last night

last night i dreamt. i dreamt that i’d somehow, someway, managed to fuck you. yes. fuck. you. crazy, right? let me tell you: it was glorious. utterly glorious. sure, you’re last on the list of “friends i’d like to fuck,” but it’s only a list of two, so it’s not that bad. and, after that, when i woke up, i felt this sort of crushing dissapointment that it was just a dream, mixed with an odd feeling of familiarity, of maybe having dreamt that same exact dream before. i wasn’t sure, but it sure felt like it.

and then i woke up again, this time for real. the sun was shining, the birds were twittering and, staring at the ceiling, i knew, deep down inside, that i’d never, ever, ever get to fuck you.

but hey, that’s why god blessed us pathetic apes with imaginations, right?

lisa’s night out (wip / early version / early draft / etc)

this was it. this was it. ok. ok. ok. inhale. exhale. finally! she’d dreamt of going to the dance for so long and, finally, it was here. the time was now, the moment had arrived. the dance! glorious, glorious dance! she stood there, resplendent in her borrowed evening gown, her heart beating faster than it had ever beaten before. she felt as if she was on the edge of greatness, the cusp of something wonderful, and then she walked inside. oh my. the lights! the chandeliers! the fussy architectural details! so many pretty boys, so many handsome girls, all dancing, dancing, dancing the night away!

she made a beeline for the dancefloor, and she stood at the side, hoping that someone would notice her and sweep her off her feet and lead her by the hand into the middle of all the dancers and make her feel things she’d never felt before. oh, that would be wonderful, wouldn’t it? and that’s exactly what happened, too! well, kind of.

someone swept her off her feet, alright, but it wasn’t figuratively. and someone did lead her by the hand, but it was more like dragging. and someone did make her feel things she’d never felt before, sure, but those things were things she’d be happy to never have felt. ever.

but then again, with the state she’s in now, i don’t think she’d be able to wish—or do anything—anyway, so i don’t know about that last one.

grindprose

in case of fire

“in case of fire, do not use elevator.” my brother didn’t. he used the stairs, like all the signs told him to. he ran down ten flights of stairs in his underwear only to find that the door leading outside was chained. from the outside. he kicked and screamed and tried to force the door open, but to no avail. he suffocated.

protection

my sister told me this story the other day: when her previous boyfriend told her that he wanted to fuck her, she wasn’t surprised. she could see it in his eyes. so she told him that sure, he could fuck her, but he had to be protected first. he had to bring protection. the next night she heard a knock on her door, and there he was, her boyfriend, along with two goons in sunglasses and spiffy suits. “protection,” he said, patting both of them on the back. she left him a week later.

you shouldn’t tell

when i told her i liked her, her skin grew pale. when i told her i really, really liked her, her hair began to fall out. when i told her i liked her more than anyone else i’d ever liked, her clothes began to tear apart at the seams. when i told her i loved her, she crumbled into dust and drifted away on a north-easterly breeze.

daytime dilemma (dangers of not knowing what to name a story and thus having to steal one from the song you’re listening to at the very moment you decide to post it on the internet)

i haven’t got the energy for this shit anymore. i’m dissapointed in you, you know? i really, really am. i don’t know which one of these you forgot: the hours we spent lying in bed in our underwear, stoned as all fuck; the days we spent bumming it out on the streets of KL, filthy and unwashed; the money we spent on paint and furniture and upholstery, trying to decorate our apartment and the fun we had doing it; that policeman we beat up in that stinking alleyway, all because he’d looked at you funny and so on and so on. and then there was that promise you made about how, you know, i was your “bestest friend ever” (you were drunk, i was drunk, who gives a fuck about grammar anyway?) and how we’d always “stick together.” i didn’t think you’d forget. i thought you meant what you said. yeah, my mistake, sure, but it was a mistake i only made because of … well, because of all of the above. i should’ve known. two days after you met her you told me you loved her and you moved out, just like that. you left me all alone. i haven’t heard from you in a year. maybe longer. i don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but if you do, i hope to god you’ll be able to smell what i’m smelling right now. i hope to god you’ll be able to smell that sweet, sweet scent of burning bridges.

a poem for a girl whose name i never got

we stumbled out the pub
stinking drunk and broke as fuck
just another drunken night
out on the town

in the dim light
away from the unceasing sound of talk
i asked you
“hey girl can you walk?”
you looked at me and nodded
took my hand in yours
and together we stumbled down the block

right when you tripped and fell
i was talking to myself
thinking
“oh god she looks so swell”
and i reached out to catch you
but i missed

you hit the concrete
like a sack of wet potatoes
we broke into drunken laughter
at exactly the same time

a passing car
drove through a puddle
by the side of the road
and soaked you to the bone

soaking wet
you asked me if i could
escort you back home
because at night
it’s dangerous to be a girl
especially when you’re drunk and out alone

so i
helped you up
took yr hand in mine
and then we started walking

the night air was cold
doubly so for you
and when i saw the look on your face
i wished that i’d brought along my jacket
just so that i could’ve given it to you for you to wear

and to cut a long story short
we soon arrived at yr place
and as you fumbled in your bag
looking for your keys
i stood and watched
hoping to god that maybe
just maybe
i’d get lucky
this time

i helped you up the steps
that led to yr door
and you unlocked the grille
and then the door
and then you opened it
bathing the both of us in an
artificial fluorescent whiteness

you smiled and said thanks
took off your shoes
and hung them up on the coat-rack to let them dry

when you stepped inside
and turned to look at me
perhaps to say goodbye
it couldn’t have been more than five seconds
but it felt like an eternity

and i wanted to take a step forward
and i wanted to join you
i’d wanted so many things
but none like i wanted you
and then when i’d made up my mind
and i was just about to take that step
you shut the door and locked it

—

This is just me going all Owen Ashworth-meets-Nazim Hikmet-meets-really bad poet on your collective arses. It’s for my Creative Writing 2 ‘zine, but well, I felt like posting something and I didn’t want to post something that’s going to go in my “book.” At least not yet. Tell me, oh dear ever-silent readers, is this one any good? I don’t fancy myself as a poet if I may be honest, but it’s somewhat fun, y’know, writing poetry. Especially crap poetry.

press my flesh

It’s been quite a while since I updated. A week, pretty much, which is a long time by my standards.

There are a variety of reasons for the long silence, but paramount is the fact that I just haven’t been a writing mood/mode. I find writing a chore, sometimes, even. Which doesn’t bode well for my assignments and my “book” project, I think you’ll agree. Things have improved a little recently, I will admit, but I’m still on rocky waters as far as my writing—and, notably, my confidence—is concerned.

I just don’t feel good about my writing these days.

And speaking of the “book” project, I’ve been re-reading some of the stuff I’ve written for it and I can’t help but feel really… unenthused. There was a moment when I felt really good about my output, but these days most of the things I felt good about seem a bit… sub-par. This is my default mode, I guess, when it comes to how I feel about my own work. When things are going good, I think it’s good/great. When things aren’t, I start disliking stuff. Being objective is something I am totally incapable of.

It doesn’t help that I’m still totally in love with Etgar Keret either. I do seem to mine a Keret-esque vein most of the time and that fact means I often end up comparing my work to his. Always unfavourably, of course. It’s something I shouldn’t do—well, not all the time, at least—and I try not to, but a lot of the time I find myself doing exactly that. Good god.

It seems to have stopped raining so much, too. Fuck. Seems it was only a few days ago I could go to sleep with the rain falling outside my window; tonight it’s “set the fan on number 2 and throw that fucking blanket somewhere far, far away,” and I don’t like that.

You know what? Fuck keeping everything under wraps. Here’s a “new” story for you fucks, as a way of making up for the long silence. It’s still not in a state that I’d call “final,” but it’s close-ish. This is longer than most of the other stuff I’ve written for the “book.”

—

The Rock

after a couple of years being the darling of the worldwide arts scene i decided that it was time to give something back to the town in which i was born and raised. it’d been a long time since i’d left the town but i still felt a real strong connection to it, as if it was the town that had raised me and not my parents. it sounds illogical, i know, but when your parents used to spend half the day working in the paddy fields and the other half quarreling and bickering about inconsequential shit instead of raising their only child it kinda begins to make a bit of sense, yeah?

it doesn’t? oh well.

i decided to make one of those abstract, surreal sculptures art critics like so much. but instead of painting it myself, i’d let the town’s kids do it. i’d let them paint and draw and scribble and splash paint on it. i’d even provide the requisite crayons, watercolours and pencils. i could’ve done all of that myself, sure, but i wanted to get the kids in on it. i wanted them to be able to look at the sculpture in a few years’ time and say, “yeah, i was part of this.” more than that, though, i just wanted people to like me. the kids, especially.

it took me a few days to find a suitable rock to start with, but once i did, i felt an excitement that i hadn’t felt in a while. for the first time in ages, i was actually excited to begin work on an art project.

without wasting any time, i loaded it onto my rented truck and took it to the beach, humming a tune as i went along. i felt good. real good.

thankfully, there wasn’t anyone at the beach, which meant i could do my work without being distracted by onlookers or passers-by. with sand in my slippers and the sound of waves lapping on the shore in my ears, i got to work.

after a few hours of chipping away and carving and shaping, i was finished. i stepped back to admire my work and, after a while, began to feel something odd within the pits of my empty stomach. it wasn’t gastric pain, that’s for sure, but i couldn’t figure out what it actually was. but soon i began to realise that it had something to do with the sculpture. namely, the fact that i wanted it. i wanted it very, very badly. i knew that many, many rich people with deep, deep pockets would want it as well.

i couldn’t let the town have it. i couldn’t let the kids have it. i couldn’t.

i looked around, hoping no-one had noticed me. i was in luck: it was a sweltering hot day and everyone was presumably inside their houses, trying to avoid the heat. i breathed a sigh of relief, loaded the sculpture back onto the truck and i drove off—windows up, air-conditioning on, radio turned up full blast, cheap knock-off raybans hiding my eyes—barrelling down the road at seventy-five-motherfucking-miles-per-hour.

i arranged to have the sculpture shipped to london, which was, at that time, my base of operations. the next day i boarded a flight heading in that same direction and didn’t look back. not even a goodbye. not that there was really anyone to say goodbye to.

i eventually sold the sculpture at an auction for more money than my parents ever made in their fourty years of working the paddy fields.

gömul vísa um vorið

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, eh? Haha, yeah, four days is “a while” when it comes to my usual standards, I guess.

I’ve been a bit unwell recently. Thankfully, however, I haven’t (yet?) succumbed to any sort of fever, but I have been coughing a lot, and my throat’s a bit sore, although it’s not that bad right now. Not bad at all, actually.

Things have been a bit slow recently. Haven’t been out shooting in a while, which means that I’ve actually been wasting the Zinc-Air battery in my OM-1 (those only last a month or so, give or take). I do plan to rectify it soon though, particularly since I’m looking forward to not only seeing how Fuji’s Acros 100 is but also because I have a roll of Tri-X 400 to burn through, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing the results I get from that.

As you might expect, I’ve been writing a lot too, although I’ve managed to refrain from posting any of the new stuff on the Internet (so far). I did post this one up on Facebook, but that’s about it. Might be posting some more soon, although I’m not sure what. I feel quite good about some of the stuff I’ve written recently and I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to release it on an unsuspecting—yeah right, probably the only people that will get the “book” (for lack of a better term) are the people that I’ll have endlessly pimped it to—and very limited public. It’s not about making money or becoming well-known or anything of the sort, though: I want to do this because, well, I want to. Teringin, if I may. At least if I ever have to do it again in the future (for a ‘zine or whatever) I’ll know what I’m doing. Roughly, at least.

With writing comes reading, and I’ve been reading a lot of both Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids and Etgar Keret’s Missing Kissinger. It helps, yes, that both books aren’t novels: Keret’s book is a collection of short stories and Alameddine’s, while it has a storyline, is very non-linear and structured in (generally very short) vignettes that allow me to skip through it at will, reading whichever vignette(s) I choose. Koolaids is probably one of the best books I’ve read recently and has rocketed to the upper echelons of my “favourites” list, as has Missing Kissinger. I got Koolaids for RM9 at the Pay Less in One Utama too, which, I think you’ll agree, is obscene. Has to rank among the best RM9 I’ve ever spent.

And yeah, Keret is Jewish, so what.

Aside from that it’s been mostly lazing around, CoD4 online and lots of  kinda-wierdo kinda-noisy music (Kuupuu, Islaja, Fursaxa, Hospitals, Sightings, Pocahaunted, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystävät, John Zorn, Naked City, Kría Brekkan, etcetc). It’s good shit. I feel so trendy right now.

No updates in regards to the xLumbrahx EP, don’t know what’s up with that.

And, since I’m in the mood (read: I was bored and looking through my photos and felt like uploading something), here’s a photo:

three-shot

Early drafts/versions, I guess. My early drafts more often end up as my final drafts, I know, but there’s a large chance I might make changes to these.

—

a phone call

he called me up, wanting to know how i was. i hadn’t heard from him in such a long time. it’d been years since the last time we’d seen each other, and i’d almost forgotten how sweet-sounding a voice he had. we made small talk, asked each other how we’d been, how life was treating us, how our jobs were going, how our families were and about whether we were seeing anyone at that time. no sooner had i said that i wasn’t did he blurt out:

“i want to fuck you.”

in the silence that followed, i could hear the sounds of leonard cohen wafting through the air from some unidentifiable point in his room.

i’d missed him so much.

waiting

i’m always waiting. always. i’m never really sure of what i’m waiting for, however. i guess i wait for many things. wait and hope. wait and hope. all the while, this red plastic chair i always sit on becomes more and more a part of me (or maybe i a part of it). i’m always waiting. always. i wait for love to come by on its glowing white horse, resplendent, a beacon of light in the dark. i wait for the time that people will open their eyes and see that there’s more to life than those boxes they stuff themselves into. i wait for the day when i can finally get the fuck out of this country and leave it all behind for new displeasures, new dislikes, new hates and a new set of idiotic politicians, policies and fatwas (in case i have the misfortune to live in another muslim country) to rant about. i wait for you, whoever you are, and whatever you will mean to me, to come into my life and do whatever it is that you will do to change my life. sometimes i get tired of waiting. sometimes i feel like giving up. no more waiting. more often than not, i feel like i’m waiting for stupid, idiotic, unattainable, illogical things. sometimes i feel like i’m crazy. but then, my best friend’s family and his best friend’s family and his best friend’s best friend’s family (etcetc) have been waiting ages for the second coming of jesus christ, so i don’t know, maybe i’m not that bad after all.

fucking homos

i am a straight man. i have never felt the urge to lie with a fellow man in my twenty-and-a-half years of existence. i have had five girlfriends in the past six years. all of them lost their virginity to me. all of them spent their nights crying over the phone to their best friends after i beat them up and/or hurt them and/or called them demeaning names (“useless, pathetic whore” comes to mind). i broke up with all of them on the twenty-first day of the month, and all via text message. they all hated me, and probably still do. and after i broke up with each one of them i would change my phone number and once again trawl the bars and clubs of kuala lumpur, searching for another cheap fuck, another toy, another punching bag. i am not a good man, but i am at peace because i know god loves me. i am straight.

i have a friend. she is a homosexual. she once told me that she discovered her homosexuality in the sweaty changing rooms of her school’s girls’ handball team (state champions, third-place finishers in the national championships). she has never been with a man, and has spent the last five years in a loving relationship with her partner, a girl who works in the same office as i do. the girl knows i know, and whenever we lunch together she always talks about how much she loves that friend of mine and how well that friend of mine treats her. they are in love, moreso than any couple i have ever met. they are good people, but i know that neither of them will never be at peace because i know that god will never ever love them. they are homosexuals.

—

Or maybe not?

how not to spend the final few years of one’s teenage life

She lights another cigarette. She lights another stick of cancer. She takes another step towards an early death without ever getting up from the couch. She knows I don’t like her smoking. It’s impossible that she’d forget. I told her. I keep telling her. She doesn’t care. Not one bit. As far as I can tell, the only thing I’ve managed to tell her is that I’m actually a broken record, a cliche, and, thus, boring as fuck.

She smiles and blows smoke directly in my drink. She looks me in the eye. I don’t like the look in those eyes, contemptuous and defiant, daring me to actually do something. I don’t like how it makes me feel. I don’t know how I—the token pathetic sop who’s the fuel for many an utterance to the effect of “I know someone just like him!”—managed to end up living with her in a dingy one-bedroom apartment with a balcony overlooking one of the busiest streets in the city with an old couple and a drug dealer for neighbours and I certainly don’t like it. Not exactly how I imagined spending the final years of my teenage life.

(I’ve never seen any of her neighbours—our neighbours, rather—so I have to believe her when she tells me that they actually do exist and that the noises that occasionally penetrate the paper-thin walls aren’t being created by ghosts of murder victims and druggies who overdosed on the “it” drug of whichever decade it was that they died in.)

I grab my drink, get up and head for the balcony. She tracks my movement with those eyes of hers or maybe she doesn’t, I don’t know for sure. I don’t think I really care anymore. I don’t think I ever cared, in fact. But I don’t know for certain. I can only guess. I’ve always been plagued by an inability to figure out how I really feel about someone. Second-guessing infatuations and third-guessing love is all I’ve ever done.

The night air is cool and the balcony is slick due to the rain that fell earlier in the night. Down below the trafic crawls slowly, almost unmoving, glacier-like. Not many people on the sidewalks, the recent rise in snatch thefts has seen to that. No-one’s safe anymore in the city. But then no-one ever was. It’s just the kind of danger that’s changed, not how dangerous it actually is.

I finish my drink, let the can drop from my outstretched hand into the darkness below and decide to look out upon the city. Or, at least, what little of it I can see that isn’t obscured by high-rise apartment blocks and shiny new office buildings. I look at the apartment blocks with their windows lighted up in some sort of esotetic code looking like a Rut Blees Luxemburg photo and begin to hope that somewhere, out there, there’s someone for me. Maybe she’s alseep, maybe she’s parked in front of the TV gorging on junk food trying to get over her ex-boyfriend, maybe she’s out on the town getting horribly drunk. Maybe, maybe, maybe. All I really hope for is someone better to be with. Someone who cares.

And that, somewhere out there, someone’s looking out upon this godforsaken city just like me and wishing for the exact same thing.

—

You wanted prose. I promised you prose. Thus, you get prose. I didn’t write this because of that, though. I’d written this a while ago, so, technically, I still haven’t broken out of this turgid state of mind. I did take some photographs though, today, during my short trip to (where else?) Central Market. Can’t wait to see how Fuji’s Acros 100 is.

I played CoD4 online today for the first time. Let’s just say I think I now know what will be keeping me up most nights from now on.

(And I know, the title sucks.)

crystal balls

For one moment, your eyes meet: that oh-so-cliche meeting of two sets of tired and weary eyes, that electric exchange of looks, that intoxicating vision that will fuel a fortnight of yearning and wet dreams and of endless infatuated ramblings to half-interested friends. Oh, those eyes, those eyes.

And in those eyes you see visions: visions of the future, visions of what will become, of what is over the horizon and of what is down in the small valley over the crest of that hill just up ahead.

You see the late nights you’ll wait up for her call, alone and lonely, the tap dripping and dripping and dripping, cockroaches scurrying across the floor, your roommates asleep and dreaming sweet dreams of Cameron Diaz willingly fulfilling their wildest sexual fantasies. There’s a newspaper nearby but you’ll be too tired to do anything except sit there waiting for that phone to ring, and you’ll begin to ask yourself whether it’s worth sacrificing joining your roommates in that glorious dream world just to hear that same, tired voice on the other end.

You see the mornings she’ll come home puffy-eyed, sleep-deprived, messy-haired, pale-faced, zombie-like, desperately trying to act like all she did last night was have a few beers and audaciously expecting you to believe not only that, but also that her cellphone battery had run out and she either didn’t have change for a payphone or that there were no payphones wherever she was last night.

You see the fights, the conflicts, the tantrums, the raised voices and pouty lips, the tears that’ll roll from her eyes and down her cheeks and onto her Abercrombie and Fitch hoodie, the phone calls she won’t pick up, the money you’ll waste on meals that neither of you really like and the horribly uncomfortable times you’ll spend in the company of her friends while she tries to direct the conversation towards her and not you.

And so on.

You’re just about to get to the good bits when she turns to her girlfriends and begins laughing in that annoying laugh that you’ve learned to hate over the years and walks away with the lot of them, holding hands and smiling, while you’re left there, standing immobile, holding your bags of shopping in front of the Burger King, rock-like in a river of moving human flesh and bone.

Your bags feel heavy and your shoes feel like they’ve had bucketloads of water pourn into them. You feel like you’ve just walked through a torrential downpour and are standing there, dripping with water, shivering, pathetic, on the front doorstep of your ex-girlfriend’s house, asking if you could come in and rifle through her drawers for any of your clothes that she hasn’t thrown away yet. And maybe a hot mug of coffee or something of the sort, if she doesn’t mind.

It takes you a while to compose yourself, but when you do, you begin to ask yourself why you felt the way you did just now. You know perfectly well that if she saw anything in your eyes, it must have been a life of happiness and love, of blue skies and cliche photographs of the two of you trying to express your love for each other—and failing, desperately—through the medium of photography.

After all, you’re infallible, aren’t you?

—

What this is, then, is a piece of drivel that I cobbled together in about an hour due to suddenly being struck by a desire to write something really crappy just as an excuse to not get the early night that I so desperately need. It’s also a melding of my seeming inability to write cheerful things, various secondhand experiences, the odd firsthand experience, a couple of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone songs—first person to name the songs gets a prize*—and some sort of odd loneliness at these nearly-unholy hours of night.

*Probably not.

by train

She looks out the window at the snowy landscape passing by and you start to wonder what she’s thinking about, whether she’s really happy being stuck in a cramped train compartment with you, whether she’s excited about spending Christmas together with you in an alien city, whether she’s actually meant all the things that she’s been saying.

You desperately want to believe her—who wouldn’t?—but you can’t shake the feeling that something’s not right and that there’s something she’s not telling you. You want to find out, but you know all too well that you had better pick your moment and choose your words carefully, or else.

That moment hasn’t come, and your words haven’t been chosen.

So you let it rest.

You lean back and try to find comfort in the pathetic, tattered cushions—burnt in some places, sliced open in others—that bear the marks of, you assume, nearly twenty years of service and abuse.

You rest your head against the rattling window, and, lulled by the monotone rhythm of the train on the tracks, soon begin to fall asleep, with all your questions unanswered and all her mysteries unrevealed.

While you sleep, she slowly gets up and walks out of the cramped compartment the two of you share, maybe to go to the toilet or maybe to find some food or maybe just to stretch her legs. She walks past other couples just like the two of you, locked in that never-ending struggle between man and woman, lost in their own little worlds, and she smiles.

Asleep, you never even notice that she’s gone.

She wonders when you will.

—

This is what you call a struggle against atrophy.