ALIEN LANDSCAPE
Author : NHJ
MSN: crescent_cage@hotmail.com
email : spherickey@gmail.com
Other Blogsites
MRH
Yeoks
Airina
Iskandar
PostSecret
echoncyllan
Before Gargoyle
One Million Footnotes
Read My Poetry.
Playing:
Between the Bars (Elliott Smith Cover) by Metric
Friday, September 30, 2005
pens and suns
The Book of Disquiet is an amazing, quietly wondrous book. the trouble is, i cannot go on a rapid-read mode on it else i might whimper and break from the heavy lightness of it all, like a sleeping girl under a ton of dream-whispering black feathers. so i am picking through it slowly like an album of a lost forgotten childhood, piecing every small chapter.
but it is ridiculous. it is like putting together a shredded flower. what i get in the end can never be as beautiful as what the writer, Pessoa, has. it is always as such. the storyteller can never be as wise as the hero. but in this case, Pessoa is both. and i am just an eager child. what could i possibly understand by whispering his tired, starry words to an empty room?
writers are amazing. they dance their pens about, and their words become constellations of suns and we readers have only to scramble for places and be thankful for some of the light that sheds across our lonely paths.
Posted by NHJ 9/30/2005 10:34:00 pm
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
but the nights.
nights where you lie wide awake and wide eyed. and you stop noticing the tears that run down your cheeks without leaving a trace of meaning. in the morning, you stop asking why the pillow is soaked salty wet. you stop wondering why it ceases to hurt in the day. but the nights.
oh the nights.
Posted by NHJ 9/27/2005 08:26:00 pm
the thing about him.
Fadilah was a girl he loved. there was something primal yet gentle about the both of them. he never told me what she was like but he told a great deal about all the things they did together and how he felt for her. there was even a blood pact between them; a blood ceremony where they clasp their bleeding palms and swore the Blood Oath. i still have it in mind, word for word.
it goes,
My life for your life
My death for your life
My life for your death
My death for your death
i won't describe the whole ceremony because the truth is, the unnecessary darkness in their love and souls saddens and frightens me. he explained the meaning of the oath. the first sentence means my life will be happy as long as you are living here with me. the second means, i am willing to die for you. the third means, if i can't prevent your death, i will avenge you. lastly, a part of me dies with you when you die.
even though i never liked the darkness of their relationship and even more now that i am older, when i begin to see the foolishness of their blood ceremony, still i have always admired their intensity, their loyalty, their honesty. i admired Fadilah, the girl who brought so much light into his life. this boy whose blood is not as red as his heart and whose hatred for humanity runs deep. but deeper still was his love for Fadilah. then she passed away. life is cruel. especially to him, it seemed.
inside, he is so much like me. we were twin souls, i've always thought, even though i did not show it much because of my fear for his powerful arrogance. when he revealed to me the darkness of his part and thus sealed our friendship, i remembered feeling honoured and so happy. my first friend. my very first friend. even though i still felt threatened by how he was pulling me along into his darkness but i was determined to change him. i did not want to be his dark equal like Fadilah. i wanted to make him see the beauty i discovered of the world and the sadness of humanity. unlike Fadilah, i did not want to build a dome between us and the world.
he was good to me. he was willing to use his fists to battle for me and with him, i felt vulnerable of his feral nature but at the same time comforted by the strength of his repelling aloofness. i think both of us knew there was never romantic love. just friendship and a sibling bond. he told me many dark things while i struggled to defend the world. yet he remained my teacher and a wiser older brother.
then came Firdaus whom i fell in love with. my dark brother offered plenty of advice when it came to Firdaus, every single one based on one thing that is sacred to him; honour. i heeded his advice. i braved the possibility of loss of dignity and i told Firdaus how i felt. and as the saying goes, we live happily after. but not for my dark brother. he was going to lose another girl he struggled to trust because of Firdaus' jealousy.
after several quarrels regarding him, Firdaus gave me an ultimatum. him or this friend i know most of my life. i care for my brother deeply and his trust and friendship is priceless and precious to me. but i love Firdaus more. Firdaus made me cut all ties with him. my first and best friend since i was nine. what hurt me more than losing him is how Firdaus never once showed that he appreciated my sacrifice. never once asked me if i was ok. he referred to him as 'the person i don't like' and make it as if he is a demon. never once did he try help me out of the pain of my loss. and til now he doesn't know i still hurt.
Hidayat of course was devastated and furious. then he got pleading. he offered his body to be battered by Firdaus in hopes it could cool his jealousy but Fir is not a violent person. he is not wise in love. he cares only that i have only him. i never got him to understand the nature of my friendship with Hidayat. that it only consisted of emails and letters once in a month or so, such that it can never endanger our relationship. he never understood that we were siblings, not lovers. he only saw male competition and everything else was irrelevant.
Hidayat got into some unknown trouble a few weeks after our seperation and asked me for help. but i ignored him. i shunned him. and i am still haunted by his reaction. his hatred. how suddenly i am part of humanity which he hates so much. how suddenly i became a friend-deserter, a betrayer. whatever he taught me of honour, dashed and meaningless. there is pain that still hasn't diminished since he left and will never get any better. i will have to learn to accept it because i do not want to hurt Firdaus and even if i wanted to, Hidayat's hatred will never again let me past.
now he found a girl who learned to love him which surprised me a great deal because one can only learn to love Hidayat when he lets his guard down and he never does, even with me and Fadilah but Fadilah and i were different. Fadilah's love was as dark as his while i was simply the younger sister he cared for because i was as lonely as him. but Mariam Farhanah seemed a sweet girl with a pure heart. the type who would go for the 'clean and good guys'. i think Hidayat finally discovered the beauty of humanity and he saw it in Mariam Farhanah. the last i heard, they have made early plans of marriage and hajj. and also that i am the most unwelcome person in their future wedding.
so that is the story. i needed to write. this is where my sadness speaks. this is where my secrets dance. this time, it is a secret that is bold and bare unlike my other recorded secrets which dance and confuse, veiled by poetry.
Posted by NHJ 9/27/2005 07:07:00 pm
Sunday, September 25, 2005
the drifted and the colossal
darling, i will trap you in my poetry, tied to my apathy. every single dream that blooms in your beautiful mind will grow like vines and twist into alien words, the language of your fairytale love. the bubble promises that burst bitter upon my tongue. the firey passion that burns everything but yourself. in the midst of your careless constructs, i am the carpenter of your sanity. i am the architect of your desires.
there are times you forget the more important things. darling, your love is colossal, mighty and useless like an empty tower but mine scatters across your universe like dead leaves. it may be the very air you breathe or the dust that stings your eyes and make you cry. that is what you forget. what is left of me are just falling leaves from a tree long withered because the land on which it grips on is hollow. and in this hollowness is a world build by your discarded dreams.
you shout your voice hoarse and scale with a compass to the corners of earth but the heart that beats within you beats forgotten like a tiny pulse of memory in an amnesia kingdom.
darling, your love is colossal. mighty and useless like an empty tower. but mine scatters across your universe like dead leaves. you can rest now. don't look for me. i am everywhere.
Posted by NHJ 9/25/2005 01:29:00 pm
Friday, September 23, 2005
morning moon
while on my way to the station, the moon which was still hovering above my head at 8.30 AM in the bright morning gave me such an irrational fright that i waved my hand angrily and hysterically at her and screamed go home! go hooommme!!!
she, of course, did not go home. i was lucky the neighbours were too occupied with taichi to call the neighbourhood boys in blue to pack me off to the loony bin.
Posted by NHJ 9/23/2005 07:24:00 pm
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
the butterfly paradox
the squat buildings of the all too familiar JE shimmered and blurred as the gaze ran over it probingly. there is something sadly unreal about JE. it looks and feels like a stage with those cardboard cutouts to replace real trees and buildings. beyond the nearer objects, there is nothing but mist or smoke or lazy whiteness.
i recall one of my first poems about a butterfly in a jar. the paradox of a butterfly living in a transparent jar placed in a beautiful garden, with the world spread out before it. there is nothing visibly solid that restricts its freedom yet as it flew and flew, it never can reach anywhere but that same spot because it doesn't know that it is really flying against glass so it keeps flying and flying until air runs out and it dies.***this is a world where Singapore is it. this is where the rest of the world are merely ideas and vivid figments of imagination crafted by the unbearably trapped minds of this city's occupants. what people have claimed to have seen, heard or felt of the world beyond this island's borders are simulants and convincing digital projection.
there are other worlds just like Singapore. India, America, Australia, Saudi Arabia and other states with grand names as such where its citizens and people have minds linked to ours to exchange ideas and images. no man or woman has ever stepped across his or her own borders because the people are the land's soul. a soul never leaves its body except when asleep or upon death.
the people of the world do not know that their eyes never opened once since birth. they have utmost complete trust in mirrors and what their wild but tranquilized minds project upon their active senses. the Forces that are behind this only allows them to see what they have to see, in accordance of their destiny. besides, action is the enemy of thought.
there is a final human self that every single one of them will be in the end. that self is shaped by elements that none of them ever expected; the individual growing souls of their neighbours, near and distant. each one of them shapes the other unconsciously while remaining leagues apart.
you see, my friends, a man will not and cannot accept total imprisonment as like a life in a jar. at some point of time, he sleeps and he dreams. but in his heart, he is awake and he believes his dream constructs are real. who is to say what is real and what is not?
the truth, my friends, is that we are dreaming. we need to wake up and accept that there is more. there is more to the feeling of sand between your toes or the tears of a friend as his cheek is pressed upon yours. there is more to the wickedness of the Americans and more to the perceived danger and backwardness of the Middle East. more to the hunger of Africa and the beauty of India. more to the tear dropped Sri Lanka. more to the oppression in China. there are more to these lands than what you see and hear and feel. there is more to God than religion.
we need to shatter glass and set our souls soaring from this island that is our body, our prison. touch a flower and feel it and don't stop there. dive into its veins and acknowledge its individualism. keep it in your thoughts and a seed will be sowed. not long after, a garden will bloom. we need to open our eyes to the world and to ourselves. we must not live seperately and oppressively in jars. we are more than being human. we are creatures of thought. we must not be at the end of the leash as our controlled thoughts govern our destiny. we must seize what is ours and shape our own destiny. take heed, my friends. open your eyes. it is not easy and you may even refuse to. there is much pain in birth but it is a small price to pay for beauty and wisdom.a map is fatally unreliable in paradoxes. let logic be a textbook for reference, but never have faith in it as you do your holy books.
Posted by NHJ 9/20/2005 11:02:00 am
Nuri i said her name softly. even when you trample and run around in the sky, people don't see you, do they? isn't it funny?
she giggled and her eyes started to shift into alternate shades of blue like they always do when she laughs. they call me 'clouds' ma! Nuri piped happily.
so they do... i said smilingly and closed my eyes.
Posted by NHJ 9/20/2005 10:56:00 am
Saturday, September 17, 2005
my cousin, MRH. a boy she loved recently died from HIV. a tattooed sweetheart who slept around but never touched her. apparently he loved her. i wish i could hold her hand and cry with her even though i seem to be incapable of crying anymore. tell her about Khai perhaps. what can that do? what can anyone do?
i hate this. i hate being helpless. i was probably laughing the moment Khai passed. i was probably happy with Fir when Hidayat tore himself from my life while half-drowned in his darkness. i did not cry with Khai. i did not ask Hidayat to stay. i never wanted any of them to go. what could i do?
i struggled while trying to help Hasini with her sadness. i wanted so bad to say the right things, to show her life as she could not see it, to tell her in words i could never really conjure that she is more than who she thinks she is. i just wanted her to be ok. i failed again. again and again. it hurts to know she is sad. every time.
and now i have a cousin i have always loved quietly, admired quietly, wanted to talk to badly, whose love died. no matter how wise Amirah is, no matter how matured, a 15 year old must never know love and death that way. i wanted to embrace her and tell her i love her and that i would have my heart broken along with hers to accompany her in her pain. but what good would that do? what bloody good would that do? from what i could assume, she would scoff at my love and declared that i will never know. perhaps. i do not know. i will never. so what can i do for you, Amirah? nothing.
so what if i love these people? love has no power. i have nothing. i watch as people i care about bleed. so what if i crumble inside? so what?
Posted by NHJ 9/17/2005 08:11:00 pm
Thursday, September 15, 2005
i am afraid that with each day, i fall deeper into the darkness. there are many things i wish to record here in shameless detail. unfortunately, i cannot do that. i am simply unable to. the falseness of my literary prowess sugar coats all things salty as blood. Islam forbids us to drink blood of any kind. especially human. often, forbidden things taste exquisite. that is why lately i have been more afraid than normal.
there are things i have done which are black as the canvas of a star graveyard. a psychiatrist's most important advice should be: don't listen to the voices.
they have come back. an army of bodiless voices murmuring inaudibly in my head, speaking only to my soul. where is my soul? i long to record my darkest thoughts here. to describe the many signs of my potential as ... as a ... a ... i cannot say it. i have not even the word for it.
i need to cry. i need to write. but the fear in me drives a pen too deep into paper. as i write, letters grow into monstrous sizes and suddenly starve and shrivel to emaciation. they are jagged like teeth, then rounded like buttons. the irregularity is disturbing and make uncomfortable suggestions about my corrupted sanity. i cannot cry. i feel the tears to be dirty. i feel it to be blood. i don't want to bleed. i have bled enough for a lifetime.
i need to talk to someone. someone who responds with severe honesty. not someone who wants to help. their judgements are often clouded with concern. someone who carries the burden of a secret comfortably.
i cannot do this anymore. Lord, i am so scared. please forgive me. give me the courage of the honest. oh God help me. help me please. i cannot do this... i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this i cannot do this
i have to stop for a while. i need to drown in something solid and confusing and utterly meaningless. like financial management. i need to keep close to God. i should not have strayed too far. there is only so much i can take without faith.
i will be back on the Alien Landscape in a week or so. Lord be willing, i might return recovered. maybe i did ask for pain to fuel my poetry. but not this kind. not guilt. not guilt... please... no more guilt. i cannot do this. i cannot do this. oh my God... please forgive me... oh God i'm so scared... don't let them take me away from my family...
Posted by NHJ 9/15/2005 07:44:00 pm
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
thank you for helping to make me.
i stood there apart from her while she does her endless chores and tried to feel her as i moved my shadow to overlap hers. i wanted to know this woman. how someone so beautiful bloomed from a young cold seed, who in her wedding pictures look like the Snow Queen with a white gown and a face that was fairest of the fair. i could not see any resemblance.
even when i raised my hand so my shadow penetrated her heart and stayed there, i felt only my own pain. does my mother feel my pain? what should i say? i want to feel you, ma. but i'm scared.
sometimes i get stupid thoughts. i would muse, if you knew me and you aren't my mother, you wouldn't love me right? you love me this painfully hard way because you helped make me. i am part of you. that is why you love me, right ma? the only reason why i'm special is because i am part of you, right ma? you wouldn't love this bestial uncertainty if she wasn't your daughter. ma, i am glad you helped make me. i don't know what i'd do without your love.
taunting thoughts like that. when these thoughts come, i wish i could slap the scared child within me to shut her up. i don't like to be reminded of how undeserving i am. then i would just want to leave my mother because if she sees the person i am, she would still love me and that is grand. grand but sad.
i have a renewed ache for orphans. what is the anguish that is that of a motherless child? how does it live without the certainty of a mother's love? where does it find a love on par to what a mother can give?
my mother does not look as cold and lean and fair as her wedding pictures now. but she is still beautiful. she still looks like a Snow Queen. and she loves me. me. so much that it makes me cry.
Posted by NHJ 9/14/2005 10:49:00 am
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
he just instant-messaged me. he said, ...u might not believe me considering all i've done.. and thats understandable.. but i fell in love with you all over again when i saw you just now.putting aside cliches. now you tell me. what more is a girl to say or ask for when she can evoke that much magic in a guy's life? and how can a girl stay mad at someone so in love? all those things he did to me seem to me are now as unreal as rumours. it sounds like witchery. yes. but don't knock it til you've tried it. or so they say.the message was followed by a corny bad poem. i will not embarrass him. that horrible poem might just smear his gallantry. hohoh. sorry Fir, i'm afraid you're a rather bad poet when you're desperate for forgiveness. you are more than worthy of this lady. perhaps you are not the one who should be worrying about being worthy. have you seen my soul lately?but i. i love you too. i don't say it as much as you. probably a hundred to one. but i do.now go away before i get any more mooshy.
Posted by NHJ 9/13/2005 11:51:00 pm
without belief.Cause I am like a big strong cable
I am a girl so soft inside
Finally today I'm able
To put you in the ground
I'll meet you in the groundThe mirror fell and I
I may as well have been blind
The days passing like cars
I'll meet you in the tower
If they can dream then why
Oh why can't I?-Ours-as that mad bomber from Speed wisely cackled while clutching a money bag and a bomb strapped woman, poor people are crazy, Jack. i'm eccentric. indeed. indeed.
the things i like about indie and dark alternative are the stories they tell. there was one song by The Arcade Fire which told a story about how it snowed and covered the whole neighbourhood to the roofs. and how this boy dug a tunnel to this girl's room and how they dug to the top of the snow and ran on the meadow that grew there whilst the world was buried beneath. that was kind of pretty. then there was another by A Perfect Circle about a father singing a dark lullaby to his son in a battered lonely hut in the midst of a war. that song always makes me feel so lost.
i have bittersweet feelings for Mr. Neil Gaiman. there is one line that i particularly liked cited by the beautiful succubus, Leah. she wondered simply and morosely, why do they want to know your name if they're only going to tell you not to be yourself? why indeed, dear Leah? at times like these i admire cats.
someone asked one: what is your name?
the cat answered: cats don't need names .why do we need names anyway? wouldn't the world feel much closer when no one has names? or maybe your world would feel further as it blends into a sea of nameless individuals. it depends on one's perspective. personally, i feel that the world is such an ironic place. i mean to have a city of thousands or even millions and each person is trying their hardest to avoid another. a smile is suspicious and even frightening. an admiring gaze considered demented or perverted. for people in such close quarters, we have build such great spaces between ourselves.
i do try. sometimes i do try to talk to these strangers and remind them that i am human too. that i cry and bleed and laugh. my tears are salty and my heart is red as theirs regardless of my skin colour and what i wear. call me a romantic but sometimes i feel so much love for humankind. so much affection for people i sit beside in the train. so what if i don't know their names? i have seen their eyes and at times i recognise their sadness and humour and joy. at times i recognise their need to share these emotion without acknowledging it.
what is the cause of their fear? it stems from pain obviously. but have they even felt that pain or is it some fable told by wounded friends and family?
and since we're asking questions. what is freedom? no really. what is freedom? i was sighing in envy when Leah was freed from her bonds. i longed to demand how it feels like to be free. am i free? is this how it feels like? is uncertainty part of it? the orgasmic pleasure of an answer perhaps? because it is rather orgasmic in a way. i am not suggesting i have ever had an orgasm however. unless in a literary way. let's just say my G-spot is a brilliant one-liner from an endless book. ok. discussion getting a tad sexual.
truth be told, i am sad right now and that fear, that fable told by the wounded, has kept me from confiding and sharing. once before, i told Fir that i did not want to share pain because i did not want to be selfish. pain is much better kept in one person rather than two or three. that it was my responsibillity not to spread it. a lady for herself. but in my heroic juvenile foolishness, i forgot that sometimes divided pain is stretched so thin, it completely disappears.
i am sad. this is where my sadness speaks. not to Fir or Jenni or Hasini or even to myself and the mythical beauties of Alien Landscape. just here. once. and that will be the end of it. not a loud shout or a literal journal entry. only words that reflect my sadness like scattered water on mud. why?
because i am afraid. like you. like them. perhaps one day when i find one nameless soul who returns my smile without fear, a proud sister or brother, only then perhaps i might disbelieve what you told me of pain. what you showed me of pain. sister. brother.
Posted by NHJ 9/13/2005 11:34:00 pm
Monday, September 05, 2005
just onceduring mundane journeys, the fact that this country has the most pillowed sky ever seen makes the walls close in, in a disturbingly comforting way. that was when reality began to irritate. the heat of anger caused the sky to suddenly boil. the bubbles must have splashed some acidic cloud moisture onto the roof because there is no roof. it did no good to my mounting excitement. it stirred the sky like a cauldron. all the clouds started spiralling down in groans of thunder and tempers of rain to form a white funnel; a tornado as it ravages the warehouses below, leaving the sky empty, blue, serene.no more pillows i thought happily. i ignored the stares of fellow passengers as they squinted to discern the sudden glow in my eyes and the eerie smile i wore as i pictured all of them being carried away either screaming or laughing by the lightning clad tornado while i sit on the flapping remains of a white train. the cloud-funnel came for me but i was not scared.i did not mind dying then just so i could see the sky that way just once more. empty, blue, serene.
Posted by NHJ 9/05/2005 10:32:00 am
Sunday, September 04, 2005
sunset and tar, lou and siti hajar
tell me, tell me Ores and Grar. tell me Goldie and Ndos. sing to me of senility and explain why i must never think it is adorable. because i do. i do. my loves. sad boys and indifferent girls. tell me Fir why i can hear your thoughts so loudly. your thoughts, it goes: don't be strange! don't be a stranger.
Sunset and Tar. Lou and Siti Hajar. and my lady who handed me a heart which was as light as paper and rattled like toy. what do you want me to do with it? my ribcage is fire and it will burn your love to ashes and dust.
tell me, Happy, tell me Frail. who are you and why do you hold hands and kiss passionately that way? are my quivers that of fear or need? tell me then Laughter, you who took me flying and dropped me from the sky like a bomb. was it you who took my soul? don't say, where did you last put it? because that is a silly question. don't talk to me of ninjas and rabbits. because rabbits are bad; they eat all those carrots for superior eyesight. what do they need it for? and ninjas are soul-snatchers. they come in the night and slip quietly into your ear to leave marks and scars on your heart and leave with your soul in a net so when you wake up, you find you are someone else altogether. so stop having me sing your song. it breeds ninjas like maggots on waste.
for the final exhausting time, you are not doing things right Pain. where is the passion in your crimes? where are your motives? and have you coupled with Insanity to have that many children at once?
and Honesty. your lipstick prints have faded. i am as clean as sin.
Posted by NHJ 9/04/2005 12:00:00 pm
Friday, September 02, 2005
dimples and dragons
i was such a typical teen-age misfit. i would say i still am but for the reason that i am rapidly decaying into adulthood. i wrote very rhythmic poetry though. i was an apprentice of wayward rhythm and songs. one of the pieces i could not really remember writing is When Silence Fall. something i have forgotten how to read for i can make out no meaning or feeling. it was written when i was sixteen. a wee lass i was really. not literally of course. i was tall and awkward. i was a writer-athlete. a liar-preacher. a knitting-vandal. therefore 'wee' in terms of significance. the poetry was an attempt of appearing larger than what i really am. of course it was a mistake. i grew even smaller, even further. i broke hearts and have brain-spaghetti for meals. i fought wars with shadows and made love to the silence. to the silence.When The Silence Fall
Seven moons and fragility intact
The silence speak in cracked repitition
Two falling stars and dusty tracks
Reality and tears remain in questionThree reflections of broken hope
The silence walk in sordid caution
A dream of pain and a tattered rope
The ache of a weakened evasionSizzling tears upon scalding cheeks
Inanimated heart of crazed perfection
Ruthless silence so you speak
Free from capture, angel of intentionA snowflake of tommorow's dead days
Stretches of white and peaceful sedation
The final stroke of quill endplay
Thus so begins and eternity of isolationEmbitter the poet with tender laughing beauty
The rise and conquest of a mocked creation
Feel the poverty of a forlorn fantasy
Shed no tear for she who attends laughing sessionsRejoice and cry on your departure
Kissing the bone knitter while remaining fractured.
Posted by NHJ 9/02/2005 12:06:00 pm