veiled in colourless quill

As my shutter lazily closes after a last click, I faintly sketch your portrait at the back of my mind. It is your story I capture every night of my childhood sleep. The ones who put me to sleep tell of so many stories and my sleep takes me to where you are.

There fly in white wings a wind invisible. My shutter need not open to capture you nor can any mirror ever reflect your smile. No light need ever pass through your lucid crystal eyes that lightly gaze in tranquil yet bizarre way. There are no mountains to block any light thus any shadow to sleep on ground. No need to walk anymore and no footsteps to lament by.

The time I spent in the angel’s home by myself seems like a togetherness of a lifetime of a misplaced moment with a company of many a young days. It is the only place I see a smile, a smile that kept me smiling by. A smile I inherit a thousand miles. It is there where I learned the many I come to know. How the wind hold me nowhere. Those white wings carry me over greenery where no craven boundary defines me.

Floating in the air, my veiled colourless quill carries me over nowhere. The place is deep within me, where someone someday can fly through. Come my wind in white wings and carry me over that same place where I once flew. Come my bright angel in serene light and steer me over greenery once again. Flap those invisible wings and arrive at this moment so still to sketch your smile once again.

a page written in invisible ink

I am to myself like the wind is to the trees, invisible to each other, yet rarely leaves to lone. That walk today seems quite ordinary along the same roads I always pass. But the difference is obvious as no shadow peek behind for my whereabouts. Like the night is to the day I hid from myself to read the pages off the road. The book is old and these pages I flip everyday not reading them but only faintly remembering hints of the pictures. I walk along these roads for almost seventeen and half years and yet never read a road as I do today.

It is a hard back in a bluish green cloth cover and as I open I hear a creak like an old rusty hinge. The first page is hand painted in a deep red with the words, red banana, written above in an unusually large font. But the strange thing is that there is no banana on this page but oranges, apples, some faded vegetables and some other people’s delusion written all over it. As I stared strangely at this page for some few moments, the many tiny things on this page changed. There came a figurine, took the beautifully drawn still life then threw some tiny paper and disappeared like the dust. That tiny paper had intricate patterns drawn in a monotonous fine print that resembles the craftsmanship of our ancestors.

Turning that page and wondering about that tiny paper I slowly turned left to read the next page. Stunned and still like a stone I had to close the next page before I could see even the edge. There came a dragon wisp through the pages and almost blew a fire that nearly burned the book. It went faster than it came and when I turned I could only see the tail. Relieved that I am still able to read I turned the page and this time quickly before another speedy comes along. The second page is filled with many colours, shapes and a long text to read. On the left are many horizontally written lines of how to do’s and reminding me of the toilet. To the right I now see a new picture pasted over one of my very favourite old ones. I like the old one because it was a natural wood in a clear matt finish. Now it is all painted green but I think that painting a green colour cannot make a place green. A complementing colour to the first page of red this green is surely competing to be read more than the first. Then along the corner of the page is a little big note more airy, transparent and in two blues that resembles the sea. No wonder why I had a second look, yes because it is some many sketches from the sea. Although I like the sea it is sad to see my friends from the ocean lying so still on a page and knowing that they can never see their loved ones again. As I read along this long and ever changing page I came across changing colour. There is no sun to see the changes clearly but these rising pigments mixed in water will surely change this page in few more months. On other days and especially when the warm sun heats my back I surely cannot read these pages as slow as I am now. And I am still on the second page and yet it seems like I already read the whole book not knowing what, why and how someone ever wrote it. 

Brink

My beach sandals shall come to know of a day when they cannot press the sand anymore. They do not know why they hurt the sand and anyone who comes in between. Each step hears the cry of many whom they never ever met before. And they simply stamp a relic like the ink between a block print. The burden left a mark so deep that their weep dripped a salt strained in a sieve unforgiving. If they had the will they can fly aloft where the sweet winds can carry the cold smile of them. Like why we do the things we do there are so many reasons that neither they nor I may ever know and yet we do and they remain with us.

Then come a day, a day as close as the light that touches me, when my sandals will step on a rim. That is when they shall say, “Oh! The one who holds the press, try if you can, and print a mark with me. For now we have come at the edge of the storm, where the thunder deafens my ears and I can hear you no more. And now we have come to a point of no return, and the lightening blinds my sight so guide me if you can. Now that we have climbed up the tall smooth and shiny bottle, a fragile one that is slippery yet colourful and reflects that we do. We made it halfway up the neck and still not enough and here we are today almost about to step on the lip.”

Imagine the moment on the brink from where we shall journey all the way again but on the other side. Like a fairy we shall fly and like a firefly we shall glow. Before our reflections were smaller since we were crawling along the outer surface of the bubble. And if we ever pass through we shall see ourselves no matter which way we turn.

My sandals shall come to know of this day and that moment when I can no more lay my burdens on them. I cannot imagine the everlasting floating selflessness that I shall be when passing through the rim. And it is when I shall leave my sandals at the threshold of myself.

National Day

As we celebrate National Day remember that we, "the people", is the nation. We are like a tree, from a seed we grow and spread and bear fruit and continue to grow. We branch in many directions and in varying sizes. Sometimes we shed leaves, but only to give way for new leaves to grow. Although very true that the young leaves collect the source of food from the sun necessary for survival, without the roots, which hold a tree firmly in all extreme conditions, those food from the leaves are but only a falling dream.

Though we are a mix of peoples, with differing thoughts and ideas, it is together that we can become the nation we dream. Like our olden boats, having no engine at all, they cross great oceans. They knew that if they made a sail to catch the wind, which even if they never saw, could take them to greater distances. The only condition was to go along with the wind, together our ancestors, the boat they made and the wind they made history in maritime culture.

Where is “my country” which I cannot see and yet I dream about? Where is “my nation” which I cannot touch and yet her warm embrace shelters me? Where is “my mother-tongue” which I cannot spell and yet her whisper is like a spell on me? Where is “my national anthem” which I cannot hear and yet she cries aloud? Where is “my mother-land” which I cannot smell and yet spreads her sweet scent on me? Where is “my people” whom I never felt and yet all around me?

Today we must not forget the socio economic problems that sleep with us today. I hear all concerned talk of the problems day and night and on voice, picture and paper. Talking is good that it is a beginning. And more, today we must talk, yes talk but about the solution and not the problem. There are different walks of life that people pursue today. For simply an economic benefit if they keep on talking until a next offer is at their hand we shall keep on talking.

I am putting a pencil on my table and I want you to tell me how to take that pencil from the table. Although when tomorrow realizes actually to become a today, there will surely be many thoughts and ideas of how to take that pencil. Some might even present beautiful presentations on how to take that pencil. Others will surely submit detailed technical reports with facts and calculations. Interesting suggestions might even be given to bring in expert help and heavy machinery to lift that pencil. Days might pass simply filling my mind and my desk too with “how to take a pencil” research data.

But I simply forward my hand and lift the pencil. To do that it took me only a second. It is the will to do what I want to do with what I have and in limited time for the benefit of everyone.

I wish all a smiling future.

the ant

Waiting around me is a vast stillness that gently breathes to faintly please me. And as I washed my hand with soap, it is a heavy rain for the ant that almost drowned in it. Crippled but struggled a few steps then fell upside down and stood as still as the stillness around me. I stood still only to hear someone so still that even the stillness played a silent whisper.

I took the ant, dipped in fresh water and kept on a soft white tissue. The water soaked quickly in the foggy softness of the paper and it shines on its smooth black surface that I almost saw myself in it. I breathed warmth into the little thing and again I did as if it felt a warm gentle breeze from a misty ocean on a warm sunny afternoon.

I moved it to a drier place on the white surface of the soft paper. Again I kept it warm until it slowly moved its legs for the second time with great expression and almost on the eleventh hour like the beautiful notes of Beethoven’s “con molt’ espressione” (sonata no. 11, 2^nd movement). After a while it turned on its legs and slowly gained bearings to turn as if to look at me. None of us moved in the next few moments listening to the stillness of the sonata. The music felt like an unplayable debt of thankfulness dressed in a white one that is layered a little more than a dozen times.

Note:           I read about the ant and how they live for the betterment of togetherness rather than the self. A self which is so weak that even a falling drop can bring an end to oneself. How they communicate, cooperate and even guide one another to at times of survival. This little creature survived through millennia only by the strong cooperative principles of strength of unity. Togetherness and understanding within one’s own community and those who surround them. Together they build great nesting places and together they inherited a tradition of survival and beauty that very few can master like the great master who play the sound of stillness.

sensation

I open my eyes. I close my eyes. Again I open my eyes. Now I know that, after many hours of sleep, I am simply awake. But no matter how wide I open or how much I close, I am not seeing anything. My mind tells me that the time gone is far better. At least through the dark darkness of my sleep, I pass those unseen unreal yet beautiful landscapes. Now I realize that, after playing with my friend, even the bright burning chubby one is still smiling deep in memories of yesterday.

I slowly went and sat out on the deck. From far away I smell the waking of that plump little one. Though my sight is low and almost asleep, I smell the dawn as freshly as how I smell the half eaten mangoes left by the bats. Now I smell the mist of the morning fog and slowly yet deeply I breathe. Feeling cold inside myself I gently hiss to that yawning round one to wake up and let me smell my skin.

I look once again and now I hear the song of the bamboo so pale and colourless in early dawn. They play softly in wild like Beethoven’s “Quasi una Fantasia”. Only the leaves can play so gently with the softness of their flesh. This music made my eyes close again for a while only to feel the liquid sound to pour inside of me.

I wake again in a silent surprise to quench my thirst from the falling little drops. It tasted like “Gnossienne in Painted Veil”.

I felt a sensation of an unseen touch. With the round one half awake I now see the trees dancing at that very moment. From where does this feeling of touch come from, I wonder. Along she comes happily to ballet with the trees then hugs me gently and tip toes through the bamboo. I never see the wind with wings that flies over me to humour the beauty of a moment so still.