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Circles in the Wild

Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams… - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Burma… Oh man, I don’t even know where to begin with this one. In my futile attempts to describe this experience to friends, a word that has continued to pop out of my mouth is “wild.” And the more I think on it now, the more I find...

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Me, Malaysia, and the Merlion

"And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven." - Jack Kerouac, On The Road It has been established that it is currently the rainy season in Southeast Asia. It has...

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A Day Without Rain

There are storms that are frankly theatrical, all sheet lightning and metallic thunder rolls. There are storms that are tropical and sultry, and incline to hot winds and fireballs. But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land - Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites I can’t remember what it feels like to wear dry socks. I can barely remember a day...

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On Paradise

"He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He’d long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men’s destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he’d drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he’d ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before...

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Time and a Place to Remember

"For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place." - Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago It’s hard to believe there was once a time when the days inched by - a time when the weeks didn’t fly by in a blur of routines and overlapping memories. There were days when I would wake up in the morning and ask myself, “What do I want to do today?” There was a point when I...

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