kAis pAgi maKan pAgi, kAis petAng maKan pEtAng

kepada jess,

Sia rasa bagai emosi sia separti kiasan tadi. Yang dikumpul dari sawah pagi tadi, sia habis makan petang sudah. Yang sia ni sudah tiada kata-kata yang dapat menggambarkan perasaan sia.

Sia boleh duduk atau melantar tanpa arah, tanpa rasa ghairah, tanpa apa –apa yang tinggal sebab sudah ku habis makan kais pagi tadi. Perasaan sia, harapan sia, semua yang dikatakan esok itu bagaikan masakan ayam yang tiada rasanya, tiada tinggal sudah semua kemasinannya, atau sudah dimakan semua dagingnya dan ditinggalkan hanya tulang – tulangnya.

Tulang – tulangnya yang kurus, kering dan tiada tujuannya lagi. Tulang – tulangnya yang menderita memberikan semua dagingnya kepada yang tidak tahu menghargainya. Yang tinggal hanya kenyataan yang tiada lagi impian, tiada lagi keghairahan atau harapan yang dapat merangsangkan sia lagi.

Mungkin manusia paling sedih apabila mereka kosong. Atau mungkin mereka lebih sedih apabila mereka sedar bahawa hidup mereka it kosong sebenarnya.

Sia sudah bosan dengan diri sia, separti sia rasa kamu rasa begitu juga. Perasaan sedih tanpa arah, hidup tanpa ghairah atau tujuan. Sia sendiri tidak pasti kenapa sia kini begini.

Sia hanya tahu sia sudah letih dengan diri sia. Sia tidak boleh tahan lagi dengan diri ini yang lebih baik tidak hidup dari hidup tanpa keghairahan.

Begitulah.

Bagusnya hidup kamu itu yang tidak pernah rasa ayam itu yang tiada kemasinannya. Jangan risau, sia pun tidak berapa faham apa yang dilafazkan.

sia,
jess

reMind me thAt i Love yOu

There is something calming about swimming. Or even not swimming. When you put your body underwater, its almost as if time has stopped. the water streams over, the gush of silence, the sudden slow motion and nothingness is overwhelming. Sometimes I think that dying should almost be that way.

Dear jess,

Remind me that I love this. Remind me that that 3 out of 3 plans in the last two weeks have failed so far. Remind me.

Every time I walk into a class to teach I feel sluggish, almost as if my self worth was dependent on a bunch of 13 year olds, how they reacted towards me, if they listened or if they ended up chit chatting about a plasma tv right in front of me.

The first time in my life I make plans for the future, they all come crashing into failure. Unfazed I stride on bravely thinking God must have a plan.

So I do this. Over and over. There it lacks the satisfaction I use to get from teaching, the wonders from students suddenly becoming dramatic, the beauty of performance.

Sometimes we let too many a good thing go, thinking that there was something better ahead for us. And that is the risk we take.

And sometimes we forget. We forget how much we love doing what we do, or we are headed towards the love of our life. Sometimes calculating the credit card debts and the mounting work, the feelings and the rewards get in the way of me.

Tomorrow, I hope to jump into that water and let it gush over me, letting me forget for the few seconds that I can hold my breath that swimming should be as enjoyable as it is tiring. But I know better to expect too much from my plans.

yours wet,

jess

tHe boOk of dEfiNitiOns

If you analyze anything, you destroy it.
Arthur Miller

dear jess,

Some may say that the hardest part about being a human is having emotions. I say the hardest part about being human is explaining, defining, knowing.. We need a name for everything. Acacia, African daisies, internalization, diaphragm, schizophrenia, three different meaning to thongs/tongs, two different ways to say tomatoes; even the little lane in the plane is called a galley.

Even we have names. Those we keep, those we change, those we think sounds nicer, make us look better and those seven different letters that define who we are and the little label tied to our toes at death..

Then there’s the nameless. The undefined.

There are days when you cry bucket loads and don’t even know why. Was it anger? Was it the fact that you feel unloved? Was it self pity?

You think that if you knew, if you just could explain, name the emotion, trace the reason then you will stop feeling this way.

Then you, me, those that are always named, find ourselves grasping hopelessly for an explanation that fits all those terms defined; anger, pms, fear, self pity, pain..

Must all tears shed be reasoned and if they weren’t would they be justified or just written off as being too feminine.

The undefined and the unknown perhaps scares us and that’s why we have a reason, an explanation, a name for everything. Once we name something, we own it. Once we own it, we control it. Once we control something, we are lured into the fallacy that it can’t harm us anymore.

I cry and I don’t know why. There shouldn’t be any fear in admitting that.

the one they call,
jess

poStage pAid

Dear jess,

My midnight online partner tells me I need some retail therapy, and so, retail therapy is what ive done. He’s probably right. I can’t get over my budgeted phone that allows me to play black jack and is coloured. Not only am I so easily pleased, one can imagine my last phone.

There ive done it. One normal-non thought provoking-emotionally bizarre - letter.

Oh wait I just remembered, over the weekend I was finally cornered by the person I was avoiding and I told him that I didn’t think I wanted to hang out with him because he makes me feel uncomfortable and that our friendship hadn’t reached the stage it was before where I wanted to invest time in it.

Being brave sometimes has the tendency of an air of bitchiness, nevertheless, ive thoroughly surprised myself, come to think of it, easter the year before had some terrifying confrontations too. Bizarre.

While im at the whole normal letter thing, I lost at black jack. Darn.

yours, as usual,

jess

aNotHer yeAr, anOthEr nUmbEr

I'm sure that, like all young men, you hold in your hands the precise formula for putting the world to rights. However, like all young men, you will one day be as old as me and then you'll see that its not so easy to change things.

dear jess,

The turning of tide as I age yet another year. It had a certain numbness to the feeling of bitterness of the unaccomplished yet a few days ago. I wasn’t sad or delirious, just sane? Calm? Sedated? perhaps just old.

Even easter had a certain numbness to it. Perhaps its just the feeling of normality. Whether its me turning an age older or easter. Its funny how these things are meant to be special but they’re all of a sudden normal. Especially easter.

Yet, there is a certain good feeling of not overplaying things, of normality, of just being around people who are closest to you and not expect anything but good company.

Proves that just cos im older, im not quite wiser. Two more years before I turn 30 and either accomplish a silly dream or just get caught in the norm pattern of adulthood. We’ll see.


blowing out the candles,
jess

bLessEd eAsTeR

mr potato head..
i could easily relate this picture to something easterish, but i wont. blessed easter and halleeellujjjaahhhhhhh :)

.. im your father..

i fEeL prEttY?

dear jess,

I had another one of those. I'll call them ‘episodes.’ I wake up with the feeling of fear and wanting to cry. It’s a feeling at 3 am when I have to wake up to prepare for lessons the next day and suddenly I feel that ive lost all aims in life, a gush and lingering feelin of emptiness.

And usually it goes in a matter of seconds. Except today, its still here. And I can cry for no reason. Well not that there isn’t any too.

The thing they call thesis that Ive been workin on for two years now threatens to be meaningless and useless and lacks everything and threatens me to be here for another year.

Its almost as if everything ive worked for and have had to face to idiots who give me the ‘whats taking so long’ look will just repeat itself. The other day when I found this out I just cried driving home. And to make things worse there was no one, no one I could tell this to that would understand. The only person I did just made me cry even more.

This is probably the one single time I do not know why im writing to you. Feels almost as if im digging low in pathetic ness to tell the world my pain and my emptiness.

an all time low,
jess

thE muCh oVeRraTed tErm

I learned something recently: our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are phased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at our difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when in fact our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives. when things were bad last year, various people i had never even seen before turned up to "console" me. i hate that.
Marie from The Zahir , Coehlo


dear jess,

He says hi. Im sure he’ll be quite pleased to find out that ive mentioned him to you, that is if he ever finds out. He use to talk to me on the phone whilst chewing an apple, with his mouth open and then walk over to pee, where I can hear him flush.

One day he thinks of me. And he calls. And we talk and talk and talk.

I tell him things that are closest to my heart and he does too. We use to be so good of friends.

He asks me.

Friends?

Pause.

Overseas.

Here?

Pause pause.

Pause.

Work. Girlfriend. Wife. Work.

Pause.

I stand on the ledge of being honest and perhaps knowing you wont like what I have to say. I have an allegiance to my soul to tell the truth that I’m too tired of hypocritical relationships that I do not want to put energy in for the title of friends, but not close, and yet seek the time when we need to be together and I have to pretend to get along with you.

Or the honesty of being tired of having to avoid you or to say hi and find out how you are doing when in reality I don’t care.

Or the honesty that I think all you want to know about me is just my juicy details in my life.

Or the honesty that if you were honest too, you too can’t be bothered and maybe that’s okay.

Friendship count.

Pause

Pause

At this rate, im sure I wont have to worry about friendship for a long time.

And to be honest, maybe that’s okay too.

I think id rather spent my time with those that talk to me with their mouth full of apple pieces than those that organize meetings at homes to see if we’re all okay.

Like I said. You may not like what I have to say.

your friend,

jess

oNe aBsoLutE, on ThE roCks pLeAsE

dear jess,

Free spirit.

There is something of an oxymoron in that phrase. Like as if we could trap that as vague and intangible as that of a spirit.

I’ve come to learn some things, not many, for fear that such statements may one day reveal to me the much unknown in the unknown worlds.

My fingers are numbed from typing, my knee scratched several times from the redundancy of sitting at the work table and my spirit tired.

My room is always a reflection of my current state of mind, and currently the room is in a perfect mess.

As you grow older, you realize that there are fewer people you call friends, that there are no such things as absolutes, that people no matter what will always, always put someone, some other culture something else down to justify their place, their position and their happiness.

That even if you’ve traveled the world, you still end up as that irritating boy sitting in secret recipe annoying the hell out of you, making generalizations on people he hasnt even met yet.

You go to the same place and you wonder how come it didn’t change him? or you? You see the same love, the same progress, the same awe inspiring beauty and your jaw drops but his doesn’t.

You can be in Rome and never seen the Coliseum, been to Malaysia and never tasted nasi lemak or let the tip of Mt Kinabalu leave you in tearing joy; or on the other hand you could’ve gone all the way to India just to say you’ve seen the Taj Mahal and still be left the way you are.

You go to say you’ve gone and you’ve seen, or you go and never.

Absolutes.

We’re so used to not becoming people who are layered with more than just one emotion that we either do or we don’t. We either are or we aren’t.

People in the jungle are either ignorant, or contented. We are either advanced or idiotic. Being here or there is either good or bad.

We either are, or we aren’t.

No in betweens.

You are either black or white.

Me? im quite literally brown.
jess

wHat iS the CoLouR of yOur LiE?

While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seem to be to their parents’ wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person ‘for the rest of their lives,’ to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half-finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying ‘no’ or ‘its over,’ to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn’t even like. Coehlo, The Zahir

dear jess,

In a decaying world, human beings prize that which is the oddest. I can feel my body heating up, perhaps due to the intolerable amount of caffeine intake I am using in aims of finishing that which ive started two years ago or so in the length of one month

In his pride he asks me, was the Japanese scene good? In my mind I flash back to me being utterly bored and thinking how idiotic it was. I look at his hopeful eyes and go, lets change the subject.

She asks me if the poem was any good and I think its crap, so I don’t reply.

The prize that no one wants. Honesty.

Its is no wonder that everyone secretly looks up to simon but no one wants to be him.

This is the sad trend in which we live, where men who stopped loving their girlfriends instead of saying its over, decides to ignore them and drag them in a failing relationship, because they are being nice. I call it wuss.

It’s a sad world we live in. Nobody is going to be honest with you, no ones going to tell you that you’re being annoying, selfish, or simply wrong or that they don’t want to be with you and that you are not worth their time. Instead however they will let you suffer for a long time till you finally guess what might be going on. Its like having booger on your face that no one will tell you about, but that they will let you parade it around town before you finally discover it yourself.

Until then, honesty is a myth we make up to tell our children what they should grow up into.

yours,

jess

aLL thE woRld's a StaGe

My dream is now realisable, but if i try and fail, i dont know what the rest of my life will be like; thats why its better to live cherishing a dream than face the possibility that it might all come to nothing. - Coehlo, The Zahir-

Dear jess,

The coffee sux. And if there is one thing I can’t stand its crappy coffee. And the idiot (I call some guys I know idiots, regardless of whether they’re aware of it or not) lets me try his ali coffee, which to my surprise, the idiot was right. It’s actually pretty good.

I went to the "palace of culture" today, and watched the much debated M opera, of which I have to say for all the negatives made me want to see men in skirts and tights dance all the more, and redefine sexiness. However.

The coffee on my table next to me sux but I drink it for the need of caffeine.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day today, Mostly because I met my past. The past that no one else I know in my present shares with me. The past that lets me relive my audition days; my days when I felt young and passionate about working for nothing. The make ups, the lights, the gossip about the woman who demands so much just because she’s on tv, the days when the now ensemble member in M opera use to be in a stupid musical with me, the front of house boy who is in a local tv series called KL lights is still the funny guy who bought me western food in KL, the days when we use to be inferior to theatre big names, and we still are. The people who’ve continued living a dream I once threw everything away for.

There was one thing that use to define my life. I always asked people this one thing. What is your passion? And when they stared blankly I’d think, ah he doesn’t know what its like to feel the fiery furnace in the pit of your stomach to go without sleep or food because being somewhere and doing something makes you feel temporarily whole, happy, in love.

The selfish idiocy of fulfillment and dreams and lost loves, the adrenaline high’s that makes living a little bearable. The illusion of real life, the secrecy of silent pain, the pretense of pretending, all under the one roof, they call the theatre.

The escapism of life claims to be the reflection of life.

Selfish fulfillments that make us for one moment believe that we really matter because of the applause of young men or the green eyed jealousy of being able to travel far and wide.

And yet, the unfulfilled selfishness can turn into lifelong regret.

The coffee gets cold, and so do i.

yours offstage,
jess