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Wednesday, 30 July 2008

The False Mirror

She woke up in the morning with the remnants of last night's conversation still ringing in her head. Or were they from dreams that were left unreconciled? She took a deep breath with her eyes still closed.

She asked herself what day was it and she didn't reply immediately.

She was looking at travel ads before going to bed. She thought about going to Egypt on her own. She tried to remember if she dreamt about Egypt in her sleep. She couldn't recall before the alarm went off again.

With the alarm going off, it could not be a weekend. She sighed and sat up. A pillow fell off the other side of the bed.

She scratched her head and quickly wished she would not have bad hair today. Her nails were long again. If she washed her face enough times, she would have to trim her nails. Her stomach made a weird sound. She supposed she was hungry.

She felt an ache in her right thigh and another one in her left ankle.

There was a lump growing out near her spine at her back. She's been putting off going to the doctor's about it, because she could not remember if she always had a thing growing there since she was little. She was lazy and it did not bother her enough. It was smaller than her thumb. That was how she would describe it to the doctor. A lump that was smaller than her thumb. She was proud of herself for thinking of that in the morning. She contorted her arm to feel for the lump. It was in between her shoulder blades. Perhaps it was more like a bump. A lump like a bump that was smaller than her thumb. That would be stretching it a little. She stretched the skin on the bump, and thought it was too early in the morning to be playing with words.

She took off her clothes and switched on the shower. She liked the feeling of the water over her skin. She soaped herself. She felt a small sharp pain. It was the first time the lump on her back hurt. She rinsed the area more carefully and wondered if there was an open wound. She did not feel any just now, but it had hurt like soap over an open wound.

She decided that she would at least look at it in the mirror before she worry. She couldn't get a good look.

She strutted naked across the room to get her compact powder. There was a mirror in there she could use. So she held up the mirror from her used compact close to the lump to reflect it in the bathroom mirror. Her hands were wet. It was awkward. The powder was dampened.

There was a lump growing on her back. On the lump, the thin fold of skin made a horizontal slit across it. It did not look like a wound and she gently pushed the skin fold apart with two fingers and it hurt. So, she used her forefinger and her thumb to pull down the lower side of the slit to be clear. She was shocked at what she saw.

There was an eye beneath it.

She dropped her arms and contorted posture. She exchanged a confirmatory, reassuring glance with herself in the mirror. Then she mumbled, “what the fuck” and recomposed herself again to take a better look.

She had an eye growing out of her back, and it looked blood shot. She thought for a while and know she could not see what the third eye saw, and could not remember reading about anything like this. Except for those foetus in foetu people who are born with a conjoined twin inside themselves. They had a face or arms or legs sticking out of their body. It was beside the point. She only had an eye. Other than this morning, the growth did not bother her. Does it warrant going to the doctor now?

With genuine gladness, she announced to herself, “okay. This makes enough reason to not go to work today.” She needs the day off to carefully consider her follow up actions.

She dried off the rest of her body and put on her home clothes. She did not put on a bra.

She sent a message to her boss to apply for a day off work because she had an eye from her back. She'd better leave out the details. What was she supposed to do at work today? Then she laughed a bit to herself for remembering that she had to prepare for a some unimportant presentation tomorrow.

She had read in the newspaper that a woman reported discovering an eye in a cupboard. Stranger things had been reported in newspapers nowadays. She could not recall what was reported in the article.

She poured milk from the fridge into a glass. There was not enough to make a glass full. She ran out at one-third glass. Hating it when that happens, she thought to make some iced coffee.

If she could see with the eye on her back, would she only see the inside of her clothing? What good is that for?

She reached behind to feel it again. She wondered if she wished to find it gone, and it was just an elaborate hallucination that she cannot explain. But it was still there. She realised that the shocking manner of the truth hasn't really sunk in yet.

After some lack of deliberation, she decided to go back to sleep and decide what to do when she wakes up again. She had a whole day to decide. That is, if she can go to sleep, with the coffee and all. She ought to just lie down. Perhaps, she would lie down on her side.

When she closed the eyes on her face, she felt the eye on her back blink.

(sneak)

A lonely long legged fly

A long legged fly landed on a rock on a windy coast one evening. It was at an area near to where the river met the sea where the wind was well-known to be especially strong. As he struggled to stand still, the wind would blow away at his wings, stomach, antennae, and even at his long slender legs, making it difficult for the little fly's feet to remain firmly on the ground.

“If only I had somebody here with me,” the little fly lamented as he found a little rock to shield himself from the wind, “then we could laugh and make this incidents into acts of comic and laugh at how each other cannot stand still.”

The little fly sighed, feeling alone, feeling lonely.

“How I wish I was more like the grey little butterfly over there,” said the fly to himself of a little grey butterfly that was flying about lowly amongst the grasses, perhaps, collecting nectar off the wayside flowers of the coast. “Even though I wouldn't be very beautiful, I would have more confidence to make friends with the dragonfly. Which has wings that are so big and that are so strong that they are loud.

“Then again, I might as well wish that I were a dragonfly,” said the fly, a little more loudly this time, as he saw some dragonflies dancing around a tree nearby. The fly did not know what the dragonfly was doing, but thought that if he were the dragonfly... “surely I would understand why then dragonflies fly around trees sometimes.”

Then the fly had a tiny epiphany.

“Maybe they are trying to make friends with the birds! Of course! If I were a dragonfly, I would surely make friends with the birds.

“Then I'd better wish that I was a bird then. A very large bird. That could fly very, very high.” The little fly raised his voice and his little head to face the sky to look for the highest flying bird that he could wish to be like.

The golden sun was setting and coloured the clouds orange, pink and purple.

“I can do no better than to wish that I was a cloud!” He cleared his throat and confidently announced to the lack of audience, “Then I would be higher than everybody and bigger and mightier. I could rain and make birds and dragonflies and butterflies and stupid little flies, like me, miserable!” The fly heaved a loud conclusive sigh, proud for arriving at such a complicated solution.

It would be good and timely if he could fold his hands behind his head and lie on his back to admire himself and the clouds. But as he realised as he turned two rounds about himself, he could not lie on his back, and felt stupid for turning rounds about himself, and quickly hope that nobody saw him.

He looked into the sky and realised that the clouds were different from how he just saw them.

Alas! Thought the little fly, even mighty clouds are subjected to the forces of the wind as well! And they wouldn't be able to find a rock to shield the wind from. Even though they are so mighty and they usually have friends that they probably don't need. Do clouds feel lonely too?

He was disappointed with the world and felt faint and nearly lost his footing again. He was too disappoint to not realise that even the mightiest of seas had to bear the forces of the wind. He was too disappointed to simply wish to be a gust of wind.

......

It was quite dark by the time he recovered himself from the desperation and he wondered if he should be getting back home. Then he concluded that he need not, since nobody was waiting for him anyway. He sighed again and looked at the water and wonder why the dark sea was so vast. It is curious how a little fly had so much capacity to sigh.

The moon was up. The little fly was cold and angry and unable to bear his perceived plight, so he shouted,

“Why is the world so unfair to me? I'm just a little long-legged fly! I have brought fault to nobody! Yet, I am so lonely. Nobody wants to be my friend.”

(sneak)

Monday, 28 July 2008

Of Supreme Importance

With the multitude of grand documentaries on people's lives and ancient wars, the world seems to be eagerly retelling their marvellous stories to me. Even when I am not there to watch or read, the televisions, movies, books, etc. are narrating something exciting to somebody.

I must have achieved very little with my life compared with the many who achieved so much.

I have not travelled to a war torn country nor saved an endangered animal. Neither had I been attacked by one. Nor even rescued a single stray dog. I am not a victim of violence who triumphed against life's odds nor a vet. I am not a noble historian of Mongolia nor an authority on modern weapon. I have never seen anybody killed nor a plausible sasquatch footprint.

I think it's quite clear. My life is not remarkable. Unrepentant, I am even grateful for not experiencing the events that would make my life somewhat remarkable. I do not enjoy tribulations and hardship.

Moreover, I have newly established an aversive principle towards travelling and vacations. I recognised that my memories from vacations are not proportional to the small fraction of my life that I have on vacations. This should not be the case. The bulk of my life should be the most enjoyable, and the best moments should not be most defined by the fragments of time I steal away from my mundane routines. Thus, I need not travel to make the most out of my time. I will derive a way to make the everyday the best of my time.

Surely, the fallacies in this perspective are garish. Novel experiences will make life move interestingly, otherwise, sleep should be the most interesting parts of life. Then again, lately, I have been having quite interesting dreams...

It is relatively meaningless that I feel like maintaining my position, for now.

So, evaluate how I've spent my day so far: 4 hours on watching television and eating intermittently, 2 hours on reading, 5 hours on writing and 2 hours on watching the skies and observing how the clouds move on a rainy day in July and random birds fly. Do you know why birds sometimes fly in spirals in the sky?

I have a new understanding on why I write mostly fiction. I enjoy writing fiction.

People will change. But before that, people are already different.

Is it of supreme importance that we must make ourselves happy?

==

Last night, I saw two gorillas in my dream. They were initially grazing on a forest floor, amidst simple ferns, until one of them turned to look at me.

Suddenly, I remembered from somewhere that in this case, I should avert my gaze to show the gorilla that I am not antagonising to him and that I should be submissive. But I didn't want to submit to the gorilla. I was aware that the gorilla was strong and mighty enough to kill me on a whim. But I could not reason with this. I didn't even want to appear submissive to the gorilla.

Our eyes were met.

The ape had great brown eyes and stared into mine. It was neither friendly nor aggressive. I presumed this since I am very ignorant of interpreting gorilla's expressions.

It did not move.

I was more inclined to decide that the gorilla is female, but I do not know anything. This was my dream, perhaps, I could decide everything.

I realised that I only had the gorilla's face left in the image. The rest of the gorilla had dissolved completely into a darkness while I was preoccupied with holding its gaze. This had happened quickly, as things does sometimes in dreams. The other gorilla had long gone.

When my attention returned to the face, other than the features, the rest of the face started to fade to black as well. What was left were the gorilla's round brown eyes and the hollows around them, the nose and nostrils, the curves around the mouth... they began to grow somewhat bright. They were like the bright spots of blindness after the flash from a camera shocked your eyes...

It composed an eerie impression.

The glowing shapes drifted slowly apart from each other. The distance between both eyes spread like they were pushed apart by some dark matter... something about the negative space reminded me of a ghost or the cloak of death. Could this be an omen?

I must abandon the image in my mind.

I do not dare to speak or write much about ghosts or death. For I am afraid that when I do meet death, my descriptions may be unsatisfactory, and I would deeply regret my portrayal without ever having the opportunity to rewrite what was written.

==

Dian Fossey (1932-1985) was an American scientist who extensively studied and observed the gorillas in the mountain forests of Rwanda.

She was an advocate of the conservation of mountain gorillas and was against poachers and zoos. Her long term research on gorillas ended when she was murdered. Details of her murder are shrouded with much controversy. She was buried next to a male gorilla who was killed trying to protect his family from poachers. He was one of her favourite gorillas.

(Sneak)

Sunday, 27 July 2008

Friday, 18 July 2008

R.A.P. (Rants with Ants in Pants) 4 - Television is a trash bag is a black hole

Here is a cliche. Television is bad for the mind.

I feel the television screen is the mouth of a spirit or intellect vacuum cleaner and it will suck my mental capacities and vitality into a dusty and dark paper trash bag that will ultimately become trash itself, destined to be the resting grounds of spiders and insects that cannot be identified by the layman.

Come to think of it, the ultimate trash bag must be like the black hole of all garbage. It is probably not perfectly analogous, but if the ultimate trash bag contains trash and is trash in itself... Assume the ultimate trash bag is firstly filled with all the shit in the world (which is basically the entire world) and becomes trash itself. Then, the ultimate trash bag must be able to contain itself, as it is the ultimate. So, the trash bag gets turned inside out in attempt to contain itself, such that what used to be the outside is now on the inside, but the inside which is reversed onto the outside still contains the whole world, but it will turn itself outside in again to contain itself... with infinite repeats it will create infinite gravitational pull and be a black hole.

If you have followed the argument thus far, you must be either respectably bored or admirably committed to the truth of things and you should give yourself a pat on your back for putting your rationality and patience at the risk of my blasting fuzzy logic.

Hell, be generous with yourself, give yourself a big hug!

As a congratulatory bonus from me to you, as a word of concern, I hope you would not try too hard to make sense of the above attempt at analogy, for even I, as the proposer, am too nauseated by the convoluted lack of point to seriously edit it to improve the sensibility.

Despite of the apparent abstruseness, I should, out of courteous decency, which I have, today, feign an effort to reconcile the analogy for a semblance of closure. So, well, the conclusion that can be made here is that the black hole is like an ultimate trash bag... and the television is the vacuum cleaner for the paper trash bag that sucks up mental capacities, and therefore, television is pretty much a complicated trash bag that makes people stupid.

Ho. Now, what do I mean by that? Is that a jibe at the media? Is that a jibe at our present society? Come to think of it, I do not know the physics of black holes very well at all.

Please join me in irony's amusement! In my determined senselessness, you may have arrived at some sensible conclusions for yourself. In my determined senselessness, I, too, arrived at some sensible conclusions for myself. Ho ho! The irony tickles a part of me that I hope to tuck away before it gets sucked away by tomorrow's afternoon television!

(sneak)

Thursday, 10 July 2008

(Untitled)

That morning, as part her daily routine, she reached into her cupboard for her gingko biloba supplement. Instead, she only found an eye staring back at her. All the otherwise reasonably anticipated contents of the cupboard were gone.

There was an eye in her cupboard.

"Maybe it's hypoglycemia. This is delusional. I must be in a dream." She didn't have lunch or dinner yesterday, maybe she was fainting from hunger - hypoglycemia. "This is delusional. There is an eye in my cupboard." It blinked.

If she blinked back, it might try to communicate somemore. That might help make sense of this. So she blinked, in hopes, as well, that the eye would disappear. If so, she must go get herself a kitkat. The eye was still there. She closed the cupboard and opened it again. The eye was still there.

She peered to check if it came with a mouth piece. It did not. It was by itself and merely looked at her.

By then, it was quite apparent to her that she would not find her gingko biloba in the cupboard today, so she closed the cupboard and went off to get herself a kitkat anyway.

"Maybe such things are drawn to bottles of gingko biloba supplements, like how... mushrooms are drawn to growing on damp wood," she wondered. "Had the other things in the cupboard drawn the eye?" She ran them through mentally and made a shopping list as well.

She thought that maybe it was a practical joke. Before leaving for work, she went back to the cupboard with a pair of chopsticks. She opened the cupboard and the eye was still there. She poised her chopsticks in a pseudo-i-am-going-to-attack-the-eye-with-a-kungfu-stance stance.

She had never learnt kungfu.

Tuesday, 1 July 2008

(Untitled)

"How many nights has it been since I have forgotten to look for the moon?" The dog star asked the pup. "I have always enjoyed her company but I've been so busy, I think... I don't remember what with, but it's been a long time since I've even thought about looking for her... Why is this so? What have we been doing?"

"You have been chasing sheep and I have been chasing you," replied the pup, "I have always been with you and I thought of nothing else. If you wish, let us go look for the moon right now."

"No. I am tired tonight. I am the dog star and I have to lead the pack. I have to chase the sheep. The moon will understand."


(sneak)