Manners and Murder

They say manners are a good thing. Manners bring polish and politeness. These in turn bring amiability. And that is useful to lure good fortune and seal favours. People generally like those that possess if not inhabit manners.

But manners prevent me from the sayings the things I need to say. I cannot call you a fucking murderer. I cannot accuse you of being a slimy scum sucking ball licking piece of shit. No. Manners demand that we respectfully dance around the massive gargoyle in the room that whose upper body has crashed through the ceiling and the pieces are raining down on us. It demands that we presume a person so unworthy of humanity to have a good reputation. The more loathsome the person, the higher their presumed reputation. So even though everybody knows what you did, we have to smile and pretend it didn't happen. 1984 in 2009.

Manners demand I politely remark in the words utterly devoid of emotion of your impropriety. We can only accuse you of that when you have betrayed and ruined us and still hold our beating hearts in your hand. Manners demand a considered and reasoned reaction to your intended madness when I want to choke the living shit out of you with my bare hands. Manners forces my mouth when my fingers want to dig into the softness of your neck and rip out your spine by tearing off your head. Manners forces a handshake when my hands wants to murder your entire family in front of you while you lay dying as you have done to so thoughtlessly to many others. So the last thing you are able to comprehend as you fade is your complete annihilation. So that when you are faced with death, you will long for it. And when you finally beg for it, pray for it, long for it like a fresh love denied, I want to keep you alive. But only just enough for you to comprehend you are living death.

And maybe after that, perhaps we can use manners a smidgen more meaningfully.

On the Outside

It's cold and lonely where I am.

On the outside looking in.

In a white out blizzard.

I cannot see.

So I press my face as closely as I can to the window but taking care not to break it.

From what I can make out and guess from what is spared by the web of ice covering the glass, I can see the main door which opens into the living room. There is a warm comfortable glow about the room. Two big and deep cushioned recliner chairs glance at each other in front of what could be a lively cackling fire. A huge tan brown bear rug on the dark brown stained wooden floor lay between the recliners and the fire. Behind the recliners is an oval shaped table with a few chairs around it. On top of it is a black suitcase with what looks like silver or white gold tasteful but understated trimmings. A pair of thin round shaped spectacles rests overturned on top of the suitcase. Then I see a man and a woman walk into the room happily talking to each other as the walk towards the fireplace. After sitting on the recliners and chatting for a while they end up making love on the bear where they fell asleep in each other's arms.

It looks how it has always been. It is pleasant to remember what was.

But I no longer hunger for it now. So I turn away from the scene.

The web of ice quickly creeps over, freezing me out.

As I close my eyes in readiness to welcome and passionately embrace the piercing cold once more, a smile slowly creeps into the opposite edges of my lips.

Thought of the Minute

When faced with annihilation, relief is found in sweet, transient oblivions. 

Something out of Nothing

Expectations. They cost nothing to conjure. It can be meaningful. It's usually whimsical. and plentiful. They are more easily felt than grasped, like gravity. Though it has no corporeal form, it has a great deal of force. The amount of force or weight of an expectation depends on the quality and/or quantity of persons. The more significant a person or the greater the number of persons, the heavier the expectation. The weight of an expectation can rival the weight of Atlas. Once an expectation is brought into existence it takes a life of its own. Sometimes it merges or fuses with the expectee's personality and lifestyle to the point that when the expectation begins and his life ends cannot be detected. It is possible to live entirely in an expectation, but it is not encouraged because there is no air in an expectation. Suffocation or asphyxiation is common within the expectation atmosphere if the weight does not first grind one's knee into the ground. An expectation is often misunderstood as a right. This is incorrect. An expectation is a wrong thought right. It can be about something impossible or possibly unnecessary. It is nothing but we make it something. We are good at making something out of nothing. We are not so good at making something into nothing. There is more litter in our attempts at annihiliation than the fruits of our creation.

Of Self Suspicions

Sometimes, when I am doing something charitable for example, I wonder about my sincerity in doing so. Sincerity I feel occurs when the actual act of charity and the motivations of the donor are aligned i.e. that the former actually needs and the latter genuinely wants to do that act of charity without any underlying motive. So when earlier I said I wondered about my sincerity, to be more precise, I meant I contemplated my motivations because they seemed to me vague and obscure. Why did I feel the need to do this? I have many theories all of which at first glance applicable and at second, incomplete. So there is no point in pursuing this. 

There is little point in considering a genuine charitable motivation situation because there is no mystery there. There is more interest in considering the 'false' motivation, in the sense that there are other more primary motivations involved, such as to boast about it later, to use charity as a cover for fraudulent purposes, etc. Is an act of charity stained by false motivation? Does it and should it matter to the donee? Are they really in any position to question an act of charity? Can the starving man turn away food from an asshole? And perhaps it is because I don't know I tend to theorize that since I am unsure, the answer was likelier to be found in the 'false' area instead of the 'genuine' area because I cannot say with certainty that I know what it truly means to have a genuine motivation, as I often tend to feel that genuineness means remaining unconsciouos of your motivations, and so the mere act of contemplating it, destroys that genuineness.

All that is left from this is a vague sour feeling sense of guilt but that is easily accounted for. 

In Silence

I feel like a dam full of emotions which you ignited, pregnant until bursting. I want to explode into you. Passionately, violently as you ripped me from the fabric of life's drudgery, its weariness, its cynicism. It was complete acceptance or eternal banishment. There was no compromise. Compromising meant being untruthful. Everything that came before was forgiven and everything thereafter accounted for. That you filled me. Reshaped me. Breathed me life anew. You make me invincible.

Sometimes I wish I could say these things to you.

But I'm just not good with words. Just not good at them.

They just don't come out right.

The face a woman looks best in

The face a woman looks best in is when she is in the throes of pleasure. That look of vulnerability and sensuality on her face, of a willing and utter surrender to the pleasures assailing her every pore. Those closed eyes spoke of wanting to achieve a depth of feeling, of being able to trace the faint outline of the contours of her pleasure. That frown of indescribable pleasure. Sighs that slowly emerged and rose into a crescendo before gently fading away, washed over like a fresh wave on the beach by her full throated mouth wide open moans that tittered at the knife edge of pleasure and pain, betrayed by a body that could not contain the pleasures coursing through her, demanding that she vocalize her enjoyment. Occasionally, she manages to restrain herself by biting her lower lip only to surrender to her soulful cries again. Each one a lick more sweeter than the last. And there is a radiance to her then, as if pleasure itself glowed in her and overflowed out of her every pore. As if she were made for just that one moment of inconsolable pleasure.

She is never more beautiful than she is then.





(The real wan ah! Not the fake wan!)

How seriously should I consider something?

Sometimes I think I possess little sense of perspective in my consideration about things. I seem to take seriously things others don't and vice versa. Or finding humour in places where others don't. And of course humour vanishes once explained. Which is why I hate explaining jokes. If you didn't get it, that's it. Sorry. Too bad. Jokes are not like freaking leftovers that you can reheat in retelling. They're like orgasms. You either get them, or you don't. You never say I think I had an orgasm. Because if you do, I got news for you. That wasn't it.

So. Back to the mains. How seriously should I consider something. For example, how much of my thoughtful effort should I apply to a rock as opposed to say a poem or a piece of music or a pen or a planet, for example. Why should I not spend 30 minutes in thoughtful consideration of a garden rock as opposed to a dead bug. I could easily spend more than 30 minutes contemplating about either one for example, where the rock is concerned: what is its' colour, its shape, its weight, its volume, its height, its distinguishing features, where it is placed, where such rock came from, how it was formed, which 'family' of rock does it belong to, how it is extracted, going even lower, its atomic composition, how I could use it in a story, etc. You get the trajectory (if not, please re-read)? An ancillary question would be how deeply should one think about things too. Should we consider some common rock in great depth? 

Interest, needs and inevitability would dictate relevance. A natural sense of curiousity and inclinations would have some influence in expanding that area of relevance. 

But even then how deeply enough do we know of what is required of and of interest to us?

We can only exist within a plane of middleness.  

Of Contemplating Myself

The deeper I contemplate myself and my condition the easier it is to contemplate humanity.

Not Reading

There will inevitably be those times when we simply do not have time to do even those things that are important for ourselves. It is certainly the sign of the times when in the past, people could not take care of their health because of the lack of knowledge or wealth. These days however, people fail to do so simply because they just don't have the time. Work seems to intrude on just about everything these days that I am sometimes tempted to think that overwork and working over time is one of the greatest social evils of our age more so than illegal substances and corruption. I shall save that rant for some other day. But it is in those times that I tend to find myself not reading something. Although I do read a lot in one day (submissions, letters, cause papers, emails and all the usual routine paperwork), when I say I do not read something I mean something different,. And something different means something either tangentially related to the law (judges biographies, the state of law in other jurisdictions, etc.) or something different altogether - psychology, economics, religion or good fiction (the classics or those that come highly recommended by my more literary friends). And newspapers by the way do not count because they are generally biased, does not provide much food for thought and the quality of writing in general leaves some style and ability to be desired.

I find that after about 2 weeks of not reading and being in the thick of work, I will slowly start to get uneasy about not reading something substantive or substantial or thought provoking. I need something new to keep my thoughts and mind churning over some other matters. If these needs are not met by the 3rd week that's when I start to think and feel that the neurons in my head that are not used begin to implode. Day by day, I become more and more convinced I'm becoming stupid. If this is not addressed in another 2 - 3 weeks (usually because of work and by now there would have been some pissed up parties and hang overs), that's when the fear digs deep. By now I will brook no dispute that I am marginally intelligent than an amoeba and paralysis in my reading and writing sets in. When I try to write, the fear freezes my hands and a little voice whispers in my ear that it's not good enough and never will be. If I try to now actually read something, I find that the words become heavy and no longer can I embrace each word no matter how short because my 'literary arms' have become weak. The words fall heavily and painfully on to my feet. The sentences stab right through my soft head and my eyes are like pools of water mirroring the emptiness of my head.

Thankfully I have never gotten further than that because if I had, I would have probably joined UMNO and started raping goats in the kampung or something with black polish on my body. But I try my best not to go without reading too long because the road back to actually read something substantive and meaningful is a long and painful one, letter by letter, word by word and sentence by sentence. But oh, to read and resonate, how wonderful a thing it is!

The Fall of the Giant Rambutan Pudding

June 2008

Somewhere in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur

The Beast

He's a right bastard, I tell you. Sometimes he can be logical, calm, cool and so between the two of us, the more reasonable and level headed, the firm restraining hand holding me back from rushing into where even angels fear to tread. And yet sometimes, he can be the worse of the two, scheming twisted and dangerous thoughts and wicked suggestions, tantalizing me with their possibilities. It's during those times that I feel he harbours murderous intent for me, though I am certain it shall not be his hands that carries out the deed. Though we hardly speak to each other, for the most part we both know each other only too well; save for that bit of darkness in our soul of which no one will ever know of save for ourselves. He calls that 'The Beast' and tells me that we all have our own Beasts. He is smiling as he tells me this, as if in relief. Don't let it consume you, he cautioned cheerily.

I asked him once, How is it we know each other so well and communicate almost telepathically, and yet are so different in thought?
That is not the question, he replied.
What is then? I asked back.
It is, How do we deal with situations given our predicament? he asked.
But I wanted to ask the question, I replied. Upset.
If you don't know the question, you cannot ask, he answered.

A Songpiracy

This may sound very cliche but I think it is neither the Djs nor radio stations that decide the songs on the airplay list. The master controller is the universe. The universe could sense how you feel and it conspires to send you messages as to console you when you feel down and lift your spirits up so that you do not give up.

Now, I am not a prophet but if I were one, I think I would be the only prophet who receives his "wahyu" from songs.

I believe that the universe communicates through songs that you listen to. The conspiracy part comes when a particular song started to play at the time when you need it the most. The fact that the DJ played it was just a coincidence. It is all part of a bigger picture, a conspiracy that you cannot solve.

If you did not believe me, just turn on the radio and start listening. I believe for messages to come accross, your mind has to work with your heart and sub- conscience. Sometimes you notice these messages but sometimes the wrong ones get sent.Then you realised that you just lost your mind. hehe. So you turn on the radio, listen to songs. Slowly, your thoughts swim, stroke after stroke, defying winds and cruel waves. You drift away then water started to lead, you struggled and when you cried for help, words from the songs you listen to started playing in your head. How they make you feel depends on you. If you listened to them wrongly, you would drown and listening right, you would swim.

I remember feeling very depressed a couple of years ago. Alright, so I am depressed by default but circa April to July 2005, I was really down, lower and deeper than anything else that is low and deep in this world. It was the most terrible feeling because I was heartbroken. Work too was no consolotion.

For the whole of that period, no song could pick me up. Rob Thomas' Lonely no more" became lonely. There was another song, about a guy who finally fell in love but only the words "even the best fall down sometimes" continued to play in my head. I cried when listening to Akon's Lonely and wondered why the stations like to play depressing songs.

Then my mum told me to try out and audition to be a DJ. I did and I think the auditioners knew that I was depressed. When told that I was going to introduce Rob Thomas' song, they kept correcting that the correct title is Lonely NO MORE and not lonely. They then asked whether I like Akon's Lonely, I did not give an answer so they started to dance to the song. I was too blur to notice but while driving home, I realised I was listening to all these songs the wrong way!

I never notice the effect of songs again until recently, more precisely since two weeks ago. I felt depressed again, not due to any matters of the heart but more towards fear and disappointment. Reality has finally set in at work and I was thinking of too many negatives.

So I turned on the radio and cried, not one but many many nights and all the time, many songs were played but only these words came flashing "No stress" and "whatever it takes". I suddenly felt dumb and started thinking about what I want to do. I turned on the radio and coincidentally, the songs were on the playlist again. Oh yes, universe I know what to do.

Twitch

Sometimes, sometimes, I get those muscle twitches you know. It's not dramatic or anything. I don't flail about and foam at the mouth. None of that stuff. I just feel it right there on my forearm for example. See, I can see the skin, just there, ha, ha, that area trembling ever so slightly there. I can only imagine the threshing and twitching of the sinewy rope of muscles along my forearm. I get that once in a very long while. Not that often. It's not a common thing. Now and then kind of thing. This time it was my forearm. The other time it was my thigh. I wonder why it does that. Not sure whether I felt it around my right shoulder the other day. Maybe I was tired. It's as if that part of my body took a breather on behalf of the rest of the muscles in the body and chose to do so at that convenient and optimal spot. I mean it does not impede with the more important areas. I mean I don't get the twitchy feeling on my ass, or head, or, or my internal organs like my heart for example. So that's a good thing, I suppose. I should be happier, I guess. We must be thankful for little mercies because uh I don't know what large or big mercies are. Uhm thankful for little mercies because because nothing's free these days. Na, ah. No sir-ree. Not that it matters. I'll take those any day because, because no, this is isn't happening, please, no, I, twitch

Marvel

Sometimes when I am so neck deep in the vagaries and vicissitudes of living, I try to remind myself to step back and marvel. The best example I can give by way of explanation is times when I sometimes find myself looking over a beautiful landscape of sea or stone and then see an aeroplane slowly but steadily making its way across the sky as if it were set on invisible tracks across the often deep blue sky flecked with migrating giant herds of cumulus clouds. Sometimes it is so far that it is like a small black sliver.

And then for a moment, I try my best to suspend all thoughts and ideas and induce complete ignorance of whatever I have learned, and try to experience the imagery in that mental state. And when I look at the aeroplane in that mental state, I find myself in awe at the marvel of it. I'll probably be even have some stupidly serene look on. But there you have it. The average 747 has a maximum take off weight at takeoff of 870,000 pounds. It can achieve average (in terms of configuration) maximum speeds of 800 m/ph for commercial ones. More than 200 people can fit in such an aircraft. It is probably the fastest and most powerful transport vehicle that nature has probably ever seen (though I will not be surprised to be disappointed).

Then I look down at my hands. Rub them together and feel the softness of my flesh. Flick at my nails to feel my calcium brittleness. And then think to myself how amazing human ingenuity is. From putting 2 sticks together to light a fire in a cave, fast forward to about 8000 BC when agriculture first began in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia and then to Neil Armstrong landing on the moon barely 9,000 years later and here we are sitting in front of our desktops isolated yet at the click of a button instantly connected to somebody, anybody. And if you don't like them, no problem, click again. What genius we are as a species. The rest of the living stuff prefer to be in the water splashing about, or on all fours and naked, or whatever. And if we round it up generously we achieved that in about say oh about 20,000 years. That's more than double time if you ask me. Wooosh like quick.

And after recovering from that pleasant reverie and after fully recovering all that I had so surprisingly easily suspended (there was so little to do apparently), I think what a stupid bunch of idiots we are as a species.