Met David yesterday who says he walked 1110 km from Johor to Kedah, under this thing called Nomadic Lion. Covering roughly 30km a day for 48 days. Pretty neat, sleeping in masjids, and palm oil plantations. When he talks of walking several names come to mind – Thoreau (in the solitude of Walden Pond), Rilke (who took barefooted walks), de Beauvoir (the image of her walking up hills on weekends after teaching somehow transpires after reading her biography), and for some reason, Azriq’s novel, D.U.B.L.I.N.
I have yet to write what I think of it but sometimes the image of the protagonist in a bathtub playing with rubber ducks come up – persistently. Must be the offhand-ish way it was written. People discuss it profusely around me yet all I can muster up are just words, not sentences. Delightful. Towards the end, confusion.
I think what I miss the most are the fields and the seas. All that empty space, vastness. Horizontal stillness.
Emptiness as a form.
p/s; In an attempt to understand poetry better, I am reading Sapardi Djoko Damono’s Hujan Bulan Juni. While I cannot appreciate his vague approach towards nature in his earlier stuff, (I seem to think that Nature on its own cannot evoke anything – it is always our relation/feeling towards it that gives life to it.), I find his later ones more… interesting.
kukirim padamu beberapa patah kata
yang sudah langka
jika pada suatu hari mereka mencapaimu,
rahasiakan, sia-sia sahaja memahamiku
-Sajak-sajak Empat Seuntai
perkaraperkara 