Black Hole Sun

The Romeo and Juliet

Once upon a time, there lived a couple of lovers quite like Romeo and Juliet. Their families were at odds with one another, and they were, well, both filial and cowardly such that they did not want to go against the wishes of their family and date each other, or hold each other’s hands. They communicated through letters, and the post system, and sometimes, via telephone. Boring stuff.

Love.

One moony night, as the owls hoot, they thought of each other, and both wished aloud to be birds simultaneously so that they could be together (so much for filial piety). The owls heard and told a fairy with the powers of such things and they were turned into birds.

Immediately, they flew off to be together, but alas!
When they finally learned how to perch, they realized that as birds they could not speak, but could only chirp.
They could not hold hands, or hug, or kiss, or fuck!

Well, actually, they fucked, but it was quick and unsatisfying. So, they hung their heads in sorrow and wept and sang a song in a bird language that meant,

“We should have waited to be together after our fathers and mothers were dead! Or at least have them changed into birds instead!”

They lived, regretfully ever after.

Silverfish Graveyard

As I was cleaning a corner of my room, I came across two dead silverfish on a cardboard box and did not fail to say “Yucksss” before wiping them off with a piece of toilet paper. After which, I took a closer look at the cardboard box, and discovered more dead silverfish.

It looked like a normal cardboard box. It used to contain industrial tape. I know because I got the box home from some company I used to work at. However, it must not be a normal cardboard box which I thought of it to be for there are so many dead silverfish on it. I could not bear to count the number of carcasses exactly, but 34 seems like a conservative exaggeration for you to share my disgust. I disposed of the bodies with care and repulsion and more toilet paper. It must be a special silverfish graveyard cardboard box. Befittingly, I threw it away, as well.

“Why are there so many dead silverfish in this corner of my room?” I asked myself. I did not know the answer immediately so I set out to investigate the matter.

Firstly, I took a book near the silverfish graveyard and tapped it against the ground to see if any more dead silverfish will fall out, or worse, alive ones. Luckily, there were not any. Therefore, I must force myself to conclude, for lack of better alternative, that all the silverfish in my room are dead and those alive are gone. They are dead and gone.

Secondly, I must ask myself how the silverfish died and went. With a gentle twitch of my imagination, I know that there can only be two possibilities, either they have evolved teleportation skills and abandoned their grandparents to die of old age; or they were all poisoned by a psychotic book loving silverfish, who thought that as long as the silverfish survive, they will eat and even though they can find alternatives now, one day, the alternatives will run out and they will have to eat books. After poisoning all the silverfish, it slammed its head repeatedly onto the cupboard box and died.

Thirdly, I researched on the internet to find that silverfish have existed for approximately thirty million years. Do you know how long thirty million years is? It is longer than I can imagine, and therefore, quite damn bloody long. And if the silverfish existed for so damn bloody long, and still look as creepy as they do, and still eat that shit (hair, dandruff, glue) that they do, I think teleportation skills should be quite low on the priority list. I deduce that the teleportation theory is unlikely. Therefore, I must incline towards the psycho silverfish theory, and mourn for two minutes for its tragic and bizarre death.

Then again, it was quite opinionated and presumptuous to poison everybody. It was cruel and incomprehensible. Could it have valued books something supposedly inanimate and tangible over life?

Isn’t life the most precious of all? Being alive, and staying alive. It is life that is of the highest order of living. Life and being alive are the crystallized sense of what living is. It is about being alive that we have a use for books: I use them to place on the shelves; the silverfish use them for food;and, the shelves use them for company. Of all the three examples, the most esteemed use for a book would be how the silverfish use them for food to sustain life itself. Sustaining life is the most fundamental, and therefore, the highest form of living. Now, we suddenly have the psycho silverfish who killed everyone else who might end up eating books... Was it for love?

There is no dilemma here. This is only irony. This is the stuff of war and protests (like for animal rights and human rights). This is the stuff of songs. This is the stuff of books.

I could kill myself to feed someone who is starving, but that would be disrespectful to my own life. So, I proclaim that I would gladly be killed by someone who is starving for food. Oh! I am so inspired that I would turn vegetarian if not for the fact that I can quickly agree that vegetables have lives too, so it won’t really make any difference, and enjoying eating good food is enjoying the highest form of living well, and that, makes me feel good about myself, that I am better than an psychotic book loving silverfish.

(sneak.)

All the flowers that you planted...

Holding onto that thing on the train that everybody holds on to with both hands in front of me, I rest my head on myself, listening to my mp3 player, to the song you had on repeat in your car when you had just broke up. The song that you would drive to, and keep quiet to, and not listen to the things I was rattling on about to. Were you healing your broken heart?

Was this how she made you feel?

Yesterday night, over the phone, you asked me not to break your heart. I'm not the best person you could trust your heart with.

Does the wind in the tunnel rushes by the train, or does the train pushes itself against the wind? I can barely hear the whining of the song if I pay attention to the howling tunnel. Will it ever tire? I take a deep breath. I feel out of breath. I feel like that pretty often nowadays. I sigh.

Shillings in my pocket. I have a box at home that I will put shillings from my pocket into. I know exactly where it is. I can imagine the sound of the coins as they are put inside in the way I will put them inside. And the way the light will flicker when I turn it on the way I will turn it on. I can imagine exactly how the way the light will twitch as the beep of my computer will sound exactly a moment after when I switch my computer on with my toe. I can imagine the smell of my room. It smells like wet laundry on the line on rainy evenings like these. The dusky sky has a corner of pink.

Most of what's left of the day looks grey. Pale, milky, bluish grey. I remember you asking me what's the difference between bluish grey and greyish blue. I explained it to you in terms of adjectives and nouns. Now that I think about it, I don't know if I'm correct about what I thought any more. I'll be sure to feel even more estranged from it if I give it any more thought.

There are others queuing in the line for the bus. I wonder if they were doing their Christmas shopping. She smiles with delight. Her teeth are very straight. That helps make her smile quite perfect. She could be in an advertisement. The girls on my right are restless, they keep looking in the direction of the bus's way. They are young.

I look at my feet. I cannot separate my index and middle toes. On both feet. It frustrates me that I cannot will my toes, but it does not surprise me. If you were here I would amuse you by making up another story on my toes.

The evening breeze makes the ends of the branches of the tree in front of me move a little. It is comforting to watch it. It is hypnotic, probably. I cannot see the green of the tree against the blurry sky. It is made of shadows now, for all I care.

I shall sit by the aisle. A seat that is near the alighting door. I don't want to squeeze pass too many people to get out. Sometimes it is okay. But not today. I take out my book to write. I tried to write about the tree being made of shadows. But it doesn't flow. I can only remember the image of the leaves swaying. Little 3 cm pinnate leaves. Made of shadows. I lose my train of thoughts. Is that my hand-phone vibrating in my bag? Should I check? Can I ignore it? I really don't feel like picking up a phone call from my mother now. Why do I feel like I have a hang over? I didn't drink anything last night...right?

You had called to ask me if I wanted to meet up for dinner. What would life be like if we didn't have cell phones? What would we be like?

I put the heartbreak song on again. I don't know why I want to listen to it. It makes me feel uneasy. There is a 10 seconds pause before the fella starts singing on the track.

Is it raining again? Doesn't look like it. But why are the wipers on? I shouldn't have worn this today. I wouldn't have, I suppose, if I had known it was going to rain.

The fluorescent lights at the bus stop comes on. The advertisement board is such an ugly lantern. But I feel welcomed. I have always liked to step off the bus. Maybe it's the way it's a big step and a little stretch. Maybe it's a little like the way I like to step off a boat that just docked. A delivery lorry speeds by. There are no cars coming my way. I cross the road despite the red man. I realise that I didn't notice the bus leaving. I don't want to go home. I don't know why I am still walking.

Did you know that I wish to die before I turn sixty-five? I don't think my teeth would last me that long.

(sneak)

Sus

(After much deliberation, I told her the truth. It will not be easier on me now. I do not feel lightened of the burden, now. I feel sheltered by the shade of what is impending.)

I was walking around in the plaza today, and I looked at all the young faces wearing the cliched expressions on the young heads of people older by age than me. They walked around, either holding on, sometimes unleashed, to the pinkish pets they farrowed; or, caressing their not-so-newly-pregnant uterus beneath their bellies, beneath their taut lycra tee-shirts, spilling from their ugly creased cotton cream-vomit-coloured beach pants; or, grunting after their wives they treat as siblings in crimes of stolid abberation.

I wondered, scornfully, "why do they look happy?" Or rather, "why do they look so stupidly happy?" Maybe we tend to over-complicate little things too much.

(Maybe, I don't need to know that you belong to me. I just need to belong to you. I always say that the truth is over-rated but who doesn't want to live happily ever after?)

The little girl with her pony tail, in white barbie tee-shirt and pink barbie pants, talking loudly on her proud mother's mobile phone to her father who may be out fucking some other woman at the hour before this, will grow up to be like who? Her mother soon squeals at her to finish up the food.

(Who did I grow up to be like? It's been a long time since I heard anyone mumble "get a life". It is an impossible dream.)

Take your baby dolls and hang them by the umbilical cords you fed them with. It should be easier than trying to smother them with your half-hearted dedication. It should be easier than having to buy them two dozens of spectacles before they turn 21.

You won't look like barbies anymore, child brides. Buy a strip of pork lard but at least deep fry it just before you lap it up, pigs.

Untitled

Yesterday night, when I was sleeping, Ali Baba came to whisper in my ear. He had a very sexy voice, and he told me that there's no need to doubt any further. He had met Mona Lisa himself, and Mona Lisa is a boy. He also said that in his next life, he was going to be an evil samurai who would have plundered many villages and violated many women, if not for his master who had fucked his backside so hard, and so many times that he could not shit properly, and he died of constipation or rectum infection of sorts, in the tragic end.

I said, okay. Him or you? Mona Lisa or you, Ali Baba?

He looked confused. Or rather, he must have looked confused, if I wasn't sleeping, and had my eyes opened, I would have been able to see his confused expression, but I was sleeping with my eyes closed and I couldn't see, so I can only presume that he looked confused, and presume that I am right, because he didn't answer me, now that leaves me with another mystery unsolved.

This teaches me that life is full of ironies. This is like how I like my clothes to be well ironed, but I don't quite know how to iron anything other than a hankercheif. I don't even know how to spell "hankerchief" properly. I can only spell it out and consider if it doesn't look quite right when I put the 'e' in from of the 'i'. Only after I switch it around a little bit then I decide that it looks better with the 'i' in front. So egocentric, isn't it, to put 'i' first? The hankerchief is used out of politeness and consideration for others, sorta, when one sneezes and whatever, no?

Oh well, anyway, after that Ali Baba didn't say anything already, either that, or I fell deeper asleep and didn't hear what he had to say.

Sorry, Ali Baba!

If you talk to me again, when I am sleeping, I can't promise you that I won't fall asleep when you are talking, because when I am sleeping I'm out of conscious control. So if you are listening to my story now, or reading this, from the internet, why don't you come and talk to me next time, when I'm not sleeping, or sleepy at all, for that matter. Then, I can promise you, that if you talk to me when I'm not sleeping or sleepy, that I will try my best to listen to you. I don't anyhow make that promise to anyone, you know. I only promise to try when I really mean it. That's one good thing about me, I suppose.

I'll even comment appropriately and not ask awkward questions about samurai afterlives.

I'll do that for you. So, what say you, eh?

(sneak)

Softly

He was strumming my pain with his fingers...
Like it was his favourite guitar...
What a bloody sadistic fucker.
I can't believe I loved him.

xo angst.

Hello. Here is a confession.

I slept for too many hours today and I have a slight headache now.
I watched Sideways, this morning before lunch, and related with the depressing material too much more than I'd have liked to.

They should ban shows like that. It makes me feel like shit. The only kind of depressing shows they should make should be like those war shows, and the faces of the characters got blown into different kinds of proportions, and the audience goes,

"Woah, it sure sucks to be you."

It gets worse when I sleep for too many hours.
I fell asleep playing a game on my nokia phone. I was managing a "disco" and my aim was to get 300 people to be at my dance club at one time within 30 days.

I don't have a scooter.
And my adventures are not better than yours.

I'm sick of feeling cold. and warm. and the tightness in my neck and shoulders.
But I cannot think of anything to do about anything.

Stardust

She had always been careless about her oral hygiene, and found brushing her teeth a chore. In a bus, on her way to the dentist, she used her tongue to feel the cavity in her last upper tooth on the right, almost as if to make sure it was in place. Going to the dentist was like her adventure of the month. Going to the dentist alone was like a childish proclaimation that she was independent and she did not need anybody else to function. Going to the dentist was fun because she would spit out blood. She never flossed.

She thought if the dentist was to take her tooth out, she would have the tooth made into a pendant to wear around her neck. How sick would that be? She nearly giggled to herself. It would be like how the fallen star in Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" would climb to the tallest tower to be close to her sisters in the sky.

She thought of how she could put the broken tooth pendant into her mouth, like how she would do that with her pendants sometimes...The broken tooth would then be reunited with her other teeth. Although most of the time the broken tooth would be bored and lonely...

And then she suddenly realises that she didn't quite want to have her tooth removed at all. Quite frankly, she'd much rather have it in her gums til she dies. Surprised by her revelation, and how it had never occured to her before, she tongued her broken tooth more tenderly.

"Perhaps," she thought, "perhaps, I should brush my teeth more diligently from now on." She even considered flossing, briefly.

The Dead Seaweed

The dead seaweed which drifted along the coast had a story that is tragic and is known only to little.

It told the story to some drifting sea foam which carried it to the shore to a seashell which told a playful little boy who picked it up. The story goes about how dead seaweed wasn't always dead, it was in love with a scampi, who did not love it back. Then, the seaweed died of love sickness.

The story is true! The little boy had told me about it himself, and like the shell, the sea foam, and the seaweed, he had no reason to lie. Afterall, like them, he was going to die, if not already dead.