Simply words

Surrender/Basics

2012-02-09T07:19:00.001+08:00

To the one who has trapped himself in life, seemingly unable to be free:

Surrender

Surrender to mortality, because for all that medicine can do, in the end you will still die, of old age.
Surrender to growing old, because for all the cosmetic surgery, health foods and wondrous methods, you will still see time take you further and further away from your birth, and closer and closer to the end.

Surrender to reality, for all your dreams and hopes, your fierce passions and reality-bending spirit, you still fall back upon your basics to survive another moment, another day.
Surrender to anonymity, for all your attempts for the feeling of fame and power are only momentary, as you are forgotten all too soon in even Earth time, and only you think you are as great, as so many others see you as just another titbit of information in history.

Surrender to failure, as your every success in your indulgence, in what you lust, quickly leads to a loss of your time, money and passing life.
Surrender to humility, as your stubborn refusal to repent only delays inevitably seeing your reflection in the mirror of experience.

—

And when one remains torn between the rash of countless desires and urges, and the bitterness of life's many truths:

Basics

You know you focus best on doing one thing at a time.
Let that be the most urgent and important thing at that time.

You know time is very limited to do the next thing in line.
Let that be the next important task you need to complete.

You know that there are so many distractions at any one moment.
Will you continue to be focused then, lonely yet adequate, at completing actions of meaning and value?

You've realised you're capable of enduring so much pain to get things done.
Would you kindly remind yourself of this, every time the fears and dreads are at their worst, so that you may take your place amongst heroes who do not asked to be sung about?

But don't you dream of the skies of vision, the outer space of possibilities?
All this self-control, can you never get there?
But then, you need the ground to solidly lift yourself up from, by using the fuel blast of frequently well-completed necessities.
Aren't you already aware that earthly basics lead to actualisation?

Peace by creative tension

2012-02-01T03:18:00.001+08:00

18:30 Jan 5, 2012
Cuscaden Road, Singapore

Once all was pitch road, but that was a long time ago.
Then dark green grass came, and it grew low and packed.
But as change is the only constant thing with all things, half the short little greens aspired to be greater and taller and more, and so, of course, they evolved.

The ambitious hedges took on yellow in half their beings, and became larger of leaf; in so doing, they doubled their height.
Relatively soon, they had spread up to, and now held territory over, quite about half of the original hedge row.

Not that the finer dark dwarf hedges minded much: they were too simple in their awareness to really bother, but then, space was indeed getting more crammed.
But taller yellow-greens and shorter dark-greens alike are trimmed strictly by the unknown gardeners, so their expansions and conquests are not of their own free will to decide, so there they remain to this present period, locked in an artificial state of balance and harmony.

And what of the future, when forces outside the plants no longer tightly box them up as showcase foliage.
You cannot ask the taller yellow-green hedge either, bigger plants don't mean that much self-awareness still!
But you and I are aware that, after human people, plants left with enough water, nutrients and sunlight will spew out over all sorts of former barriers, and reclaim the land in equatorial rain-jungle again.

Messy once more to the human eyes, but since those eyes are dead or no longer cannot see, it suits all plants fine.
Not that they bother that much, they're just content being what they are!

A pinnacle lost in the sea

2012-02-01T02:07:00.001+08:00

18:37 Jan 15, 2012

Bishan, Singapore

The vans on the ground form the base upon which to climb upwards.

Laden with goods packed within, or else silently empty, they carry the promise of large spaces within which to store your many memories, plentiful hopes or countless forgotten secrets.

The row of shophouses is a red brick wall either to block you from the possibilities out there, in the great wide beyond, or to shield you from the maddening flurry of phenomena outside, their inertia driving you on with the inexplicable urge to keep moving, keep hurrying, keep going on.

Only the trees retain their individuality, finding their little niches to be serene yet gently proud at the same time, while giving shade to those friendly enough to stand beside them.

And impossibly, in the background the ivory tower stabs erect into the sky, its many glass eyes a dazzling visual illusion, that blurs your vision even on a clear day cooking in heat.

Like a desert mirage transplanted upon equatorial torrid, you can get as close as you can but never enter it, you can see as much of it as you want but never enjoy its insides.

It is the dream you will never achieve, but a dream I might never want either, for having possessed it, what other boring material conquest shall I go for next?

It's not as if this middle finger is the gateway to heaven!

We stand into the night

2012-01-30T05:54:00.002+08:00

Dec 2, 2011

Bishan Park, Singapore

00:18

ONE: We survived the quick zombies and soul vampires, ever looking up into the forever night skies.
We died, flesh eaten, spirit consumed, and yet we looked up to the sky with then unseeing eyes gone blind.
And so the hope has sustained us, that one day the sky people would return from the stars, to reclaim us from this hellish world of darkness, as we kept on, kept on looking into outer space for rescue, believing the nighttime clouds to conceal the ships which would eventually emerge.

And one early evening, our prayers came through for us survivors, as the cloud banks did part to welcome back those gone so long, but now come so far to life us from the veiled miseries of this night world.

Tonight, decades later, our last sanctuaries on this cursed world remain brightly lit, still available for those who choose to return to purge the undead scourge.
And the fear is extinguishing, for now we fall in the struggle, only to be revived clean, amidst the clouds, where more starships await.

00:21

TWO: Ever since our original sun went out on us, we have adjusted to the perpetual night, with light of our own.
Hurtling into the absolute cold of space, we've nevertheless managed to keep our atmosphere comfortably warm, and more than sufficient brightness for people to live as they have, over the past ten thousand years or so.
This high evening is as typical as those on most other nights, but we celebrate silently in our hearts, yet another period added to our existence, since the ejection from our former solar system, so many decades ago.

The river flows like a gentle stream in the foreground, as we remain witnesses to the soundless aftermath of a marvellous performance at the amphitheatre in the midground, bank opposite.
The social interaction continues warmly in the tall sticks of apartment blocks in the background, which is where we will soon head, to soak in the laughter, chatting and play.

We face the endless dark of interstellar galactic space together now, lit by the sun which has never set in ourselves.

My broad path it turns and turns

2012-01-30T05:24:00.001+08:00

17:24 Nov 26, 2011

Downtown East, Singapore

With our family at the end of a sweltering afternoon, we readied to descend the escalator, when we witnessed this view of the sky.

Only months later when I studied what I had photographed, did I finally understand the message I felt, when I had to capture this scene.

Life ahead is so full of thick clumps of clouds, threatening right before oneself to turn dark and pour down as a thunderstorm.

Mine is the tree that has learned how to grow straight and tall, and spread out branches to receive the sunlight.

But it is the red bricked roofs that speak the loudest message of all.

The pathway formed by these rooftops tell me that the turns at every major point in life ahead can be broad and clear, that there is much breadth to decide how to go to where one's heart leads.

Throughout the ups and downs of the detailed landscape below and ahead, the sure brick road winds onwards into the horizon.

The only question to answer at all times then, is: do I dare to walk this swath with honest courage?

Another gear shift

2012-01-30T05:00:00.004+08:00

I don't publish enough.
I find myself held back by working part-time for a living, by the huge backlog of past photos, ideas and works to follow up on, and by the doodles I have yet to create.

Time to move past this obstacle: all backlog are now set free.
My last 3 doodles for now will soon adorn the last 3 More words 'imagine' posts: Marking a beginning, Daily life is a story and a game, and Old and wiser
(check back later this week, when the doodles become attached.)

I'm back to posting and compiling, but still in issues of about 10 works as ebooklets, which remain free to download, US$1 to buy, or you set your price/contribution.
This means that photos and ideas past and present, as well as follow-up works will appear as I decide to work on them, no longer controlled by artificial schedule or theme.

I'm also looking into leaving Oronjo, and on to Skydrive to keep my past works available for you, dear readers.

To go where most won't

2012-01-20T16:52:00.000+08:00

I've said before that if it weren't for need of income, I'd gladly give away my creative work for free.
Rather than wait for that indefinite day which has not yet come, I have reflected on my online communication journey so far and come to another inevitable decision.

I'm giving away my original, creative work for free, if you want it.
If you still want to pay for it, you can set your price.
And if you need a guideline, there's always my recommendation.

For those of you who bought my earlier ebooks, your support has been ploughed back into the continuing production that comes from this one-man publishing house.

Of course, all rights continue to be reserved.

Most important to me continues to be finding my community out there, people who like the stuff I do enough to want to support it.
The key reason for publishing and communicating online is to keep my work available to, and keep the channels open with, as many of you interested folks out there, as often and as long as possible.

To begin, here are 3 of my products, for you to download:

More words 2011 Issue 1, from August to October.
This collects 10 short works and more, originally published in Tumblr.
You can download it for free, your price, or US$1.

—

Logue, a short ebooklet inspired by our trip to Perth in early 2011.
You can download it for free, your price, or $0.30.

—

Coping, compiling work from May to December 2009.
You can download it for free, your price, or US$7.10.

Update:

A good friend downloaded More Words 2011 Issue 1 for free, then decided to contribute a donation, but found he could only do so via another product.
The setup allows you repeated downloads, once you acquire it free or pay for it.

I've emailed Oronjo seeking advice on this matter.

My ongoing thanks to all of you in the community supporting me this way.
Meanwhile, feel free to contribute if you want, through my friend's workaround:
pay through another product.

Happy reading!

And I saw, and heard

2012-01-15T07:46:00.001+08:00

The following derives from an idea first recorded 2 years before, but only developed further now.

It was a dream, it was real.
I was there, or I was watching, like of a documentary.
The sea was at night, the moonshine at full bright.
I was at its surface, I could see just below.

The bright yellow was far, a brilliant spot which temporarily blinded, and left black spots in the vision.
The bright yellow came near, and behold, I saw the upper floater of what seemed a jellyfish colony!

And I saw, just into the waters, their many tentacles glaringly extending into unfathomed depths below, moving slowly about but with deadly stinging purpose.
But it was the head -- oh, the head! -- into which I saw, and heard, and felt, the many horrors which I could not feel at that time… because remember, it was a dream? … or was it still real?

I saw people trapped inside the glowing golden floating sac, as if bodies were trapped in yellow sap turning into amber.
Some slept curled, with the innocence of the newborn.
Some had mouths agape in toothless, tongueless screams and their eyes open, or at least whatever was still undigested of those orbs.
But it was those bodies still squirming, still howling and screaming, until I felt their vibrations, just outside and beside them.
Leftover limbs momentarily pushing out from within the rubbery floating membrane, forming moving bulges straining in all directions!

It was these that I now feel chills racing down the spine, as I recall them, but of which bizarrely I felt nothing of at that time.
No, not even the ocean surrounding me, which must have been chilly and numbing in its wetness!

And it was the embedded vessels which capped the terror I feel rising in me, only… n…now…
…can't…breathe…
must hold it together now… must tell what happened;
boats.
And ships… goodness, how big was this thing, actually?
And: a small town, swallowed whole… can still see the orderly laid out streets, the half liquefied houses.

…

Moments must have passed, for what seemed like weeks.
I was now looking at the-- jellyfish colony thing, moving off with its leisurely wake.
I don't think I can ever forget the howls, the silent ones too; and that engulfed coastal settlement within that: creature.

But the last thing which I didn't expect to hear, was the slight slap of tentacles below water, together with the stretched sounds of a balloon being rubbed over water.
In its own way, the dazzling golden yellow jellyfish colony was singing.

Spotter

2012-01-15T06:25:00.001+08:00

The two investigators stopped at the figure seated by the street, alone now that the last of the packed crowds were gone for the night.
They knew from watching his habit, that he would have been there throughout the day and the night, watching everyone who came and went.
Now they could ask him questions.

The shorter and fairer flashed an image of one whom they were looking for, on the screen of his communicating device,
"Have you seen him?"

The man on the street studied the displayed photo for a thoughtful instant before replying deliberately.
"That one's a charmer.
Breezes into town, sweeps ladies off their feet, delights the kids, impresses the guys, then waltzes away again.
After that's when folks slowly realise the mess that charmer's caused.
Broke women's hearts, sidelined the children, offended the men
Others have to pick up after him, pay for his 'free' drinks and food, fix what he broke, and live with the annoyance of being taken for a ride again."

Street chap drew breath and concluded.
"You won't find him anywhere nearby, when the manure hits the wind.
And when you finally catch up with him, he will make you feel that it's your fault to come all the way and offend him, with your very presences."

The taller and darker detective nodded at that analysis.
Then he revealed another picture, on his own larger device.
"And what of her?"

This time, person by the road took longer to deliberate, shifting himself slowly about on his firm yet comfy chair.
Then he said, "She's a really opaque one.
All about secrets kept silent about, and a face with one single plain expression kept up all the time.
Wouldn't know whether she is upset, amused, or simply indifferent to it all."

"But for those who constantly remain mysterious, they leak the reality about themselves all the time.
No different with her.
She's always about getting the best deals, securing the most advantage, all the while leaving as many around her as possible, confused about her motives, unaware that they've already been played out.
A dangerous kind of person, especially if you think she's on your side, when she has already betrayed you."

"Oddly enough," he finished, " you can easily find her at the end of this road, readying to hatch another of her nefarious schemes."

The two lawmen in everyday clothes were silent for a while, after both long answers.
Then the expression on the darker one's face got darker, if only anyone else other than the one before him could detect it, as he began to frown while probing: "Have we met before?"

He on his chair looked up, steady eyes piercing through time-worn face, replying," I'm just a middle-aged man."

It's called a poem

2012-01-13T18:27:00.001+08:00

Can't read poems?
Too deep to understand?
But the fact is --
wherever there is rhythm,
where words flow well,
there you have a poem
(like lyrics without music)

So here you are in the midst
of a free style one.

Poems have to rhyme?
That idea's so old, so last time!
Not everything is rap
In which you string crap
And limericks like these are one a dime!

Heard you of near-rhyme or assonance?
Lines ending in close sound, like this one, for comparison
So poetry is versatile, that's why it's cool
Just broaden your mind, don't rhyme yourself blue!

Surviving

2012-01-05T08:00:00.001+08:00

Disaster movies need not just be escapist fantasy.
To me, they remind me of how life cannot be always scheduled for, and how changes come so suddenly.
I particularly like movies featuring ordinary people, with all their limitations and flaws, and how they have to rise above the horror of the disaster, and become much more than they never imagined of themselves.
And yet, at the end of the day, ordinary people blunder, lose, die.
But they did their best until the end.

The disaster might be caused by people themselves, like a mutant virus escaped to destroy the world we know.
Or it might be natural, brought on by forces larger than ourselves, such as odourless poison gas escaping a volcanic eruption and rolling mightily down the slopes to a nearby settlement.
If aliens from outer space are involved, invasion can then be considered as caused by other people (no more evil and less good than us, once we know them) and also as forces beyond our control.

Regardless of whatever flavour of disaster, the first thing survivors clamour for, is some form of protection and shelter.
Next comes necessities like drinking water, and sugary foods, and of course, air.
I often wonder why the movies don't show how important toilets and tissue paper, soap and washing water are, but by now such essential but not-so-nice-to-show are taken for granted, as being taken care of.

Tools of all sorts, as well as creative actions, feature in successfully ending disaster stories, and the mind-tickling ones get our characters to come out with desperate new ways of staying alive, and succeeding.
Burning books rather than reading them, so as not to freeze in the coming chill.
Sending out a repeating signal, so that rescuers stand a chance of finding those who are trapped.
Exploiting the weakness or characteristic of a hostile force to the advantage of the survivors.

I don't think I can be as young, fit, healthy, courageous, and most importantly, good looking as the actors and actresses who portray the valiant characters who make it to the end of the disaster movie.
My breath will run out, I'll flop down exhausted, and my heart will give up, before I even get past the opening scenes!
But then, who knows what might really happen, if I and my own really have to face up to such a dread reality.
I know the human being is capable of the unbelievable, in adverse circumstances.
Of course, I'll rather never have to find out.
Like many of you out there, I guess, I like my uneventful, routine days during which I get enough rest — and have the time and means for a proper bath.

My Tumblr posts 2011 August

2011-09-02T21:35:00.001+08:00

Posts:

Sometimes I feel like a mere leaf in a huge forest of pretty leaves.
A leaf falls, and none knows?

I think there is something powerful and stubborn within us which often doesn't do us good, but we can live with it and work with it.
The afflicted giant

There was once an awkward boy.
Now double the age, he hides inside a less awkward man.
That awkward boy

I use several less common but just as rich words, to recount an episode of two artistic persons, one evil and the other who works for good.set in my world of magic.
Opposites

--

News:

I introduce the story world and the story space I work in.
I work in my world and space

Giving an overview of my latest writing projects:
The writing routine

It's time to write more directly and plainly to readers.
Time to write more plainly again

How my library of works has been building up so far:
Library

Little prose: My Tweets on Twitter 2011 Jul, Aug

2011-09-02T09:35:00.000+08:00

Jeering one's opponents does not win over sensible folks towards whom one supports.
5:23 PM Aug 19th

Scolding parents who cannot accept their children growing up, themselves have not grown wiser either.
1:58 AM Aug 12th

If long-time residents of the land cannot be trusted to do what's best, then how can newly minted citizens?
1:56 AM Aug 12th

Praise from outside that the nation excels is annoying, when inside the humble citizen is made increasingly upset.
1:51 AM Aug 12th

We are still a united nation of landlords and tenants.
4:51 PM Aug 9th

Not that we're stuck seeing black and white; not that we can't work in gray; but for too long, the establishment has been too whitewashed.
3:29 PM Jul 27th

Cacophonous bikers: NOT awesome, sound like about to crash, mangle and disintegrate.
10:18 AM Jul 6th

Yuppies earn-spend much; far more thrifty heartlanders; wise weave value-worthy paths.
8:50 PM Jul 1st

My Tumblr posts 2011 Jun

2011-08-01T13:38:00.002+08:00

Secret, truly

Remember the source

My earliest human memory

Little prose: My Tweets on Twitter 2011 Jun

2011-08-01T13:37:00.000+08:00

The lone efforts ever doomed to obscurity; the sponsored ones becoming historic trends; yet hero is originally solo.
2:12 PM Jun 29th

Guest workers and stayers in foreign lands -- abused and abusive; reaching out and embraced; every act paves the eventual road.
1:24 PM Jun 28th

As the parents you have, so the seniors you tend to be; but you always have choices.
12:41 PM Jun 27th

Teaching too well narrowly, makes for learning too well, narrowly; demands outside support, only narrowly.
11:22 AM Jun 27th

Bloated with pizza and cola; filled with memes and words; life's countdown clock ticks on…
10:18 PM Jun 24th

Present chooses ol' faithful to head the state; future roots for most evolved conservative.
5:50 PM Jun 24th

Sees with middle-aged eyes: ashamed -- petty, angry boy returns inside; wise -- learning from pain; happy -- casting off grudge.
2:59 AM Jun 24th

Earning bits in moments over days; rich memories many moments through the days.
3:05 PM Jun 23rd

Body ill, mind clouds; mind clears, will surges; will uplifts, body revives.
12:25 AM Jun 17th

Over-achieved, underpaid; we artisans thus exploited by users, who then continue indulging monies on other fads.
7:00 PM Jun 15th

Push too hard, repelled from desires; embrace with love, wealth draws in.
11:43 AM Jun 15th

Pulling back

2011-06-26T11:49:00.003+08:00

I'm thinking of no longer overtly advertising my ebooks for sale, and of removing their availability from PayLoadz.
Rather, more publicity of their existence can be directly through what I publish, and if you like, buy direct from me.

Local-account readers can pay into my current account to avoid higher pricing due to middleman checkout, while for overseas ones, we're still perhaps forced to let PayPal earn.
Download can then be through a temporary online folder between us.

Such a change in our interactive relationship needs closer direct contact.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.2

I'm now also on Tumblr

2011-06-25T13:12:00.000+08:00

I just moved into another little home office.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

Little prose: My Tweets on Twitter 2011 May

2011-06-24T22:16:00.002+08:00

Madness lies beneath veneeer of stressful sanity; the abnormal within façade of strident normality.
4:06 PM May 31st

Apologies can be withdrawn from the ungrateful and disrespectful who try to rub in our mutual fallibilities.
9:22 AM May 31st

The compulsive fool denying basic personal needs to complete self-vowed do-or-dies; unrealistic romantic doomed against status-quo success.
7:55 AM May 19th

It's so human to think one suffers more terribly and knows far better, than what so many worldwide already understand and endure.
2:06 AM May 15th

The future: paper or plastic? Both: smartphone on a folding sheet.
6:16 PM May 14th

Idealists — exploited; Ambitious — climbed; Shrewd — survived; Wise — endure.
1:12 PM May 12th

Can hear, can receive; cannot empathise, cannot connect.
3:57 AM May 11th

Lament the shallow passing of time in few words here; would you not celebrate the essence of message in them? I would change.
2:26 AM May 10th

Little prose: My Tweets on Twitter 2011 Feb, Mar

2011-06-24T22:16:00.001+08:00

May the day come when unsellable exorbitant housing is used for free, to shelter needy young and old wounded by runaway greed.
11:30 AM Mar 28th

We are Study Nation, but that's just force-fed, crammed input. Original, creative, free thinking and activity make for meaningful output.
11:19 AM Mar 28th

Yes, we can regenerate ourselves: write short, release, broadcast, heal; our stories reaffirm us as if spiritual endorphins.
8:29 AM Mar 15th

I am so sad… honest writers don't typically make money like top bankers… this world values abstract wealth far more than rich imagination…
7:09 AM Feb 21st, 2011

Somebody else's ambition

2011-06-24T22:04:00.001+08:00

Don't have to expunge the original childhood heartland spirit of living.
Don't have to obediently favour the too-early schooling hours past, to become the compliant and conforming employee present and future, locked into the battery farming of overtime work, stretching through weekends and holidays.

No need for blind faith that top scoring in abstract, rigid, limited studies guarantees a certain future of status and wealth.
No need for unfounded assurance that slowly climbing rungs of hierarchies gets one to the illusory peak of questionable power.

For that matter, the ultimate fantasy is that one form of living thing is superior to another, for the most 'lowly' virus can still fell the most 'exalted' human.
For that matter, the utter fiction lies in membership with some formally organised absolute belief brings final salvation — no, it's still personal hard work and the greatness in each individual that makes some semblance of it so.

So expand awareness beyond body fat, exercise quotas, toxic medications and exorbitant beautifications, for the naked truth is one dies, miserably or peacefully, from sudden, unexpected accidents, despite the best treatments which cause the most exquisite agonies meanwhile.
And expand awareness that within the memories of experience, and challenging life itself, lie true happiness, and not material possessions that cannot stop rotting over time, or some 'eternal' memorial when already decayed, cremated, become fertile soil, or fossil fuel.

Let exorcise the mental demons of fear, anxiety, stress, depression and their servants ambition, greed, hatred and envy.
Let focus a life lived fully with every passing now, doing right and best because from within says so, not from some mortal, flawed expert from without shrieks so.

Heart's value

2011-06-24T17:41:00.002+08:00

The great sale has failed to entice me.
All along I've not been turned on by clothes, watches claimed to be too cheap on offers, but really, still costing hundreds of dollars apiece makes them suspicious cash cows with which to reel in blind bargain hunters.

As for things I really like, books went digital ages ago, and one handful of web sites provide that stimulating fiction of original imagination and creativity down these long and lonely years.
For news and non-fiction, two handfuls of online links have provided more understanding than heavy hardbound books, paper yellowing too rapidly down even months and always costing too much.

There has been so much reading offered for free knowledge, that respectable sale offers of discounted promotions fail to attract me, to pay for rapidly obsolete learning which should have been widely available to all, right from the start, especially now in these decades.

Electronics perhaps? Smart phones, touch tablets, video games, humongous flat TVs?
Marketing campaigns have failed to engage me, warmly endorsing more brands and models than I can use at a time, before they oh too quickly fall out of fashion.
I'm supposed to be titillated by the gorgeous features of the select brands they're gushing over, when none has bothered to quiz me on what I really, really look for -- in so behaving, they have repeatedly failed to secure my consistent spending.

Not that they're bothered to earn my money anyway, despite its being a sizeable amount down the years which they'll never have;
more likely they'll just write us off as too troublesome, while desperately struggling to look for more new difficult customers.

By the way, I've not been asked to reveal that I prefer the substantial to the flashy, pragmatic tools over sleek packaging, the value-priced rather than overpriced luxury as status symbols.
Little wonder folks like us are overlooked for the extreme profits from flawed star products, since we belong with the long tail of truly great but still modestly behaved ones!

So the sprawling mega-malls that have turned our island nation into a retail giant, we do not contribute efficiently to your factory generation of revenues.
We remember still that we're dignified human beings, not manufactured products and faceless economic units.

We have learnt to resist "but everyone wants it, because we say everyone's doing it", just as we reflexively ignore those large, loud, gaudy commercials, which keep squandering so many precious resources in order to keep being largely ignored by all.

So when are people going to stop trying to earn money from me, and we start synergising actual wealth in all its diversity?
I continue learning down that road for ordinary guys.

A sudden end

2011-06-24T01:20:00.002+08:00

WR 104 GRB

We had survived many outside disasters, and even more which we had created internally within our species and myriad cultures.
But this was one finality which, despite all our millennia of technological evolution, it happened too instantaneously for our ensemble civilisations on-planet to meaningfully, significantly react.

And so we are gone. Irrevocably. Forever.
We had survived volcanoes, tsunamis, climate change.
We had recovered from devastating planetary war and global industrial degradation.
We even averted extinction events by world-killer meteorite, coronal mass ejection and a man-made micro black hole.

But with all previous crises we barely had enough time, and managed to gather and sustain enough collective, collaborative will to muster resources and pull through.
Not this round.

The hypernova of a nearby super giant could only be seen when light finally arrived for this world to witness the event.
At the same time the most brilliant cosmic spectacle of vast gamma ray burst scorched our surface of ocean and all extant life, as had happened several times already in this earth's galactic history.

So all we ever existed for, stood for upon this ground has been wiped out, as if we were never here from the start.
But then why am I spreading this message to you, that once upon a time we were there?

Because while we had no possibility of saving our original world, our sentience had spread in universal directions, seeding all possible habitats in our spiral arm of stars.
I am the deduction end program of countless speculative algorithms which just as immediately went into activity, once contact with home world was massively lost.

So we will prevail, never forgotten as the cosmos stores our potential signatures in its infinite variations.
As for our mortal concerns on the now orphaned star systems themselves turned parents, there're archives including me to motivate continued transformation of descendants, from where the original lost ancestors left off.

A burst of utter destruction triggered our future's creation.

Of flat, rising and bridge

2011-06-22T19:17:00.000+08:00

back to oh so original Tassie again

13:35, December 14, 2006

Launceston, Tasmania

There is more to you than meets the casual, preoccupied eye.
You hum with vibes deeper than what I've experienced, growing up and working in the city.

We walk across the manmade carpet that is the grass field, and look at the narrow waters widens out here, and stand respectfully humbled before the spurs of your headlands, where carpets of trees on slopes anchor the dainty bridge straddled above the dark mirror of the water surface.
Beyond, more highlands beckon.

I am more alive than I ever thought possible, more calm than I could have imagined of existence.
I have been here forever, but have never arrived or returned before.

The song which I struggled to sing in urban build-up, so taken for granted as natural upon this spot.
At once seemingly oblivious of the hopes and anxieties of just one insignificant me, and yet so accommodating of every who ever passed by in this timeless existence.

Years later I would learn of the original humans who perished as they were displaced by foreign kin.
Years down the road I understand how you have similarly made quieter those who came after.

Standing here I feel again earth mother speaking to me, when this lost great-grandson has been reunited with her in moments vanishingly brief.
I hear the deeper, vast original melody of silence, and I know however lost and poor I would ever become, my own note has never been alone.

Lighthouse

2011-06-16T18:19:00.000+08:00

She continues communicating still.
The As she scored as a junior schooler, for purposes of entering prestigious high: well, she still foolishly holds on to the sentimental nostalgia of it all, the first sunburst of her earliest successes.

Long after her peers went on to delve in authoritative mathematics, dominative science and leveraging technology, she sticks to the imperfectly evolved words of a potpourri language, impoverishing herself every day with the richness of creative combinations of expressions.
While around her, contemporaries have piled themselves with material goods, their worldly accomplishments comparable to every unspectacular, modest experience she has gained so much for herself.

And yet she continues lacking the wisdom to resign herself to the structures of society which govern everyone and everything, retardedly imagining herself free to enjoy the original purity of childhood, the creative sandbox of premature retirement.
So she remains severely unemployed, drastically unemployed and so extremely anonymous; she will never make it into Who's Who this lifetime.

She continues communicating still.
Amongst her cohort she has seen politicians decline in influence, business people go bankrupt, brilliant folk collapse mentally, and robust persons leave after accidents.

Yet the fun and joy continue, while her account never stops declining from little to zero.
Yet the actualization of family togetherness and children growing up and global trending and life's unexpected encounters carry on flowing in to satisfy, much like an everlasting fountain of youth.

She continues communicating still, a lighthouse of the voice turning the noise of chaos into music.

Apparitions

2011-06-15T13:50:00.002+08:00

We're doomed, he realised, if we continue this way without breakthrough.
But he would share this awareness sparingly, only with those with the capacity to understand, and only if they were willing to listen.

And sensibly so.
The island was a utopia.
Things were at their best ever, despite the unabating threats continuing to come in, of costs and competition, after they initially loomed over the horizon.

No, he affirmed, most folk did not want to act against the perceived danger, citing personal weakness, comfortable inertia, and fear of the untried and the different.
All the more the conclusion that inevitably many will suffer more than before, in the coming inexorability.

The fever of the season was over, as he understood it had to:
the frivolity of the trendy young, whose bark was worse than bite.
Come the second choosing of the year, all will be under incumbent control decades proud, but emulating that great country of the north, with its enforced stability millennia dominant.

So he sees the signs, and tries to prepare his own as much as he can;
like another beachgoer unable to reach high ground, before the next tsunami.
Only last night, private students gained more experience, dabbling with their digital handhelds, than they ever did with the pretext of pen writing upon paper, compelled into growing-up playtime converted to learning overtime, rigidly seated, straitjacketed towards antiquated exams.

Everyday since has been spending season.
The voices in many minds are the commercial hype of engineered fashion, and not your unique inner voice rapidly going extinct.

The shopping malls now are your vast outdoors, the final frontier which one never again has to leave for foreign lands to explore.
Mouths will fill with morsels of wallet-draining alien cuisine, as we forget to cook our own rice and stir-fry with soya sauce.

And so the nation loses humble, original cultural roots, in favour of the snob appeal of prestigious, profitable imports.
More crucially, society keeps losing yet another generation of that rare subset, of independently thinking nobodies and frugally creative modesty, but remains too drugged to properly mourn and repent.

He closes his book now, the records he continues to work on.
We're doomed, he realised, if we continue this way without breakthrough.

Intransigent

2011-06-05T04:14:00.002+08:00

straitjacket associate

The undead were pummelling the gates of the temple, but the acolytes were holding fast there, as their Elder arrived.
The skeletons they could smash, the ghouls they could bar, but now the specters had arrived, and the faithful began to fall quickly.

Even the mystical walls of belief surrounding the holy site were being scaled by these ghostly monsters.
Here, an old man fell, drained of life;
there, another young woman went limp, her vivacity robbed.

Elder marshalled the defences as best he could, but the waves of deadly assault were set to wipe out all in a matter of time.
His most powerful prayers to dispel the encroaching unliving were too slow at targeting the unexpectedly nimble attackers.

Then without announcement, sunbeam shone from behind and above him, spotlighting the spectres and weakening their deathly auras.

Elder turned his head to meet an unexpected visitor.
The Versatile formerly known as Walker from somewhere else had arrived to lend unwelcome assistance.

This Islander consummately solidified sun power, first within one spectre, then another, and their protesting howls faded, as they dissipated harmlessly.

Then the Versatile's feet touched landing, to be greeted by Elder's formal and thankless: "You have to report at the gates before you can enter."

The man from Island smiled, as if hearing a familiar silly joke, and replied silly,
"For that, they have to be cleared first."
And he raised his arms and chanted, levitating as he turned to face steel frames and stone openings.

Skeleton bones shattered and ghoul bodies imploded as the Versatile disintegrated these lesser unliving.
Elder grimaced, as if witnessing some unsanctioned and therefore suspiciously sacrilegious act.

"Only those with faith can do that," he verbalised in response.

"That's why we're called Versatile mostly commonly, amongst monikers."

"But you have not obtained our temple's approval to do so."

Islander cut to the chase, "Look, Elder, your temple together with your precious acolytes is about to fall terribly.
I'm just a passer-by with a mortal's natural urge to aid his fellows."
He called out to everyone to hear, "Behold the approaching doom up the slopes!"

Those who could receive looked downhill of the main approach, at the dread party of steadily advancing monstrosities masquerading as well-dressed folk.
Elite vampires.

Elder frowned, his voice beginning with cold annoyance at being seemingly upstaged by this young upstart, "Silence, thee! We are invincible through our convictions!
Begone, interloper, before we turn our attentions to dispersing you too.
You are hereby ostracised!"
The old voice climbed to a cracking high in volume, and acolytes briefly turned heads, clearly hiding desperation for any welcome distraction, however brief the respite.

Versatile took advantage. Steadily eyeing the elder, he replied, "If it has to be this way -- I cannot allow you to mislead any more, all these sincerely devout to their untimely, needless deaths."
He narrowed his eyes, finally verifying the true nature within, and promptly raised his staff, which only recently had retracted spear head:
"You are revealed! "

Blue staff light cast upon Elder's face, plainly showing to everyone else a hitherto undetected one who would not die: Fossil.

Like my words? Buy my ebooks

2011-06-01T00:00:00.000+08:00

— Yearly collections of past works in Simply Words blog —

PDF format
Download with PayLoadz
Buy with PayPal or major credit cards.

A happy, happy story

160 content pages:
149 pieces of short essays and fiction, scenic photos, poetry, poemlets,
works and little prose

Free: Logue
3 works with scenic photos

Free preview
Front cover of free Logue

US$14.85

The rules and I

117 content pages
114 pieces of short essays and fiction, scenic photos, poetry and poemlets

Free: Plain colour front cover

Free preview

US $11.85

Coping

78 content pages
71 pieces of short essays and fiction, and scenic photos

Free: Plain colour front cover

Free preview

US $7.65

2010 work shall now fade from this display

2011-05-31T08:07:00.003+08:00

Dear readers,

With the official sale of A happy, happy story, the posts of 2010 will begin to disappear from here.
The first slate to go will be until May, and onwards monthly from there.

This also applies to my poemlets and little prose over at Twitter, which have been included in ebooks since 2009's Coming the other way.

Painstaking, plain steps

2011-05-30T19:34:00.002+08:00

The 2010 compilation of my works here (and on Twitter) — A happy, happy ending — has already been uploaded on standby for PDF ebook sales.
What I've left to do, before actually launching it for purchase, is to build up the broadcast to all possibly interested readers.
This news post is one of those progressive public steps.

I'm currently only used to announcing here, on Facebook and Twitter.
I have become familiar with what Blogger can and cannot often do for me, just like I'm reasonably comfortable with how Facebook connects with friends and associates alike.
Without such an experience, it was awkward earlier trying to reach out to the world online.
Twitter continues to be the gateway announcer to posts here, as well as where I can place very, very short writes (or should we say types) to share.

The compilation of A happy, happy ending finished by January this year.
Since then, compilation has continued for the 2011 ebook, Coming the other way.
Completed too was a short 3-piece work with photos, of our recent Perth trip, which is given away free with every copy sold of A happy, happy ending.

I have also written of change in ebook front cover design, from a tiling of my own photo, or a coloured plain background and font, to a pure black-and-white with a singular photo in the middle, as elaborated in this post.

Other concurrent projects include looking back at scenic photos of our Tasmania journey 5 years ago, and writing current responses to them; as well as re-visiting posts with new ones, starting from the 2008 compilation of Coping.

So why did it take 5 months to launch something completed for last year?
Both because other things in life keep taking precedence, and also I need to feel right about my personal enterprise before I proceed on.
Matters of higher priority include other limited income opportunity for the family to survive, which includes whatever training I have to develop work materials.
And about being comfortable with my self-publishing, I stand at the other end of the range of people, quite far away from those who just want to sell to as many strangers as possible, for as much profit as possible.

Ultimately it's better to have no regrets going exactly where one wants to go, doing what one really wants to do.
Perfectionism in disguise? No longer, I think, and believe.
More like you cannot hasten a little sapling's growth by pulling out its roots.

Much ado about

2011-05-28T22:23:00.004+08:00

inspired by 686B 73

Once, a village well was tainted.
Too quickly, some villagers tried organising a mob to lynch the mayor responsible.

Many were horrified that the body of an old man lay at its bottom, making it impossible to then use its water to make clean soup for families to drink.
The site was contaminated forever, the old spirit would certainly leach into the stone sides, haunting the passage down, from surface to water table.

Even though there was no sensible proof of such a thing.

Several of the loudest locals demanded that the guilty village council replace the errant well, filling it, while still operating, with earth, and oversee the sinking of another, paying with their blood if necessary.
In a while, they realised that they themselves had to put in the labour, as there was no one else, for quite a distance around, to do any work for them.

Yet no one stepped forward to mourn the poor old chap who had lost his life amongst the dark waters.
A few witnesses had cursorily gotten the supposed culprit arrested without trial yet, suspicion by way of her being first on the scene to draw water for her family, on that fateful morning night, while it was still dark.

None asked why she would still have wanted to loiter around at that time, if she were really aware of the dastardly act, and if she was even culpable of it in the first place!
Anyway, her stoning in the square would be postponed indefinitely, while her fellow heartless denizens ate out their hearts lamenting their imaginary doom, of poisoned water.

Imaginary I say, for many assumed someone else had disposed of the disgusting body, after the former old man had been hauled up, at arm's length, from the groundwater below, and been tsk-tsked at length, with much self-pitying horror.
But in fact, no one bothered to touch the supposed corpse thereafter, which was not actually dead after all, and had picked up himself unceremoniously, head shaking with much disappointment as he strolled off unwitnessed.

For he was the local earth god come to test his supplicating constituents, and they had been found very much wanting.
So that was it then -- by his powers of nature, the villagers' fields would turn dry, the well water become muddy, the rains when they came would be storms precipitating torrential floods.

And oh, the earth god added, superstition would also drive the most ardent instigators amongst them raving mad.

Lift into dark

2011-05-19T07:25:00.000+08:00

00:47, May 14, 2008

Bishan Street 25, Singapore

another on Google Nexus S, no zoom possible

The space elevator is not yet open.
It hangs on actual threads, indestructible by their carbon configurations, from ground right into space, saving humans the fiery destruction of rotted-plant solid, liquid and gas fuels in more sky-heating pollution, for a quieter, enduring, more ecological solution.
But business has not started yet, right, given that surface base is not lighted in opening, and the majestic rising columns are not similarly twinkling with like stars?

But space elevator has actually been ever open, since it stood tall.
What is the need for artificial bright, to rage against the endless night of outer space eventually met, as we ascend?
Darkness, ever been so scary upon our planet of sun-day and moonless-night, of stars too far to allay our primal fears of ancient horrors.
But out there in vast vacuum, it'll be the way of lives, for countless more generations.
So why sweat the absence of colour?

Because a romantic party of my heart is left behind up there, when actually I know one day a large part of me will be left behind, when we actually migrate cosmos-wards.
Until then, for a relatively long time in the remainder of my instantaneous life-span, let me stand and walk and take a photo, in the warm humid of a silenter early morning, and wildly imagine that this uncompleted construction site holds the great promise of ad astra of one of these nights, for many aeons more to come.

Port to the skies

2011-05-19T07:23:00.001+08:00

19:13, May 13, 2008

Bishan, Singapore

finally! taken on a Google Nexus S

I launch through grilles at sliding windows, but do not hurtle down to a gory, pasty end.
I lift lightly upon windless breeze, and leave in tapering rise past red brick roof, lit rock-and-steel lasagna, and porous high-rise slabs and obelisks, until I'm aloft in cloudy dusk skies.

So am I expected to launch vertically into the utter cold of space?
But why be so predictable?
Why surrender again to cold hard science, that the moon is not made of green cheese, and that we cannot breathe as we transit between Mars and Europa?

Why should I distance so far, from dinner cooking for sale just below in the food centres, and not just soak in the evening activity below, from this densely populated island of human ants?
To enjoy for once the detested hot and damp and familiar of our spot upon this globe, knowing elsewhere would never feel this original, being too cold or dry or foreign.

And then I shall glide around, but I'll never admit this to you, not even with excusing it as fantasy in an unarranged mind.
This is my little space, and for all your conformity, all your world-sweeping trending, you have not taken that eternal, aloft child in me.

The next ebook covers: Goodbye photo-tile floral, hello plain-white and photo

2011-05-14T23:58:00.002+08:00

Dear readers,

Last year, I did my limited best to create the covers for Coping and The Rules and I, and came up with a flowery tiled pattern of a photo, and coloured words.
I also created plain colour versions, following feedback.

Now I find myself feeling more right, reverting to simple white, and letting black font and a singular half-width photo speak for itself.

The cover for the upcoming A Happy, Happy Story, collecting 2010 work, is the last of this 'flowery mosaic'.
No plain-colour alternative cover will be issued free and bundled for sale.

Instead, the bundle will include this free Logue ebooklet, reflecting our recent re-visit of Perth, which sports the new minimal white design.

When the time comes

2011-05-14T01:35:00.001+08:00

The time isn't ripe yet.

The message has been broadcast as fireworks, but it hasn't sunk into the majority psyche.
The body of works has been archived, but the masses have not yet bought into the ideas.

The signs have not percolated thoroughly enough to rouse the instincts.

The righteous still sit aloof from the rightful, bewildered hurt soon to be resumed with unhearing overweening confidence, whilst the unassuming ground unprovokingly chips away at the final of the straw.

Meanwhile, another group of members continue in spiritual decline, as heads not renewing and control not alive freeze behaviour in living stone, not caring that within their cracks, young waters will trickle, weathering all the hardness too soon into sand and clay.

The need is not felt, not understood yet.
For when it is, street people will own the ivory towers.
And faux religion will become daily living philosophy not just for the status quo.

Old man alone upon the bench

2011-05-10T22:52:00.001+08:00

Old man alone upon the bench
And what is all he sees?
Staring dazedly into space,
Does he travel through times?

Of a youth witnessing atrocities
Deprivation and tribulation?
Of a vanished childhood never sweeter
Whatever the early circumstance?

Of a young adult diligent and erect
And the joy of new life and family?
Of middle age, and what unsettling brings
And dearest dreams entrusted to futures?

And what now, as life closes in and wraps up?
An incessant replay of old favourites?
Meshing into the background, always so,
or to inspire, of diverse hearts come after?

I stand upon the shores of the sea…

2011-05-10T22:45:00.000+08:00

I stand upon the shores of the dusk-come sea, and gaze into the waving expanse stretching beyond my senses.
One day, my ship will arrive, laden with bountiful fruits of the sea, harvests of the distant, produce of the foreign.
But until then, astride all this emptiness, I can only hope.
For it is all I have left.

Hope.
Where once there was desperate optimism.
Added to that was the blissful ignorance of tomorrow still being far away.
Before that the cumulative naivété of a false security and a fake plenty.
And topping that all was once the relative blankness of meek compliance and acceptable obedience.
Now there's — just — hope.

I once believed myself at the foothills of the mountain of success.
I once thought that calculation got one everywhere; complexed into planning; mutated into strategy; guaranteed by theory and convention.
I once assumed that dogged diligence was all that was needed for obscenely great success.

Now I know better, that the truth within alone does not betray.
That all manner of distraction and false glory abound around, but changes naught the honest actualisation which has never deserted.
I do not understand; I understand far less now than all my amassed learning in my life.
But I am also far less bewildered, frustrated, anguished.
I understand… somehow; I accept; yes, this is what it feels to hope, amidst daily action; one step after another.
The ever now is the most important: it stretches with sureness forever.

So I stand at the edge of sea meets land, and I await into the darkening waters of evening.
My eternal fish body awaits me, for when I one day return to swim gracefully in its depths, unfettered.

Bloodied

2011-05-10T22:29:00.001+08:00

Thwack! The imperial agent hit young Lizard really hard, and he fell backwards, blood splattering from his little nose.
"This is for failing to support the will of Above, out of deep gratitude: which you younglings sorely lack."

Even simple-minded Lizard knew enough that he was being victimised. Not only those fewer of years now thought more ill of the imperium up there. In fact, from city elders to village mayors, they led the way, and for Lizard and his mates, these shining examples they gladly followed.

"Who are you dirt serfs to deem yourselves worthy to criticise us?" the second of the three guards took over, "we police our own servants, and the divine Family are capable of self-correction, self-renewal!" To punctuate this, his left foot turned the young man face down towards the dirt, then came down hard in harsh punishment.

Lizard's back crumpled in response, as his smaller shoulder bones broke, and his precious spine snapped.
Much more blood spewed from his mouth, splashing upon then draining into the fertile black earth below.
Now in more agony than even a strong-willed chap like him could bear, Lizard groaned out a shrieking "Mother!!", calling especially as common folk traditionally do, to the bountiful nature that still surrounded these regions.

And this time, at long last, Mother henceforth began to more frequently respond. Powerfully.

As Lizard struggled to raise whatever he could that was left of his broken body, so that he could live moments longer, as his lungs also drowned in blood, the fecund earth beneath him began to ripple, at first like a small burrowing creature scurrying just beneath the surface.
And then the ground started sweeping in waves, causing the trio of the imperials to unbalance around the young man, and then finally fall down.

The ground came alive with a terrible groan, like a heaving dirt dragon!
And Lizard's body melded into it, as he was now energised enough in his agony, to roar his refusal to give in, to die terribly.
Now the special imperial guards screamed, as the undulating waves of ground now returned them their cruelty, snapping major bones then grinding their skin-covered bodies, before mashing their innards and fluids into a fertiliser pulp.
And the surface, now mulched, returned to its unmoving peace once more.

Lizard peeled off from the fresh muddy surface, whole again.
He stood, bowed deeply in respect to nature in all directions, and silently he strode off.
But he understood now.
He had earth blood in him, repeated in thousands like him all over the empire, and beyond. Dragon around had returned to stare down the one self-placed up there.

And in the imperial courts upon the high plateau, the divine son of heaven began his long fretting, as never before, any more.

Change in sea level

2011-05-10T02:24:00.000+08:00

The empire is receding, and the divine ruler by heavenly mandate feels his fearful, mortal beating heart.
The armies are still everywhere, but these days even eagles challenge the imperial dragon flights, while at sea great turtles dare ram mighty dreadnaught ships.
And the people's movement has arisen, where impoverished peasants dare cast off their yokes of serfdom, and believe themselves able to look after their own well being, without intervention from the gods high above.

The divine ruler would vow to crush such insolent resistance, but the world continues to flow in, like great rivers in storm season would eventually break levées and soak the fields of cities, heeding not what they drown and whom they inundate.
It was as if the people had called out to the very earth that supported and nurtured all, and the the mother beneath had answered, granting them spontaneous earth dragon blood — no, unbelievably, returning them what was theirs that had been held in trust for so long.

And so now, from villages to towns and city to metropoli, paupers were sprouting majestic wings, merchants were transforming their bodies and limbs into shiny scaled armour, and they had collectively shouted their ultimatum towards the imperial palace that stood high still, above the lay of the land, "Rule us better henceforth, or it shall be your last!"

The divine mortal shook his head, resting its heaviness upon the fine cloths of sleeves.
Authority concentrated within his exclusive line was diffusing in all directions.
The time for invincible godliness was almost over; the time for flesh and blood greatness had but restarted.

Tracer

2011-04-18T01:49:00.000+08:00

"And how do you propose to track something lost and fleeing, amidst these Caverns Below?"

Seeker could feel his legs start to tremble, at the futile question and the unwavering accusation.
After all, it happened on his watch, and so it was sort of his fault too.
"Well, maybe that 'something' gets itself lost up there in the Maze Middling, like so many uncooperative travellers up into City Above, who do not follow the established routes?" he ventured, half in jest.

The steady glare from the lady overseer showed she was hardly amused.

Moments later, Seeker was leading a small party into dangerously little-charted parts of the Caverns, in search of a pesky monster, to some, or a devious fellow, to more open-minded folk.
It took some time, when they were just outside the limits of mapped spaces, when one of them spotted it.
It of course shrieked in seeming fright, then scampered off, followed by one enthusiastic pursuer, trusting the rest of the party would somehow provide a living way back.
Seeker never got to shout a warning, and that guy was never seen coming back again, even with enough of them left to keep line of sight to the way out.

"This tricky creature is picking us off one by one, while we remain over-confident in numbers," Seeker explained to the rest, "Move as one, strike together."

Easier said than done. The assigned mapper had turned the corner behind the rest, when the fugitive appeared to join the party rear, and made a grab.
Seeker doubled back to hear the mapper's howl of protest cut off mid-air; no longer there.

It reappeared, with a straight face that Seeker was sure hid derisive laughter at them, in its belly.
"Where did you take him?" Seeker demanded of it, the others looking at him in disbelief. Why would it deign to answer they who tried to recapture him?

But it was up to the game, and of taunting and goading them on, especially this expert tracker who even called himself so.
"See-ker." It began. " I took him away, into the between. Teleport. Displacement. Whatever."

"I'd like to see between." Seeker said calmly. "Then take me too!!" He suddenly roared and lunged at it, which welcomed once more with open arms. The remaining two shouted in greater surprise at Seeker's apparent suicide, as he too vanished.

Then reappeared, hugging it instead, as it now groaned groggily, all mischief snuffed out of its being for now.
Noticing jaws agape and eyes wide open, Seeker managed a sheepish smile before lifting a talisman-like object, at the end of non-descript rope tying both him and it.
"Place anchor." That was all he said.

At least now the seer's glaring woman eyes won't pierce him when he brought back the escapee.
And that brought Seeker a needed reprieve of relief.

Bare background:
World of mythic times. Frontier covers the land. Within is a plateau which sits City Above, connected at ground by Caverns Below, and in between by Maze Middling. Overseers monitor the trade and traffic passing up and down.

Growing income

2011-04-17T22:48:00.000+08:00

bringing up the rear after 3 years of prior publication

When I started down this self-publishing road, I somehow already knew I was ignorant of so much that laid down this path, and how I would bring in income for a living.
I likely just assumed that like every other small-time lone entrepreneur, I would have a sufficient market, sell my works, and earn enough income to support the family.

Wait a minute, you might notice.
This sounds like the way I wrote that first post, 3 years ago, which I could bear to accept for further compilation.
But that's right, there's some imitation in going back to the recent past to update it, to renovate further from it.

It isn't that our family is in poverty now, made less as we are, now that my remaining adult line has been orphans for some more time.
It's a silent challenge every moment, still feeling a boy inside, behaving as a man's supposed to, on the outside.

The love for writing, if it truly is a gift for all to see, has opened its doors, and the flood of message has poured forth.
And from the outflow, months closer to forty past, is time to take stock.

I have returned to the land of deadened heart alive, to rejoin the neck-shackling routine of livelihood as prisoner no longer, but now I willingly concede there is security no longer; never was, really.
Yet I admit that now hope and vision are ever more alive, than in over four decades that had to be lived through.

I have learnt to put faith in the future that is truly unplannable, unseeable, unpredictable;
to put faith in what lies inside which is indestructible, but which is wrapped in the fragile, the mortal, and which ages and will not last.

So the nest trap is finally sprung, that long-awaited event long-feared but no longer, and I cheerfully return into its vice grips.
But the boy who loves never left, wide-eyed with the wonder of life ever, believing in the bright, colourful world still.

And now he weaves the story passed on to other younger boys, so that as long as they wish, they would share the fascination of a world never depleted in resource, not lacking in goodness, not deadened bark of human contrivance upon the unperturbed tree of life.

So I love at communication, and work at communication once more.
I await still the doom of money run out soon, no different from close kin waiting for the end, the cancer enemy entering the fallen gates of ebbing life.
But as one who knows days are numbered knows deeper meaning and joy of living, as never imagined possible.

It is no long, lingering death before meeting the coffin.
I cremate, and life stretches as long as it needs to, filling the world with the positive difference as only it can.

Originally published in blog Simply Words on May 1, 2008;
Compiled in ebook Coping

The issue with income

When I was a child student, I think I was typically naive about my future work life, and how I will bring in income for a living. I likely just assumed that like 'everyone else', I will get a job, work under bosses, and be a proper adult.

It wasn't that my family had money problems. Thanks to our working mother, my younger brother and I were ensconced in what was called the middle class.

Not that we usually noticed that comfort, and how lucky we were. In fact, while standard material needs were met, I constantly felt a hunger, a poverty, for deep interests I could not buy stuff for, under our mother's punishing directive for thrift.

Therefore, formative experiences for developing honest potential, while provided enough for, were not rich enough to cause blossoming of original gifts.

I wish that my love for writing had been supported from young as an enterprise. That I had been encouraged earlier towards the arts and humanities, instead of trying to be excellent in everything.

So it was with this family fortune, and the help of benefactors, that I earned a requisite university degree, and made ready to enter the 'working world'.

I thought I had played it safe, getting a job with the public service. As the years went on, demand increased for continuously better performance, strictly measured by policies, not formed from my own natural values. I began to understand the drudgery, behind dedicating to the external goals of large organizations.

It was with this new realization, but still the old lazy thinking that others will provide security, that I crossed over to the small-time commercial.

That became another sobering awakening. It was one thing to quickly spot flaws, compromises and lasting mediocrity in your employers' setups and work cultures. It is another to know your own, and that they hold the money over you, your future prospects within their businesses, and so they come to own you.

I am grateful to temporarily excuse myself from that nest trap. Like many who dream to work for themselves, and truly own their own income, I keep learning to balance personal vision, against the collective reality of today's world.

I dare to escape the dependency on others for employment. What has been far tougher, is bringing in money, because I bring my dreams into life.

Yes, you might notice I just said the above like a fact, and not just with mere yearning. The difficulty was always accepting the importance of convictions, and not fearing that the ongoing process of creating your wanted reality, makes you feel and seem silly.

That seemed to be why I felt impoverished while growing up, even though apparently not wanting for my needs.

And also why the recurring nightmares of my working 20s have been dying out in my reforming 30s. To lose oneself using excuses, of the working society at large, and the need for money, is a long, lingering death, before meeting one's coffin.

Hell here

2011-04-16T04:44:00.000+08:00

recalling earlier…

You pathetic worm.
You've struggled so long against your weaknesses, and still in your middle age have not summoned up the maturity to get on top of yourself.
And for all your troubles, you've burnt out.
Weakling, you've fallen sicker than you thought possible.

Valued your marvellous throat too much, haven't you?
The wellspring of your eloquent words and articulate influence?
Well, it sure sucks now, the soreness that would not stretch mere days but longer, into the weeks and, perhaps, month.
Who would have thought that all the stress with trying harder, would lead to a breakdown in your more treasured region of your body?

And feel your over-heated body!
How could someone as old as you ever have high fever again?
But did you really work so hard?
It seems not, for the weeks of incubation running up to your illness hell, you procrastinated.
Dallied. Twiddled your thumbs.
And like one not warmed up and springing to strenuous exercise, you are the analogy of tore a ligament.

The suffering will not end soon now.
It is not even certain you will learn your final lesson, even though.
Somehow, somewhere inside you, thou needs summonst the original dragon.
Or all is lost, in slow motion, exquisitely prolonged for duration of natural life.

Dénouement

2011-04-16T01:56:00.000+08:00

It happened quietly, in the silence that it was meant to.
Sage.
That longed for, imagined archetype he was to become.
Now active.

No longer could he only reach into his imagination, and make believe a mythic personage who was the vessel of his hopes.
In this limited, linear, inexorable reality, he came into his power with himself.
Need not ambition. Nor acquisition.
But sure would be the affirmation that had to come, as water had to flow downwards from gravity.

All he needed these years was just face the pain he was running away from.
It had all been so queer; he feared not suffering, which he had had to endure more of, simply because he tried to evade it.
What sense did that make? He already possessed that which makes weathering misery possible.

Now he only needed to revert to calm. Clarity.
And feel the energy to change reality, one step at a time, always there in some form.
Faded from obvious when exhausted, brightly obvious when refreshed.

And the frustrations lost count, the wants innumerate, the constraints relentlessly crush pressing, they drained away.
No need for so much.
So little needed to thrive, actually.
Just me, and my own.

And so that was what Sage meant.
It meant wisdom, not intellect.
Its source was not in the high and mighty, but in the vast stretch of ground, fluid and sky.

Ready now to meet the coming death that aging brings.
Prepared by the moment to experience the certain flurries, that life's changes keep delivering.

Another majesty

2011-04-16T01:18:00.000+08:00

The Tasmania story of 5 years past has barely begun, and continues, and will continue on

13:24, December 14, 2006

Launceston, Tasmania

I know I'm not as much to look at, compared to my tropic kindred.
Where they wear their trunk barks fully clothed, mine reveals more bare flesh with only slivers of tease.

And the leaves are not the luxuriant crowns weighing down upon branch baskets, nor are they large, leathery and loudly green.
But in this cooler and drier, they would do just fine.

Besides, I am older than you, and our current growth older than your equatorial swaths.
Our clans are older than your human kind, whether or not you started recording your brief existence already.

And now you dare to pave us, trim us back, keep us at bay while you impose settlement.
But we have been here long, to the extent of you losing count and therefore feeling timeless.
A magic exists in the air of this place, which even the imposition of your urbania would merely overlay.

Come, come in amidst our greens and wets, and breathe of the ever story that sings without noise.
You hear it in your solitary breathing, in the loud pounding of your hearts heard nowhere outside yourself.
You feel it in every foot-covered climb step you take, in every anticipation of chilly water upon your skin-pore.

Welcome, city-dweller, into our home now alien to you, again.

Horror in plain sight in the night

2011-04-15T04:42:00.000+08:00

It was another ordinary morning-night, when the deepest, darkest quiet existed, before the break into day once more.
The middle-aged man was the mostly silent ghost, up and awake when most others were asleep, busy with the day's/night's work, his mind brightly lit by the inner sun of his thoughts, and the outer lamps of the ceiling.

Taking the usual break to stretch the untrained muscles of his unfit body, and to mentally stretch away the overheated strain of gazing and tapping, he looked out of his window in distracted nosiness, at the over-lit open space below.
He spotted something unusual, and it grew towards him.

There was the initially ridiculous sight of the apparent stereotype of a haunting — walking white sheet topped by a hairy mop of dark, which promised a horrid face hidden beneath, and what greater horrors in the rest of the excuse for an undead body within.
And then, like a badly predictable horror movie ploy, what stood for a head turned to look at the man, a few levels up, peeking unblinkingly out of small window, rooted and fixated.

At least the apparition's eyes which showed off the pale face did not carry one of such intense anger, that a living mortal would die on the spot.
But it was real, so real to the man, and it was awfully happening to him!
It seemed so normal a gaze from a late-night passerby, so why was he feeling the paralysis of terrible dread.

His mind now screaming soundlessly, the man fought hard to summon whatever courage he had, whatever spiritual strength, whatever stainless-steel willpower, as it looked on up into him, and utter terror assaulted his every consciousness.
Whispers that were not told of his ultimate doom and failure, of the fall of this here community and nation today, of the forever futility of all the positive futures humanity and its technology dangled promise of.

And no one knew of this, no one heard sound from him, none knew of the terrible struggle being waged, nor could they helped him had they been aware, and tried as they might.

The ageing man gave his best unknown struggle ever, and finally won for the price of a senseless husk.

It was yet another typical morning, and a portly middle-aged man slumped by his window, body slightly turned back, a faint smile oh so slight upon his plain features, a little saliva drooling from a corner of his lips.

And none knew why this was victory, why the fallen had his glory.
Not that it mattered, except to him.

Not invincible?

2011-03-27T21:42:00.003+08:00

The first attack was a stab from the base of the skull into the brain, to make sure the Versatile lost the presence of mind to counter with magic or mental power.
Then the battle mage amongst them thrust into the victim's chest, his spell ripping aside the rib cage as his hand clawed around the heart beating no more, quick-freezing it; he tugged outwards, and organic tissue shattered in icy fragments.
The assassins rejoiced.

"Invincible Islanders — pah!" The stabber cheered at yelling volume. "We just successfully murdered one of their kind! Where's the invulnerable smugness now, huh?! Where?!"

Once the racket died down, the five in this evil party decided to divide up the human carcass, dismembering the corpse in the time-worn ritual of quartering, as each carried away head or attached limb.
They would scatter to the winds, to different corners of the still-vicious Frontier, lest their self-styled goody enemy had some secret necromancy, to bring dead body back to unlife.
Into The Tyranny one went, while another headed for nearby Hostile, and a third to Infest; oddly enough, the fourth and the fifth, the head-bearer, made themselves scarce somewhere closer to the Kingdom of goodness and its Unseen Living Wall.

In the moons that passed, unnoticed and untracked by all save Island, the murderers unanimously experienced changes in ethics and morals, as each gravitated towards Kingdom, and all ended up living in the noble Wall.
But the body parts of their dastardly act were never found, seemingly vanished from the world, and none questioned their treacherous past in their transformed, reformed present selves.

-

Which did not come as any surprise to their supposed Island Versatile 'victim', whose mind left its previous shell intact, and was reformed with physical certainty back home, the instant he was 'eliminated'.
Such an obvious and clumsy attempt to destroy him was foreseen not only villages away, but weeks away too.
So the Versatile decided to leave a parting gift.

With his body distributed amongst those who meant him harm, his parts exuded an unrelentless and positive influence, which modern science would call genetic and still not come close to the full explanation.
Such an influence followed the men and women villains into the foulest lands, and had remaining power enough to draw them back towards better nations, until eventually they resettled into a better life.

Another object lesson in the inexorable.

Bare background: Island folk are the true pinnacle peoples of mystic World, though few realise that. Each a Versatile hero competent in all skills and feats, they are effectively invincible, even after they fall in regrettable conflict, as this story shows.

This writing links with Versatiles and Unreturned.

Diversity tree in another land

2011-03-27T19:01:00.003+08:00

this ends the tiny memory-set for Perth 2011 January

17:52, January 16, 2011
Perth, Western Australia

Did not expect to find a reminder to the mighty banyan, upon another great land, far from the humid heat of ours, far from their northern coastals of comparable clime.
For this was southwest, where hot and dry replace warm and wet.

Shaded by artificial growths, surrounded by a bake that was not humid, the worst of the day wended into evening, as this quiet being presented itself with languid dignity.
Are you sibling or cousin to those I know back where I came from, and our regional neighbours?
Or are you analogous convergence?

Do you represent too the Pancasila of harmony in diversity, by other names native to this ground, sky, these waters?
Of course you do, at least in your different ways of branching out and spreading laterally upwards.
And of harmony? Well, you do not snag human walkers nearby for food, or poison the soils around so that no other shall vegetate, so yes, you stand for peace in this mortal settlement.

I cloud in confusion, remembering only yesterday that I stood where I have lived almost all this while, remembering those that looked like you.
Still they stand, at strictly regulated intervals, lining the roads in perpetual attention, their green decorations actually the natural spirit of bus stops and black-surface traffic.

I smell their musky wetness in residential urban now, 'specially after the rain, unlike the dryness my blocked nose cannot smell of you, and the desert-ness of big town imposed upon.
And you look more sinister, thy roots more snake-like, thy thick branches more the brute.

And so my silent bewilderment remains, of this place, your place — will ever mine?
Where I have come from, the richness I reject?
Where we are now, present but lost in uncertainty?
Where we will be, the dark, fluctuating unknown?

But this other land wordlessly agrees with my own heart: it matters not.
What matters is we are here, you and I.
And what we do now builds the future, a brick at a time, a leaf fall with its every moment.
You may not be here in that then, we may not be there during that when.
But where we actually land up, our forever is now.

The builder's heart weary

2011-03-20T13:50:00.000+08:00

of social simulations and destroyed towns

Naiveté died again, and again that morning.
The week before, idyllic paradise was shattered, in the event that never happened again, until the moment it did.
This week after, proud technology was again pulverised, in yet another event most extreme yet, that it was not supposed to exceptionally happen; but it did.

I went out into nature, and built me a town that represented our best hopes.
Then the reality of negative events that removed the world we know, came in to slap me hard on the back of my head, and I lost my senses, of the right and the pretty.

I gaze out amongst the farms of modern windmills, providing clean and green power, and I can only see their actual fallen counterparts, shattered on their main masts, fan blades brutally snapped or bent weirdly under.

My heart aches at cultivated nature, as only a sub-metropolitan town can sustain and harness, and breaks at their trashed aftermath.
The honey farm is hive-cracked, those diligent workers not dead have fled to amongst sparse refuge of levelled woods.
The communal garden is a horrifically tossed salad, cracks in the bed creating an uneven, jagged landscape of ruptured, not fertile mother.
At the fishing hole, water has drained out a dry, cracked pot, where only previously sludge waves gorged the mouth with destroyed waste; its healthy fish community, churned into a recycled mulch elsewhere.

The signs of local-level industry have stopped their diligent showing.
The clown school graduates no more survivors to lighten the heavy days now, or restore cheer to the cheerless desolation.
The genetics lab is a shattered, lightless future lamp, none heeding any more the building blocks of life, when the blocks of buildings have been rid of purposeful life activity.

And who cares for alien artifacts in another lab, when they have been stolen and re-buried like forgotten treasures within a temperamental planet, by force of shake and engulf?
We cannot even heed our basic survival desperation now!

Certainly not the bed and breakfast homes dotting this townscape, even more indistinguishable now from uncommercialised houses…
Or the leisurely tea house now spoiled in tea-coloured flood stills, relaxation against daily stress now a cessation of death, freeing so many from such mundane pleasures of existence.
And no more food carts to line the streets, their wooden frames shattered into matchsticle scale, edibles long gone bad, like so much of the larger environs.

Even the groans and cries at the major trauma centre have silenced themselves.
Now none to pull from rubble and mud, now all who can be saved need less desperate attention than even those who cannot clamour for it.
Wordless grieving begun hangs suspended long and slow in the air, before the human being somehow finds the spirit again to clear and rebuild.

Skeletons of plasma billboards, permanently turned off, stand in mute sentry, to guard the silence and blackness of their loss.
When the sun rises yet again, the flattening of the town would feel even more unbearable to gaze at for long, like trying to stare skywards and observe the bright orb.

I will miss the night lights of this artificial town I created, where people walk the streets after dark late.
My vision replaces with optimism snuffed out of a toyland, amidst starlit wild but bright no longer.

But hope will return.
And near-obliteration begins another golden age.
Our dreams will keep us honest in ideals, and one day soon we will shine again, my mind-construct and actual settlements alike.

Still got work to do

2011-03-13T18:12:00.002+08:00

remembering Haiti, Christchurch, Sendai

The unflagging rain was turning everywhere amongst the ruins, into a muddy slush.
Yet he who approached managed to keep his boots wet, not dirty, as he moved towards the older man, who was gazing out at the devastation, hard in thought, face frowning.

"By now, almost everyone in these lands has lost someone to the disasters," the one with unsullied boots began, "whether crushed by earth, inundated by waters, or seared by fire."

"Not to forget tossed by the winds, even in storms," the similarly mature Grower rejoined, as he stood beside the still Sage, his eyebrows still furrowed at the desolation.

Sage then spoke, "Let's start on what we came here to do." He turned to the Versatile from Island, looking fresh and clean despite his clothes wet by rain. "Smith's gone on to clear the rubble, starting from where the need is most dire, where life still pulses buried. Our thanks to you folks for lending magic and mind to the process."

"No need for such formal gratitude," the Islander could not help a slight, gentle amused smile at the corners of his lips, "It is already noble of you five, and befitting of those who come from Island, especially since you have chosen to remain Unreturned for a while longer."

Sage turned back, and walked into the destroyed town which he had just surveyed. "Since we ourselves are difficult to destroy, revealed of our true origins or not, we could at least leave one more good deed to River Town's name."

Ahead, Artist could be heard singing amongst the diminished survivors who had joined in to continue searching for their own fallen kin. Not using his hands to draw or sculpt at this time, or his legs to dance, he employed his voice, which sounded both sad and comforting but not too much of either, and subtly, strangely uplifted all who listened in.
Even Grower felt inspired to work out replanting and regrowing schemes, once enough arable land was cleared to re-nourish the rebuilding.

Smith was one of the many dots still in the distance, lending brawn to the heavy lifting, mostly done by levitation spells, and sheer telekinesis, for in these mythical times huge machines were still not a common given.
Walker, as expected, was moving back and forth, helping to coordinate by communication the strenuous recovery efforts, his very mobility helping to brace up the low morale of so many who had not even begun grieving yet, numbed with shock and loss as they still were.

Sage spoke for all, as the three closed in to join their compatriots, "We wail in sorrow within, although our faces are plain, and our limbs reach forth to help.
Let the women cry more easily than us, on our behalf, as we express more in action."

And in the silence of speech and the noises of exertion, hope slowly returned, and pain became more workable.

Bare background: Mythic times on World, where most lands comprise Frontier, and River Town sits somewhere within. Five from there are Sage, Smith, Walker, Grower and Artist, seemingly everyday heroes who have yet to reclaim their denizen status as the invincible goodly folk of Island — hence their name, Unreturned. When they finally do so, they are immediately Versatile — consummate warriors, mystics, rogues and magi.

This writing links with Versatiles and Unreturned.

Versatiles and Unreturned

2011-02-21T06:09:00.004+08:00

From across the shores these people from Island enter the Frontier by the Islet insertion, one group conscious of their identity and tarrying little before recalling themselves back: these are the Versatiles.
Another group dallies long, intertwined in the fate of the Frontier, for they know not their true greatness, having committed themselves as fully as any other denizen pioneers, until finally awakened: we call these the Unreturned.

The Versatiles are a sight to behold, in action for positive causes, and in conflict against negative forces. They fluently wield all manners of weapons, their bodies and minds weapons too, as they weave in with martial arts and wade out in jumps and dodges, and join battle with psychic attacks, or pull back to unleash magic maelstrom.
'Ware their words, instigators of carnage, for their music will soothe you to end wars, and their songs restore nature against your unnatural destruction.
Understand then why the world sees them sparingly, and necessity uses them rarely, for then everywhere upheavals will return the state of things to natural optimum, and then, wherefrom any more of your naughtiness?

For the Unreturned, harken to River Town and speak with Sage and his pals, Smith, Walker, Grower and Artist, before the evening that they actually Return to Island, and you'll find that however you may try, you could never get them to suspect their true origins.
Instead they are deep into their individual ways of protecting the Town, from its hills to the north to the marsh lands away toward the south, exerting their daily, steady utmost for a relatively untrained settlement against the rigours of incursion by wild lands, and invasion by murderous intent.

And yet Sage continues to advise, guide and research, and despite the obvious wisdom he imparts, the townsfolk grow uncannily wiser.
Smith has his hands expectedly full with all the tools that go into running a town from farm to market, and yet his really fine masterwork on mundane equipment alike, makes sharp eyes suspect that a military arsenal is already ready in reserve.

Walker walks of course, but the environs of River Town are as if thoroughly aware of even all that is hidden, disguised and deceptive in the neighbourhood, as if the two rivers crossing its heart were insect antennae to the very winds.
Grower's like any farmer. except that his crops are not only those just suited to the hot and cold, wet and dry of the area: new herbs and staples, better livestock issue from his houses more fruitfully than an innovative genetics research laboratory of a future world.

And Artist's paintings and sketches and sculptures magically realise into buildings and statues and decorative works, while his prose and poetic verses lend strange psychic strength to the places they seem to protect, as evidenced by the recent wraiths banished to fertilise nearby marsh, or earlier ghasts returned to rest and mulch, in some of the town's hill groves.

Verily, the power that is Island protects the kindred spirit of its neighbouring folk, against the day when they must reduce, withdraw and leave.
But by then, their rightful residences elsewhere would be ready.

Bare background:
This is World of mythic times. Most of the land is Frontier, and River Town seems one of several free, independent settlements. Foremost in goodness, and invincible, is Island and its Denizens. Islet travels anywhere to temporarily extend like a tentacle, and insert Island's influence.

This writing links with Still got work to do and Not invincible?

Refurbished

2011-02-21T01:14:00.002+08:00

You are rejected, in our eyes. Incompetent. Sub-standard.
Second-choice material, likely even worse potential.
It's a wonder to us that your genetic material even crawled out of the evolutionary cess-pool.

Except that you have the singular fortune to live in the right pond.
So you are giving yourself a second chance.
It's trivial, by our indifferent reflex of a judgement.
You will never make history, not even a headline, in any way.
But you might feel less sorry for your perpetually non-elite self, you ever low-caste.

So listen up. Carefully. To what that puny inner voice is telling you.
Yes, that is a sliver of a throwaway program from our crude prototype generation.

Start early. Breeze through routine chores in unending repeated cycles. Attain a state of being constantly free, with no pressing tasks of priority.
Only then may you begin to even taste the normal loftiness of a mere citizen here.

Rest if you must from your feeble exertions, get enough sleep.
Lest you break your overloaded bones from a careless fall of fatigue, and your blob of excessive mass comes crashing down.

And then get up and work, work whatever little your pitiful life has left, to contribute to the greater whole of the community, the greater good of the best-led masses.

But you cannot be taught to go further from here.
Our ranks see no special future for you, except in the drudge of the everyday follower, compliant, passive.
For you are already over the hill, passed over into middle age.
The young, for which all of the best and brightest are for, have been snapped by us, like bear catching stream salmon, or netter by the fisherfolk of other lands.
Consider yourself just so much fishpaste precursor.

For even when you have come on top of your miserable busy-ness, you know nowhere else to go for sure.
And elsewhere, everything is already claimed by us, and our network.

So tonight, in your futile dreams, continue believing about life in a land where you may earn at ease.
For come morning again, your thoughts are rubbish again, in the face of uncaring mundanity.

Playing card games

2011-02-19T23:24:00.000+08:00

credits and debits

We always want your money.
You of course want your money, but don't want to have to fret all the time about protecting from others taking it away.
So you put your money with us, expecting us to serve you tirelessly in the most intimate of needs.
We of course humour you, using your money for our purposes, first to survive and then to prosper.

You get greedy. We get greedy too. Greed is human.
We have lots of synonyms for that: ambition; power; control; leverage; aspiration; calling.
Whatever the excuse, there comes a time when you must spend more than you actually have.
So we give you credit for it.
But you are human, so you over-extend yourself.
And we are human, so we make you pay for having to over-extend ourselves.
No limit to our creativity in squeezing every last dollar and cent possible from you.
For being human, we must survive too.

Of course, so do you, and so you lash back at our topless greed, fees and charges escalating the heights.
But we are among the startest of our kind, so we keep coming up with ways to return from behind, surviving your protests, surviving the laws, and still turning a profit in the end.

So you let us debit your confident savings, not even checking that we can simply blind you again to overspending, then fee you blind once and again, and the next times.

But we are all human.
And in our constant gambling, we play dice with the cosmos and ultimately lose ourselves to the final bankruptcy — yea, both the giants and midgets.
So our stakes were recently stacked in the global casino, where we played new government collaterals, and the "dare to shoot me, I'm too big to die".
And we await our executioner with the wicked axe, for if countries crash, lending crashes, at long last we big banks will too.

But we will never learn, right?
Our children will rise from our bitter ashes of doom, to play the game again to finally lose our common sense.
New economies, finances, fossilised dinosaur institutions.
Where again the best brains are trapped in the most over-sized bodies.
New ways to fool ourselves once more with our mental brilliance of "the house always wins".
Trapped incessantly in repeating cycles of damnation, we once simply called hell.

Unless…
one survives and thrives, by seeing beyond the need, money, greed trap.
But then again, for how long?
Like vampires could famously say, "In the end, the thirst always wins."

Meet and greet

2011-02-04T06:51:00.002+08:00

This starts again the compilation of Tasmania 2006 December, but this creative summary, Pro-Logue, really began its introduction.

13:24, December 14, 2006
Launceston, Tasmania

Encircled in your own grass space, you play the role of welcomer, voluntary or not.
You grow upwards in all directions, bulbous in spots, bark a-peeling, but ignoring anyway the puny human exhortation to keep its machines in limited direction.
Cut off from your brethren this way, you nevertheless project well the soul of the reserve, the immense breathing presence of the woods on cliffs behind your taking point.

I walk in, humbled by your forested majesty, a momentary blip of a visitor to your enduring existence.
We do not yet understand the cold of your warm summer, the dryness of your moist holdings, but we will try to learn the dweomer of your original place.

Can't do worse than a dutiful, brainless lamp-post.

Linked in arms

2011-02-04T06:39:00.000+08:00

and so begins, soon to conclude, part of a micro-compilation for Perth 2011 January,
of which this post, Logue, actually started as an introduction.

13:29, January 15, 2011
Fremantle harbour, Western Australia

I do not know of your many experiences, braving waves out there, to bring back to us those marvellous fishies and sea-fruities.
But seeing you in straight rank, decked out in your smartest uniforms of white tops and blue bottoms, I sense your deserved pride to serve.
And so where I stand, too much a stranger with too little time to become more familiar, I strive to remember you to the best I can.

In that one insufficient moment of life, I take in the sapphire blue waters that buoy you, the nonchalant lunch crowd which enjoys the haul from some of you, the bustling business indoors at my back, where giant pagers beep yet more completed transactions, and still wonder why lovely white sea-meat needs to be eaten with still more salt.

Then family calls and I must be away, lest I hold back the team against the inexorable rush of time.
But I will not let my thoughts of you die, how I never saw you twice in the 90s, preoccupied with the markets in the sun, and later the good coffee and delicious mass-produced chicken pattie.
Too little this tree frog from the red-dot well can perceive of the vast world out there, even when voluntarily evicting from his water-hole.
And so the mind must hope ("I'll be back…"), must imagine ("…'d try to see"), must work on ("keep the dream alive, for everyone's sake").

So long, dignified boats, and thanks for all the fry.

Pro-Logue

2011-02-04T06:20:00.000+08:00

the rabbit hops on once more, as the moon announces a new year in its 2nd day

cool temper of seasons
island at the other end
5 years ago

Our lives had begun to shift into another phase, as one major presence in our lives left with her final dignity.
We could afford to cross islands, one large enough to be continent, and arrive at yet another.
But money only creates bigger worries.

The big airport before the final straits was a new taste of that big-city nation, everyone busy with their important jobs, none interested in the disorientation of a young family travelling their furthest so far, and a young boy on his first long haul.

The quiet meet-up at journey's first-half end, and we were introduced to the modest serenity of this great little island.
To stay in a shared house, a privilege I cannot imagine when and if we'll ever have again.
And our first night out in a real town, where we dined of home but the fare was different, and the first day out ever, where high rocks carried lovely live forest, and cold, clear waters below.
Stream, up-climb, peacocks ("I'm scared!" said our then little one, then the only), swaying bridge;
young denizens celebrating summer plunging down into the warm fun of chilly waters, while I panicked from mere height and frightened cold fingers above;
walking sheer river cliff side without being forced to try and hug it.

The Mc-brekkie, town centre and malls, the graduation walk, the park (monkey menagerie!);
the tall hall, graduation proper, the full-bodied song soaring hauntingly upwards;
the restaurant that early winter night at the casino
(no gambling for kids! no coffee served yourself from the bar!);
the voice of Home singing with ceaseless sweet melancholy inside me for years after and on still.

To behold the next day, a pier with a ship anchored forever in the river;
silent seahorses and hyper-active platypi, and sociable echidna;
to behold a Batman bridge we flew over, from under; but no caped crusader;
to snack from a shop stopped over briefly by the road; envy sheep and cows pasturing at ease;
to mourn possum roadkill which the locals accept unheeding.

And finally we worm south down the island, as our childhood catches up on free park swings the brand of canned soup, and public turnabout by the sea where we saw no swans;
then falling asleep to the scenic drive skirting the east coast, to finally enter motel by picturesque river near the bridge (went the distance did we — cold steel playground slide!)
Another our kind-of-food restaurant open past closing time, and portions that also included breakfast; the oldie feel an indelible memory for good.
Standing radiator in the sleep of night; washing machine in the wake of morn; truly big house.

And so to meet a close one's friend, his Japanese lunch an originality I've not since experienced.
And a chocolate factory which named the region, that had neither lottery kid or eccentric owner:
just hardworking folk knocking off before time, huge bars of hard brown really bulk-cheap, and a free gift pack not to be not paid for again.

As the day winds down into low-sun evening, dinner in the car in the town by the convict-built bridge, and the soundless echoes of memories from way past a century back, in the hedges and trees, in the unchanged past buildings of which so many remain.

The last night, a beautiful houselet (warmed bed!) amidst garden, to wake to a morning of lavenders, before we cross back to important big aeroport, one more wait, and in the end away from the magic, of an island that charmed us, but we could not keep to it, for the summoning pull of reality was far greater.

Logue

2011-02-04T05:42:00.001+08:00

2nd day of lunar new year of rabbit again

hot dry summers, cool wet winters
where summer begins the year

They were meant to be short flights, so the children should have fussed little;
but fuss much they did, and each took turns on separate legs.
One whined in air-motion sick to the stomach, and did not eat all day until land-bound at night;
the other emptied his stomach on the squeeze-cabin carpet.
And then the other, fine toddler he was, could not stop patrolling all the way back, protesting in cry and scream when restrained, most of five hours.

The one, in the quiet safety of hotel room, begged to go home right away, despite having to suffer ordeal again.
But the quieter hum of the land much soothed our tattered spirits, as much as the baking sun would claw at our raw red skin.

We loved the cool wind of summer night, and the lack of life-death tension that plagued most of our homeland lives.
And the next day brought dry heat and the no-less-bright sun, and I gained the lesson of how to bake than stew.

The lake was its ever placidness, the black graces ever dignified with their personal dignity.
But the sea which we had never seen previously, however near we were to coast, was an unbelieving emerald green, and kelp hedges I'd never before connected in my mind.
Wind, spotlight burn, carefree people busily enjoying the beach, working hard on a Saturday at leisure.

And as we headed to harbour, we saw how marine bounty made for another kind of busy-ness, as self-respectingly large pagers signalled heaps of seafood fry that took themselves rightfully seriously.
I had not before witnessed mussels so happily served in tomato broth.

Up and down, to and fro, lodging to the heart of the city.
Shops familiar, the yellow M ever poking its nose everywhere.
Malls mauling down strollers with the mission to expend and consume.
Yet here, something was always different.
White rice and bean sprouts and soy(a) sauce and tofu will never taste the same elsewhere again.

As we were gratefully seated in a metal machine being driven onward relentlessly, day and night:
I saw golden flowers bloom in amazing sweetness, the more intense the daily glare;
I saw browned grass and then I saw quaint traditional houses in unrepeated variety, never the concrete pigeon holes of my town;
I felt the wakeful silence overlooking city night from high park, where familiar strangers all came as we, to listen to even the unspeaking trees talk;
I'd returned to the familiar strangeness of open spaces, and would soon return to the alien familiarity of urban isolation wards.

The salty tap water, and desire for semblance of food from my region, finally did me in.
As we struggled through the hours of waiting and one competitive round after another of security auditions, to finally leave the ground late again anyway, I finished, exhausted, and still as bewildered.

I know I belong where life takes me, but why does discomfort always pair with the blessed bliss of being me?
Mindlessly eating what has been thrust into my mouth all these years, to be fed in another world?
Going back only seldom to the spiritual hearths of my being, because I was meant to spend most my days in pedantic purgatory?