So it’s not stopped raining for the past 24 hours, I’m stuck in a house with just about the rest of my extended family (and you know how it is with vaguely traditional Chinese families, it is large. We’re talking something like, 20 kids, which apparently according to Esquire, is very appealing for a woman to have. Because girls with huge families are supposed to be a lot more fun).
But I’m absolutely bereft of any vague semblance of intelligent conversation, firstly because there’s a new born in the house and every one will not cease with the baby talk, although the baby is the most silent baby I have ever known. And his brother, older by a few years, will not cease in his attempts to teach everyone snatches of German phrases from a translation of a Beatrix Potter novella inscribed on his dinner mat. And my Sarawakian cousins live in such over-bearing simplicity it’s almost charming in a rustic, small town manner. Lee’s 21 this year, and thinking of marriage, something I cannot comprehend but have long stopped teasing him about it. He behaves as if he were married already anyway. Two, three years back he was really hot and completely way-ward. These days, he’s possibly 15 kilos heavier, all soft, and spends his time watching past seasons of Babylon 5.
I could never comprehend all of this a year or so past. ‘How can you be so simple minded! Marry at 21? Are you completely mad, have you no ambitions? What do you want to do in the future?’
‘Graduate I guess, and figure out if I wish to live in this town or the next. There’ll be a job with the company I did an internship for last semester… Maryann and I will wed, I don’t know when, but whether sooner or later, it’ll be her…’
Angel completes her final year in college, and plans to go back to an even smaller town to be with her father. She’s a very fetching sort of girl, beautiful and a little plump; wonderfully pleasant to look at, the sort of girl who will be eternally devoted to her man. Only, she’s already found that man, and it’s her father. Her room is littered with those weird little picture frames on which is inscribed with odd engrish verse like ‘a moment of picture, happy in time’ and they are all of her and her father. I love my dad, but my attempts on an outward show of filial piety go as far as pictures of him in my cell phone. Of course we lead immensely different lives, and my dad doesn’t care much if I lived with him all the time, or not.
And on that matter, I am contemplating moving out temporarily, to work on my art without the clutter (I’ve done quite a lot of work on it lately, and I think I’m getting better). Dr. Seuss has put in my pocket a fair bit of money which I’ve nothing to spend on (I shopped incessantly for a couple of days, and simply got sick of it when I bought all the little knacks I wanted, and grew tired of attempting to find the rest) and I think it would be fun to spend a little time in isolation. Although, chances are, I’ll probably end up traveling with Ethan on his insistence after the holiday season. Yes we are still in contact, and yes, we will not cease with the stupid ‘I still quite like you, so let’s do this’ nonsense.
But the melodrama for the time being should shift back to the little suburb in the jungle where nothing of real import actually happens. The only eventful thing that did transpire today was a little argument between my mother and me, over the necessity of bringing along a whole backpack full of my underwear. Including the kitschy, kinky shit I wear for aesthetic appeal alone. (This would also incidentally mean that she’s seen my all my sex toys – 2 defunct vibrators from which the batteries exploded because I left them in unused for too long, a dildo, some of the SM shit I have that are more for play then real SM shit, and all golf balls Dr. Seuss is so fond of stuffing into hankies and gagging me with. But I doubt Mom would have ever guessed-)
I had told her I needed to buy new panties when we landed, because the old ones I had were simply not comfortably usable anymore. She took it as: I had to buy more underwear because I forgot to bring sufficient quantity.
The women who are unable to translate the speech of men correctly and so often derided in Non- Sequittar are, I believe, just generally incapable of translating anything someone else has said or anything they have read, accurately. Trust me, my mother –I love her, but every one has their quirks that must be tolerated, however damned annoying- is one of those women who packs too much, concerns herself with every damned detail, and enjoys lamb kebab, until she knows that it has lamb inside. Not because she’s vegetarian, but because she loves saying she hates red meat (she doesn’t).
Because I’ve not had much to do, and was robbed of a day’s workout in such wonderfully fresh air because it has not stopped raining, I was left contemplating how I really hoped never to become like my mother. And how odd it was that she had once told me she’d hoped never to become like her mother. And thank God she lived up to it, if only partially through, because my only remaining grandparent is one of those matriarchal figures from hell. I just think both of them need more engaging occupations to keep them from paying too much detail to things that honestly do not matter, and serve not the greater good of art. Heh, the last bit was just thrown in defense of my own innate sense of paying attention to every thought and feeling I perceive from that often seemingly unattainable paramour of mine.
Oh yes, Martine. He has begged me to let him breathe easy and just live out our relationship as it is. Forget worry and thought; I should find pleasure in sitting naked at his feet, my head resting between his legs and drinking in the smell of sex. I’ve told him he was crazy to even bother asking that of me. Crazy that he should even think I actually needed much more. I wish Liz would not be a constant obstruction to the little bits of time we get to spend together, but aside from that, I’m asking for no promises, and for that matter, asking for anything at all. Only that he be honest, and please tell me what he felt all the time. But of course I couldn’t help but want to write that long winded letter, simply because it delighted me to have my thoughts dwell upon him, and stay so focused upon Us.
No prizes for what he’s given me this Christmas. A CD, Khaled’s Sahra (he’s the guy that recorded that really famous dance hit, Aisha. I’ve liked it for ever, just never gotten down to knowing who actually sang it) and a book which I’ve just finished, Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. I’ve heard a couple of people mention it before, it’s a very interesting book by way of craft alone, being written completely in tetrameter (I think it’s tetrameter anyway). But I’ve never had any desire to read it, simply because it seemed to lack the sort of extremity of circumstance and of psychology I generally like to have in the novels I read. This book is a book about perfectly normal people, about circumstances that could have chanced upon any one. A little melodrama, but with so much thought and intensity of feeling, and such an amazing use of the language and the form of poetry, I found myself curled up into a little ball, feeling a sort of melancholy consistently though every page. It’s definitely a must read. You’d be missing something amazing if you didn’t. He puts ideas many can only explain in lengthy paragraphs and only with an astounding amount of verbosity (i.e. me) in a few lines. While being confined to the structure of verse and rhyme.
Now that is art.
xoxox
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