excerpts #4

two stoic people find solace
in both their sidelined loneliness,
with little chirps of excitement
and chartered chatters,
in your refusal to acknowledge
the sporadic sparks that never –
never will – burst into flame
you leave the arena and assume
the role of the anathema
*
there is nothing that binds you to them 
as much as the world owes nothing to you
however much your want and desire to
subdue everything at your feet.
*
saya macho saya okay.
*
poyo adalah mengatakan “ada buku E.Said atas meja aku sekarang ni”.
*
siapa Din Kino?
*
sekarang ini De Beauvoir dah termasuk dalam list perempuan perempuan menarik. ok dah tu je.
*
to find/experience/explore the concept of love in story books, however greatly romantic it is, tak kisah la kau baca Goethe ke Rilke atau Kierkegaard, ianya bukanlah satu substitute yang sebenar. cinta agung konon. tapi what do i know?
*
kalau kau tulis esei pasal Rilke atau cinta dan penulisan kemudian salah eja nama Rilke sebagai Milke berulang kali sambil quote dan analisis elegi pertama dia berulang kali bermakna ada sesuatu yang salah di situ. haih. takde orang boleh khatam Duino dalam satu malam.
*
bila perempuan perempuan yang tengok drama melayu bergaduh dengan orang yang tak tengok drama melayu, kau akan angkat tangan sambil katakan, ai takde masa nak layan orang orang bosan seperti kamu. it’s a lost cause from the beginning.

initiation

the woman spoke of initiation yesterday during our little communion in the evening. that by the end of the summer, each of us would be asked whether first, we would like to be recruited, further up the hierarchy (an imaginary one), and become one of those sisters whose sole aim to give give give. as if their only aim to be generous in time energy wealth and to spend according their to capacity to our little juniors (in the foreseeable future).

i say, okay, grinning madly from one ear to another, much to her annoyance, because she seems to take this thing too seriously, too rigidly, too ardently. what’s life without a little gaiety?

i say to her, opening my little book of quotes and say, first, learn to forgive yourself.

tuhan dan hal hal lain

sometimes i think of days whenever you aren’t around at my disposal at think whether this is right whether your looming presence is ever overshadowing my every thought my every wish such that you are a constant in every decision i make. and will not that be the case with all that lies ahead of us, where i would have to give up one by one my desire my satire my whole being, a complete surrender to the will of another?

you see i wrote that thinking about you, instead of putting god as the center piece inside my head. how wretched an existence. and so long as this push and pull back and forth, of me trying to evict you out of my head without much success, i cannot be happy. do i seek verses of poetry in all their metaphorical drunkenness and languor to find the love of the mortal or the love of the divine? i in all my hunger which cannot be appeased must devour all that comes to me until i hit it but realize with such sadness that you, are never enough for me. that you might suffice but temporarily dear love, because i clamour for the eternal that i have not found.

and to keep pressurizing you to finally be done with it all is characteristic of me. i want to expire, to climb new heights, to plunge into the unknown, to exhaust you, the idea of, and of you completely not because so i can move to another soul but because i want to be rid of my contrived contradictory self to purify myself. i want to stamp you out to extinguish you by way of having you so the mind the heart the soul can finally concentrate bent hopefully toward the eternal.

p(l)athos

a little plath every other day.

“The dialogue between my Writing and my Life is always in danger of becoming a slithering shifting of responsibility, of evasive rationalizing, in other words, I justified the mess I made of life by saying I’d give it order, form, beauty, writing about it; I justified my writing by saying it would be published, give me life (and prestige to life). Now you have to begin somewhere, and it might as well be with life, a belief in me, with my limitations , and a strong punchy determination to fight to overcome one by one, like languages, to learn French, ignore Italian (a sloppy knowledge of 3 languages is dilettantism), and revive German again, to build each solid. To build all solid. “

***

” I need you to do this one more thing for me. Break your image and wrench it from me. I need you to tell me in very definite concrete words that you are unavailable, that you do not want me to come to you in Paris in a few weeks or ask you to come to Italy with me or save me from death. I think I can live in this world as long as I must, and slowly learn how not to cry at night, if only you will do this one last thing for me. Please, just write to me one very simple declarative sentence, the kind a woman can understand; kill your image and the hope and love I give it which keeps me frozen in the land of the bronze dead, for it gets harder and harder to free myself from that abstract tyrant named Richard who is so much more, being abstract, than he really is in this world… For I must get back my soul from you; I am killing my flesh without it. “

it’s been a while

since we commune to each other, because of all the things happening here. already i find it hard addressing the general public because now even the slightest hint of emotion is delivered to him. and to confide even the most private stories that you never even care to explain to anyone. be truthful, as they say. honest. honesty. honest. let us love each other for a long long time, where everything is revealed, stripped bare, cracked open, an opal smile that betrays even the slightest emotion. in smiling you sigh, thinking what will you have to go through what will anyone else have to go through, thinking planning pondering weighing calculating all the possibilities conditions that can govern us in say five ten fifteen years time. it is supposed to be eternal. of course the road is a tough one, no one ever said it was easy as a ritual and a certificate signed in front of men clad in kopiahs, many things will come after and it is up to you, no both of you of to live this through.

crafting your own idea of a holiday

the reading list
  • duino elegies, sonnets to orpheus 
  • in the shade of the quran – it helps to read the meanings while memorizing. (and look away)
  • shahadatul haq – although i have a few reservations against this book. but okay, bacalah. homework.
  • towards understanding islam – thoroughly this time. kut. 
*
read some parts of Nursi’s stuff on the miracle that is quran, and some parts of it pertaining to modern science (not that it hasn’t bee expounded by other people), but such allusions he give is sort of interesting. especially in the arranging and choice of  words used from one ayah to another. of course, you hear about the arabs playing particular importance to poets and all that. they should realize the magnificence of each verse, much better than us who receive filtered out translations. heh. 
but you are learning. you are memorizing. you are understanding. so that’s a start. 
i suppose you need to seep into everything slowly and absorb things one by one until it hits your heart. subduing your self into humility before anything else is paramount. and to claim you read this or that before you were even this or that is boastful. you understood nothing to begin with. so you pick up, these little things, one by one. filling out one book after another. casting out several books in the process. 
kbye. 
*

excerpts #3

the thought of owning a person, is compelling to you, but you yourself wouldn’t let yourself be owned.

*
because you are fleeting, dear, and you already you can feel regression remission a relapse into a state of so disagreeableness. you must flee. this is call fight or flight. and to resist such things is futile, because you know yourself giving in from the very beginning. what are we left with, in the end, after all the things we have said?

surely not more than the same repetitive declarations at every silence every pause between us as if to fill the gap already widening. as if at every interlude you would need to pad it with fluff. an attitude so desperate as to not silence reign. as if the breath of another is intolerable. as if every sigh incomprehensible.

at each laugh, each chuckle, you discriminate. now here meanness takes a new meaning. it is considered a virtue, when in fact, it is no more than a marked disdain, one after another, until finally you have emptied yourself of even that, and so, you are left with a bitter aftertaste. contempt.

*

incandescent

“You still haven’t answered my question”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah”
“It’s a combination of knowledge and conviction”
“Knowledge? Knowledge can be taken anywhere, be it bad or good. That in itself is inadequate”
“Aaaah, fine. It’s all the faham/tahu difference eh. Understanding and conviction, then.”
“Aaah, you’re one quick to learn”

*

“Strange how we were once young we fear the word and now we embrace it quite happily”
“I never had anything against it, it’s just I think that it doesn’t really quite apply to me”
“And you discredit the things done by him”
“No, I just don’t think it’s necessary at my stage”

*

“What have you learned from him, then?”
“I, well, stuff”
“Because ultimately it doesn’t come from him, but Him”

*

self denying

there is a feeling of decay within me that must be battled out

this is a cat that must be killed, as it purred in front of you, staring wide eyed at you, as you flip lecture notes for tomorrow’s test one one hand, and your phone complaining to him on another, head massively recovering from yesterday’s laughter, as it jumps at your every movement, and then comes back crawling at you, sniffing your toes, your bag, your hands. you look at it full of hate, and realize that in that particular moment both of you are utterly alone. the cat estranged from its home (two weeks now), barred from entering into anyone’s room (the doors are eternally closed), and even its litter box is opened revealing him burying his head into fecal sands. you, lost, at the back of the bus some two hours away, staring into some punk’s phone screen, him messaging some Bernard Bellamy about going to beat someone tonight, a skimpy skull tattoo on his arm. why brandish anything to your body? and then you thought pathetically of your scars and try to trace out an alphabet or two to remind you of who you once were. it is gone now, and you smile delightfully at the cat, as you wave him and it goodbye and goodnight (it is now four am) and return to the other room and go back to staring into space.