yesterday i bumped into a really good friend, z, while i was about to take money out from an atm. she told me that another one of her close friends (i'll call her a) - we all went on a grrlie holiday together - just gave birth. strangely enough, a was thinking of z just before her contractions began, and that was one day before z's birthday. the next day, 17 july, on z's 30th birthday, a gave birth to her second child.

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i first encountered the concept of synchronicity at a talk. c, who was really into combining psychoanalysis and feminism, asked me to join her. being curious about a field of knowledge i don't usually get into, i went along. the dude was american, and started speaking about his idea of jungian synchronicity. according to him, synchronicities can be recognised through a set of personal symbols that is accessible only to the self. looking at dreams in particular, he went on to talk about how synchronicities pepper throughout our dreamscapes. they appear when there is a need to counter subconscious emotions that are repressed in waking life. for example, feeling really resentful at a partner but not having the desire or energy or some other logical reason deal with it when awake. there is a need to balance out the psyche, and this is where dreams come in. the point is, to be able to recognise repressed emotions, one needs to delve into dreams in search of synchronicities. which can be detected through symbolic reverberations. doop dee doo. i remembered thinking it was all a little suspiciously 'self-healing' and 'oprah' to be taken too seriously.

but it was interesting. and i never really forgot about it. because coincidences are funny things. they make a person think about fate, destiny, the existence of gods and ultimate super computers called 'deep thought'.

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it's fucking hot today. and i had to drive all over the place. with not enough sleep. the last time i didn't have enough sleep and had to drive around KL, i knocked into an old malay woman's right ankle. her sons were lawyers and either have been ignoring her for awhile, or dotes on her incessantly. i had to send her to gleneagles hospital to see if anything was broken. she initially appeared fine, and then got more and more vocal in her expressions of pain as she was on the phone to her sons in the car ride. when they got there, i was threatened with court suits and treated with the sudden display of filial love.

so today i made a note in my head to drive carefully. as i was waiting in a jammed que near the traffic lights, i saw a car bump into the car in front of it. a cloud of dust was freed from the scene of the accident and floated towards the toll booth. even though the damage wasn't great, they caused another jam behind them as hazard lights were bleeped on a minute later. before i had time to muse about this, my que started moving. not a minute later, there was a similar accident on my left lane. a mini 4WD bumped into the car in front of it, and its bumper is on the ground, freshly fallen. a minute later, hazard lights on, and another jam appears.

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so that got me thinking about this whole concept again. i read up a little on wikipedia and another website from a phd student who examined synchronicity in relation to post-structuralism. in a nutshell, synchronicity is about meaningful coincidences that are not causally related. because it is laden with meaning - i suppose from a personal perspective - it is explainable if one accepts that mind, matter, past, present, future, spirit etc is somehow connected in a meta kind of way. kinda reminds me of kaku and his writing about higher dimensions. if there are only 4 dimensions - depth, width, height & time - then a lot of stuff in physics doesn't make sense. theories of quantum mechanics & general relativity contradict each other, and chasing einstein's dream of fusing the two, it becomes clearer if there is a higher dimension, or hyperspace, or parallel universes where things that don't make sense happen and make sense when they do happen (i don't claim to understand any of it, but it's interesting toilet reading!).

so again, looking for the meta equation, the one ring to rule them all. in other words, if you pull back far enough, you see more, and understand more. in kaku's analogy, if you're a carp in a pond, being caught doesn't make sense unless you perceive there is a world outside of the pond.

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my roommate in uni, h, lost her twin brother in a car accident. her mother lives in a different continent to the both of them. at the night of the accident, h's mother dreamt that she was pregnant. her stomach started to hurt so much that she woke up. sensing something wrong, she rang them both. it's a very sad memory.

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what is the point of believing in this concept enough to want to prove it? so that we can better understand the now, or so that we can predict the future, or to know how the now is entangled so meaningfully and purposefully to the future? but this is what we do anyway, every single day. making meaning. drawing patterns in human and social behaviour. creating tactics and making decisions every split second to carry on. if synchronicities are not causally related, then to seek the connection is to unravel the cause or the purpose no? or is it simply reassuring enough to know that things are somehow connected, no matter how obtusely for the moment? 

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i am currently reading the may 13 book, as another theory is expounded on why this event happened. every explanation of history carries within its flesh a cartography of space, time, sequential events and people - a kind of pattern, prediction, with embedded messages of forewarning, prevention, recognition, articulation, something. as texts quiver with each story, the self morphs into another idea. another archetype to feed into another mass of contradicting collective consciousness-es.
m
a lot of what i do is spent on trying to change a certain course of reality. and this means paying careful attention to what's going on right now. what has happened before. what could possibly be a crack into the future. and concurrent futures swimming like small snakes, hissing for dominance. i don't know what thinking about wormholes, parallel universes, jungian synchronicity, post-structuralism and other new language can do.

maybe it's just good toilet musing.

there is usually something hiding behind the buildings that was just a moment ago, merely new; now, looking more and more like a maze i have to clamber through. big waves, the colour of deep seas, will stretch impossibly high to engulf any notions of sky. they are always heavy, always with unknown depths, always a painfully beautiful greenish colour, and always, always, coming closer. i am sometimes with people, friends, or ghost friends remembered from a long time ago. and all  ebulliance of novelty and adventure would be framed by these waves. i cannot swim so well. but i never drown.

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notes on a scandal attributes too much obsessive compulsions to unarticulated sexual desires. but the contradiction of gaze and innocence was beautifully done.

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i feel very tired today.

it's funny. a large part of what i do is communications strategising. especially through technology platforms. gadgets and gizmos and intertwining this and that.

then i have a friend. who in the past two days left me a little gobsmacked. nonplussed. huh? whooey whoo.

i wonder how much of it is around the failure of email as a medium of communication, and how much of it is my failure of saying what i mean, and how much of it is my friend typing when he's zoned off on lalang.

and i wonder how replacing emails with a phone call will help.

sigh.

it's been a long time since i interrogated my own position as an activist. i kinda settled on that term once i started freelancing since i dont have any formal job position to brand on myself. or an organisation that i'm *with*. the decision is a conscious one. i'm sick of institutions, and i'm sceptical of their capacity for change when it's repeating the same kinds of structures, subjects and power relations. but that was in 2005. i havent thought much about it since. but with that abandonment, i've become a free radical. hah. actually, maybe more like a lost atom. the problem with calling myself an activist is this is a little more 'sticky' than say, a job function or an organisation. i dont have the option of clean cuts. unless i quit activism. and what the hell does that mean anyway?

whenever someone asks me what i do, i struggle to be serious and push all the hysterical giggles down with reddening fingers.


i'm a otak-otak of activism. how do i draw a line between living my life, and doing the things that i do? thoughts and feelings about power, norms, money, sex, gender, race, disabilities, language, culture, fairness, relations, bladifuckingbla bleed into every act. from my dreams, to poetry, to doodles, to hanging out with my family, to random acts of rebellion, to serious writing, to organising actions, to bladifuckingbla.

my platypus. i'm in serious need of something pretty fucking drastic.

i used to think that art will un-choke me. but that tidy little cubicle betrayed me by bleeding all the same. so what am i left with now?

+++++++++++

she is sharing the boat shaped like an oversized teacup with me. i am careful with my bag. if our cup-boat capsizes, fabala will become wet. she seems oblivious to the tiger that just jumped into the ocean. it is causing ripples that swell into unruly waves, tipping us dangerously. she starts to shriek and panic. i asked her to sit down, and lean back into her side, so we can achieve some balance. for awhile, we swirled round and round on the waters' blades. fragments of the sea sloshes upon us. fabala is slightly wet. i am worried that the covers i crafted for her safety is inadequate. but there is no time to check for now. we need to stay afloat.

we arrive at the hut. bright purple mosquito nets cover the door. when it is opened, i see the backside of the sea. not the kind of beach anticipated. but still, it is beautiful in a rough kind of way. some are already making plans to sunbathe on its regular indented curves. i can see the sea sneaking across the sand dunes, breaking the barriers with quiet cunning. her lips are red and her hair is black. a familiar form is on the chair. but as i drew closer, the cat's head turns, and it is not the soul i hoped to embrace. instead, the pussy is sour and grumpy. i move away.

i woke up singing with flames and pink in my head. walked around and bought a bigger screen. 21 inch. feeling suffocated in the glitzy superficiality of trade. and walked away. became a child in games and joy. playful. played. i felt a balloon of calm that became a dark shadow that shrank and elongated with a dancing sun moving inside me. 33 little sticks of love. or maybe almost love. i looked for water but sand got in the way. so many histories pressed together in laughter and slight insobriety. i walked amongst them like a ghost in a self-induced haze. tasting sweetness in ashes. they burst on my tongue and like the cube, leave reality in their wake. maybe there will be magic...

i stumbled on a cube so densely packed that it became a globe. every time i touched it it shivered and another layer of colour peeled off like a poor painter's only canvas. the people were all strangers, but were as familiar as companion in my dreams. every thing they held were stained with passion, time and beauty. it was as real and as indescribable as pain. or love. or maybe even life. i am not sure. but i am addicted. i wanted to gorge and gorge myself with this onion. i wanted to savour each changing texture as i chewed with intense concentration. i wanted a meditative experience that did not elide appetites. but i had to remove myself. and i find the colourful ripples pass me like waking shadows, wobbling my lethargy. i must not lose this memory.

At the last day of Know How, and we are scattered in the main hall, watching activism videos on the big screen. I’ve seen the one currently being shown, a wonderful short clip that turns the world on its head, where Pinochet confesses to crimes against humanity and George Bush sits in meditation with Ghandhi’s face on his pagoda singlet. Suddenly I feel a little overwhelmed with sadness. The repetition of these hope-drenched clips, where activists still know how to laugh and poke fun at the world we’re in, while retaining the reality of how shitty the world actually is.

Is it? I don’t know. War, war, war. Such a small word that is ceaselessly transforming itself as a different, inevitable and hopeful solution. Why do we still keep believing in it when we know at the end of its smallness is basically devastation. Of so many kinds it’s not even worth repeating. Wanting to do campaigns and realising the false grins that it floats on. The happiness, cheekiness, fun-edged attempt to sell the idea to more and more apathetic people who are so tired of life, so bored of everything, the only escape is the fantasy found at the end of a million dollars.

The conference has been good I think. It feels concrete. I have had concrete conversations with women I admire, feminists who continue to inspire. I see some faces again, so now that makes it twice, maybe three times. I start to see the fleshiness under the halo. It’s okay. It makes it all the more real. I don’t know if I am more involved, or if I feel more detached. I have a campaign to plan, and this gives me something real to stand on. Not just language, analysis, maybes, rhetorics, rearticulation of musts and needs and critical things that has to happen but offering stale words in exchange. What is it that I have in exchange?

An icon? A space? An attitude or philosophy? It is urban, it is pink and pigtails. It is toying with ethernet whips. It is english. I don’t know. I am not sure. As we ended the session yesterday, the energy was high. People were smiling and nodding. I hope this means taking some kind of action. I hope this means a desire to do, to be, to play. I don’t know. What will it achieve? Will it stop assholes from using the internet to betray and hunt and hurt? Probably not. Will it get young women to at least think a little bit more about how the internet is not as innocuous and as ‘hip’ as it seems? Maybe. I have absolutely no idea. Does it give something for web users to identify with? Something to attach meaning to? Something to signify? Hopefully.

Hope drenched campaigns in a shitty world.

Outside, it has been raining for the past two days. The day before, there was hail. I wonder how cold the protesters were, sleeping in those tents. Is it worth it? The need to simplify the rusts of democracy to slogans, acronyms and caricatures of injustice. Blood and shit in toilet bowls. When simplified, people can take part. Can gear their passion into one charismatic smile. I feel the stink of guilt. I feel the dusts of imagination settle. Nobody doubts the intention, the anger, the absolute desire for change. Have we chained change into these tactics? Or is it a necessity in a world constantly shrinking in the overpopulation of signs and iconic transformation?

This morning, I met a marching cluster of witches looking like feminist Ku Klux Klans, chanting slogans I do not understand. Something about feminism and patriarchy. I am not sure about the newness of this spirit. But I smiled. It is so wonderful to think about the time it took to plan this, build the cardboard sharp tipped hats. The seriousness of the faces mirrored in the curiosity shone from by-standers, standing by in uncertainty. The sudden twist of normalcy. It gives butterfly wings a little more solidity. Dusts billowing. Unsettling. Reality vs rhetoric. They are going to announce the Know How declaration soon. The past two days, since the last year, I have heard the push for creativity, imaginary unbound, language on the shifting points of flames. I saw a version of the declaration. It speaks of affirmation, of references to UN declarations, of connections with shit, and war, and poverty, and alienation.

I want my wings.

She woke up to small explosions. All bubbles in the sea decided to burst at once. They sounded like an infinity of tiny screams amplified by aeons of being bottled up. Burbling in stabbing fear like treble cracking bass.

Finding a coherent universe of desire-cloaked despair in each repleted bubble, she tried to stay un-lost. She tried to surf across each ebullition. But found that she was sinking. It was not clear to her anymore where black separates from white when the skin of every circle was stretched thin into oily varicoloured sheens.

Somehow she has lost everyone along the way.

Maybe while she was dreaming, she was actually asleep.

i was swimming towards you but you are slipping away. she is laughing without sound at the sides. watching me get pulled under. coming undone. a special current just for me. i am not deterred. she means nothing to me. i put everything i have into the journey. it is only a few feet. but it takes forever. i seem to be going around in circles. the water is filling up my nostrils, the gaps in my teeth, between my eye lashes. i think i am drowning.

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she is ours. the child who looked so foreign. we decided to adopt her. remember? you suddenly do. and it freezes you. hesitantly. you turn to me as we climbed up the ladder. perhaps we are not ready. i hear your words solidify into new doubt in my heart. perhaps we are not ready. i think of her spending time with everyone who is not you or me. i worry she will not recognise our imprint that is meant to be marked on her soul. perhaps we are not ready.

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the woman with the metal legs looked familiar. i know her from somewhere. her skin is olive. her eyes dark. her jeans hug her hips. she sits next to me on the rickshaw. i notice the rust on her skin. it is a simple contraption. bending inwards at one point, right in the middle. made of green steel. she wants to leave me. i am panicking. my indiscretion betrays me to friends that i have made in the golden time of ethics. i feel defeated. seeing the rage in your eyes. the betrayal. the pain. my body is crushed against the wall through the metal frame. i cannot escape my fate.

Shh... did you notice? The world has changed as we were asleep. In my dreams, I was clasping you in my arms, and I saw your flesh rise in tiny bumps as my breath tickled you. You turned around and opened your eyes and I saw reflected, a carousel, painted in rainbow colours, turning round and round in time with our heartbeat.

We held hands and climbed into it and you picked a monkey while I picked a bird. Yours was a monkey god in satin trousers, golden and shimmering as it ran past the river. You were so happy and laughed with open abandonment. I gently touched the feathers of my tiny sparrow. Inside her, I see the fire plumage of a phoenix and it made me cry to see it bent and twisted, waiting for a death to be released.

You stood by the waters and their music surrounded you like a liquid cloak, bubbling and giggling. I knew you were waiting. Patiently. Your face shining with anticipation. The monkey god was pulling angry faces behind you, scowling at me, with raging red tears smearing across its silently screaming mouth. I understood the desires, and walked towards you, with the sparrow fluttering in my palms.

We're standing so close that the tip of our noses met. Your breath like cardomon entered into my skin and intoxicated me. I never wanted to let it pass through me, like a ghost, imprinted only like a hazy memory. I willed my eyes shut, clapsed my mouth together and forgot to breath. I could feel myself floating in a cloud of spice and bliss. Then you sang your stories into my ears in whispers; of soil, of bones, of blood, of stones, things found, things lost, twisting questions, spreading source. When my eyes opened, you stood so clearly before me, heavy with life. My feet were on the sparrow.

I opened my mouth to say your name, and instead of sound, only feathers came out. Brown, creased, broken feathers singed with the marks of despair. They tickled my throat and I gasped with panic as air traded with cardomon, exhaled from a fish who forgot how to drown. Suddenly I am empty and I fall with the weight of nothingness. Tumbling, my hands reach out for you but I find that I have no arms. No eyes to seek you, no ears to find your song, no body to crash onto the ground. As I am dispersed and scattered, something drops into the river and shatters. Beneath the waters, blood flows freely with the pulsing of my pain and I scream with all my soul in fear and agony. No one can hear me. Not even you.

A night has passed and it is morning. I do not want to wake up. The world has changed while we were asleep. Already the hollow imprint of your body left on the bed is losing its heat.