Perverted or Repressed or Plain Psycho?

If you've lived in Sri Lanka long enough, there's a very likely chance that you/ a girl you know has been "eve-teased" - either groped on the bus/ in a crowd, or at the very least have had a few well-chosen words/ remarks aimed at you/ her as you/ she walked past a group of men. (This though is not just in Sri Lanka, but common in the sub-continent.)

Anyway, sometimes you get told by adults to "dress properly" (=conservatively) to avoid such harassment. This has no real grounds though since even older sari-clad women complain of being masturbated on/ rubbed against on the bus. Why is this? Because men here are generally perverts who get a kick out of harrssing women/ girls? Or are men here so repressed that this is their only "outlet" so to speak (no pun intended!)??

Ravana kept asking in this post, are men here really so repressed cos "why are all these men so excited by the tame sight of [the] dancer’s cleavage?" No one really gave a very satisfactory answer to that. And I continue to wonder, these kind of men - are they perverts? Or "the repressed"? Which category does this guy (that I'll tell you about in a sec) slide in to since he wasn't bothering a girl dressed "provocatively"? Was he neither your general pervert or repressed but simply a random psycho?

Last evening, a friend and I went for a play - an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet directed by William Scott Richards. It was held at the Hilton Garden - a very nice setting had it not been for the terrible (and cold) winds, the blast of vehicles on the road outside and the at least 10-minute long ringing of the temple bell from the Gangaramaya (I assume?) in the middle of the performance. Nevertheless, the performance was fantastic - I really loved the alternative uses of symbolism, clothes and lighting. Ironically, before I left home, as usual, the dad threw a mini-fit about "it's not safe to go all alone" for which I retorted "it's at a 5-star hotel for God's sake!". He replied, the hotel bit he was fine with, it's the getting there he worried about. He finally drove me there. I collected my ticket at the counter and they asked for my ID to verify that I am indeed the manshark (as the ticket said)..before I proceeded to join my friend who was already sitting inside.

What happened during the performance was shocking - and that is a gross understatement. In the ball scene, the actors broke out in dance to a fast song. The cast was very young and the dancing very “modern” - what you'd find at a club. Within these youngsters, there was a man dancing - extremely vulgar moves, thrusting his pelvis forward, gyrating. He stood out (even if it were not for his disgusting dancing) cos he was in a white t-shirt emblazoned "Oregon" in red and brown pants with brown (very, very shiny) dress shoes - and, without meaning to sound elitist, he just didn't seem to be part of the audience and looked more like a 'helper' - with the equipment, etc). The cast was in jeans, runners and white t-shirts which had quotes from the play written on them, unlike the oregon dude. Anyhow, the dancing over, the play continued. The Oregon dude sat at the edge of a stage (there were 3 positioned at 45 degree angles to each other) very near a 14 /15 year old foreign boy (British, I think) who was sitting in the row in front of me. He then proceeded to slip his arm around the back of the chair, lean in towards the boy and mutter things to him, staring intently at the boy’s face the whole time. He honestly looked scary - his eyes wild, his head bent, chin tucked into his neck, the eyes rolling around "peeking" at other people every few minutes. Perveted or freaky? The boy mostly ignored him, except to swallow hard a couple of times and move his neck forward when the hand touched him . There was a Chinese mother and son (a 3/4 year old) sitting beside me, and at one point, when the mom sat the boy down next to me and went off for a few minutes, the kid promptly jumped up and was running about. When he accidently knocked into this psycho’s knee, he grabbed the boy by the neck of his t-shirt, brought his face close to the boy’s face, his mouth in a kind of leer and for a second I seriously thought he was going to take a bite, I swear. I grabbed the kid's hand and pulled till he landed in the chair next to me again and I whispered "sit here till your mother comes back" as fiercely as I knew how and held on to him till the mother came back. More perverted or freakier?

The play ended half hour or so later, and the last scene was (an alternative addition after the death scene) was once again of the cast dancing to a fast tempo. Psycho dude jumped up and began the gyrating, staring at the British boy, 3 feet away from him. And as the music started tapering off, he walked up to the boy, lifted his Oregon t-shirt, thrust his pelvis in the boy’s face and gyrated, leering. The boy looked terrified till his mother (sitting beside him) punched the psycho in the stomach, to which he leered at her before joining the cast to watch them (the cast) hug each other, etc off stage. The boy's mother was almost in tears. And the worst thing was, no one seemed to have noticed, not even my friend (sitting beside me!) till that last dance. Perhaps cos the play involved the audience quite a bit (they pulled a few front-row-seaters into dance with the cast as well, etc), perhaps they thought this was part of the play? But seriously? And who could that boy complain to? The play director? The cast? The hotel? I honestly had no idea and it was frustrating that it seemed there was nothing to do. The mother turned around, her face red and teary and said "that man was bothering my son all night! Who can I talk to?!?". I asked her to try both the cast and the hotel management. The only thing I did was leave my name and number with her in case they got treated with the usual "but it's your word against his" quip if they did choose to complain, and needed a witness.

And this made me realize that, in reality, maybe not even 5-star hotels are actually safe since this psycho made it in. And I wondered, was this a stalker/ hotel employee who'd had that boy in his sights for some reason (far-fetched but possible)? Although if that was the case, wouldn't the mom/ boy have "known" him at least by sight? And why did they not complain in the middle of the play? I suspect they didn't want to make a scene and figured if they ignored him long enough, he'd go away.

Or was this a random pervert who made it in with a valid ticket, or otherwise? Was this “a repressed” whose only outlet for his gay tendencies (but perverted anyway since normal gay guys don't gyrate at random people) was to show up here? Or a random paedophile? What was going on and more importantly, what could that boy have done? Hit him? Have complained in the middle of the play? If so, then to whom since there weren't any hotel employees around and it seemed there were only the cast (who did the lighting and the moving of equipment themselves) and the audience? Or ignored him (as was done till the last scene) and endured the groping and muttering? My own behaviour disgusted me then and continues to disgust me now since all I did was to observe this whole fiasco and only get angrier and scared-er and ended up only offering to be "a witness" for them, before choosing to walk away. Couldn't I have done more? Complained myself (after or in the middle of the play)?

I guess these will only be abstract questions now that it's all over and done with. But I must say, selfishly I guess, next time I go out - no matter where - I'll take my dad's advice and have a safety net. Perhaps lots of friends around in case there are more of these perverts/ repressed/ psychos around and next time, the crime goes further and the victim turns out to be me.

Update

Apparently this psycho is a part of neither the crew nor the cast of the play as assured by Benvoleo ( a member of the cast) who had left a comment here and also by another cast member which Sach very kindly shared with me thru e-mail.

Living for the moment

We always look for an end, a goal, a conclusion that sometimes the means to that end is forgotten, and perhaps left unenjoyed. But what if there was no end? Would we enjoy the traveling more? Would we still be as enthusiastic about every step, every skip, every tumble?

Sometimes when we meet someone, we look, even unconsciously, for a conclusion. A conclusion in the form of a good business deal, a special favour, a perfect friendship, the soulmate. When we meet people, or are catapulted in to situations, then that initially imagined goal becomes a series of stepping stones – profit, happy relationships, growing old together while the gold bands on each other’s fingers slowly grow dull with time. But if that end could not be, does it make the path any more rugged? Does it make the traveling any less sweeter? Isn’t it by looking for that almost ready-made conclusion that the sweet is embittered? When the conclusion is not as glossy as it seemed in the catalogue in which we’d imagined it?

What if we were a spider web - the middle enclosure, where we stand, and the strands, the arms we unravel outwards to the world? For all those bugs and beetles scurrying along the wall, those strands lead in to an interesting, unknown centre..along strands some might slide along with gleeful weee!s while others may find them sticky and cumbersome, and exhale their final breath never really having reached the centre.

Yet to us, those who stand in the middle of that web, the strands don’t necessarily lead anywhere. Could it not be that they lead nowhere, but only exist to balance that inner circle more firmly? Then is it realistic to expect each strand to leave us with explosions of realization which, even for a moment, reach grand unexplored epiphanies? But if that explosion, that epiphany was not actively searched out but left to surprise us if be, would we be as happy? For isn’t happiness found in our minds, in our hearts, only when we imagine that explosion and see the beauty of rainbow sparks? Isn’t it the fact that those sparks never exist outside the realm of our minds that leaves us disappointed with people and situations we might have otherwise found perfectly acceptable?

And so if that final goal which we found in the catalogue of our imagination was not looked for, would we not pay closer attention to the strand stretching outward? Appreciate the gentle diamond glisten of dew drops that balance minutely defying gravity? Realize, before it’s too late, the dust which had begun to accumulate along that fine thread till it was a heavy rope which we lugged around unknowingly or complainingly, had silently snapped long ago?

They say that life is a dew drop balanced on the edge of a grass blade. We’ve all lost someone, by distance, by death, by a sudden cool breeze, in the blink of an eye to know that this goes undoubted. One wayward breeze, one careless footstep and that drop of heavenly water ceases to live.

Then in that infinitesimal moment, between balancing on the tip of the blade of grass and being greedily drunk in by the thirsting earth, should we not endeavour to enjoy every diamond, no matter how small, that lies perched on the strands we unravel outward rather than crane our necks, bending over backwards, in the hope of an end that might very well have ultimately been only imagined or presumed?

Scary checkpoint - why?!?

We’ve been told check points exist for our own safety and I’ve so far accepted that without a second thought. When my car was stopped in the past, they asked for my ID and then I was sent on my way. I don’t know if this has changed because the other day the process was longer and, moreover, scary.

I was on the way home along Galle Road and a bit past Barefoot I was stopped at a checkpoint. I was asked to park the car and walk up to the sheltered box-like structure under which an army guy and 2 police officers stood. I handed over my ID and was asked for the license as well. One police officer came out of the boxlike structure and stood closely beside me while the other officer proceeded to write down my name, address and what not in some sort of ledger. The officer beside me studied the license closely commenting on the license photo as compared to how I look now. After this thorough examination of the ID and license I was asked to sign beside my name in that ledger.

I thought it was quite strange that we’re now asked to sign ledgers and thereby have to get out of the vehicle. My dad said, sometimes they search the car (including under the driver’s seat) and hence asks the driver to get out…but in my case, the car was glanced at once (to write down the license plate number) and that was it.

The issue I have is the fact that I, a girl (a very tiny one at that), needed to leave the relative safety of my car to walk to a box like structure manned by 3 men. Unfortunately, when you've been forced to see the ugly animal-istic side of the male species, even a man who stands too close to me in the supermarket queue quite honestly makes me call upon all my will power to stay standing while every cell in my brain screams to run fast in the other direction. Therefore, that day at that checkpoint, I was so scared, when I signed that ledger I couldn’t remember for the life of me what my signature looked like and ended up printing my name in a very child-like scrawl. And on the way home as soon as the checkpoint disappeared from my rear-view mirror, I needed to pull up and calm myself down.

While I admit my own reaction at the time may have not been normal altogether, isn’t there still something inherently unsafe about one girl having to approach three men standing in a alcove-like place? The idea is that they are there for my security, for my safety, but at the end of the day, while they are members of security forces, they are also men. And they are people almost twice my size. And I, unfortunately, cannot live in a bubble-like make believe world where people ideally never hurt each other. They do. People known to you, that you trust for whatever whacky reasons, can turn around and in one second leave the rest of your life nightmare-riddled. And that day, I felt extremely vulnerable standing before these three men while they looked me up and down and studied my ID.

Maybe I don't know enough about security matters and counter-terrorism measures, but is there really no better way to provide us with security without heightening our sense of personal insecurity?

Grief

I watched a movie recently of which I didn’t think too much…maybe because the entire plot was pretty obvious within the first 2 minutes of the movie and the rest had to be spent suppressing yawns. However, one short scene got me thinking..

Grief

A widow dances.
The empty arms of his shirt
Wrapped about her
As rains wash away the hurt
She dances; smiling,
His old warmth all-embracing

Most of us have been touched by grief, in one way or another. I always wondered how people can say ‘X’s grief is worse/less than Y’s’ and not know that they lie. One’s grief is not relative for one’s pain is not relative. One hurts as deeply as another – not more, not less.

When pain hits you, and darkness starts closing in, the only way back to light is to dance. In the rain where you don’t know if you’re crying, in an embrace that feels as warm today as it had yesterday. But that light is not real; it only tries to relieve the darkness a little. It comes fast, like a lightening streak out of a stormless sky, for it lights up the darkness and then is gone, leaving us gasping, groping, knowing we need to find a longer, stronger light.

That longer light comes with the realization that the arms are now empty, the warmth has left and the rains that came with duty, with friends, has now ceased for it cannot rain forever. Rain only patters about softly for a little while before you must be left alone to find the sunshine again. This light comes like the sun over the horizon – softly and so, so slowly you wonder if it’ll ever rise, if it’ll ever take over the sky.

And then, when the light has risen, the blue sky seems yellow hued again. Yet, a lined hand, a warm touch, the tilt of a head, a scent from childhood in the breeze, a familiar chant…and the darkness beckons once more. And the temptation to give in is strong, to curl up in the darkness, to wait for those around you to forget you were ever there.

Yet we refuse to give in. Is it because we’re afraid of being judged by the rains that will surely surge around us if we were to give up and give in? Or are we afraid of losing our way, of forgetting the path, we’d struggled so hard to find?

The most beautiful bride EVER!!

I’ve known Desh for over 12 years now and she’s the sort of person who makes the whole world smile when she smiles (literally and metaphorically!) and so when she got hitched last Thursday it was quite expected that she’d make a gorgeous bride...but oh boy!! She looked so stunning that ‘stunning’ doesn’t even start to cover it! She’s the first bride I’ve seen who really did glow on her special day!! And this was at 8pm in the evening…after being dressed from noon and going thru hours of photo-taking and a church wedding!!

She looked so happy I wanted to cry!! (But I couldn’t remember if the mascara was waterproof..so had to resort to blinking rapidly instead..bloody make up getting in my way! :(

With the proud parents

Glowing, glowing, glowing! :o)

Everyone made it! :o)

And the whole time, I was thanking god I’d got a early flight and made it here in time..cos had I missed this, I would have seriously hanged myself! :oD

Hehehe :oD

..and off she goes! ..STILL glowing! :oD

Congratulations Desh and Hemaka!!

..love you guys heaps! xox

Not really being there…

A couple of days ago, I went along to what was meant to be a special day for a friend…and found to my dismay that I was only one of the 2 people who bothered showing up…despite the fact that the invite list was much longer…and this got me thinking..

Why do we expect people to be there for us, to stay loyal and true to us… Is it to fool ourselves into staying happy? Feeling cared for? Loved? Is it not our own vanity that makes us think that friends, family and other loved ones will always be around us, in days full of light as well as those in darkness?

If you take a minute you’d notice that perhaps we don’t always think about it, but our shadow seems to always be around. It seems that the shadow never leaves the heels of our feet, but walks along with us, indiscriminate of how we feel and who we are. But this is only an illusion we hang on to as we plod along because we don’t bother to really notice that shadow…instead, we leave it to sway in the periphery of our vision…and only see it when it’s not there, or when we need to see it to dispel the loneliness.

In reality, the shadow clings to our heels so loyally only in the light. Depending on the light and its angle, the shadow grows and recedes. It dances to a rhythm we can’t control for it listens and knows only the music of light. But we always find that when there is darkness, the shadow is no more…for when the music vanishes, when the notes are tuneless, the shadow knows not the steps anymore.

If even our own shadows cling to us only in times of light, why is it that we expect people to be with us, for us, in our times of darkness? Why do we expect people to materialize out of nowhere for even a short waltz that’ll help us smile for a few minutes a day, when those who are closest to us hears the music no more?

The Forgotten: He who died for me

There was always something that bothered me about the man in olive fatigues holding a gun who stood at the top of the street. I think this is a feeling that was/ is shared by a good many people in Sri Lanka over the last years and now. The fact that he stood in the sun, two wet streaks running down the sides of his face, while we scuttled to find a shady spot bothered me then. It bothers me now.

But I’d never really been able to put my finger on why it exactly bothered me. I rationalised that in a country where there was a war, someone had to die, someone had to give their life. For if I didn’t think like that, I guess I would need to take up arms and give my life too for ‘the cause’ whatever that was.

Yesterday, I found why it bothered me so much. I went for a concert held as a fundraiser to fund a housing scheme for soldiers. At the start of the concert two minutes’ silence was observed for those who gave their life for us. And images I’d seen in the media rose unbidden while I stood thinking, being reminded once again, that every day of my life I stood on the blood and tears of so many men. And though for a moment something snapped within me as it always does at the end of this train of thought, this wasn’t the powerful moment. That was to come much later.

In the middle of the concert a soldier, who had lost his leg to the war, sang a couple of songs too. After the singing, he hobbled off stage – stiff-legged, leaning heavily on a metal cane, concentratingly watching his feet put one in front of the other. That half a minute he took to painfully walk off the stage brought home the fact that no matter how much we thank the forces, no matter how much we give to ‘them’, it’s never enough. Never.

We thank the army, the navy, the air force, the entire thrivida hamudava. But how many of us remember that it’s not a ‘people’, a mass we must thank, but one person at a time? One person at a time? A person who will live the rest of his life without an arm and/ or leg that was familiar to him as much as my arm and leg is familiar to me now?

When we observe those two minutes of silence, when we see images of the dead, our dead, we think of them as those who died for us, but forget to see that it was he who died for us.

And I guess that is the reality of war. Not that someone had to stand in the sun so I can stand in the shade, but that when I pay tribute, I pay tribute to a lot of people. Not really to the one person who watched life expire from his limbs, lungs, loved ones.

In reality then, doesn’t that one soldier, that one person who died forever, or in bits and pieces as he was de-limbed, therefore remain to me forever nameless? Faceless?

Forgotten?

Going home - the scary and the hope :o)

Tonight I go back home to Sri Lanka and I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit this week. There are things I look forward to, but there are lots of things that also scare me. This fear, I think, is rooted in the fact that I have come to realize that I don’t really know Sri Lanka. I grew up in Colombo, and I don’t think I knew the real Sri Lanka except in glimpses here and there. It is as Arthur Jarvis said, in Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country, of growing up in South Africa:

“One can ride, as I rode when I was a boy, over green hills and into great valleys. One can see, as I saw when I was a boy, the reserves of the Bantu people and see nothing of what was happening there at all… One can read, as I read when I was a boy, the brochures about lovely South Africa, that land of sun and beauty sheltered from the storms of the world, and feel pride in it and love for it, and yet know nothing about it at all. It is only as one grows up that one learns of the hates and fears of our country. It is only then that one’s love grows deep and passionate, as a man may love a woman who is true, false, cold, loving, cruel and afraid.”

What I know of the real Sri Lanka is so little because as a teenager growing up, one lives (at least I did) in a bubble where there’s so much going on – school, exams, sport, emotional roller-coasters – that you don’t let yourself really open your eyes and look around you…except for a brief cursory glance. It really is when you start growing up that you learn of the real storms thundering around you. But I did that growing up elsewhere, outside of Sri Lanka. I saw bits of Sri Lanka through these new “grown up” eyes during holidays – but that’s really what they were in the end – holidays in which I saw things, heard things, but left behind at the end of the month.

I did my growing up and the real seeing and hearing in Melbourne. I did find a lot of 'good' here, but in end, I can’t reconcile myself to accept the pile of bad no matter how sparkly the pile of good glitters. Men arrive on these shores with only the clothes on their back, for fear of their lives, and are locked up like common criminals; and families which were victimised and broken apart by fundamentalists elsewhere are once again victimised and broken apart by liberals here – again and again. There's nothing as painful as watching a grown man cry for his wife, for his children; there's nothing as uplifting as promising him you'd find a way; and there's nothing to compare to the fear that keeps you awake night after night afraid of other men's policies that'll make your words drown in nothingness. In some ways, I'm leaving because I know I don't want to stay.

When I return to Sri Lanka, I return to what I'd seen only in glimpses here and there over the last couple of decades. But also buried deep within those slightly thundery unsure images and the “golden beaches” of brochures and postcards, I also carry a few special images; rare glimpses of real radiance like the complete untouched beauty of the morning fog over Lokgaloya. I found that unexpectedly, the breath caught in my throat, as I passed through on the way elsewhere.

So I leave behind the country I could not really connect with, the country that destroyed my faith in simple humanity. I know I will never return to Melbourne. For me, that golden ball of fire in the sky here is a hypocrite; lighting the blue skies whilst a dark thundery cloud lies hidden on the horizon; firing mundane trees to blanket whole areas in thick grey fog.

Yes, it's inevitable that I’ll see such dark clouds in the blue skies of Sri Lanka too. Yet that is MY country and right now, that seems to make all the difference. And so here's hoping for real love for Sri Lanka in the coming months and years. And maybe, just maybe, even real and dramatic enough to be “deep and passionate, as a man may love a woman who is true, false, cold, loving, cruel and afraid.”

Painting: Monet's Red Kerchief

Do I really want to be a lawyer?!?

Next Tuesday I sit for (hopefully) my final exam and so this is probably not the time to question the point of the last four years…yet, now that I’m almost at the end, I do question it. I wanted to read and write, write and read all my life, yet law was tempting and when it knocked, I gave in and bid it welcome. And now that I have to decide on a career path and find a job, I really do wonder at it. At the choice I made. And more at the choice I might have let slip past.

There’s a path before you, a path that ends at a cliff, a path you have not walked before. Once you start walking it, you know there can be no returning, not to what you leave behind. So you make a decision to walk, you find someone who makes the sunshine a little bit brighter around you and put one foot in front of the other.

You take their hand and walk, the sweet scent of the world wafting around you. Little stones prick the soft soles, boulders lie across the path, flowers bloom prettily while thorns run down their green stalks. You choose to walk around the boulders, furtively wipe the blood off your fingers and ignore the pricks of pain for if you did not, that path would be walked alone. Alone, in the dark of night when pain is unseen, in the monsoons when tears invisible.

At the end of the path lies the cliff, with the ocean below, yet out of sight. And you don’t know if the waves roll in softly or thunder against the rock. You don’t know if the water is warm and light-dappled or icy and deep. Without the safety of knowing, you need to jump. For you said you would. You took a foot off that cliff, that promising hand in your clammy one, and know now it’s too late to refuse. Too late to run to the footsteps you now suddenly hear behind you. The foot prints you had not stopped to examine before. But it’s too late to run back now for you have committed yourself too much.

If a drowning man clutches at straws, a falling man grabs at anything that floats past. And when you take that jump, what else do you hang on to but optimism? But optimism can be reality’s worst nightmare for it creates hope. It’s the softly fading rainbow of the man losing sight. It makes you search the vacant air for a stray parachute. It keeps the water warm, the sand soft below. And hope never dies. Not till the icy water numbs the pain and you lie on the rocks below, your head splintered, unseeing eyes staring at the empty blue of the sky arching above. Only then, only then, will hope die its silently shattered death.

But who’s to say the parachute will not come?

Now back to the studying...ack!

Hope on the Edge

When you’re a kid, there’s this game some adults play with you. They hold out a fist to you and ask you to guess what they hold within. So you guess – a chocolate! a marble! And some adults give you whatever it is they brought. But there were others. Others who made you peel back their fingers, one by one, till you can see the treasure they hold, till you can grasp it within your own small fist.

Life is like this I think. A fist held out to you, fingers to be peeled back one by one. Yet the difference is you’re no longer a child. You hope for the chocolate, the coloured marble, but somewhere in the back of your mind you know there could be something nasty, something sick. Yet, since hope is a funny thing, you peel back the fingers anyway.

Some are fast enough to find a glittery treasure within a few minutes, whilst others spend their whole life without once catching sight of anything beautiful. Some catch sight of a pretty shade and grasp it only to find that the colour fades too soon. Some peel back the fingers to find that the fist held nothing at all.

However, there are lucky ones among us. The ones who find the marble. The marble with the stripe of colours held tight within the glass. In this marble of life, that stripe is a Mobius strip – one-sided, one edged. Bits of it we walk the right way up, bits of upside down, but all of it on the same path. There’s only one very small challenge in walking through this colourfully marbled world. Whether one breaks into dance on the right-way-up bits or gets too dizzy on the upside-down bits, we need to stay away from the edge.

For beyond that edge, hope does not exist. And fists will never be extended again.

Today ;o(

Borrowed a car from a friend cos I needed to get some chores done (which could not be done on the bus!)..and I should have known something bad was gonna happen cos the entrance to the highway was closed and had to start my journey reversing more than 500 meters down the road to get to the next street since my street is one way.. Anyway, so on the way passed two dead birds and was starting to kinda wonder wtf was going on today when two streets before the destination, took a wrong turn, crashed into truck (an 8 wheeler!!) and got myself well and truly wedged between the engine bit and the loonnnggg bit that carries things (and I can't be bothered looking up what those bits are called so shall just call 'em "bits").

Did I die? No. But there was enough crunching to make me think I probably was dead even though a voice in my head kept sayin omg,omg,omg,omg over and over again ;o( A dude passing by stopped and drove me around the corner to a nearby petrol shed seeing as I was hardly managing to stay on my feet, nevermind get myself behind the wheel again. After this kindly stranger left, after making me promise that I will call a friend to pick me up, I proceeded to sit in the petrol shed for 45 minutes shaking..with that damned voice STILL going omg, omg, omg,omg..

I've been driving for the last 8 years and have never even come close to hitting something (nothing spectacular enough to remember at least), on Sri Lankan mad roads too mind, and then have to fucking wedge myself in a truck here on these neat wide roads a couple of weeks before I leave the country!! Arrgghh.

After all that drama I get home to a neat note left by the housemate which says that the internet at home won't be reconnected till at least mid mext week. Which means I'm going to have to live with this bloody omg-ing voice for the next 4 or 5 days without any other distraction, by the end of which I will surely be a raving lunatic.

Shit.Shit.SHIT.

Who is "mad" - me or she??

Last week I visited a friend who introduced me to her grandmother who was apparently "not quite right". She certainly seemed all right to me, but apparently she wasn't. Since I didn't know the grandaughter too well, I couldn't really question her, so while coffee was being made, I talked to the "not quite right" grandma. Or rather, she talked to me.

The news was on and there was a man talking about the failure of the war in Iraq, to which the grandma listened quite patiently beofre suddenly sayin - we don't realize that everything we do, we do only for ourself. Even when we help someone, we help them only because it gives us the satsifaction of having done some good. And only God does things for others without looking for personal happiness. Not exactly how I see the war in Iraq (!!) or God for that matter, so was this what made her "not quite right"?

No, 'course not cos when the chick came back with coffee she decided to show me just how "not quite right" her grandma was. She proceeded to ask her grandmother a series of questions. What year is this? After much thought the answer came back - 1982. How old was she? 55 (she was actually 79). How old was the granddaughter? 'you graduated last year. 24' (correct). Where did she live? An address so far out in the suburbs I had not heard of the place (though they actually lived very close to the city). Where was grandpa? Glancing at the clock on the wall, 'at work' (he had died about 20 years ago I think) and so on.

Throughout this questioning, this chick found these answers hilarious. And the questions got wackier till I told her I didn't find it funny. I don't know what exactly the grandma had for she remembered some things quite correctly and other things so very incorrectly..but what disconcerted me was not the errors the grandma made, but the fact that this girl I had thought was quite "normal" was so entertained by her grandmother's "madness". Wasn't that a much worse madness than whatever the old lady had?? And is the fact that I find the girl "mad" and not at all hilarious mean that I myself is afflicted with some sort of "madness"?

Why is it that we are so quick to see madness in others but not in ourselves? Why is it that we must always point to that mad person and not to this mad person in the mirror? Is it because if we start seeing our own madness, we can never surface from the dark labyrinth we are dragged into? Is it because we start seeing people in the dark alleyways that hitherto ran empty in solitude within us? Maybe it's because when we start seeing those that hover in the twilight of our hearts, we expect others to see them and we want others to see them. When they cannot, we are disappointed. Maybe it is to shield ourselves, from this disappointment, from that feeling of utter aloneness we feel when we realize that we are alone among those ghosts within us, that we refuse to see the madness within us and are quite happy to pass judgment on others.

Top 5ive things I hate...

...about living in the land down under. I’m only writing this to give you poor souls a break from all the politics, mayhem and what not. At least that’s all you need to know. (Note to Manshark: this is for reminding you things you might forget if Sri Lanka were to start driving you mad someday in the near future).

So, the Top 5ive things I hate about living in the land down under:

1. When the sky goes all blue and rains down blinding sunshine and I, like the fool that I am, run out (and still miss the damned bus!) without a jacket and freeze my butt off since the cold wind won the contest over the sun

2. People who have no respect for running mansharks and beep their horns and scare the living day lights out of me

3. Crazy tram drivers who ding-ding-ding! at running mansharks and scare whatever remains of the living day lights (what are living day lights? The number of ‘light’ of days one lives? So does that mean manshark shall now only live at night?)

4. Vicious, lunatic magpies

5. People who run over possums and leave their carcasses (the possum's, not suicide-ed people's) in the middle of the road (okay, I'm not asking for a sob-fest burial here, but at least leave 'em on the road side so the rest of the possum-brood won't possibly get run over looking for mum)

6. (Hyper) footy crowd at Richmond station on Sat arvo – no, the stink of beer is just not attractive

7. People who say ‘she’ll be right mate’ instead of giving me a hug when I tell them I have failed my exams

8. Big, neat roads with polite drivers that make driving such a bore. Now, in Sri Lanka, it’s a bit different, y’see. First, when you manage to nudge your way on to the main road from the itty bitty lane you were on, there’s the exhilaration of your first triumph of the journey. Then comes the mad go, stop, go, STOP!! (fucking three-wheeler full of grinning dimwits), go, stop, shit that dimwit-full three wheeler is after me, go, go, GO!!, stop, apologize to the biker you almost ran over (yes, it’s always the non-bikes that are at fault), go, stop, etc. Then comes the best feeling of all when you reach your destination: knowing you achieved, albeit verging on near insanity now, all that you set out to achieve and have gone the full distance of the journey you set out to travel. THAT feeling is just not there in the land down under.

9. People who find tiny people mansharks cute for they not only selfishly withhold (much deserved) hugs, they also selfishly don’t understand how much time it takes to try to get a good foothold just so I can at least see the bloody exam paper that’s on that abnormally high desk from the abnormally low chair

10. Lack of humidity – when my hair doesn’t go crazy people mistake me for a normal sane person manshark and tell me normal sane things about their normal sane lives which are just too normally, sanely boring. Well, except maybe "Bob" who lives on swanston street and once told me he knew I was one of ‘em the minute I stopped to listen to his crazy li’l songs (I actually stopped to pet the lab who lives with him, but why burst his bubble?) Besides, "Bob" hates chocolate so I don’t need to share my choc waffle with him while I listen to the stories 'bout people he’d met who have fires in their head ("Bob"'s been places you've never dreamed nightmared of!)

I know I said “5ive” above, but once I got started, there were just so darn many…Why did I not get my one-way ticket outta here earlier??

Go give your mom a hug! ;o)

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie...

- Tenneva Jordan

Now go give your mom a hug!!

I gotta wait two more months!! :'- (

Painting: "Mother and Children"

With my own two hands..

I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands
Make a kinder place
With my own two hands
With my own,
With my own two hands

I can reach out to you
With my own two hands
With my own,
With my own two hands

I can hold you
With my own two hands
I can comfort you
With my own two hands
But you got to use

Use your own two hands
Use your own
Use your own two hands

With our own
With our own two hands

With My Own Two Hands - Ben Harper (Diamonds on the Inside)

..to whom if I were to speak, I would not understand.

And 'tis DONE! Finished the damned thesis mid-day yday!! I did dearly want to do a jig of celebration but since my feet felt like lead thought I'd sleep it off first, do the jig second - and I wake up 13 hours later now and both my feet and head feel like lead. Is that normal???

Anyways, checked out Turtles Blog (as per usual) and decided to steal a few of her pics (as per usual).

This one (which I stole) I will put up here, cos it represents my life right now (and I suspect for the next couple of months to come):

A tangle of roads, heading towards a bend around which I cannot yet see; some look green and luscious, others bare and wanting, but all surrounded by daunting, daunting hills. If I had expected bright yellow signposts along the way, it seems there would be none. And coming from around the bend is a lonely man, to whom if I were to speak, I would not understand. I would not understand.

Sigh.

Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god

My thesis is due in five days! 5! Five! FIVE!!!!!!

Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god

OH MY GOD

I can either

1. Sit dow and Just Do It

OR

2. Find a thick rope and hang myself

Option 2 is tempting, but I must resist. I mean, what would everyone do without moi?? (ie, once the celebrations die down)

(Don't you dare answer that!!)

To rant a blog or to blog a rant? That is the title.

A 30C day was forecast, hence off I went about my chores in a skirt and rubber slippers. BUT I forgot that winter had made my feet dry and soft and used-to-socks. Hence 15 minutes into the walk there was a blister on each foot.

Having limped the last 20 minutes to my destination tragic realization hit me- I needed to walk back all that way home again! No can do.

So I walk into a pharmacy to buy bandaids.The lady behind the counter very politely tells me that bandaids don't come in ones or twos but in 25 bandaid packs. Err..excuse me, lady, I have two blisters, not twenty-five. And apparently the pharmacy also doesn't take Eftpos for purchases under $10 and there was no ATM in sight. I pray and hope tmrw's newspapers will report that a lady pharmacist was found dead from having mysteriously acquired 25 on blisters on each foot.

And for all of you who saw me limping home (a green-skirted manshark, that is) thank you very much for offering me a ride. I hope you die of blisters someday soon too.

For all of you who stopped me to ask if I had a blister, and cluck your

tongue in sympathy - that did not help. A bandaid might have.

And to the Russian-accented dude who sympathised with my limping around the dvd store just before proceeding to tell me 'I think you are gorgeous' (as if there was such a thing as an ugly manshark!) - go fuck yourself. Next time you so much as look at me, I'll have you shot (mafia links are easy to acquire around here).

And while I'm on this rant, let me also tell you all the things I found annoying during my (slow) walk home: every fucking song on my i-pod (it'd now be at the bottom of a river had I found one), the sound of housekeys jiggling around in my bag (why do I have so many keys when there's only one door to my house?), people who don't pick up their dogs' shit off the pavements (have you tried manoeuvring - how the fuck do you spell that word?!? - around such piles with blistered-feet?), Magpies protecting their young in trees who swoop down at you for walking under (well, excuse me for living!), supermarkets that run out of chocolate wafers (no, vanilla will not fucking do), and finally when I find a million e-mails waiting for me at home from people who send millions of friend requests/ messages to my Hi 5 (one of these days, I'm gonna shut down that site and all you losers are gonna have to find yourselves a job!).

Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh.

No, I'm not dead..yet!

For those of you who might care - no, I'm not dead (..yet! Though I have been considering the option of shooting myself in the head just to see if it would kill me - but the way my luck's going atm, it prob'ly wouldn't and instead would prob'ly only leave me just a bit more brain-damaged than I already am!) ;o(

Anyways, my internet provider's packed up and left (I assume) and so till the net is back up at home, no blogging.. but I will definitely be BACK (not that I would want you to hold your breath or anything!)

Ciao!

Yellow to Red to Orange

It's weird how you wake up in the morning and go about your day not knowing that you're going to meet someone and when you meet him, he'll say something to you and BOOM! your life will change.

This is what happened last Friday.

And when you wake up the next day you realize that everything in your life has been stupid, stupid, stupid

It's like life barrells down in yellows and then someone comes along and leaks a bit of red into it and it all turns orange and there's nothing you can do about it except see everything else for the rest of your life through that orange, orange haze

And I have finally understood most of the song Misere (Cat Empire):

/Do you ever look around/ turn your ear to the ground/ show your face to the sky/ on a night when the skies echo sounds/ from inside of your mind/ on the stage that you shone/ where the sun did become you/ and move with your thoughts/ through the sighs and the scenes/ of the worlds you have seen/ and the sights that have been/ your reflection in shadows and dreams?/

Did you ever see a man/ who did walk down the street/ white robe with no shoes on his feet/ and on top of his head place a box/ with two slits/ and the sign from his neck said/ ‘I do not exist’/ or a woman who could not remember/ her name/ did stutter and stutter/ again and again/ and saw you and called you her son/ her eyes said/ ‘my being is gone/ but still I’m not dead’?/

/Miserere/

/Have you ever seen a sound/ have you listened to an image/.../ have you ever told a lie/ that was true more than truth/ because truth it had lied/ all its life when it spoke to you?/ And what did it say/ it is that it is this/ this goes here here is there/ it is not yes it is/ it was dulling your senses/ your eyes they were bound/ have you ever my friends/ been looking around?/

/And the other replies/ with a wave of a hand/ I am already here/ in this promised land/ but not by a god and not by a king/ and not by a spirit/ deep from within/ I am here/ because a miracle’s a whim/ it’s a flash of glory/ it’s an empty tin/ and maybe might lets you in/ not to save you/ but to keep on looking/

/Miserere/

/Do you ever look around/ and find what is yet to be found?/

And so henceforth, through this newly acquired orange haze I will notice the man who does not exist, the woman who exists without a being, the truth that has (so badly) dulled my senses cos a miracle is indeed a (very) empty tin and I've now realized that it's there not to save you but to only make you keep looking.

And hopefully everytime I want more I'll remember to stop to look around; to see that which I am looking for.