2310
I almost named my rabbit “Rabbito Carlos”. The World Cup was hot then.
1910
Life’s decision tree
With multidinous branches in all directions,
Emanating from this one point-
here.
1810
When I choose, I am.
0707
Ah! quiet here! Just
How it shhhh…
ould be
1906
And why do I love her?
Because she is never tired of life
Though it tire of her
And sit sullenly silent,
Not allowing her the chance
To say and shine and be.
I’ve heard her sing
And it is more beautiful
Than the clouds that roll across
To catch in cotton drifts,
The ocher sun of the sunset,
Dimming over a half hour
Behind the craggy limestone hills
Between Ipoh and Tapah.
I’ve watched many sunset episodes
Out of gel-stained bus windows
On my trips home.
And her voice is strong with
Melody and meaning
Of beautiful things
Of quiet things
Of Monets
Of impressions
Of injustices
Of Mozart
Of Keane
Of Malaysia
Of God
Of church
Of government
Of me
Of football, of course.
1604
I was posed the question “What would your wedding be like if you had a limitless budget?” I was at a loss for words. I’m not sure I’ve actually thought about it from that dimension before.
1202
It’s time to celebrate the milestones, and also the miles in between.
1401
And I’ve quietly allowed them into my life, the little people that make all the difference.
0312
I’ve looked often at the bedraggled man on the streets, ambling along dressed in tattered, eccentric garb, with disheveled, clumpy hair and wondered “What broke?”. I’ve met people who are adults acting like children, sitting petulantly on the floor and refusing to move and I wondered “What broke?”. I’ve seen society and the way in which those whose minds are broken, whose spirits are crushed, being pushed to the fringes and given remnants to chew on and in the midst of the lack of care I’ve wondered “What broke?”. I’ve seen man, made in the image of God, reaching out to himself in a cracked mirror, one no longer able to reflect any true semblance of the beauty that is innate and wondering “What broke?”.
2909
I was trying to get a closer look at the concentric, green seaweed that clustered the rock, actually. But as the individual waves crashed upwards over the rock I was squatting on, I glimpsed their spindly, orange fronds rise up out of the surf in the gap that comes in between waves. Bent backwards by the furrows of water seawards, they would suddenly pop out of the water when the receding water could not pin them down anymore. The pocket of air where they waved freely and merrily in the sun only lasted a moment before water swallowed them up again. Nature’s own pun: corals that wave at you when they are not being waved upon!
1809
“Superficiality is the curse of our age” Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline. I survey myself, my surrounding cultural artefacts and find myself sighing “Yes, it is true. It is truth”. The irony is that the celebration of discipline requires discipline. Can we harvest rice when we have not a grain to begin with?
1509
Our eyes informed us that the place had already been demolished, and we were only greeted with scrub and overgrown pillars as we crested the hill of the once-upon-a-time kampung.
0109
Trying something “petals on a wet…” Pound-ish.
2108
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Now and Then
0407
Trying to grasp Buechner’s fluid, lyrical style from “Sacred Journey” and “Now and Then”, but struck more by the profound way in which he descibes his own life and vocation. Surely “…in the last analysis all moments are key moments”. On my run yesterday, worked it so that my turn-around would be at the seaside where people gather to indulge in kite-flying, and like me, kite-watching. What was it about a little piece of paper suspended in the air that made them smile so widely?
2306
A tentative attempt at prose. We’ll see how it goes.
1606
Nursing the wounds of the climb, I can conclude it is only a small price to pay for the ebullient taste of the raw, rugged beauty of the mountains. We drank in every drop: from the thick mud that encrusted our weary legs and tore at shoes hoping to render them useless, to the trickles of tannin-stained water accumulating in dark, rocky pools, to the torrential rain that lashed our tent straining and straining to find its way in. We drank it all in and realised our mastery was but an illusion; we weren’t conquering it but rather it was taming us. Towering over this whole scene is its Creator. Indeed who are we that God is mindful of us?
0106
I must thank her for delighting me with descriptive poetry: what an excellent introduction in the vein of Neruda’s “Toward an Impure Poetry”. Hmm…lots of similarities between them actually: recognising the beautiful “there-ness” of every surrounding object, yet not oblivious, but passionate, rather, to the climate of injustice and oppression in the land.
“…The used surfaces of things, the wear that the hands give to things, the air, tragic at times, pathetic at others, of such things—all lend a curious attactiveness to the reality of the world that should not be underprized…. A poetry impure as the clothing we wear, or our bodies, soup-stained, soiled with our shameful behavior, our wrinkles and vigils and dreams, observations and prophecies, declarations of loathing and love, idylls and beasts, the shocks of encounter, political loyalties, denials and doubts, affirmations and taxes…” Toward an Impure Poetry, P.Neruda
0305
Chanced upon Rilke’s 10 letters in Borders. Via snippets between work documents and emails, I was encouraged and inspired by his generosity to a complete stranger. Can such goodwill be even glimpsed these days, when all is monetary, when the ladders we climb lead our heads into the clouds and away from the man sitting and waiting for someone to care. Whither the pause that makes space for a friend, for our neighbour?
2404
Spent a few days away in Camerons. Partly time away, but brought along the Penguin translation of Tagore’s poetry to while the time away. If this is pantheistic transcendence, I think I see why it is so appealing. Fusing novel, unconventional poetic rythms and earthy values with the the celestial tune of the universe, one is hard pressed to not see beauty in creation as he saw it. Yet unlike the Psalms, he stopped far short of a personal God revealed in Creation, in fact the God he described, his jiban debrata was a shifting, teasing, almost tormenting Being that was one minute noble and the next deceiving.
