I’m a guy standing at the edge of a puddle.

I’m afraid to step in.

The puddle is, by puddle standards, relatively shallow. Large, wide, maybe a little murky, with strands of oily colours coiling by the sides. But shallow.

There is an urge to leap right in, for that satisfying splash. To kick the water and show ‘em who’s boss. To say, “Who’s in deep water now, huh?”

But I don’t want to dirty the shoes. I don’t like the idea of jumping into untested waters. I’m afraid of wetting the hem of my trousers, knowing that the soaked fabric would cling to my leg, reminding me of the dirtiness of the water, constantly stinging me with cold, haunting me with discomfort…

I take a step back, where I know it’s dry. Boringly so. Safely so.

I need to walk ahead.

I can easily sidestep the puddle. Make one great leap and pray I clear the water. Find a piece of something somewhere, and use it as a makeshift bridge. Or I can wait for the puddle to dry. I’m in no hurry, and the day is warm.

But you know what they say about puddles. Actually, you don’t. Because there’s nothing about puddles there is to be said. They’re just that; shallow waters to step into, or step over. They can be fun, they can be uncomfortable. They’re both things.

They are many things. But, in the end, they’re puddles, and you decide if you’ll walk in or not.

I need to walk ahead.

I think I’ll just walk. Puddle or not. Wet, dry, fun or discomfort… well, they’re just one of those things.

And well, there’re many more puddles ahead.

****

Make sense of what you might. I couldn’t. I was simply writing up an excuse from drafting this bit of website copywriting, which isn’t happening. It could be the heat. Or simply a brain on atrophy.

Whatever it is, I think I’m glad I wrote this. Because, well, it meant that I’m writing. Sorta.

Heh.

****

The truth is, I’m walking ahead because I remember;

Some time ago someone went off to fulfil her dream.

She walked on a foreign land, learned new things and saw great wonders.

She faced the world, braced the winds, and smiled and cried and stayed walking.

One flower against the world.

One flower who held my hand. Taught me to walk onwards, and giving me the strength to.

And now it's Two. 

Cold tables do not invite neighbours.

You don’t want them to come.

Dug up some old written works, in a folder marked Written Works in the external HDD.  One of the stories I’ve written, which belongs to the group of stories I’ve written without meaning, without plot, without much semblance of anything else – usually started from a random phrase or word from the dictionary, and left to flow and form and become – as they all become – total crackpot of stories, started out with this.

Think I miss writing stories like those. I’d be tempted to try sometimes, but the words don’t flow and form anymore. It’s like the river has met the lake, and everything about rapids and torrents and salmons are forgotten.

Anyway, I want it back. I want it back very much. So much that I think I’ll just start blogging on a whim because the feeling is here. Maybe I could listen to these whims more often.

The problem with whims are, however, is that they can end rapidly. As it’s doing now.

I suppose I’ll head to bed now. And figure out this interview for tomorrow morning.

Before that:

Goodnight, people.

As it turns out, it can be a Thursday night when someone can wake up and find himself on a piece of paper the size of the World.

It was - as papers tend to be sometimes - completely empty.

There are many common, clichéd things a person can do when they find themselves on paper; walking and jumping around would be one, and yelling and hollering for answers would be another. The common, clichéd thing to happen next is the introduction of a Wise Old Man as a convention to further the plot and answer pivotal questions. Which is, incidentally, exactly what we’re going to do.

Naturally, the person would yell and holler at the Wise Old Man for answers. Unnaturally, the Wise Old Man would start doodling on the paper and drool after a few lines of “Pop Goes the Weasel”. This may seem like the Wise Old Man is, indeed, not Wise at all, but Old and Man all the same.

“You’re not going to further things by answering the question, won’t you?” the person would ask.

“There is no need to. You see, you’re merely a metaphorical representation of a writer meaning to metaphorically represent you in what that could easily be the metaphorical representation of what he may term as ‘A New Chapter’ in life. Ergo, you’re sitting on paper, which is the World – his World,” said the Wise Old Man. “A penny for a spool of thread…”

“So why is it all empty? Why is it blank?”

“Why, it’s so you can fill it out yourself. Write out the chapter. Make your own World.” The Maybe-Not-Quite-Wise-but-definitely-Old-and-Man Wise Old Man would then walk away, and as common and clichéd as it goes, simply vanished.

And so, our person stands still on a vast, empty piece of paper the size of the world, knowing very well that he would have to fill it out, and feeling very silly that he has to be written this way by someone not really sure on how to start a long neglected blogpost.

And so, I suppose, we move on to the rest of things.

***

This is what really happened after my previous post (unfortunately, it does not involve me on a plane crash stranding me on open seas where I inexplicably discover the mythical entrance to Rapture, which is some sort of adult theme park minus the fun):

1)    1)   I got on a plane. And then another.

2)     2)  I reached the United States of America (America! Eff Yeah!)

3)     3)  I had the best 2 weeks of my life (of Dreams, and Warmth, and Fireworks, and Hands-Held, and Burgers and Books and Kites and Green Grass and Childhood Memories)

4)    4)   I came back to the midst of hectic magazine-wrapping, which took 2 weeks.

5)      5) I’m living the sort of life I could only dream of. The sort of life I don’t intend to keep on living, because I want it to be better.  I want it to be more than a dream.

And that’s about it.

There may be too much of the States to write out in a single entry, so I intend to start off further posts with a little of the States and the rest of everything else. If I do.  

I hope I do.

It would be better if you make me.

I’m leaving the last bit of this post with two things. One of them is this:

And in case you’d be interested in joining or passing it along with more information, you can find out more here.

The other thing is this:

And well, also this:

Because they’re going nowhere and I ought to get back to taking pictures a little more seriously.

(I also notice the futility of trying to share things here, because, frankly, no one reads this, except maybe my blog spider, which I’m not sure if it’s still around.)

Goodnight, people.

In 9 hours or so, give or take, I’ll be flying off to the most important trip of my life.

It is, perhaps, nowhere as important as most other Important Trips can be. But I’d look at it at in different ways, try out different angles, and it would still be the most important. There’s probably no other way to it.

 People make important trips to find themselves, discover parts of them in other parts of the world. Some go on important trips because they were forced to; they’d be there, not knowing how significant things are until it Becomes. Some, they make important trips all the time, because the destination is always a goal.

Me, I make this trip for a Dream. And this is the sort of Dream you drift into, because you happen to have had the fortune of it finding you.

I’ll be meeting my Dream there, with the sense that I’m finding it again, in a different way. And I will live the Dream until I return with it.  And go on living it until the next path reveals itself, and it doesn’t matter what, because this is that Dream worth living.

I will return to home in 2 weeks, and life would be normal, and the Important Trip might’ve just been a simple holiday, of sights and sounds and experience. But in the way that I can’t explain, or perhaps in the way that only I know; the moment I set my foot past immigration tomorrow is the moment the page flips, and I’m in the next chapter. And I wouldn’t know what the chapter would be about; I only know what I wanted it to be (only that, being pages, it will never turn out the way you want it). It’s a huge thing, important thing, because – since a long, long time – this would be the first page flip. And for the past 7 months, what I’ve done was to be ready for it.

I will return home in a new life, living a Dream, and heading towards both old and new ones. It’s not a promise.

It just is.

I’ll sleep now, to dream of Dreams. And tomorrow, to America.

To my Love. 

I’m trying to make sense of the heat right now. I don’t want to stand out from the crowd and yell “Global Warming! Curse you and your kin, heathen!” without having a sense of something, like an answer. Basically, I know too little about Global Warming to start blaming it, but since I’m running out of answers (especially the more logical ones, like God forgetting to turn off the heater), I’m starting to give it the stink eye.

Whatever it is to blame, though; the weather now is baking. I say baking because if you place cake mixture in my living room right now and return next morning, you get a very lopsided cake baked close to edible. And pixies or gnomes have nothing to do with it.

It’s hot enough for me to wish for a genie so that I can wish for snow.

(Hot as it is, however, I sometimes get very blue skies. You can’t find it everywhere in KL now, because the haze has settled on most parts of the city, but Plaza Damas is lucky enough to have azure skies and cotton-white clouds. I suspect the residents there actually paid for it).

Baking hot weather is not all bad. For one, traffic seems to be smoother. Without rain to addle our minds and sending us into frantic confusion as to why water is falling from the sky, I haven’t been hitting heavy traffic for some time now. It’s good in that I get home with half the time and frustration. It’s not so good when I find myself having less time to think. Or daydream.

For two, the dogs dry up nice and quickly, after I bathe them.

For three, it feels like summer. And summer is what I really want happening right now.

I want summer.

You don’t ask for summer in Malaysia because you don’t get them (we’re tropical, which is like a mutated climate), but I want summer to happen, because it’ll be summer Somewhere.

Summer is nice, yes? 

Yesterday, I went up to the rooftop balcony, pulled the bench to the middle, and laid down on it. I let my hands become the pillow, and looked up at the sky.

It was a sky that was – as poets may put it – cerulean like the depths of sapphire. And as poets might’ve done, I stared at the passing clouds, to think and limn and ramify, as much as passing clouds would allow for thoughts and limning and ramifications. Like the clouds, they stayed only as solid as the winds would allow.

You fall into skies like that. You let it take you places, riding on the clouds and the winds. You trust it tell you something.

So I let go, and fell.

I was cheated 5 minutes later.

Because, in the end, the hard bench still hurt my back and the hands can only last as long as makeshift pillows over splintery wood. Discomfort can be a real anchor to reality, and sore arms are a reminder of that.

I was still thinking, though. The skies and the clouds made sure of that. And the winds that day, they were beautiful. They sang and they caressed.

You can try and think back, then. Reminisce bygone times, reconsider decisions, ask the What Ifs or the How It Would’ve Beens. You can try to recount the years and the months and the days and the seconds or retrace every footstep left on the Sands of Time. You can try all that, and you would’ve ended up back staring up at the azure sky and wonder how things had gotten there. And you may know, or tell yourself that you do, but once the clouds shift and the thoughts went with it, you’ll be back wondering.

Sometimes, we wonder enough to decide that the wondering itself is really the answer.

“Why are we here, mate?” “I wonder, buddy. I Wonder.”

I wonder.

But I’m really here, under the bluest skies this side of the world. I’m here and it’s a beautiful sky.

And all is good, even if the bench hurts. But it let me look up to the skies, like I was part of it.

It’s not perfect. But it’s good. Yeah.

And then the stairs-climbing dogs found me, and they do the only thing they’d do if they find a master lazing out on a garden bench placed on top of a rooftop balcony under the cerulean sky; they lick him until he had drool gelling up his hair. I had to feed them to appease them.

And that was that.

It’s not perfect, but the sky is. Always will be.

Ten, Eleven 

Colours, and Tools

Three things, to realise worlds in different ways. 

Or make new ones. 

An Invitation 

To the clouds? I'll take it 

Ninth 

Signs & Silver Linings 

I'm starting to think, these days; 


That if you look up, you find Answers. 


Or maybe it just really takes Looking. 

The Thoughts You End Up Driving Into

 I think a lot in cars lately.

It helps that most of the time I’m in the car, it’ll be moving at a pace of 5 meters per quarter hour. That would be the time my car will join other cars and we turn into a single, collective mass. We would be known as The Gorram Jam, or other variations like Effing Jam or WTF Jam(!). As a collective mass, we are also collectively noisy.

The thought parts, I think, are individual.

And while I think most when I was part of The Gorram Jam, I inevitably also end up thinking a lot when driving normally. It’s quite unhealthy, because I run the risk of careening off flyovers before I can say “Oh Hell No”, but it’s as easy to fall into as daydreams in the day.

I’d think of many things – things I forget, things that aren’t important, and the same things all over again.

There was that day when I had to drive to Sepang for an event. The way there was aided efficiently by well-placed signboards, but the roads to it went on and on and on, all the while changing gracefully from highways to streets to winding roads that only grow narrower. It was like driving into different realms, and I found that I couldn’t spare the time to think when I had to constantly wonder (aloud, and sometimes rather panicky) if I’m still on the right track.

Driving back from it, though, and already knowing the way, it felt like driving into roads of Thought that went all the way to my front porch.  

The skies that day were a brilliant blue, decked with serene clouds that were either magnificently huge, or humbly scattered and introverted. They had shapes that represented nothing; for all I know, they were Shapes.

Like my thoughts, they were clear, certain and blue, and filled with shaped things that remain mysteries.

It doesn’t make sense, as usual.

But I thought a lot. And I thought until the roads ran out.

I thought more than I ever did.

****

Tonight, Thinking as I drive, I came to a Decision.

It was as simple as just Thinking it. And deciding as it materialised. And while I gave it more Thought to make sure I was certain, it seemed set and unmoving. It seemed determined.

When decisions happen like this, I guess I’ll have to go through with it.

And I think I will.

The Eighth

Trajectory

“Would you believe that I can swing my way up to Heaven?”

“It takes a lot of swinging.”

“Only until it’s high enough.”

(It also takes an act called "Letting Go". That's when you reach the zenith of the swing, free yourself from the shackles of holding something, believe you're Superman and watch as the trajectory carries you into a graceful somersault before landing you on your neck. I hope you've got the Divine Insurance covered). 

****

There was that other story, which went like this:

The girl was an unhappy girl. Her parents had little time to love her, and even if they made sure she was fed and bathed and occupied with things like Piano and Art and Stories, they paid no more attention to her other than her grades, or sometimes to cane her for disobedience, even when she wasn’t, but had seemed so.

In school she had little friends, who only cared for as long as she would play with them or share her things, and after school it was either Piano or Art or Stories or home alone, with the emptiness of the house. When so, she would finish her homework and sat by her window to wait for something to happen. Sometimes she would sneak outside and walk to the playground near her house. There, she would content herself by sitting on the swing, and singing made-up songs to nobody (for the playground, old and rusty and uncared, was always deserted).

When she decided that she would run away from home, like the brave boys and girls in the Stories, she was sure that the world has much more to offer than an empty life. And knowing about the dangers of strangers, and stray dogs, and traffic, and the monsters that live in the street cracks and the shadowy alleys; and also knowing that she could, perhaps, be found by the police eventually, and be taken home to her parents that would cane her, yell at her, take things away from her – she believed that nothing could be had when her heart is a constant void. Believing in that, and the world, she packed her schoolbags with clothes and food and a little book for her Art and Stories, and walked out of the house with her little yellow hat. She remembered to lock the door and hide the key in the post box.

But before she would run away and into the world, she had decided that she would visit the playground. She would sit in that swing, for one last time.

As usual, the playground was empty. She put her bag on the ground and sat herself on the swing. The rusty chains creaked against the rusty frame. She kicked and they creaked even more, but after awhile, as though it remembered how it was like before time made it old and decrepit and forgotten,  when it was played with by children who came by in every time of day -  it stopped creaking.

She kicked, and swung, and urged the swing to go higher. And each time the wind swept past her ear in a whoosh, her heart whooshed along with a laugh. She smiled and swung and sang her made-up songs, which would always end as Tra-la-la-la and start with Fa-la-la-la. She swung and the world blurred. She swung until everything became the whiteness of the skies above, pure and wholesome in its emptiness.

She realised she wasn’t swinging anymore, but sitting in the whiteness of the sky. Her heart is still whooshing, and she was still smiling. Her songs rang in her head.

“Hello,” said someone, who is a boy a little older than her.

“Hullo. Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re in Heaven. You swung your way up here.”

“You can do that?”

“Not everyone,” said the boy, and he looked a little embarrassed. “You have to be swinging so high and fast and happily to end up here.”

“Did you swing your way up here?”

“No. But I’ve seen people do that.”

“So what happens now? What do I do?” asked the girl. She tried to remember the things in her Art and Stories that were about Heaven.

“Whatever you want to do,” said the boy. He smiled. “It is Heaven. I can show you.”

“Okay,” said the girl. And she smiled, too.

She took his hand and they ran into the whiteness, past the sky and into Heaven.

The news reports would say that the girl was first discovered missing when her parents came home to find a locked and empty house. The police found her bag in an old abandoned playground, but they found no other trace of her. Her face soon appeared in the newspapers, and eventually on the streets and on every wall along with phone numbers and honest pleading to bring her home. They blamed a lot of things. They blamed the parents, blamed kidnappers, blamed mentally dangerous people, blamed the education system and Television and the state of the world. But they never would know, and believe, that the little girl would have swung her way up to Heaven.

When the playground was demolished to make way for shop houses, the swing went along with it. And, along with the news and the posters, everything was forgotten.

****

You can tell that I’m incredibly bored right now.

I’m also feeling melancholic. Perhaps not so immensely; more like the feeling of sitting under grey, shapeless skies. More like emptiness.

I don’t know why it’s so. I just know that I’ll be filled and fulfilled in time, though there’s a part of me wishing that it wouldn’t happen so quickly.

Angels need their sleep, too.

And I wish and pray for that. I also made sure to bribe the Sandman to sprinkle a little more than usual, and maybe sabotage the alarm clock.

Because I own the night these days, through making the right friends and investing in the right areas, I have the most of it.

My dreams can happen later. For now, I wish the angel her sleep.

I have my Words, after all. In all of its ugly shapes and deficiencies.

****

For the first time in two years, I found myself at the playground right down the road.

I was there to take pictures, but pictures can be hard to take when everyone is wary of you doing that, and they looked like they were ready to rally with pitchforks and rakes. I took very little and very cautiously. I’ve also lost my lens cap there. It’s just the kind of thing I’d do.

They’re here, the ones that looked like they mean something. They’ll be on Flickr, too, but Flickr hates it when I try to upload too many at one go. Or maybe it’s just my feisty Internet connection.

Anyway: 

Because being barefooted is just more fun

You have to make a name somewhere, even an abbreviated one.

Seeing Joy

Giving Joy

Having Joy

No Joy

A piece of trash, literally. The Recyclists are probably hounding down on me now.  

This is an accident, but it turned out to be one of those that I feel happy about. In a sense; Accidental Happiness.

Moving Forward. The best direction, imho.

And that's that.

Goodnight, people.

I’ve been 24 years old for the better part of 23 hours now. It is a pleasant feeling. In other times, and perhaps much more amazingly frequently than possible, it is a wonderful feeling

When I was 12 years old, I couldn’t imagine myself being 24. It mostly had to do with a stunted imagination, at that time more solely occupied to imagining snakes eating classmates or talking to girls from other classrooms. Maybe I had imagined, sometimes, when I’ve accidentally ingested Brand’s Chicken Stock; because I remember imagining being a comic-book artist, even if the imagination had been short and deformed and unrealised.  

When I was 18, I imagined being 24 and working as a journalist – the type who finds stories and tells them nicely, if not persistently – and then finding a Girl. When I was 23, I imagined being 24 as like being 23 – unchanged, unmoving, uninspired.

Being 24 now and not imagining it, I’m mostly surprised that I’m not dead.

I’m also surprised that I’ve managed to keep a job.

I’m also also surprised that I’m still having friends, my family has not denounced my existence, I’ve not turned into a psychopathic, schizophrenic killer (haven’t quite reached the killer bit) and I’ve not consigned myself into a church of the Great Old Ones, feeding fishes to baby octopi in a bit to raise the True Cthulhu.

I’m also surprised that I’m happy. Yeah. These days, I’m happy. And glad. And content. And fulfilled. And satiated. And filled. And Loved.

And, perhaps the biggest surprise that I would find myself in; I’m surprised that I now have Dreams.

And I’ve had dreams. Just not Dreams. Dreams, of the ones that I want to fulfil. The ones that I know I’ll get to once I start moving. Once I start walking. Once I learned how to run and leap hurdles and swim and jump and fly. And, as having Dreams would entail, you know you can do all that. You’ll also know you won’t fail, because there’s a hand catching you, and that hand is warm and gentle and firm. It is a reason. A great, wonderful reason.

I guess I’m really surprised that I would Want. And Hope. And Take.

Being here, 24 years old and not imagining it, I started imagining the future. There’s a Dream there that I want to reach, and I’m heading there. I’m walking now, occasionally stumbling and slipping, but I know there’s a hand there for me to hold and feel comforted. And I know I’ll get there, because Someone believes in me. That’s all I need.

I’ll just Keep Going.     

****

Birthdays will get better than this; that’s indubitable, and it’s because I know I can hope for a beautiful kind of future. But as of now, this Birthday is simply awesome.

It started with a phone call. I became the Happiest Bloke Alive.

Then the early wishes came, and they had kept coming, and I like that I’m able to thank all of them personally, even if I can’t thank them enough. Here’s an additional Thank You, All!, if any of you happen to be here, reading.

And then I dreamed. Of nice things.

I woke up to a memory of a brother coming into my room to retrieve his mouse, and saying Happy Birthday on the way out. I slept again, because I was given permission to. I woke up to see that my father had SMSed a wish. It was very unlike him. I had thought I was dreaming.

I went to work to find a present on my keyboard, and it was a copy of Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiments, given to me by the Best Editor in the World, who had wrapped it with calendar paper and printed a self-made card to go along. And the Best Magazine Sales-Guy gave me a Nerf Gun: Stealth Edition. They both treated me lunch. They are the Best Colleagues Ever.

My mom then finally worked out the complexity of handphone texting, and SMSed me a wish. I’m impressed and very grateful.

Work was really just me, the Best Editor and the Best Sales Guy playing the XBOX 360 on the review monitor.

I came home and went for dinner with the family. The food was good, the company better and I’m glad that I could sit at a table with family who can laugh and joke and talk to one another. They made me belong.

And I’m here now, Jiaogulan Tea on the table, the gentle quietness of the night outside, and I’m writing this at the computer with the speakers silent. Sometimes the best music is in your head.

But the best thing of all was the thing that came through the hands of many a people, placed into mine by my father, and it came with Pictures, and Balloons, and Dreams, and the Words. The Words that said more and fulfilled me more than anything. The Words that told me to Keep Going. The Words that signed it. And Something that would linger in my heart, forever and ever.

It is, truly is, the best birthday present one could ever receive.

I end this now, with a thank you. To all of you, who stuck by this hopeless guy and gave him everything he could ask for, or could even imagine asking.

So thank you, everyone.

And, lastly, Thank You. =)

Goodnight, People.

The Seventh

Two Kinds of Light

I wish I knew what it meant. I had taken it knowing that it means something, but I’ve really just been sitting here and thinking and realising that I don’t know.

It’s still there, somewhere. Maybe if I looked at it long enough, I’d know.

Or maybe I really do, and have merely forgotten.

Or maybe it just means what it meant. Two Kinds of Light.

Mine, and Someone Else’s

****

Well, that was a cheat.

The lawyer part of me, birthed through mutations caused by radiation emitted from a lawyer brother, put on his glasses, straightened his tie and will now proceed to present my defence:

 “My client here had just concluded the final moments of his monthly period of pretentious assiduousness, which he had constantly referred to as his Closing Period. He had, through intensive amount of mental regurgitation, exhausted most of his limited Words. And since he had been a victim of Utter Stupidity since the moment of his birth, his current mental state would mean that he is now Utterly Idiotic, and would normally not be of the state to write in, if not for the fact that he had signed a personal contract with Himself to ensure the consistent updating of his Project 52; failure to comply would mean that he would eat boogers for lunch. I believe, your Honours, that he should therefore be forgiven for this half-assed attempt at a Project 52 post - only that he shouldn’t, because it’s not even worth an image for Project 52 in the first place, and he had really just desperately went out of the office in the night to take something that he hoped he could remotely turn into something half-assedly interesting. This man is a cheat, and should therefore eat the boogers. Thank you.”

That went well.

At any rate, I would have to apologise, and this is more in particular to my partner in plight, who had updated within the week nonetheless, in spite of her crazy week at work. No excuses from me, aside from what my lawyer self had stated.

I wonder how boogers taste like.

****

It was a Moment. A split-second in Forever.

I was in the darkness, sitting down. The chair was hard and uncomfortable. A reminder of reality, that I was sitting in a metaphorical darkness, that the enclosing shadows were mentally projected and functioned as a representation of something, while the growing numbness of the buttocks is the prompt that I should be sitting straighter up.

I was questioned, and I answered truthfully.

The Moment went and gone. I sat up straight, to liberate my buttocks. The darkness dissipated.

Then I realised I hadn’t cared. For a single thing.

Or maybe I did. Because, in the depths of everything, I was really angry.

That, too, dissipated. Because I couldn’t care enough to be angry.

My care was really someplace else. And till now, it’s there. Devoted, entirely. There.

And I guess I can be worried. 

And The Moon Was Not Mine to Capture

I was on the roof-balcony tonight, with the determination and naïve romanticism that I could capture the moon.

So I climbed the spiral stairs and unlocked the little gate, which creaked a whisper, and then waited for the moon to stroll out from the clouds. There wasn’t any wind, though occasionally you get a tease of one; the leaves would seem to rustle, and you’d wait, expectantly, but nothing ever comes.

Of course, you don’t capture the moon without the equipment for it, so I set up the tripod and the camera and the silver chain I bought from the Amcorp Mall flea market, which the seller told me (she was an old lady, who looked like she was from a foreign land, a mysterious land, and she wore a monocle and a hat of dead flowers) was made from the silver lining of clouds, to rope the moon in place.

And when the moon came out, I cast the silver chain, and then took the pictures. About 13 of them. But none of them caught the moon. They’d catch a glimmer of light in the night sky, but it’s never the moon. Never the shape. And the moon soon flitted back to the clouds, which devoured it. And I was left standing there, wondering if I hadn’t had the skills for it, or maybe hadn’t the right equipment. Or maybe the silver chain was a dud, and come to think of it, I think I saw the same lady selling bubble blowers at Petaling Street, only that she wasn’t wearing a monocle, and that she really looked like she was from Pudu.

And I thought I could try some night-time photography, but my inability to use the tripod properly caused me to over-screw a knob and it fell out and into oblivion, perhaps down the cracks of Neverwhere. So yeah; my first night with the tripod, and I’ve already broken something.

And because I have an impeccable sense of timing, the last batch of the Chinese New Year fireworks was released the moment I locked the little gate. One of them was really close, too. With the bunch of stuff in my hand, the most I could do is say Argh. And Damn It.

Turns out that I could’ve actually read a guide on capturing the moon. None of them said I needed a silver chain made out of the silver lining of clouds.

So here are the pictures of the Non-Moon, which I decided to mess around with using Lightroom’s presets. They turn into weird things.

This one, without presets

This one, with the Bram Stoker vibe

This one, which became some sort of cheap imitation of a NASA photograph of their desktop wallpaper.

And my mistake with the camera timer took this shot, which I tinkered around with, with Lightroom. I kind of like how it looks.

Because it kind of looks like a shot from Night of the Living Dead. 

I would try to capture the moon again tomorrow, because determination and naïve romanticism require a little more than a night’s disappointment to kill.  

The 6^th

For That Light

There is darkness in everything,

And this is all that I can say:

These are the Darkness you endure

For that beautiful Light

***

In which we also talk a little about Valentine's Day, and Zombie Strippers.

(Right now, I’m feeling like I could wrap myself in sleep and rot there until morning, when obligations do its voodoo and I stumble to work, moaning and giving everybody the stink-eye. I’m brain-dead in the way that I wanted to be brain-dead, because there’s simply no reason to be brain-alive, when it’s mostly this emptiness to face. So yeah; in all technicality, I had just committed brain-suicide).

It was Valentine’s Day. I don’t quite remember how it came to be, but Valentine’s Day is the day you celebrate Love.

But everyone would tell you that Love is celebrated everywhere, and all the time. Valentine’s Day would be that capitalist, manipulative, consumerist occasion created to celebrate something pointlessly celebrated throughout so that the florist industry doesn’t die, excess of chocolates don’t get turned into construction material (it’s the truth, people) and Hallmark can still finance their TV channel. So what’s the point?

To tell people to celebrate Love.

Because – believe it or not – people have a tendency to forget about celebrating things. We already have a hard time remembering birthdays and anniversaries. And I may try to elaborate more, but when was the last time you celebrate things without being reminded of it?

Do you celebrate Life every day; live life to the brimming fullest, knowing birth and death and the middle of it, until your birthday? Do you celebrate your mother’s love, your father’s dedication, until Parent’s Day came about? And what of senior citizens, of war veterans, of our cats and dogs and famous people who did something we don’t remember but we’re grateful anyway?

What of Love?

Truthfully, we all celebrate daily, too. So long we live, we celebrate. We just don’t celebrate everything all the time, because there are simply too many things to celebrate. And because we all do more than just celebrate (we mourn, we worry, we procrastinate, we eat, we daydream, we reminisce, etc), there’s simply no time. That’s why we needed days like Valentine’s Day, to tell us that Buddy, You Best Appreciate Your Girl. Because She’s The Best Girl Ever.

You might do something for someone every day, or you might not. And when a day tells you to do it, you do it, and it means something. And even if you’ve done it every day, doing it that day makes it even better.

Capitalist, manipulative, consumerist… yeap, it’s there. But it’s really there anyway, because capitalism feeds – in one large segment – on the industry of Celebrating Things.

So you might have your Valentine’s humbuggery, or you might scoff at the pointlessness of it, or the day might’ve hurt you with memories. But, maybe, if you’ve find one way to go out and celebrate Love, in all of its many forms and sizes, then maybe it would’ve have been more than Just Another Day.

I know I had.

But of course; I could’ve gotten the meaning of Valentine’s Day wrong. And if so, let’s just ignore everything and then, well, move along.

****

I read on Twitter, which led me to read some of the news, that the government of this country in which I reside in (and that’s Malaysia, though I know my profile says I live Somewhere) has banned Muslims to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Their reason was that they were worried what while the people are reminded to celebrate love, they would also be reminded of having sex. Especially before marriage.

And that’s morally wrong, of course, depending on the way you look at it. So I can understand. Maybe. No. I don’t, actually. Because I think people are reminded about having sex so long as they feel like it. But no. Wait. I should stop. Because I lack the mental capacity and comprehension to make a coherent, worthwhile comment or argument. But yeah.

I just think it’s sad.

For everyone.

Especially the florists.

****

I also found out that they’ve arrested people who celebrated it anyway.

Some misconstrued writer could’ve reported it by saying; “People arrested for celebrating love.”

Of course, the writer was misconstrued. He might’ve also gotten the idea of Valentine’s Day wrong.

****

I spent the day after Valentine’s Day watching Zombie Strippers.

Wrong kinda eating you might be thinking there.

I did it because I needed it to fill a void. The title and the premise of the movie might suggest to you of what sort of void I needed filling, and I would leave you to these suggestions. So suggest away. 

Anyway, if you like B-movies, watch it.

If you don’t like B-movies, but will appreciate parodies and homages of it, watch it.

If you don’t like B-movies, don’t really care for parodies but want some mindless fun and a lot of tits, watch it.

If you don’t like B-movies, or movies in general, don’t watch it.

I won’t guarantee that you’ll like it, but like everything else that titles itself boldly, with all honesty of what it’s trying to show (it’s a movie about Strippers, who are somehow Zombies), you might find that there’s a lot to love, or a lot to hate.

I love it. Mainly because it was what it is, and the makers knew exactly what they wanted to make and made it pretty damn well. It’s silly, it’s serious one part and then subverts it in another, it’s deliberately stupid, it has loads of gore, it has sexploitative amount of women bodice shown and it’s also a thinly veiled socio-political commentary. And it has Zombies. And Robert Englund. And strippers, who stripped. You don’t need another reason.

(And a little trivia: the movie’s title is, apparently, Zombie Strippers because they found out that it’s the most marketable B-movie title, taking into account of the most marketable aspects of B-movies. And I know you want to watch it, just by the sound of it).

(Don't deny it) 

This Blogpost is a Final Bid for Something

Because, really, if I don’t write at least something tonight, I would’ve done absolutely nothing. Not that it’ll actually make this Sunday any way more productive, because I can’t. Because it’s as squandered off as the family fortune down a fake wishing well; but Something is better than Nothing, however small or pointless.

(At any rate, it’s Rule #1, and if I don’t comply, I’ll be meeting the manifestation of all my guilt and sins. He looks like Bill Murray’s zombie.

“You’re screwed, ______,” he’ll say.

“Why won’t you say my name?”

“It’s because you’re so screwed now, you don’t even exist.”

“_____ damn it.”

“Where you’re going, He doesn’t exist, too.”)

So yeah.

***

Today, there was that moment when it dawned upon my father that the rooftop lighting (part of his Grand Scheme of Things) would not be completed in time for the impending storm. And the storm was ominously impending enough, steadily throwing the rumbles of thunder our way while making sure the wind bit our skins and howled in our ears. He said Oh Shit, and I picked up the pace, one part hoping that we’d ditch the job midway, the other hoping we’d get it done before the rain so that I don’t have to worry about it tomorrow. I ran and I dashed and I dropped screws in my anxiety.

Turned out the impending storm wasn’t impending at all, because it shifted elsewhere and impended other places, and my dad was left in the house cursing at the weather.

I came in, read a few things, smiled at them, wished the lighting thing didn’t happen, then took a shower and watched the storm roll away.

And then, in the way you’d remember something just because the moment makes you so, I remembered a song.

I don’t remember the words to it now, but I remember what it was for and what it meant. Thing is, I thought I’d be singing this song again today, as I had always secretly sung it inside whenever I remembered it.

Today, I tore the song. Inside my head, the song went away.

There was something else though, and it went;

I might still be in disbelieve, but really;

The days remind me constantly

That dreams can last as I dream it

And they turn truer the more I live it.

It may be something hard, but truly;

You’d believe it too, as I do, fully

That dreams can last as we dream it

And they come true the longer we wish it.

So if there’s a storm, look and see

And you’ll know that rainbows follow after.

So if the night is lonely, close your eyes and cut free

And you’ll know that my words will follow after.

Baby, they follow after.

And maybe there’s more, or maybe that’s it.

Either way, I sing it now.

And I'll sing it after.