Alien Landscape

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

Tuesday, September 20, 2005