“penang”
May 4, 2008 by constantquantum
everywhere & nowhere 25
July 13
Penang
Synchronicities
Our friend Anna received a letter today: her mother breaks the household mixer and that very afternoon, unknowing, her father arrives having won a new mixer at a golf tournament.
there is no such thing as coincidence
Meanwhile, our Swiss friend Daniel has hooked up with a Thai woman who’s celebrating: “My happy birthday today,” who keeps bestowing little gifts upon everybody: chocolate bar and t-shirt presents that materialize in an ragged orange plastic shoulder bag. She has her own place she tells us, not a hotel room. (Was there a ‘nudge, nudge’ ‘wink, wink’ that everybody else managed to pick up and I missed?)
& she has the names and addresses of “friends” recorded in a blank page at the back of The Book of Mormon (???)
One man in there is from New Zealand, she tells me, and he has two wives: one Malay and one New Zealander… or rather had… He killed the New Zealand one, and is serving time in a Malaysian prison now.
“Hey lady, you give me your address?”
“Only if you call me Gayle, and promise to write.”
Penang Hill
a monolithic Colonial brooding over the South East
panarama and perspective
Last night:
a dream about Johnny as the conductor of a faceless symphony orchestra. Standing spine-rigid in front of shadows. Wand hand floating. Head bobbing.
This evening: Sitting in the hotel with Andy and Colin.
A couple “regular blokes,” they’re talking about Daniel’s Thai friend. They snicker about prostitutes. “Feminist!” they interject, when I begin my say. Too much like preaching to suggest that perhaps we don’t all have to exist as objects…
same old story
Play along with the orchestra Gayle, no time for a jazz riff tonight
July 14
Penang-Kuala Lumpur
en route. en train
(minus Johnny and Puff, who are caught in a customs nowhere between Indonesia and Malaysia)
The tracks stretch out here. Leading to somewhere. A to B.
a set course
on and on and on
andonandon
Pistons and turbines driving smooth metal wheels
Slicing across foreign ground on a colonially prepared steel-girtered scar
Rhythmically dictating my course:
BRO-MO JOG-JA PRAM-BA-NAN PEN-ANG MA-LA-CA SING-A-PORE.
DIZ-ZY BLOND. YOU-ARE-HERE. THEY-ARE-THERE.
YOU-CAN’T-GO ANY-WHERE.
Replacing even my heart beat…
I pick up a newspaper, only to throw it down again a second later. The Herald Tribune. Politics and power.
same old story
***
if we all define ourselves according to others,
or even if it is only me who does that,
is it any wonder I am disappearing?
the others of this group I’ve joined,
the others of this new country,
my own conspicuous others,
a moment of epiphany.
hesitant infatuation
strange dreams
( )
no one’s home…
