THE FIRE NEXT TIME

I remember when the end of another year called for joyous celebration with friends and family, with strangers on the streets, the air pierced with explosions of cheers and laughter and false newfound optimism that bursts forcibly in myriad colors high above in the black sky. And people reflect on the year in that moment, reflect and breathe a sigh of relief that it's over, life will move on, on to bigger better things, time to make some changes.

Such are the lies we tell ourselves, and each other. In this mad world, we go in circles, making the conscious decision to destroy others in our selfish pursuits and arrogance. I reflect on nothing at the end of this year, look through no obligatory narrow scope that provides little understanding of the mess and destruction we perpetrate. I believe in reflecting on a daily basis, but that is just habitual of those with an abundance of private time, those of us who have become ghosts. To even begin understanding something demands consistent examination.

Sometimes when I raise my eyes from where I sit on the subway, and I meet the eyes of a stranger nearby I see an emptiness, a vacancy that prompts me to look away almost immediately. Though, it's possible that I am too severe about letting my guard down, and I dismiss them when, perhaps, they are ghosts too.

To look towards a better future, one with less prejudice, less inequality, less injustice against minorities, less bullying, emotionally or physically, less provocation, less misguided hate and ignorance, and less self absorption is a laughable sort of optimism. Humans inhabit the world, after all, and the social standards and codes that dictate the way we live are set by flawed humans. Everything is on us. Everything fails because of us, and we fail each other because there is an aggression in all of us that denies acceptance, understanding, and kindness for those we've been conditioned to loathe and oppress. And when we set the whole world on fire once again, as we do every day, every year, and we will continue to do so, we should all burn together, every last one of us.

From this realization, this realism that fosters nothing but truth, an uncontrollable aggression and despondency clashes with the laughter and solace that is innate to me, presents a conundrum that has made even the streaks of color and light and illuminations in the sky seem false and banal to me.

THE SEARCH

" According to Greek mythology, 

humans were originally created with 4 arms, 

4 legs, 

and a head with 2 faces.

Fearing their power, 

Zeus split them into two separate parts, 

condemning them to spend the rest of their lives 

in search of their other halves. "

- Plato's The Symposium

WONDER WHY FOR MADAME GEORGE

Seriously considered booking a flight back to the motherland, aka the place in which I, by accident, was conceived, and in which my parents still reside, but upon further contemplation I decided that a flight to and from Southeast Asia costs way too much, especially for the visit I had planned to not exceed two weeks.

Anyway, I only felt the sudden impulse to drop in on the folks in KL because my last surviving grandparent is living with them now, and her memory has weakened over the past few months. I wish I could be with her at this dwindling stage of her life, because if there's one relative I've ever been close to it's my maternal grandmother. I had lived with her for 3 months at one point in my childhood, in conservative Kota Bharu back in the mid nineties, where I would watch old black and white P. Ramlee films on the TV with her at night in her tiny flat, usually with the movie playing as the two of us had dinner. Some days I would hold her hand and we would walk to the market under the sweltering sun, her head wrapped in a scarf, me in shorts, so she could buy vegetables and fruit. She walks with a slight limp ever since I can remember, so we would walk slowly and have clumsy conversation along the way. She would say things in her rich Kelantan dialect, and I would understand but struggle to respond in my unpolished Malay, with some scattered Kelantanese phrases thrown in just to amuse the two of us.

Sometimes she would just sit on the floor of her living room, staring blankly at something I couldn't see, and she seemed to be singing softly to herself or reciting verses from the Quran. This is my grandmother who lost her husband a few years into their marriage and never had children of her own, but took in my mother to help ease the burden of her sister, my mom's biological mother, who had five kids.

It must be really tough to be old and helpless. To think that being young and lonely is bad, or frightening, and then to imagine what it must feel like to know all of your friends and siblings, people you have known and grown with for over 70+ years have passed away long before you, and there's only you left behind, waiting.

Waiting for the train to get to your stop, finally, so you can get on and wave goodbye.

YOUNG LOVE

Malacca

When I was a kid, people used to tease me and a male cousin for being particularly affectionate with each other. He was about two years older than me. I was four. One time, he climbed to the top of the rambutan tree in my father's compound and wrestled a bunch of rambutans loose from the branch. When he was back on the ground, he sat beside me on the back porch of the house and peeled the red skin of a rambutan open, smiled at me in the afternoon sun and held the fruit toward me without saying a word. He barely knew any English, and I barely knew any Malay. I took the fruit from his hand appreciatively, struck with the realization that this was the very first time a boy was being sweet to me.

Even as a kid, I knew that was what true love was about. Braving the swarms of fire ants living in the rambutan tree, and presenting the prize to the object of your affections.

Years go by and it takes with it the sincerity of young love. There were no ulterior motives then, no desperate need for companionship, no peer pressure, and no idea of complications. Just the intention of loving, and sharing. Young love embodies a naivete that's true for all of the innocence still undestroyed, untainted, uncorrupted.

The memory of such an event surpasses even the grandeur of poetry for me. If it's true what is said about the first boy who showed you that sort of love sets the standard for every other boy you will meet for the rest of your life, I fear that I am doomed. Because innocence is destructible, and growing up seems to make sure of that. That innocence of which had been ingrained within me by my cousin as being a favorable quality in a man, always.

LABELS ARE FOR JARS

Why is it that all the organic food businesses are staffed by mostly tattooed and pierced twenty somethings who sit on their high horse with their tofu and coconut water as though being associated with Trader Joes, Whole Foods, some organic cafe, etc. makes them more enlightened than everybody else? White people losing their shit over the recently marketed coconut water in the US is funny to me. People in tropical countries have been drinking that for centuries. 

Every time some new trend surfaces on American shores, like Sri Racha sauce, or an Apple gadget, the hip kids try to apply some purpose and meaning to their lives by attaching themselves to the bandwagon. The Apple logo doesn't define you, it just affirms the fact that you rely on trends and brand names in your non-existential quest to matter within a capitalist, consumerist culture.

Marketing and advertising executives define "cool" for you, so you don't have to think for yourself.

UPWARD OVER THE MOUNTAIN

Feeling restless and longing for adventure. Really I just want to get out of Boston for awhile. Well, the States, to be honest. 

I need a vacation from this mad, sad society.

HORROR STORY

This is what the walk up to the top floor, where the English department is located, looks like. Abandoned mental institution standard of creepy, if you ask me. You rarely bump into anyone, climbing or descending. Later, when you reach the top floor you find yourself in a maze of narrow hallways that stretch on into several doors you have to walk through while wearing a confused expression. I walked around the entire floor twice in a full circle looking for a professor's office, poking my head into another room to ask someone for directions in a moment of desperation after I twice passed by an old rickety professor wheeling his bike toward his office and it got awkward for both of us, turning a corner to have to walk down the long, quiet hallway toward each other.

...You again. I dislike those repeated instances.

I would've taken more photographic proof of the ridiculous layout of the place, but it was quite simply impossible. There are walls overlapping walls, and passageways fit for a single body. Interesting word choice, I guess, using "body" instead of something like, "person." I was just thinking about it being a suitable set for a horror film, where people get lost in the English department, and end up dead. Panic attack? Claustrophobia? Psycho professor mad about plagiarizing students?

Can you tell I don't hang out at the English department much? That was my second time there in two years.

That little adventure ended the semester for me. I can now get back to a bunch of exciting things waiting for my full, undivided attention.

Life has moved on, as it does, since the bombings. A city shut down for an entire day as authorities hunted a nineteen year old. It was as insane as it sounds. I have a lot of thoughts on the issue, the brothers, and the city, but it's a real downer to get into. I've refrained from reading news sites for a few days now, because some of the headlines still scream of the whole horrible ordeal. Dzokhar's young face stares back at me through the screen on some of those sites, and I feel a deep sadness rise within me as I wonder many things.

The backlash has returned, or become more pronounced, since it's always been there. Muslims on a universal scale are being held responsible for radical Islamists (this is not news, obviously). Some of the dialogue going on over here right now is both frightening and amusing, to say the least. Suggestions of eradicating all Muslims from America to guarantee safety from terrorism and violence against Americans. But ignorance breeds arrogance. How about the US stop breaking international laws in their continuous bloodlust in foreign lands? Maybe stop massacring people on a whim in their own nations, and perhaps don't torture people, because that sort of thing can break a person.

The other morning I was walking home when a white man paused at his doorstep to glare at me in a way that might intimidate me, before stepping into his house.

It's strange now, to have to wonder why a white person stares at you when you walk down the street, and if the reason is what you think it is. Because the color of your skin represents what they detest. You are not like them, they want to remind or inform you. That's fine with me, though. I know who I am and continue to be that person with dignity, in ways that a flag can't define.

IN SEARCH OF MEANING

Tonight I would've been on a plane to Athens, where I would stay within sight of the Parthenon, in a city watched over by the ancient gods like Apollo and Zeus, where philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle pondered the meaning of life.

Four days and three nights would be spent in Santorini, in a hilltop hotel by Fira overlooking the Aegean Sea, where an undeserving woman's face once launched a thousand Spartan ships towards Troy, according to Homer and Marlowe.

This is Santorini.

Grief should be felt for a sight so beautiful and peaceful, because they are only "holiday getaways." Why then do we choose to live in the corrupt, clamorous, disorderly city when the opposite exists? 

Do we yearn to be relevant by association, simply by trying to adjust and conform to urban expectations? What does being a city person have to do with being tenacious and enviable, when it is just a jungle of concrete and superstructures and everybody is killing everybody else for greed and power?

As unfortunate as it is, I know Greece and all its history will be there when I finally feel right about visiting. It depends on what sort of experience you're looking for, I guess. There are some places that are perfect for seeing alone, and there are places that I believe are more worthwhile to experience with the right person.

STANDING UP TO GIANTS

1) Arts appreciation two Sundays ago. A free ticket came my way and so I went.

2) The walk back from the theater. A passage through time (wishful thinking).

My dad was right when he informed me once in my teenage years, "you have an attitude problem." I figured he based this on the fact that I was an angsty, alienated teenager and didn't argue with him. I wasn't rude, I simply disliked most people and norms and was straightforward in my indifference. I'm a lion, from the family of big wild cats, I pounce when I have to with no restraints, I am protective, I kill with my bite which really means I commit pain with words because that is the only weapon I am not afraid of, that I can master, the pen is mightier than the sword after all - but when I really have to, pounce that is, when I am provoked, pushed over the edge.

A few weeks ago Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog paid a visit to our class and spoke and took questions for an hour and 45 minutes. An affable, aggressive man he pointed to each one of us in the large lecture theater and asked for our names at the start of the class, which I thought was a nice gesture, considering he was only visiting for an hour and 45 minutes.

While talking about his writing process toward the end of the class, seated sideways on the table in the front of the room, he looked right at me in the sea of students and asked, "what's your name again?" I told him, and he repeated it, and then asked, "Have you ever written something you normally wouldn't, it just didn't reflect the person you are, but you completely believed it anyway?" I waited for him to explain a little further what he meant, not wanting to nod eagerly and immediately say yes like a naive person trying to gain acceptance by heavyweights without really understanding. Besides, here was a great writer standing before me, I wanted nothing more than to hear him speak and explain things while I listened.

I thought about his question long after the class ended. I thought of something recent I had written, if I had believed what I had written. I had supported a black man, a character in one of the novels I'd read for a different class, and the violence he had unleashed as retaliation for being treated like a second-rate citizen by some white people. What causes a stand up guy like Coalhouse Walker, a ragtime piano player, to abandon his principles and calm and go on a rampage of terrorism toward some white people, why, by being provoked of course, and being denied his right to justice by the police, lawyers and city officials one after the other. We're all human after all. Some white girl (although every student in the class is white, except me) retorted, "He's essentially a terrorist." Yet most of American history is rooted in terrorism, I wanted to say, and following that horrific history of slavery, lynching, slaveowners raping their slaves, Coalhouse Walker trying to gain justice for himself when a crime was commited against him in the first place, pales in comparison to all of that history.

It is hard for self important people like her to grasp the anger and despair endured by minorities. I understood violence in that context, and why it had to happen, what led to it, and why it didn't make Coalhouse Walker a bad person. It's about self respect and sticking up for yourself. It's about the lengths people will go to in order to make a point, to make people listen, finally. And I believed it,with all my heart, when I said, "I wouldn't go down without a fight either."

ON AMERICA

At this stage of my life, one of the things I am most sure of about myself is that I am a grumpy old man. I am easily annoyed, and disagree with a lot of accepted, conventional ideas. And because a lot of people annoy me on a daily basis, I have found it easier to speak out and not give a damn. This is easy in a city like Boston, where everyone is an asshole.

Two weeks ago in a seminar class, I offered my two cents on the play we were analyzing at the time, which was Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. My comment was on Linda, Willy Loman's wife. To me, she was the most couragous character because she adapted to her surroundings, her life. Her husband talked down to her, a man who had suicidal tendencies, and she stuck by him and adapted. It takes a lot of courage for a person to accept their place in life. This was courageous of Linda Loman, given the situation at the time and the lack of opportunities for women. But it also takes a lot of courage for a person to defy convention and pursue something better for themselves, rather than let society decide your fate. Those are two ways of looking at courage, at its very surface.

I haven't adapted to my surroundings, in a way. I think I refuse to, no matter where I am. Perhaps it would be different if I was married, had a family, and putting myself first all the time was no longer an option. And being a non-white, non-American does not give me the privilege of adapting here, at least not completely. People try, but we all know it is for the most part, an illusion. Because to adapt does not necessarily mean to be accepted. In the past few weeks I had an Asian-American woman, in her late 50's, confide in me how her all white colleagues demean her in their work environment, despite her achievements, despite the fact that she holds a PhD and is an expert in her field, just like them. She has been going through that her entire life, she told me, and I could see in her eyes, even at this stage in her life, it still upset her greatly.

I haven't adapted in many ways here, because I refuse to be an asshole. I can be, of course, when things get testy and one needs to stick up for themselves. But I have values and principles that I hold on to, and I don't make assessments about people based on the color of their skin, but on their character, and how they speak to others. Having said that, I consider myself fortunate to not be treated as terribly as many others are, like the constant belittling that Asian-American woman who has lived in the United States her entire life has been subjected to. And it makes me wonder, why endure it?