Author: perkaraperkara

to listen to reproductions of Oh My English in real life. broken as hell as they may be, they are the most jovial people on earth. despite having to go back home at four in the morning or to live in constant fear of electrocution. it’s seldom enough that we even hear men across different ages talk to each other, let alone joke. so this kind of atmosphere is what makes a workplace more enjoyable. i suppose.

of course, there are always the imploring ones who insist to speak English as a way to address those in the lower strata. imposing incorrect grammar to state your position, so do we stammer in fear or in horror?

i feel as if i am entering some void in which i know not whether i should continue to dwell in out of reluctance to meet the demands of the outside. they call this being avoidant, of being fearful of things you do not know its consequences (but nevertheless deep inside you do know things will pan out to be okay anyway – what great trials await a twenty one year old in this twenty first century anyway? nothing – and everything at the same time)

yet i continue to dream of unspeakable heights which i know (at this rate) i shall never be able set foot of. this is because laziness always set in at every hour that to see to witness to perform a minute of genuine work would be a miracle , or perhaps i am allowing myself being assailed from every direction that i am simply at lost, stunted, unable to move. the next obvious thing to do is to naturally remove these so called distractions, which are just, essentially petty and inconsequential in itself that it is shameful to even to speak of them.

the problem however arises when these things are the very things that used to move you that used to
constitute a definite part of your being, so embedded they are that you cannot just dispense them entirely. so much that you’d rather play false, say false things, be false characters, speak with false enthusiasm, intonation. what’s worse is that these are not false at all, in fact, they are the correct (the sensible, the norm) way things are supposed to be conducted.  so there you have a hypocrite. a disharmony between aim and character (heart, desire?).

*

this is my stop. i must go to work now. am going to finish the last twenty pages of Jose Saramago’s The Elephant’s Journey. then continue his Blindness, reading Rilke and Salome’s letters in between. one of these days i need to go to the bookstore and buy myself  Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and a Pamuk’s My Name is Red.

goodbye.

i feel as if i am in this state of perpetual stupidity, where i am not actually learning anything but lulling myself to the will of others, be it family or friends, to add that i am not even doing a good job at that, which makes it worse.

there is a need for solitude, and whether i can explain it to people or not i don’t know. too many things move. even if not in your direction. i am easily distracted by movement. the stillness of the mind is not achieved, for there is always some mundane chore to be done, even eating for that matter, for then the fear of offending comes into play. one must oblige, comply, even though it takes half of the day.

sometimes i wish i could just disappear for a week and not talk to anyone at all. or not to participate in the world.

is there no way into the mind?

incessantly in english, laughing haughtily noisily so that people can here how bloody ‘in the moment’ they are, pretending they have anything interesting to say, when all they talk about fall into the following;

• the internet speed
• online gaming
• persatuan shit
• jobs and ‘planning ahead’
• phones and tablets and computer
• infantile talk about the country

so i went to Johor under this program organised by a certain body which aims to retain “talent” inside the country by persuading them to work here instead of migrating to other places. which is a good initiative to combat brain drain, and expose us to different job prospects, especially in the south of Malaysia (but not a step further). it is sort of fascinating to see oil rigs and aircraft engines and ships and subsea equipment being made, as well as marvel at things you never really care about how it was being made. electricity, oil, that sort of stuff, and the amount of engineering it comes with. because all this while you only care about the end product.

the only things i read these days is whatever the people at Issue Magazine are writing. i give up on Plato, i probably need to reach some sort of contemplative mood in order to do that. these days i am one who is too bounded to another, to the point of annoyance. so this instant gratification of your laments, thoughts, rants, in the form of replies, texts, calls, messages, tweets, emails, whatever really, has really thrown reflection out of the window. you are not driven to the point of desperation that enables you properly assess things. the invasion of other people’s thoughts before your own. we call this cacophony.

it’s nice, to have this break from the people you normally hang out overseas with. disillusionment, if anything. they always go about talking about how great the outside world is, concentrating on dakwahs and theories that are too idealistic in nature but fail to listen/read anything going on in their own country except what’s already on facebook. all slogans but nothing really being discoursed. semangat je lebih tapi infantile in thoughts.

but who am i to judge other people eh? i myself have many other flaws.

***

semasa saya tidur di UKM malam sabtu sebelum pergi demo hari tu, ada berbual dengan beberapa orang semasa sedang membuat banner (yang lastnya tak join pun). dengan impeccable disguise saya (kut), saya pergi dengar taklimat budak budak Persatuaan Islam Mahasiswa (?) yang rata ratanya budak budak  fakulti pengajian islam.. later into the night, le friend and i menyimpulkan/mempersoakan bahawa adakah local students more timid in nature? atau adakah maisarah terlalu semangat bercakap selepas minum ipoh white town coffee perisa hazelnut? but mereka belajar benda benda hebat so kagum. “Kajian Tarikat Nashqabandi”, misalnya. I is jealous.

curiously though (kata mereka) mostly they learn from slides and not a critical reading of any text (unless they choose to self-study, that is). so it’s understandable for some people *cough* to steal from libraries and claim to have lost them, because to leave them unread in dusty bookshelves would be a much bigger atrocity. tak gitu?

sometimes i wonder if i’ll be happier studying social sciences/philosophy and that sort of stuff. no doubt i’ll be more in tune with myself. but everything is dandy so far so it’s best to move forward.

***

next up the reading list after half-finishing Fear and Trembling, is Plato’s the republic.

***

i might just draw up the things i’ll read right now while i’m in Malaysia;

• Paradise Lost, John Milton – this thing has been lying for years now 
• cuba baca semula Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Annemarie Schimmel – as i’ve read parts of Rumi, Attar, and Omar Khayyam. . might be interesting to delve into again and understand better.
• Leviathan, Auster?
• Saramago, whichever book.
• finish Marquez.

and now everything falls apart.

slowly i am putting everything on hold until the time which i know will not come comes up. there’s a lot of price you need to pay for solitude around here. that means, losing your sleep and cutting phone calls which are all insubstantial to say the least, which is all okay easy considering you do need that time for thinking or reading or whatever. stagnant, that’s what i feel at the moment. so the problem is over indulgence in one thing that you forget neglect all the other stuff.

reading 100 Years of Solitude, grand as it sounds, but i’m already disenchanted by it. Surely one must know the limits of magic realism. I suppose in short doses it is okay. Maybe one needs to read it over a span of weeks to actually filter through the bizarre-ness of it all, not considering the overlapping names which confuse you further and further. so stop.

regarding work, i think the learning curve is very slow at the moment, but seeing the different equipment being used and steps on how to maintain them, there is still a lot learned. at least all things are being manifested physically from the papers and formulas you used to study. they take the practical form sans all the calculation. and it’s not all about learning, it’s about listening to the stories told by the workers about seeing his friend literally exploded in front of his eyes because of a flashover, or how removing a dead man’s shoes also meant removing a dead man’s feet. these make you shudder, but also more aware of the things you are dealing with.

i probably need to write more. i am the verge of beginning, but i never do. there’s this need to reconcile with a few fears, obstacles that don’t really exist except in the realm of my own imagination. i remain a poor reluctant sod.

so i go read Fear and Trembling and prepare to go to work for the day.