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
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Rejection of the Fishes.
there is nothing quite as peaceful as being submerged in a howling watery world of endless blue for minutes in a dead man's float which could span through lifetimes. it is a disturbing form of flight. one that swallows instead of letting go. it's a death that creeps instead of plunges.
your eyes look far and deep into the blue, into yourself and send you swirling with that bloated feeling of grandiose insignificance. like soaring underwater as a single trout among thousands other silver-blue mini-lightnings. just feeling and waiting in motion to be captured by a human net. to be consumed, to be regurgitated or excreted.
like a drop of rain falling and screaming but never being loud enough to drown out splashes of destiny.
how must it feel to be deserted? to make sand-angels where the ocean used to churn and broil? to be a droplet instead of rain?
when i was a younger girl, i used to enjoy exhaling long loud shouts at gathering groups of stupid-looking pigeons and laugh as the mighty sound of bird wings drowned out the sky, leaving an empty spot where i would lie and pretend i had friends. they were hiding among nearby pillars, ready to pounce and surprise me into sudden flight (just like with the pigeons). but i guess i must've fell asleep everytime because when i woke up, there were faraway echoes of running steps.
rejection of the fishes. i just love that title. it murmurs of darting fishes, the sound of her wings and the raspy static of arms and legs waving to make sand angels. of seas falling as rain into the clouds. and everything spirals into space, eyes closed, arms spread. whizzing past all the fishes that ever left. into the beginning! into that which gave birth to all of us.
you know, when we were all still fishes?
Posted by NHJ 2/26/2006 10:11:00 pm
Friday, February 17, 2006
letters of the end.your letters are always written on blue paper with dark red ink. deep red rose juice. your alphabets intimate and seductive in its miniature curves and teasing strokes. your letters are morbid. as if the world has been massacred and the blood of earth has stained the sky. but you make it in a way such that i know that in the end there really is no one but you and i.drenched in ink, blood and tears as the artists blew themselves up in their last desperate attempt of greatness. to die in explosions and screams and scatter their words and colours across a dead world for us to see. the final works, my friend. the ultimate stories, songs, pictures and poetry. for you and i both.i tore your last letter because it was the only thing that had colour when i saw the world through obstinate tears. everything else was grey and melting. dripping. dying.but your letter was iridescent. in the midst of all the grey and black, it was painful. so i tore it up into pieces of red-dotted blue and threw it in the air. the pieces still burned with technicolour as it floated, swayed and fell. as it touched the grey, everything caught fire.there were piercing whines of agony from unknown sources. there was rapid muttering and spittle flying all over. it was quite a din.my contact is to the right. email me so you can answer a most pressing question:who are you?
Posted by NHJ 2/17/2006 06:09:00 pm
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
tuesdays with Susan Lee.the way her gazing almond eyes are slanted like an elf's. i cannot get it out of my mind.which is all i can say about our meeting for now.
Posted by NHJ 2/15/2006 10:30:00 am
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
the sun between the gap of teeth.
i bought tissue from a granny with a gap-toothed grin. her smile made my whole being smile with her. such courage for optimism. when she nodded happily at me and repeated her thanks a few times, i felt embarrassed. it was only small change after all. the only cash i had left for the day. barely the price for a heart-lifting, soul-replenishing smile and four packets of tissue which will soak my tears away for days to come. it left me feeling bare and empty. hopelessly wanting so much to offer her more. but all i did was smile at her one last time and walked away.
along the way, there was a woman who was smiling to herself as if she had a sweet secret. as she smiled in my direction, i smiled back. even though it wasn't her intention, i'd like to think that that smile was for me, telling of hope and fair endings. like a page in a story.
those were rich women. and i am poor.
but
on bus journeys home, the sun gazed its softest rays upon the words of the book which i rake frantically with searching eyes. no matter how desperate the search got, at a certain point of the journey, my eyes lifted easily toward the glass window. it was that certain point where the sky was high as it should be with strong orange clouds, not fallen low upon our faces like blankets blinding us blue and white.
suddenly i knew.
i knew the secret!
i am rich! i am alive!
i am small. there is a small hidayah-shaped puzzle piece space in this world where i fit perfectly.
Posted by NHJ 2/08/2006 07:54:00 pm
tuesdays without Susan Lee.just coridors of dark offices and educators with bland faces. Velvet Underground's Crimson and Clover was playing in my head. the theme song for Susan Lee's walk. i know it's a slightly lovesick tune. i have no excuses. my feelings are akin to that of lovesickness though it's more a hunger for inspiration from the unparallel muse. tch. tuesdays just aren't tuesdays without Susan Lee. do i have to go on with the rest of my life every week falling through a maw that was tuesday?
Posted by NHJ 2/08/2006 03:54:00 pm
Monday, February 06, 2006
Perplexed, Van Winkle strokes (as doubts begin)The century old beard that wreathes his chin.i don't want to live a Van Winkle life, waking up one day startled at the mass of white hair on my head looking like a walking white flag surrendering my life to inevitability. i want to weave that white slowly and meticulously, aware that every strand of white is well spent in Time. i need to stop this self love. this constant pretense of self exploration when i haven't even yet grazed the surface. like Sylvia suggested, i need to devote myself to a Cause. or dedicate a large part of my life to someone. i should do the former. i have no patience or endurance to love only one mortal man or woman and give myself up unconditionally. see, this is mad. i seem to think that i am the only one granted immortality. because it doesn't matter that the whole of humankind is immortal; waiting impatiently in their earthy graves for the Final Assembly. ultimately, we are individuals. single. alone. we just happen to give a name to ourselves because we have the same biological structure.getting back. a Cause. something worthwhile i can contribute to, to make a shitty world less shitty. orphans? poverty? Islam? the first thing i heard when i came to Earth out of a hole from my mother's tummy because i was too obnoxious and big to exit the proper way, was the cry of Azaan. so i was born a Muslim warrior. i was instantly plopped into a world which dismisses what i believe, scoffs at the flag of God and the Prophet and fears our dedication to a cause they don't and have no intention to understand. the recent Denmark caricatures appalled me. the outrage of poking fun and insulting the greatest man that ever lived. i was not at all surprised at the protests of Muslims worldwide but sinkingly disappointed at bomb threats and violent protests. is this how they honour the memory of Nabi Muhammad s.a.w., a man of peace, enlightenment and education?Muslims are not doing enough with world healing. maybe i can help somehow.i never wanted to say or write this so stridently but i've always believed that my purpose in life is to be a part of greatness. i grew up listening to stories of heros and warrior princesses and queens and philosophers and poets. i simply cannot be any less. i don't want to stop existing.
Posted by NHJ 2/06/2006 09:20:00 pm
all of which keeps me sane.my mother told me to quell my mass tea-drinking habits.but man, i love tea too much.it takes me away to the Landscape where i sit with my two reigning mind people as i indulge in my egotistical fantasies.tea is the colour of the river i splashed in with my brother back in Pontian when we were younger.tea keeps me from falling unconscious as i sit slaving at this desk, caught between cursing the things i have to do and being thankful for having to be around wildlife.tea is the warmth that eradicates the spread of cold guilt.tea is a memory of my late grandmother and a reminder of the sad one i have now.tea is the embrace of an understanding, kind friend i never can be or never will have.under stress of the pressure of writing and overworking, it failed to disturb me like i expected it would, when i got to bed with tousled hair and the faint smell of urine hanging about me. i may even have smiled in my sleep. perhaps content at the dismissal of responsibilities and succumbing to a mental-patient composure of tense shoulders, wide eyes and a softly stinking smell.and so i dreamt of all my favourite things. Sylvia Plath's weathered journal, Ksasi the camera, Susan Lee's email, Dita the Red Fish, Firdaus' imperfections, Jenni's and my dusty Dr Martens mary janes walking identical, my sturdy orange pencil and tea. most of all, tea. cups and mugs of translucent orange tea. all kinds.i woke up.it is the same day all over again.looking ahead, i saw rows upon rows of cloned todays.
Posted by NHJ 2/06/2006 12:07:00 pm
Sunday, February 05, 2006
welling rose.the towel wrapped around my head only means i knocked my head repeatedly against the door from which i listen in to people's disappointment of me, until there's a round patch of welling red. like a rose blooming. i don't want to remember why. it has something to do with people humiliating themselves while i watched in morbid fascination. something. something is missing from this confession. is it the tiny tiny scars on my forehead that aren't directly self inflicted? is it the shadow that has now fallen across my face?am i too far gone? can i.. come back? will i be accepted with the rose absent from my forehead? the imprint of a desperate cowardly lie.
Posted by NHJ 2/05/2006 05:44:00 pm