perkaraperkara

Here I am, again. In front of me is a man with 1984 on his lap, playing clash of the clans (a game my brother plays) on the phone. Two minutes later, he gives up his seat to me, for no apparent reason. No orwellian nightmare here.

Last night was probably the longest time I have ever stayed at the office, and it kills me to up and running and typing things I do not care of, writing to all these datuks and datins for their approvals on little projects scattered in small countries. Twelve hours later, in the boardroom with the CEO, we all observe how the figure seems to be deciding whether or not to proceed with the projects. I am, of course, tired of all this as I had not a normal rest day for the past month, such that thoughts of turning up with a resignation letter often occurs to my mind. But we endure, nevertheless.

Then there are calls that are unreturned, books that are left unread, essays half typed, ideas scattered about, letters not fully formed. I look at all this with terrible groan, and proceed to sleep.

Morning, the usual commute. All the sent emails from the sea from F, opened up, read, and reread. Today is his last day after all, and then chop chop, the helicopter on towards home. I cannot imagine being at the sea, not on your own admission. I wonder if he has read Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea. All I could muster up, was a line from The Waste Land. ‘Consider Phlebeas, who was once as handsome and tall as you’. (I might have gotten this wrong).

In return, what have I considered? Perhaps motioning through life, as I always have, morbidly.

*

“Is this poem romantic?”, the question said. A poem from Zurinah Hassan, made itself into the English literature syllabus. “Yes, because she is in love with the artist”, my sister says. “Yes, because she longs for the past”, I say. The answer at the back says “No, because it’s about the irony wanting to hear a flute played when all is suffering, not love”. I then proceed to give a crash course on romanticism to my sister, the night before her exam.

*

On the drive back and forth to Eksotikata, Loq and I talked, mostly about childhood memories, love and the things we love.

If there’s anything I love doing, it is the downplaying of personal memories. I treat everything insignificantly, I have no appreciation of the moment (and this is the opposite of Rilke’s being), no carpe diems, no nothing.

This, in contrast with all the women at the office, who tell every little detail they remember, down to the singlest remark or gesture, and carry themselves, cubicble from cubicle repeating the same stories, for weeks and weeks, which recedes itself into a dull buzz in my ears.

I wonder how this, Knausgard dude, can bore out details of his grandmother’s death in eighty or so pages. How one can, excavate the mind, concentrate solely on churning out memories into words and words into a book. One must be attentive, to absorb all that is happening surrounding them.

But off now, to work.

Here I am, neither living no wondering how I came to be. All that has come before me, and all that will come unto me, are effaced my silence. My mind does not resonate with anything, nor my ears listen. Words, syllables, they wiggle through into my head, I try to comprehend yet nothing forms, nothing forms. I no longer remember, I no longer recall and can no longer witness anything at all.

It so happens that I am tired of living.
(Echoing Neruda’s Walking Around)

Words that fleet to the mind every time one ventures outside the home, to walk, to stand, to sit (if the opportunity presents itself). To eat, to try a different thing. The novelty of things, of new places to go, to eat, wears out, and tedium sets in.

Often times when this happens I would read a bit of Pessoa, then tell myself I should not be as wearied as he is. I talk but I never mean what I say, E says to me. E who has memories of all words uttered. I wonder if I am just uttering words, not remembering any of them. I forget. I have lost the ability to retain anything. Things pass me by. Everything is without consequence, either because they do not imprint themselves upon me, or that I am beginning to not care, or be aware of things.

To be deeply rooted in the present.

As I entered the kitchen, Syazana was holding out a bowl with a cockroach inside, which had been dead for who knows how long.

‘Perhaps we need to buy some ubat lipas, so these lipas can gravitate towards it’, I said.

These days, animals keep me alert of the passing days and months; the orange cat at the train station I’d give my breakfast to, the ants living inside the front hood of my car and seem to find their way at the drive wheel which I try to smudge at traffic light stops, the little cats that my brother would bring back from the surau – all smelly and hungry, the big, dark, moths in the city every time I get out of the lift, and so on.

Then of course, there is drama between these little moments, I said, as I wear those silly bunny ears in Hanna’s room. I tell Hanna that I always forget things every time I wake up, even though I’ve had a rough day, or that I’ve been crying all night, or that I’ve broken up with F. I seem to be disconnected from the continuity of life, nothing intensifies, nothing is ever clarified, I reach no heights nor depths; each day everything is renewed and I am back wondering where I have left things off. Of course as the hours add up, moments seem to restore yet I am unable to simply discern. I am left with a jumble of words and images of others yet unable to find my own. Then the day folds into night and I keep on repeating the same exercise.

F says I am tiring myself out.

It is indeed a tiring business, to locate yourself in the hearts of others; to ask ‘what do I matter to you?’, ‘why do you love me?’, rather than asking yourself ‘why do you matter to me?’. I can be evasive. It is more convenient that way, latching yourself unto others, so that you do not have to deal with the complications of your own. But these days all people say to me to ask where does my heart lie, to whom does it gravitate to, and to these questions I cannot answer.

Not yet, at least.

***

P/S; Hi.

I have worn you,
From narrow dark corridors to open-spaced gardens,
Through the sea breeze when it first came to me,
In a box with a letter beneath.

Do memories of you still persist,
even this scent has long been replaced?
Can our songs still be evoked,
At the faintest whiff of your love?

I am diffused into a million other elements,
Unremittingly plain by nature, I need no reminding,
Every time I choose an ice cream, order a drink,
Or brush the brink of solitude.

Like the perfume, I exist – but no longer belong,
To neither anyone , nor anywhere,
I shall pervade the stillness of the air,
And into quietude I vanish
***
Also inside Senorita’s Vol.4

Real work has come at last.

I have just recovered from a month-long sickness that involves vomiting and feeling nauseated every other day. I have not drunk any coffee for the past month, on the advice of the doctor. So what I do when I get home, is that I eat some form of dinner and chat around with the family before I withdraw to my room and sleep. 

Routine. 

I have memorized traffic lights timings, stood over the same faces on the same spots in trains, tried to catch the busker’s songs by the ticket gate (though I have given only once), listened to songs on Spotify at work (making the hours bearable), pondering whether there’s a thing called collective consciousness of people at the same place (during train delays, or when the police shouts to make way for a kid on a stretcher).

The only non-routine thing about work days is the anticipation of after-work conversations. These over a drink, or a cake, but mostly nothing at all. 

I am currently reading, probably the fourth copy I have owned of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. The first one was lent to M in highschool (never to be returned again – I waited for him to come until the I had to board the bus home – he never did), the second one I had bought it with F in a book festival (this one is either given during book giveaways spree or I have not seen it), the third one I had found it in the Alumni bookshop for a dollar and given it to Q when she visited Wollongong (the coincidences in life). 

The thing about Salinger is his way with dialogue. Give him a dull setting, a still room with windows overlooking the street, a fishbowl, a sofa, and a desk with books strewn about, and two characters, and he will give you an excellent dialogue. A drama unfolding with words and minute movements, like a person holding a cigarette and scratching a chip of paint off the wall. At the end of it all one is left with a sense of disentanglement, or an obscure revelation being told, albeit rather slowly. 

(At the same time I am filled absolute glee re-reading Notes from the Underground). 

It has given birth to five kittens, and over the course of several weeks, they started to die one after another.

I come back from home one day to find the box empty, and then from then onward, the countdown began. First the mother moved them at the drain, underneath the covers. Then it started to rain. Four. Then she moved them to the neighbour’s backyard, between pipes and tall, long grasses. I went away for the week only to return to the place with my litter brother, and found them no longer there. In the mean time the mother greeted me every morning, meowing restlessly from one corner to another, in cupboards, underneath the sofa, in search for lost things. One days when I feel like it I lift it up and lie it down with me, “Why do you sound so sad?”. Mother has gave up on her – bitter by the act of neglect – she shuts her up every time she emerges from from the door. So I feed her every morning before I go to work.

Sometime this week, my brother found the last kitten, hidden in a flower pot. It was blind.

The next morning it was dead. He threw it in the bushes.

When I come home that evening, I saw the kitten lie on the porch. Ants were swarming around it.

I asked my mother what happened and then after dinner, I told my little brother to open the keys to the back and find the cangkul. As I retrieved the corpse, the mother followed suit. I put it beside the soil and started digging. Soon the brother joined in to help and I laid it down in the small hole we dug under the tree. He recited something and I saw the mother lying at the side, watching the procession as it ended. She lingered for a while, long after we all went inside.

***

“Do you want to stay together in your next life, or never meet again?”