Haze Finding myself not overtly affected by my grandfather’s death last week, although the 5 day long ceremony took over my life. By rough calculations I performed approximately 80 bows in front of the body. Call me tacky, but I can understand the camp, morbid appeal of professional mourners; although our ‘Gold’ funeral package purchased from Nirvana Memorial Care Sdn. Bhd. ‘Total Peace of Mind’, did not include that service. We did have a band, however, playing such sentimental favorites as ‘Over the Rainbow’, and ‘Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo de Xin’ by Teresa Teng. Also a photographer, catering, bus, three Buddhist nuns and all associated prayer offerings, including paper Mercedes, paper servants, paper bungalow, paper nokia phone and a lot of paper ‘merit’ passports and paper money. All was conducted in the presence of grey haze, which continues on and I find my thoughts are exactly like the air – completely vague and unclear. A sort of ‘next step’ has to come up soon but I’m postponing that reality. I’m thinking about a quote by Goenawan Mohamad, which pierces with a little light:

‘In truth, it is not possible for someone to say: I choose independence, but at the same time I do not choose danger. Independence does not only beckon responsibility. Literature also, as an expression of independence, does not only convey matters that inspire calm, because it also inspires unease. I cannot only choose a creative life, but at the same time not be prepared to, like Adam, be expelled from blissful Paradise into the restless world of creation.’

If you are an artist that seeks to know yourself completely, and in that process you create your work, then if you do not know what is around you, surely that must signify a large gap in the knowing of yourself, hence the creation of your work? Right now I have little confidence in my own intellect, crippled by the sense of not knowing how things work locally. I write and create very uncertainly these days. I know how to speak the language of a global art and a global culture. I know where I can go with this language, and where I can speak it there I will find a home. Really, if I wanted to leave I could leave. Being here is not really about roots. I don’t need to find my origins, not really. I have a pretty good idea of who I am. The idea that one can be relatively successful as an artist and a writer here, without really knowing the socio-political mechanisms upon which the country moves – this scares me. The depth of my own complacency and ignorance, and yet thriving in spite of it, (upon it, even?) – this scares me. All the post-colonial and cultural theory I’ve learnt fails me. It doesn’t help me now. I am looking back to the old text books, Ministry of Education published books on Malaysian history and national policy – eating away at the dry passages and veiled propaganda, searching searching searching. Am I regressing?! I studied these same textbooks nearly 10 years ago! I don’t know why I care, as there is a promising international art career to build. How far could I go, staying here? And time is a-wasting, it’s a-passing me by…

In the meantime life, like time, is flowing on and on. The next step is not clear to me and I worry and worry. All I do is keep afloat. But to move forward to the next step I am trying to know things, and find out things in ways that are not already present. The news helps me to perceive, but perceiving is not knowing.

After the funeral I only had one serious emotional reaction – looking out into the haze, breathing it, feeling totally demoralized by it… thinking about the coffin we left in the deep dark earth, thinking – life is so sweet, I don’t want it to end.  ¶ 6:48 PM