words and words and me and words

Just recently I tried to write in Malay, a words/language that I consider sacred and absolute challenge. I envy Latiff Mohidel and Chairil Anwar. Words form naturally in front of them. Sharp observation, intuitive and often out of the conventional boundaries.

Words form on tips of my world
Often high
Often dry
Moist with everything
Something

Of course I don’t write poems. Not like I used to. Once. When I was naïve and small. Know nothing better to do then scribbling lone, loose sentences that form a group of words that can barely held anything. People nowadays know Chairil Anwar through ‘ada apa dengan cinta’ , his notoriously revolutionary ‘aku’ that jeopardy every rules of conventional poetry at that time. Equally was his legendary hedonistic lifestyle. People knew less and less about poetry. Even me. Ignorance. Poetry and me. To be naive is more important then knowledge, as knowledge, many of it was unused and wasted makes one selves ignorant and self centered. Popular culture gives major literary works the ‘pop’ it sometime deserved. But over exposure will surely stripe the works from it true nature and intention. Exploitation of the highest form. Is imitation is the highest form of flattery? I might be, it might be not.

Other then writing, I also indulged myself in a habit that might spell myopia but the result was very satisfying. Dots and dots. Layers and layers of it. Not all being arranged in any particular order, but were put in order which can change quickly with a stroke of a pen. I like drawing pictures of old people, aged by experience in sharp and hot sunlight. Wrinkles have always be the favorite subject for artist. Pretty in it own way, more beautiful then perfection. I think that what Pablo Picasso sees in his painting, cubism, a norm for him but obscene for others. His drawing was worse; girls with unsymmetrical eyes and rigid looking figures. He sees people differently, which was normal to normal people but sometimes jagged for him.    

Malaysian drivers

malaysian are basically nice people, but morons when it come to driving. stupid, stupid. they don't care about giving signal when changing lanes, they just ignore you if you give signal to cut infront of them. what idiots. hey, that also includes me you know, because our way of life teaches me to act like the popular masses. i don't have any trouble if someone show some courtesy while overtaking. don't just speed and then flash their car's head light like crazy. stupid. last time when i was in pasir gudang, this one kenari (supposely converted to..stupid) just an inche away from crashing my car! he was from the opposite side, no trafic, no animals, no rain, just that fucking dumb guy and me. well, like my manager always say, "bodo, idiot! want to die, die alone laaaa!!"

two years of sollitude

it is hard to sleep when you think a lot. i just realized that. i'm just angry with myself,being exploited and had bared everything when i know it might be humiliating later on. but i digress thethought. perish. far away. i took the chances. burnt to pulp. but white water washed away theashes. flower petals started to make way for lonely fat honey bee. yeah, thit is me.

i was restless last night, making no less then 5 phones calls to Kl. fadh was annoyed, at some point with me. i'm just guessing. later on, after her eye had already adjusted to the reality in hand, she shared her ears with me. my voice started to sound firm. but unsure. nothing else matter these days.she listen carefully and promised me to asked her mother later on about me. okay, i said. we hung up and i'd promised to call her in the morning.

i had a weird dream. something involving siti nurhaliza, music, happiness and color all around. it wasn't supposed to be this way. i know my subconcious are trying to play down this love thing. i'd dream what i want to dream. between sweet dreams, bad and sad thoughts creeped through and i recited the word of God to kept me calm throught out the night.

later that day, i'd called fadh and her rather cherful voice yell the words of happiness. it might be a joke these days if someone told you that he just broke of with his girlfriend because he didn't answer the 'salam' when her mother picked up the phone. but if it happened to you, it might not sound too funny . isn't it? she said everything was okay. she laught, small and confident. sound of people and other assorted noises confirmed it wasn't a dream. dream do come true.

bad thoughts, perished, to far away places. will it came back, i can't denied it. but this time i was sure everything might turned alright. as sure as i am that was damon albarn's voice singing on the radio just a moment ago. beth gibbon's voice might be the very appropriate sound track right now. sweet as honey. tripping on everything yet not once stumbled on every obsticle in front of her. i'd assured myself that makcik mazidah really is as sweet as the name had suggested. the one i used to know long time ago might not be too much different as this one. how many mazidah did i knew? only two, and both have been here and there in my long and dwinding life. two, is one to many.

she was nice and i was happy. it was the longest week for me . too long that it is really exhausting just to think about it. some people might be blind to see the reality, some are ignorant, some just don't even give a damn. i might be ignorant but i do give a damn where my life is going to be.....() time, numbers and age. faith, fate, timing. everything else just reasons for another to fail.

love lost, found, lost and found.

art and reality, where the thin black line often look visible as it intended to be. i got the will to write again after a long hiatus and so called sabatical leave. i was heartbroken when my computer crashed a couples of months ago. i was trying to install thye CD-r when it happen. nearly all my hard work for years were flushed down the drain. lucky i had a hard copy of my story 'saving graces' but nearlt 30% of the story was lost. for ever. i thought i coudn't write anymore. it feel so hard and to start over again is not as easy as it sound. ironically, my CD-r went kaput 2 days ago. i went ahead that night to write half page worth of my so called social observation and emotional outpore. everything was written in one smooth motion, like nothing had ever happen. no hiccups, and my hands works like a well oiled machine. i have thought of continuing my story that was intendedly to be only a short story. soon, the characters develope it own complications and from here came the sub-plots and new characters. i kept it open and don't want to tied it down with any uncertainties. it was a classic malay dilema, complete with jealousy, glutony, besuty and occasional musical moments. i want it to be old school, dramatic, long shoot, black and white film affair. less physical action and more of internal termoil. everything is slow as i was influenced by gabriel garcia marquez's ine hundred years of solitude when i first started to write. i was hooked by it fluid style and details observation, even if something may sound obscure and downright nonsense. the presetation was important. of course , the novel wasn't called one of the most important novel of the last century for nothing.

footnote : brief history of yesterday

19/8/2003 Isnin, 9.00 malam. Why the date and all? It was significantly important, after emotional start to a very mundane morning, I finally felt free. The weather was wet but sunny. My eyes may still feel puffy and tight. It may not be cleared as it used to. Not today. Today is quite different. Looking at the office door, I swear I could see the sexy girl next door walking to the pantry with big red mug in her hand. It wasn't super power but utter concentration. I was sitting by my desk writing these sentences down in my green notebook and then stared at the wall for the next two or three hours. Loser. Right? It may not seem as bad as it sound. I can smile easier now and I bet by 8.00pm my mother will already start talking about 3 different types of rings and what color should she paint the house. Are there enough plates and glasses and spoons and forks? Should we rent it? We should right? And by midnight Fadh will called and tell me about her trip to Jaya Jusco. Everything will be okay then, I sleep at 12.00 pm and wake up refreshed the next day, hopefully there won't be any ducks in front of my house waiting to take a bite at my tasty butt. Fadh still kept the cards that I gave her last time when we were in love. Not that many but certainly quantity wasn't the issue here. She wrote to me emotional emails with details I don't even remember. The sincerity was touching. Sweet in a way that nearly bring tears to my eyes. My throat felt funny after reading it. I chuckled for a moment to digest the words and memory. No other small things have touched me so dearly as that email has for a very long time.

reality bites

reality just sets on me. what come around do come around. faith is something that you can't ignored, either you want to belive it or not, it does happen and when it does, you may either laught your heart out or cry to death. either way, life can be preety weird and play a cruel game on us.

sometime you know you are right but you know you can't change anything by saying that you are right. people hear things they want to hear and ignore everything else. they does that very often. initially when everything set in, it hurts. like hell. the burning sensation still cut through my skin now and then.

for the longest time i had ignored fadh's phone call and only then did i picked it up and talked to her without mentioning fizi's name and saying the kitchen is on fire in the same sentence. it wasn't a happy phone call this time. for her, at least. time hasn't been much better for fadh and me either, but the curcumstances are just too weird. it was august two years ago that we broke up. using SMS, no less spectacular and sophisticated, a good two years before the goverment banned the idea of divorce thru SMS. it is possible and nothing wrong with it, but BE a man la. faced it. everything come tumbeling down for fadh as her fiancee choosed his skyline then getting married sometime this month. plus many other anoying issues which i find rather pathetic and funny. Zue (negara) have been her unsecure self again, doubting everything about me and decided to choose the nicer part of life then gamble on me. well, i should have guess it long time ago. secured life and fairy tale ending, doesnt that just sound like me? not? brother grimms it may not be but be sure i have a foot in kafka or joyces classic. everything will eventually come in palce. i ponder. and ponder. but when and why the suddend changes? everything so new for me in just two weeks?

i took the less scenic route this time. time is not on my side, so i say. being on the brink of unsecurity i tied to the long pole that was offered by fadh. she knows me long enought not to play with this rather fragile emotion. she wept through her sentences and letting out small laughter at the end of our conversation that night. i slept a little tighter and hope the sun will coem out soon.

am i making the right choice? am i concious enought to think straight and make decision as big as this in this weird week with little naughty little boy dancing and running riot in my head? i think i do and i doubt thing will change much if i had choosed to sleep on it and decide later.

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