slowly

the act of intimating has eluded me for awhile now. i spent most of my early 20s theorising, thinking, writing, talking, but nowadays i feel as if there simply is no theory without praxis and the praxis of life, being-with, becoming, encounter, community, is where i reside now. it's not that i've successfully migrated out of my head. just that the once-theoretical deluge now drips into simple actions of the everyday. i read, listen, do the dishes, care for my toddler whose entire being has been entrusted to my hands, contemplate in prayer, spend time with friends, take my tingkat to buy food from the hawker opposite my block, establish daily practices of care for the things i believe in, talk to ahmas in the lift, view art, write, sleep, and dream. everything is quiet, and i don't feel any need to move out of this reverie that is a simple life.

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absence is presence.

i think of fleabag when i say this. i watched it some time ago, but it's stayed with me because nothing comes quite as close in its brilliance to replicating the lives of the chronically online, the ones who live for the confessional, who disassociate into long-drawn monologues and conversations in their head (hi! that's me). all this just to avoid saying something true, living something true, living something delicately painful and sad and bittersweet all at once. or maybe it's less a matter of will, but a matter of ability.

i think of fleabag looking back towards the camera in the final scene, shaking her head slightly as if to say "no you can't follow me". and then she is no longer perceived. there's a delicious irony in this. the same distaste and fear of being perceived usually feeds back into a desire to be perceived all the more because you have to tilt, shapeshift, contort just to be seen in the light you desire. it's a long way of saying that insecurity and vanity are two sides of the same coin. but it's also nice when you finally trade that in for being seen. or better still, to just be.

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anxiety found its way into my heart late last year and made a home there. it could be that planes were crashing, or the world experiencing an unprecedented warmth. but more likely that somewhere between the happy hormones of child-bearing wearing off and the fattened worm of childhood trauma squirming through my brain, it birthed a spectacular panic in me, then a panicking over said panic, and so forth. it turns out that anxiety really begets itself, like the looping tedium of a washing machine. it's wearisome. at some point when you're drenched with the constant monsoon of worry, you notice less when sunlight tickles your toes, or the crisp air skimming your cheeks. the mind circles the same spot while the world passes by.

but the washing machine eventually dials down to its last cycle and stops. linen not fit for dress will be soon. over by the yard, warm winds from the north deposit salty smells onto fibre, exchanging them for moisture that recedes slowly. i'm not fully there yet, and it's not by any delusional boost of confidence or toxic positivity that i'm eking my way there, but i want to think of this more as gestation rather than maladaptation. that while trite, if we think of life as a garden, ecology requires less pruning than we think it does. a laissez-faire approach that embraces the worms and weeds amongst the flowers and trees works; is better even! i can only wait and let the garden grow as it will in the tender hands and care of the maker, and his workers in the form of my friends and little family.

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gestation also because i can only hope that this hard work of healing eventually stores up an inheritance of love and a mantle of peace for my little toddler. as the world burns and hurtles towards all kinds of unimaginable desecrations - of environments, lives (human or nonhuman), the smallest and the least trampled over - and into various forms of moral bankruptcy, the best i can do is to build a safe and kind world for her in this home. don't get me wrong, i don't mean to virtue signal here. i am also both completely complicit, and at times helpless, and so count solely on the grace of others extended to me.

i think about this bell hooks quote now and then,

to tend to the earth is always then, to tend to hope, our freedom, our destiny.

which is not far from the logics of good stewardship, limned carefully in the book of Genesis. i want to suggest something here too, which is that to first tend to the earth, i must also simultaneously tend to me. not in a navel-gazing sort of way, but more in recognition of my minuscule place as one amongst the earth, that sits on the threshold of smallness and power. it is but one thread, fine and nondescript, but when traced, is found to be woven deeply and slowly into the fabric of some greater tapestry i cannot yet comprehend.

all this to say, let there be peace (and tenderness, and joy, and great love) on earth, and let it begin with me.

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absence is presence.

it begins like this: unbridled laughter echoing up the walls, the scents of Top detergent drifting through the corridor all entangled with the oils of freshly fried fish, fluorescent lights showing up promptly at 7pm as if to greet the night hello, small hands in mine, orange rinds all blistered from the sun, blisters on your tongue and hands and feet, coffee spilled into saucers poured back into cups, abrasive voices calling for attention to the kumquats the finest kumquats the cheapest kumquats, the pattering of rain on tiles, the pattering of small feet on wood, round eyes to hold captive the oceans, blinds heaving in the monsoon, crickets crooning angrily at the end of the monsoon, snails crumpled under callous feet, ATMs with long queues, ah girl wa buay hiao yong le zai boh? eyes thick with sleep, eyes thick with deterioration, the simple polyphonies of a market, the caustic smell of burning wet tar, small hands on my face, small teeth biting my skin, debris and cigarette butts amongst the planters, it's august so durians for sale, swollen meat rubber seeds, words that sting but don't bite, voices that crack but do not break, following the sound of your steps, the sound of your small throat not yet fully formed, the sound of your cry swelling to meet the intensity of pain, the sound of your heart beating softly at night, who says that love doesn't grow a second skin? who says that love doesn't grow a second skin?