Far From The Madding Crowd

I am reading Emily Dickinson's biography and her loneliness (for although she chose to be a recluse, she was very lonely) has affected me strangely. She felt so much and her feelings were neither guarded nor polite enough for public consumption. She loved so much that the people she loved moved away from her; shunned her.

Her heart was broken over and over again. She was rejected and ignored over and over again.

Nice New England girls are supposed to feel just so much and no more. Everything nicely bounded with a border of daffodils, perhaps.

Until, rejected and misunderstood, she shut herself off from the world. Better voluntary exile than to keep being rejected.

And need I say I understood how she felt?

And I wonder if I should shut myself away next year and work and write and read, far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife?

Driftwood

I don't belong anywhere. I don't belong to anybody. I am part of nothing. Always alone, even when with people.

Alone.

Always.

There is a pageant before me, shifting faces, places and I look on, sometimes slightly intrigued, most times indifferent. Time passes, people pass, places wobble and shift and reform into something else.

I meet someone on the lift and we chat and exchange stories.

I meet someone at a gift shop and she tells me her name.

I meet someone for dinner who smiles and asks me if this could ever be home.

I say no. Not for me. I don't have a home. I drift, like some piece of wood, forever searching, never finding, buffeted by the waves.

Never finding.

Alone.

Forever.

The House Specialty

The dark, cavernous space, the bar that went on and on for years, is thick with ghosts. Sometimes, she throws them into oil, has a big fry-up.

Some taste like meringues, slightly burned around the edges. Others taste as bland as despair, a taste that is no taste, except that it sinks deep inside you and goes on forever. And some taste sour, like the breath of a drunk, the sweat of a drunk.

She moves through the space with a butterfly net, a cloth tea strainer, anything she has on hand, and traps the wisps, throws them in.

They look better fried. Corporeal is a good thing to be, when you haven't been for so long.

And when the others start to shuffle in, the dead ones still on this side of the veil, she offers them her fried ghosts, the house specialty. Take your pick, she says, luck of the draw, she says.

You never know what you're gonna get, Forrest Gump's mama says.

Sometimes she melts chocolate over them. Sometimes she flavours them with beer. Sometimes she serves them up with a side of chips.

No two quite the same. Saunter up, take your pick, ghost to taste, ghost of a taste, ghostly aftertaste, and whathaveyou.

They file in, weary, dead-eyed, chew the treats mechanically, and breathe.

Still breathing.

That's something.

And sometimes this world makes sense and they matter and have a reason for being.

But if they did, they wouldn't be here.

Anywhere but here.

These are for the deadends, the no-hopers, the ones who have just a little way to go.

These are the ones you hear about, read about, but never see.

And so they shuffle into this halfway house, poised between living and the opposite of it, coming from nowhere, going nowhere.

Nothing

Crystal vessel full of nothing
Emptiness carefully carved from air
So delicate, so precarious
I stand beside the gaping hole
and smile sweetly.

Because nothing fills me
Nothing answers me
Nothing is warm and comforting
I put my arms around nothing
and pull it to my chest...

And there we are
Nothing and I
We have each other
And there we are
Nothing and I
We fall asleep.

Coherence

Yes, I will gather up these daisies
and put them together
So they cohere and make sense
Not petals, but flowers,
Not flowers, but bouquets
Not parts but a whole
Not parts, but a hole.

Ah me, there it is
Waiting at the fringes
As I strive to cohere,
To cohere.

Even if everything crumbles
in my fingers
And faces fail to coalesce
A nose, some teeth, is that hair?
Pieces of people,
People in pieces
I don't recognise anyone.

Shifting features,
Nothing stops for an instant
To let me fix an image.
No images,
Just colours, shapes, ghosts?
All wispy strands around me
Struggling to coalesce
I don't see them
They don't see me.

But it's perfect, a pageant
unending.

And I'm sad because
I tried to hold on
to a moment
and the moment
slipped away.

A Perfect Day

I would like to take off on the beaten highway and write a Road story.

So what if it's been done too many times? All stories are old. But new all the same. Every line is cliched. But fresh all the same. And what fun a journey into nowhere would be, melting into strangers  and moving on.

How impeturbable the traveler who carries little and takes away less.

Ah me.

It's always a perfect day.

Other Broken People

His long white hair is caught up in an untidy ponytail. He is sitting hunched at the bar, radiating his rage. I'm too drunk to notice so when Marcel leaves I move over and invite him to join me at my table. Mistake.

He begins by criticising the musicians in tones, increasingly strident, increasingly indignant. "Copies! Copies of American music. Why can't they sing their own? Where is the Asianess in all this."

He's probably right. But I don't want to hear it right now. I'm pickled on three glasses of wine and I don't want to hear this. I just want to enjoy the music, watch the guys having fun on stage, that cool vibe which moves through the room.

But the Composer is livid. And he keeps muttering imprecations, reaching out every once in a while to take my hand and kiss it. And then he starts attacking me. "You, what are you doing here? How many nights a week do you come? What is it you are looking for?"

All valid questions, no doubt. But at the same time, none of his damn business. The set finishes and I run up to the stage. Tell Albert that it's a little uncomfortable, there's a feral Frenchman out there and I want to leave. Albert glances over, cool as a chilled pineapple, and suggests that I sit in front with the musicians.

So I do. But my stuff is still at the other table. I wait and talk to the guys. They're having a good time...it's all very quiet. I guess they are the antithesis of rowdy musicians. They're just doing a job and doing it well. I wonder why the Composer has to pick on them. A little later I see a young (French?)man come up and talk to him. And then I glance over and he's not there. I duck in, get my bag and the bottle of wine Marcel brought me as a present, and duck out again.

Yay. Now I can sit and enjoy the rest of the show without anxiety. I don't need anxiety. I have wine. But he hasn't gone. Not by a long shot. And now, he's even angrier. Whatever he had to be aggrieved about earlier, I have now just added to it by abandoning him. I could hit myself for being so stupid as to invite him to join me. You don't do that. Not here. You sit alone and enjoy the music. That's what people like us do. We don't want to deal with other people's pain. We're too busy avoiding our own.

And then the boys invite Rafique up for a song. Rafique demurs at first, then goes up and plays Michelle. In Thai. He's taking the piss. The rest of us laugh. The Composer bristles. And then the comments, which were only audible if you were sitting next to him, get louder. A lot louder.

He says: "Go home! I didn't come here to listen to you."

He says: "Stop! This is not a karaoke. I came hear to listen to real musicians."

He continues to heckle and Rafique sings another song. The heckling gets louder. Rafique, unfazed, gets off the stage smiling broadly. "There's always one," he says cheerfully. The other musicians look at each other.

Azmi, who's sitting nearest to me, shakes his head. "I see him at No Black Tie all the time. But he's never like this."

I say: "Yeah, I think he's a famous composer. At least, Mark says he is."

The Composer had written his name down for me, but I haven't Googled him yet. And nobody here, looking at this tired, dishevelled, angry, heartbroken old man, can believe that he was great. That actually, he still is.

Albert and Badar take the stage and start playing a series of slow numbers. The Composer staggers towards the stage, climbs up and kneels in front of the conga drums. Both Albert and Badar, who are gentle souls, raise their eyebrows in alarm.

Edmund's had it. The guy already irritated him with the earlier heckling. And now this? "Oi!" he calls out. "Get down from there."

"Cakap baik sikit bang," says Azmi, the peacemaker.

"You act like this, you only deserve an oi," insists Edmund. Then he goes up to the stage and orders the Composer to get off. Like, now!

The Composer pauses befuddled. "This is your stage?" he asks, clearly offended.

"Go help him downlar, the man will fall," says Azmi.

And Edmund, irrirated as he is, does. He goes and offers a hand for the Composer to get off the stage. He is an old man. And he could fall. Although he had no business up there disrupting the musicians in the first place.

They play on and finally Rafique goes up and joins Albert - the two start off with House at Pooh Corner and then go into a series of James Taylor numbers. It is truly beautiful.

But the Composer, his dignity ruffled, stalks out of the bar in high dudgeon. He stops by a table, probably to tell them that he is never coming here again. Never has he been so insulted.

I look at Edmund and sigh. I hate confrontations. I hate all this tension. I ask tentatively whether Edmund knows who the guy is. No, he doesn't know. And he doesn't care. Just some drunk. I say, apparently, he's some famous composer....also a musician.

And Edmund shakes his head vigorously. No way. No musician would do what he did. And then today, taking a break from my interminable story on human resources, I Google the guy. And I find...not only is he famous, he's world famous...not well known in the Anglo Saxon world...but in the rest...his fame stretches from Europe to South America to Africa to the Middle East. He has composed ballets, symphonies, experimented...the list goes on and on...I find pictures of him on the net - he looked younger and handsomer...a man confident, secure in himself.

What happened? How did he morph into that broken man at the bar, heckling the musicians and climbing up on stage, unloved, unlwecome, a nuisance?

He told me, actually.

It was love.

Empty

Mornings, I sleep off
nights of red wine.
Nights, I go
out of my mind.

But my nights remain
empty of you.
My life remains
empty of you,
My heart remains
empty.

Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachtani?

Sometimes a shower is like a benediction. Little freezing drops of blessing pouring over you, cleansing, clearing, heartening for a new day. I feel I am washing off this whole bad experience of Lent, when I gave up the wrong things and somehow, went wrong.

Meat and alcohol and (sometimes) sweets.

But I didn't give up the rage in my heart or the longing that stirs the blood and drives me crazy.

I didn't give up the madness (because how could I? you need to move through the madness to get to the other side).

I sit here waiting for a phone call to pick up the mother and the brother from Good Friday service.

At long last, Lent has juddered to an end.

Tomorrow, Esther and I go to watch Libera in Singapore. Another obsession (mine, not hers).

It's a birthday treat for her, and I don't know what it is for me. A "Thank God that's over..." kind of treat?

But the stately ships move on
to their haven under the hill
but oh for the touch of a vanished hand
and the sound of a voice that is still.

I believe that people move on, and that they do it successfully without a piece of them caught in the past, infected and rotten.

I have to believe.

I can't take this for very much longer.

Alone

They still ask about you
after all this time
I guess you were
such a fixture
in my life

I made you that fixture
I gave you that knife

And now you're not
here anymore
there's only silence
now I don't know
where to find you
they still ask

And I tell them
I don't know
because when you left
you left me
all alone

When I awoke
when I finally awoke
I couldn't find you
you were gone

and you left me
when you left me
all alone.

So I sit and stare
into space
try and remember
your touch
your voice
your taste

But there's only
the blankness
you left behind
a cancelling out
a void

because when you left me
you left me
all alone.

Blue Ruin

And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And I'm lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway
And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat...
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear
One for every year he's away, she said
Such a crumbling beauty, ah
There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen...

Sing For Me

I wonder sometimes how I can listen to "Goodnight My Angel" over and over again...how is it that I never got tired of it, that voice, reaching into me, comforting me, in some inexplicable way.

I finally figured out that I was the child being rocked to sleep. I needed to be rocked to sleep, and to feel there was someone out there, watching over my sleep, loving me, someone who's finger I clutch in my baby fist, as I swim through dreamland, reaching out to comb the mermaids' tresses, listening for their songs..."each to each..."

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I know why we're afraid of great literature, why sometimes it bores us to tears, or sometimes we avoid...it opens up those gummed up places inside and for a moment, we see, we see...what the welcoming dark shut out.

We dart our eyes, willing ourselves to look anywhere but...

But we see, anyway. An image emerges, clear and dark and cold. An image emerges that won't be denied.

And I know now, I know...that I died a long time ago...that all this...activity, is nothing more than my corpse hiccuping.

Things have not been real for a long long time.

Sometimes I think the sadness is real, the pain is real...but they're all shadows aren't they?

Just phantoms floating in and out of consciousness.

Just phantoms.

And sometimes I see someone, and I notice how the shadows etch out cheekbones, how the hair falls across his face....and I think, if you kissed me, I would feel something. If you kissed me, you would make me real.

But I don't know who you are. Just a shadowy form. Just a few details. I don't know what your soul tastes like. How it would feel if I inhaled your heart. I don't know what your insides feel like. Whether you have shadows flapping about inside your head.

Like me.

But I'm not normal...living this half life is not normal.

It's enough to get by.

I stare out at the other grey figures around me and wonder how many of them are actually alive.

You're alive.

I know you're alive.

And I want to feed on your life.

Like a zombie.

Like a vampire.

Like a curve of blackness carved out of the air.

I want to feed on your life and I feel guilty for wanting to feed on your life.

And so I avert my eyes. Dart left and right and don't look at you, not in the face, not really so I don't have to see who you really are. So I can imagine you whichever way I want.

So I can turn you into a phantom, a shadow, a half life...so I can have conversations inside my head.

So I can, for a moment, pretend to be real, pretend I know what's it like to feel something.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

But you sing to me. Do you know you're singing to me? Do you see me?

Or am I as invisible to you as I am to me?

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent

Stalking 101

Things are a little heavy around here...and I never intended it to be. I thought a stalker blog would be a fun thing to do...especially as I'm an accomplished stalker minus the binoculars. Also I don't send my stalkees 14 eyelashes in an enveloped sealed with...well, it's better not to think about it.

I've been thinking of writing rules for stalkers. You know, so we can cease to be so creepy and everyone can just get along. I must say, stalking Mark all these years, and the way he handles it. has helped me create a code of behaviour so that everyone is comfortable, and nobody runs out of buildings screaming...

Actually now I think of it, some of the rules are for stalkers; others are for the stalkees.

1. Treat your stalker with polite distance; be clear where your boundaries are and how much stalking you will tolerate.

2. Memorise your stalkee's schedule; especially if they are a performer...they will appreciate you because performers need support in their gigs, and what better support than their very own stalkers.

3. Remember birthdays and try to give the stalkee something small, thoughtful and not over-the-top. (If you're mortgaging the house to buy it, it's over-the-top)

4. Be content to watch without demanding attention...if you're a pest, well, they'll think you're a pest.

5. Leave straight after the gig. Never stick around. Pretend you have to work the next day. Really have to work the next day. In short, have a life.

6. Try to bring someone else along. If you're alone, it's a little obvious...not that you care, but they might.

7. Memorise conversations, write them down - can be used later for cross-reference purposes.

8. Never join your stalker at a table...attention unsettles them and gives them false hope.


9. Never talk to your stalker for more than 5 minutes, OK, 10 minutes at most. (refer to 8)

10. Above all, exercise discretion...don't turn up for every gig, don't accept every invitation.

11. Identify your stalkee's scent and the source e.g perfume, body odour from countless hours spent in bars surrounded by cigarette smoke and alcohol, then replicate the scent, package it and sell. Gain income from stalking.

Of course, all this only applies if you're stalking Mark. If you decided to stalk someone else, well, you'll have to learn their rules for yourself.

Time and patience, my dears and we can all be good stalkers together.

Falling Off The Edge

The thing about being a stalker, is you live a half life, you turn into a ghost, and you're not there anymore.

Not really.

You blend into beige walls, you disappear into shadows and your smile...what smile?

Nobody can do anything about it.

Nobody can save you.

Some try. They shouldn't. Because they can't.

You are a country blasted apart by a bomb and everywhere around you there are only shards, smithereens.

Only you can pick through the debris and rebuild.

Only you.

But it's so hard.

And you won't.

So you look outside yourself for an answer, for someone to save you, take you out of this life, if only for a moment.

You get so sick of the ruins.

But how do you escape from you?

You can't.

You're there.

Still there when you wake up in the morning in a strange bed, shivering, wondering who, wondering what, wondering why you did it all over again.

The body, if there is a body next to you, is cold, unyielding, strange.

And you just want to leave.

Disappear.

Scrub out the encounter from under your skin. Scrub until there are scratches running down your body, scrub until there is blood running down the scratches.

That's what you want to do.

And you let yourself bleed into the ground, watching the blood seep away, turning into a ghost.

But still that country, annihilated by the blasting bomb, that country's there, waiting for you to return, rebuild...but you can't.

Not without love.

And there is no love left in you.

Only obsession.

So you become a creature of night.

Shadowy, insubstantial, weightless.

So you stalk another, borrowing a life, for a few moments, emerging from the dead, only to go back tomorrow.

There is no now. There is no tomorrow. You cling on to the moments with your fingernails. The moments slip away.

You tear great holes into your body.

What body?

You're not even there.

And if you disappear tomorrow, don't worry.

Nobody will notice.

Perfect Time

Why is the measure of love loss?

Maybe if I breathe slowly, hold the image, relax into it, maybe then...

I am not ready. She's coming for me. I was stalling and she told me there would be a reckoning. She warned me.

No escape.

Child, stay awake.

Why is the measure of love loss?

It's time.

No, I'm not ready. Sometimes the wind is moist and the raindrops make me cry.

It's time.

Sometimes on a cloudy afternoon, I can hear music on the wind.

It's time.

Sometimes there is chocolate cake in the oven and a mother who smiles and lets me scrape the bowl.

It's time.

Sometimes there is a glint of warmth in the eyes of a stranger.

It's time.

Sometimes there's an afterglow.

No more words.

I'm not ready. I haven't learned it. Please...I'm not ready.

Why is the measure of love loss?

Because there is no love.

Only loss.

Welcome To My Life

Do you ever feel like breaking down?
Do you ever feel out of place,
Like somehow you just don't belong
And no one understands you?
Do you ever wanna run away?
Do you lock yourself in your room
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you're screaming?

No, you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels all right
You don't know what it's like
To be like me

To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No, you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life

Do you wanna be somebody else?
Are you sick of feeling so left out?
Are you desperate to find something more
Before your life is over?
Are you stuck inside a world you hate?
Are you sick of everyone around?
With their big fake smiles and stupid lies
While deep inside you're bleeding

No, you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels all right
You don't know what it's like
To be like me

To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life

No one ever lied straight to your face
And no one ever stabbed you in the back
You might think I'm happy but I'm not gonna be okay
Everybody always gave you what you wanted
You never had to work it was always there
You don't know what it's like, what it's like

To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No, you don't know what it's like (What it's like)

To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No, you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life
Welcome to my life
Welcome to my life

I Follow

I've taken to hiding behind doors and pictures to get a glimpse of her. Skin like silk and a face as limpid as plasticine.

We don't always get to choose what we fall in love with. Or who. I meant who.

I listen to her voice in my head and us talking, only it's not us, it's her, I'm silent catching the words as they fall from her lips, saphires to be stored away, sweet saphires I pop into my mouth, sultry saphires that taste of midnight.

Ah, but the moon is orange tonight. And unreadable. And you saw me hiding behind the picture and turned and smiled.

Why was I stalking you?

I'm sorry. I thought if I did it quietly, unobstrusively, you wouldn't mind, you wouldn't notice.

And you offer me a glass full of blood. No, wait, it's wine. Yes, wine.

Drink up, you say.

So I do.

I always do.

If you told me to dive into my wineglass I would.

That's how much.

And then you've filled my glass again. I didn't see you do it. I was not looking. You always do things when I'm not looking.

She laughs, her teeth glinting like teardrops. Oh my, but it's wonderful here, in this world that shifts and wobbles and bears me up like waves. Motion. Motion is all I have.

I don't have her.

You.

You're just a dream and I'm not talking to you here. Not really. You're too beautiful and you only see other beautiful people.

Pretty maids all in a row.

I don't love you. I drown in you. You've taken my volition and I find myself grinning stupidly.

So I follow her dumbly, ducking behind doorways like she hasn't already seen me, accepting glasses of wine when she does, because that's all I know how to do.

I follow.

Love, love, love...

So are you to my thoughts, as food to life,
Or as sweet season'd showers are to the ground...

Love, love, love...

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire...

Love, love, love...

Don't turn around, don't smile at me, don't beckon and please, please, please...

Please let me go.