Rindu

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go made it on the Times list of 100 best books but I wasn't a fan. I just finished it and found it to be too meandering the way bits and pieces of events were revealed here and there. Plus, I didn't really like the voice of the narrator, Kathy H. Still, I'm wouldn't doubt that many other people would appreciate such stories.

On another note...maybe it was Sylvan and all her talk about going to the islands. Maybe it was Zane's painting of the shadows creeping into the sea, still plastered on the wall, unfinished. For whatever reason, I'm just pining for the islands. I long for the water to rush and swirl at my feet. I miss Pantai Cenderawasih and all the hanging mobiles made of dead coral, and the sacrificial altar that some voodoo fans erected.

Seriously. When Zane and I were there, we made friends with a Greek tourist. We secretly called her the Bohemian lady and Zane even did a painting of her after we got back from that holiday which he called Bohemian Sunset.

How we got to know her was that she would always walk back and forth on "our" little beach next to Rajawali resort which was being constructed at the time and thus not many people ventured there except us.

Apparently, she passed our way each time to get to "her" little beach over on the other side of some precariously placed boulders and shrub. Sometimes, when she passed by, we would exchange hi's. Another time, she gave us a whole piece of mango which was heavenly if you eat it in the sea! Yet another time, we gave away some bottles of mineral water.

That was how we got to know each other and learn about "her" secret beach. She invited us over and one evening, we did. But instead of walking down the path and crossing the boulders as she had, we snorkelled over there. It was quite far away and Zane and I had to stop snorkeling and just paddled the water at some point.

It wasn't such a huge beach but it was very quiet and private. The sand was white, dead corals lay on the shore and the trees and jungle stood quietly in the back. The boho lady and a couple of her traveling companions were, horror of horrors, in some form of nudity or other!

They had made the beach "theirs" by decorating the place with sea "sculptures" -- some were made of dead coral stacked one on top of another, some were done with sand and water to create fascinating forms, and there were mobiles of dead corals, stones and bits of coloured glass hung on trees. They even made an outdoor shower by channeling a tiny stream to their shower post!

Further in, we were shown a little temple that they had built complete with an altar and dolls, and some inscription of promise and love. That was when I gave a look at Zane that said, "These people are crazy..." For all I knew, we may have been lured here by her mangoes and all so that our heads would be chopped off and eaten!

Needless to say, we quickly put on our snorkeling gear and paddled off as fast as we could!

Heh!

And now, I miss that beach...I miss watching the sunset from the dilapidated pier. I miss the banana pancakes which I can never get here. I miss the evening barbecue and meratah on sweet lips fish. I miss my morning swim in the little bay, so quiet and calm. I miss chasing after those huge majunga Napoleans.

I miss it all...

Oh, Hentian...when will I get to be with you again...?

Ode to my socks by Pablo Neruda

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted with her own
sheepherder hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as if they were
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and the pelt of sheep.

Outrageous socks,
my feet became
two fish
made of wool,
two long sharks
of ultramarine blue
crossed
by one golden hair,
two gigantic blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so beautiful
that for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
of those luminous
socks.

Nevertheless,
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as scholars
collect
sacred documents,
I resisted
the wild impulse
to put them
in a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and chunks of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle
who hand over the rare
green deer
to the roasting spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the
magnificent
socks
and
then my shoes.

And the moral of my ode
is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it's a matter of two
woolen socks
in winter.

To listen to the poem being read, go here.
For notes to accompany this reading, go here.

Eyed wide open

Early this morning, I attached Pak Latiff Mohidin's Kalau Kau Mahu poem to a passionate email (as below) to a friend of mine, Mr. Beary Bear, a self-professed lit-slacker. I thought it was an appropriate poem to send seeing how caught up he is with work that he hardly has time to play with his two daughters.

With numerous readings, the poem will reveal its many layers to him eventually...and I really hope he loves it as much as I do!

Dear Beary Bear,

Sometimes we get too caught up in work that we forget that we have a life to live. I think this is what happened to Ms. Funky – she’s been working too hard that she simply “disappeared” from the social circle. That’s why I only got to see her after 10 over years at the reunion the other night. Before, when I try to find her, I googled her on the internet. She wasn’t even in cyberscpace! It’s like she didn’t exist.

But thank goodness for artists, writers and poets from long before and who are still alive now, from all over the world. Because they are the ones who observe life and write about the everyday, mundane things in life for us, the 9-to-5 slaves, to read and appreciate when we finally wake up from our paper-chasing, bureaucratic nightmare.

They have documented for us what a sunset looks like, the feelings evoked by putting on a pair of socks (yes, there is an actual poem out there by the celebrated Pablo Neruda on this topic – I will send it to you when I find it), what it was like to really experience eating an ice cream, about the beauty of a snail making its way up a tree, etc.

Thank goodness for books – where writers permit us to delve into their minds and read the fascinating stories they weave or conjure up. Some of these writers have fantastic minds that they can create such vastly different worlds from our very own. How imaginative, how clever of them!

If we continue our lives clocking in and clocking out at the office like this, going on clockwork, we would be like robots, you know…and God made all these beautiful things in this world for us to see, smell, appreciate…If we are cooped up in the shopping mall, house or office all the time, what a waste it would have been for God to have created all these things for us – the rivers, the mountains, the jungles. It’s in the Quran you know that this earth was made as a carpet for us, with the clouds to shield us, for us to harvest the fruits of this world for our own pleasure…I forget the verse name, but I’ll find it if you want. *

Oh well, after this “sermon”, I too am guilty of being ignorant of the world. But this is a reminder for you, for me…that there is a whole world out there, outside of this office, this home, that is just waiting for us. Life is more than this existence man has created.

Amen…and yours sincerely,

Ena


* Here it is:

From Al-Baqarah, 2:22

"The One who made the earth habitable for you, and the sky a structure. He sends down from the sky water, to produce all kinds of fruits for your sustenance. You shall not set up idols to rival God, now that you know. "

"Dialah yang menjadikan bumi sebagai hamparan bagimu dan langit sebagai atap, dan Dia menurunkan air (hujan) dari langit, lalu Dia menghasilkan dengan hujan itu segala buah-buahan sebagai rezki untukmu; karena itu janganlah kamu mengadakan sekutu-sekutu bagi Allah, padahal kamu mengetahui."

Shopping made easy

For years, my sister was such an e-bay shopaholic. I never got her fascination for online shopping until I had my chickadee lil Moses and realised that time waits for no mom!

Of course, I miss going to shopping malls and all that, but it's become quite a hassle. Every time we go out, we have to pack a truck-load of stuff for Moses -- his diaper bag, his stroller, his sling and him.

Then when we get there, we'd have to unpack everything in reverse order. Between Zane wanting to shop for his stuff and Moses wanting milk, I get no shopping done.

Now, all I ever do is shop online. Of course, most of my needs now are centred around the baby so I always check out online baby shops. In the past eight months, I've bought baby clothes, nursing clothes and bras, baby books, and breastfeeding stuff like milk storage plastic bags.

I've spent hundreds at one time on my online shopping, but to ease my guilt, I tell myself that these are all necessary purchases. Really.

Okay, except for that one splurge from Mimpi. But it looks so exquisite, I will forgive myself for this one indulgent sin.

I'm waiting for the package to arrive either today or tomorrow. I can't wait! Heheh...

Jazz and Rock

There was a recent period in my life that I didn't listen to music in my car. This went on for many years. I don't remember when it started. Probably about the time Wow.fm stopped airing.

But I do remember why I was fed up with our Malaysia radio. It was the cringe-worthy ads that made me swear off radio forever.

However, recently, I've been tuning in to a couple of favourite stations again. The ads, sadly, are still there, as awful as ever. But the music these days have saved my sanity many a time during Malaysia's infamous traffic jams.

Songs like:

Starlight by Muse
Pari-Pari Bawah Angin by Meet Uncle Hussain
Mawar Khayalan by Laila's Lounge
Viva La Vida by Coldplay
Apologize by One Republic

"You suka tak lagu ni, sayang?" I asked Zane, as Mawar Khayalan was being played on youtube.com.

"My taste and your taste different," was all he said.

Right. I should've known. Heehee. After all, this was a man who listens to Klasik Nasional in his vintage car.

In some ways, Zane and I are worlds apart. Our choice of music, books, art, expression, poison, fashion.

But for all the things that count, we are of one heart.

The East Coast Chronicles

Yesterday, Zane showed me the books he bought for me. They were Daler-Rowney sketch books with beautiful art cover and exquisite ivory pages inside made of acid free paper.

Yes, both of us can get pretty excited over mere books!

He loved them so much, he borong all seven of them from the art supplies store in Ulu Kelang. Some will be for him to do his drawings. Some will be for me to do my writings. The original price was RM50 (art supplies are never cheap), but because it was old stock, the books were tagged at RM22, and because Zane offered to clear the stock, he got them for RM17 each.

But believe me, I've seen Zane spend thousands at a time for a whole year's worth of canvas, paints, brushes and an assortment of art-related stuff at Nanyang Art Shop in Penang.

Anyway, buying the sketch books was just another step towards realising our East Coast Chronicles project. Actually, the project doesn't have an official name yet (the two of us haven't had a decent length of time together to actually discuss the details of the project yet). I just created that on the fly. It might change later on...knowing how fickle I am about these things!

The project started out as something we dreamed up over lunch some weeks back. It fits into the larger picture of us wanting to expand our art business, me wanting to quit my day job and focus on The Art Room, our little studio-gallery-home, and him making his art career fly.

Since I started working in this tourism line, and since Zane has this uncanny ability to find some amazingly beautiful places and experiences, we've really found Malaysia to be a real gem. I'm not just saying that to promote Malaysia as a holiday destination, though I reckon Tourism Malaysia ought to pay me more for this free plug.

We've really seen so many nice sides of Malaysia, places that need a little effort to get to, but all worth the trouble. On our holidays and mini detours, we've inadvertently found some treasures -- a secret beach at Hentian Kecil, a really great kway teow soup food stall and delicious mini nasi lemaks for only 50 sen in Langkawi, and a beautiful sunset view in Penang.

Both of us love the east coast and we just know that there are many secret, unexplored, ignored places there that are just waiting for us!

So this project will see us traveling to the east coast and documenting our journey -- both in writing and drawing. So many of the places in the east coast Zane had painted before no longer exist due to development, erosion or some reason or other. And so, we just feel that it was important for us to make a record of our journey -- Narrations in prose and painting (is that a possible exhibition title?).

At the end of the project, we hope to put up an exhibition, mainly of his paintings, supported by my writings.

The details of this project, like I said, have not been worked out yet. But, one by one, we are making efforts towards realising this dream.

For a start, I'll have some 40 days of leave next year to apply to go on this journey! Yay!

Fibroids

When I was pregnant with Musa at about three months, I suffered from excruciating abdominal pains and had to be taken to the emergency room.

I thought I was losing the baby.

After the medical examination, I was told that I had multiple fibroids growing everywhere in my uterus, my cervix, behind them, etc. Like I said, they were everywhere. And they were feeding off my pregnancy hormones and getting bigger (which caused the pain) and crowding out the fetus.

When she first counselled me about my condition, I was about three months pregnant and, due to the fibroids, looking like five! She told me all the possible risks and possible pain and possible outcomes. They all involved losing the baby, losing the mother, and more unbearable pain.

I cried some tears that day...and I was scared sh*t.

There was one particular fibroid she was worried about...the one that was at my cervix. Because of its location, she wasn't sure if I would be able to have a normal delivery (as opposed to C-section). Well, as it turned out, I managed to push the baby out through the "door" as was intended.

Today, I went to see Dr. Reena again for advice. After some nine months, the fibroids were still there, big as ever.

She told me the options, none of which was appealing: let them be or take them out. With the latter choice, there was risk of hemorrhaging which could lead to a hysterectomy. Of course, if I let them be and decide to conceive again, it would be, in her own words, a "stormy pregnancy."

I'm leaning towards "not doing anything about them" because I'm too chicken. But then, would I want another baby, and if I do, will I be able to handle another difficult pregnancy?

I'm kinda at a loss here.

Kiss!

The little chickadee, Musa Hashim, got his first kiss on Monday!

Before buka puasa, I took him for a short stroll to say hello to the neighbour's kids, Tala, Tia and 2-year old Kayla.

The kids loved Musa so much and couldn't get enough of hugging and touching him. And Musa, was equally ecstatic to have friends his age for once (he'd been spending too much time with adults all this while).

Musa babbled and laughed and was just making so much eye contact with them. Then the kids took turns holding him.

When it was time to say goodbye, they all kissed him. Kayla was so fascinated with Musa that she came back again and again for more kisses.

One parting kiss they shared involved some tongue action some more!

Aiyoh, my boy dah French kiss at just 8+ months...with an older woman pulak tu!

Heheh....

A poem for Simin

I first read this poem in Roger Housden's "Ten Poems to Change Your Life" which I got from the bargain bin at a booksale and which I just love to bits. I think it really sums up Simin's courage and I hope that a "stretcher will come from grace to gather us up."

Zero Circle by Rumi
(Version by Coleman Barks)

Be Helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we're lying.
If we say No, we don't see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.

Courage

Last week, I got an unexpected email from an old friend. It said, "Ena. I am in KL. This is my number. Please call me. I love to see you. Simin."

The first time I met Simin was in Tehran, Iran. At the time, Simin was a journalist covering the event I was there to organise.

In the crazy bustling streets of Tehran, in between press conferences, in cafes sipping sugary sweet drinks and between the bookshelves of so many bookstores, we bonded, Simin and I.

She showed me the Tehran she loved. At first, it was terrifying to cross the seemingly lawless roads, to be driven in a taxi that swerved at un-Godly speeds, but I got used to it. So this is Tehran...like Petaling Street on speed.

When I left, I never thought I would see her again. Somehow, I always remembered Simin. She really went out of her way to make me feel welcomed in her city. And then, the email appeared and last Friday, we met after two years since our first meeting.

When I entered her hotel room and saw the amount of luggage she brought, I couldn't help but say, "Simin, you have your entire life here in those bags sitting on the floor of this hotel room." She could only smile wordlessly.

It seemed like her arrival here in Malaysia was unplanned and rushed, but I didn't want to intrude and ask too many questions. I was among the handful of people she knew in Malaysia. She came without a job, without a house, without many friends. And she still managed to smile. I really admire her courage.

She told me that she had been traveling independently for almost a year -- to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. When she came back to her job in Tehran, it was only to tell her boss that she was quitting.

I guess, I could understand her feelings there. It was like the time I went to North Africa and visited Morocco, Lebanon, Dubai and Algeria...I had met so many exciting and interesting people, nurtured many dreams and ideas, that it seemed impossible for me to go back to the boring life I had in Malaysia -- the 9-to-5, the traffic jam, the same thing day-in-day-out.

I had felt so free on that trip, so liberated, that coming home seemed like being imprisoned. I had yearned for a new life, a fresh start, and felt that I could fly!

Well, I didn't leave town...and I think I still stuck with the daily grind. Kinda accommodated to it, actually. Perhaps I could have had a different kind of life, but this one is not too bad, you know.

But to those like Simin who had the courage to pursue their innermost desires and ambitions, I salute you for your bravery in making the change, in jumping in head-first without knowing if you'll be able to come up for air, to go blindly into the dark, for being true to your feelings.

I am in awe.