Visit From A Mamba

A fire is always a welcomed friend on a cold night in the savannah. Sitting here was I outside my tent with the metallic mug I used earlier to brew my tea now warm in my hands. My ears remained wary throughout the night, picking up the occasional laugh of distant hyenas disrupting the ever-present, ever-tranquil, songs of the crickets that sang to the soughing winds that came about by the minute. Occasionally, I would stare off into the scenery filled with the silhouettes of bushes and trees all under a sea of stars that belonged to something much bigger. I permitted my mind to wander off while I stared into the flame. I had no reason to be here, yet strangely, that gave me all the reason to be here at the same time. It was the comfort of being in a home of a natural kind, the kind that made me feel I was meant to be here. Lost in thought, a sudden, meek voice calling for my attention drew me away from my musings.

"Excuse me, sir," the voice called, its owner nowhere to be found when I looked for him. "Excuse me," the voice parroted, this time letting itself be known that it was close to the Earth's bed.

I looked to the caller, the yellow ring of its black pupil catching me in its circle. Its grey scales glistening with the light of the fire reflecting off its long, slender body. I realised that my visitor was none other than a black mamba.

"Please, don't be frightened," the snake reassured after I had jumped from my spot in shock, somehow managing to keep my hand stable enough not to spill my tea. He lowered his head courteously and backed away from me to give me the comfort of space.

The display of docility calmed me down as I returned to where I sat. The mamba remained where he was, content with speaking from there.

"Thank you, I hope you don't mind me here," he said softly. It was because of the tone of his voice that I somehow knew that he meant me no harm.

"No, no, you just startled me," I replied accordingly, "what brings you here?"

The mamba's head slithered about, a little flustered to confess his purpose.

"I caught the scent of a brewing lavender while I was on my way with my journey North. With the warm fire and the lavender tea, I was wondering whether I could... rest here for a while." He requested as gently and sincerely as he could, "and I was hoping that you would be willing to... share your tea as well," he added shyly.

I didn't think of it too much before I smiled warmly and invited the mamba closer.

"Wait here," I instructed, "let me go get another mug just for you."

I stood and returned to my tent, keeping an eye on the mamba to see whether he would drink my tea. He stayed where he was with a content smile on his face, happily enjoying the fire's warmth. Getting another mug from my bag, I returned to his side and poured some tea from my own mug, and set his mug down in front of him.

"Thank you!" He excitedly said, resting his head at the rim of the mug and sipping the tea from there.

We enjoyed the taste of the tea and the warmth of the fire in silence until we were done drinking. Still in the comfort of the burning wood, we took this time to exchange a few kind words.

"Where are you from?" The mamba asked me, his black eyes set on the fire.

"I came from the city." I replied, trusting this new friend of mine further to open up, "I just felt that the time was right for me to move on to a new place. That place was eventually going to be the death of me." I chuckled, folding my legs and locking them with my arms as I rested my head on my knees. I was going to go off in a reverie again until I realised I should probably ask the same of the mamba. "Where did you come from?" I asked, "and you mentioned you were going North. What's going on there?"

He turned his head to me, "I've been around, moving from place to place. I've been doing that for a very long time," he replied, "this time, I just feel the need to go North. That's where life is at this time of year, so that's where I need to go." He explained further, "it's a long journey, and I have miles to go before I sleep."

I noticed a trace of melancholy in his tone when he voiced his last sentence.

"Are you going with anyone?" I inquired.

The mamba, after a few pensive thoughts, smiled wryly.

"No," he replied.

I thought about it for a while before coming to a decision.

"Why don't I go with you?" I offered, "I don't have plans on where I'm going, I don't mind tagging along with you."

The mamba was surprised by my offer, stammering at first, "A-Are you sure? It's a long way to go and with what you have with you now, I wouldn't want to trouble you." His voice cracked out of surprise over my sudden suggestion.

I laughed heartily into the night, greatly amused by his character.

"Yes, I'm sure," I nodded. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're a gentleman?"

The black mamba slithered his head away, embarrassed by the compliment. It wasn't long until he turned back to me, a look of slight urgency written on his face.

"Very well, but you won't be able to bring what you have now," he said.

"Why not?"

"It's a long journey and if you follow me, such things will only slow you down." He informed, "are you sure you want to give them up?" He said, looking at my tent.

Once more, I was put in the position where I had to think. But, remembering how this wonder of nature has been doing this for a long time, I was sure his experiences knew better than my thoughts ever would on this new journey that I was uncertain of. So, I nodded my head.

The mamba smiled warmly.

"We will leave shortly," he said, "and... thank you."

Upon leaning closer, the mamba raised his head and planted a soft kiss on top of my hand. It sent a small tingle through my body that came as soon as it went, it was probably his breath brushing through the hairs on my hand. The mamba returned back to my side and we stayed that way for as long as we could to enjoy the fire for one last time.

It wasn't long until we stood to embark on our journey. The mamba and I started walking after he had pointed to the North Star as indication to where we were going. With my new companion, I started on my journey North. Taking a brief moment to look back at my tent, my now dying fire, and my aged body, that I was leaving behind as a present to the Earth before I continued on with this new life of mine.

A Black Mamba (Click to Enlarge)

The Work of An Artist

The artist takes his brush and paints his scene,

Of a winding road down the forest green.

With a shaky hand dealt by old age,

A new life is breathed into the foliage.

He takes his time with the strokes of his brush,

Knowing that art is a life never rush'd.

For the wasted lives of hurried talents show,

That rushing a tree will never make it grow.

And the artist will rest when he tires.

Even an android needs to cool its wires.

As he gazes down his own winding road,

On the many nights in his warm abode.

Time passes and the painting now lies drawn.

The artist lowers his brush, his war now won.

Though it won't be long til' he fights his next one,

For the work of an artist is never done.

Music Box

I sat in my living room

With my tea on the rocks.

Staring at an heirloom

Of an old music box.

It was on my birthday,

When I had just turned nine.

The timeless instrument played

And entered this life of mine.

The melodic brass chimes

From the wooden trinket.

Sounding sweetly sublime,

It became a favourite. 

In time, decades soon passed

And the world came to know

Of a toy meant to last,

thus came the radio.

By then, I forgot my gift.

It was left all alone.

For my life took a shift,

what happened was I had grown.

And now, I have grown old.

I had a crude thought struck:

That the radio gone cold,

Never had songs that stuck.

Only then did I see,

Sitting there all aloof,

The friend who's been with me

Ever since my youth.

So I opened the old thing

And found after so long,

My music box still singing 

My one favourite song.

Chessboard

I was in the study

of a friend one day.

Admiring a chessboard,

dusty and alone it lay.

It gave the room life.

That small touch of flair.

How that odd pedestal,

brought a vintage air.

The owner came with drinks

he set upon the table.

"I don't play that game,"

"I'm just not that able."

So the chessboard sat there,

accompanied by neat books.

Serving forever just to

complete the room's looks.

I was called to the house

much later in time.

Something terrible happened,

that seemed almost a crime.

The study lost its feeling.

That flair no longer present.

For on the chessboard there

was one chess piece absent.

Though my friend was unchanged,

he expressed he was annoyed.

He knew very well that

a new piece won't fill the void.

I returned home that evening.

Realizing in that instance,

how one missing chess piece,

can make all the difference.

Twenty Days Without You: Day Nineteen

What do you do on your last day?

Get ready for the next day.

End of Day Nineteen.

Twenty Days Without You: Day Eighteen

I've come a long way. My twenty-days are almost up. Somehow, because of a few things, I'm not really contented with myself. I feel I could have done more in places. But for eighteen days so far, I've done a lot. And while I feel really disappointed and upset that I haven't done everything I wanted to do, I cannot deny that a lot has happened throughout the week.

My week started off with me going to the University of Nottingham in Semenyih to finish everything I needed to do for my university application. It's now official that I will furthering my studies there. The place is big and it's in the middle of nowhere like an isolated island from the city life of KL I'm accustomed to. I'll be living there in my own dorm room by myself. I'll try to come back on weekends, not sure if I could considering the amount of work I might be facing there. This makes me feel like I'll be embarking on a Robinson Crusoe experience albeit with a few differences. I'm fond of that idea. I'll have to remember to submit to them a transcript of some sort that proves that I've taken Malaysian Studies and the Malay language so that I wouldn't have to repeat in university; can't stand the way that subject is taught half the time.

Midway through the week, I found myself traveling to my grandmother's place more often. Still, my cousin's absence is very noticeable. I've begun to fill in that gap by understanding my grandmother's thick Terrengganu dialect better. She and I had an exchange on how to cook which involved a lot of garlic and onions. That's intrinsically the Malay way. It was in that same period of the week when my uncle-in-law passed away.

I still remember the scene vividly: I'm in the back seat of the uncomfortable Nissan X-Trail, facing out the right window and listening to Wrap it Up by Whitey. My dad, as usual, driving with the radio off and exchanging idle chatter here and there with either my mom, my sister, or me. My mom gets a call and she answers. From her happy and sociable expression, there was then a sharp change of shock and confound betrayed in her tone of voice. She puts the down the phone and turns to me first for some reason before disclosing the news of my uncle-in-law's passing. A strange feeling is what it is when someone you should be close with suddenly passes away. It's not dolor. The dolor came when I saw how bereaved my favorite cousin was. Back to the strange feeling though, it's a feeling of absence in the way life just goes on and that absence makes a notable difference on one's perspective for a while.

That was not the only gloomy conversation that took place in that very car on that very day. Just before the news of the passing, my mom was going on about how she had met a family friend whom she hasn't seen in a while. That friend's children were people I grew up with albeit not as best friends but more of acquaintances yet there was still that connection that comes from growing up together. One of those children in particular now being the source of my mother's friend's grief. About this child: She's a girl, standing about five feet and eight inches and a few years older than me. She mixed between her mother's Malay blood and father's German blood. Inheriting most of her father's blood, she grew up to look very pulchritudinous. She's very sociable and approachable, a social animal would describe her right. Alas, she also has the characteristic of being headstrong.

She fell in love with a person that used a be drug dealer eight years ago apparently. I haven't met the person. People say she met him at her job as a model. The mother didn't like the person and would often fall into arguments with her. Ergo, one day, she just left home and refused to come back. They found her sooner or later, high on marijuana strolling a shopping mall. Brought her home, sent her to rehab, and still she is now going out with the same guy and still fighting with her mom. Kind of seems perpetual the way they are going at it. My mom said, "no one can talk to her now." It was because of this I stopped judging her. I used to think she was naive and gullible. Now I just think it's because she has no one to turn to save for him. It's not that no one can talk to her; it's that no one is willing to listen to her. I hope he treats her right either way.

Out of this, I got two poems. I'm working on one right now that will pop up here eventually.

Onto the end of the week. The week ended for me pretty much on Saturday, July the 16th. I'm sure a lot people know that Urbanscapes 2011 and Bon Odori happened on the same day. While this happened, I went up all the way to Janda Baik in Pahang for a barbecue lunch. The roads were windy and when we were nearly there, the scene of an urban jungle switched to the scene of a real jungle. Real trees and real hills were all that surrounded the main road. My family and I almost got crushed by a bus there on our way up. A thought came to mind that if I died, no one would hear from me for weeks or maybe months because of how isolated that place was. It was a pleasantly depressing thought.

I was plagued with depression on that day. It was partly due to Urbanscapes and Bon Odori that I felt so. Here I am, twenty days doing something by myself with no one to see my progress. I've learned how to cook, sew, polish my shoes, maintain my car, write better and analyze things better; my body has gotten stronger and my knee is healing well because of my body conditioning; I've finished reading a couple of novels as well as writing a couple of better poems, and I'm coming close to understanding myself a lilttle better. Yet, looking at myself, then looking at people I know who are out there having the time of their lives regardless of how little time they spend for themselves. I just felt at the time that everything that I've been doing up to that point just surmounted to nothing. I imagined in my head. I pictured my friend Joyce going to Urbanscapes then to Bon Odori, having so much fun and taking the experience in with all her friends. All of the friends that I won't have because of how much of a creep I am. Then I look at myself, just working on making my lumbar better at the time. It just made me feel so pathetic. I can't blame people though because they are who they are. To ask them to be spend time for themselves for the sake of my content is selfish and I did choose to do this instead of just breaking this project to attend the two events. So, like everything else that I'm involved in, getting depressed because of that… was my fault… like how a lot of things are.

The main reason though to why I was depressed on that day was because of a relapse of the stupid mistakes I've done- and there's a lot of them- coming back to haunt me. I don't move on well but I do eventually. However, later in time I would get these guilt-laced memories clawing back into my head and it would make me feel terrible because of how it would echo the message that maybe I just don't belong in society and how I should just keep away from people for my own good. Thinking about it now, in some ways, it's the reason why I don't move on well in the first place when I fuck up. For in that moment in time, all those painful recollections just somehow magically resurface so vividly just so that the latest one can be piled on. I would get on and recover from that feeling as I did later on that day. But when it hits… it hits hard. The worst part is that no can really help because it's something I can only get out of by myself. I'm going to make it a point just to avoid talking to people when I'm depressed.

Sharing this thing is hard, I'm feeling heavy-hearted again.

I'm still trying to find that reason lying within to why I can't move on from things easily. That part to me is still a mystery. I believe I came close at one point but the idea was too vague for me to determine well enough. I can take comfort in the fact that I do move on from things easier now though.

Anyway, the day ended with a grand feast at home with guests for dinner. Containers of delectable nasi lemak and a platter of homemade grilled chicken on behalf of the guest who attended were just among the other viands that were there. I got to talk to an old friend. We had an interesting conversation about the generalization that one's understanding of English would be better when we read more. I find now that, after reading on English Composition, this isn't necessarily the case. You don't really learn more about English by reading if you don't know what to look out for when you're reading. I know, this is obvious to some people. But it wasn't for me. It's the reason why I became deluded that I could write. Figuring that I've read and understood the classics I read, I would assume like I did that I would be able to write. And for a long time, I thought I had. It wasn't up until college that, a brilliant teacher imbued that one virus that slowly ruptured my state of literary delusion. Unless of course, one is a prodigy which I'm not, it's hard for people to look at a paragraph in a story and recognize the coherence and unity that lies within the composition.  I doubt the common person even goes through a book with the thought of the type of sentence written in mind. I doubt it ever occurs. So, it's important to know what you're looking out for in English to get learn more about English. The fundamentals I suppose.

So, onto today, nothing much. I've devoted today to writing. I'm currently working on my next poem and if you've noticed, I've finished the first part of a story I'm rewriting, and I wrote this. So yeah, see you around. Whoever you guys are.

End of Day Eighteen.

No Sex For Ben - The Rapture

Another Excerpt I'd Like To Share

This one comes from an interview on Inside the Actor's Studio where James Liption, dean of the Actors Studio Drama School, interviews comedian Dave Chappelle:

"The worst thing to call somebody is crazy. It's dismissive. 'I don't understand this person, so they're crazy.' That's bullshit, because people are not crazy, they're strong people. Maybe the environment… is a little sick."

Just sharing.