My Book

So my book is out. And I've run through the first very limited printing of 50 copies. Who would have thunk it? I thought 50 would be way more than enough. But, apparently not. So I'm printing 100 more.

I have lists of people to send it out to, people I want to give a copy (because they are not depressed enough, and a little more sadness is always good).

These are strange times.

I can't believe that I printed so many copies, that I'm doing readings and parties and book launches and signing the copies and and and...putting myself out there, as if my life depended on it.

And, while all this is going on, putting together the next book...and the next.

Why the urgency?

Beats me. I really have no idea.

Come What May

My dear, I don't know if you still read this; we have drifted so far apart...but yesterday I launched my first book. I selected a collection of my work - poems, prose pieces, formatted them into a proper book, designed a cover on Canva, found a printer...and printed 50 copies. They were beautiful.

Then, I organised a book launch. In a proper venue. OK, the venue was sort of informal but there was food and wine...both the best of the best...and I asked Mark to bring a speaker and a mike so I could give a reading.

I went up on stage, hammed it up, told a few lame jokes, then read three of the pieces. People clapped. I don't know if they were being polite or they actually enjoyed the selections. I realised that everything I write (even the stuff that is supposedly quirky and crazy) is sad. And that I am sad.

One of my guests (I invited quite a few and some didn't turn up which was good because there was not enough space for everybody) said the book was so sad. He had flipped through it.

(A horn is blasting away now, or maybe it's a car alarm)

I chose the 28th of April for a purpose. It was my mother's birthday. The book is dedicated to her and this was my way of honouring her.

I felt happy, sad and drunk, all at once.

Everyone wanted to buy a copy.

I handed them out for free and wrote things into the books...signed copies.

My dear, you're gone now. But I thought you would have liked to have seen me, liked to have seen me or been there.

Life goes on.

It does, you know. And things only happen when you make them happen.

Most times I feel like I'm being impelled by a force stronger and more resonant than me. I dig my feet into the ground and resist, but it lifts me up effortlessly and bears me along...and I'm too tired to fight it.

So I give in.

I give in, my dear.

I give in.

Come what may.

That Awful Feeling

On Sunday I got the news that an uncle had died more than a year ago. On New Year's Day last year to be exact. My godmother had texted me the news.

I didn't really react - he was old, and it was so long since I had considered him family - he got together with some low class female almost as soon as my aunt died all those years ago and kicked his own children, my cousins, out of the house.

OK it's not as bad as it sounds because they didn't really live with him. Both were at boarding school and they simply went to stay with the aunts for the holiday. But being rejected by their only remaining parent in favour of some stray woman they had never met who was now employed in 'comforting' their father because they could not accept her? Well it was bad enough.

I had not thought about this uncle very much through the years. I heard about him from time to time - he was running a post office, he was jailed for suspected arson - but not much else. As far as I was concerned he was subhuman. What man does that to his kids?

I would have probably continued to feel the same way if my intensely nosey godmother hadn't done some detective work and stalked his new son's FB page. He had another child with this woman... And his son, more than two decades younger than his other children loved his dad. In fact, he considered him a great father, husband and a true inspiration.

His grief at his father's passing was apparent. As was his estrangement from his half brother and sister. He never contacted them to tell them that their father had died.

And as we went further back in his posts, we realised that my uncle had been sick a long time; that there had not been enough money for his treatment; that his youngest son had actually tried to do a crowdfunding campaign and only managed to collect some 30 pounds.

It was all so heartbreaking. That he died poor and sick. No matter what he had done. And that he never got to see his other children again. That he never got to meet his grandchildren.

And I thought about whether it was worth it, all these grudges we hold on to, way past their sell-by date.

And I thought about the grudges I hold and tried to imagine what it would feel like if they died while we were still estranged.

It's been a troubled few nights.

A Little Birthday Interlude

It was close to 11 at night and I suddenly bethought myself of my father who was turning 80 in an hour. I assumed he was with one of my siblings because I didn't think they would let him see in his birthday alone. I called him. He didn't answer. Then he called back. I asked him where he was. At home. Who was with him? No one.

I said, OK, I'll come over.

I'll come over and see your birthday in with you.

I called Chubs. He was already in bed. And not willing to get up and drive all the way to see in the birthday. "I'll see him tomorrow," he said.

I rang off.

I called Sue-Ann. She was the one person who would know where I could get a cake, a birthday cake, at the last minute, this close to midnight. She did. She came through for me - first she tried to describe the place to me, then she sent me a location on Google.

I changed out of my nightclothes and sallied forth to look for this 24-hour cafe that sold birthday cakes. I found it. I parked. I bought the cake. I made it to my father's house at 11.23pm. There was loads of time to arrange the cake.

I stuck the eight candles in.

Then I decided that it should not only be the two of us celebrating the birthday.

I started calling and texting around.

Finally by 12, I had assembled my sister and her family on one phone and my two aunts and cousin (my father's sisters and niece) on another.

We sang his birthday in. He blew out his candles and cut his cake. It wasn't that great a cake, but it was miraculous, given the time of night. And here's the thing - it LOOKED the part. With strawberries and oreo cookies and chocolate cream.

We put away the cake, sipped the wine and then I was out of there and back home by 12.20am.

I felt sort of satisfied.

It was no great shakes, but at least, he didn't see in his 80th birthday alone.

That's something, isn't it?

And now I'm back home, resuming the transcribing that was interrupted when I suddenly had my brainwave.

Later for you.

The Smile Of A Mona

I watched the video where you were led to your death. Death by hanging. Rumour had it that you went defiantly. Rumour had it that your last words were that you could not die. They said you smiled on the way to the gallows.

I watched the video and saw, it was not true. Your face was contorted in fear. You were an ordinary woman, being marched, handcuffed, to your death.

An ordinary woman with an ordinary woman's terror.

And you died, after all.

None of this, of course made the slightest difference to the stories, the legends that grew up around you.

Quite frankly, I believed them too.

How could you not be swept up in the hysteria? The murder was so cruel. Unnecessarily so.

And you smiled in court. Every picture they took of you, you were grinning like a chimpanzee. You relished the attention. It was what you had longed for all your life.

You didn't look evil. Just crazy.

You didn't have the strength to carry out the heinous murder. The strength to slice through the bone.

It was the man who did it. Even the courts accepted that. You were just the third most culpable. There was the one who committed the murder. There was the one who got rid of the body and the weapons.

I am not quite sure what you did. Maybe you sliced off the easier parts, the parts with tendons rather than bone.

But the legends about you continued to grow. Men were afraid to look at you, afraid you would curse them with impotence.

And that was the real trouble.

Your smile emasculated them.

It fed into their primal fear of the female, the weaker but deadlier sex.

Hecate.

Circe.

The man who was killed was a loathsome creature. He was willing to traffic with the devil to gain more power and wealth. During the documentary, they kept repeating - this was all about greed. They meant your greed. And your husband's.

Because you did what you did for money. But he did what he did for money too.

So, whose greed?

Your face as you were marched to the gallows said it all. Gone was the false mask of bravado. Gone were the one-liners that sent shivers down the spines of a nation obsessed.

You died.

You just died.

But oh, how they want you to rise. And show your face again.

And smile, Mona, just smile.

Panic Attack

There was a time when I used to cry on Sunday nights because I was terrified of Monday. I was about 9 years old at the time and in the wrong class. My class was too smart for me and I was way behind on every subject so I had not passed up my work for weeks, if not months.

Every Sunday night, I would hang out near the bathroom for some privacy and feel the tears roll down my cheeks. I would weep as if in despair because I was. I felt dumb and graceless and in the wrong place. I felt like everything they said about me was true, only more so.

I hated my life. I wish I could have gone back to pre-school days when I didn't go to school, when I could run and play in the park behind the house, when there was nothing either ominous or foreboding in my life.

Today, all of a sudden I had a panic attack. My stomach squeezed tight and I thought of Monday, of being unprepared for Monday, of being useless and of everyone hating me at work, and I felt sick.

I have no idea why I was revisiting one of the worst years of my life (there have been a few of those but none, I come to see, as bad as this one).

I am now trying to breathe slowly and calm down.

All the intervening years have disappeared and I'm back to how I was...frightened and so very, very alone.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I'm back from Vegas and I'm exhausted. Not for the usual reasons. I ran past the slot machines while trying to make it to the various talks or presentations I wanted to attend - but because I flew there and back in a week - travel time equalled two days and the stay there, three days. I didn't get over the jet lag when I was there, and now I'm back and things are passing by in some sort of amorphous haze.

One good thing happened when I got back. Tim Tam was adopted. By the sweetest young expat couple who saw his pictures (and my snazzy write-up) on PetFinder and fell in love with him. He was delivered safely to his new home on Saturday.

A friend's mother passed away while I was airborne - the KL-London sector. Life has been going on with a vengeance while I was gone - but I feel strangely out of it - waking up when the sun has gone down to resume my nocturnal existence. This was the last day I could do that, though.

Tomorrow, real life begins again, with interviews, etc.

Tonight, I have to edit something, write something - I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner, but she's strangely silent and hasn't been answering the phone. It's OK. I will work and pay bills until she does.

I don't mind, really.

I don't mind anything at all.

I'm in that strange half world, out of sync with the rest of the world, and not really caring.

The cats love it. Firstly, they're so glad that TimTam the bandit is gone and that room is open territory once again. So after sleeping there some nights, they have come back to sleep with me or on me (as Sheba would prefer it). They're just enjoying the companionship after a hiatus of one week.

One week is a long time in the life of a cat.

I really wish I could rescue the cat next door. She cries so piteously and the owners are hard hearted. They keep her locked up in the balcony, without any companionship or attention. She is beautiful and she has the saddest eyes.

I dreamt that some rat was bothering me. I would have ignored me but it came right up to me and started nibbling or trying to bite me. Anyway, I picked it up by the scruff of its neck and threw it against a wall. It splattered. In my dreams, the rats splattered easily.

And then there was another rat. This time, I was closer to the wall, so I was not sure if there was enough distance to create the force to make the rat splatter. But splatter it did. There was a lot of other stuff in this dream, about being at the base camp of a mountain in the Himalaya and other things...which fade. What stays with me is the rat splattering.

Yesterday I dreamt of my grandfather who has been dead for 32 years. I dreamt he was alive and strong and buff. He was working out and muscled - and I calculated his age and realised that in my dream, he was 110 years old. He was going strong and writing his will so that he gave away his money to other people, people who were not his family. Because as he said quite clearly, he didn't like his family.

And I thought in my dream (being a member of his family) that he was wrong. But...it was HIS money and his choice about what to do with it.

What Matters The Most

So I find out today that one of my best friends has cirrhosis of the liver. We haven't really kept in touch and honestly, are any of these petty fights or slights worth it?

Yesterday I humbled myself abjectly and apologised to Sheba for hurting his feelings (he had stopped talking to me and was manifesting his hurt and outrage by alternately avoiding me and puking his guts out) and I was sorry, so sorry.

I think at some point you figure out what and who matters the most.

There are those that you love, companions along the way, and you reprioritise and refocus.

I Don't Know Why

There is a certain nervousness that starts moving in your blood, when you haven't moved enough. You become suspicious, paranoid, you pounce on words that have no meaning, no intention behind them.

This is me.

I sat in Coffee Bean having my dinner and reading my book and a strange man followed me out of there and tried to strike up a conversation. He looked harmless and I felt vaguely sorry for him but any attempt to answer his question and cut short the conversation led to another question, another attempt to prolong this pointless conversation...and suddenly I felt weary.

My body recoiled. I don't like people who steal my energy. It is unbecoming.

So I cut short the conversation abruptly, since he hadn't allowed me to do it politely, with my body half turned away to flee...he hadn't respected my time or space and I had no choice. I realised that Malaysians don't like confrontation and we don't like being rude when strangers accost us in shopping centres to ask what book we are reading. Even if there is something vaguely suspicious about these strangers. Even if they carry blue canvas bags and sit in Coffee Bean without buying anything. Even if they say that my newspaper is way too expensive and we should distribute it for free. Even if they get on every last nerve. Even if their eyes are desperate and they want to talk and they want to talk.

So I cut short the conversation and turned to leave. His face fell, it shut like a parasol and I felt sorry but I wanted to be away, not there chatting in the middle of a shopping centre with an uninteresting stranger who sought desperately to be interesting, who pinioned me to the ground, demanded my time.

You can't have my time.

You can't have my time unless I choose to give it to you.

And I don't choose.

Not anymore.

Written On The Body

I need to use my body more, because when I don't...it messes with my mind. My blood congeals and I start holding my breath, my thoughts stagger in the same familiar loops...and I weep, I weep.

I walked far today - I walked and walked and I would have walked some more, but a light shower, like a blessing, a benediction started - and I didn't know if it would get heavy, if I would be soaked. There were not so many people around today and I wondered at that. It was dark (the street lamps were not lit) and I wondered at that. I had no idea that it was so late.

But there were cats out, and every so often I stooped down and placed a handful of biscuits on the ground where they could get at them once I had passed on (they are shy, they do not know me, they do not trust me). I fed many cats. Or maybe they were the same cats, over and over. I do not know.

I listened to Bernard in his last soliloquy and then the book ended and so I started it again. I tried to share the book with Tommy, gave him my own copy, the copy that I loved, went home and typed out Jeanette Winterson's long essay on The Waves for him...and it had the opposite effect that it had on me. When I read Winterson's essay, I wanted to dive back into the book that I had rejected as so much unnecessary nonsense. I persevered and it opened itself up to me, its hidden beauty which had actually been there, in plain sight, but I had not the eyes to see.

I wonder at that. How much beauty is hidden from me because I refuse to see? I see what is glaring and brash and obvious. I see it and although I should have more wit, I fall for it.

I fall for it.

I brush away my feelings and I need to stop doing that. Walking helps me put things in perspective. It helps me think about things, sort through strands.

Being sedentary - I guess our bodies were not built to be sedentary. Ivana told me that once. She said, our bodies haven't evolved to suit this sedentary lifestyle and that is why - we grow sick and swollen, and that is why we lead such unfulfilled lives. Running on a machine in the gym does not satisfy...it feels...industrial.

I want to be as natural as possible.

But I don't know how.

So I stagger about, stop breathing, feel my mind congeal into something hard, unlovely.

I write because I try to make sense of the world.

But the world remains impervious and unexplained.

My mind has tried to save me and it hasn't succeeded.

My heart simply leads me astray as often as it can.

Maybe I should be looking to the body for salvation.

Figment Of My Imagination

I think I know but I have no idea. This is what writers do. We make stuff up. It's all in our heads. Most of our conversations are imaginary. We don't know. So we imagine.

And because you are a figment of my imagination, I felt free to make stuff up.

But then, you read it and were offended, maybe hurt?

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I was just trying to make sense of it to myself.

And in some alternate reality, where we are still friends, where you still talk to me, where you care about me, there I am, apologising to you.

Air

We talk with the outsides of words, skimming the surface. not saying what we really feel. At one time it was enough. It was enough to hear your voice, to listen to how you formed the words, to imagine the cadences underneath, the things unsaid.

Your smile was enough.

And now your smile has disappeared.

Your words have disappeared.

And when I have nothing, those empty words, those soufflé, meringue words, are not enough.

Wrestling Angels

I go for a walk today and do only half the required steps. Who requires it? I don't know. I listen to Bernard talk, then Neville, then Louis, then Rhoda, Susan and Jinny. I listen to each cadence and until my steps start to flag. And then I make for home because I am tired, because this walking in circles is pointless.

And whenever you interrupt their words, my thoughts, I walk faster, trying to work you out of my system. I try to walk through that slight ache that tugs at my chest. I know when I come home, having tired myself out, I will find no word from you, nothing.

This silence.

I think you will be here tomorrow, I am almost sure, but you were supposed to be there yesterday, and you weren't.

You called and cancelled. You said, no, next week instead.

Nothing compels you. You will not be compelled. You will come and go as you please. You find any sort of clinging distasteful.

And I have uninstalled Skype from my phone because I was tired of checking for a message that never came. I needed to stop.

And there is so much work now, so much. I have created it for myself because I need the distraction. I need to think of something else, someone else.

But there is no one.

I listen to Neville obsess about Percival and for the first time, I understand him. I understand how he loves Percival for leaving his letters scattered about unanswered, among his guns and dogs. I understand how he loves Percival for agreeing to meet him under a clock in London and then not showing up. For not understanding Catullus and yet understanding him, better than Louis who would understand the words perfectly.

You can love someone because they are perfect and remote and unattainable. Because they are ephemeral and disappear just as you are about to turn around. You can love them because you can only catch sight of them from the corner of your eye. You love them because they are fleeting and insubstantial, the substance of dreams and daydreams.

And even though love is too strong a word, too final, too finite, too all-encompassing, you attach that word to their face, their form, and it feels right.

Maybe tomorrow you will cease to remember, this obsession will pass.

But for today, you love them and you love them anyway.

Your Fragrance, Your Dust

Because I lost you I search for you in the oddest places; under rocks, behind doors, under sheets laid flat. I search for you longingly, desperately, and sometimes I forget what I'm searching for and the search takes over.

I look for any trace, ANY trace of you and when I find it, some dust you left behind, some salt you scattered in your wake, I pause and I breathe it in, I savour it, I run it through my fingers, so precious, so wonderful.

Your dust. Your salt.

I know that all this is strange and sad and crazy.

But to me, they are traces of joy.

My heart beats quicker and I feel my eyes blaze and shine forth.

You have withdrawn now and I can no longer see you. You have receded into the horizon and there is only the faint fragrance that you've left behind.

It lingers in the air.

I breathe it in, exhale and fall back, relax and sleep.

The Little Girl In A White Dress

She was a little girl, rather tall, quiet, well-behaved in a white dress. She had on socks and shoes, the kind I wore when I was small. Mum dressed her the way she dressed me.

Mum was looking after her. Mum had taken her to church and oh, such a church. Words were written in the sky rather than projected on a wall and the Mass, the Mass...it was always beginning and never quite begun.

And she sat there, this little girl, this nameless little girl, so sad, so quiet, so well-behaved, she sat there, making no sound. Contained in herself.

I knew she was loved.

That much I knew.

That's all I saw. 

And then I woke up and remembered that Mum was no more. 

And I wondered who the little girl was. In my dream it seemed obvious but when I woke up, less so.

Let Her Cry

The tears, they were a long time coming. But now they're here. It's OK. Just let her cry. She needs this. This release. This slow giving up. This acknowledgement that there's nothing there now. Maybe there was nothing there to begin with.

Just another illusion, delusion, that falls like delicate blown glass to the rough canteen floor and shatters there...ignored, to be swept up with the rest of the gunk later.

Just let her cry.

Empty and Sad

TimTam is blind in one eye and it breaks my heart. The person who was supposed to come to see him didn't call, didn't come. And I don't care about that. But I do wonder how to get these four cats, getting along with each other. They don't have to love each other. Just be amicable. They each find their own little niches in my tiny apartment and it is hard when one whole room has to be shut off to the other three and one of them has to be confined to a single room. I wish he didn't. I wish I could let all of them mingle. But he's full of rage and when he attacks, he hurts.

Is that what I'm like?

I don't think so. But I'm not sure.

This weekend I wrote five letters using a quill I had bought from Dove Cottage (think Wordsworth, Grasmere, the Lake District) and Indian ink that Wan Yee had given me last Christmas. The thing about Indian ink is that it dries to a goo-like substance.

(Oh dear, Tim Tam has pooped and there's  a pong in my room. I think I am going to have to pause this and go clean it up). Also, open a window and air out the room.

Done and done.

Life is a series of things on a to-do list. You move forward. You do one thing, You tick it off. You tick if off. And you tick it off again.

And time moves on. It just moves on.

And all you are at the end of the day is tired.

And sad.

And empty again.

The Fireworks Symphony

I am transcribing an interview that I should have transcribed weeks ago with the idea of working on the story tomorrow. It's the Hokkien New Year today I think - that from midnight onwards, the fireworks have been going off so continuously, they sound like rain on a tin roof. I pretend to myself that it is rain...I love the sound of rain when I am about to sleep.

But right now I am full of nervous energy that comes from transcribing an interview. I am hanging out with TimTam as I transcribe - so we get some face time. The poor boy has to be kept apart and I feel guilty when I am out there with the others (although I would like to be). I so wish he could get along with them and didn't always feel compelled to establish his dominance.

I haven't gone walking for days now, so I have not finished the last 54 minutes of The Waves. Maybe I will start again tomorrow.

I think I have plans for the weekend. I am not sure. I do know there will be work...because there is always work now.

I have gone for a slew of interviews - which need to be transcribed and written up. I keep cranking them out like gunshots. And maybe, at some point, I will be able to lie back, close my eyes, exhale gently and sleep.

Customary somnolence

I've elapsed into my customary somnolence.

It was nice to be out of it for a while.

But now I trudge on, each step heavier than the last, breathing in and out and just trying to get through today.

Clichés

I love my cats; I have four of them - how typical and old maidish - to give your love to cats and not to a man, not to children.

I take long walks on stone pavements and tarred roads and all I see are foreign workers taking walks - them for necessity, me for exercise because I have swollen to a monstrous size and I think, I can no longer ignore it. Even alone, I want to be acceptable to myself. I want to fit in clothes again. I can understand why this land slowly passes to them, the foreign workers. To know the land, you have to tread it, feel it beneath your feet, walk slowly enough to take it in. Travelling about in air-conditioned cars, we do not even let the air in. We swish past so quickly, noticing nothing except the car in front of us. We do not take in...anything.

Today I walked to a shopping centre that it would have taken me 10 minutes to get to by car. OK, maybe 15. It took me the best part of an hour. I really FELT the distance. I was looking for a photo shop because I wanted to take a picture for a visa. There were none along the way, so I walked further and further. I cut my hair to take an acceptable shot, but it was unacceptable anyway. I mean the hair was alright; the face was greasy with this thin film of sweat.

I listened to another two hours of The Waves. I honestly thought I would have finished it by now....but it is 9 hours long. Not 6. And I have about 54 minutes left. I think I am at Bernard's last soliloquy, but I may be wrong. Listening to it like this, the words make sense - the drum of words illustrating each character. The reader, Frances Jeeter, is very good. I like listening to her, her posh accent, her reading at the speed I think Virginia Woolf would have read it, but we cannot know, no we cannot.

Sheba decides to bully Pablo because he is cuddling and grooming Smeagol, his paw clasped lovingly around the kitten. I think Sheba is jealous. He strikes out, then strikes again - and now Pablo is hiding under the armchair. He is wise enough to know that is the best course when Sheba gets jealous.

There are 39 days more of Lent to go.

I downloaded a pedometer and then uninstalled it because it was not really recording my steps. I also uninstalled Skype from my phone because my habit of checking it 300 times a day was getting too cumbersome. Also, the disappointment when there were no messages for me.

I have finished reading In The Restaurant by Christoph Ribbat but I skimmed and it is a good book so it will bear re-reading.

I posted five letters and two presents off today. And bought a bunch of stamps. I am glad the presents have been despatched; the thought of them was weighing me down.

I have changed my hairstyle and it looks too hard for my moonface but what can you do.

Of such trifles are a life made up.