Tea

I baked a loaf today. Filled with overripe bananas, toasted coconut nibs, chocolate chips and hazelnuts, with just a fleeting sense of lemon. It was perfect with a cup of hot darjeeling tea, black and no sugar. And so, we sat my friend and I through the evening, talking over tea, eating the sweet bread. Outside the rain fell, the sun emerged briefly its rays weak and quiet on my cempaka tree, and then the rain fell again.

Saturday

The rain is still falling. Giving fullness to the once-lithe weeping willow. The ceiling leaks somewhere in the dark. I turn and see its dark path cowering in a corner, spreading as the rain persists. In this hour, there is a sense of familiarity filling up the air around me. How often, I have heard the fall outside the window of my childhood. The town Taiping that never gave up on rain. From a babe to an adult, its populace grows, moves and dies to the sound of falling rain. That incessant patter, the bashing, flashing thunderous storm, that fine drizzle leaving a deep damp all around.

Friday rain

The ground is wet. The patches of dark grey large and imposing on my driveway edged by the damp grass, scattered with brown leaves. Leaves that defy the drenching and remain crackling when my dogs race by, trampling them underfoot. How could I not love this evening, so full of life, so cool after the blistering day? I stand by my front door and draw aside the ancient collapsible grille, creaking and reluctant as I slide it quickly. The light is leaving, lifting and moving across everything in its wake, the final touch before dark descends.

Comfort

After weeks of worry and frustration, I was finally, properly diagnosed today. I have Graves' Disease. An autoimmune disorder which causes the thyroid to crunch into overdrive, sending your body helter-skelter into distress. I saw a listing of 60 symptoms; although one doesn't have all, you can surely count on maybe 5-6 you have to bear and live with. Mine were swollen feet and lower calves, fatigue, anxiety, rapid pulse, heat intolerance, difficulty sleeping. Most symptoms are innocuous and general, so its hard to put a finger on the problem. The swelling was the one that sent me quickly to the doctor.

So I am relieved. I suppose that's an odd thing to say, but its true. Better to know what you're dealing with, than to wonder and fret. I must admit though that I have already gone the extreme, of being cheerful and strong to being fearful and snivelly. The feelings shift as rapidly as the light.

So I talk to my dogs, sweep my garden and water the plants.

I read comics, cook dinner and reach out for my favourite CDs.

I write.

In these times, these are the things that hold me still, and comfort me.

Ipoh Aunty

Today is the 7th anniversary of her passing. My aunty from Ipoh, who was at that time in her 60s, the youngest daughter to my mother being the eldest. All day today, I tried to recall memories of her but they were scant. She would come to Taiping to visit us, staying at our home and I imagine my eldest brother and sister would have more recollections of her because she must have been more regular a visitor when they were young. My mother would sometimes say so, because they were all younger, my uncles, her brothers. By the time I came along, a fifth child, everyone had grown up and left Taiping.

The few memories I have of her is of distance. She was always generous with us, the children in the family. I remember her giving me a watch when I completed the big government exam when I was 15. She told me to study harder and be better. She advised me keenly, and I listened, as a child would, with some reluctance and stubbornness. She must have sensed that, because she never stopped advising me. Right till I became an adult.

Despite the emotional distance between us, I remember her as being funny. She had that earthy humour that characterised Chinese who came from a different time, and because they stayed in a small town within the enclave of a Chinese community, they retained that sense of humour all their lives. She could tell the most mundane story and wring a sort of a black humour out of it; of fat people, of short people, of stupid people. She would sit with my mother sometimes by the front door of our house in the evenings and they would be laughing over the same story again and again.

The year before she died, she seemed to have changed. I saw her several times, and once when I offered to take her out for breakfast, she looked at me in a sad sort of way, and said as she always did, never mind, save your money. I remember feeling a little taken aback at hearing the way she said that, as if it was too much for me to buy her breakfast. It was only long afterward that I understood it was her way of expressing her feelings. Giving advice was her way of saying she cared for your well-being; and the more anxiety she felt, she must have, like all of us, felt she had to keep on repeating it. Like the funny stories, being told again and again.

Today, I lit a lamp and prayed for her, remembered her life. I remember her, and wished that I had known her a little bit better.

Mortal

Almost four days ago, I was lying on a stretcher and staring at the pale orange curtains that divided me from the rest of the patients in an emergency ward. I could hear voices mingling, a mix of languages, Tamil, Cantonese, Malay. The tones of urgency and quiet. Through the narrow gap of the curtains, nurses and orderlies moved swiftly creating a jagged sense of their mute efficiency. I had kept my eyes open, wondering if my heart which was pounding rapidly would stop if I closed them. Within these walls, a rectangular space half created by pretty curtains and white walls, some souls must have found release. I can see that it would have comforted some, to be in a spectacularly clean and well-lighted place, and it would have been better than the opposite; a place full of strangeness and darkness. Here, at least, the nurses are kind and gentle. But as it turned out, my thoughts of departure never materialised. In a sequence filled with a rapid march through the building, the large caverns of lifts, I was wheeled to my ward. All the time, the light and darkness flying in front of my eyes and my body flat and moving on a sturdy stretcher. Days later, I sit here writing this. The rain has just swept through my garden, scattering leaves and leaving the willow bent over. Everything is, as always.

Second coming - 1 October Padang

8.59 the day after
The second arrives
The brother of the first
Seven, not Seven Point Six
What point of difference is there
Between Point Six and Point None
More buildings falling
More streets buckling
More cracks showing
More lives breaking
Are those differences
Or more of one and the same
The point of the point
Is nothing
Of nothing
After the second coming
Who remains to wait for a third

30 September Padang

It is morning now
The day after
What do you wake up to?
Coffee, the wafting fragrance
Of incense
Warm toast and melting butter
Sunny cream on brown burnt crusts
Not all mornings are the same
Somewhere someone wakes
On a street filled with pain, fear and brokenness
Crowded with rubble, singled by death
I cannot imagine the greyness
That came down with the rain last night
For after the shifting of the earth
All life had left this city
Now who remembers yesterday, this time
When coffee in the cup was still
And the sun had shone so bright
That even shadows were beautiful

Perfect

Yesterday at this time, I was sitting in a boat. The boat was nosing its way up a tributary that ran into a peat swamp forest. The water below was black, and if you cupped your hands and raised some in the fold on your palms, it is not black, but a deep rust red. The inky waters cast the forests in a rather intriguing way, creating a stark contrast in the bright sunshine filtering between the thick trees and branches leaning low into the river. Occasionally, you drift by dappled light dancing on its darkened surface.

All this while, Atan, the boatman tells you stories of bears, panthers and giant snakes that wander through these forests. Sometimes, he says, you can see them by the water, but only if you are lucky. As he speaks, he maneuvers the boat through passages made narrow by numerous branches and small logs floating by. Occasionally in his quiet voice he says, be careful, branches.At that, he would have just saved you, the low branches and leaves sometimes spiked with tiny thorns from tearing at your hair, your tee-shirt, your hat.

It is a hot day, but in the shadow of the overhanging forests, it is rather pleasant. You drift along as though you do not have a care in the world. As though all that you have now, the trees, the black waters, the steady hand of your boatman, were all you would ever need this Saturday afternoon to make your life perfect.