Tom, Dick, & Harry

"You know what I really hate? Forgetting if I've locked the house door when I step out of the lift, then having to wait for one to go back up to check. Usually I have it locked. But there was once, three years ago, when it was not. That's the worst thing that happened, I tell you, because it proved that it's possible that I should forget to lock the door. The threat is real! So, my paranoia is founded! And if my wife finds that out, she'll nag me until the cows come home and go out and come home again. You know what I mean?"

"I don't have the exact same problem, because my mother is always at home. But maybe I can empathise. Do you think it's like how I forget that if I've brushed my teeth, then I have to go and feel if my toothbrush is damp? My wife thinks it's damn stupid."

"You guys think you have a problem? When I'm done taking a shit and by the time I return to my desk, I'd entirely forget if I wiped my ass. Then I'll have to go back to the toilet and check! Imagine how my wife will go crazy if she finds shit stains in my underwear."

"Oh, right... I can see how the suspicion is completely valid... Seeing how you usually completely forget to wipe your nose when you come out of meetings with the bosses."

(sneak.)

The One-Legged Lady

I thought I was crazy when I saw her
but now I just cannot forget her
and how she whispered into my ear
for us to sleep together.

By the way: Slippers

The French Crow

I first met Pierre when one morning I woke up with him in my room on my bed. He nipped off my right middle finger and ate it. Though appalled and frightened, I gave chase as I did not know what else I could do to get my finger back. Pierre flew out of my window, and before I knew it, I was flying too. That was when I realised that I was in a dream.

When Pierre finally roosted in a tree that was full of crows, and that was typically in the middle of a car park overseeing polished cars, I approached him and said,

"Hey, crow, can you give me my finger back? Or else I won't be able to flip people off with my right hand. Sure, I suppose I could use the one on my left hand, but having the option to use the right hand, or to use both hands to emphasize my point sometimes, well, is important to me." I paused to ponder about my options as Pierre replied,

"Je m'en fous. Je ne veux que chier."

Wow, I thought, a French crow. How curious. I didn't even know I understood French. But the limitless power of the unconscious is always surprising, and I understood that he said something rude enough to make me realise that I might be able to flip people off with my right hand after all... I just had to grab him and snap his smart alec head off and attach it to where my middle finger was. Then, when I have to flip the birdie off, it'll be an elaborate, nice, and feathery display. With any luck, the smart mouth would crow some French for a dramatic effect and an uncalled for touch of act class. And it's black. It'll match my hair.

Ever since I attached his head to my hand (with the face and beak rightfully facing outwards, if you were wondering), Pierre became very becoming, at least to me. I've named him Pierre, after Pierre Corneille, who is somebody I didn't know I knew of, and because "Pierre" seems to be the most intuitive name suitable for any French character. He gets along very well with my left middle finger, whom we've decided to name Paul.

I shall love to introduce you to Pierre if we should meet in our dreams, but I'm afraid it would only be rude, so I shall not look forward to it when the time comes.

(sneak.)

Untitled

There must be something
that is troubling
my neighbour's poor dog,
whose high-pitched whining
woke me this morning.

Kick the tick

There was a boy who did not like to take good care of his dog which became very dirty and full of ticks. The ticks irritated and disgusted the boy even more, which resulted in him wanting to care for his dog even less. One day he kicked his dog out of the way, and that night he dreamt of the dog saying to him,

"How can you blame me for having ticks when you are the one not taking care of me? I am suffering from their bites and irritation everyday, and still, you despise me for your negligence. They have caused me sleepless nights and blood and tears, and I hate them more than you do!" And the complains went on for a while longer until the dog fell asleep and dreamt of a tick saying,

"How can you blame us for living on you and sucking your blood when you don't keep yourself clean and continue to let us feed on you? If we didn't have you to feed on, we might have gone somewhere nicer to live in. We might have grown wings and flown away."

The Champedek Tree

Once upon a time, there lived a champedek tree who wanted to fly ever since it was just a little seedling. Over the years, it painstakingly grew and groomed its branches and foliages in a position that it resembled a bird in flight.

There was just one problem though, the champedek tree, like all trees, have roots embedded into the ground. The only way to fly was to uproot and die. What was the champedek tree to do?

One monsoon season, there was a particularly strong typhoon, and as the strong wind blew, the champedek tree thought "it's now or never!" and uprooted itself and leapt into the air, and it soared across three small hills and three small valleys before being smashed into a mountain in its path.

As the champedek tree laid to die of rotting roots in the ensuing rains, it was full of smiles and happiness.

(sneak.)

The man with the box kite house

There was a man who liked to make box kites so much that he lived in a house that he built with the same engineering principles as box kites. It was made of bamboo poles and water-proofed cardboards.

One day, a strong wind blew and lifted his house into the sky, and the man was delighted to be able to fly.

The house flew higher and higher as the man tossed out his piano and bed frame until it was so high that there was no air to breathe. The man felt like it was his body that was weighing him down, so he took off his body and tossed it out the window. True enough, the wind took him and his house higher and higher, and finally, he flew into space and became an astronaut.

He lived happily ever after, because in space there was no wind and the house was just floating around rather randomly, and he found that very enjoyable.

Reminder: The dead lizard is dead

I was walking around in my dream and saw a dead lizard on the ground, so I took a picture of it.


See how it was dried and fried by a hot sun of sorts. I was amused by how, even in its death, it camouflaged itself with the grey concrete pretty well. The lizard must have died in a dramatically, with a right hand put to its chest in restraint, and a left hand caught dead flailing with unrestraint. Now they're dried and stuck there forever. This lizard must have been left alone to die, with nobody around to rest the body in a more comfortable resting position.

I was moved by it. It looks so heartbroken. Don't you agree?

Come to think of it, it's been more than two years since I wrote about the jilted lizard, a heartbroken lizard I met in a dream before this. It was on a hot day too. I wonder how is he.

Was this he? I curiously examined the anatomy of the dead lizard, if it was a female then it won't be the jilted lizard. But it was male... I think.

"Poor, poor, lizard, are you the jilted lizard? Have you come back to look for me? Do you have something to tell me? Or are you another lizard? Did you die heartbroken too? Do all lizards take matters of love so seriously...?"

"It doesn't matter," the dead lizard suddenly said, "Whether I died heartbroken or were wronged or were right, or if I were the jilted lizard or not, I died. And I am no more. You may take me home and season me with salt to eat, because I am crispy and will taste nice."

In the blink of an eye, the dead lizard had jumped into a plastic container, that had suddenly appeared, with a cover that says it's "microwave reheatable", and "reheatable" is apparently not even a word. I realised that the plastic container used to contain horfun but was washed and cleaned out to be reusable (which, by the way, qualifies as a word).

When I woke up, he was on my bed-side table.

To be able to take pictures in dreams is one thing, and to have a dead lizard who told me to eat him in my dream and then to wake up next to him is at a triple-advanced level that I didn't know I was at.

I wanted to apologise to him for taking him home, but he did say that he was dead and no more. I'm not sure if I agree with him, because if he was dead and no more, how could he speak to me?

Today is a wonderful day, with the weather the way I like it. It may be a little too cloudy to see the blue skies, but the winds are blowing and herding the clouds by fast. The trees are dancing, and if I close my eyes and listen carefully, I can hear the sha-sha sound from the different trees. The sound of the palm trees. The sound of the pine trees. The sound of the dunno-what-they're-called-trees. The sound of my curtains flying, the sound of the hairs on my ears tingling... the clackity-clack of me typing... the voices in my head... the lizard's talking... The world is alive, and the wind - its breath, and these sounds - its music and song.

Is the dead lizard not yet dead? Like how the world is alive, as long as I pay my attention to it? I don't know, because, here, right in front of me, in his plastic coffin, with a broken tail and two little bulgy things that look like they were testicles, lies a lifeless corpse - an undeniable reminder. That the dead lizard is dead. Like how I shall one day die. And that it won't really matter how or why.


(For the dead lizard and the jilted lizard. RIP.)

My grandmother's story

I remember a story about a dragon that my grandmother told me when I was young.

It was about how when she was young and in her village in Taiwan, she saw a dragon rise up from the ground and fly into the sky. One could see the distinct prints of the dragon scales left behind on the ground.

It was something like how the place the dragon rose from was a construction site. In my imagination, the people were digging around, and piling or drilling into the ground, although I am not sure if back then, they had the same kind of technology to do things like that. All that construction work might have disturbed the earth dragon. In my imagination, many people gathered to see the dragon rise away, and the dragon was sometimes white, or green, or golden-yellow.

I find the disturbing thing about how old people tell stories is that they don't give you the descriptive details that you want. I want to know if the dragon breathed out smoke or fire or mist, or if it somersaulted before it flew away, but no, that was the way she told me - in its brevity. And in passing. They like to tell interesting things in passing, and by the time you're coming to terms with what was just said, they're already talking about other things - like if you'd like to have an apple, or drink some milo, or how is your mother - things that require you to respond mundanely and forget your curiosity.

Then, as I grew up, whether dragons are real or not became lesser of a discussed question. The scientists would say perhaps, back in ancient China, people imagined dragons from dinosaur bones and giant snakes or whatever. Perhaps, if I call my grandmother now to ask her to repeat the story, she may tell me that she doesn't remember anything.

But I remember the story. And I believe that she had no reason to lie to me that she saw such a thing happen with her own eyes. She's not somebody who would tell me things for fun, you know. She was somebody who scolded me for pouring talcum powder on the ground (so that I could skate around the room), because it was a waste of money.

I suppose I might have dreamt up the story and think of it to be real. Since I did not keep a diary when I was young and I don't have records of the conversation to refer to. If she did, she must have told me the story over a decade ago, and I don't even remember properly what she told me last week.

Then again, my grandmother might have dreamt it up too.

The Elephants' Tusks

Once upon a time, there was a place where worlds were in the form of giant elephants.

They all lived in lush greenery with plenty of grape vines and sugar cane plants, which they fed on. Some elephants still farmed carrots organically to eat.

On the elephants, there lived little beings and things, who did not know the vastness of the world, but they just lived and flourished, or died out, and whatever. The elephants would walk around, carrying their little occupants on their bodies. (Some elephants had little occupants that resided within their bodies.)

The elephants were not the creator of the little occupants, nor could they dictate much of what happened with their occupants, nor could they select what kind of occupants they got. Most of the little occupants were not even aware of the existence of the elephants at all.

The relationship between the elephants and their little occupants, however, was such that, for instance, if an elephant stood in the rain, floods might be caused at the area at the back of his neck. Or perhaps, if all the occupants living at the back of an elephant's neck gathered to jump at the right spot at the same time, that elephant's head might bob a bit.

*

One elephant had a nation of tiny frogs living on one of his tusks and a nation of tiny toads living on his other. The nation of frogs worshipped the great Frog God, and the nation of toads worshipped the great Toad God. In their respective god's name, they fought incessantly, trying to prove to each other the might of their gods. With their warring exchange of arrows, they often injured and burnt the elephant's trunk. And the elephant was afraid to lift the trunk too high to feed, as a result, he was hungry and weak and sickly of his occupants.

So, this world of an elephant went to ask around for a solution, and because he was a compassionate elephant, he hoped for a kind resolution.

After countless interviews with elephants whom did not even have occupants living on tusks, or had occupants of the same beliefs occupying both tusks and no experience with handling warring, or whose suggestions were not compassionate enough, he finally came across another elephant, who could rightfully empathise because he had experienced a similar problem a long time ago.

*

This second elephant had a nation of slugs living on one tusk and a nation of snails living on the other tusk. They worshipped their respective gods, but they lived peacefully with each other. They even celebrated each other's religious holidays in celebration of other's religions.

The slugs and snails used to be warring periodically. During a period of especially strong animosity, a slug prince and a snail princess fell in love with each other, and married in both gods names. The snail princess came to the slug land to profess her love for the snail god, asking for the slug's respect because to her, the Snail God made her a good person to come to the wonderful land of slugs. The slug prince went over to the Snail land and said something similiar. This appleased the people, whom accepted their marriage and eased their tension. (Appleased means a combination of pleased and appeased.)

So, the slugs celebrated the Snail God's birthday because they were happy that the Snail God was born to help many snails be better snails and not, for example, too arrogant that they had shells. The snails found the Slug God's birthday worth celebrating because the Slug God helped many slugs be better slugs, and not, for example, too arrogant just because they looked sexier.

*

Excited at the possible resolution, the frog-toad elephant was eager to stop the warring on his tusks. The frog-toad elephant proposed to join tusks with the slug-snail elephant so that the slugs and snails could pass their religion and message of peace to the frogs and toads.

When the tusks were joined, the frogs and toads ate up the slugs and snails, and occupied the tusks. In the new colonies, the frogs and toads were excited by their new land and interbred in the new settlements, and thus, ended their war, in most places.

*

The elephants, fell in love with each other while their tusks were interlocked, and when they realised the peaceful nations of the slugs and snails were wiped out, it was too late.

While they were in love, they dated and fed each other grapes and things. Then they came to think about how the slug-snail elephant could have just fed the frog-toad elephant, and there was no need to wipe out the snails and slugs after all. Their haste made waste.

Guilt stricken, the elephants broke up. They were self-reproachful for having pretended to be compassionate, but were actually not. (Although, ironically, by being guilt stricken, they were compassionate after all.)

The elephants did not realise that if they had not interlocked their tusks in the first place, they might not have fallen in love and ever thought of feeding each other food.

(sneak.)

By the way: (No) Stopping Anytime