The Thing About
Random thoughts,
they are so natural,
yet so meaningless,
so unintellectual,
yet so priceless......



The thing about
random thoughts,
They come out sporadically,
dealing with matters trivial,
always incorrect grammatically,
leaving others so quizzical

Enjoy some photos...

I do not know how to be philosophical about myself. The following story explains me better than anything else I can think of. What I am trying to say is that I do not truly understand myself. I am learning more and more every day. Take what you will from this story. After all, who we are has a lot to do with how others view us and I am no different.

A man stands in a long line of people dressed in black. They stare off into space as they shuffle along. Their eyes rest deep within their sockets, nothing more than bottomless black pits. They walk with slumped shoulders and empty expressions, these fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends and enemies. The line goes on and on, never ending, never beginning.

From this line of the walking dead, a little girl dressed in black steps out. In her right hand she holds a withered rose with black petals. She wears a sorrowful mask to match the black of her dress, shoes and bangles. Her skin is deathly pale. She looks up and sees the man. The little girl walks towards him, away from her place in the line. As she approaches, her frown turns into a smile. Her dress seems a lighter shade now. Perhaps his eyes deceive him, but her outfit is changing colors, from black to white. Her shoes begin to shed their color as well, the black spots falling away to reveal a sparkling white underneath. Her pale skin begins to glow, as if a warm light had been ignited from within. The little girl continues to move towards him.

She stands before him and looks up with sparkling brown eyes, pure and hopeful. She lifts her hand and presents the rose, which is no longer dead and black but alive and crimson. The man gazes in wonder and accepts. The girl’s smile widens and she breaks into a soft, angelic laugh. She reaches for his arm and pulls him away from the line. The others see this and begin to wail, calling the man back with their awful cry. The man does not hear them. The girl leads him towards the unknown. She stops. Before his very eyes, she begins to dissipate in a fountain of colors. She evanesces towards the heavens, leaving a whisper in the man’s ears, ‘Be who you are’.

I will not pretend to understand this story. I wrote it down as I imagined it. My life’s quest is to find some sort of meaning. As mentioned earlier, I am learning a little more each and every day. I am the man in the story.

This is not the world I imagined…

Perhaps in a different time, in a different age, but not this one. Before me lies a wasteland, covered in lies and deception so it seems as if everything is perfect. It is not.

Rain falls from the skies, an open wound bleeding upon the ashes of civilization, lightning, silver cross striking into the heart of cities and infrastructure. Thunder heralds a change, a cleansing, a rebirth impending.

Platinum shards that light up the night sky thrill my soul, and though I fear them, I do not wish them to end. They are nature, they are the way, and they are the cycle. We will be part of it, we always have been. Our time will come. We have much to account for.

Who will stand up for what has been done? Who will shoulder the blame? Is there life out there, is there penance? Take and never give back, take without sharing, take what is of worth, burn the rest, leave ashes and smoke behind a trail of tears.

This is not the world I imagined…

Black are these days, crimson the nights. Where these voices coming from? Who’s tears and cries do I hear haunting my soul? What ghosts are these that remain in this desert of ashes? Are they my own, so deformed that I do not recognize myself? There is nothing here, only shells, shells of what was once life. Dreams are dark and visions of paradise distorted into terrors.
Who else can we look to but ourselves? Have brought our end upon us, the wrath of the cycle? The wheels are turning… we will be consumed, as we have been consuming. This is it. This is our end.

This is not the world I imagined…

Monsters

There are monsters in this world of ours. There are so many of them, with different faces, but equally terrifying. They make us scream in our sleep, in our waking moments, and every other moment.

The monsters live everywhere. They surround us, they poison us and they consume us. We are food to sate their hunger, their insatiable greed. What happens to us is none of their concern, we are nothing to them. They are everything; they are the Gods of our time, always seen but never realized, these monsters.

The monsters are invincible. They are indestructible. Their armor is impenetrable; their weapons unbreakable. The monsters wield their whips to keep us in line; keep us blind to their ways; keep us deaf to their dark secrets; keep us gagged from speaking out. Those of us who do stand up fall prey to their terrible wrath; punishment is never fast but slow and torturous. These monsters have no mercy.

There are monsters here. Monsters that carry weapons of great destruction. Monsters that have neither love nor compassion; they only have their insatiable hunger. They are empty within, filled by a void that can never be filled no matter how they try. The monsters will do anything to gain control and power. They will conquer and ruin; they will subjugate everything before them. Their will consume us, just as their hunger consumes them.

These monsters look just like us. They pretend to be one of us. They sound like us; talk like us, act like us, and change like us. The monsters live among us. They are the ones who rule us, who dictate our lives and keep us in line. The monsters feed us with their illusions and lies to fatten us up so they may consume us in the end. Their production lines are their means of imprisoning us; their media is their means of subjugating and controlling us, their products are the poison that corrupts us. Like a potent drug, we become addicted to their smoke and mirrors; without them we will fall and shatter.

The monsters are here. We do not scream. We are not afraid.

We are the monsters.

What Needs to Be Said, Should Be Said, Must Be Said, But is Yet to Be Said

Someone once said that in order to have a proper society, with an efficient government and a prosperous culture, we need huge amounts of social capital; we need trust, engagement and reciprocity. The name of that good man was Robert D. Putnam (Bowling Alone). Those three things need to exist in society for it, for democracy, to properly work; by properly work I mean that both the rights of people and the stability of the state are guaranteed. It is quite interesting to see how our Malaysian society measures up to these standards.
One of the first things we learn, growing up in this country, is that obedience is a virtue. We must not question or disregard authority. It is treacherous to do so. Now this is a problem. How can we practice both freedom and obedience at the same time? Is it not so that disobedience is one of the key characteristics of freedom? Is it not so that to be free means that one should not be forced to do and believe things that they do not want to? Which of these concepts do us Malaysians buy into; freedom or obedience? Which one do we, as human beings, buy into? Is there a difference between being Malaysian and being human? I ask this so that we do not confuse ourselves with illusions that might have been created to justify restrictions on freedom on the basis of us being Malaysian. We are all human beings, regardless of sex, race, religion, faith, gender, sexual orientation, class and caste. The same principles of rights and freedom should apply fairly across our species, not discriminately.
What strikes me as odd is that most of us do not seem to be aware of the fact that we have so many restrictions placed upon us. It strikes fear into me to see how passive we are as citizens, never engaging, never questioning, never participating, and never utilizing that defining trait of humanity; initiative. Our good people need to wake up and realize that they have a voice in this social system, a voice that can make a difference if they so choose. This is important, because without active engagement by all members of a society, social capital would be very low and the society (together with its inefficiently established institutions) will simply crumble into an oligarchy- a rigid machine where a few elitist individuals wield all the power and control over the rest of the society. A prime example of such a process is when a state that started out as a democratic one, deteriorates into an authoritarian government that decides everything without consulting the public, punishes dissenters, and rules with an iron fist. It concerns me to think that Malaysia might end up like that.
I suppose that there is really nothing new in this discussion. It has been talked about before, and most of do realize that we live in a not-so-free-environment and that democracy in Malaysia is just a pretense, for most part. However, realizing and acknowledging it is not going to cure the problem; not unless we start finding ways to address the issue and try to pro-actively deal with it. This is near-impossible, because, as I said earlier, Initiative is a very hard word to find in our Malaysian vocabularies.
Trust. Now this is the word we know well, but for all the wrong reasons. We are not known for having faith in others, are we? Well, not in my eyes, anyway. We are rather distrustful in many ways; partners always being suspicious of their significant others, individuals being constantly afraid of being backstabbed by friends, etc. It goes to the point that some of us do not even trust our own neighbors. Heck, some of us do not even KNOW our neighbors. This is not particularly good by any stretch of the imagination because such high levels of distrust often leads to an easily disintegrated unit of society, as no one has any faith in the system and will bolt at the first sign of trouble, abandoning everyone else. I know that that is very bluntly put, but the correlation with reality in our society is plain to see.
How about reciprocity? Do we, Malaysians, care about each other enough to want to build a stable, progressive and efficient environment for each other? Strangely enough, deep down, I think we all do, despite our pettiness. We want a place where our children can grow up without pressure, risk and danger; we want it collectively. No one really actually wants bad things to happen to others, but it is because of the way we have been conditioned (ruthless, cut-throat competition) that we care less and less about others and more about ourselves.
Hence, I think it is safe to say that we are not a particularly well-developed society. We do have some big problems, and dealing with these should be a priority one issue, because these are issues that will influence the future of our society. It is truly depressing that not many of us even want to acknowledge the matter.