Wormwood

Swimming unconsciously

in a dark sea

of turgid swelling waters

the electric brain sparking

little short-lived embers

shouting mindlessly

across the thick murkiness

hands held up as in sour surrender

turning sweet

then bitter

wormwood casting its spell

of slow painful murder

beatings rap on the chest

gasping for precious breath

in the soporific cage

pounding without mercy

upon rankling sensibilities

the clock of procrastination

rapidly swirling arsyversy

with the whiplash

of angry moments

spewing silent drops of blood

and excrement mixed

with gall and myrrh

the waters tremble

as unwelcome light filters through

oblivious to the murmurs of evil

9 December 2005

Despair

Despair looks me in the eye

throwing spades and daggers

and samurais

My eye bleeds but I gaze back

with the formidable stare

of Samson at Gaza
eyes plucked out

never to see

Impudence is disguised cowardice

The angry clock beats its sequence

its very life depending on it

Sequence, sequence

what

then what

after what

comes next

The torrid sun will come my way in the morning

trouncing every soul with oppressive heat

and blinding brightness

offering a promise of a burnt city

razing it down with the picnic flies

Life is a carousel

it never stops turning

8 November 2005

Life Scripts

Seven days already into the new year. For seven days, or just a bit less, I haven't written anything down, except for odd bits and pieces at work, but that's another life: the life of a developer, or to be precise, an analyst-programmer. I don't know why that had to be two words stringed together by a dash or a slash, like there could no single word for it. I once said I was a developer and I was asked, "So you're in real estate?"

So I said almost apologetically, "Okay, I'm a programmer." I'd be tempted to say at times that I'm an analyst, but was afraid to be thought of as a shrink. No, there's no one suitable word for it. I like how they referred to that in German: Softwareentwickler. It sounded more important, a tad harshly guttural, but important nonetheless.

To work in IT nowadays, you are not just in IT; you have to be called, designated, defined, by what you actually do. Network Manager. Business Intelligence Analyst. DBA. PL/SQL Developer. Data Warehouse Analyst-Programmer. What a mouthful!

I wanted to live a simple life without fanfare but unwitting complications always attended to it. Nothing seemed to be according to script. Maybe we're really all fudging our scripts as we meander or streak through the badly-lit avenues, the vexing mazes, the cryptic puzzles and sudokus of life. As we make decisions, as we steer to a certain course, et voila, our script is written. Can we change the script perhaps? Yes, we can write our own scripts, puny, obtuse, grand, noble. Just don't ask me how, as each of us will have to find our own pathetic or sublime ways to accomplish that. It all depends.

Maybe you want to write your script as a crime fiction. You are the protagonist of course... in agony of course... with conflicts fleeting and racing left, right and centre, turning your head into confused spinning wheel. Which one to deal with first? Who is the killer here? Do I have the clues to trounce this major conflict and annihilate, terminate, exterminate this thing, event, person, whatever.

Maybe you want to write your script as a Mills and Boon romance. I can't help you there much but you know the score. It's about the girl in a quest for Mister Right otherwise known as Prince Charming or Darling Dickhead, the one to look after her and love her forever. Or it's about the boy in a similar quest for the girl of his dreams (too hopelessly romantic) or his thrills (too brutally honest). I refuse to dwell on male psychology here on account of various stages of deviousness, incoherence, crudity in the male psyche, but in the end after years of maturing, the male wants a quiet relationship. But then again that may be just my obtuse fantasy.

Maybe you want to write your new script as an Indiana Jones adventure, with the thrills on kills, spills over hills, Jills with skills, and deals with dills, and scheming minds to meet and outmaneouvre. Going to exotic places, tasting extreme experiences, keeping you feeling the adrenalin rushing through your entire body, constantly facing moments of mad excitement, living on the XXX edge, life without the boring bits. Coolness. Never on the same spot twice. Each day fraught with danger but always with the assurance of predestined, guaranteed victory.

8:20 PM. Wenty Station. Deserted. No sign of life could be seen from Platform 4. Except for a young girl in white singlet, black shorts, chunking her ball on the closed garage door of the Thai Spot Restaurant near the corner of Station Street. Waiting for the train to Blacktown in this deserted strip of wasteland, except for the sorry signs of civilisation with the train platforms, the graffitied wall of MoneyTax - Tax Agents - with the cartoony illustration of two girls. One with brown hair, green shirt, arms akimbo, sour face, looking askew to her side like Paris Hilton but without the inane grin. The other with fluoro blonde hair, blue shirt, toothy smile, both friendly arms waving.

8:26 PM. A dilatory family phone call from Adelaide: What time is Jan's flight on the 21st?

8:28 PM. A train zipped through the platform without stopping. On the left side of the wall, in giant graffiti letters which always take a while to decipher: Female Force. There were names on top: Louise, Bubs, Alex, Spice, Afera, Alicia. The graffiti art wasn't bad. I've seen worse, but I've also seen better, more obscurely spastic.

I almost forgot what I wanted to say in this forsaken place, devoid of life except for weekdays. I could hear the violent, incessant chirping of mynahs nesting high-rise in the 40-foot tree at the side of the house behind MoneyTax. Their noise broke the curse-like monotony of the place, as did the occasional cars gliding by the station. The twilight rain clouds were hanging ominously on the sky, too close to my face, threatening to spray mischief.

I could feel a deep, visceral loneliness. Weary. Depressed even. Perhaps not the ilk that drives one to Sebstmord but to madness. I have one consoling thought: the mad people of the world, the ones cached away as pariahs in mental asylums and loony farms are possibly the happiest in the world. They don't have anything in the world to worry about. They are pre-occupied in their own created bliss-blessed Elysian Fields.

8:42 PM. Right on time the train has come, punctual as Adelaide Metro. I left the forsaken place and its depression black hole, sucking my chakras with the desparation that leads man to even more punctual madness. The kind that makes old, lonely men to want eagerly to depart this life and prematurely join the ancestors. I understand in my own pathetic way the loneliness of the elderlies, especially those living alone, deserted, neglected, forgotten by friends and relatives. I'd rather be like the 72-year-old Christmas Tree man I spoke to, hula-hooping near the traffic lights of Melbourne, dreaming of building a church in North Korea.



7 January 2006

Off to a New Year's Day Service

The oppressive heat of the night, dry and incendiary, was replaced in the morning by a light, welcome drizzle, softening and moisturising the earth, sending a cool breeze to the warm skin, giving comfort to the bodies aching and screaming for some respite from the heat of the last few days. Friday was bad, with the city reaching a record of 46 degrees C, the hottest since 1939.

The midnight countdown was one of those funny moments when we all turned all all the lights in the house, ignited some sparklers and pulled firecrackers. Everybody greeted everybody Happy New Year and asked: "What's your New Year's resolution?" This is some kind of chimera, a mythical monster one attempts to grasp but many a time fail to even start or break as soon as it is started. Some get a shock thay they haven't made a New Year's resolution yet. "Okay, my resolution is to think about my resolution" came as a reaction. Somebody resolved something in these words: "I swear not to swear anymore!" and he breaks it in the next five minutes.

Resolutions should be borne out of conviction, not by fancy, for fancy is whimsical and has no character of permanence. Convictions at least have some roots. You still have to dig around the roots, fertilise the ground, water it, but the plant would have a better chance of growing than the dandelion seed blown by the wind, with no one really knowing where it would land.

I caught the 9:43am bus to Glenelg, got off at Jetty Road, and boarded the tram to the Adelaide at 10:00am. The faces of people were dour, some sour, like the New Year had been a non-event, or it was an event and was good while the celebrations lasted, a few hours into the night of revelry, wine-bibbing, and oohs and aahs at the fireworks, and making noise. But greeting the New Year to me is to look it straight in the eye and to befriend it and to speak to it in no uncertain terms: I will be with you for 365 days; I will have to put up with you all the things and events ans mishaps and good fortune that will be in my way this year.

This year for me is a year of wondering about peace in the world, a concern that everybody should have in their heads and hearts. We hope for peace in the world and cannot even give a little piece of peace to others. Mother Teresa once said: "Peace begins with a smile." We need countless, huge smiles to start the peace process. The world's religions have a specific responsibility to make it a jihad of smile, a crusade of smile, a zen of smile, and to spread peace in the simplest way that a human face can give to other human faces. Forget about the environment and global warming for a minute, we have to take care of the environment of interhuman, international relationships. Forget about saving the whales and the endangered species, for humankind is the most endangered of all species. The smile is universal. No matter what race, religion, colour of skin, language, political persuasion, the smile always stands for goodwill and peace, transmitting a message of happiness.

At 10:15am the tram stopped at Morphettville due to some mechanical failure: the tram would not start. Radio communication could be heard from the driver's seat. The tram doors opened. The driver and the conductor stepped out of the tram as I continued to scribble away. Sounds of technical advice could be heard from the other end of the radio transmission. The trams doors were then shut and the tram backed up a few inches. The driver came back holding some tool and declaring: "Champion, mate, absolute champion!" And the tram started at 10:20am and sped in the directions of the city.

There were not many passengers in this tram. I sat on the third row of the first car. Three got in at Plympton Park, next stop 2 people: one elderly woman sat on the the area reserved for the "aged or physically impaired persons" which was closest the door. She was wearing flowery Chinese-style shirt in a dark brown background. The other one was a Chinese man in a checkered shirt and silver sports pants. Next stop, a woman with short curled hair dyed blonde sat in front of me. Next stop, a moustachioed man boarded the tram in his khaki military-style shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a baseball cap of matching colour. The conductor came around asking who wanted tickets. He was wearing a blue shirt, dark-blue pants and the ticket box dangling on his hips. Meanwhile a fly continued to bother me, targetting my eyes of all places. Soon we neared the city. Outside on the sidewalks near the South Terrace, a man in his fifties in white sports singlet and black shorts was running, probably as he had always done everyday, New Year's Day being no exception. The cheeky fly was riding the tip of my pen for about 5 seconds even as I scribbled. At 10:35am I wasn't far from my destination.

Behind the altar of St. Francis Xavier Cathedral near Victoria Square, a tall Christmas tree peppered with tiny lights stood proudly blocking partly the stained glass panels. On the left side of the altar was the statue of St. Therese de Lisieux. On the right was that of St. Francis Xavier in his white dalmatic and red stole over his black frock. In his hand he was holding and looking at a crucifix. The stained glass panels depicted the mysteries of the Rosary: the left panel for the Joyful Mysteries, the middle for the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the right panel for the Glorious Mysteries. The second and third rows of stone pillars had green Christmas wreaths snaking around them. The rest of the pillars were graced by green and red ribbons flowing to the floor. The ribbons were topped by short wreaths with little golden bells.

The commentator said something about "peace in our troubled world". The green sheet guide for the day's service declared this day to be the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Just under the heading was a grim boxed reminder: "Please ensure that mobile phones are switched off. Thank you." The entrance hymn was from a music of the 15th century. The last verse had the words:

O and A and A and O

cum cantibus in choro

let the merry organ go

Benedicamus Domino

Benedicamus Domino.

The main celebrant was a bishop who said the day was the "greatest feast each year". In his introduction to the homily, he said that the length of the homily was in inverse proportion to the temperature, the hotter the temperature, the shorter the homily. He mentioned about Mary being the greatest disciple of Jesus, as "she followed Jesus more closely than anybody else in the Bible." The Gospel reading for the day was from Luke 2:16-21. Verse 19 declares: And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. The bishop said: "We live in an age that is dominated by image and sound." That made it hard to reflect spiritual truths in our hearts. He said that to be a disciple in the Church, we must contemplate the truth, that Jesus was born not just to bring grace but also to bring truth. He mentioned that for over 35 years now in Australia, this day has been celebrated as World Day of Prayer for Peace. The letter of Pope Benedict XVI said that: "Truth is peace." The Bishop then continued to say that you and I must be rededicated in being truthful to God and to one another, doing justice between peoples and be engaged in the Lord's work. The Bishop said that the fundamental truth Jesus revealed was that "God is our Father" and that as a consequence of that truth, we are all his children, we are touched by God's light, every person is a child of God, that whatever differences we may have with other people, they are our brothers and sisters, even when their differences are expressed in anger.

1 January 2006