Category: Uncategorized

haven’t watched any good movies lately. maybe i ran out of people to tell me the good stuff, such that i’d resort to farty movies on the tele. or maybe i have lost the propensity to fathom really good films. or maybe videos don’t excite me as much anymore. or maybe i no longer find it worthwhile to dig over new films, go to cinemas and all that. maybe i spent a large part of being 17, 18,19 just watching movies finding nothing worthwhile to do. it’s all just ignorance back then, eh?

you hear about the suicidal h, hovering between the living and the dead, quite unsure of this or the other, dragging his existence, terrorizing his surroundings, casting fear and worry into the hearts of others. your name, do you know what it reminds me of?

But if they turn away, say, “Sufficient for me is Allah ; there is no deity except Him. On Him I have relied, and He is the Lord of the Great Throne.”

the father of a dear friend of mine
just passed away yesterday.
i don’t know what to react to this.
in fact, i don’t know how to properly
react to any news of death, either.
one is arrested with a sudden paralysing feeling.
as if time stopped moving, and everything suddenly 
pales in comparison.
as if each movement ceases to mean anything.
you see it in movies, in film, in the news, everyday
how many? only one? two? oh not a big figure.
how disensitized we have become
to feel towards the unliving
a certain somnambulism
a stupor that continues to gape at life
to grasp to seize greedily
what it has to offer us
when the earth is always ready
to receive us.

of course, you could always glance at me across the seats, always eager to speak to me because you know how much i know yet you would never allow it out of pride out of egotism over your flowery poetry with nuptials and strange barbed words spread at every stanza. no i don’t find it strong, profound, or even remotely tasteful, perhaps because i am a mere layman atrophied by equations and formulas related to all the macro and micro, my brain hardwired to become to architect circuits  designate wave forms manipulate numbers – i didn’t study literature or english or poetry in my university – i know not what is past present principle tenses verbs nouns in all their confusing trajectories – nor do i know art or philosophy psychology social theory – marxism confuses me, nietzsche disgusts me, freud bores me jung eludes me kant i cannot fathom sartre makes ponder but kierkegaard delights me – i never studied german or french or japanese enough to translate them to use them in my letters or tweets because i don’t want to suddenly be asked how am i progressing along even though i have all three lessons and dictionaries in my room – i don’t suddenly secretly address people ff in obscurely written essays in to appear intellectual because i know i am not i am extremely limited in my capacity to understand all the isms and dualities – i don’t even understand love or angelic references because i don’t like to read nature i let it seize me with feelings and awe not with words and colors – i am no artist and i have no eye for the particular i let things and people and scenery imbue me but i cannot paint them with expressions. i am merely preoccupied with my own world and the little bits that i pull from everything. so  yes, my opinion, my words; they don’t have the least significance to you, o great poet, they only occupy a little space here and nowhere else.

the whole point of the expression, if i were to give it an expression, is to let another person know your thoughts. but what if you wanted to conceal a thing in the first place? how does anything gets written then? mon cherie remains an idea, because she is steadily growing, bemoaning her fate and anxiety; you are anxious enough to write it down, but find it difficult to get out of bed and stare monotonously at the computer for hours without end. yes, it is difficult precisely because you’d rather lose yourself in short empty chatter fruitless pandering that points toward nothing but short momentary bursts to mollify your heart, that you realize will never be enough. why don’t you, why won’t you, turn your head to what lasts, to what gives you more permanence?
*
then again, to speak of anyone, to anyone, these days is rather fruitless.
*
you have abandoned all ideas of being purified and dignified, and would rather roll in your sheets and face nothing but the wall than embrace the disparaging noise that creep across the hallway in all their gaiety and laughter.
*
reading list;
marx, beauvoir, kafka, swettenham.
(yet you know you’ll never finish any of them)
*
the fourth state of matter, jo ann beard.
*
don’t send anything if you think i’m not worthy of it. it is as simple as that. don’t complain of the inability to comprehend. sometimes it’s the refusal to acknowledge that leads to a cold response. one is not at loss of words, rather one doesn’t want to give any.
*
would rather read than write. one must be patient, and not eager to lash out words upon words to claim the title writer. right now you must lay dormant and read read read.
*
someone sent me a picture of some author to the phone. it is now forever marred with a very sial existence.
*
it’s blatant but only with those familiar.
*
sekian

wrote another email yesterday. did a word count and saw it amounted to a thousand words, just written under an hour. that is your pace you guess, if you don’t put much thought into it, to blast, blast away without a care. toe on the side, looping indefinitely without knowing or caring which is which. of course, one has to wrap up at some point, but to end with, i am going to read kafka now is very abrupt. the thing arrived this morning, all soaked up in rain, so you teared it open after you agreed to get spaghetti at A’s place, bringing in a pile of books you said that you wanted to read. you didn’t even read anything there. you slept on the cold hard floor. it was raining. it was snowing, in fact, in other parts of the country, despite it being a month into spring. the mad weather. you sat at the side of the cafe waiting for the binding to be finished, submitted it, going through the breezing wind saying hello to brian while he tells you of his nineteen year old autistic son of how his mother left him how you had to take care of him. my hands are full, so you see him reflecting on his life, a mild expression on his face but it was raining you had to say goodbye adieu and brace again the cold weather.

I am reading the Unaddressed Letters by Frank Swetthenham. It turns out it is a series of letters (most possibly written by him himself), addressed to several different people, but more frequently to one specific person. His Carina. This Carina, whether she existed or not, whether she is but a collective of images wrapped in one persona, is of no importance. The advantage of unaddressed letters, he said, is that one does not have to think of the other person, or the his reaction. Because in writing, the image of the addressed appears before us, and thus, under his gaze, or what really is under his influence, that we write. Thus we are constrained in both our language and subject.

Why not then just have a journal, you say? It’s because a journal never has an audience. A writer is a liar if he says he only writes for himself, secretly he conceals his desire to be read by at least one person, imaginary or not. For everyone desires to be heard, to be sought out, to be spoken to, whether by a stranger, a friend, a lover, god if you may.

Of course, to be the recipient of such letters (or emails, for that matter) is a feeling even more wonderful. Now, who’s going to write a real love letter to me?

p/s; he quotes frequently from persian poetry (most likely rumi/hafez), and has a thing for snakes, sunshine, india, and the whole eastern experience. i suppose if i lived at the beginning of 20th century tanah melayu would be extremely enchanting.

as if you need to be jovial all the time. 
of course, i tell nothing to anyone anymore. and they keep listening in even though there is none to be said, each heaved in their silent crawl, ready to snap snap snap at every opportunity. i am alone in my wandering/running.
after all, what’s worse than the absence of a person? it is silence of presence.
at least for the latter you could take comfort in not having to care, to reach out. no agitation to yak about in order to fill in the emptiness. the spilling of triviality.
but here i am basking in agony. basking? how can there be joy in pain?
never.
yet you keep calling me a masochist downplaying the suffering of others but i am the one who is always try to be jovial about this unbearable existence.
we laugh at ourselves, believing it will alleviate ourselves gaping at the world with wonder and beauty everyday we become little woodsworths and seize, carpe diem, tres bien tres bien.

but now it’s just tres movais.

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”.
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siapa Din Kino?
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sekarang ini De Beauvoir dah termasuk dalam list perempuan perempuan menarik. ok dah tu je.
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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?
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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.
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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.