langkau fiction

hhm…you don’t really belong here, do you?

I’ve not been posting.

I know.

I can give excuses but I’m not going to.

So, I ask myself tonight “I should just stop, right?”

A sneeze, a snot and a stupid grin.

My friend, Mads, posted this on his site. I clipped it from there and transported it here because like what Mads wrote: “Everything that makes life worth living is in this video..”

Now, I am sharing this incredible video with you and hope that no matter how shitty your Saturday is today, this video will breathe a new meaning into your life.

I am totally speechless.

No, I don’t have the lyrics…sorry.

I had an interesting discussion with my colleague over lunch today. The topic of our conversation was on the application of the Iban customs on lying, or specifically, the liar. Yes, I can hear your sighs piercing my screen. But allow me to bore you with this. Please.

I think most of us would agree with the idea that lying is an undesirable act. In turn, a liar is someone whom we prefer not to have as friends. Or acquaintances. Or some of us prefer them to be the mental receptacles of our “fuck offs!” But there are times when the liar is so polished at lying that he or she becomes an established, reputed liar. I know this because I’ve made friends with some of these interesting species over the years. There are two common species of liars that inhabit this part of the world.

The first species: they don’t usually ask for much from you, they just want you to listen to their deftly fabricated stories. All of you have to do is nod randomly and mumble ‘yes, you’re right’. You don’t lose much by having this species as a friend except for your time. Oh, maybe a pint or two at the bar. They can also be interesting and amusing. The second species is a bit difficult to handle lah. These are friends who constantly ask for your financial assistance of the numerically colossal kind. And you know there is no way they’re going to return your assistance. Best of all, they can totally convince you they will get the money by next week because some big shots will pay him a large amount of moolah for helping them out of their troubles. Yeah, this species is definitely the hero of the two.

Now, the question is, what are we supposed to do with them?

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Really. There’s nothing.

Since I got back from the ulu last week, I’ve not been quite myself. Whatever ‘myself’ means. I go to work but I don’t work. I breathe but I don’t live. I’m here but it feels I’m floating. I feel a bit down for reasons I am not sure of. And you know how I hate not knowing what’s happening. It feels like undergoing the process of being a toad but that tadpole tail just refuses to go.

hhm…nevermind. Bad metaphor.

My stupid situation reminds me of a poem, my favourite actually, by Wallace Stevens called “The Snowman”. I can vividly remember what I went through when I first read this piece 15 years ago. But the poem’s meaning does not allow me read it otherwise. If you know what I mean lah.

Maybe I should just make another attempt at Teacher’s to knock me out.

Here’s “The Snowman”:

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Goodnight.