langkau fiction

I was about 13 or 14 when I first heard this song. I remember I was building a tiny hut on the casuarina tree outside our house and in my pocket, I had this broken walkman that my neighbor gave me. Everything was broken and the cassette ‘door’ was gone. I dissected the walkman and just messed around with its innards. Yes, sounds biological laa. I put the parts back together and it worked! Then, I took out a Buddy Holly cassette — I can’t remember whose cassette was it — and played this song while I built that silly hut. It went on till the battery died.

That’ll Be The Day

Well, that’ll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie
‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die

Well, that’ll be the day, hoo-hoo
That’ll be the day, hoo-hoo
That’ll be the day, hoo-hoo
That’ll be the day

I can’t sleep.

My thoughts are wrestling with things it doesn’t understand.

There’s a puzzle.

Then hope.

Then fear.

Then there’s a rustle at the back of my head.

An image smiling at me.

I’ve been having strange dreams recently. These are vivid dreams that I can remember but they don’t make much sense. I don’t usually remember my dreams even though I can describe how it feels. But this time, I can remember them and yet, I don’t kow what they are.

Tonight my dream took me a familiar place, a place where I’ve been to a couple of times. But I don’t understand them. In my dreams, I could only see clips of people’s expressions, of people I’ve met and know. Of course, there’s a brief image of the bridge. People, mountain ridges, rocky slopes, burning fields, a school and everything else that comes in quick succession of snapshots.

Then, I woke up. My emotions were not provoked and I don’t understand why. Oh, well…

This bridge crosses the Bengoh River. It’s one of the handful of such bridges built by the Bimbaan who lives in the semi-bowl shaped valley of the Bengoh mountain range. In a few years, this bridge will be reduced to mere memories. The present lives will be a past lived. The people, I mean.

I’ve met visitors who’ve been to the area many times. They all love the bridges. But they also know it’s going to go soon. “Better see them now before it’s all gone,” they told me a couple of times. I don’t know whether to laugh or become upset. They — or maybe me too? — treat it as if it’s a mere object, a beautiful structure without a life. But there is life! There are streams of life that passes through these bridges for many generations, even until today.

It’s not dying. We’re killing it.

We’re killing the life that passes through it. We’re killing that hope by saying “Better see them now before it’s all gone”. Worse, we’re content for it to be a small part of history and that life must go on. What the fuck, y’know. It does not go on. How can we be content to be part of that small history that takes away a living thing?

You may say, it’s just a bridge.

It is not, I’m sorry. A bridge is not built to look beautiful. It is built to carry lives across the river to the other side. It’s a human representation of wanting to constantly be connected to life. It’s the people’s desire to share, to learn and to live, expressed in structures that are dictated by cultures and belief systems. It is beautiful not because it looks unique, strange, or aesthetic. It is beautiful because it is life.

It is us, our lives too.