My Mind Now In Paris

On the streets, as I would imagine it. I would be walking, and getting lost while trying to take everything in. Paris would sing to me, all sounds and whispers - and as Paris would be at her soul, it would be Jazz.

Yeah, that would be nice.

But I couldn’t be there. Not without many, many years of working. And saving. Not without a little foresight and a goal. I suppose Paris now would have to be the postcards, and the pictures, and the movies. It could be a dream, too. Maybe.

That could be just that, though; woolgathering on a rainy Saturday, while Paris sings to me in a different way, through the headphones, and composed by Michael Giacchino.

I can't blame myself. After all, all hearts, in all manner of love, find their way to Paris.

My Heart, though, is really Somewhere Else.

A Little Caffeinated, and Waiting.

It was supposedly something to kill my Friday, stated as such with the disclaimer that it would, as certain as the sender may think of it, murder my Friday in all literal sense. The sender also told me that it was a Wall of Text. At 77 pages, it could be.

But a guy like me, who does little reading, or perhaps just much less than he should, can tell you that this particular Wall of Text is very climbable. And once I had set my rappels right and made sure I had that courage to do the Wall the justice it deserves, I began reading.

That was 77 pages ago (ok, I cheated; I didn’t go through the Works Cited section, because I wanted to get to the ending and referential formats confuse me still). And I have not done it justice, because my horrendously low sense of academics meant I have difficulty in understanding parts of it (of which is entirely my fault) and that I have no capability of producing any form of coherent and intelligent comment to this work. In fact, my simple brain can only say this, in the way that I have always said it, to the sender and to everyone that would care to listen:

She is Amazing.

It normally only takes a sight, and a little Get-to-knowing her to come to this conclusion. But reading this, the apparent became certainty.

I am Amazed.

She would call me biased. She would rap my head if she could, and then tell me that it was much less to do with her than it has to do with fortune or luck or guidance. But I would’ve rapped her head back, and told her that it takes someone Amazing to turn that fortune and luck and guidance into this amazing piece of study.

“So what?” she might say, and I imagine that a soft frown would decorate her face, and she might divert her eyes to think or to muse. “Other passionate people, with hard work, could’ve done it.”

But other passionate people might not have the Love you have for your work.

If her work was indeed a Wall of Text, in the figurative sense, then it would’ve been a crafted wall. It has its patterns, surely; all Wall of Texts do. But it also has a Life. There are not many walls in the world, figurative or literal, that has a Life. A wall may only have a Life if it’s given one. Usually, it’s when Love is poured into it, as part of the concrete and the bricks.

I touched the Wall, and it touched back. And when it did, I knew I owe it to myself to finish it. For the first time in a long time, I made coffee and sat down to read. Coffee not because reading it is boring or sleep inducing, but because I wanted to rid of the day’s inkling of tiredness that followed me home from work.

And I read, and made sure I understood as best as I could. I read and found myself learning. Best of all, and this I wasn’t even surprised to discover; I read and I am intrigued.

It was a study. And if I could’ve given her the marks, I would’ve marked it as Perfect.

She would’ve rapped my head again and told me it has flaws. Maybe her lecturer would, too (not the rapping. But I imagine a similar form of pain induction, perhaps in a glare or a Tsk, because I would’ve been a Know-It-All and probably deserved it). But I would point out that it’s perfect because you can feel the Love in every word written.

Love in the subject. Love in the discovery. Love in the learning and the teaching and the devotion to it.

It was, above all, a work of Love. Those are always the best works, and flawed as they may seem to be, they’re Perfect in that sense.

But where’s my constructive argument? Where are my intellectual comments, my justifications and my dissection of the study laid upon an autopsy table section by section so that I may prove to you that it is Perfect? I can’t, because I’m not academic. I can’t because I’m not worthy of it. I can’t because my thought process has already regressed back to its primitive state, and soon I would be back on my hands and knees, trying to figure out the mechanics of peeling bananas.

You have nothing but my words. And I can only tell you that it’s true.

In my hard drive now sat a study I made; the only one I’ve ever done. It was, at one point, something like a Wall with promises. On the billboard, it promised a lot. When it came to constructing it, however, I used cheap materials and cut corners and botched it. It’s now not a wall, but a piece of wood. With words on it, and arrows, that point out to people that this is a Wall.

Thankfully, people aren’t fooled. Though they gave me marks for the effort. I guess it was the arrows.

The funny thing is that part of this wood was actually Love. It had nails jutting out of it, but they were the bits I hammered it. It was ugly, but you can touch it, and it’ll touch back. Though it’ll give you tetanus.

One day I might make use of it. Burn it, as firewood, or send it out to sea, as part of a ship. Or maybe hang it up, as a memento, of how to start something with Love and forsaking it for the sake of ease.

Now, though, I leant it against her Wall and stepped back for the bigger picture.

Amazing how one can feel so small, and so wishing to be big at the same time.

The 3^rd

Cold Shower

In the hardest of rainfalls;

It was dark.

It was cold.

It was harsh, and loud, and blinding.

It was, above all, lonely.

It was everything that was ever bad about the hardest of rainfalls, except that I remembered you. And how it is that thunder calms you.

And I felt like I could weather through, somehow. I felt like I could feel your hands in mine.

And I could.

******

Well, that was a crazy week.

It largely had to do with the fact that Chinese New Year couldn’t be happening anytime sooner, and to make sure we get the magazine out in time, magazine-closing happened earlier. Way earlier. And if you ever see me out on the streets, mumbling and glaring and generally being bitter about Chinese New Year – all that red and pomp and those insanely, painfully saccharine songs - you’ll know that this would be one of the reasons.

I don’t think Chinese New Year hate ever hung so low and dark over the office, or at anywhere for that matter, even if nobody said a word or complained. We’d walk and bustled, and the hate would brush our hair and tickle our ear and muddle our minds with thoughts of massacre and suicide with Dettol.

For that week, every evening, it rained. And the rains then were heavy and harsh.

It would’ve been forlorn. Or depressing. Or lonely, because there had been days like these in the previous year, and they had all been lonely days.

But it wasn’t this time. Because of the Words and Songs and Being There.

Because, in one way, there was an Angel. And I was bestowed with the above.

It kept me going, even after I’ve gone through.

And I go a little further still.

The Second

Hello There

There's no story here.

The girl wasn't a lost girl. That man wasn't a man who found her. It wasn't an airport or a terminal or a place where people meet and people separate. It wasn't a place of departures and arrivals. It wasn't a place of Lost and Found. It wasn't a Start of A Special Relationship.

It was a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon, and the girl and the man were complete strangers. They shared a look. I took a picture.

And I made up stories with it.

And it was about a lost girl and the man who found her, in a place where everything and everyone goes and leave, and people get lost and found. There would be a Start of A Special Relationship.

And, maybe then, there would be a story.

This is a special kind of night. It’s the way things fell into place, but we’re not talking about contrived coincidence or, as one may put it, fortune or luck or fate. It’s just that, being here, headphones on to Jack Johnson, and waiting for a dream to come; it’s a kind of serene pleasure I’ve probably never had. And it feels great, in a quiet kind of way. Therefore, it’s special, as special goes.

It had rained. Heavily. I drove away from work and into malignant clouds, which proceeded to throw chaos and ensured the roads were jammed. And maybe because of the room’s comfort, made cosy by the aftermath of the weather’s toil, I fell asleep right after dinner. It was wholly unintentional, and I sank into sleep the few minutes I sat on the bed while waiting for the computer to boot. My dreams were bright and unreal and formless.

I woke up with a panic, but it was only 11.30.

Part of me wanted to work, but the most of me knew how pointless that would be. The dregs of sleep cantered and frolicked, and scattered my flock of thoughts.

There’s no way this post would be anywhere meaningful or worth anything, but Rule 1 was to get the words down no matter what. And as Sam Vimes put it; if you give yourself any reason to not do it, sooner or later you won’t.

(Or something in that effect. Terry Pratchett is too much of a genius for me to quote, and my flock of thoughts are scattered).

And I shall end this here, as this. Not much of a thing to mark a night I deem special, but I think I knew it in myself that the nights for the past month had been special ones themselves.

Nay. It’s really the days. Or rather, the Time.

Life, right now, is special.

The First of Fifty Two

White Out

It was a street I’ve never been on. Perhaps once upon a time, by chance, I had, but not in recent memory. Yet the unevenness of the pavement felt familiar, and the time I made frozen in a frame reminded me of walks and strides and runs I’ve never made, on a street miles and miles away from home.

One may say that there are two streets that’ll look the same, but truthfully;

Do they end up in the same place?

*****

We’re essentially two crazy people onto something crazy again (but we’re of two different kinds of crazy – Teh Ais Limei's is an Awesome kind, the kind that people cock eyebrows at but will inevitable cheer as she creates the next great masterpiece. Mine is the kind which people run over with cars, calling the asylum at the same time, while the cops participate in sinking slugs into my thigh). And what we’re on is (a) Project 52, where we’ll be posting a new picture per week, for a year, and write a little something about it. Her entry is already up, which you can see here .

It’s crazy because we’re also essentially people with Lives going on. It’s also very much like you do, too, but if you have the time to even be here reading this (quite possibly, however, I’m simply writing this into empty digital space), heading out to take a picture that means something to you and then putting it up could be something nice. And something new, or fresh, or inspiring. And maybe even something magnificent.

So here’s a formal invitation to join us, should you feel like being crazy for a bit in life, and we could all do with some insanity to see life in its full. You might even discover something.

And if you’re saying Yes to this craziness, just tell us who you are and where we can see your pictures. We’re doing this as a commitment towards fun and stories, and there’s definitely much more fun and stories if more of you tag along.

So let us know if you’re in, and we’ll be there, to gawk, talk, drool and worship your picture.

Cheerios!

(You write a little something every day. That is Rule 1. It doesn’t matter if you’re too brain-dead to pen something remotely comprehensible, or if lethargy is eating at your consciousness. You get some words down, even a little bit. Even a single word. And you do your best to make it count.)

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

It started with a man named Odd Gleditsh.

(There’s nothing odd with Odd; it would really mean The Tip of the Blade, and it’s a nice name by Norwegian standards. This little snippet of information is taken from Neil Gaiman’s Odd and the Frost Giants, of which Odd Gleditsh is in no way related to.)

Odd Gleditsh was born into whaling. He whaled. And he whaled well enough to rise several ranks and made himself business supplier to a few whaling fleets. It was impressive, and he became successful enough. It was around 1920.

And somehow, being a man quite unlike most men, he saw something in Paint.

He started selling paint. And when the paint sold well enough, he started making them. He took over a bankrupt factory and resurrected it under the name Jotun Kemiske Fabrik. Odd died in 1990, but Jotun would live on to be one of the world’s most renowned paint manufacturers.

20 years after Odd’s death (in his pictures, he was a happy man. And there was a joy in his smile, which looked like he smiled from the heart, or perhaps from the brimming depths of his bank account), a man named Tan Heng Kai walked into a Jotun shop, opened – like the many thousands of Jotun shops across the world – in a Malaysian town named Kajang. There, he bought a Jotun paint. It was wood paint.

A month later, the tin of paint was opened and placed on top of several pieces of newspaper, and every quick successive moment, a brush would dip into it. And that brush would smear the paint over a wooden fence. Sometimes, if handled clumsily, some of the paint will fall on a hand. That hand would be mine.

And I would wipe it off with thinner, mostly unbothered, and continued with the painting while Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek came out of my mouth in the most terrifyingly tuneless ways.

Somehow, to that man named Odd Gleditsh, who made the company that made the paint that I had applied, with as much care as leisurely painting would give, to a fence that sat on a balcony that perhaps isn’t quite a balcony, I couldn’t decide if should hate him or be thankful for him.

But even so – and I realised this after I shut the tin of paint and replaced it back into the storeroom –, and if Odd had continued whaling and never sold paint, my dad would’ve still gotten something from Nippon. That, then, would’ve been another story.

And I'm not even sure why this is here.

***

I confess:

I had meant to continue writing the novel I had put off for a month. Only that I had really missed out the bit in the Rulebook of Writing (if there ever is one, and not written by someone) that one should, perhaps, really really refrain from putting off a novel for too long. That’s because one would simply forget the plot.

So I was really reading back what I (and my amazing partner) had written, and then erasing one small bit where I had written blindly into, and now I’m trying to plot something that wouldn’t come.

I’m a failure.

The good thing is that I have my drive to work tomorrow to plot, if I’m not too busy having my mind really in the clouds and deep into dreams of skies and stars.

So right now, I’m merely writing for the sake of writing something.

***

I am also waiting.

And I might not have to wait much longer anymore. In 10 minutes time, I’ll be delving into a kind of drug that isn’t administered through needles or by sucking powder or by inhaling smoke. All it takes are words, a voice and a face.

It’s a potent drug. And I am addicted.

Severely, addicted.

And it puts me higher than this.

Much, much higher

I bought the ticket, sat in the cinema, and was immediately surrounded by couples.

It didn’t occur to me that I could’ve gotten the corner seats, or somewhere front enough to put off other people, but my movie-going sensibilities were healthy and less bothered by the concept of being in the cinema alone, so it made me choose the seat smack in the middle.

I was the lone guy, still in work attire, hands crossed and waiting to watch an animated feature, a ‘Bah, Lovebugs’ already at the tip of my tongue and ready to jump off.

Everyone was couples there, except for that one guy behind me. He was the lamp post. And he was talking very little as to not appear so.

But I wasn’t quite alone, not really. I was watching it with someone in mind.

And I placed that thought on the spare seat beside me, and fed it popcorns.

***

Entangled

That's one hairy girl, Flynn Rider. You don't mess with them.

(Here’s a disclaimer, which I’ll put in very large letters, so that people don’t come and throw scissors at me later:

SPOILERS HERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

And it’s for the movie Tangled, titled Rapunzel in Asia, because Disney Asia either 1) Felt that Asians would not be familiar enough with the Grimm fairy tale or 2) They lack the marketing skills of Disney America, otherwise Lords Disney, or 3) They know Tangled is really a marketing sort of title, but kept Rapunzel anyway because they’re Disney and people will still pay them money for everything. Westerners. What idiots.)

I guess, in most ways, that me considering Tangled as the best animated feature of 2010 is perhaps utter bollocks. But it is the year’s best, to this writer’s honest opinion. Yeap. You’re probably staring at me now, mouth agape. The scissors in your hand is very throwable, and you’ve practised before, especially on unfortunate cockroaches. You know I’m really just being daft. 2010 was, after all, the year of How To Train Your Dragon, and Despicable Me, and Toy Story 3 (“Especially Toy Story 3,” you said, twirling the scissors. It catches the light and gleams). What Disney concoction, no matter how nice or cool, could ever trump this?

Well, it’s because (and in this writer’s honest opinion): It’s Friggin’ Disney. Wow, good throw. Got my ear there. Very clean.

But well, this Disney we’re talking about here isn’t the Disney that closed down their traditional animated studios and made Chicken Little. This is the Disney that has that spark for characters, storytelling, wonderful visuals and the good old Believing In Themselves. Like The Princess and the Frog, Tangled is very much a traditional Disney movie. Disney of Walt’s time. Disney of the Animation Renaissance, which they had started. Disney who knew what they were doing. Disney with that childlike wonder in their hearts, and the adult-like dedication to bring them out as imaginatively as possible.

Oh, missed me there. But it’s Okay; I dodged. Just wanted you to know that. Don’t feel so bad about yourself.

Alright, Tangled isn’t without its flaws. It didn’t start off too well, and I can’t exactly tell you why. But once the plot got along, taking these established characters into the wilderness and giving them alcohol, it became a life of its own. I got lost in it. I stopped feeling like I was watching a movie. I was caring about the characters, I was laughing and I was sad, and it didn’t matter if I had actually seen most of everything coming – I was already so deeply lost in it that it surprised me anyway. It only took the reality of the End Credits to being me back, and also only because cinema cleaners here have no respect for End Credit watchers.

It was like watching Disney in their prime again, getting swept along in that carpet ride, getting to know Hakuna Matata, wanting to be Out There or Part of Your World, and knowing that Love conquers all.

Sure, I may be wrong. I may be biased, and there’s perhaps one or two of you out there who know that I am. But if you’re ever a Disney fan, you do yourself a favour to watch Tangled, before it faded into the unattainable (until the DVD release). Because, well, It’s Friggin’ Disney.

Hoho, close one there, that one clipped my heel that Ah Ok, there goes the eye, you got the eye, haha, and yeap; oomph; the pancreas. Always the pancreas…

***

That was the technical reason, the movie critic in me. Here is the real reason, and also where the SPOILERS, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD disclaimer come to play.

Our heroes were on a boat, and they said something. Something I had been waiting for them to say. And after that, the lanterns came.

And the Song came. They sang about meeting their dreams, or chasing after pointless ones. They sang about seeing each other. They sang about having new dreams. And we know, then, as the lanterns descent and lit the water and their eyes; that they dream of each other.

It took a Song, and the mass of floating lanterns, so beautiful and close and real, to make me know that I’m really dreaming, too. And I have a new dream.

You’re my new dream.

The Dreams Forgotten Today

This is one of those ruminative posts that are best left unread, but here's a ruminative picture anyway

Evening today, I took the DSLR up to the roof. It was up there with me, of course, for taking pictures, but what I had really wanted to do was to spend a few moments not thinking.

But nothing can outrun thought; that was the bit of wisdom you pick from Norse mythology, and I was soon standing by the fence to stare blankly into the sunset. The camera went to auto-sleep.

You don’t outrun Thought. You sit down and face it. It’s best to even serve crackers and tea.

There is a girl, and she is now across the ocean, pursuing a dream. For the months she was there, I had always considered her as amazing and courageous. And there really is no one I knew who is as brave as her, and in a time where most people dream only to fantasise, she dreamt to fulfil it.

Today she gave me her portfolio website. It was for an article she wrote on Twilight, and it was to follow up on our conversation on it.

I read the article. And then I read all of her articles. And then I turned off the computer and took the camera up to the roof, hoping not to think.

Why? Because I was suddenly struck with something. It was a curious feeling; parts of it were fear, mingled with memories and a cold stab of realisation. Inevitably in life, you get epiphanies. But epiphanies aren’t all warm, bursting realisations of feelings and the sudden will to decide – they are, in parts, the plunge into cold arctic waters, where the pain stabs you like needles, stopping your heart, freezing your mind.

A plunge into reality.

Have you ever dreamt?

You have to. Nobody can live a life without dreaming of something. The difference is whether the dream is realised or otherwise. Dreams become reality too. And dreams are hard to achieve.

I dreamt a lot, but I dreamt to fantasise. That is the fact.

When I was in middle school I dreamt to the point where dreams didn’t matter, because that was it; dreams that you make to smile to, to escape the conundrums of life as it rolls onwards into greyer and greyer territories. I had never given thought on dreams. It was a life where I was ready to live on without knowing where to go. I never studied. I never found a passion. I played and lazed and day-dreamt, sure that in spite of everything, there’s always a part of the world that I can find a place to stand in. And that was all I needed. Just a place to stand. I didn’t need to move.

I didn’t know what to do. Or rather, I never wanted to do anything.

Writing was a curious thing then. I loved writing. It helped with the fact that I day-dreamt and these dreams were mostly worlds as large as imagination could make. In my memory, I had never chosen a single exam essay that would need me to write a factual piece. It was always the stories.

One day a teacher said to me; “You write well.”

It was the greatest day of my teenage life.

“Have you ever considered a writing career?”

Truth be told, I hadn’t. It wasn’t until then that I had even dared to imagine that somehow, I could write into my adult life, and maybe even earn a living out of it.

But I was young, and naïve, and ignorant, and I had only dreamt to fantasise, so I said “No.”

“Have you ever considered Journalism?”

Journalism, then, was a new world in itself. I do not fancy myself as a good reader, and somehow it never occurred to me that journalists write. It was always as though they had simply walked out to get a story, walked back in, and read into the microphone. That would become the day’s headlines.

“You could try for it,” said the teacher.

And then, I felt, I really could.

That day onwards, I had a Dream. If stories were the only thing that I could make, and then, somehow, tell it out, with words or voices, then I would become a storyteller. It was a Dreamlike prospect. A modern day storyteller, a man with a book in one hand, a pencil in the other, and he would write stories that would stay and entertain and inspire. And Journalism, whatever it was, would be a way to start going.

When my father gave me the Talk, I told him I wanted to pursue Journalism. It was a joke to him. Here was a guy who had never read the newspaper, never seen the news, never written anything more than fiction and nonsense and he had the audacity to suggest a future in Journalism. But I was young and naïve and ignorant, and I had a dream to fulfil, so I insisted.

To my surprise, he allowed me so. In the coming months, he found the quickest way for me to do it, and with my mother in tow, we had a course to head towards. All I needed was 5 credits for my SPM. And that was all I took.

Before I applied for good, my father threw a newspaper page into my lap. It was an application form for The Star’s BRATs program. It was a program to encourage young and aspiring journalists, and that was what I was. That week, I sat up in the nights to fill it.

There was that bit that required me to write about myself, and why I would want to join. It was a difficult bit, because I could easily make something up for it, and knowing that I really couldn’t. It had to be true. And I still didn’t know why I wanted to do journalism, except that it would allow me to write.

It took many nights, but at the last night before I had to submit, I took the pen and wrote;

I want to be a journalist because I like telling stories. I want to be a storyteller, and what better stories can there be told but real ones?

(It was longer then, and much more glorified, but I’d be hard pressed to remember what I actually wrote).

I didn’t know if it was true then, what I wrote. But of all the things I would make up, that one would sound the truest. I put the form into an envelope and mailed it. A few weeks later, the acceptance letter came, and I found myself flying alone to Kelantan for the program.

For the days there, in the program, what I had written slowly became truer and truer.

I found that there were stories everywhere if you knew where to look. Sometimes it takes a single question. Sometimes it takes a sight. Sometimes, they’re the stories you tell just by the thought of it. They were both true stories, and made up stories. And I realised that I like it. I could do this. I could be a journalist, and write about true stories. And I would write them not as news, but as tales, as Stories, and people would read them and feel something.

I came back, and enrolled into TARC and straight into my Diploma in Journalism. For those two years, what I had written on the form stayed at the back of my head. I may not have been a good student, but I made sure I got through. And then I progressed to my Degree, which took me to UTAR.

Two years later, and those words faded. Those dreams, they became the ones I made to fantasise. They were bygone, and stupid. I wouldn’t say reality put me in check. It was more like complacency. And the slow realisation that I wasn’t cut out for Journalism.

The reason was simple, and it was because I am lazy. The other reasons were that I lacked every pretty much every skill you would need to be a journalist. I have the curiosity of a pebble. I cannot, for the life of me, ask questions, or make new ones as I go. I am bad with people, and till today the thought of meeting people terrifies me. What I had was just the passable skill to write, maybe articulate well enough to work slightly above average. That was all. I had the pen, but nothing else.

Soon, I was simply floating along. I did just enough to graduate. I held a degree for a job I can’t do.

And somehow, I found a job, and in Journalism. Today, I write for a living. When people asked, I would still tell them my passion is to write.

Only to write. I had forgotten what it was to be a storyteller.

This girl, now across the ocean, possibly asleep, and ready to wake up soon to face her challenges and fulfil her dream, has done more to me than just enlighten me on the subject of a contemporary hit of a vampire novel. What she had done is the equivalent of pushing me off the Titanic and letting me hit the icy waters, before pulling me out with a grappling hook.

It is this girl that, at the age of 18, had written for a newspaper, and what she had written were fantastic pieces. She has written them for five years, before flying off for her dreams. She has been writing the things I had wanted to write, but had never done so.

What have I done over the past 5 years? I had dreamt, and I let it fade. I studied for passion first, which slowly became a duty, and later just an obligation. And now, I write for a technology magazine, which is absolutely the best magazine one would ever hope to be hired into, but what had I truly written? The months were just me regurgitating tech facts and press releases. Try as I might to breathe life over my stagnating writing, and all I could manage were pathetic opening lines that just as easily would divulge back into boring, uninspired writing. I have not been asking questions at events, and while I justify it with the fact that there was really never any need to, the truth is that I never had a question. And every day I live with the fact that sooner or later people would find out that I’m barely anywhere knowledgeable in the tech and IT industry. I have only been getting by with sheer luck and the patience of others.

Where am I now?

What the fuck have I been doing?

And I’m here, really, to know that I’ve just been back to dreams that fantasise.

I have nothing to fulfil anymore.

You do not outrun Thought. You sit down and confront it. At best, you talk to it. It’ll talk back.

So here I am, confronting it, and talking to it for the first time in my life.

And here is me telling myself that I have a dream to fulfil.

I don’t know if it’ll work, or if I’ll just as easily regressed back to complacency, ready to accept life as the spot in which I can only stand in. I have no faith in myself. But these days – these past 14 days, where I am really living a dream that is wonderful, surreal, fantastic, and something that I couldn’t dare believe in, maybe it’s time that I start believing in myself to pull it through.

I think, for once, and truthfully, I want to dream to fulfil.

Somewhere at the back of my head is still the image of the storyteller, with his pencil and paper. Somewhere along with it is the other image of the guy who believed that he can, somehow, tell true stories.

I think it’s time I go and say hi to them again.

Day the First

("Product Placement.")

(And yes, it has nothing to do with the following post)

That night, when the year’s bridge met each other and my past and future self shook hands and went their own ways, I was on the roof of the house.

(You may be wondering why or how I got up there, and it certainly had nothing to do with an ability to leap tall bounds, or to teleport, or even anything involving a rickety ladder. It does, however, involve a lopsided spiral staircase and my father’s fantastic sense to design the top of our recently renovated house into a flat balcony, if it should be called a balcony.)

I had just gotten a Call, and I had flubbed it. But it had plastered me with this idiotic smile and light-heartedness that it left me dreamlike as I leant on the rooftop fence, the Shandy in my hand barely drunk, while I dreamt into the wind.

The fireworks came. The ones people secretly bought from friends who had friends who are dealers that dealt with dealers of these sorts of fireworks, and they lit lower rung of the skies with unsynchronised brevity. The bangs were thumps, deep and bass-y. I watched them bloomed and died, bloomed and died, bloomed and died…

It was beautiful, in its own unremarkable way.

I imagined a hand in mine, and I held that. And then I wished I was flying in the clouds, crossing oceans, passing mountains and planes and cities.

I finished the Shandy. Then a Text came.

And oh, did I wish.

***

You don’t normally spend your New Year’s Day painting gates, but that was what my parents got up to do, and I got slotted under the morning sun before I knew it, mentally noting that you do not, under any circumstances, wear a black t-shirt if you were painting under Malaysian sun.

Our first meal of the year was at Uncle Tony’s, and it was every of his claypot specialities. The New Year’s part was that we ended up being temporary workers to help clear the tables, them being extremely shorthanded. I had found it to be amusing and strangely fun, overlooking the fact that every other customer looked like they expected us to clean their tables too. Then they saw us sitting down to eat. Then they started clearing their own tables, as best as they could.

The day rolled into a pleasant afternoon, a pleasant evening, and a pleasant night barbecuing at an uncle’s house. Then I got home to a wonderful night.

And somewhere, in a voice that's very much me on High, said "This has to be the best New Year's Day."

"Ever."

The Part Where We Stroll Into the New Year

The way I see it, the last few minutes of New Year’s Eve is like two ends of a bridge that are about to join together. In one side is the young, naïve, sprightly guy ready to run into the unknown future - while the other side is the dishevelled, unshaved, lethargic guy who walked as though the world weighted upon him. When the bridge connects, they’d shake hands, bid each other farewell and go on with their ways.

This happens every year. The naïve guy would always run ahead, taking the falls and the obstacles whichever they came first. The tired man would walk and sigh and wonder how it was that he never took time to look around. They’d reach the same end of the bridge every year. How they do so is like those time-paradoxical things that are best left unexplained.

There is a lesson here somewhere, but I’m too confused trying to figure out how this continuum thing works.

***

I should probably try writing about things in retrospect, and I think I’ve been trying to do it for every year to no avail. If the New Year’s is like the connecting bridge, then my guys would be sitting around chatting about Marshmallows while playing cards, and when the bridge split again they’d look at each other with shocked expressions. One might even try to jump. He never makes it.

So the year that was is, once again, a blur. Maybe pre-New Year brains are just that mushy. Maybe I’m simply too lazy to try and reminisce a year where things barely happened. Truthfully, nothing happened. I had gone through another year by staring dead into space and drooling. Time simply rolled on, carefully avoiding tipping me over. And when they did, I just drooled into the ground.

There, it was dark and comfortable and I dreamt of Nice Things.

***

Alright, maybe I can try and remember the past year.

(And I’ll be doing so by going through my 2010 blog entries, just to help my mushed up brain).

I remember doing a lot of flying. Much more than one could ever dream of, even if flying weren’t their cup of tea. But I had flown. I had gone to Bali, and Bangkok, and Jakarta, and a few times to Singapore. And then, of course, there was Japan. I have a lot to love about my job, and the constant flying was one of them.

I remember my great grandma’ passing. I remember the funeral, and my last look upon her face. I remember not crying. I still hadn’t.

I remember the day it dawned upon me that I had been in my job for a full year. It was an exciting thought, and there was this pathetic bloom of pride. Somehow, I hadn’t managed to get myself fired. Somehow, that meant a lot to me.

I remember little of everything else. There was a farewell I couldn’t make, a promise I couldn’t keep. Watching as the world played out like a theatre. It’s a story about me, but I’m just the audience. And I had fallen asleep on the fast-forward button.

The lights are on now, and the people are moving about discarding popcorn boxes.

***

There is something that I don’t need to try and remember, however. That’s because it’s happening right now.

And it’s a dream. There’s no other way to put it. I’ve tried pinching myself a few hundred times, and at one point put my foot out on a passing trolley at the supermarket, but I’m still here. Still in this dream. This surreality. This believing that it’s all real, however unreal. This wonderful feeling.

This feeling in the stars, in the clouds. There is no air, but only Life that you breathe.

And I’m still here, in spite of everything. I’m Still Here.

And I like it here.

A lot.

***

Resolutions? Just one.

The good thing about this resolution is that, if I kept at it, and I will, it opens up to a hundred more resolutions to fulfil. So I’ve got my sleeves rolled, and knuckles cracked. I’ve even put on my running shoes.

It starts next year.

***

Here’s the bit where I wish everyone a Happy New Year.

And I wish that you find Happiness. That’s just about it. Happiness, I figure, is direly underrated. You don’t pay the bills with Happiness, but Happiness pays you Love, and Laughter, and Joy, and that thing that keeps the road ahead lit even when it’s dark.

It would really then be a Happy New Year, right? Right?

Right? Guys? Guys??

First, a picture that I may use for bragging rights:

But it doesn’t belong to me, not alone at least. It belongs mostly to the greatest writing partner that I could wish for, and she gave me the plots and the words and that mental image in the form of an army of zombies waving banners that say “Just a little more!” and “Stay Lurching!” and “Brainz Up Ahead!”. She and the Zomb-army carried us past the finish line, and all I did was make sure I hit the nightly word count by continuously typing Ape, Ape, Ape, Ape, Ape (and, for the rest of the night, Bananas x 1000).

Suddenly, it was back to those nights where the parchment would open and I’d fall into it, and the words would just come (Apes and Bananas). And I’d be somewhere else, and nothing else would’ve mattered. Not even the coffee-requesting parent. Not even the mosquitoes. Not even sleep, at least until it got overly demanding. Only that this time, there was someone else with me, and she pitched while I batted.

Suddenly I was plotting, padding, making characters speak in my head, tying up loose ends and throwing things randomly on the wall with the hope that it sticks. And then, in the end, making sure that I’d come home and write it.

50,000 words weren’t even enough. But here’s the second promise; finishing the novel. Complete with the edits, changes, omissions, ironing, waxing, wrestling-with-the-characters-ing, and footnotes.

The road is long, and I’m having a great time walking down it.

So here I raise, this imaginary glass of sparkling champagne, to my writing partner, her Zomb-army, and the words.

Time to fire the Large Plotron Collider!

****

Right, there was also that bit where I went to Japan for a few days, and it’s my third self-promise to blog about it (with pictures. From a perfectly fine camera duly wasted upon me). But at least until I finish the coverage on it.

There is, of course, self-promise One and Two. There’s also a Four, but knowing myself, self-promises tend to vaporise. So maybe three for now. I’ll work in the extras later.

And yes, this bit of the post is to remind me to do it. Do ignore, and go let that spider chase your mouse pointer.

Oíche Mhaith

Carni

Right now, there’s an inflatable castle in my head, and I’m in it and bouncing off the halls and turrets. This, I figure, was placed there by the alcohol. It was only half a pint, drunk with friends and laughter, but to my credit it’s already double the amount I would’ve dared to drink. So yeah; I’m still an alcohol wuss, and right now I’m bouncy.

(At any rate, a bouncing castle wouldn’t bode well with that NaNoWriMo novel we’re trying to finish, but I wanted to write something. At least until the bouncy castle deflates).

November was the craziest month.

There was the fact that I tried, and had to, close the magazine a week early. And there was NaNoWriMo. And the Japan trip came along and threw everything into disorder. I’ve technically worked for three weeks without a single day off, if you count Japan being work, which it is in parts.

But I've enjoyed NaNoWriMo. Japan was an eye opener, and the job was the same adrenaline rush that only midnights and deadlines could give. So it was all crazy, but crazy good. Crazy tiring.

November was like a carnival. It had lights, and noises, and music. It had rides that thrilled; roller-coaster carts and Ferris wheels and haunted houses, and it had shows and acts that told of secrets and shadows and the darkest pits of desire. And like all carnivals, you know the dark, seedy going-ons it has in its corners, and yet you’re attracted to the lights, thrilled by the thrills, enticed by the secrets in the tents...

You get swept into the ride, and you’ll hate it, but pervasively, unabashedly, finding every moment enjoyable.

All I found myself doing was falling. Into the spinning lights. While they played and danced and made me hate and like.

Right now I’m walking out of the carnival, cotton candy in one hand, beer bottle in the other. And there’s a ravine ahead.

And I know I’m just gonna fall.

I'm in the airport now, and the Internet access here is patchy at best, so I'm just gonna run this quick:

1) I'll be flying off to Japan in 2 hours time

2) I have butterflies the size of Mothra

3) I'm having food coma

4) This will be the furthest I've ever been from home

It's still like walking into a dream. The type that makes you climb stairs in a desert, leaving you parched and dying. But surreal all the same.

Which me luck against Godzilla.

So, one part of me is saying; “Why the fuck aren’t you asleep?”, while another part is saying that “If you’re not fucking sleeping, why aren’t you clocking word count for NaNoWriMo?”. But I had tried; I sat staring at the previous words I’ve written and waited for more words to come ... and nothing came. But the words, oddly enough, came for this, so I figured that skipping one night would do me some favours. In one shoddy way, I am writing still. And it keeps a stagnant blog slightly less decadent. So shut it, Conscience B.

(Another reason for not being asleep is that, right now, my hair is still wet, and I have mud on my face. It’s most likely mud mixed with random herbs that is packed and marketed as a Neem Face Pack, which was shoved into my hands by the people who bought it, telling me that it’ll do me good and make me a better looking man if I kept at it – and I’m just thinking that hey, if it’s free, and if it ensures that I won’t have to consider plastic surgery over the next few years, why not? So here I am, in the middle of the night, typing on a blog entry I shouldn’t be making with mud smeared on my face, making me feel increasingly metrosexual. That would be the mud bit.)

But nights like this are worth being up, just for a little while. And I have jazz and numbers by Ol’ Blue Eyes right here, and he’s doing a great job telling how life should be.

And maybe it’s the jazz, and the night feeling so placid and empty, that I feel like I could do with a shot of Bourbon. The kind you take over at the bar, with the bartender named Joe, while the jukebox plays something like what Ol’ Blue Eyes would sing, about making one for the road. And I could say, I could tell you a lot, but it’s not... in a gentleman’s code. And then drink. And then say, “Hit me with another one, Joe. For old times’ sake.”

But reality is a sour bitch. I don’t drink, and I don’t know what Bourbon is. The nearest bar is in town and it’ll be playing seedy KTV music. And I might feel like I could do with a drink, but the drink would probably do as much as a favour to me as playing a round on an arcade machine. A quick, forgetful thrill. And I’d personally choose the latter.

There’s probably some coherence, or maybe some sense, in what I’ve just written. And damn if I’m gonna bother checking for one or giving it something.

You can shut up now, Conscience B. And A.

(But Joe, maybe... you know: Make it just one more, for my baby. And one more for the road).

Room With No Walls

There was this old forgotten story, which sort of went like:

There was a boy who lived in a room with no walls, built on top of a pillar that rose above a sea of clouds. In the morning, the boy will tend to his garden crop. In the afternoon he would rappel down the side of his pillar, where he was building stairs that spiral down into the clouds. He was doing so because, one night, he saw a pulse of light from beneath the clouds. No ship had been able to sail below the clouds and return, but the boy was compelled in his certainty that the stairs will take him down. And he built and built, and...

And the rest never happened, because I’ve never written past that.

The story is still lodged somewhere at the back of my head, and maybe one day I’ll finish it. Knowing me, however, that day might never come. But it’s there, and sometimes it tells itself to me as I sleep. I just need to tell myself to write it.

Anyway, my room now has no wall.

If I am to sleep in it, people passing every morning will me my leg stuck at an odd angle and my pillow soaked in drool. I’d also be covered in dust and debris, which – aside from being a tad uncomfortable as a state to live in – is also very unhealthy. I’ve now relocated to the brother’s room, and every night is a revisited battle; I’ve spent a better part of my life sleeping with him that it’s back to the old nightly endeavour of fending off his blanket-stealing attempts, and his dangerous swinging legs.

I’m glad October went past. The days where he sat on the chair, the weather had been chaotic. And people went ballistic and started having events every damn day, which was hectic to attend. And somewhere I managed to demolish an old cabinet by trying to use it as a height boost, hurting my hand in the process. And yesterday I did every single Don’ts in a guide to break a fight between two dogs, and got my hand bitten for my troubles (nothing antiseptics couldn’t help, though). And I owe DiGi a lot of cash I didn’t spend. And I’m at the eve of NaNoWriMo with no plot, no story, no characters, no nothing...

(But I’m cheating this year. Sort of. There’s nothing on the FAQ that said I can’t collaborate with someone and actually just write the half of it...)

(I think I’ll burn in NaNoWriMo hell).

The bright side of things, however, is that it’s November, and when she takes the chair I normally get a very good 30 days. She has been kind to me.

50 more minutes now, and October will leave.

It’ll be time to write.

A more rational me would’ve gone to sleep, but this other part wanted to relish in past photographs, so I sit here uploading old photos into Flickr, and taking time to go through products of a more enthusiastic period of youth.

(This reinvigoration of an interest is stemmed by the Bra-man, who already has a Flickr account of his own, accessed here, which is in turn sparked off by his acquisition of a DLSR. Resurrecting my Flickr page is both in his request and my interest to pick up a DSLR myself. I’ve also starting to feel rather competitive. Not that I’m ever in the league, but I can’t help it.)

Anyway, my Flickr page is here, and if it stays active I’ll probably pin it to the link bar for good.

I like photography. I don’t love it. I used to, but time has a good way to dash enthusiasm and confidence into shards, and whatever’s left is only enough to keep me snapping during vacations or memorable trips. Otherwise, I barely utilise the compact cameras. They’re here, in the drawer. I haven’t turned them on for a long time.

I don’t take good pictures, but there’s a sense of achievement in trying to get one. For me the fun is in the process, and the photograph is the trophy. It didn’t have to look nice, but a nice trophy is fantastic anyways, and it keeps me going for that. Going through these old pictures, I realised that I miss it a lot.

This Nikon D3100 I’m getting, might just put me back in the love. As for now, I’m having a crush all over again.

I must confess; I like photography.

I really do.

I figured I was smart. I figured; there’s no better way to force yourself into writing unless it’s a life threatening situation. So here I am, strapped to a chair, which is being slowly lowered into a pool of genetically mutated Piranhasharks and will keep doing so unless I continuously type down something. It sucks that I sort of have writers’ block, so I’m pretty close to the waters now, and there’s this itch on my toe that I have just have to get and oh god it waters just touched my ankles I have to type gotta keep typing one word two word three word four word oh crap oh crap oh crap oh

Oh, now I have some leeway. Right. I just need to type myself to safety. Just keep typing, typing…

*****

So, I had this week staked out. I studied the calendar, I noted down the important stuff and I had myself a schedule, complete with red-marker circlets. Then I cracked my fingers and got on with it. By Tuesday I’ve forgotten my days and I thought I was in the year 1901.

In my defence, I kept my end of the bargain until everything simply collapsed into craziness. When that happens, the best one could do is simply fall along and hope that there’s coffee at the end of it. So don’t blame me for thinking time went back to 1901 and I stood watching Annie Taylor going down the Niagara Falls in a barrel and freaking survived.

Anyway, I wonder why every person out there thinks October is a good time to have media events. By the damn throngs of it.

Things happened, one after another. And I couldn’t remember most of it already, or rather I’m too lazy to. One had me going on a flying fox, though. It was real. It was a long day.

And it’s not dying down. The storm’s still going on. We’re barely through.

Though, now I’ve got a poncho and an umbrella. And yellow boots.

Interesting what a barber can say to you and leave you troubled for the day. But you’re only troubled by it because it’s true, and that you’re already troubled by it anyway, only that it takes someone to word it out, even unintentionally, for it to latch on and spread out like blight. At the end of the day, it’s a disease.

A mental structure is like a bricolage, built with salvaged scraps and scattered bits of separate thoughts, and it unless these thoughts are of strong material, it doesn’t take much for it to crumble. A breeze, a prod can bring it down. Sometimes, the words of a barber.

The rest is kind of what you do with it. Face the truth, and walk away with a briefcase and ready to make a move, or pick up the pieces and start rebuilding the next whimsical structure?

But you know, the road ahead is tough. Sometimes it’s easier to rebuild, and stay holed again.

Oddly empty highways, lighted amber and dark, can be a joy to drive through. Windows down, head abuzz with 10 sips of wine, Yoko Kanno’s Space Lion playing on the radio makes it melancholic, and it was like I was driving towards someplace unreachable. In some ways, it was like dreaming. The kind of dreams that were wishful, unattainable things.

And the magic ended at the toll, when barred gates and money put a stop to dreaming. I paid, drove by, and it was just that; a drive home.

The radio played That’s Life, and Frank Sinatra sung me to the next traffic light.

****

It might be too early to count these eggs, but it seems like I’ll be going to Japan next month.

For work, of course. But the free time in between meant that I’ll be making the most out of Tokyo, to appease this semi-otaku tendencies.

(And, if my itinerary is to be believed, I get a chance to visit the Ghibli Museum. That’s one tick on my Bucket List).

It’s gonna be expensive, even if food and accommodation will be taken care of. So starting today, I’ll be tying up my stomach and only drink milk for 6 weeks.

*********

This very possible trip to Japan also meant that it’s time I get my DSLR. I’m pretty much set to purchase the Nikon D3100, but I still can’t decide if I want to pay it through instalments or save up more for a smoother transaction. But a new camera and Japan’s sights would be awesometastic.

I think I’ll leave these thoughts in the air as I retreat to bed.