Ten, owing two

The long arm of law...

...has feelings too.

Nine

---

"If you stand too close to a painting — all you see are patches of color, if you stand too far back, you can't see any of the detail."

-- Dead Like Me: Nighthawks (Season 1, Ep 12)

Eight. Dead.

What a coincidence to be meeting a dad trying to teach his son to spin tops.

What a rarity.

I just had a chat recently about childhood games, as in the ones that don’t involve buttons. The ones that are powered by nothing but a little ingenuity and kiddish egos. The ones that don’t try to add your dexterity or gold, nor unlock any new skills that make you feel vaguely awesome. Until the battery runs out, anyway.

He told me about kite-flying, and how his dad would balance the wing-tips with ribbons. I never knew that about kites. He told me about the game galah-panjang, and how the game was played with such intricate strategy. I never knew there was such a game. He told me about playing with marbles, and how the marbles would actually break if they were rough enough (and being boys, they usually were). I never had enough marbles to know what to do with them. He told me about spinning tops, and how he and his friends would try to wreck (or “tikam”) each other’s tops by spinning it with a certain force and angle. I never knew a seemingly harmless game of top-spinning has such a, ahem, twist.

What did I do with my childhood?

Perhaps my obsession with living-life-to-the-fullest is a sort of compensation – for times lost, and laughter unknown.

At least he promised to show me all of them. Recaptured innocence seems more appealing than premature maturity.

*****

If I may be allowed to make an honest observation, living life to the fullest can wear you thin.

(Now, now, put down that pitchfork before you hurt someone. Unnecessary excitement is never healthy. I promise that I’ll climb into the meat grinder by myself as soon as I explain my seemingly obnoxious statement.)

With only a year in the States, I sometimes feel like I’m not doing enough with my seconds. What do you mean I cannot write/feed/chauffeur/scream on a roller coaster/photograph the streets of San Francisco/cheer to a gig/skydive/sing lullabies/comb through the motherlode of movies that is Netflix/take a road trip/calm nightmare scares all at once? There ain’t no limit to the “multi” in multi-tasking, innit?

And therefore, every weekend, I promised myself that I would do something new. Something exciting. Something American.

I’d like to say that my weekends have been fulfilling. I feel quite proud of dragging myself out of the room before the lumpiness settled, and See and Did things. Sometimes it isn’t worth it. There were some things I saw and did which were, really, nothing to shout about. But at least I felt like I lived.

Feeling alive, however, was another matter altogether.

This weekend, the blues caught me by surprise. I could feel the lethargy in my body, the heaviness of my heart. It wasn’t as if something happened. I just didn’t feel like doing anything. And heaven forbid, I did nothing.

And then I realise, boy, am I tired.

I may eat my words several months from now, but I actually had fond thoughts about going home, to recuperate from this… pressure, for want of a better word, of always having to Experience the World. I’m not complaining, no. It’s a privilege to be living your dream.

I’m just a little worn out from trying to keep up with that privilege.

It’s probably a personality flaw. I have lots of them.

This weekend, I just lazed. And I thought about all the things that I didn’t do. I didn’t go to the Mardi Gras parade in San Francisco. I didn’t work on my Challenge for this month. I didn’t wash the car. I didn’t take my Smena Symbol out for a stroll.

But gosh, it’s too darn depressing to measure life by what you didn’t do, no matter what Mark Twain said. So I decided to think about what I did, instead.

I Dreamt, and that was doubtlessly the best. I napped, and it was sheer bliss.

But the most significant thing, I suppose, is that I fell in love with the world again.

And all I really did was just watched the tv series Dead Like Me, and cried.

(I realise, that could actually be my achievement for the weekend: shedding tears for a story well-told. Sure, I didn’t set out to do it. But heck, life is too short to spend the days making the goal. Sometimes, making up the goal as you go along would have to do.)


Dead Like Me is, essentially, a dark comedy about an uninspired, sulky 18-year-old Georgia being killed by a flying toilet seat (as freak accidents go, this one isn’t even the most bizarre one in the show). However, she doesn’t have the convenience of being dead. She got recruited as an undead – a grim reaper. Yes, “a”, because she is not alone in her duties to escort newly-expired souls to their Destinations. Along with an eclectic and experienced bunch of undeads, who have to hold day jobs or a life of crime to survive and squat in dead people’s houses (grim reapers are not paid because it’s considered public service), Georgia, as Netflix wrote, “doesn't quite know what she's doing -- or even why she was chosen for the job in the first place. But soon, she grows to recognize the poetry in her purpose.”

In short, it’s totally my kind of TV series.

I’m a sucker for humanization of the supernatural and mythical. That is why I’m so hooked on Pratchett’s Discworld – be it dragons or trolls or dwarves or vampires or werewolves or witches or humans or Corporal Nobbs (who has papers to prove that he’s human), everyone is just trying to live the best way they know how, and even if that involves selling you Dragonland souvenirs or counterfeits (or in Corporal Nobbs’ case, rummage about in your pockets), then so be it.

The motley crew of soul escorts in Dead Like Me is no different – they do laundry, smuggle drugs in their asses (it went horribly wrong) to pay the rent, order the cheapest things on the menu and keep pets because that’s the closest they can have for a friend. They also have to put up with the Rules of being a grim reaper, i.e. no messing about with fate. Ask Georgia; she tried.

In other words, being an undead has all the peskiness of being alive, with the added disadvantage that you can’t have contact with your loved ones, lest they can’t deal with the excitement. There are Inconveniences that you can’t run away from, like money issues, and Rules, and human relationships and well, death.

But as Episode 5 “Reaping Havoc” showed, even if you can’t run away from these certainties, you can find poetry in them – in money issues, in Rules, in relationships, and yes, even Death. It’s not that hard. I mean, it’s gotta be easier than finding poetry in, say, Taxes, at least.

So a grim reaper left a post-it note on the door of a victim’s sister. It says,
“M.J.’s okay.
:), Jesus.”

And a grim reaper buried a lone, old woman whose children do not visit her anymore, even though she can be haughty, when she’s not making him smirk.

And a grim reaper shut down one building’s electricity, so that the alarm clock of a resident – who had remained jolly and kind even though the undead wrote him a parking ticket in her day job – would not ring, and therefore he would not wake in time to meet his ill fate.

And two grim reapers watched a man having the time of his life doing an Irish dance on the bar table before his time was up. One of the grim reapers took a last polaroid of the man smiling in mid-dance, just like she did to every other soul she escorts, before they died.

And I watched all this, with tears streaming down my cheek, and found myself stubbornly believing that this is what the world is. A world I can really love; a world where everyone is just, really, human.

And because the Bible said that everyone is created in God’s likeness…

... therefore, maybe everyone is just, really, God.

*****

I can do with more weekends like this.

Seven, etc.

You’re gonna get a peace of me.

The ironic thing is not the dissonance between her actions and her agenda.
The ironic thing is that she was trying to punch an octopus tree.

Unreasonable. Unsolicited, and most likely, unrequited. Unfair. Unnecessary.

Some people’s actions are.

They sit atop their Moral Mountains and pass judgment. And sometimes, for good measure perhaps, they found it necessary to smite you with their Rod of Righteousness, lest you forget that their Opinions matter.

Even though sometimes they aren’t even sure what the heck they are attacking. It’s got eight legs, and it’s covered with green bits of stuff, and it’s rooted to the spot minding its own business … but damn, let’s just show it who’s boss anyway. For good measure, and wossname.

Back off, will ya?

Because seriously, in all sincerity and with all due respect (which amount, to be honest, is dipping by the dozen every passing moment), you don’t know shit.

I know better than anyone that I deserve Judgment for the heart that I have wounded, and the mess I created. If I’m lucky, it would be the kind of Judgement that involves a meat grinder and some sterilized cans. But heck, I probably don’t have enough karma for that kind of luck.

It would, however, not be the kind of judgement that you are qualified to pass. Your opinion is not my sentence, because you did not live our lives. All you knew was just what you saw. All you decided was just what your mind was able to feed. You. Do. Not. Know. Period.

I owe to the people I have hurt. I will answer to them. If they punch me, I would not retaliate. If they do not punch me, I would do so for them.

I am already doing so.

But you. I owe you nothing.

I write this not to make you change your mind about me. Shove your Moral Meatpie in my face, or rather, as you did, behind my back – I have a big enough towel. Let’s see who gets tired first.

I wrote this to remind you that everyone has a reason for the things they did, and everyone is just trying to live the best way they know how. And really, we do not owe you an explanation about why we did what we did. That doesn’t mean you can wave your ignorance about and impose your values on us.

I wrote this, with the hope that you will remember to live and let live. Perhaps, even just one person in the future would be able to breathe easier without you huffing down their neck. Goodness knows we have enough monsters within already.

But of course, you can disregard all the above as a self-redeeming ramble. To which I will reply, “Go on, cast that stone.”

*****

Okay, enough of that venting. Here are some innocuous floral pics from the Tulipmania festival in San Francisco to balance it out.

Tulips are, I thought, the happiest flowers ever. If God knew Photoshop (he probably uses something infinitely more complex), Tulips would be the test subjects where He bumped up the contrast with.

And God saw that it was good.

Just a few personal favourites. The angles aren’t even original, for crying out loud.

Six

San Francisco, Feb 2011.

This Chinese New Year actually came and went quietly, with me hardly noticing it.

The key word here is “quiet”. The fact that it occurred in the same sentence with CNY makes it a novelty, and that is a fresh change from the usual scarlet festivity, which had always been just a novel – the kind that has more drama than you can keep up with, but still manages to be several hundred pages too long.

It’s not that I hate CNY. In all honesty, I actually enjoy going back to my Grandma’s for some home-cooked spread, soaking in the camaraderie and witty banters unique to Ipoh-town folks, and take full advantage of the homely love that Uncles and Aunts seem to be more inclined to dish out when they have not seen you for a year. And Kuih Kapit. Oh man, how I miss the sweet aroma teasing my senses when I levered open the Milo tins filled with those pieces of crispy, folded wonders. And lion dances. And wearing red for gung-ho’s sake. And holidays, except I always ended up working anyway, because a procrastinating workaholic (yes, they do exist, but the government hushed it up) should never end up as a freelance writer.

But I could really do less with the spring cleaning, and the noise level, and the stress, and the visiting, and the scorching heat pervading the air, and the songs. Gosh, especially the songs.
This year, however, CNY was a negligible affair. Granted, I baked the cornflake-cookie thing with my host kids (my first time baking okay!) to show some gusto, but other than that the day went on with a different kind of drama, stress and noise level (firecrackers stand no chance against the kids’ screams). I even forgot to wear red.

I did, however, shivered in the cold rainy evening for several hours in San Francisco to watch the CNY parade, which was supposedly among the top ten parades in the world.

My verdict? Meh. The lion dances were half-hearted at best, the marches were mostly unsynchronized, and some of the costume designs were just plain, well, plain. It could be that the whole spirit of CNY was dampened by the rain, which has the nipping potential to freeze anyone into immobility. There were times when I thought my hands went dead, which would be a bummer, considering that I was trying to push the shutter button on my camera.

And that was how I learnt to appreciate the things I never found the reason to. Like the warmth of the festivity in Malaysia, both in family and in weather. I realised that part of the fun of CNY is that it makes you want to tear your stinky, sweat-stained shirt out. And being able to stomach any chilled beverages, even Sarsi (diabetes in a can, that). I also realise that there are some things that Malaysians still do best, lion dances being one of them.

Most of all, I realise that my CNY in America lack a certain noise level, stress, visiting and general red-ness. And songs. Gosh, especially the songs.

I kinda, perhaps, miss them.

Next year, I’ll be eating my words. But I bet they wouldn’t taste so bad with Kuih Kapit.

Five

Won·der

[wuhn-der]
–verb (used without object)

1. to think or speculate curiously
2. to be filled with admiration, amazement, or awe; marvel (often followed by at )
3. to doubt

(Taken from Dictionary.com)

Being a nanny puts a lot of things in perspective. The importance of paying attention in class, for example.

This is not to say that nanny-ing is, an inferior job compared to those that you need to blowtorch half your brains and numb the other half over (wait wait, they have a word for it… Yep, Education). I always think the value of a certificate, like many other forms of paper in the working world, is highly overrated. It’s just that, it would have been handy if I had listened to the droning of my Biology teacher. And actually commit to mind the Chemistry chaos.

Gosh, I would have carefully filed my notes and stored them in alphabetical order, had I know that I would be one day taking care of tiny human beings who have interest ranging from the uses of chemicals (dang the Powerpuff Girls and the mention of Chemical X) and the names of all the bones in the body. My boys, they seem to be held together by questions and the stubbornness to Get Answers, no matter the threat (which usually goes like:

“If you ask me one more question, boys… I’d… play dead.”

“What is ‘dead’?”

“Arrrgh!”

“Why did you say aargh?”

“Please, have mercy!”

“What’s ‘mercy’?”

“*foams*”

“What’s that white stuff?”

“*whimpers*”

“What’s that white stuff? What’sthatwhitestuffwhat’sthatwhitestuffwhat’sthatwhitestuff?”)

Yet, at times, their childish wonder and curiosity in the world keeps me from getting too old for my own good. They are so new, so fresh; everything fascinates them. They poke, they probe, they push every button (mostly mine) and pick up EVERY DARN THING from the ground.

Kids probably make the best journalists, mostly because they are oblivious to the popping vein on their victims’ necks, and that they probably invented Follow-Up Questions, and fortified them with steel stubbornness. And you have to admit, those huge eyes staring expectantly up at you have its effects. In a way, you feel like they believe that you Know. And goodness knows we don’t get enough votes of confidence like that.

And while I cringe whenever I feel the question mark creeping up, the kids have taught me to be fascinated about the world we live in. They have reminded me that living is pretty darn amazing, and life is so much stranger than we dared to hope for, if only we look in the right places. Or rather, don’t bother looking in the right places. Just poke your head into every place that looks fun, and let other people do the fretting for you about possible danger and death and, because you’d never know with kids, dynamites.

Where am I going with this? Heck, I don’t know. But as one mentor/friend once taught me, life is not about getting the right answers, but by asking the right questions.

Her

You may like me

(but really, what’s wrong with thee?),
or you can hate me
(by golly, what’s wrong with yours truly?),
but who I have turned out to be,
I like to think that I owe no one an apology.

But if you seek to praise a deserving name,
Or, more likely, finding someone to blame,
For crafting my odd personality that is prone to various levels of lame,
And, when not losing my shoe, as is my fame,
Would most probably clumsily set something aflame,
Let me tell you that this is all thanks to one amazing dame,
My infinite gratitude is hers to claim.

Without her as my sister,
My world would never be filled with the laughter,
That puts hyenas to shame.

For you must know,
That despite the early years of sisterly row,
The seeds of awe and wonder she still sow,
In my childish, awkward soul that was more graceless than a crow,
She was the Big Sister in which perfectness and brilliance flow,
She carried herself with such confidence, such glow,
She was popular in school, with impressive achievements in tow,
While I struggled to survive the primary-school low,
I looked up to her, occasionally my friend and mostly my foe,
And by secretly parroting her personality, my character found a way to grow.

The years went by, and as sisters do, we grew inseparable,
The fun we have; we guffaw more than we chuckle,
Together we survived various degrees of terrible,
For instance, Mum’s anger when our wee-hour -chats were not so subtle,
And the college years when our combined net assets worth only slightly more than rubble,
And when we caffeinated ourselves after watching a possessed child cackle,
And when we pigged out at a mamak,
with workers that like to soundlessly appear beside our table,
And how about the time when we were rolling in hunger,
waiting for Dad and the lunch in his motorcycle?

Thank you,
For saving my ass,
And saving my shoe,
For being my conscience,
And my cheerleading crew,
For standing by me,
Even when there was no reason to,
For Being There,
The difference it made, you have no clue.

To my uber awesome cool sister,
With her very own brand of humour,
One day the world we shall take over,
For Pinky and the Brain is born to conquer,
But for now a toast is in order,
Here’s to your spirit, your enthusiasm, your character,
May your strength and energy continue to inspire,
And although this will be that big 30th year,
I wish you never lose that joie de vivre,
For age is really but a number,
Ignore the details and we’d all be happier.

Happy Birthday, Pinky.

(This post will also serve as a reminder to myself: never attempt to rhyme past midnight again.)