liminal spaces

You approach the mirror, sure that when you touch it, your hand will ripple through it like through water and touch someone else, someone who is not you because they cannot be you. You are sure of this, very sure, and yet… You hesitate to do that, to put your hand forward and prove to yourself what you know. Instead, you stare at that person who stares back at you unblinkingly.

You note the hair, the lips, the hands hanging limply and feel the tingles go through your arm. The reflections are too different, too other to be your own. Those are not the hands you see and use everyday. That hair is not what slides through your fingers when you are tired. Those lips… You quirk your own just to see what it does and yet desperately avoid noticing. You jerk your eyes away in time and end up looking into the eyes.

The eyes… And now two moments blend, fade in and out eerily as you see yourself for a moment and then the stranger until the power of the eyes make you breathless and you want to look away and can’t but you must…

In sheer desperation, frightened of something–yes, for you are frightened and the ridiculing of your fears will only come much later–you reach out your hand and slap it on the surface of the mirror. Whether your hand goes through or not suddenly seems immaterial. For whatever it is, you are trapped.

we<–>me

The longer I live, the farther she gets from me. I lived with her once, constantly. Then she drifted and became an ideal I would reach one day–and that day, I’d feel successful and whole. But days pass and I doubt she’ll ever come back to me. I begin to wonder if I can live with just me, without her to give that meaning, that hope of redemption some day. Slitted wrists and melodrama tempt and yet can never be.

She is dead. That confident, gregarious woman. Though only I knew of her, she was still as real and tangible as the summer sun. I mourn her as a dear, precious friend, now gone forever. No one mourns beside me, for the world never truly saw her. I skim through her past and her thwarted future, but it’s painful to look through it and despair at the futility of it all! Melted dreams and disappearing hopes now remain like scattered debris from a happy picnic that only lives now in sepia-mind-photographs.

within

She floats in the fog, drifting… a whisper through a world that isn’t quite real. The fog is so cool, so comfortable – it crept up so slowly on her that she didn’t notice it. And now it consumes her existence and yet, she still does not notice, for she can’t remember a time that was free of the fog.

The fog is a light blanket, pressing against her nose, her ears, skin, eyes, it muffles her senses. It isn’t unpleasant. Oh no, it’s quite wonderful, actually. Wonderful to not feel too sharply or think too deeply. She used to think that most of the problems in life came from feeling too intensely. She doesn’t need those emotions to define her existence. All she needs is… anything that leads to nothing. Like the fog.

Sometimes, she feels the panic. There are sudden feelings of oppression when she lets herself forget her own assurances or remember the before. But even the panic isn’t sharp and intense – the fog doesn’t allow that. The fog, her best friend. It is more of a vague anxiety, a nagging worry. Yet she knows, intellectually, that it is a panic. In these times, she desperately misses those unnamed and unnameable concepts, those ideas whose names she’s forgotten. She cannot be content or secure in the fog, which suddenly seems to fill itself with shadows that even she—a whisper—can see, and feels vaguely frightened.

But these panic attacks come so rarely and go so quickly that she hardly remembers or cares. They hardly cause any thinning in the ever-thickening fog.

(Nameless… again)

She stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down. Still, motionless. The waves moved forward and smashed themselves on the rocks so far below, with such force that she could taste the salt against her pale lips. Her eyes drifted to the calmer part of the ocean, the indescribably diverse shades of colour–green blending into blue, into grey. And all she saw was the ocean, the sky. All she heard was the sounds of the waves and the cawing of the birds around her.

She wondered idly why she saw nothing more, felt nothing more. Surely she ought to have some great, deep thoughts about the beauty, the loneliness and the sheer power of it all? Every human before her, every one of them who had stood where she now did, must have felt some sense of awe and wonder. After all, didn’t the poets find eternal inspiration from the sight of the sea? Didn’t they write endlessly on everything from despair to hope to hatred to time, inspired by this very sight? Who could count the number of artists over time who had tried, to their frustration, to capture the sheer vastness of the angry ocean on canvas, to freeze a moment of the grandeur for all eternity?

Why, then, she wondered. Why wasn’t she moved to any emotion but quietness… A sense of simply watching? Nothing in her stirred, nothing about the vista before her spoke to her soul. Just the thought seemed vaguely ridiculous to her.

She had noticed this about herself before. She was so often baffled when people spoke of grand passions, about being absolutely taken over by emotion. She had no idea what they meant. For her everything was even, smooth, like a well-pressed silk cloth without a single blemish. Her emotions, like her voice, were well modulated, without great variation in frequency.

She must be what they called “cold hearted”. Her mind shied away from the thought. Surely not! She did not like the sound of that. She had always heard such people being spoken of in the most horrified tones. To not have the heart filled with emotion, brimming with love–or hatred–seemed pathetic and unnatural. Surely she wasn’t either of that?

Now, she remembered as a child that there had been something different about her. A feeling inside that had made her–different, somehow, from what she now was. But she had grown up and lived her life. And a normal life it had been too. No great tragedies or agonies to kill that spark inside. And she realized now that it was dead. Strange that she had never noticed the loss. It has crept in on her slowly, silently, yet inexorably.

The fact that she was able to stand here and feel nothing–absolutely nothing–bothered her suddenly. Was she really dead inside? Something inside her whispered insidiously–yes!

She stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down. The waves moved, suddenly seeming hypnotic. She knew that a cold, emotionless life was surely not worth living. What was the use of being human, of being alive when the soul was dead? Wasn’t she just a shell, insignificant? A lifeless piece of driftwood swirled along by the whirlpool of life, caring neither about shores, nor jagged rocks? Surely it was better smashed against those rocks, far below?

Yet she stood still, motionless. A step would send her plummeting into the ocean, into oblivion. But she realized that such a thing was beyond her. She didn’t feel the despair… No traces of emotion strong enough for such a step existed in her. And even as she contemplated it, she didn’t feel fear at the thought. A strange, detached fascination with what would come after… but she did not need to discover that today.

Shrugging off what she considered temporary insanity, she stepped back… turned… and walked away.

…

…

As the water enfolds me like a cool sheet, I feel the day’s heat and exhaustion recede and melt. I abruptly forget strokes, kicks and other details as I sink in and just let myself float. Behind closed eyes, I can almost imagine staying here forever, with the body incredibly light and just floating, adrift, with water-deafened ears creating a sense of peaceful solitude. I can imagine being the only soul in the universe, or even a small part of a great, living, breathing universe. Was this how I was a short 18 years ago, floating in the serentiy and security of the womb, unaware of the world outside, suspended in a liquid reality where everything seems far, yet so near? Where you can never be sure of proportions, yet this hardly matters?

My eyes open and I am transformed again… Everything is blue or green, floating, insubstantial, in a world that is never still. This somehow seems real or even closer to reality than a world above ruled by gravity, weighed down by rules and unbreakable laws. Here, anything is possible. I can almost imagine an ancient, primitive ancestor floating and moving through this waterscape with ease, gills or some primitive organ drinking in and effortless limbs propelling it through the water. How did I reach this far? The gills are gone, the limbs are changed and all those memories are gone. But perhaps here, suspended, the mind remembers, some primal part of us remembers and yearns… the mind wanders, meanders into other places.

Suddenly I feel a bump against my arm and I rise to the surface, breathing deeply, blinking away water… and more… from my eyes.

Do you know the muffin man?

Do you know the muffin man?

The muffin man?

The muffin man?

Oh–the one who lives on Drury Lane? Yes… I do know the muffin
man.

It may be noted that some of the greatest secrets and conspiracies of the world are hidden in the most innocuous of places. There are millions of theories such as how a certain building is symbolic of the chaos that man lives in; or a certain painting of a scenery is actually symbolic of the artist’s maiden aunt’s nose which had an ugly wart on it. While these theories range from the profound to the ridiculously ridiculous, the fact remains that sometimes things are not always what they seem.

The same applies to the passage quoted at the beginning of this post. For the animated movie savvy, I hardly need to mention that it is from the king of all cartoons, Shrek. This particular dialogue is innocent enough (unless you consider the ginger bread man being tortured with milk by Lord Farquads goonda not very innocent… but that’s another story.) Anyway… it is, I state, quite an innocent scene. On first viewing it, one may be mildly amused or like me, laugh like a loon for an hour. But a disturbing insight has come to light.

The muffin man they speak about, is in fact, a secret code word. Or rather, a secret man. Er… that is to say, the muffin man leads a secret double life. By day, he’s a jovial, fat little baker, baking away runaway confectionaries but by night… Ah yes, few people know of his night shift duties. By night, he becomes a different man. He becomes a shadow among shadows—except for the fact that he is an oddly yummy-smelling shadow. He becomes the defender of the defenceless. He becomes the protector of the… protection less and the upholder of justice, and to blatantly plagiarise a particular movie, he becomes an all-round good guy.

Not that he’s a bad guy during the day. His muffins are well know. He is peerless in his cakebaking abilities. His baguettes are to die for. But somehow loses favour among women–they say his food is too tempting and too fattening. But he strives on, everyday, baking away.

But it is at night that his true nature revelas itself. Armed with a frying pan and another lethal weapon–his blender–he roves the areas around Drury Lane, scourting the street for crime. It may be noted that the police are pretty good at this themselves and so the presence of a super hero proves redundant, rendering the muffin man into a slightly insane looking figure. But remember, it’s the thought that counts!

The muffin man is often made conspicuous by the absense of any particularly great super powers, unless of course you, like me, have tasted his chocolate gateau and think it’s a super human preperation. But he is still a super hero because in his heart he is one! He does have a constume which unfortunately does not fit anymore due to a weakness for his own preparations. He is still a dignified figure though (or so he would have us believe.)

To add to his good deeds, he also takes customised orders like giant ginger bread men, gingerbread houses, etc.

So, the next time you want to strike fear in the heart of a villain, walk up to him and whisper in his ear Do you know the muffin man? (Using a menacing tone while doing so might help.)

Last confessions of a murderer.

On a cold dark night I decided to do it. My motives were many. Its crimes against me were innumerable. It took everything away from me. I’m old and didn’t feel scared. Ironic, really.

I had considered many ways of committing the crime–yes, killing is a crime and I knew it. I’m not about to offer any justification for my act, my crime. All I can say is that I decided to do it. I planned for days, weeks. I could feel the pressure building through days of busy work and a hectic schedule.Because I knew what lay waiting for me at the end of it all.

I planned. Yes, I confess, this crime was premeditated. I planned it step by step. It would have been so easy to use any one of verious methods. Poison, a bullet, a rope. All these options were open to me. But I chose none of them because these would directly affect me. And I wanted to triumph over that which wronged me many times. Many times. Ah, the irony of it!

Perhaps I need not have done it at all. I would have survived. But I saw–and see–no reason to not commit the crime. I cannot say I forced myself. It was completely out of free will. I even enjoyed it. Yes, I admit to that too. I enjoyed it!

But let me tell you something, before you judge me, my parents, my family, my sanity, my morality and all else associated with me. Let me tell you. You are guilty! Guilty, at this very minute of the same crime I committed!

But now… now as my pen grows slower and slower, as the seconds tick by, I realise the futility of my act. But I didn’t realise it then, when I committed the crime.

Yes, I went through with my plans of vengeance and murder. I committed the heinous crime. I leaned forward, picked up the remote and turned the television on.

(People going What obscure crap! may want to refer to the comments section.)

The ant’s tragedy

Well, guess I’m on a roll today. Am not very satisfied with this one, so comments are welcome again…

The bright blue ant from Chengulpet
Shone brilliantly enough to be set
In a necklace
But was reckless
And was crushed under a Fiat

Five lines to endless wisdom…

Wrote a limerick in class… Comments and critiques welcome!

A silly young girl from George Town
Set her heart on wedding a clown
But her stern father
Would much rather
That she find a well to jump down

Hmmm… if this makes you feel like finding a well to jump down, please don’t let me stop you
Peace…

The Nameless One

CAUTION: Yes, I’m a girl and please dont judge me when you read the first line. Read on, good woman/sir… enlightenment awaits you.

And oh yes. This is mine, mine MINE! If you steal it, I shall find you and shoot you and cut you into tiny pieces and bury them. Unless you’re rich of course, in which case I shall blackmail you into writing off all your wealth to me. Now, enough chatter. Go read… shoo!
———-

I’ve always had a thing for older women, for as long as I can remember. An animal psychologist would have a field day with that statement, I’m sure, coming up with various theories on my early puppy-hood experiences. You know how these humans tend to complicate stuff. Whatever it was, I can only say that I find older women oddly attractive. That’s probably why the woman next door caught my eye when my humans and I moved into our new home.

Suzy was a beauty by any standards, I’ve got to say. She was of indeterminate breed but my! she seemed to have inherited the best from all her various illustrious ancestors. Long, silky ears, a cute little snout that ended on an unbelievably pink nose… and that tail! It was—and remains—long and graceful with the same silky hair that covers those beautiful ears. You might think I’m being sexist in my description of her, but to understand the inner beauty, you have to learn to understand the outer beauty. (What that basically means is that I fell in love purely on a physical, superficial level at first. But you have to mind the sensibilities of the ladies… who might just write me off as a male chauvinist cat if I didn’t add these touches.)

So I did what any healthy dog with any amount of self-respect would do. I tried to grab her attention. Well, maybe I went a little too far or moved a little too fast that first day when I rushed into their garden through a gap in the fence. And maybe it was a little foolish to dig up the flowers. I mean, I knew I wasn’t supposed to do that. But, in my defence, how else was I going to make her sit up and take notice?

Well, to cut an ugly story short, I didn’t win any favours from her on that memorable occasion. But fortunately, apparently the belief that first impressions last long proved wrong. Maybe it was my dashing charm or my great looks. Maybe even my modesty. All I can say is that a few short weeks later, she seemed willing to let me approach her again.

This time, I used all my dogly wits and planned ahead. After all, two years of life as a bachelor hadn’t gone to waste. Never mind the fact that I hadn’t lived alone. My humans needed me. But I was no inexperienced little pup. Anyway, I let my humans and Suzy’s become friends. The flower garden incident hadn’t really killed all hope of that. In fact, perversely, it seemed to make these humans closer to each other (I won’t mentioned the amused, somewhat disparaging remarks that I sensed being directed at me or the chuckles they had at my expense. No, I won’t mention it.)

As they bonded in their strange and often amusing ways, I would often stroll into the house. Suzy would notice, oh yes, she would. I could always tell because even if she was pretending to sleep, her tail would twitch the slightest bit and I would be forced to hide a smug smile. I slowly approached her… wooed her, if you please. I can’t say I composed great love poetry, I found that too undignified. But I gently prodded her into games and long walks at twilight. We even shared a few moonlight howls. And slowly she gained interest in me.

Let me tell you something, though. Don’t let my narrative skills lead you to think that it was easy. Oh no. Remember, Suzy was much older than I—a whole year older and therefore that much more experienced. She’s seen men come and men go. But I had something that she’d not come up against—the enthusiasm of youth! It proved to be too powerful I guess.

By the time she gave in to my wiles, the humans had discovered my—er—interest in my ravishing neighbour. While that was mildly embarrassing, it was nothing when you compare it to what followed.

I’ve been living with humans all my life and while I’m convinced that they might be more intelligent than we dogs suspect, what creates a problem in these theories is some of their strange activities. They tend to muck about a lot, complicating the simplest of things, even the most basic necessities of life, like eating, sleeping and even fun stuff like mating! Take it from me, they hardly ever eat without strangely shaped objects to poke at their food with. Their sleeping peculiarities I don’t really criticise very harshly. They sleep on such soft, comfy beds. But they seem to be fixated on sleeping only at night. Strange, I know. Even answering nature’s call isn’t exempted from their peculiarities. They use strangely shaped chairs, paper and all kinds of things. And don’t even let me start on their “baths” and “showers”!

Then there is mating. They have strange ceremonies and practices even there!

Now, really. Don’t misunderstand me. I love my humans. I love it if they’re happy (for this means more love and attention for me too!) and I don’t mind their peculiarities. But what I object to is imposing it on me. They give me a bowl to eat from, fair enough. They give me a cushion to sleep on, I love that. The concepts of bathroom training and baths were painful to me, but I forced myself to accept it. But when they found out about Suzy and me!

A wedding was arranged. Yes, you heard me right. A wedding. They invited guests. They ordered cakes. They ordered specially made dog-clothes (did I mention clothes as one of these human abnormalities?) and generally indulged themselves. Apparently Frank and Cyndi, Suzy’s humans, were also pleased with our mutual interest. They arranged a wedding as I said.

I wore a suit and a top hat and Suzy wore a white gown, somehow still managing to look beautiful. I was mortally afraid one of our acquaintances, the Dalmatians or the Dobermans from the next street would discover this bit of ridiculousness. By the time the wedding was over, my tension was so high that I was hardly able to enjoy the bone-cake that my humans had lovingly had made.

When Suzy and I finally were alone, she said something that struck me as most appropriate and summed up the situation. “I guess we’ll never fully understand them,” she said, her tail waving gracefully. “But we can indulge their fancies, after all. Poor things!”

Ze End