Pass the Parcel

A formidable sight, four human beings, or should I say moderately well defined apparitions, seated in an awfully perfect circle, passing a parcel. Too used am I to perfection interrupting imperfection. Yet it is no ordinary parcel, for in that case we could do well to assume its contents, which tend not to stray away from a standard range of possibilites. It is in fact neither too heavy nor too light, neither too presentable nor too shabby. Neither this nor that, that nor this, an affirmation that ignorance is bliss. Yet they pass it around discontentedly, accompanied by a phantom rhythm in the depth of their minds. Perhaps they too struggle to situate themselves in niether-noredness.

Come, boy, feel the delightful smoothness of the box! And someday when you have grown up you will fondly recall the texture of boxes, God forbid that you should find yourself within one. Is that a look of curiosity? Would a ton of preservatives shower upon your soul, for I guarantee you cannot bear the pain of faded inquisitiveness. But please stop, and pass it on, the parcel is something you are not prepared to wait upon

Toss it over to the lunatic, mushy lipstick glossed over unkempt lips, shreds of rotten breakfast littered over obscene hips. He would most rather continue waltzing with his teddy bear, than bother with the cumbersome parcel. Bright shades of purple once ignited luminosity in his eyes, but now, no more wonder, no more surprise.

Look at yourself, figure of absolute orthodoxy! Insulated from ear-piercing jeers by whiteness, from top to bottom. Twiddle with steel balls of composure in your sweatless palm, contemplate blankness with your condescending calm. Never can someone within tincture something without. Pass it on, capitulate without so much of a shout.

Onto me! Onto me! With trembling hands I strip the intricate ribbons away, still the rhythm pounds my sanity to the ground. Lost visions of rapidly cascading reality flash past me, torrential rainstorms of tea and coffee and all my cherished fluids muster into sea. Talk is too cheap, whoever looks before he leaps? And amidst the wild cheers from the appreciably small audience, I plunged into the parcel.

Transition and Continuity

My department recently organised a career fair, with the intention of helping personnel whose contracts would not be renewed to begin a second career. With little or no relevant experience it has always been an uphill struggle for them to find new employment at the same remuneration rates as before. Moments of empathy united with the transient joy of chewing sesame-sprinkled chicken wings, even as I stood wistfully before a booth of impossibility. And for awhile I could not distinguish one bubbling cauldron of emotions from another.

With the numbing, destabilizing twinges of transition still ringing in my ears, I was awakened later by a familiar voice, inviting me to resume a recently discarded coaching role. Formidable mother and son, you unleashed a devastating bolt of continuity unto the landscape of transition, with results I am almost frightened to face. You flagged the epic tug-of-war between two irreconcillable states, and with every pull it seems that my inspiration trickles away with macho sweat. On a plain canvas you splash your contradictory colours and deliberate your dastardly stroke. A part of me flutters with your creation, you restore equilibrium to my jagged predisposition.

Man Shell

Man-shell, your mournful eye caught me by surprise. Ring the bell before you crumble, in this journey who does not stumble?

I flipped the torn wallet, and they rolled on the ground
Two pennies have never and will ne'er make a sound
Once waltzing with pure silver, now copper and brass
Now layered with rust, still they lay on the grass
No longer so clearly, a greasy face did I see
Just as the wind once mocked you, now it bites into me
Now it whirls round my hunger, but I reach out my hand
I could drown in last Tuesday
Or do I reach for dry land

Koan Series II

The cold, bleak weather as of late is outstandingly ideal for moments of musing and pondering. I suspect that the heavens fling open their floodgates of inspiration and shower it upon the earth. So here goes the next koan, those remotely interested would already have heard it. Tell me your interpretations!

What is your face before your ancestors were born?

I think this koan invites us to ponder the delicious possibility that causal sequence does not always entail temporal sequence. In other words, if A causes B, A might not necessarily come before B. This is so characteristic of the logic-subvering nature of koans. Those familiar with Buddhist principles of causality, particularly the twelvefold chain of interdependent causation, will appreciate this to a more thorough extent.

The romantic idea of a primordial existence before physical birth is of course ancient and hardly novel, but this koan introduces an additional familial dimension, as if there is some transcendental force shaping our geneaologies, adding a wilful touch of determinism in an otherwise non-deterministic philosophy. Fragments, memories of a past life seep through the amniotic bag, entangle themselves around the umbilical cord as would streams of colourful graffitti around a pillar. And then comes the crushing, existentialist type of blow -- What is the face of your ancestor? Before you were born? Why, simply, it is thus! Thus! Just like....that! And at once all opposition, all protests, all counterarguments are stunned into eternal silence, and the foetus erupts into a frenzy of complete understanding.

Hüzün

I recently read with great pleasure Orhan Pamut's Istanbul - Memories and the City. Orhan is a true blue Turk, born and bred in Istanbul - what was once the majestic Constantinople, capital city of the glorious Ottoman empire.

In his book he introduces us to hüzün, an intense and intimate sentiment of communal melancholy that all Istabul people share. On one hand, a forlorn sigh for faded greatness. A mournful echo clinging onto the past. On the other, a tender and barely perceptible call to brotherhood, an enduring testament of Turkish unity and nostalgic pride. Altogether charming.

I believe this is what makes a city great. Its people, its souls, magically bonded together by a common history, quietly inspired by a common destiny, handfasted in a thick communal sentiment. I yearn to belong to such a place.

Wherein lies the hüzün of Singapore?

And then there was none

And then there was none, the final droplets of dew vaporize into oblivion, carrying away memories of daybreak's transient affections. Irrationally proud to be chlorophyll's lone repository, a leaf basks in evaporated glory, genetic memories of the Green Man's demise painlessly swept away. And yet they breathe the same stars! The lonesome cry of ancients, gatekeepers of druidry, forever lost in resonating limbo. A slash, a wild fire, sanctity to the evil pyre! Effiges in effulgence, the pain of sadistic indulgence! Resist and thy blood shall staineth my blade! Victory, destruction, the irony of the illumination at the end of a Dark Age. Sun, you eminent star, surely you alone can distinguish darkness and light. Awaken! Nonetheless, screeches and screams, the Ancients' dreams, all evaporated into the memories of daybreak's transient affections.

And the face of the victor? Why, a corpulent, meat chewing despot, precipitator of landslides and acid rains! Deliver a checkmate to nature's rebellions, will you not, kindly gentleman? Edicts of masters and slaves forgotten, but vengeance is sweet and karma is rotten.

And the despot ceases his march before our heroic leaf, chlorophyll's lone repository. Profound reconciliation, will you come this instant? Time to crucify Cinderella, my sweet underlings. For it is without a moment's hesitation, that the hideously obese bigot plucks leaf from stem, O Infernal Dukkha.....and Alas! Demonic derangement! A glimmer of insanity peppers his delicacy! He shoves it in his mouth and chews and bites and incises and swallows, O how tasty, how succulent, how delicious is the larva, the final sorrowful echoes of the Green Man...Eat, eat, eat! Fill your pork bellies and wallow in the oil bath that evicts your rectum. Breakfast, lunch, dinner for tuppence, humanity swallows impending come-uppance.

Sharing melodies

Once upon a time I used to love picking up a guitar and strumming, singing rubbish and writing songs. Long time friends would remember monstrosities such as "The Camfgians", "Modern Lutist", "Yesterday" and "Quadripledgic". Nowadays, the inspiration doesn't quite flow as smoothly, perhaps stoppered by the counter current of time. However, once in a while I would still love to share some pieces around. Here are 2 of my songs...inspired by religious sentiments. You can download the mp3 below.

When

When you call out to me

There are many times I cannot hear

There are many times I can't draw near

When tomorrow becomes unclear

When you whisper my name

I can feel it's not the same

Take me back, show me how, I know it's now

I cannot wait, there's a door in me that I must open

Pour out your love, take me closer take me to the moment

Where you are found, where love is all around

Take my life, there's nothing I can't leave behind

When I stand on my own

Doing anything I want to do

Keeping everything I want from you

And forsaking what I know is true

When I'm spinning my wheel

When I'm blind towards the hurt you feel

Right my wrong, make me strong, lead me on

O My Child

Goodbye to the days of searching your heart

Where memories tear you apart

Groping in the dark you have found the spark

And suddenly you have a new start

You must be oh so tired

You couldn't count the times that you cried

A helping hand you desired

And now you hear the voice

The still small voice that comes from inside

Saying O my child, it took you a while

But you answered me today, now I'm coming in to stay

I will take your hand, and then you'll understand

A futile chase you leave behind, an endless stream of love you'll find

Welcome to the days of growing in love

With mercies that are so undeserved

Walking in the light throughout the long night

Surrounded by a feeling so right

Download "When"
Download "O My Child"

Koan Series

I've been fascinated by koans from the Japanese Zen tradition recently. Literally translated as "Public Case", Zen koans are apparent logical absurdities; meditative puzzles that masters issue to their disciples to ponder over. The objective is to gain a glimpse into a secret level of reality, which flirts with the boundaries of logic and defies the reference and predication of language. There is always an irresistible charm to the bewildering nature of the "answers".

Here's an "elementary" koan, taken from the Gateless Gate collection (http://www.csudh.edu/phenom_studies/mumonkan/mumonkan.htm). I will post some initial, non-meditated-over comments, and I look forward to hearing yours!

A monk asked Joshu (zen master), "Does a dog have Buddha nature?"

Joshu replied, "Mu!" (nothing)

It's quite clear why this is supposed to be an introductory koan. Joshu, apparently perturbed by his student's dualistic conditioning (have/have not; dog/non-dog; Buddha/non-Buddha), curtly lashes out the word "nothing", at once attempting to lift him from his dual mindset into an unstructured, transcendental kind of "nothingness". The monk vainly believed that by setting up a presumably sharp contrast between a dog and a Buddha, he had created a type of categorical domain between the two extremes, where entities of progressively "higher" nature may be analysed for their Buddha/non-Buddhahood. However, obviously, such a linear logical approach so typical of our rationality and epistemological tradition, does not sit well with Joshu. Hence Joshu's response can be seen as a complete, radical and fundamental refutation of not just the content, but the form and structure of the monk's doomed query.

Well, as I type, my own dog, Pebbles, is hungry and whining. Does she have Buddha nature? Seriously, there are other things to worry about for now...

A Tale

It seems that the more abstractedly i try to write, the more it is a sign that I have lost touch with my feelings and emotions. I've never believed in laying them bare for the world to see, not because of a fear of vulnerability, but that no one will stop and take me through them. In these times I reckon it would be easier after all to chug them along, by myself, on the road. And an arduous road it is turning out to be, one step barely justifying the next.

Anyway here's a little tale. When they were young, Ganesha and Murugan, who were squabbling but inseparable brothers, decided to have a little race among themselves. As deities, of course, it would be no ordinary race. The winner would be the first to complete one round around the world. From the command "go", Murugan took off furiously and sprinted with all his might across the continents and oceans, sidestepping mountains and valleys along the way. When he was finally back at the starting point, gasping, exhausted but assured of victory, he was curiously disgusted to see his brother, Ganesha, dancing victoriously by their mother's side. Exasperated, Murugan confronted him and lashed out, "We're supposed to run once around the world! What are you doing here? And you think you have won? How is this?"

Ganesha tugged merrily at the long flowing gown of his mother, Parvati, and said "I have won. I ran once around my dear mother, who is my everything, my world."

Since that day

I am sad.

A vain shadow darts in and out of the canopy, faintly pursuing its misplaced pockets of flesh. Flickers of ash rain upon whip and backlash. The fallacy of composition ruthlessly exposed beneath a glaringly mocking sun! A sardonic embrace between pie-gobbling philosophers. Far wiser it would be, to cling unto piecemeal shreds of existence, than to seek restitution between deranged mind, desiccated heart and disenchanted soul. Nonetheless the shadow manages a feeble smile, unmanifest in that repulsive black mess. Clamour for a projection onto flesh and blood, where the world can see, nod and give two thumbs up?? Folly, folly, our shadow's melancholy...know he not that the axioms of nature have never been reversed for unworthy buffoons, but he find out all too soon. Reality wields a long winding knife, once it warms up it slashes your life.

Likewise, hand in hand with my eternal companion, our vanities exchange cookies. A symphony of futility in F# minor. We stroll down a god-forsaken path, humming victorious war melodies, sneakily dripping our guilt, shame, crystalline pain. A modern hansel-and-gretelization, paving the way for my samsaric return. And over and over again, the vain shadow grovels for his fame. As for me? Since that fateful day I have never been the same.

Ramayana II

The loquacious man emerges from hiding, betel leaves mixed with gargled toddy. He resumes his seat in front of famished ears, and continues his discourse.

...And so it was, that the resister and his legions of beasts collide with the demon. Never was futility better manifested than in the victorious cries of karma, when the resister plunged his lance into the vile darkness of the demon's heart, every plunge and every twist bringing a morbid pleasure to justice's perverted physiognomy. Yet can the Kshatriya perform otherwise? Can the conchshell be traded for a humble plough? Surely you deign to mock the primordial purusha!

The just side of an ambivalent mirror of dharma dances to the hollow tune of a phyrric victory. Yet the resister succumbs to his deceit, nourishes his conceit, whereupon for kingly honor his love he prepares to forfeit. Echoed eons later by a fellow resister, whose soul was ravenously swallowed by the deux ex machina of flickering neon lights, whose empathy for her fellow sufferers predisposed her to utter the final monumental words, "Human talk is to be feared", our distinguished resister wallows in the venomous chastise of cronies and lackeys. Deeply afflicted by the venom of their lies, the resister dismisses his spouse, for his trust was too emaciated to cast off imaginations of his wife's fantasized plunge into temptation and unholy union with the vanquished demon. Such is the laughable irony of our epic resister, coming full circle in his mundane quest and his fruitless battle with destiny. Such are the hollow promises of the glories of kingship, the ingratiating stance towards the masses at the expense of one's most dearly cherished.

Yet as surely as Visnu reposes in the lotus pond of creation, justice roars its formidable head at all who beseeches its intervention. The spouse mourns in sackcloth and with all the might in her accursed soul, laments to the earth to ingest her entirety into its boundless plains. Can even the vilest of criminals deny the delicate wish of a destroyed damsel in deathly distress? The deed is done, and the spouse is devoured, still bleeding in derision, still clinging onto a shattered vision of peurile reconciliation.

Years later, as if the fervent echoes of karma finally traverse to our resister's hardened ears, he harkens his call to his own tragic and melancholic demise. Garnering his bewildering legions of devotees, he embarks on the long march towards the enchanted streams and rivers of his long departed youth, and it is there that he implores Visnu to enfold him eternally into the bosoms of divine infinitude.

-The End-

Ramayana

Hark, hark, the loquacious man speaks...

Amidst the languid foliage of the jungle emerges the resister. Slung over his indefatigable shoulders, a handcrafted bow, a soul-wrenching past, a hazily resolute future interwoven by images of his estranged wife, his life, the toil and the strife, the unrelenting will to survive. Bending towards the serenity of the brook, he invigorates his senses by meditating upon the sacred lotus pond of his lord Visnu, enthroned mightily in glory. With a careless whisper the morning breeze caresses his bronzed covering, the occluding armour above the dense ocean of turmoil and sorrow. His thoughts we now follow, all through the endless tomorrows.

A chaste spouse floundering betwixt the boundaries of peril, tempation and sanctity. A deafening tirade on the conchshell, the inexorable call to mortal combat. Bow drawn, eyes transfixed, chaturangas geared, faces smeared, a battalion of souls both fearing and feared. In the name of dharma, conscience artificially cleared. On the very ground they tread, they deposit fragments of their souls, lest the body fails to find its way home.

Then, as glorious as drops of nectar on a parched land, divinity descends, and in one stroke of provenance, the untamed beasts of the jungle proclaim their allegiance to our weary resister. Woe to the demon, its craving and lust now confront the callous spear of justice! Yet upon the sight, what more the touch, of such unprecedented celestial beauty as incarnated by the resister's inamorato, what else has the demon to lose, to gain, to cling on in vain? Not this wretched life, nor any previous and future existences as the demon hangs its head in profound resignation, arms of destiny outstretched and crucified from kalpa to kalpa. If demise be the price for the abduction and tryst, then let all be staked upon the roll of its karmic dice.

...And upon uttering thus, the loquacious man is assailed by fatigue...bid him a good repose, and he will return shortly to bestow the remnants of the Ramayana.

Eddie Guerrero (1967-2005)

15 killed in bomb blast.
39 meet their maker as train derails.

In an age when the demise of humanity sometimes becomes a mind-numbing statistic, the passing of a few good men wrenches the heart and unveils whole new perspectives on death. Such a passing happened, on the 14th of November. Just another day of another month in another year.

Rest in Peace, Eddie Guerrero. It's finally time to sit back and sip a cup of tea with the Owen Harts and Curt Hennigs.

Viva La Rasa, lie cheat and steal!

Your Kite Face

A string can be cut into many pieces, yet we chose to tug at each end, inflicting abrasions unto each other's hand. If eyes could drip pus and blood, I would'nt be caught in this teary flood. Once I tried to weave a net that would impale you, a caricature of my undoing, a cartouche of my most ancient script of desire. Around each bend and hitch we ran, knotting nothing into Wonderland. I wonder when your kite face plunged the sands. For in the end, I gaze longingly into the cuts of my fat bleeding hands.

Cometh Thou All !

Being a log of cavernous lamentations from a tarnished spirit, in due course ordained to arise, nonetheless provisionally covenanted with the Majesty of Insanity....

"Cometh thou all to the banquet
That madness, in gladness has set
Hang up the old cloaks of past glory
And savour the wine of regret
Why hurry? The main course is just starting
Its flavours shall rummage your heart
And after your tango with kismet
You try but you cannot depart. "