In front of our terrace house in Taman Sri Minang, there are trees in the park. On Monday night, dinner eaten, the children watching Japanese cartoons in the background, I sat out under the awning, filled my pipe, and smoked. The pipe comes and goes in life: I smoked when I was completing my PhD thesis, in angry walks down by the river across the football pitch from the Stuart Hall Building. This fit of smoking, over the last two months, began while Yoko and the kids were away, when I bought tobacco in Suria, the glossy mall in KLCC. RM22, a kind of selfish treat, I thought at the time.
After the sunset, but before the final call to prayer, the atmosphere is perfect — the streetlamp in front of the house casting a third-world light that you notice when you first arrive in the country, but becomes normal the more you are in it. I looked up at the tree and thought about how long it had been there — was it older than me?
On Tuesday, Naomi and I will go again to her new school for orientation and on Wednesday she will start, and I am dreading this. Another change in an unending series of changes, although Yoko assures me that if we, her parents, are okay, she will be okay. This won't be the case in three years time, when she is ten, but for now we can control it and make it okay. I want to believe this, but I have doubts. Her life has been in non-stop flux, new friends and languages. How does anyone remain happy throughout these changes: I map my own insecurity on her experience. Perhaps being a child is easier.
Security: a kind of half truth to our children about how the world really is.
After riding my motorbike on Tuesday, being liberated, I was brought down quickly. I passed an accident on the road home and remembered one thing about riding the bike I hadn't fully realised: the ride in to work was much easier than the ride out. A half circle of people around a mangled Yamaha Wave — a police car with lights on. No one was dead, from what I could tell, but an omen among good portents stands out.
I dread dragging my daughter back to the school again, but what needs to be done, needs to be done. Have I learned anything in the last eight months: it's worth asking that question outloud. I ask it all the time in my head, when I'm sending the children up to go to bed, or walking out to lock the gate, or waiting for the bus. Put this all in context for me.
All this talk of the moment around me now; just live the moment, don't pull anything close or push anything away. Cross-legged on the concrete in front of the house, for a moment, the peace that passes understanding, the peace of being present in the moment, the past and future forgotten, came upon me. Bathed in light and smoke, looking up. Yes, I see, I have a glimpse. There is nothing to do but be here.
13 August 2013
Falling
The story splintered over the last ten days, in ways that I feel uncomfortable following. The narrative of this blog avoids certain topics: it gives the appearance of transparency, while keeping certain things out of sight, or hidden in plain sight. 'Here' — or physical location more generally — is always a metonymy for emotional or mental location. Here is never just the chair that you're sitting in, it's your whole embodied experience of here. Take that as a lesson.
On Thursday afternoon, the first day of my week of holidays, I walked through the KL bird park, bloodied, dehydrated, and exhausted. My youngest daughter was clinging again to my wife, who looked and looks one step away from collapsing. None of this is metaphorical, all actual: real blood, real dehydration, real screaming. I argue with a woman in a tudong, Is there really no drinking water in the park? Only the mineral water marked up 4 times? It's hard to tell who is more frustrated with whom.
I had returned from Germany feeling positive, but lasted only for a moment. In the taxi ride up from the airport, passing the mosques and chatting with the driver, I felt almost like I was in a foreign country again. The house, however, felt familiar; a kind of kennel. Not a jail: a place you are kept out of love. The Muslims in the neighbourhood broke fast on Wednesday with feasting and fireworks; we broke it with fighting. The next morning, the residue of anger and exhaustion hung on. The family couldn't stay in the overheated terrace house in Taman Sri Minang another day, but there was nowhere to go. Let's go to the Bird Park. Let's try that.
I was bloodied, actually bloodied, from falling in a hole, an actual, physical hole. Walking in front of Kuala Lumpur station, I had peeled my youngest daughter off of my wife again and was walking ahead to get her to forget that she was not with her mother. Then, suddenly, I am on the ground, my glasses have been knocked off. Mia is lying on her back, she's hit her head and is screaming. I try to stand, but can't. Yoko's asking if I'm okay.
Tense shifts to present for immediacy in narrative. My dad, telling me the story of seeing his uncle burned alive, also shifted into the present tense.
I was, thankfully, more or less okay. I was scraped badly, but not deeply, not actually cut. We went into the station, the thousands of Malay men clamouring for tickets, and the call to prayer of the national mosque on the other side. A man in a white robe, the station master, mopped up my scraps with another man in a backpack.There's a grate missing on one of the sewage drains out there, I said. Yes, the station master said, You must be careful. It was, as everything has been in this country, my fault: it's your fault for not knowing that you would not get paid. It's your fault for giving the police officer money when he asks. You shouldn't do that; you should know better. You should know there are holes in the sidewalks.
The story just trailed off there. Nothing happened, no one fixed the hole, no one took responsibility: we were pointed to the Bird Park, where we were headed before I fell. I limped a little, but by the end of the day, my ankle could hold my weight. The scrap slowly healed, is healing. We took a taxi back to town, and everything was forgotten.
Now, we are waiting -- for the holiday to end, for Naomi's school to start, for the first round of possibilities in the UK to go through or come back negative. Then we will re-evaluate, see where we should invest next. For my part, I finally bought shorts and t-shirts: clothes that fit and are comfortable in this climate. In Germany, I staggered around in my clothes from England which are too small now, particularly when I am eating non-stop. Come Autumn, I will, again, get my body back. Come next week, when I go back to work and can forget about heat.
On Thursday afternoon, the first day of my week of holidays, I walked through the KL bird park, bloodied, dehydrated, and exhausted. My youngest daughter was clinging again to my wife, who looked and looks one step away from collapsing. None of this is metaphorical, all actual: real blood, real dehydration, real screaming. I argue with a woman in a tudong, Is there really no drinking water in the park? Only the mineral water marked up 4 times? It's hard to tell who is more frustrated with whom.
I had returned from Germany feeling positive, but lasted only for a moment. In the taxi ride up from the airport, passing the mosques and chatting with the driver, I felt almost like I was in a foreign country again. The house, however, felt familiar; a kind of kennel. Not a jail: a place you are kept out of love. The Muslims in the neighbourhood broke fast on Wednesday with feasting and fireworks; we broke it with fighting. The next morning, the residue of anger and exhaustion hung on. The family couldn't stay in the overheated terrace house in Taman Sri Minang another day, but there was nowhere to go. Let's go to the Bird Park. Let's try that.
I was bloodied, actually bloodied, from falling in a hole, an actual, physical hole. Walking in front of Kuala Lumpur station, I had peeled my youngest daughter off of my wife again and was walking ahead to get her to forget that she was not with her mother. Then, suddenly, I am on the ground, my glasses have been knocked off. Mia is lying on her back, she's hit her head and is screaming. I try to stand, but can't. Yoko's asking if I'm okay.
Tense shifts to present for immediacy in narrative. My dad, telling me the story of seeing his uncle burned alive, also shifted into the present tense.
I was, thankfully, more or less okay. I was scraped badly, but not deeply, not actually cut. We went into the station, the thousands of Malay men clamouring for tickets, and the call to prayer of the national mosque on the other side. A man in a white robe, the station master, mopped up my scraps with another man in a backpack.There's a grate missing on one of the sewage drains out there, I said. Yes, the station master said, You must be careful. It was, as everything has been in this country, my fault: it's your fault for not knowing that you would not get paid. It's your fault for giving the police officer money when he asks. You shouldn't do that; you should know better. You should know there are holes in the sidewalks.
The story just trailed off there. Nothing happened, no one fixed the hole, no one took responsibility: we were pointed to the Bird Park, where we were headed before I fell. I limped a little, but by the end of the day, my ankle could hold my weight. The scrap slowly healed, is healing. We took a taxi back to town, and everything was forgotten.
Now, we are waiting -- for the holiday to end, for Naomi's school to start, for the first round of possibilities in the UK to go through or come back negative. Then we will re-evaluate, see where we should invest next. For my part, I finally bought shorts and t-shirts: clothes that fit and are comfortable in this climate. In Germany, I staggered around in my clothes from England which are too small now, particularly when I am eating non-stop. Come Autumn, I will, again, get my body back. Come next week, when I go back to work and can forget about heat.
04 August 2013
Grey light
The morning light seemed grey until I just opened the curtain now and looked out. Yes, it will be another glorious German day, but one that will be cut short by a plane ride back.
I left the conference feeling profoundly uneasy about the choices I've made in the last year. I've said that feeling duped is shameful and disheartening, but that's how I feel. I feel duped. Righting the ship shouldn't be impossible, I am still young and none of my choices have taken me too far away from where I wanted to go. Now though, to focus.
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