The Dream

I had a dream about some family friends that was as disturbing as it was mind-boggling.

In the dream, the father was mercilessly kicking the wife, who had her arms around her daughter in a protective hug. She resolutely stared at the floor, grimacing with each blow but not making any attempt to run away from the attack. Her stance had the certainty that the assault would end soon. All she had to do was to weather it. It will be over soon.

I stood at a distance as one witnessing a dirty family secret finally being exposed.

That family I saw in that dream resembled nothing of the family that I know in real life. The father is most loving and the mother has the vocal disposition of someone who shall and will never stand passively in the face of violence against herself or her child. The dream was completely false and I know that.

Yet it disturbs me so much. I felt as if I’d been divulged a secret through that dream. Although it was completely false, I felt as if it was inspired by some measure of truth. I can normally trace every aspect of my dream to some occurrence I had witnessed or experienced during the day, even the ones that didn’t make any sense.

Had I witnessed something that hinted of abuse within the family? A discrete shove, a secret glare of disapproval or a quick ducking behind someone’s back after a wrong doing? Is there a truth to that dream that’s hiding somewhere in the recesses of my mind? Are there pieces of a puzzle that are waiting to be put together?

Perhaps this is just a matter of my brain firing off the wrong signals in the wrong sequence. Perhaps there is a truth to that dream that evades me. Perhaps its truth is too ugly and my defence mechanisms kick in whenever I come close to uncovering it.

So much time, so little to do

I'm missing some people so terribly I'm rendered inarticulate, blog-wise.

My days have suddenly been flooded with time and space again. No amount of cooking, cleaning, organizing, facebooking, sleeping and praying can fill the hours graciously allotted to me each day. At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I will say that I can't wait for school to start again.

Exams, assignments, deadline pressure, stress and quick, inadequate lunches - YUM.

Summer dear, I'm thoroughly done with you.

My Twilight Years Abound

I finally managed to force myself to watch 'Twilight'.

For the entire duration of the movie, only two thoughts recurred to me. The first was that this was just another teenage-vampire-love story. The second was that the reason I can't relate to the media frenzy that it's caused may be strongly related to my distance from my high school days. I feel so old.

Summer Project

Sprout your ornaments!

What you need:
1. A decorative pot of your choice
2. Any bean of your choice - you can even make your own mix of sproutable beans!
3. Water - preferably in a spray bottle for easy application

How:
1. Spread beans in a thin layer at the bottom of your pot - just about enough to cover the base of the pot.
2. Soak the beans over night in water - they will expand up to twice their original size. You will need roughly once cup of water for one table spoon of green beans. Adjust the amount of water according to the size of beans you are using.
3. Drain the water and spread the beans evenly in the pot. Place the pot where there is enough sunlight for the beans to sprout.
4. Spritz the beans with water periodically and toss them gently around to make sure they are evenly coated in water - do NOT drown them. Ever.
Note: if the beans start to smell funky or if fungus start to appear, simply rinse the beans in cold water and be gentle so as not to damage their sprouts. Once they are fully grown as seen in the picture, you can water them regularly once a day.

Time required : You should be able to see green leaves as shown in the picture in approximately two weeks's, depending on the type of beans you use.

Going off on tangents a la Sebald

It's one of those nights again.

My body's dead tired but my mind refuses to stop. Odd thoughts visit me when the lights are out and there's nothing for my eyes to focus on.

For some reason the memory of my long-deceased friend comes back to me. While I replayed bits of what I can remember of him, my mind goes off on a tangent. I tried to decipher the reason I am suddenly thinking of him. Maybe it isn't so sudden. The day has been filled with the news of a famous pop icon's death. Maybe that's what's gotten me to thinking of him. Amongst those that I've lost, his was the hardest one for me to deal with. Perhaps it's because he was especially close to me compared to the others. The fact that he was my age was certainly a factor. It seemed like a great injustice for his life to have ended while mine was still laid out before me. But I will not go there. Allah knows best and from Him come the best decisions.

The loved ones I have lost were almost all in their golden years or had been suffering from some illness or the other. Their deaths were expected, even presaged by the incessant visits by relatives and friends who would not have otherwise presented themselves so gravely under normal circumstances. Amongst my earliest memories of witnessing the coming of death took place in my hometown of Kota Bharu. The daughter of one of my mother's cousins was in her final days after a battle with kidney disease. I must have been six or seven years of age. I remember listening to the somber tones of people talking about her condition, giving a wide berth to the reality of what laid right before them. The dying one's sister described the difficulties of feeding her with an apathetic helplessness I couldn't understand. My mother suggested cooking some porridge, the kind we often make when someone was too sick to consume anything else. They talked for a while on how it was important for her to get the daily required intake of food and how best to achieve that. Porridge was the answer- it's easy to digest and easy to prepare.

I remember feeling confused. Was she not dying? Is it not inevitable at this point? Were we not there to say our farewells, pray for her soul and comfort her family? I couldn't understand why they were carrying on the conversation as if she might regain her health in a week or two. The talk was curiously optimistic, as if to keep at bay the grief that was sure to come. In the meantime she laid there, her chest feebly rising and falling while her eyes roamed the room half-open, staring at a future visible only to her dying gaze.

I remember looking for some ominous sign of the coming of the angel of death. Perhaps something dramatic that I would be able to tell my friends in our callow explorations of such weighty topics as death, divorce, evil spirits and the significance of birthmarks. I watched the bleak walls, the worn curtains dancing on the windows, the pale green linoleum floor and the furniture that were all pushed against the walls to make floor space for whoever came to visit. It was as if the sickness had spread its arms amidst the clutter in the house to make way for death, the same way a bodyguard parts a crowd to make way for a celebrity to pass through.

News of her death came several days later, alongside the news that my aunt's train was stranded on the tracks and that the coronation of the new Sultan of Kelantan is postponed indefinitely due to the rains that portended another wet monsoon, much to my pleasure.

MJ passes on

When news of the king of pop's demise reached me, I was initially amused. My first thought was, 'Is this another hoax?' Of all the bizarre and oftentimes ridiculous pieces of news that surface, this is not much different. After the news was confirmed and recapped more times than I care to mention within the hour, I began to feel sad. Not so much for his death, but

more for the tragic life that he has had in the public eye. From dangling his baby from a hotel balcony to his ranch being repossessed by banks, every bit of detail about his life seems to slide on a scale of peculiarity. And the media (and the public) never fails to lash on to story and bleed them for what they're worth. When news program after news program featured his demise as their headline as a 'tribute', all I saw was a damaged life that began with so much promise and potential. I felt sad - not for his death but for the life that he'd had to endure in the public eye.

Until I sat down on the pink runway in a clothing warehouse cum model agency downtown on Canada Day. My friend who is a seasoned bargain hunter was busy bargain hunting while another friend and myself spent the time trying to puzzle out the rational behind the irrationally pink runway that ran down the middle of the warehouse. The store's proprietor blasted loud MJ hits in conjunction (I'm assuming) with the singer's departure from this world. When 'Heal the World' came on the loudspeakers it hit me as to why I should feel sad about the singer's death. I was never into the MJ mania although I was a fan of his ingenuity and creativity. Listeing to 'Heal the World' reminded me (naturally) of 'Black or White', 'What About Us' and the likes. Those songs were more than just entertaining. They carried a universal message about love and peace that were reminiscent of the 60's cultural movement and have been somewhat neglected in virtually every musical genre except maybe in gospel music. And to boot, virtually every one of his singles became worldwide hits and unwittingly dispersed their message into the subconscious of millions around the world.

It was at that point that I thought, 'Yup, his death is a loss to us all.'

Writers' block

-noun

a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.