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sometimes the conversations that go on unrecorded will be lost in time, like everything else that has come before you, so lost we are in this infinitude of noise. she wants to read but is unable hence resort to talking talking endlessly to a person or two about the future about you of cherry picking of dry biscuits of anything. mind mates, what a word. but you found that somewhere else, and apply it quite freely. how unoriginal how unnatural. but is there such a natural thing for you in the first place my dear? i don’t know myself.

but here we have, a permanence, a history of all things that have come to accord. is this not what you wanted in the first place? everything has fallen into its rightful place, aligned, assigned, alighted, and the only thing left to do is to commence. to begin. but what beginning? what end?

nothing interesting happening of late. just people abundantly swarming in and out of your lives all you could wish for yourself is some time effectively alone. and even alone doesn’t necessarily mean not seeing or talking to people. it is the absolute stillness that we crave. 

now that the ordeal is over, where everything is already out in the open, all sentiments and intentions known, i am first to severe you from myself and then wait wait wait and prepare to what is to become. for the grand conclusion. this is frightening indeed but what other way must we direct ourselves but forward?

i could never be happier.

to limit ourselves so that nothing imperfect ever escapes us. works in progress, scrap ramblings, what use are there for one’s image is shattered. it is better not to speak, than to mingle and be free as you risk yourself of exposure.

but where’s the fun in all that?

it is only when you start putting yourself out there is where all the interesting things happen. you cannot expect random people to approach you and recommend you rumi out of the blue one saturday afternoon when you were fourteen in a bookstore just because you happen to be poring over books at one corner, trying to find Father and Sons because that seemed like a good text to introduce yourself to nihilism. you even had a book to record each title and author you were going to read. now that, doesn’t happen everyday, dear.

and if i happen to confess out of odd desperation out of chaotic silence please do not fail me in the end, dear. i want us to endure.

(because a five star rating in Goodreads alone, never suffice)

i think, in reading Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, one begins to appreciate how fortunate we, as a woman to live in the world at this age where more privileges are given, more opportunities, more freedom, more everything.

of course, i haven’t been reading any ‘feminist’ literature, so to speak, to comment enough about them. seeing Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice on your mother’s bookshelf membuat kau, aaaah noooooo, such a long windy volume, what can a woman write about anyway. of course, there is, Anne Frank, which you never finish (or did, rather hazily), because she wrote bady (and the cries of war seem to you so foreign an idea). and then Sylvia Plath, but you have been speaking about her plenty of times already. malas dah.

of course, reading the essay, one could not help but marvel how Woolf ever rose out of all those beadles and begin to write, rather porously into pages and pages, where libraries are locked for woman, and money denied and all that.

(ha, mula lah tu.)

of course, you have read in all those Dostoevsky novels, where sisters are educated by their fathers in all the arts, married off to men of standing. you think, good, now that isn’t so bad after all. Natasya forever remains perfect to you. but then you read of the flogging of the milking of the bearing children and all those grushenkas and harlots and prudes then reality dawns upon you.

you have seen Hamka’s Di Bawah Lindungan Kaabah, where the girl is forced to stay at the island while the guy easily goes to Mekah studying whatever it is that he desires, while she has to be content riding bicycles doing accounts of his father and be feverish at every thought of her damned future.

Schopenhauer was a misogynist.
Khomeimi pun sama je.

and you yourself, weren’t you, at the age of twelve felt jealous because your brothers got into boarding school where you didn’t because girls are simply much smarter (or better at academics at such an early age),
and thus harder to get in. one doesn’t have to strive that much as a boy – all they need is that stamp of the son of and he is employed.

but all that doesn’t concern you. as you visit the women studies section in the library, you see so many subjects written of women; women here, women that, women this, unearthing woman, so much that the idea repels you – you didn’t manage to find Beauvoir’s the second sex anyway – but you know the old bookshop at the city sells them – her image persists in each visit.

but enough about women. i am to comment about the essay. there is a type of fiction that we must aim for (in fact, that is all i want to write about… i think), something that elevates the woman without ever identifying her as one, that nameless goddess.

on the other hand, Ayn Rand removes herself completely.

but Woolf was writing from a very western, patriarchal, christian culture, where women are thought to be owned by men, to be, merely an object (haih, this is you, teleng); as such their father’s names are erased and replaced with the husband’s, unable to proclaim for herself eternally. it’s a tradition passed where women are never allowed to enter the church – they must shave their head off first – things like that –  no wonder you see all these feminists running rampant around america. haih.

you don’t really see that in Islam, do you? not in it’s purest form, at least. (malas nak comment pasal all those things happening in Afghanistan/Middle East because i don’t really know much about it – probably it’s an arab thing). or maybe things are bound to be corrupted and people forget and adopt all sorts of errant stuff from the old days. or maybe because men simply feel (and need to feel) superior, and when they cannot conquer land, power, wealth, they turn to women…..

i’m tired of the wor(l)d already.

but you shall still fall short of everything that precedes you.
greedy maisarah, eager maisarah, she wants to marry the whole world.
spreading little seeds of impression so the only trace of it is washed on the blue shores of
depression on aided days on walls of celebratory calls.

you have spoken to them for at least one hour each,
talking about the future the past the post and pre
on nights where the movies are played on the screen at a distance
and you timid, gawk at the height of aspiration
or you feeling lofty, spoke of literature and philosophy to the scrawny
or you feeling friendly, depart all hate and unscrewing all dormant secrets
or you feeling bored, simply want to entertain the thought of being someone else
for a day or two, not without a remorse
or feeling stupid, try to mingle in fear nibbling in cups
and appear as the odd one out – how pathetic.

come come, wear all masks, empty your mind
and gaze at this odd deformed little display
and they know not what still lives in her to this day
is this desire to burn burn burn brightly
to exhaust oneself until one expires.

the unloading of words that are badly disconnected to each other.
i am fearful. i do not know how am i supposed to keep up with all of this. i do not know how to proceed.
and then you might read this and feel as if i am getting morbid and grumpy and that it bores you.

bear with me, i say, and all shall be well.
but sometimes i dream of people pointing knives at my throat.
so pregnant are my words.
shall i die before i ever bloom into anything?
shall everything burst before i give birth into something
what bad metaphors, tell me, do you miss your mother, now?
you want to return to the womb, forever cocooned.

what now?
what next?
what love?

***

and she is eager to speak to everyone. look at her as she tries to dart words to people, all inaudible all jumbled up in one incomprehensible clandestine, one just can smile politely and say yeah alright sure.

“Pass me the nat”
“The what?”
“The nat”
“You mean the the nuts?”
“Yeah”
“Alright”

woman, you are losing in all this. you keep saying you, are a loner, but all i see the devouring eagerness to deliver. what day? what night? what crime? what lights? what joke? what may? i am tattered, battered, obscured from the loud music that blast through the empty hall where men and women from the region of samoa settled nice and trite dance awkwardly into the night. acceptance? here, have a sentence. you call yourself elvis? let us roll into something, because frankly your costume is obtrusive and my mind is attacking all that is received, for in times like this there is no better work than to diss. and the king of libya stands and struts off his muscles and bones grinding into shame grinding into women yet you dare ask me esok semayang raya ke tak?

amboi.

such juxtapositions are unacceptable. or am i one who is still untainted, and unable to perceive, how the world at large has come to be?

***

satu catatan tentang hidup at this point (dan sebagainya).

setelah lebih dua hari tidak menyentuh komputer ini, sebab aku agak sibuk dengan dunia secara keseluruhan (aku rasa), dan persiapan untuk raya (walaupun tak seberapa, apalah sangat nak buat di perantuan).

aku bangun awal hari ini. jam 3. dan macam biasa ada orang beberapa makhluk yang akan ucapkan selamat malam dan kita pun akan membalasnya secara rahsia. there’s nothing much to do in the morning but read, you know? or to recite. kadang kadang aku rasa aku tak optimumkan bulan ini dengan secukupnya. i too, have a brother whom i am incredibly jealous at. if there was a living goal, i’d be him. one needn’t to look at other brothers, yang hebat in themselves with all their hamza yusuf’s dan alghazali dan tolstoy’s, kerana what i desire in the end, in simplicity and humbleness in perceiving your docility. mungkin sebab abang aku, being almost seized of his life about four years ago, realizes this much more than i, who still cling to boring and mundane things. (aku baru sedar yang mundane doesn’t necessarily mean boring, only worldly), feel extremely adequate to meet god. then there is the family. all radiant of goodness, and i a black bile of darkness. (this stinks of your letter, now)

tapi kembali kepada bahasa melayu. i have this idea for a novel, tapi ianya masih belum complete secara keseluruhannya, kerana one cannot write mindlessly (macam tempat ini), because such permanence (in book form) requires such a inward goal that demands a purpose. i am not eager to write, or to publish at this point, i merely waiting for something to seize me and then i shall begin? tapi sampai bila? it seems to me i have been putting off this for too long. but writing is no goal now. i am to study and to aim aim aim for some sort of stability like the rest of the masses.

ada kawan aku, baru baru ini, question aku, kenapa aku pilih untuk teruskan belajar, walaupun aku, secara lazimnya amat bencikan all this formal education atau all this structure, really, or the need to conform. poyo betul kan. kami ini, dua insan, yang kononnya nak menentang dunia. tapi aku cakap pada dia, aih, perlulah senjata. one simply cannot proceed in this world without giving in to the rules that governs it, even if one hates it. the key is to be inside and the necessitate change from within. perubahan apa? (dia tanya). aku tak tahu. education reform, government reform, the upholding of religion, of people, truth, what have you. dia pun ok, setuju. kami ini, insan yang cynical, kononya. campurkan pembacaan Catcher in the Rye dan Notes in the Underground sambil menaiki bas melihat bandar Kota Bharu, melewati setiap pelusuk dan lorong lorong yang gelap, melihat orang orang gila, sakit, sewel, cacat, tua dan tak dipedulikan, haaa, ini hasilnya. tapi aku cakap pada dia, aku dah berubah, aku rasa.

jadi perubahan. ini bulan ramadan. mereka cakap there is not a better time to change yourself then within ramadan. kerana tuhan telah berfirman dalam albaqarah ayat 183, yang dia mahu kita berpuasa pada bulan ramadan, agar kita menjadi orang yang bertakwa. apa itu takwa? fear atau hope. consciousness. the state of being wary of god’s presence pervading in each aspect of your life, and in effect kamu itu takut akan him seeing you wasting your hours away or slipping into a state of kelalaian (leka), such that each second each breath that you take is in accordance to him, and for him. so you remember god at all times.

whenever i call my father in nights where i am most agitated and in distress over the strife of life, because purely i have no one to talk to (friends are fine but they have not experienced life, and most men are helpless and cannot give than a bloated word or two, and i am greatly affixed to the old man anyway), jadi dia akan katakan pada aku, atau recite from this ayat quran, surah ar-raad (raad means thunder, as i have came to learn, sebab my lecturer’s name is Raad), that, verily only in remembrance of god does the heart find rest.

i suppose those words are enough for me now. some people say i am too high strung, or that they do not know i simply cope, maisarah being maisarah, with all the things that occupy my mind. yang aku ini, berfikir terlalu banyak. dan aku mengaku yang kadang kadang aku akan duduk kaku berdiri selama sejam dua plainly deep in thought (aku rasa berangan je lebih kut), and all that. meh, what spiraled me deep into depression in the first place? too much pondering over stupid things. but i am not to recount this, not this moment, at any rate. dah panjang dan penat menulis. (dan siapa akan baca ini, anyway?)

sometimes i wish i could be done with the world as soon as possible. and that has been the goal for years now, that i no longer want to face all this grime and dirt. but life is beautiful. there are many wonderful things inside it. love, for example (hi hi hi). i believe i am happy at the moment but at the same time, anguished, because i know that all this is transitory, and that everything shall face away. sometimes it is better to be sad or dangling in anticipation because you keep on hoping for salvation or happiness and strive towards it. but when you are joyful, you seem to forget everything and see yourself accomplished, and then worry over the loss of another. this all, is a false sense of security.

see how i jump from one thing to another. i should rightly stop and wait until four until claudia comes to pick me up so we can go to sydney and be, cultural. i don’t know what paths i am taking at this moment but i seem to like her, because she loves reading and islam and all that. what a nice person.

in the meantime, i shall study. i have been reading al-attar’s book the conference of the birds for too long, i should do my power calculations. and to add a simple footnote on how i picked up this book – i have borrowed it before, together with my rilke last year, but had never the opportunity to read, it, and last monday only picked it up out of wanting to avoid a collision of some guy in the literature section as well (why does he have to move from the German section to the World literature shelf?)

and this was after i was reading rather lightly (and putting back) Murakami’s Hard Boiled Egg Wonderland (cat missing brooding wife mystery phone calls…. *yawn*), and Tolstoy’s Collected Short Stories (only the intro, because i’m lazy).

 i promise shall read Tolstoy one day……..

but every now and then i go watch a movie or two under the club and encounter strange bearded men who look like marx’s dead brothers and hippies who talk about camping for twelve years at the beach building radiowave transmitters over mining areas who get arrested by the cops impressed by how non electronic he is, and he amazed at what i am studying, asks about lynas and protest and green shirted men going against the uranium wasteland shit happening in the country.

but okay.

westerners seem to have this thinking having no humanity left to fight for, they fight for the earth instead. when there are much more grave happenings in the poorer parts of the country. war. oppression. murder. poverty. famine. (and then…  idiocy). that they fight for liberation of the earth than the liberation of the oppressed people. either they don’t know or find it irrelevant, or foreign to their ears.

but a cause is a cause. but so weak a cause, to hug a tree to find solace in the woods to find it worthy to stand up for deforestation. humanism. environmentalism, what have yous. against all ignorance of the masses. to live, poetically (says Kierkegaard). and at this moment Qutb’s words somewhat ring true that all he sees around him are people who are willed but weak willed who are doing injustice to their own faculties to not be upholding what is ultimately the one and only reason for us being here; that is to serve god and inherit – govern – the earth.

(and by morning we shall inherit the earth)

and i, a smiling woman, i’m only twenty. but i am beginning to see the differences between a ‘developed’ and a ‘developing’ country is. i am learning.

i have the most kind, motherly, mother on earth.

there is an idea inside my head, one that speaks to tell of this relationship between the family and the individual, for i am greatly attached to the family.

tapi saya tak balik raya pun tahun ni.

syahdu.

i want to be able to write everyday, with much more comprehensibility on my part, so that when i look back at this, i’d be able to understand what it is that i have wanted to do with my life.

reading Plath’s journals helps. she fleshes out these little funny ideas on life and marriage and self-love and graduation and purpose and the cause and on suicide on writing and the like. on love. on accomplishing life. i suppose it doesn’t hurt to actually read her as i grow up, as i bloom into the age of thirty, to actually be able to bridge and map out experience and see if we ever coincide or not. i need to be in touch with the feminine. not one of the loud feminist types who argue of mundane things such as shaving your armpits in toilets or the ability of express your thoughts squeakily on a little platform for women, but one so personal so anguished so private one whose every thought is pregnant with that want to give everything away to relinquish herself yet remain mute in her nameless suffering.

i take that back because that sounds like something out of Ombak Rindu.

there should be a quality of nobility attached to it. one that immediately demands call forth, respect or awe over her selflessness. can a woman be so selflessly proud?