i am hoping that pictures speak a thousand words...

because i certainly haven't been able to speak any of late




more @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/95436238@N00/

supposed sightings

early saturday morning [6am] a colleague asked me along for a smoke outside the office building. what started off as a conversation about wild chickens in the oil palm plantation around us ended up about spirits and ghosts. he told me that there have been more sightings lately - an old man in the control room [he asked the guy who works in there why he's hiding up in our department when he could ask the old man for help with his work] and a little kid playing in the office on the second floor where apparently one of the managers stayed back late to work and he heard a kid playing outside his office about 1 am and called the security room asking who the heck brought their kids up to the office and that they should get the kid back home now. ah but another colleague comes up to us and told us the story of the month. our colleague, the resident clown was in the prayer room at the far end of the building that looks out on to the highway. one early morning, after he was done with his prayers, he heard a car honking. thinking it odd that there would be cars around much less hoking at that time of day, he decided to open the windows to look out. and lo and behold, he saw something white in the middle of the highway. he started to panic because it looked like a hantu pochong [Hantu Pochong or Pochong– this is a Malay ghost, which is commonly seen wrapped up in its ‘kain kapan’ or white burial cloth. When a Malay dies he or she is wrapped up in three layers of white sheet, the end being tied in a knot.] a car approaches the alleged ghost and slows down to start honking since it's blocking up the road. and according to the clown, the ghost started to moo. turned out it was a white cow that wandered onto the highway. -_- pfft

perhaps they don't tell you things anymore because you don't deserve to know anything.

the sky looks bigger and trees, blacker when i am on a swing with my feet scraping the sand each time i fall back to the earth. rusted wood look like corinthian pillars holding up the space between the ground and the sky. i swing in that space between; back and forth, back and forth as if my life would wither away if istopped - teasingly at the trees that spread out their charcoal fingers as if to grab me and eat me up into its shadows. my toes are ashened - dipped in pompeiian volcanic dust that have bubbled its way onto the dry surface of makeshift frogponds beneath my swing. i trail footprints back to Dream with a song whispering around my lips like cigarette smoke escaping in hopes that someone would find them one day and track them like they would tiger footprints.

i put wishes in the coinslots of washing machines

... and i watch them tumbledry until they're soft and fluffy and static-y

if phonecalls did not cost so much, i would narrate my thoughts to you in utter monotony through the receiver so that you could hear them while i tangle my fingers around the cords. then you can cast your own net of emotions and expressions over my thoughts so that you could ake them yours. and that would save me a million years of writing nonstop over everything i own and my fingers wouldn't be inkstained and weeping from all the heaviness of words walking through them. you would be able to see my eyes and recite the exact color of it in perfect latin and everything would momentarily seem ok.
if telephones were still tied to wires and telephone poles, there will not be enough wires to tie around us and let our voices travel eventhough we are standing next to each other.

sometimes standing over the edge of a curb with the tip of my feet peeking over it feels like standing a thousand storeys above the ground and everything seems so small it looks as if there's nothing below. sometimes you are one and part of everyone down below - almost invisible, moving amongst the gravel cracks and i wouldn't be able to reach out to touch you. and if i jumped i would fall so far down so quickly that it would feel as if i've never fallen at all. and i will fall forever with the base of my shoes firmly on the gravel.

ancient teacups, antique scones

entries reread seem ancient now. they seem as if written by someone else; barely evoking faint memories of what they really mean - all the fancy caterwauling words that seem like intricate henna tattoos on the palms of indian brides. i had so much to let out. my alphabet soup was thick and gravylike. and now, when faced with something new, i am utterly speechless. yet i have been shown such an array of things that sometimes it feels as if i am walking down the street markets in Morocco. With vendors throwing their ware right at my face, my senses are smothered with the spice and music that abounds.