Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts

Gemini Baby

18th June, 9.09am:

I slept the shallowest of sleeps. I retired to bed much too late and rose much too early. I had a strange, strange dream. My cats, an ex-girlfriend and I was in it. I dreamed that Dylan, Sid and Jonsi died. She knelt on their graveyard, her face dripping with sorrow, and sat there silently. She turned, suddenly, and looked at me long and hard. I couldn't tell what she was trying to tell me with that cold, solemn stare. I had already died by then. Time was of no essence. Every scene was juxtaposed without any beginning nor ending. The mise en scene was confusing. But I remember the bits and pieces. And I remember that it was strange.


19th June, 12:45am
:

As of 4.30pm today, decades ago, I came into the world in complete silence with one eye shut and feet as long as my thighs. I did not yelp a single cry. For a brief moment, my parents went berserk thinking I was a half blind, mute, semi-disfigured baby with alien legs. Thankfully, that was just a temporary joke God played on them. For whatever reason, remains a cosmic mystery. Probably for all eternity.

Fast forward to today, I am a healthy, cynical dreamer with no definite plans for world domination. Yet. There is just too much to type out the story of my life. Too much have gone by, and there is too little time and much too large of an ego (to not come off as being a tad too narcissistic) to realistically write about one's autobiography in a single page.

"My body is my temple", they say. Though I don't know if that's the case for me. I wish it was otherwise, but that's just useless wishful thinking. Over the years, my mind, body and soul have been riddled with bullets of shitty diet, haphazard hangat-hangat taik ayam workouts, infinite amounts of sins, cigarettes, and general substance abuse. As a result? I have a memory of a goldfish, fitness of a 12 year-old, guilts of a Protestant gay priest, and a perfect pair of charcoal lungs.

My only consolation lies in my firm belief that mistakes are what we're made of. I'd rather go through a life of rollercoaster than to cruise through life mechanically and monotonously with hardly any memorable bittersweet moments of stupidity and disaster. I've had a difficult, yet colourful life. And I'm thankful for that.

I'm thankful for all the memories, good and bad. For the people, friends and foes and lovers and family, that have came and gone and stubbornly stayed. For all the wrong things that I have done to others, and others unto me. For all my mistakes, stupidity and immaturity in the past. For every single one of my failures. For every single gray day and hopeless moments of utter defeat. For all the memories, and that I still have a decently semi-working one to remember them all.

I'm thankful that I'm still breathing today. 'Cause y'know, I kinda like living. More so now than ever before. And I think there's still a lot of good I can do for myself and others; friends and family and strangers. I think so. Lets just hope that's not yet another wishful thinking.

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than to be absolutely boring" - Marilyn Monroe.


19th June, 2:20am:

I watched Nosferatu halfway. It's an insult to the film to doze in and out of sleep, so I decided to lay it off till tomorrow. I hate sleeping.

Phoenix

Happy birthday my dear budak kecik, semi-stranger, and now, imaginary ex-girlfriend.

I remember you once asked me, "Am I strong?". I knew fully well how you were feeling at that time, and the rational thing to do would be to utter words of optimism, of encouragement. Positive cliches, albeit overused, are true. To a certain extent. But sometimes we need to hear the truth. Without rose-tinted glasses, without lacing words with sweet hypnotic perfume. Sometimes we need to know things as it really is. And there will be times that we'll need exactly that.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. It really isn't. The truth is difficult. Having to face reality is difficult. Life, being the way it is, is composed of constants and variables. I believe that the "truth", in the most general sense of the word, is a variable. I may have done bad things in the past, I cannot change the truth in that. But because of what I had to endure, I learned that I can change that "truth" today so that I will not repeat the same mistakes tomorrow.

I replied back to you, "You are not strong". Because as of that particular moment, you were not. We all have moments like that. And it is also one of those infinite number of variables in life that we all just have to deal with. Even at the most trying of times, you can change that. When? How? Well, that is all up to you.

It is written that life is fated and predestined, but never forget that God gave us free will for a reason. And it is our duty, whoever we are, whatever our beliefs are, to utilise it to our very best. To search for that constant in life, whatever it may be. In hopes that it will give us something strong, something concrete, a constant truth if you may, to hold on to dear life and enjoy the ride for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in death and in dreams.

You may not be strong today. But isn't it true that we need to be weak to be strong? That we need to learn to walk before we run. That to be able to climb a thousand stairs we need to take that first step. It is only natural to fall and falter every once in awhile. Sometimes we trip over a small boulder, sometimes we fall into bottomless pits of despair and hopelessness. But isn't that just the other half of the yin and yang of life? The other duality. The central idea and concept in life, in Islam. There is the beginning and the end, good and evil, weak and strong, male and female, black and white, life and death.

I've never believed that the other half of life's duality to be something bad nor should we fear it. Darkness is not darkness in itself, rather it is merely an absence of light. It is just a necessary evil. And necessary evils are, of course, a necessity. For a good reason.

Fix your variables. Find your constant. And believe in yourself. Nothing in the world can stop you from finding what you want.

I hope you will one day see the light in yourself. Because believe me, I see it in you.

"Is it true that some of our strength comes from suffering? That suffering hardships makes us stronger? That those of us who have never known a real hardship, and true suffering, cannot have the same strength as others, who have suffered much? And if that is true, does that not mean that your argument is the same thing as saying that we have to be weak to suffer, and we have to suffer to be strong, so we have to be weak to be strong?" - K.