(Nine thousand and ninety-nine)
A flurry of plumeria leaves and tobacco
(Nine thousand and ninety-eight)
A tentative smile
(Get a grip)
Milk on your shirt
(Before you slip)
Stains on our sleeves
(Nine thousand and ninety-seven)
The park and everything in between
(Nine thousand and ninety-six)
The parts of our skin we should never have seen
(Nine thousand and ninety-five)
I'd rather


dangle my two feet over the tarmac
than deal with the weight of the morning after.

Philosophical Mathematics (An Interpretation)

 

Drew the last Venn Diagram to explain something to a friend, which lead to a series of other pointless mathematical diagrams. I clearly have too much time on my hands. Selamat Hari Raya, everybody!

An Unlikely Prayer

I wish for my actions to be independent of irrational thought, yet dependent on a limitless capacity for compassion.

Please let me accept wholeheartedly the prospect of being wrong despite this burgeoning itch to always be right.

Grant me enough prudence to know when to think, when to decide, and when to stop.

Things I Encountered on a Highway at 3AM (Both Literally and Figuratively)

A swarm of insects
Although we differ greatly in size, humans and insects share one common ground--there is a predictive quality in our behavior patterns.

Ants learn by interaction; though their interactions are not quite as emotionally agonizing as the ones we are forced to endure.

Moths are attracted to light, just as we are drawn to enlightenment. In both cases, the end result is disorientation. In both cases, the desire for light is self-destructive.

A honey bee's stinger is its one and only mode of defense. Once it stings its victim, the bee's stinger is detached from its body and it will subsequently face death. Mankind's fate is doubly tragic-- our stings leave us not dead, but with a hollowness that derogates our will to live.

An eery mist
A fog covers the field where you sit cross-legged with a sickle and tobacco stained teeth. Hacked weeds and headless rodents surround your dreary patch of land. There is no way for me to convince you to leave your Godless shrine, so I choose to rescue the parts of my body that did not get lost in the grey.

Crows
A single crow is an omen. A murder of crows is an ending.

Sailors.

Some people live in split second transitions of daydreams.

Sailing steadfast on their mighty caravels.

Tying themselves tightly to the masts, hoping that monsoon winds will carry their cargo loaded vessels away from leaden waters; towards coasts where sunlight embellishes the shoreline with opulent hues of gold and ivory.

The hulls of their ships gleam like elephant tusks, spearheading the drifter's pursuit for soil and sand.

Uh Huh Honey.

 

Bigger

For in these cold Chi night's moon, you my light
If heaven had a height, you would be that tall
Ghetto to coffee shop, through you I see that all

I could do it, maybe one day
When you figure out you're gonna need someone
When you figure out it's all right here in the city
And you don't run from where we come from
That sound like Poetic Justice, Poetic Justice

Underwater, stove-top, blue flame scientist come out with your scales up
get baptized in the ocean of the hungry
(Humdi luli lalilulo, Humdi lulilalilu)
My niggas turn in to gods,
walls come tumblin'

Original rude boy, never am I coy
You can be a shorty in my ill convoy
Not to come across as a thug or a hood
But hon, you got the goods, like madeline woods

Fingerprints.

You popped up on my computer today.

My Skype went through a system update and by some technical mismanagement my profile picture changed to a picture of you.

I can't remember when or why I had changed it years ago. Maybe it was one of those cute couple-y things we succumbed to back then; the exact reason escapes me. The years have managed to trim the fuzzy edges of my memory of our relationship. All I'm left with is the stripped down core: we were good, right up until the point where we weren't. Nonetheless, I felt a sting. In that picture, your hair went past your eyebrows which could only mean it was taken a few weeks before we called it quits. You're sporting a 5 o'clock stubble, which rounds out the sombre look you wore so often. It's the image of you I've carried around all these years -- worn out and shabby, but composed in your own way.

You were a P.O. Box, a few swift strokes of the keyboard and a low-end web camera I stared into day in and day out. Continents still separate us after all these years, as it rightfully should. Why did you make a digital appearance again today after so many years of absence? My guess is as good as any. It hardly even matters. Fate and destiny is a phase that I've thankfully grown out of. After all, symbols and signs are what we make of them.


Since that juncture of my life, I've been wary of online communication. Everyone is the idealized version of themselves here, myself included. It's all quite formulaic.

Hide as much as you like!  Reveal as little as possible!  Be intellectual up to a point!  Write with wit!  Care but don't care too much because the world is going to end anyway!  Words are like windows so choose them carefully!

It amazes me how much everyone has been avoiding physical contact with each other. Just look at how seamlessly our interactions have been formatted into web protocols over the last couple of years, i.e. count the amount of conversations you have on your phone/online vs. the ones you have in the real world.

I suppose it's the safest way of keeping each other company. Safer than sharing a common space with someone new. Safer than whatever it was that we had.

Lace Doilies Look Like Snowflakes Don't They?

I remember spinning slowly in my room on the first day of the year. As a kid I constantly spun in circles, curious as to why I'd lose my balance and topple over after doing multiple 360s. I wanted to recreate that feeling; the satisfaction that came with losing control. The light-headedness. The frivolous rush. The I wonder how long I can make this last? sensation.
Unlike my juvenile experimentation, the turns and twists on that January morning only left me irritated and slightly nauseous. Had I trained myself to resist any loss of control over the years? I wondered if it was reversible. I wanted so badly to regain the comfort I had assimilated with the unfamiliar. Hard to believe we were playmates once. Anyway, that was close to 6 months ago.

Since then, I have

• moved into a run-down apartment (a trade-off for getting a room of my own, which at my age I have come to appreciate as a luxury)
• started the second half of my sad excuse of an education (the most valuable lessons in life/mathematics/politics/whatever can't be taught on PowerPoint)
• wrote a few sad songs which I have sung for people who cannot relate to the distilled sub-genres of hip hop and pop that have amassed disproportionate airplay (GUYS, synths do not save lives)

Family, friends and people are moving. Time is marching on its feet as well--linearly or cyclical, that is still up for fruitful debate. There is purpose and opportunity, but there is no distinction between the two--this, thus far, has become my current everyday struggle; aside from the usual affairs that befall a female 20-something melanchomaniac.

I feel like my life is a three-spaced wheel split into change I can control, change that bubbles in a dark cauldron with the intention to slither out of the sinister brew and into my life, and change that controls me. It spins, and spins, and spins.

Most current picture, taken within 3 months. In case you forgot what I look like.

Hands

A weaving web, one tiny glove
the lines and stitches, the makings of
our tiny five-fingered glove
to cover from the biting cold
                     of nights alone.

Hands are never free unless they are held
I have you glued under my nails.

I carried life colourblind
with outstretched arms, words divine
stealing light from power lines
to lift us from the swelling cold
                         on nights alone.

Hands are never free unless they are held
our fingers trace the missing rails.

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