Tag: September

Birthday.

Cycled to the beach and sat by the rocky shores overlooking the sea. Song of the day would be The Paper Kite’s Maker of My Time.  Bought Vanilla yogurt, a slice of Basa fillet and four bananas. Six dollars. Returned to H’s house just to have ice cream for breakfast, and then reached back home. Cleaned the kitchen counter while making fish sandwich. Shower. To walk or to cycle? Walk, for we want blue flowers today. Found yellow instead. Went to the Alumni Bookshop, and the lady with her dog greets me as usual. Came out with Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse for a dollar.

“The classics section has improved, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, I keep coming back every week”.

“There’s a group of you people, who come in, put their bags, and straight go to the classic sections”.

So she recognizes me.

*

Class was boring. DH Lawrence. I haven’t got a shred of interest in reading him. He’s just too lewd, and horribly so. To call ‘climax’ as ‘crisis’. Every woman is a lesbian. Bizarre euphemisms you can’t just get past him. Perhaps tonight I shall try read a third of this Chatterley book. I don’t get all this sexual liberation, to be honest. To give the body superiority over the mind. Perhaps because the Western tradition, the Catholic specifically, has denied the body for so long – calling it filthy and all, now comes all this surge to express the repressed.

There was a debate last week at a certain university, where a Muslim figure debated with some Atheist Club president. Topic was did man create god or god create man. Heated. Both friends couldn’t believe how an atheist would claim to that far to call religion a myth or something only to gather and unite the masses so that they can be directed towards an end (mostly political). I say to them, it’s understandable how they become that way, all this rejection of god is because of the disillusion with Christianity, further propelled by the Nietzsche and Darwin and the like. To dispense the necessity of god, then denying him altogether. But of course, I’m sick of all this. I’m sick of all this talk. 

*

I think I’ve had quite enough of films. There’s only a certain number of films you can consume over the period of a month, and I seek, but I no longer know where to start. Gone are the days of devouring films one after another, of watching tv shows episode after episode. Some of them are vapid and senseless. I like Lost, though, because of the complexes in the characters and plot (up until season three, at least). But alas, when I think of it, the only reason people watch shows or read news and gossips about this or that is to be able to talk about it to other people. To have a generic topic to talk about,rather than talk about the heart of things. Perhaps. I remember a time when I would memorize Bowling For Soup’s song  1985 when it first came out, without even knowing what it means. I was born in 1991, and everything from the 80s is removed from me. America has nothing to do with me, yet I am saturated with her culture, past or present.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Thoreau’s Walden, so much that I feel like reading it again.  There’s this feeling of wanting to empty yourself, your surroundings, and perhaps not actually to go back ‘into the wild’, but a time when everything is much simpler. To not carry everything with you. Having coffee with K a while ago perhaps triggered this. She was talking of massive sales in London – shopping, named brands here and there, but I was left with the impression of her buying the means for her ends. For example, buying a new closet for your overwhelming clothes. Or, increasing your luggage weight to accommodate for shopping. Increasing the necessity for your non necessities. The bigger your house, the higher the upkeep. Reading all these English stories about unused rooms in mansions only increases this sense of waste and emptiness of the world.

*

I keep telling myself I should remove myself entirely from everything that hinders me from any spiritual progress. I entertain notions of studying in Indonesia and my father tells me I should do whatever I feel is right for me. At present I am very much rooted to the ground. I should liken myself as a tree in need sunlight so that I could grow, and water that I should live. Marham says to me that I need a teacher to guide me. A hoopee or sorts, like Al-Attar’s Conference of the Birds. ‘Kamu butuh pertolongan’. For to be guided in the right direction, one does not waste time groping in the dark.

*

Baaaaaaaaaaah.

*

I come out disillusioned.

Dinner consisted of a foot-long Subway sandwich (cut in three; tomatoes, pickles, and carrot for each) and ice cream. We were at the Darling Harbour, the three of us. During the walk from Railway Square we talked of A, who seems to haven’t located herself in the her own heart, let alone the heart of others. We sat and ate while the sirens go off and men and women with neon sticks around their arms neck and feet ran towards the Harbour Bridge. The night seemed vibrant, with tourists, runners, diners, kids, all wait for the hourly fireworks at the pier. Winter is finally over, and here Spring greets us warmly. But this wasn’t what you came for, as the three of you find your way to the Metro Theatre, took out your IDs and hands marked with black crosses. Here was a new venue, a new crowd, a new band, but the same old accomplices. A was here to have fun. F was to listen. And you to just soak yourself in the music. To feel those reverberations,  those vibrations in your being. But I suppose transcendence feels much sweeter. So we settle ourselves with such moments of bliss. It was not until ten that the band appeared, people – girls mostly – were filling up the front line so you got tired of standing and just sat at the stairs. It was nice, to hear an album played out before you, and everyone singing along to the words, moments of utter silence to listen to the words emptied out to the audience. Preachers of the modern age, you thought. Also, was an encore no longer an encore but just another routine? A wondered whether it was a strange sight, or contradictory, to see the three of us, all clad in tudungs to watch a show. Perhaps, perhaps. We went home, each stumbling through the night, watching people still crossing streets at midnight, catching buses, sleeping at sidewalks, shouting at one another. One wonders if the city ever sleeps. But our time was over, and time it was.