girl: we won't see each other again.

boy: [pause] yes. we won't see each other again.

-

boy: we wouldn't see each other again.

girl: we wouldn't see each other again.

-

there must be a simpler reason to why I like Wong Kar Wai.
and i finally understood when I was listening to one of the soundtracks.

it's all about repetitive differentiated instances
moments that are repeated (regardless of space and time)
but each repetition brings a subtle difference to how the moment is felt

it's like an old radio that plays contemporary music. but involuntarily encodes signs that suggest more than the contemporarity of the songs. (it plays its static)

Quizas heard then would always be heard differently now.

it's about departures and encounters.
tag. races. journeys. more films. and great soundtracks that describe our lives.
do you have a song that just summarises everything about you and your life?

I have a few.
"Quizas"

but it's really more than the beginning and the ending of each narrative.
it is the moment. the moment in the mood.
and a reflected moment of that mood.
until u lose sight of it. it drifts away like a bubble blown.
and you see it pop.
you remember it somehow.
but it's not the same to blow another bubble.

and at that moment before departure, i was in the mood for love
but at that moment of departure, you were still in the mood for another
and at this moment of writing of that departure, I feel the gaping hole
of someone who had shared those moments together.

variations of the same theme.

Quizas.

i wish you love.
no.

you are loved.

am taking a break from writing.

i feel the




g

a
p

those moments are always hardest. When they might be the last.
did that a few times. and indeed I don't see them for years.
unless it's a sick joke of destiny that I cannot escape. quick pace of escape eh.
not everything is that easy.

16 months. I totally appreciate the experience. Phew. it doesn't sound long but any day living with unrequited feelings is an eternity (as many can testify).

so here is my short testimony.

-

love/hate
smile/frown
thesis/antithesis
sibling/nemesis
sense/
nonsense

swim - - - ming in pools of unresolved
portions of enigma

of nearness of you
but w i d e gaps


facetoface

so near
and so far

numbers and dates don't mean much

dreams did.

it's just the distance/nearness of you

missing, missed.

divisions. divisions. divisions. divisions.divisions. divisions.divisions. divisions.divisions. divisions.

but all in good time, for a greater purpose.


henceforth,

always a comma,

i write/stop writing to you,

let us imagine a linear and rational world, where you are alone at this time and place, focused on that single project (e.g. your essay). From a multiple possibilities and perspectives in which you could have approached your project, you finally (somehow) narrow down to the words or actions you have written or done thus far.

Then the there is a knock on your door. You open the door and you stare at a stranger. It takes you 2 seconds to recognize that it is your friend, who for some reason has come to visit. This interruption to your project (a shock, a displeasure, or just simply an interruption) takes a while to register. But before you know what you are doing, you are in a conversation with your friend, after inviting the friend into your house. You discover (though not unsuspecting) that he or she has a problem and you will, in the next hour or two, play the role of a listener or even an adviser, if he or she decides to align what he or she thinks with your advice. Or it could be he or she knew the answer to the problem all the while, but found no means to articulate it (or have a listener to verify). You gamely give the friend what he or she wants. You have a nice cup of tea or coffee. And finally, the conversation ends and you are once again left alone.

You pause a moment, quite glad you have just helped a friend, and you probably do not really see it as a distraction but it was truly great to have your friend to visit you. And then you stare at your project again. And perhaps you may suffer from the same shock you have had when you met your friend. What have I just written?

now, try to recall that initial shock.

you could have been staring at infinity.

---

the philosophy of Levinas in a nutshell.

I discovered this philosophy (without reading him, I was reading Sartre) when I was taking a dump in my hotel in La Spezia, Italy. My thoughts were finally consolidated on a train ride back from Montreux to Munich. I decided to reject Sartre's existentialism and concept of nothingness and believed instead that neither essence nor existence predicts my actions, but on the relation of the Other (always there) with me (as-long-as-I-am-here) that always leaves me with a shock, which then causes a reaction in relation to the Other. Henceforth, I understood that my identity ultimately is a reaction to what I perceive before me. This empirical world sounds really small, but consciousness (and unconsciousness) as you will agree, is a universe.

Having agreed on where I stood in relation to Sartre's philosophy, to my shock two years later, I discovered Levinas and then the rest is history.

In short, I consciously engage and disengage with everything around me. Crossing boundaries, playing around with infinitude and finitude. I sometimes say what people expect me to say. But sometimes I shock people by saying what they do not want to hear or the words or actions completely make no sense to them. The rewards are amusing. Not least to say intriguing. Because I discover both the potential of our minds, I also saw the depravity in them. What you have is a plateau of circles intersecting each other (it's not a spiritual atom, but molecules), perhaps moving in Brownian motion but always receptive to outside forces - heat, weak/strong nuclear, electro-magnetic. For we live alone and also not alone. There is a shared and collective memory of our history. But there is also always an individual history we are responsible to.

We can leap around from one state to another, but we not just become someone completely new. We bear traces of them. Failure to acknowledge makes us very miserable; more because you are trying to be (singularly) someone you are not, when change has already become part of you. Therefore I still disagree with the general interpretation of Kierkegaard that there are a few states to leap around...to and fro (aesthetic, ethical, religious). All these boundaries are within us. The true test of faith is how we relate to them. How the inward individual regards them as well as disregard them.

It is how the inward individual relates to the Supreme Other. and still be responsible to these states of humanity.

there are no answers (except perhaps abstract ones).
We are all and one at the same time. we cannot have the same solutions to all problems. we just do what we must do, in shock, perhaps in fear but certainly in trembling and in silence. (like Abraham)

ultimately, my philosophy is not yours.

tired of trying. to listen. to care. to ignore. i'm no saint. so leave me be.

dream sequence 1

i remember - as a young man - I dreamed - that I was part of a big group of people on a football field and it was, among all things (haha), a football competition (5A side). We formed our groups, drew lots (I had to rush back to get $1 for the competition fee before I could draw the lots). Then all was quiet. Everyone left to prepare for the big tournament. I was transported (yes, it's true) from the field to a magnificent area with 5 (or was it 6) small courts (some grass pitches, some concrete). A group was waiting for their first match. I walked down a corridor (what looked like an abandoned school, and I found my team (including a multitude of malays in the same classroom), and told them that we were the second group to play. One of the guys acknowledged but they continued to pray in a great cluster. And I stood outside the room, I remember, that I was not part of them.

dream sequence 2

vaguely conscious of the tournament, for no apparent reason, I took a bus to get to the playing court. On the bus, I remember, the scenery was slightly different. I looked out of the window, and I saw a bustling town/village/bus deport(that vaguely looked like one I saw, also on a bus, along the way from Tampin to Malacca.). The roofs were coloured maroon. And the people around me were faceless. For another unknown reason, I alighted, no longer conscious that I have a tournament to play in. I found myself at a road junction. I walked across, to a road island. And the lights changed to allow a horde (yes) of bicycles to pass through. Some of them almost hit me. Yes, now I was vaguely aware that I had crossed geographical boundaries to find myself in China. But temporally, I was not yet sure if I had travelled back (or forth) in time. Eventually, I managed to cross over to another side of the street, only to realise, to my horror, that the relative ease in crossing the road was due to a sudden road block that the local police (公安）had placed. While it was not shocking to see men in green caps and green uniforms, resembling the youths of the cultural revolution on the bicycles, it was, when the police rounded them up and I was on my way to my next teleportation.
I was now on walking on a mountain passage. With a young girl, who I consciously -- I remember -- thought she was my daughter (I've a daughter!). However, she was partially blind, but weirdly enough had a camera which was a visual aid for her. She would take pictures with it and used it to record moving and still images of things as she saw it. Therefore, I was comparing the images she took with the actual landscape around us. (or was it I thought that the camera was damaged and tried to fix it?) But soon, she took a video of a distant cliff. I had a good look at the LCD screen of the camera, and yes, the dream sequences were connected. There before me, as in there was a filmic zoom, were the Mao's youths, all kneeling, and they were excueted, at point blank, by their own comrades, away from the streets they were.

dream sequence 3

I woke up briefly; the images fuzzy. but it was not long before I fell back to my slumber and this coming dream was familiar territory.

I went to cut my hair. I vaguely recalled a sms I received but -- I remember -- I cannot remember the contents of the message. As I was walking to the barber, there she was (again) sleeping on a couch, waiting for me I assumed, and I woke her up. She was wearing her favourite baby blue cap and her purple sweater, how she looked like years ago when I first met her. (there was no voice, as most of my dreams were) We somehow understood each other, and it was somehow related to the sms. I was told she had not eaten and she did not sleep last night. I left the barber and walked to the coffeeshop (one of those at my place). We had two other Malay friends with us. She ate but she also asked for sugar. Odd thing to do, but it's the dream world. She finished the meal. She stood up and walked away with the malay friends, now wearing a brown dress, and visibly plumper. But I was looking at her back. It probably wasn't her anymore. I remained at the table. And I woke up.

--
I finally decided that this blog needs to include dreams in its contents to be faithful to the headings above. So whenever I remember my dreams, I will type them down.

when you can look at the person's eyes and see the gleam of your own eyes, you are in love. maybe.

adapted from breathless

after death, for the living, comes silence.
when one says he or she can no longer be happy after a death, it is from a lack that the emotions take over.
then a room where the living voice no longer reinstates his or her existence. an absence.
but what if the room is taken over? a presence overrides the absence?

it is sad that a memory of a person fades after death and finally ceases for the person who dies next. is there a way to retain this memory?

silence of the dead invites voices. no...not the ghost, but from the living. (whether one chooses to remember or forget)

that much I know.

---

the feelings die. so silence take over. a memory of the feelings. then they fade. and they cease. memory re-engaged. i care but I don't care as i did before. re-imagined presence, in the absence that time witnesses. time is not a conscious being. we are.

so i care for you and I don't care for you.

A death.
that is as fair as I can get.
always already an injustice.

---

I shall take the leap. and be forgotten!
before I (increasingly) sense my inferiority.

Camille Monet on Her Death Bed, 1879

let not death be proud. death cannot be proud. because we do not know death.

the impression or memory of my grandmother etched on my skull.
I can feel it (beneath my skin) but I cannot see it.
the same materials that make out our skulls.
the individual memories of her/your death I have/cannot have.

so do not be proud death, I do not know you. yet.


so to those who think everything is a performance, try performing death.

I am convinced that we are all taught/made/forced to forget.

the person who I hoped would know me best
turns out to not know me.
but it's ok.

at least I think it is.
there is always a knowledge that it won't happen.
to know me will be to invite a giant monster.
to know me will be to hate and love the world.
and I think it's pathetic to believe that no one understands me. but truly it is the case.
and I can't express myself well.

i love myself and i hate myself.
but the Lord knows me.

"it is natural for the mind to believe, and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false"

Pascal

I always feel that the dead know me better than people around me. Maybe it is because I read them in a certain way, such that they make perfect sense to me. Or maybe it is just that we thought of the same dilemma of living (and dying). Or maybe there is a same Author.

I feel, as if a hand is grabbing me, and wipes the tear I shed unknowingly when I read words that touch me.
I hear, as if a loud laughter echoes the room, when I read the words of mockery (of humanity). It is me, laughing with them.
I see, as if I am in a dark room, and I am blind, wandering in stationary wilderness. But there, out of a page, there is my long lost companion, waiting for me to share a candle.

Reading and writing has that immense sensation of being watched and feeling as if someone is guiding your fingers and eyes. You read the words that flow out of your mind. (Were they from somewhere you read?) And these two activities are when I meet my ghostly friends.

I enjoy the late nights alone (just the sound of goldfish in fish tanks with motors accompanies me). I always feel secure in the knowledge that I can stop to contemplate. To 'witness' so to speak. It is like an enclosed temporal moment when I stop being the normal me, who is one who takes over me and behaves according to the situation. It is not that I am always conscious of how I behave, but I am trapped in the hours before I sleep, to face myself as myself and not myself, and shake my head in disgust and envy.

I am envious, that I am living a life; that I can be stubborn about things that are not good for me and still get away with it.

But I am digusted that I am living a life; of every step that is marked by a temptation and a movement in relation to that temptation.

my heightened consciousness is always at work. and it is only at the hours before I sleep, to seriously be myself, in a contemplative, discerning me, who hates and loves myself, building and destroying myself, when I have the knowledge that I have spent another day away from the House of God.

but precisely. It is this relation with God that continues to remind me of what needs to be done. I cannot stand it any longer. But to scream it out loud here, is not an action to solve my problem. It is just an acknowledgment that I love myself too much to not stand it.

It is not to think that I have to do it. But it will be done or already done.

For all things are false. As long as they do not happen. Truths can be hidden away. But the truth of an act done cannot be.

the doing convinces us of the truth of the false.
and so I cannot do, if I am convinced of its falsehood.
and so in my not-doing, I partake in another falsehood, that of the doing of my not-doing, even though I am convinced they are true.

HA. Bloody ha.

the actual act that should be esteemed should be the inward one. One that demands nothing from the outside, but only the inside of himself; or as Kierkegaard puts it,

...for unless the individual learns in the reality of religion and before God to be content with himself, and learns, instead of dominating others, to dominate himself, content as priest to be his own audience, and as author his own reader, if he will not learn to be satisfied with that as the highest, because it is the expression of the equality of all men before God (by which K. could mean that we all have to stand before Him on Judgment Day) and of our likeness to others, then he will not escape reflection.

S. K. The Present Age, 1940. p 35.

and reflection is not a mirror stage where one identifies oneself with, but the reflection of oneself in relation to the people around him; A person who demands from others more than he or she does to him-herself.

as this entry becomes more incoherent, the issue I am trying to make is that, at the inward level, the struggle is more demanding than what an outsider can describe for you. so I cannot be upset that someone misunderstands me because I am different, always. and the same, always. I do not speak the truth. Because I do not know the truth. I just know what I believe in.

no one can be there with me at the hours of reading, talking and learning of myself, alone. (except God).
and I don't expect anyone to. For it is always a greater challenge for me to face someone else, other than myself.

frankly. I don't want to study anymore. neither do I want to pursue some worldly dream of making films, or write stuff people will understand and applaud me for making it understandable. the point, ladies and gentlemen, is to not make a point that the world will eventually forget. there are more half-truths, repetitions and misprints in this world than what is essentially needed to live a decent life. Frankly speaking, as much as I imagine the hands and specters that roam around the house at night with me, they are not the ones I want to hang around with all the time. For it is more of the communion with my Lord that I want to have, that would cast away all those infinite pages and voices of gibberish and glossolalia, so that I do not have to continue to face them and foray through for a quick (but always wrong) answer.

there are no quick answers. Subjectivity takes on a whole new meaning than just that truth is to live an idea. Subjectivity is not the prerequisite of truth. Subjectivity is truth when the truth is to live not an idea, but to have God live in you.

as we come to another non-conclusive end to my discussion, I sincerely believe that one must die many deaths, only to discover the limits of our potential. the beginning of the secular death is not the only one. For there are things in this world, that continue to deceive us, and the most fatal one, is ourselves. I am sorry that I have to lay tombstones before you before you get to the me who stands behind these graves. But I must do what I must do, for the anointing is not for men to benefit, but for my final death to benefit. There is a hint of hypocrisy there. I will clear the mess in due time.

because one answers for him- herself, eventually. Confessions and deaths have something in common.

You (as you the human) meet God alone. a leap!

------

it's at last time to move on.

and to deconstruct myself - 1 John 4:7

to level out things is not to be fair. nothing is fair. almost.
death is fair. every human dies.
love is not fair. not every one loves (equally)
*shakes head and goes to sleep*

Die Stadt schlaf (the city sleeps)
Nur wir sind wach (only we're awake)
wir sind still (we're silent)
reden nicht viel (not saying much)

listening to Heutnacht (Tonight)

After the requiem,
comes the blessing,
blesses those present,
healing their wounds,
pleasing their souls,
calming their blood,
relaxing their minds,
levelling their reflections,
before the coffin seals,
After the entourage scatters.

The tomb is left alone;
till the land deed expires.

After a jazz song,
comes the next track,
distracts the listener,
healing his wounds,
pleasing his senses,
calming his blood,
relaxing his mind,
avoiding any reflection,
before the player stops,
After the first song ends.

The man is left alone;
till the hand needs no one.

missing lasts as long as loving lasts.

"I am already a simulacrum of myself; I have sent a clone in my place,"

Jean Baudrillard

I/i dreamt of you. again.
I cannot remember how many times I have done so.
versions of you so familiar and so different.
wish I never dream, so I won't wake up with this bittersweet regret of waking up,
and face you with only one version of you and me.

ich versuchte, aber ich fällte immer durch.

i won't see you. again.






i'm the sentimental sort.
the film wasn't fantastic. In fact, it was boring. the kind you just prefer to read the synopsis of my life (of regrets), which I can swear it won't be a smooth reading.

but i shall not condemn it and dismiss it as a complete failure (as most road films end up being when the traveller stops travelling)

beneath the surface of the nauseating frames, i was looking for that one moment that justified my time spent there. and I am glad I found one.

"Even if the key could open the door, the guy may no longer be in the room."

I have a very bad flaw, i.e. my memory. I can leave my keys hanging on the gates to my door and happily changed...only to realise an hour later that I have forgotten my keys.

and I see that as a personal metaphor of my unconscious effort to repress some emotions/reactions to a certain significant past, and the keys have been forgotten. and where else...at the door.

It is true that I often forget my keys and leave them hanging there, thus allowing the chance for someone to discover them, or even steal them, choosing to come back again someday to harm me. And I am also reminded of the moments when Li-zhen would go back to the hotel room to somehow recapture the moments she spent in there with him (without him).

I would very much prefer moments to be unresolved; to be left hanging; to be left unspoken. And very much remain so without going on a road trip only to go back 300 days later/90 minutes later to do what she should have done 300 days ago/90 minutes ago. While that would mean that there won't be any show to watch, reality has often proven to me that whenever something happened, any action thereafter would just be an addition. A sentence uttered cannot be retrieved. It can disappear (be forgotten) but you cannot take back what you say or do. So any return is futile.

To not do anything is a regret but the beauty of not doing anything is that, while you live, you remember forever of the thing not done or said. But it should not be a residing pain that ceases to escape you but a gentle prompt of the feelings you might once have. You cannot possibly relive that experience but that aftertaste is bittersweet. And I like that bittersweetness. It makes me feel alive. It makes me understand how human I am. It glorifies traces of life that would have been severely criticized by me in a different context.

I remember the cold winter night, at a fountain park where you waited hours for me...I imagine you there, alone, a thousand thoughts flooding you with insecurities and precious moments. But I imagine. But it was more about the instance of my appearance. I cannot remember what I said to you. I could instead remember warming your hands. (but not your heart)

but it was apparently, a reversal of roles. I was not Jeremy in the film. I was the Russian girl.
we are not actors. We never deliver the best lines. We never show the right gestures to make the moment magical. We always do not know the lines or the directions. What do we do? What is he or she thinking? I do not know. And never will I. But I do not intend to. Reality is so much more shocking and fluid than theatre/film. I have no idea why people continue to suggest that reality is all about performing. When the moments really matter, can we all really make the moments work?


I never really know what it means to love. In part, I understood what it means to be loved. But to love is such a fleeting feeling that I can never grasp it as an eternal emotion.


I am such an impressionistic person. or rather a person who lives in the moment and for the moment (not in the Dionysian sense) but I like to stand and rest, admiring the inner landscapes I paint vaguely in my mind. Therefore, I often alienate people. I live in my own world, of pain, of joy, of angst, of excitement...but most of all, a chimeric behemoth resides in me and I have silent conversations with her.

so sometimes, (or really most of the time) I do not know what I am talking about. It always feel like there is nothing new to say. It is stuck in my throat. And when I do say it, it escapes me. It doesn't belong to me.

But frankly speaking (haha! ironic...), the thing one needs is to have fear, but more than that, to have courage to conquer the fear to do what needs to be done at the moment. It is not regrets that you should avoid. Instead, you should avoid to not even have regrets to remember and learn from.

I will see you. Every reflection of you, i.e.

God did not give us a spirit of cowardliness but a spirit of power and of love and of self-control.

II Timothy 1:7

So there are no private rooms for us to remain in there for keys to be forgotten or doors to be opened by a ghost of the past, or a stranger we cannot learn everything about. It is about leaving the room and going on a road trip to nowhere.

at best, it is here that I do not talk.

but at this moment, I talk.

because I have declared that I have not been talking.

but it is a double action, of talking and not talking. What has been written is not a speech. A documentation of a silent speech in my mind that takes form as I think and write. A thought and an act of writing. I escape myself as I talk. that was the earlier reason for not talking, because I act.

an alternative is to imitate the silent speech in my mind and remain silent. Absolute silence. the best of what I can achieve here is not enough. It is mostly achieved in my mind. And to describe the mental landscape is to make useless connexion of a process more profound that what I know about neurology.

so i cannot speak because i do not know what I speak.

perhaps there is a better method to this double action, one that escapes this double action to reconstitute the previous action into its own entity. But that is impossible. I suppose.

but within the temporal existence of a human life, it is possible. A life that destroys oneself (upon birth).

Consider that the speech (of mine) is spoken to be forgotten, and at times I may insist on the immortality of my speech by writing it. But my consciousness of my speech lasts as long as I live. My embodied consciousness relates to it as long as I exist. But let us not further the discussion of the embodied consciousness but consider that the duration of personal speech remains entirely up to the originator of the speech, otherwise known as "I", despite all the cannibalism I may choose to participate in by my citation and quotation of speech of others. And this speech does not last for me. So I am always going to be silent (anyway). I cannot hear myself after I die (assuming that there is no afterlife). But with the human body that I came into this world with, I remain, entirely, bound to the confines of it and the consciousness (and the unconsciousness) of it.

So instead of the perpetual (pretension) of the double action of silence and manifested speech, speech meets its inexorable end. It is the unbelievable end. It is the un-embraced fact. It is the unconcerned finitude of our instantaneous life. The instant of my life, is the instant of my death. The undeniable truth. The unassailable, non-negotiable and inconceivable experience that cannot be utter. I cannot describe my own death.

There is no instance of my instant of death, just as there is no instance of my instant of birth. One for one. One to one.

So speech exists within this one to one. within the rude facticity of existence. Therein lies my speech. Beyond and within the double action of speech and non-speech. Every voiceless silence is a speech and a non-speech.

damien bau

Therefore, I pray. to speak to myself and beyond. To no-one and to myself. To listen for silence. To listen for the beyond. To listen for the within. That is where we know who we are. That is where the Other is beyond and within. That is where the vis-a-vis occurs. And that is where Jacob fights.

paulo grey

and there is where I can say adieu to myself. where no simulacrum can mimic me. where I maintain the state of aporia. It is not to resolve the question. It is to maintain the Question, and faith can make (makes) the leap.

the best form of human existence is death.

it is when you cannot speak.
it is when you cannot see.
it is when you cannot feel.
it is when you are no longer responsible to the living.

and therein lies the irony. how can you exist if you're dead?

no. it is not even to say that I will merely perform my death.
I live once, just as I will die once.
but death occurs at every moment of interpretation, performance and repetition.
I repeat my death.
only because I wish to live, even if it is for another breath.
even if death is just a metaphor.
I die. to resurrect.
I do not want to die. It is forced on me.
I want to die. It is to manifest what I could be.

But at the instant before my death, when death is refused, it is then most painful.

there is an immediate acknowledgment of my (new) existence.
but there is also a posthumous existence that I will never know.
I am dead. The dead me cannot understand what is spoken about the dead.
The resurrected me, can only understand my (new) existence in my (new) universe.
There are no ghosts. If there were, they would be on their own, conjured by the living.
If I am spooked, I haunt myself.
If I die, it is to become someone else.

aye. that's the rub.
A semblance of the former, but insistent of being the latter, fully aware of a future hope of death.
In truth, we walk blindly.
"There is a cliff before you."
I take the step. And I perform my death.

But I am refused death.

A.

tears for the waking dream
silence for the dreaming wake

may that crying dream be the last I had of you.

you won't understand.

but maybe i'll negotiate for a get-out clause.

when your strength wavers and you can hardly stand, with onrushing water that threatens to sweep you away...
i wish i could be the physical presence to stand firm and steadfast, who could drain the water and dry your feet and eyes, that you might stand with me, lending my shoulders for you...to rest and move at the same time.

but your tears won't reach me.
and I prefer someone more divine and personal, to heal you.

but I stand, resting and waiting.

the nature of men is their ability to imagine infinite possibilities, despite their finitude.
just that we grow old and lazy to sort them out.

damien bau

the nature of men is that they lie with their eyes wide open.

paulo grey

the nature of men is to love. (even if it is self-love)

Ahuvya

人之初，性本虚。

木穆霖

-----

if i could, i would have moved on.

they build walls around them, claiming the rest as falsehood, simply because they refuse to be false themselves.

resisting everything,
but wishing,
no hoping.
gravitating contradictions...
hovering around,
changing perspectives;
figuring how.
the now.
no worrying,
exact repetitions.
extending...........
no caring. loving.
wasting time.ly wasting.
passions don't belong,
where desires project
everything.
a trajectory of
emotions, going in circles
only to further, conclusions
into traces
looking for,
the answers,
to treating...
you.

if that's what you want, it will be done.

staring out into the open sky,

where flaming dreams cloud my vision,
I cannot see my Lord if I turn to Him for eternal life.

looking inward for the broken man,
the blind sojourner cursed by the seed of knowledge.
I cannot hear my Lord if I turn every way to hear Him.

witnessing the spread of the disease,
sitting on the rock overseeing the modern Babylons
I cannot find my Lord if I turn away from His face.

therefore, I am constrained to serve as a midwife, debarred from giving birth.
So behold, I am dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that the things promised shall be performed, because I believe not His words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.
(adapted from Luke 1:20)

no miracle comes to me as a blessing.
no prophecy comes to me as new.
no healing comes to me as eternal.

I suffer the curse of Zacharias, unable to speak what I saw and heard as I believe not.
it is not that I have forgotten the knowledge inherited from my ancestors
it is not that I have tarried long under the tree, hiding behind the trunk from my shame
it is not that I have made my brother jealous and made my brother poor
it is not that I have been left to be tempted and cursed by the fallen angel
it is really because ego sum qui sum.
I have become one of you, to know good and evil.

Ahuvya Shakeach
---

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Genesis 3:24 KJV

there is a great mystery that surrounds the opening passages of the divine drama; which is a mystery because its definition is largely fueled by my thirst for an understanding how our human destiny unfolds after our first transgression. I am particularly interested in framings, opening framings to be precise. The castaway presents to me unsolvable questions and the fact that we have been denied eternal life by a disobedience resulting from the only law we could break at that time. The framing, however, does not strictly point to the fall itself but in the manner of the fall.

1st mystery and framing of the scene:

In other words, I am intrigued by the very fact that two trees: the tree of Knowledge and Life, were planted before the eyes of Adam and Eve, which are definitely tempting enough to any mortal. The proximity of the trees to the pair presents, firstly an option, and secondly a cause for God to give the only commandment to the pair not to consume the fruits from the tree.

2nd mystery:

It was the tree of knowledge that the fruit was taken. As it was conventionally acknowledged that the sin and fall of man lie not in the consequence of attaining knowledge, but by the transgression of a direct order from God. This disobedience was the root of our fall. Consider this: that if we were to know everything that is good and evil, because it is what the fruit is all about, then why are we not able to choose good over evil? The balance has already been tilted because the disobedience is not against that knowledge, but by the direct and indirect disobedience to the commandment of God. But that is not the concern for this enquiry. Why was it the tree of knowledge and not life? To extrapolate from something that has not occurred is a futile attempt simply because it has not occurred. However, the fact that it remains undone, is what that makes this biblical non-occurrence intriguing. Do we have that hidden desire to attain that fruit because it will then complete our immortality? After all, we are one fruit short from eternal life and knowledge.

the understanding of the way the drama has been framed leads me to then present not the answers to the questions, but a consideration of these two claims:

that it is significant that it is knowledge that we have attained and not eternal life;
and that is both this gain and this lack that define the human condition.

knowledge, which is also well-known that we have been taught further by Lucifer in the knowledge of mass destruction, is the golden chalice, feeding our ceaseless thirst to overwhelm our consciousness which exceeding knowledge to the point of amnesia. The course of human history is to rediscover our hidden talents and the ability to build towers of Babel to reach for the skies, and in other words, to be like gods. I need no proof. But it is not knowledge that we have lack of but it is eternal life that continues to threaten our existence and remind us of our vulnerability. To gain eternal life completes our immortality as I have mentioned. Therefore, it is of my belief that this endeavour has always been deterred by the heavens as the "flaming sword which turned every way" prevents us from reaching immortality. If this may sound like a contradiction to conventional preaching of the gospel, indeed it is. Without going into the concept of madness and unreason in Christianity, knowledge is precisely what we do not need. The point is not to complete the picture of gaining both the tree of knowledge and life. The whole point, my readers and to myself, is only to be obedient to God, in light of the trials we are placed with.

My treatise, which first begins with the framing, points to me directly to the circumstances in which Adam first sinned. To put it simply, the presentation of the two trees is obviously a trial to Adam to withstand the temptation. Not only is God aware that he would eventually be tempted, God gave him a chance to repent as He called out to Adam and Eve as they were hiding. The trial, to put it simply is a choice between knowledge and communion with God. And Adam failed the trial.

If the fruit of knowledge is associated with the fruit of life, my next point is to identify this as our next biggest trial, which is our seeking of eternal life. I cannot be exhaustive in this treatment of the biblical text but the charge I am about to give is derivative from the discourse I have presented thus far. the charge is:

that it is not knowledge nor eternal life that we should seek,
but the communion with God.

therein lies the motivation in believing the gospel. It is not the promised knowledge or the promised eternal life. There are no perks in believing the gospel. It is only the communion with God alone that should be sufficient to convince us to seek Him as He seeks you. Any added emphasis of any of the trees and fruits should be viewed with caution, just as Eve should have exercised when she was tempted by the serpent. Remember: we are often motivated by lusts and self love, more than anything else. That is the reality as a human being, one that is motivated by a gain and a lack.

this conclusion will be further discussed in future.

paulo grey
in response to a poem by Ahuvya Shakeach

when you remove dreams from reality, we are accepting that reality is lived with immediacy. we live for the moment because we cannot project an imagination; a hope for the future.

what is an impossible imagination?
it is to betray a hope, or in my case, it is to accept a deadly premonition of the other (Derrida, Memoires for Paul de Man, 6) and to reject it. but I do not mourn for it. I accept my infinite removal (if I can), and do not wish to partake in the possible or impossible dream/hope/future. I refuse to take part within myself, and believe in the absurdity of my project, that is the perpetual misshapenness of my imagination. To believe in imaginations, is to stare at the tomb or the vault of some narcissism.

I constantly learn from myself the pathetic weakness of my mind to retain lusts, desires, wanton fantasies and wants that bite into my existence or my project to change for the (desired) better. If we are to believe what we see, (or hear, sense or imagine), we often see with double, triple or more vision and imageries, mixing with cruel intensity and disregard. I cannot believe what I see. And I cannot believe what I hear, simply because I cannot see or hear without my narcissistic projection or influence from alterity.

However, to reject does not mean to remove with certainty from the imagination. So what is an infinite removal from imagination (or hope)?

we have all the potential to live a dream, a hope or to imagine a possibility of the future. Actuality does occur. But within the course of the human life, we often fail as much as we succeed. There is no singular or constant when we acknowledge hopes, dreams, goals, ambitions as motivating factors to live. That is to say that before actuality, there are infinite possibilities, only to be filtered as time narrows them down to happenings, events, and actions. these are as certain as time moves.

Therefore, to be removed from imagination is to stop living. to stop living, of course means to die. A living person's reality is to die (that is our finitude). It ceases all imagination. It annihilates all possibilities. And it removes all knowledge. Death is Nothing par excellence. No one escapes it. It is a god.

so to infinitely remove ourselves from imagination is to die. that I cannot imagine, because it is the truth. It is an impossible imagination because the act of imagining death is absurd. You can imagine possible deaths, but you only live one death. If imagination is a narcissistic projection of our ego (and a reaction to the Other), which is often a distraction more than a salvation, death is my escape from my original state of existence and human condition.

"Ye must be born again." John 3:6-8

and so I recall fondly this passage. It is not a mourning.

"For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away." 1 Peter 1:24

and so I died.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

and live. removing all imaginations. It is an infinite removal because all narcissistic and finite imagination cannot tell me where the wind comes from or where it goes.

if there is mourning, it is only the flesh that mourns at his loss. of which, I suffer the finite reality of my body. but it is also where I understand what it means to remove myself infinitely. I do not hope. The wind blows me.

if I conclude that I am dumb and ignorant, so must everyone be.

maybe.

what we do not hear are the voices of people who live but the whispers of the specters who dwell behind the shadows we cast in our rooms. what we then see, after the voices creep into our semi-conscious mind, is that there is no one, but traces of the voices, that mean so much to us but frighten us as well. we long for them and yet, we dread their presence (absence).
we then suffer from a restless awakening, breathing in deep the cool air of the sunless morning, and then till day breaks once again, we stare into nothingness, only to recall with trembling the faceless voices that speak to you, again and again.
sleep comes once again when light casts these nightmares away. but before you consider them to be mere dreams, they speak to us too when we wake. to wake is to stare into a blank picture; a canvas that is our mind as we dip our invisible paintbrushes on the palette of memory and immediate consciousness to connect images into a whole picture of experience, resulting in the immediate appearance of a picture on the canvas.
to separate them, that I cannot do. to paint a beautiful symmetrical picture, that I cannot do too.
but the drawback of such canvases is that once you paint over them, they stay. and so if you should endeavour to draw a nice portrait of yourself, one wrong stroke, and the painting becomes abstract; becomes more than just a representation. However, mistakes often speak more of the reality of humanity than beautiful, flawless and perfect portraits of ourselves. that is why I prefer landscape paintings more than portraits. at least, landscapes take longer to change.
every still moment has a voice. every moment of contemplation has a voice. every writing, painting or moment of artistic inspiration has a voice. and often we do not recognise this voice as our own. it is as if we conjure up a ghost capable of assisting us as well as dooming us. what we do not give significance to is that these ghosts, or witnesses, come from us, and us alone, clinging on to us for their dear lives (or spirits) to influence us, to preach to us, to lie to us, to convince us, to inspire us, to motivate us; whatever purposes (or hidden desires we may have). I cannot recognise them wholly but to ignore the possibility that we are their source of strength and existence is to commit a folly so great that redemption is hardly an option. we cannot be free from these hauntings so let us not ignore them. redemption is not to be freed from them but redemption is only granted to those we come face to face with them. so no amount of hiding, exorcism, casting or repulsion can drive them away. In fact, it is through them that we come to understand the meaning of redemption.
so then what is redemption? redeem from what or who? and who does the redemption? this is not a theological treatise or an apologetic call. redemption, frankly speaking, is a vague term. to be redeemed does not free you from these hauntings or ghosts who I have been describing earlier. Redemption merely means that we remain in relation to them. only that we come face to face to them, hear their voices, recognise that they actually speak your voices, and master the supernatural possibility of hearing nothing by saying nothing.

but then again, what am I saying here?

often when we claim that it is "my voice", it is actually everyone's voice, in different variations of the same condition. what we say often have already a pre-existence; have been said before, over and over again. when we hear ourselves, we hear others.
Redemption must overcome the individual trauma (of daily hauntings) as well as the universal condition consisting of a cacophony of voices (often sad, lost, lonely, sick, deprived, poor etc.) I am reluctant to believe in a universalism that is quick to judge and to force every individual into a formalised, normalised and cruel structure of coherence, because every individual has his or her own pain, struggles, happiness, sadness, tears, laughter, moments of intense emotions or intelligence. Nevertheless, the human is born to die, if not in soul, at least in body. the physical end of our lives drives us to form structures of reason (or unreason), to transcend or believe in a transcendental realm beyond our physical reality. but really, that is not the point or the fundamental goal of life. for to live really means to live, in the order and disorder we face day to day; in every moment that any voice comes knocking at our ear drums and speaks some inner thoughts, or some faceless memory of someone disappeared, decides to also visit and to drag out some painful memory or nostalgia. but really, it is just us. just us in the world to face what came and will come. I cannot know what will come that does not has a voice that hides within me. but I can know (or try to know) the voices that speak to me often. I can recognise that hauntings rely on me to exist. (I am the one being haunted and no one else in the dead of the night.) So let us challenge not the dead who may have transcended the living realm. let them die in peace. but to face the ghostly dead, requires both strength and faith. but most of all, discernment. because most if not all voices derive from us, if not you alone. to hear means more than just to hear. it is both a projection of what you want to hear (and can only hear) as well as the voice that is directed to you externally. we cannot know when they merge together. but we can know that that is reason enough to be probe deeper the origin of the voice; not to doubt, but to discern.
I cannot know who I am, unless I know what or who I listen.

so read this not because you listen to me, but you listen to yourself, and then you may or may not realise, that what I wrote, is nothing new.
you are redeemed because of both the subjective belief in the redemption and the silent voice that drags you out from the quicksand of your human predicament we all suffer.

redemption and confession are silent.

ich hasse,

the random thoughts of dir
the weekly reflections of dir
the nightly dreams of dir
the imaginations of dir
the reality of uns

ich hoffe,
dass
ich you vergesse

to be more accurate
meine Gefuehle of dir
like i forget mein Deutsch

yours,
Shakeach

i can't be quiet - you're boring to be with
i can't look the way i want - you look in bad shape
i can't be alone - you need company
i can't like the things i like - you need communities, commonalities, whatever
i can't behave like this - it is not you to behave like this
i can't change - change is bad
i can't let go - why? how come you and her so and so? why? so how's your past coming along?
stop telling me who I am. stop reminding me.

i like to be quiet, because i take time to observe, see, and think of random stuff completely unrelated. i like to be quiet, because i do not know what to say and I don't see why I have to put in effort to say things that only pleases you, skewing the reality who is me.
i like to be who i am because there is no other way I could look. I am weird to many but I am sane to myself. so listen to me silently. and let me be who i am being.

and i am fiction,

damien bau
----

love thy neighbours, as you love yourself

to love yourself (not the first objective, as there is no first or second within this statement) but in so doing, we love our neighbours (the Other) the way we should. learn love, through being and otherwise than being, and the being of the Other. (reminded by E. Levinas)

through loving i know the loved and the one loving.
so there are no past, present and future; no transcendence but perpetual love and state of loving and knowing. hence, i do not separate temporally and "spatially" the state of loving into different entities but i am constantly in relation to the act and mood of loving. so it is not anything else that influences me to remain or depart from the act and mood, but the other and I are both in relation, which is ultimately a subjective experience as well as a responsive one that completes the total relationship.

so do not ask what the other asks of you or wants of you and vice versa, but ask yourself who you are in relation to the Other and what drives the love. the patience of love is not created by a force of corrupted nature, but a force that is inward and self-sufficient, a faith that does not demand anything because nothing is needed. the state of totality is inward, and always seeking, crying and saved in the desert of the real.

response from paulo grey.

---

Ahuvya says,

I have nothing to say. he does not know how to say.

Yahweh has already blessed; you are already blessed.
--

Lieber Ndugu,

Ich bin in sie so verliebt!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Hilft mir.
SEUFZ...

Herzlich Gruss,
Ahuvya Shakeach

when i wake, everything feels anew
when i sleep, everything feels old
though reason alone convinces me of duration,
in between waking, i see the infinite darkness equivalent to 3 minutes of waking time; unless I dream.
respect life, because reason alone will not get you through.
ignore visions, for whatever not lived is forever not lived.

Shakeach

Alas! the death of A.

Ahuvya now lives.