Friday, June 30, 2006

He wrote dirty stories in the office when he is free, it excited him. He imagined sending them to his lady boss, watching her face glow from excitement and anger at the outrageousness of the whole idea of it. He thought of how rich he would be when they are published one day and perhaps made into R-rated movies. He drew inspiration from the horribly drab and grey office, where all imagination (sexual or not) must die.

He sometimes get so excited writing his stories he almost got himself fired form the job. He was muttering the imagined sequence in the bedroom, dreaming up the designs on the curtains, the bed sheets, the temperatures, the scents and the seduction processes; he did not notice his colleague approaching him nor discover him standing behind him, until at the climax of his naughty story, he heard a sharp inhalation of breath. He turned around to see a very aroused colleague. He was about to lecture him on his rudeness when his colleague told him gruffly to continue typing or suffer the consequence of being nick-named the office pervert. With the defiant thought of “wait a minute, who’s the office pervert” he kept typing. It was not until lunch time did his satisfied colleague asked him “is there going to be a sequel to that?”

“well…I..” He hesitated “I might have to start charging a subscription fee…If you are interested…”
“Oh how much?” went the irritated colleague.
“For a modest sum of $30 a month, you can enjoy intense stories to occupy the boring-est of all days.”
“I’ll take it!” went the happy colleague But you got to make her a belly dancer. Oh and I like third parties.”
“Custom-made for your enjoyment only.”

That was the beginning of what became a notorious underground group of bored office workers. What began as a result of blackmail, spread like wild fire throughout the office building, and soon he had a large following of bored men, with no release for their sexual fantasies stuck in a grey reality but hungered for some kind of bizarre escapades. He was the producer of their fantasies. He started getting hellos, and friendly pats from lawyers, managers, even the doorman showed him extra friendliness to the intrigue of his female colleagues.

“Have you been going for charisma classes or something?” one of them finally asked.
“It’s a secret.” He answered smugly and strutted off.

Things were going all so well, until one of his stories involving a man who grew up in the jungle, a power suit high-heeled executive virgin, a car park attendant and a chicken landed up in his own boss’s office. When she called him into her office, he knew he as in deep shit. She never called anyone into her office unless they were getting a scolding, or they were getting fired. He was expecting the latter.

He went in to see a very angry looking boss. The room was freezing and the air was so still he heard buzzing in his ears. When she finally spoke, he felt a small sense of relief.
“This is outrageous! How dare you! That is sexist behavior right under my own nose!”
“I..” He wanted to defend himself but she silenced him.
“I don’t want to hear a single word from you. You are getting out of my office this minute! And you are going to write more stories. No more weak female sex objects. I want active female subjects in pursuit of sexual liberation.”
He was dumbstruck.
“And..” she continued, “I want you to make your services available to women! For God’s sakes, do you think women don’t read porn now-a-days? Now get to work!”
He left the room amazed; hardly believing this piece of luck.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Bad days.. Anger swelling
Like a ballooning tide
Tears welling up, reddened
Short breaths to keep those liquid inside
“don’t cry. DON’t cry.”
The tightened breath, not released
For fear of the onrushing tears
Quick strides to the toilet
A few unwilling tears on wet tissue
A withheld sob that turns into a deep
Breathe.
Think happy thought
Self consolation for distractions.
Those rebellious tears which keep forming.
Repeatingly telling myself that
I will survive.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Heaven, such a beautiful word, such a beautiful place, beyond the imagination. Beyond human mind, beyond conceptualization. NO image can describe it. The place we all long to be in some day. No one really thinks about the term, it is taken as a given, that it will be a paradise, that what can not be achieved on Earth in this life, can be attained in this mysterious place we all hope to fly to. It is assumed that it lies somewhere above. Probably among clouds with winged citizens playing harp, drinking out of rivers of honey and milk. Streets paved with precious stones and such lovely sights you cannot even begin to imagine. And then there will be peace, happiness , contentment. What if heaven was altogether a different picture? What if no one has ever really thought about heaven as it might really be? A Communist state gone right? Where everybody thinks alike? Where personal identity no longer is an issue, everyone would become part of a whole. A perfect whole united in God’s love. But if every religion has an exclusive paradise, does that mean that in a particular heaven only a certain group of like-minded individuals has the right to abode. Heaven if there indeed is one, must, in my opinion, be free from such politics. I would much rather become an atom without consciousness than to live in a place that is exclusively for a certain group of people. It is scary. I wish Heaven was a place where there will be no people, no division, no more prejudice, no more exclusivity. But then, where will the line between order and chaos be? Perhaps, Heaven and Hell is really the same place, on different days. Through different eyes. OR perhaps, they are both existing on the same plane.

If all religious groups claim an exclusive right to the truth and they all have a promise of the ultimate end. Where would you end up if you have not made up your mind? A short life time of, for the average human being, 70 years will decide your fate for eternity. Your essential core which survives your material being will then be punished or rewarded according to the choices you as a human has made. You as a human with your carnal desires, needs, whims and fancies of the physical being. Sometimes, the supposed central core, the spiritual centre aspires a lot but we as beings in flesh and blood can only attain so much height before our bodies decompose and with it our individuality, our identity our memories. Then I wonder where then is the beauty left? Perhaps, being nothing would be a nice break.

What about the people who had made a mistake, or because of various circumstances, did not meet the criteria to become one of Heaven’s citizen. Will they be refugees roaming the universe? Perhaps, at death, it is the end. A fullstop. Or perhaps a pause. Eternity is too long for the human mind. We all have to transfigure into some alien being in order to experience heaven and eternity. Maybe that is the picture of heaven. It is just a vast space where our stupidity, our stubbornness, our hatred bred by prejudice and petty claims to truth can finally be at rest. Where division no longer makes sense and heaven and hell are merely a silly fantasy of the smallness of human mind, which always need to think in opposites. And then we will understand that all things are one really. That there is no skin, no morality, no language, no experience that separates me from you, you from that saint or me from that murderer, that there is no distance between us. That there is no heaven there is no hell. That perhaps it is a circle of time, of life, of death, of nothing, of things, of darkness, of light. And then we will be at rest but keep spinning and there is no end, or beginning. Just that.

Friday, June 09, 2006

She, a tiny wizen lady with brown grainy skin hanging like a layer of dirt which years have slowly piled on, sat smiling watching her tiny dot of a grandson running around screaming along with other equally minute children at the playground. Wondering where her years have disappeared to, asking herself if her grandson would one day sit watching his own grandchild play. Only perhaps, he would be luckier, he would be able to hold his grandson’s tiny hands, feel his sweaty palm, his fluffy hair a bit wet with perspiration. The distance between them being only a few metres, not millions of miles apart. God knows how far, perhaps a hundred thousand million miles away. She no longer knows how far her family is, how far away from her tiny dot of a grandson playing at a playground who she cannot touch, except for a screen in front of her. ‘They” have told her that the screen’s images are instantaneous, explaining in depth about how Einstein’s theory of relativity has already been taken into consideration, and time difference is really not much of an issue, “they” have tried to make her and thousands other elderly folks feel better, less unwanted. Like garbage ejected into outer space because planet earth no longer has a place for them.

She remembered sending her own grandmother off, with tears in her eyes, promising to call every night. A promise which she kept until teen-hood came along and friends became priority, eventually the calls became irregular acts of obligation, and when the news came that her grandmother has passed on, freed once again to become part of the cosmos, she felt nothing. Only a tiny tinge of remorse that she had not bid her a final farewell. But that is what happens when one could no longer see another’s face, feel their palpable presence, know that that person is not just an image transmitted and then captured by the eyes, but that the person existed in three dimensional space. That if one could just reach out a tiny finger, one could and would touch the other. Now, she recalls and knows that she too, will be forgotten by her grandson, become unreal and distant. Familiar only in the sense of a character one watches on 3D L-TV.

No, she did not feel bitter. This was the way it was meant to be. Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest has taken on a new meaning, it is the survival of the youngests. Every mother would sacrifice her own well-being to ensure a better chance for her children. This same belief is what still holds this space program together, every year with willing volunteers choosing to leave their home planet on a luxury space shuttle to spend their end in space. In death, they will be released into space. People had somehow reproduced so quickly, while the population continued aging and with older people having longer and longer life expectancy such that planet Earth became overcrowded, this was a desperate measure to try to keep the equilibrium on Earth. Year after year, ship loads and ship loads of elderly pack up their belongings bid their families goodbye and step on board a space shuttle that would take them out to space, tour the galaxy, equipped with swimming , bowling, medical, entertainment and culinary facilities meant to ease the guilt of family members and those remaining on Earth. They would wave goodbye happily on board as if leaving for a short trip, feigning excitement, telling their families not to worry and receiving resolute promises that things would not be that different, only they would be physical separated. No ones knows that after take off, all these old folks cry heartbroken tears in their cabins, that they should have to die away from their loved ones, left drifting in space, with only fellow passengers who genuinely feel their loss and mourn.

Feeling the upwelling of emotions of fear, loneliness, she tried to push the thought of her lonely end out of mind and concentrated on the moment now in which she can enjoy the presence of her grandson happily playing amongst other children, even if it is only virtual. She wondered if the footage she is watching now is indeed what is happening simultaneously on Earth somewhere millions of miles and miles away. She allowed herself to shed a tear looking out of her cabin window at the immense darkness and vastness of space, lit up only by the occasional star. She pondered on the maker of this universe and wondered if in death she would become something else that makes up the universe. But her thoughts were interrupted by cheerful voices at her door, asking if she would like to join them for a game of bowling. She quickly dried her tears, called out that she just needed to get her things. The next moment, she was ushered out of her door by fellow travelers like herself, eager to make the most of their last days, even if these days may not be perfect. Some of the men who had had a drink burst into a familiar song. All of a sudden she felt warm again, a lady next to her took her hand and squeezed it.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Moving, is a coming to terms with the past.
A gathering of things filled with memories,
a rediscovery of lost feelings, thoughts, images woven into the trivials
the dust which accompanies the passing days
some photographs to sort through
picking up these scattered remnants of the self
lying ordinarily in the landscape of the familiar
a place of rest, to find the self sometimes fuzzy in the hectic world
an old shirt, the same sofa you sat on as a child
the past ten years, an invisible change uncaptured
escaped like the changing of the being
a shadow.
Putting these things into suitcases,
packing them into boxes
as if to contain the pasing years, the shifiting self
giving up some parts deemed no longer important
like chucking piles of lecutre notes as unloading of burdens of a version of you
no longer the student, a recognition of an official end
a kind of resolution, determination
to choose between memories, and looking ahead to the future
where an empty house awaits new memories to be spinned on
layers on layers
like the dust and cobwebs in some hidden corner of the house
white walls, impersonal
the new view from the windows
waiting for a new self to inhabit
an indecision between the goodbye and the hello
the in-between of the still attached strings of the past and the cutting of ties to face a future
losing a place to hide from the moving time the changing life
a bold step into the exposed place
a recreation of the self
to give up and to welcome
To find that anchor, as you leave the old place behind
in a van, in a taxi, on a plane.