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.