Postcards from KL (4)

Ma and Pa,

KL’s wonderful! I’ve been having a lot of Curry, Nasi Lemak, Bihon Goreng and Roti Chanai. But I’m also keeping fit since there’s a pool and a gym in the serviced apartment where we stay.

KL, Out of the Office

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
(A week after we booked our wedding date)

On the way out of the office, the first thing you notice is the overpowering presence of the majestic Petronas Towers in its glittering steel, imposing itself in the KL skyline. On the ground, at 8 in the morning, a veiled Muslim woman skips out of a motorcycle being driven by someone who I assume is her husband. Every part of her body, except for her face and hands, is covered with her clothing. Islam is a fascinating religion. Seeing it up close in people immerses you in the context of the magnanimous self-discipline it requires. A wife shows absolute loyalty to her husband, with her flesh never to be seen by anyone else. While some may not see it as liberated, it is but absolutely sacred. Perhaps I am caught in the web of my cultural ineptitude. All I know for sure is that what I saw seemed like loving with unquestionable loyalty.

Before I digress, I go back to the morning I saw the veiled lady unmount from the motorcycle driven by her husband. She fixes the folds of her clothes. As she stands, with all her flesh covered, you notice the purity so bold in her eyes. She takes the hand of her husband and kisses it. She moves her head toward her husband and kisses his left cheek, then kisses his right cheek. Finally, she kisses his forehead.

Seeing all that, my own face went warm with the rogue of their love. I looked away, holding off the scarlet blushing its way out of me.

And then I ached with longing, now that emotions are unfeigned.

The woman I love was so far away.

Raise Your Dreams

While the deaf-mute carpenter repairs the ceiling. My life with you is the creation of pleasant spaces instead of settling for the absurd blanks. I thought of that when the deaf-mute but deadly-efficient and compulsively productive carpenter fixed your ceiling while we looked up at him in arched necks. He hammered an epiphany. Raise your dreams, J&D! Love each other some more. The skies are beautiful from up high.

Autistic Wannabe-ing

I usually have both profound sympathy and an admiration bordering on the wanting-to-be --- autistic. Strangely enough, they make my own eerie compulsions and my compulsions and mannerisms rather normal. The world is a safer place without anybody else in it.

We’ve seen a lot of movies and read many stories about emotionally disassociated minds. They were all heavily charged with disparity and kept wringing our pity. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” in contrast, is one that we simply relate to, and empathize with. We don’t feel pity for the character, we level with him and genuinely cheer him on and hope for an eventual triumph. It allows not to see the character as an outcast. We come to an understanding of how their world works. And we are awed by this world.

Aesthetics and Drama

My sense of aesthetics was reduced from “Aesthetic Contemplation” in the Schopenhauerian sense to the “aesthetics” of choosing the colors, fonts and graphical presentations of my daily/weekly/monthly reports in Microsoft Excel.

Coffeeshop drama na naman.

Raskolnikoving

The best part of Crime and Punishment is p.326. A proud Raskolnikov, in a sense of delirium, unremorseful of the crime he committed, tries to justify himself.

His discussion of the “Ordinary Man” and “Extraordinary Man” shows some footprints of the influence to Nietzsche. But this is also how Nietzsche departs from Dostoevsky and turns the footprints of his influence on to an entirely different path.