i can't remember the first time i met you. it seems as though you have always been present, with a huge breathtaking hug and a smile that just knocks all doubts away. how can the world begin to spell the loss of you? i just saw a video in tribute to you. and you are there, speaking, your voice sounding just like how it always is, strong, questioning, challenging, always with a hint of a laugh underneath. i cannot remember the sound of your laughter, and that really hurts me.

do you know just how much you are loved? do you know how beautiful you are, in your presence, in your life, in everything that you do and touch and see? you are like the heart of a ripple, imperceptible and humble in your constant agitation of complacency. and we have not yet seen the end of those ripples you have caused. change upon change. awakening upon awakening. you inspire.

everytime i have the chance of having a conversation with you, i leave a fuller person. did you know you do that to people? you make me feel with earth under my feet, you make me think with the tireless spinning of webs inside my head, forming question marks that are sparked by fire, pushing me to act, however small my hands and feet, they can move and make and break and create. after each conversation, you make me believe that.

when i was drowning myself in a sea full of guilt and inadequacy, for not doing more, for not giving more, you were always so light and honest in your appreciation, all scales fall away and dissolve into resolve. it doesn't matter. what matters is everything that is, and everything that could possibly be. humility. you teach me humility.

and you have opened me to a kind of love i did not realise is possible. without lines, without trade, without spaces. you are so wise. you are so sharp. you dance in the waves of cheeky laughter. you are truly, someone the world was not prepared to deserve. and is not prepared to lose.

there is an absence that a century of grieving could not shadow the form of exactly how deep, how much we have lost. all i know is i miss you so much. an insensible craving that cannot begin to grasp the fact that you are gone. with love toni. you are a magical blessing.

tahlil for toni kasim tonight (wed) at 7pm, at mosque near subang old airport. mosque has no name but apparently you jjst do a 3 o'clock at the roundabout and you'll see it. should last from maghrib to isya'. it's not exactly a multi-faith ceremony but friends of all faiths are welcome to be in the mosque compound to remember her in everyone's unique way. do pass the message on.

haven't blogged in awhile, and i think i've forgotten how to write.

spent tuesday night at a vigil, held in protest against continued detention of revathi masoosai aka siti. checked the definition of vigil, and it basically means a period of deliberate wakefulness and watching over something.

i guess in this context, it makes sense. making a public statement that the whole politicisation of religion is being watched. and crowding at merdeka square locates the issue as something related to our freedom to shape the idea of nation and citizenship.

but standing there, holding a candle, watching the TV and news crews catching quick soundbytes, preferably passionate and full of dramatic tension, it was strange. the affair was peaceful, and peaceful protests are wonderful. but i can't help thinking...

who died? why so few of us? who is this dude passing around a neat flyer interpellating everyone as greedy christians? is this more of a social networking event for people to catch up? why isn't there a buzz about the issue? how am i supposed to know what the issue is unless i subscribe to malaysiakini or msian-ngo? is that why the cops just hang about, no choppers above our heads trying to drown out speeches or freak out tourists? is it because it's 8pm on a tuesday night at a street where few people go to unless there's siti or football on the giant screen?

a little hungry for more.

---
a really good friend asked me to join facebook last week, so i did.

i have been resisting all these social networking platforms cause they freak me out. everyone being connected, voluntarily giving out personal data, able to be surveilled and tracked down to the smallest detail, happy heaven for advertisers and other corporations who can save money on market research...

it just makes me want to scream privacy is a sacred thing!!!! which makes me check their privacy policy.

in short, if you want an account, you have to give:

• your full name
  can be masked - just give a silly name, although it kinda defeats the purpose cause no one can find you unless you go around using a silly name, which means you're track-able anyway
• your email address
  can create a dummy by using gmail, yahoo mail, or any other free webmail services. but also means you'll end up with 1 email account per sign up of any of these things, which means you'll be spending a lot of time checking multiple emails!
• your birthday
  can be masked - just give any random date as long as it makes you more than the legal age as understood by the service provider. which makes me wonder about the intended security (it covers their ass, as in the kid lied, we didn't know, we did everything we could. but is there another way?). which also means you'll have to jot it down somewhere in case password is lost at some future date and you need verification (like yahoo!). 
  
• your school
  can just select none of the above.
  

and so on. but the whole point of joining these things is to put down an identity to yourself that is real, and connectable to real people who have encountered you in the past no? i found some uni friends in the space, and it did make me quite happy. but then... i dont forsee myself spending lots of time hanging out with them over facebook. or is this usually the case? i have no idea. what is the pleasure of these things? the number of friends or fanny-tastic testimonies in the www?

i should stop thinking. or writing. it hurts like crazy.

kek cawan ku yang begitu manja
marilah bersantai bersama-sama
ke hujung, ke akhir, riwayat kita
kek cawan, ku janji, ku bukan gila.

+++++

someone has opened a can of worms. it is crawling all over cyberspace. every corner i turn, i sight that wriggling creature making itself known. many learned people are trying to name it, but it's stubbornly slippery. all that's left behind is a slightly sticky trail of wetness. no one is claiming it yet, so it continues to squirm and tunnel through concrete layers of self-assurances built from years of back patting. the can opener has withdrawn to silence. smirking uncertainly for a job well done, or maybe done too well. i'm going to keep my eye on this worm.

it's generally white. a kind of blindness that sits awkwardly. like groping towards death. the muscles around my eyes tauten to pull as much skin away from eyeballs as possible, meeting in folds on top of my forehead. i am only imagining this. i don't actually know. but memory sometimes serves as a mirror. fingers splayed, touching in hiccups at first, then with a kind of jabbing desperation to feel something, anything other than numbing white. i swallow dirty gulps of suffocation. there is nothing here.

you know something is cracking
when your feet start to slip
and you can't tell if its solid ground
or icy clouds holding your grit;

sometimes i feel like nothing
can rumble the straightness of my crooked spine
sometimes i feel like nothing
will squeeze to hunger, the endless tube of time;

there is no horizon large enough, to paint
my dreams splashed in a chaotic spider dance
no philosophy or politics
to choke destiny into chance.

but something is cracking
my feet starts to shiver
i want to hang on to anything
that will nail me a believer.

reboot

things are getting a little slow
too many things are running
in the background
foreground
it's getting hard to breathe

my mind is running past white walls
freezing as they shift
constructing
constricting
it's getting hard to breathe

i suck on one cigarette after another
ctrl+s, ctrl F4
ctrl + alt + tab
ctrl 4
the error stays on the screen
impassive
possesive
it colours my face with light,
a little green.

if only i can press down
for 5 seconds
and wait
for it to flicker shut
and come alive
one more time,
innocent with first breath

if only i can reboot
everything in life.

some people are able to see words form inside their head. the sinew and fleshiness of their anger, hurt, unbearable sadness or joy or confusion or frustration or... other things where single words try to define but hold nothing close to what is, becomes. through sentences and metaphors and memory that conjure up details remembered as acutely as a scene, replayed over and over again. a strain of music stiched into every breath exhaled. sometimes, elaborate tapestries can be woven. lines of principles and philosophies are pumped with new vigour as they are reartculated into different moments, different contexts, different relationships. or poetry. where something small contains the wobbling girth of everything that is. the smallness multiplying in difference. this colour. this action. this forgetfulness. this. these reasons.

i cannot. all i have is some kind of bulbous thing. morphing into postules that erupt and fatten and deflate and becomes something else. as i try to touch what is. it is not. it is something altogether different. my pauses gain a life of their own. they say things i do not mean. i try to capture the empty balloons that changes colour even as they point at me before escape. but all i catch are giggles and a deeper creature of awkwardness. unintended intentions.

sometimes i try to pin them down through writing. if speech is fleeting and capricious. maybe the regimental leanings of actual writing can somehow lessen possibilities from spawning probabilities. but even here, i think i fail.

today i am completely gnawed into sadness.

i have just watched a documentary about nick drake, and in the process, found one of the most beautiful poem i have ever encountered. it is by nick drake's mom, whose name was not mentioned throughout the documentary. even when she spoke (her face was not shown throughout, i'm not sure why. instead, they shot a close-up of rain falling on leaves outside of his bedroom window when she did), the title was "nick's mother". his sister played a cassette recording of their mother's music to demonstrate how he was influenced by her (and it was not hard to imagine), and on the cassette, it said "molly's songs".

molly (?) is a genius. secret and hidden in this until recently obscure brilliant singer, song-writer and guitarist's legend.

this is her poem:

The Shell
- by Molly (?) Drake

Living grows around us
like a skin,
To shut away the outer desolation;
For if we clearly marked
the furthest deep
We should be dead long years
before the grave.
But turning around within the homely shell of worry
Discontent and narrow joy,
We grow and flourish;
And rarely see
The outside dark that would
Confound our eyes.

Some break the shell.

I think there are those who
Push their fingers through the
Brittle walls
and make a hole,
and through this cruel slit
Stare out across the cinders of the world with naked eyes.
They look both out and in;
Knowing themselves,
And too much else beside.

jabulani , c5 , binsoup  & fatfairy  ... i think you will appreciate the beauty with different reasons.

if anyone knows more about molly, please let me know. i am hungering for more.

(i had to type out the poem as it was profoundly recited by Nick's sister, so i am guessing at the breaks and punctuation.)

Eduardo Recife - 1 and 2
----------------------------------

it's been awhile since i have used this space for myself. i hardly know how anymore. i feel like i am speaking to a known audience. that scares me. my lack of anonymity frightens me. what does that mean when a person can only speak what she feels or thinks to an unanswering wall? a wall or space of emptiness that knows no language. or can not name?

i suppose it can mean that she is afraid of being asked to answer for the many things she says. it can mean that i am afraid that someone willl recognise me and life ceases to become one stream of interesting mundanity after another, but instead, become like the focussed aesthetics of a camera lense. violently obtrusive. every pimple magnified.

or perhaps a form of mindless flowing into norms. calcifying modes and methods to what is given value, or already named. chance and creations squandered through repetitive motions of a different pattern. telling, multiplying, reifying, performing. linking. attempting significance through the same. attempting invisibility through the same.

or maybe casting another layer to the skin. one more cleaving of the self into another private, another public, another common, another test of trust. one more incomprehensible poem to wade through before realising truths that lie in indistinct textures that change with every contact. slipping like the alchemy of perfume and sweat.

there is no reason for one to lay her life within the palms of another; the blackened cold pupils of another. the only safety and sanctity in being is the innate ability to disappear into silence.

yet we persistently attempt its rupture and destruction through evolving calculated guesses. intimate as instinct.

language, signs, codes, logos, gestures of the limbs, flickers of the lips, making histories, burdening every accidental occurence with meaning, dates, numbers, time, locking every colour, line, smell and light into an eternal prison of unforgiving memory. compelling the impossible feat of free falling from every random ressonance. calling every hesitant resistance as betrayal.

am i truly walking around, searching for my name? as it burns onto new tongues and rebelliously squirms its misrecognition, does the yearning stay the same?

one of the 43 things i would like to do is forget myself and laugh. but i truly think i lack this thing called humour. some will tell me it indicates a shallowness of intelligence. knowing the inside cosmic joke means understanding the cosmic pattern itself and the ludicrousness of its continued self-perpetuation. but the more i find out, the sadder i become. my bafflement produces no self-effacing snigger. or the clarity it gives. every dive bops me up to scummy depths.

if i were a cartoon character, i would be a morose tadpole.