Lest I Ever Forget Again

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love NEVER fails.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Simply The Way It Is

But still, what interests me is this question of why a particular culture asks particular questions. Why is it that we Americans, for instance, seem to expect things to be over so fast, and to be healed and back to normal after losses? Is it in our culture of safety and insurance?

It causes me to ask, really, what is the role of intellectual endeavor, of knowledge, of understanding -- is understanding like a magic spell that can make the past disappear? Are our various techniques for meditation, our philosophies, our belief systems, our technologies of the spirit and our intellectual methods, are all these things essentially supposed to be emotional cures, or drugs, to make us feel like we used to feel before whatever happened happened? What about tragic emotion? Why should we expect any act of the mind to overcome reality? Is that not the realm of spoon-benders and levitators?

I can say from experience that when something awful happens we generally feel bad about it for a long time. And of course we ponder it from every angle, and we seek relief from the feeling. We seek to get the feeling in perspective, which you have done. You would do well to continue looking at it from different angles, placing it in perspective. And you would do well to stop saying that these ways of looking at it did not really work. Of course they worked. They can't change history. But they can help you organize experience and keep it from overwhelming you.

I have a question in mind, and it really is about fate, about how we confront reality, and how reality changes us.

At some point in our lives, our own experiences affect us in ways that run counter to our habitual expectations and assumptions, and it is at that point that we either construct even larger delusions, or we give up and say yes, this is me, this is what happened to me, this is how I feel. It is at these moments that we have to encounter difficulty not as something to be cured but in a more elemental sense as simply the way it is.

This is a good thing. We stop trying to stamp out this reality, this knowledge of what happened, this feeling of loss, this unbalance, this void. We stop trying to make this thing tiny or kill it off. Instead we expand so we can carry it. When we do this we actually expand our capacity for experience.

Extracted from
http://salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/10/18/stolen_laptop/

Belle is 3!

October 8 - Belle's 3rd Birthday at KL Aquaria

Ship Arrest!

It was late on friday evening. I was looking forward to a restful weekend. It had been a rough couple of weeks.

It was not to be.

I was called into Brilliant Boss' (BB) room. He had a view overlooking the Singapore harbour. It was already dark and all I could see were the ship lights blinking on the ocean.

- Possible instructions to arrest! I want you to handle it.

I blanched. It was the day before Hari Raya/Eid. Our process server cum court clerk would be busy with his family. I would have to arrest the ship by myself!. I gulped and nodded.

It was a long friday night as I prepared the papers and ran through the entire procedure again. A, BB's super secretary was worried for me.

- You can't go and arrest a ship by yourself! What if you get raped?

So it was that B was assigned to aid me in this my first arrest.

The next day, we played the waiting game. Having informed the Bailiff and the Duty Registrar (a junior judge), we could only polish up the papers and line up the other details.

I had not been eating well for a couple of weeks, but I tried to stuff some lunch into myself knowing that I would need all the energy I could get. Alas, before I could quite finish it was ALL SYSTEMS GO!

We donned our court attire, grabbed the papers and rushed to Court. It was a Saturday and a Public Holiday so neither the Judge nor the Bailiff were in formals. B and I looked like out of place penguins in the vast and empty High Court.

There was a problem with the papers! We had to get a Commissioner of Oaths! Further Delay!

Thankfully both the Judge and the Bailiff were cutie-pies so I was kept suitably occupied :-p

Finally we got our Warrant of Arrest!

It was already dark as we rushed back to the office to change into something suitable. I had my "lucky" lime green Puma shoes and trusted them to keep me safe.

The stats that came in as we rushed to the Pier though were not encouraging. The biggest ship in that particular anchorage! About 5-6 stories high. I prayed hard.

We were soon in the launch. I noted that there were no formalities about life-jackets and informed B that "I could not swim". He assured me pragmatically - Don't worry, you won't survive a fall to need to know how to swim.

Though we had the particular anchorage and the grid number (the harbour is divided into grids on a map and ships are assigned to particular locations in various grids), we could not seem to find the ship.

It was close to 10 pm by now and our launch slid between the various ships while obligingly shining its lamp on their hulls (to check their names). It was a veritable needle in the haystack. Finally, B had the brilliant idea of asking the launch guy who had gone in the morning to speak to our guy. After a brief conversation in Malay on the handphone, our guy banked sharply starboard (right) and headed towards a HUGE ship.

The three of us stared at it. The launch's lamp shone on its name. It was our baby alright. The launch guy whistled. That there is one high mailto:*&@* ship!

He tooted his horn repeatedly to rouse the ship. I stared at the rope ladder hanging by the side of the ship. It seems I would have to face my two greatest fears - the water and heights.

After a while, there seemed to be some activity onboard. A gangway was being lowered! Hopefully, it would go down far enough so we need not utilise the rope ladder. It did! The gangway was like a metallic staircase - the "stairs" though were made of wooden planks.

B jumped from the launch to the gangway first. With my heart in my mouth I followed. I made it to the gangway! We trudged up. I could see the sea lapping between the planks of the gangway and prayed hard that I would not trip in some way. I am such a klutz I can trip getting from point A to point B. It seemed so high! It was endless!

Finally, we reached the top and clambered on to the deck. What a huge ship! I was shaking like a leaf by now but took a deep breath and followed B. Sure enough the first thing I did was to trip over something and bruise my shin!

We were led to the Captain's cabin. Thankfully he was more than civil (these things can sometimes turn ugly) and offered us cans of coke. I drank mine to take in some glucose as my hands were visibly shaking when I passed him the relevant papers.

He then escorted us to the wheelhouse of the ship where we pasted the Warrant of Arrest as per procedure.

After the various formalities were concluded, we were escorted back to the gangway. Going down was almost as bad as going up. At the bottom, the launch was just too far away for me and I froze, remembering how I had fallen into the water at Pangkil in a similiar situation. But at Pangkil it was day, I had a life-jacket, there were no motorised craft around and I had many friends to save me.

B! I cried out. He came back to the side and held out his hand. I grabbed his hand and jumped onto the moving launch. We clung to the sides and crept back inside the launch.

So you have done your first arrest, B said smiling at me.

Yeah, I said smiling back as the launch headed back towards the Pier and the lights of Singapore blinked at us invitingly from the shore.

If the reader is wondering what the hell I was doing "arresting a ship" please go to http://maritimelawcenter.com/html/arrest_of_vessel.html for an explanation.

Wild Thing

Self-Pity

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

DH Lawrence

Pain

I must not fear pain.

Pain is the mind-killer.

Pain is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my pain.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the pain has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

- A Variation of The Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear

Of Riversides and A Thousand Yellow Daisies

We sat by the riverside.

The sun was setting but the Chao Phraya was still teeming with traffic.

I looked across to the Rama VIII bridge and told him the funny story of how Almas and I had tried to get a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the bridge and the ensuing misunderstandings and shenanigans.

He laughed appropriately but his eyes were strange. I would have thought them troubled if I knew him better. But I did not.

We talked of his grandparents, those kind souls who had taken in my poor orphaned mother and who had very kindly treated my siblings and I as their grandchildren too.

All of a sudden, he took out his wallet and rummaged in it and pulled out two rosary beads, rich, dark brown like Daddy’s. They reminded me of comfort and security and Daddy’s rough cheek when I kissed him after every rosary.

- For you. We were each given two of Grandpa’s rosary beads when he died.

- I have kept them all these years and I want you to have mine.

I must have protested. I don’t really remember.

But I remember his eyes as he looked away – confused, afraid, an infinity of pain and unspoken emotions.

Would it not have been better had you not spoken?

Would it not have been better if you had left me with the beads to wonder forever what lay behind those eyes of yours?