Red River Valley

The air inside the coffee house was choked with the song came out of the speakers hid above the ceiling. There seem to be something nauseating and gloomy in the air too. I don’t know how they can play such a depressing song in this rainy atmosphere. Indeed, the song was a plagiarized version of a song, Listen to the Radio by Don William. You would know how it is awful if you were sitting in this coffee house. The original sound is a very great one but when you plagiarize and turn it into another language and put some sort of musical effects, it turns into a crap. It simply lacks the authenticity. But as far as I know, most of the people like that plagiarized version. But I don't know if they have listened to Don Williams'. Maybe they prefer this song as a translation of the Listen to the Radio. But the lyrics in the plagiarized version are very different from that of Listen to the Radio. The chorus is something like "I want to come to you if I have wings". As if there's no other mode of transportation. A classic lie of male as he tries to lure his female partner, I would say. I mean, you can come whether you have wings or not, right? There’s no need to exaggerate.

What's more, the taste of coffee is awful. When we were about to order, the waitress said the coffee machine was broken. We did not think much and order some 'creamy coffee' as it is said so in the menu cards. Then we find that it is actually an instant coffee with condensed milk. Anyway, we are here to talk and I don't care the coffee. She also doesn't care the coffee, she says.

"When is that?" I ask her.

"I booked an air ticket for tomorrow. I still need to get things done. I haven’t packed yet and I am a bit excited."

"Yeah, I know what it feels. You are not the only one. "

“Yeah, I just feel upset to check everything and make sure they are ready.”

While waiting for the order, she reaches my hand and grasps my hand. I think she has small fingers compared to her body or her face. When she grasps my hand, I somehow feel funny to look at our hands because her small-sized fingers make my own gigantic.

I am looking at the back covers of the books I have just bought from the bookshop. Two novels and a book of Big Bang theory.  She is not talking or looking at me. She is staring at the children through the glass wall of the coffee house. Children are running and chasing each other while their parents are shopping at the supermarket.

“I want to run,” she says, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Hmm…. It’s fun, eh? It will be more fun if they run away. From their parents. Or from something or someone.”

She give me a nod. The song being played in the coffee shop is something about having wings and the children are running. Although I neither like the children or the song, there are a lot of factors that encourage one to run away.

I feel her breath on my sleeve, I feel sleepy, order arrives, a woman comes and passes us and locates herself in a chair, another song follows after the current song finishes, people walk along outside of the coffee shop, she looks at me, I look at her, we smile and we reach to each other hands. She buries her head more into my shoulders and I put my hand on her shoulder and fondle her hair.

She has that sort of nostalgic smell that makes me look back to the past. I want to think about who I am and what I have been through as I am inhaling her smell, her sweetness. I just want to close my eyes while I am thinking about everything and everyone in the past. It takes a couple of minutes before I open my eyes. I see her watching me. I don't know when she has switched her eyes from the children to me and how long she has been watching me. I want to kiss her. A kiss will make me feel less sleepy. But PDA is highly restricted here even when you are sitting at a corner of a stupid coffee house with your girlfriend.

“Your hair is soft and you are beautiful. There’s a connection between them, I am sure.”
She turns up her head to me with a smile. A woman who came in earlier is looking at us as if we are criminals. I don’t want to make anything to draw more attention from that woman. She seems very old-fashioned and we cannot know if she comes to us and lecture how to behave well as a couple.
I drop the coffee cup back to saucer and say,

“Sometimes you don't need to run away. You just disappear. Do you know some people just vanish into thin air?”

“No, I don’t know. How come?”

 “There are some kinds of people who just disappeared.  To nowhere.  They are born to disappear.  This kind of people. I know one poet in Mandalay who took a walk before the dinner, maybe he might have kissed his wife before he left for a walk, and he never came back to his wife and his family. His wife is always waiting.”

"Oh, that's just sad. What has happened to him?"

"I don't know. Just think of it. You are here. And I am here too. But we won't be here tomorrow. We left for somewhere. But in the poet's case, he left for nowhere. All the time normal people like us are somewhere but we can occupy just one single spot in the universe. You sit in that chair – just one spot. And I occupy one spot. Only one. And then you will disappear and go to one another spot. So will I. But some people reach the place of nowhere and they are considered missing. Never coming back."

“Never?”

“Yes, never.”

She squints on me. She squints when she needs to think for a long time or when she likes something.

The only thing I enjoy doing when she is squinting is looking for the hidden smiles on her face until she speaks,

“What kind of people are missing?”

“I don’t know. There are people who went shopping for Christmas and never come back. And some people were sleeping at their home and they disappeared with the rise of the sun. We will probably go missing after coming out of this coffee house. Our parents will report the police but they will never find us."

"Where do we go?"

"There might be an abyss at the end of meadow. It is a place for all the missing people. Perhaps, we will meet with Virginia Woolf, Ambrose Bierce and Abbie Hoffman.”

"There might be some chances only one of us will disappear soon. How would you feel when I disappear in such a way?" I ask her. She tilts her head to me as she is thinking for the answer. She has the sort of body heat that can connect to other people. Warmth and heat from her are radiated to my body.

It takes her a couple of seconds to respond. I stare around the coffee house waiting for her reply. The woman who has been looking to us with suspicious eyes finally gets down to reading alone. Maybe she has found the book more interesting than watching a young couple. I sneak a look at the cover of the book she is reading. I have never heard of the writer or the name of the book.

 “I will cry for sure. I don't like the feeling of being left. It's like listening to a song with the highest volume the speakers can bare and it ends up abruptly. There is a silence without a hint. Without any foreshadow. There are silence in your ears and nothing more. You will hear the song from within but that's not real. ”

"You are lovely," I say. Then the next moment I find my lips pressing against hers. There is a cough from the woman after we are kissing for five seconds. Neither of us wants to stop but we sit back and try to hide the awkwardness. I take a quick glance at the woman who is monitoring on us as if she is a guardian of no-kiss-on-earth.

“Perhaps, we can assure ourselves we haven’t disappeared until now because that woman’s eyes are always on us."

She takes a glance over the woman. She agrees with me and giggles silently. And then she gives me a kind of look that I can’t explain whether she is going to smile or cry.

"Yes, you are right. She's like that."

She makes the face of the woman, and I laugh at it.

“I want to kiss you more,” I tell her.

“Let’s go outside of this creepy place,” she gets up squeezing my fingers.

As we leave the coffee house, there are some gray clouds in the sky. There are not many people and cars on the road. It is cool to walk through the breeze.

“Let’s pretend we are missing people,” she continues, “no one sees us, right?”

“Yeah, no one really sees us. Hey can you see me?” I shout to the people walking on the opposite sidewalk. None of them can hear us or bother to respond my faint shout.

“Look, no one is aware of us. Which means they can’t see us, now,” I tell her, laughing.

“We will go somewhere and kiss,” she says to me. “Behind that tree,” she points at the big tree.

My hands are wrapping around her neck, my lips almost touch to hers and we stay in this position for five minutes. And then we sit together on the ground and I hum,


“Joan was quizzical; studied pataphysical
Science in the home.
Late nights all alone with a test tube.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.”

She smiles at the song and sings,


“Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine,
Calls her on the phone.
"Can I take you out to the pictures,
Joa, oa, oa, oan?"

“Hey, am I singing it in the right way?” she tilts her head from side to side as she is singing. She makes her lips in O-shape as she is singing. I cannot forget her smell, I think to myself.

“Yeah, you are. It’s a great song. It’s funny,” I tell her.

“And it’s sad,” she adds.

“Funny and sad it is.” I conclude.

She rummages in her bag and take out her iPod. She gives me a bud of ear phone and plugs one into her ear. There are birds making funny noises on the tree. But we are abducted from this world as we are listening to the song until the sense of eternity has clashed with the beeping of the reality.

I get up early and sit on my head. I cannot see the sunlight in my room. Maybe it’s too early for the sun to rise. My house is located under the path air planes fly. It roars for five seconds when an air plane is flying above my head. I wonder if she is in that air plane. Maybe I should run to the top of the hill and wave to her. I should shout to her how much I love her. Or I should shout to her how often I love her.

But if I get out of my room, some people will find that I am not ‘missing’. When you are not missing, you have to do something. You should go to school or you should work and be a part of GDP. I just want to sit and read some books. And I will read those books again when I have finished. With the music on the speakers.

Hitler, Fitzgerald and the story of our time

Hitler, Fitzgerald and the story of our time

It is raining outside, the streets filled with puddles, everything is quite vague from the view here. I am sitting beside the window and peering through the roar of rain. The vendors and commuters keep on doing their everyday chores amidst the rain as if nothing is more important than what they are doing now. As the sporadic wind picks up, the people have two main functions to achieve – hold their clothes against the wind and protect their head against the stream of beads of rain flying towards them from every direction with umbrellas. Some people give up moving on and begin searching for a place to take refuge as the torrent of rain is marching from the sky.

I have been watching these people since the early morning – the time it started raining. It is my hobby to savor the picturesque view of the rain in urban areas. The population on the streets and roads would gradually dwindle to a fourth of its former one or less than that as the rain persists. What adds more liveliness and colors to this nature-born scenery is a cup of coffee and a thought to think of. I am holding my second cup of coffee for this morning. The problem with the coffee is it is too sweet and I am reluctant to put more coffee powder in it as though the aura of happiness I enjoy now would vanish if I put more coffee powder. As for the thought, my mind is running through thousands of memories – from the day I first went to school screaming, trying to escape from my mother who held me tightly and dragging me to school, to my last ex-girlfriend. Nothing jumps out of my memories is worth thinking or perhaps I just want to leave myself empty. That not being in the process of thinking is like a room without its main features such as the wall and the floor.

Not until one sight struck me do I not have anything to figure out. The old man with a can of coconut oil is moving slowly on the street. He is a vendor who uses this street every day. I bought some coconut oil from him once or twice. There are winkles in his face and most parts of his lungyi and shirt are drenched with water. One of his hands holds the umbrella and the other clasps the oil can. I have seen him several times before but I never felt something strange from him. He is just the ordinary vendor walking through the labyrinth of streets to sell his coconut oil and I am just the customer. Nothing is peculiar. It seems to me, now, that he is much a familiar figure to me. He seems like more than sixty and keeps on struggling for survival on his own. As the sight flies towards me and through my retina it is sent to my brain, a series of inexplicable combination of feelings formed into waves passes through and they crushed against my interior being. I cannot tell what kind of feeling it is. It is neither the reminiscence of the past nor the prospect for the future – it is something of the present I dwell in.

I am entangled with the thought for a very long time even after the old man get out of my sight as if he is my relief from my irksome nightmare.

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“Since I was young, the video games and computer games have been my favorite pastime”, I said to her. She nodded.

“You know, my brothers used to play video games. I used to try to play with them. But they didn’t allow me to play with them. They said these are not girl’s stuff.” She grimaced as she told me her childhood memories.

“Anyway, they are nice brothers, just protecting their little sister from getting addicted to video games, aren’t they? “

“I don’t think so. They are selfish brothers. Why did you like playing games?” she said. There were only two colors in her eyes, absolute white and absolute black. Her eyes were big, large and lustrous and I was proud to have their visit on my face as she was talking.

“I don’t know. Maybe one thing I like about video game or computer game is that you can choose whether you save your progress or not. If you don’t think you didn’t do your mission well, you can choose ‘No’. Life doesn’t provide that service to us. Maybe that’s why I am happier to have a battle in the virtual world than in the real world.”

“You are funny. Yeah, our life is poor”, she said. She gave me the smile that rooted in the innermost parts and blossomed into the surface of her lips and cheeks.

I did not say anything and she did not say anything or perhaps there was nothing we could talk and we just looked at each other. It was a while before I eyed the outside. There were not much students outside, just a few going to their classes or heading to canteen to create their comfort zone away from boring lessons. The dry leaves from tree, after leaving their home, were swaying in the dry air as if taking as much time as they could to avoid landing on the ground. The cold air of January reached our small classroom as the wind blew. The air was alarmingly cold as it touched us; I tried to bury my cold finger in my jacket. Even my whole body was squeezed into the jacket. The sun was trying to push through the fog and it seemed that the sun started to defeat the fog. The temperature was commencing to rebuild the normal day for people. Yangoners were not accustomed to the cold winter normally. As what we call the global climate change triggered the peculiar conditions in our world, all the climates in the regions of the world were turned upside down –including the freezing winter visiting Yangon temporarily. Burning the dried leaves was the only method to clean the campus. The aroma of burning leaves wafted through the air, the smoke from burning leaves could be seen through window. Until the bell for second period rang and the tutor got into the class, did I not talk anything. I did not do anything other than glancing idly. The weather was dull – making everyone in the room immobilized.

The tutor said “Ok, class. Let’s do some group work. I will form you guys into seven groups…….,” and my mind went blur. I took the wrong schedule in the morning, I realized. She was the tutor I didn’t even want to sit in her teaching time. I looked around, everybody got to their feet as she told.

I wake up, my shirt damp with sweat and my head suffering from headache as usual. I am very sick of this nightmare, it has been happening repeatedly in my life. Every time it is the same – I was taken back to the university, in the cold weather, talking to my female friend the same dialogue as it happened many times before, gazing idly, the tutor gave us lessons and I realized I had looked at the wrong schedule, and I was woken with giant beads of perspiration excreting from my skin.

I gulp down a glass of cold water and sit down. Secondly, I open my poetry book randomly in which I have been writing poems for years. Both reading poems and writing poems are my emotional outlets and they are the tools with which I overcame in the harshest points of my life. One verse of a poem says:

“I’d rather go beyond

  Than go before

  Of the perplexity of my destiny

  Or the melancholy of my life. ”

I look up the date it was written. It says 27^th December. I don’t remember exactly why I wrote that verse or what its meaning is. I am not even sure if I wrote it because my friends used to write poems in my poetry book. I say the verse silently again. The words slip through my lips as if they become the visible creatures. I say the verse or hymn– till I lose the connection with the outer world – utterly. And I fall asleep again.

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 “I am extremely annoyed with it. I don’t know why but it keeps on coming to me again and again.”

The psychiatrist listens to me as she jots down on a piece of paper. A clock on the wall says it is 3:30.

“When did that nightmare start?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it is not a nightmare. It just frequently comes to me when I fall asleep –so frequently that I feel very annoyed and I am even frightened to sleep. It started, maybe, one and a half year ago.”

“So, how many times did you have this same dream?”

“I don’t know. It just so happens when I sleep.”

 “Think it much as you can, how that girl, your female friend, has influenced your life? I mean if you ever loved her? Or is she an important part in your life?”

I cannot reply it for a moment. I have to go through my memories of my university. Nothing of my memories comes out of.  

“No, I don’t remember. My memory is a blur when I think about her. I forget almost everything.”

She stops staring at the sheet of paper she is writing down and looks at me.

“You forgot everything? Do you have amnesia?” the psychiatrist asks me.

“No, I don’t know if I have amnesia. I remember some days of my university, some friends which I totally recall but I cannot recall the others including that girl as if I have never met with them. It’s a blur when I think about them. I know I had some friends but I don’t even remember their names or their appearances.”

“So how do you know she is your friend?”

“According to my diary”

“I see. Do you have contact with old friends from your university?”

“No, not at all.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t see them.”

“Are you lonely in these days? “

“I am used to loneliness. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“You should meet someone and talk”, she suggests and continues, “Are the dreams always the same? Do you find some differences in your dreams about that girl?”

“No, they are exactly the same.”

“Other people, things and setting?

“I must say they are the same too. It is like watching a film again and again. At the first time, I was happy to have reunion with my university experience that I cannot find in my memory then.”

 “Alright, this is the last question. Do you want to find her in your life now?”

Her abrupt question wakes my mind. I have no answer for that. I haven’t thought whether I should find her and talk to her.

“Maybe I want to find her if I have a chance.”

The psychiatrist puts her pen down and looks at me. She flashes a smile to me. She gives me some suggestions to get rid of the haunting dream.

“Ok, it will take a lot of time to resolve it but we can do it eventually. Please come to me next Tuesday.”

I leave the psychiatrist. This is the first time I visit her. I have not seen any psychiatrist as I believed it’d not be a psychological problem.

It is a pleasant evening when I go for a walk. The sun is about to sink in; the lamp light mingling with the sunlight radiates the pavement eloquently, running buses are full of tired crowds heading to their homes, the puddles, the signs of the recent angry rain are everywhere, the road is teeming with people. There are a lot of vendors and hawkers on the pavement as if a night market. I choose the small Chinese restaurant for my meal. There are people, smoke released from cigarettes and the clatter of dishes. While waiting, someone calls my name and greets me.

“Hey, how are you?”

“Yeah, I am fine. I haven’t seen you for ages. How you doing?”

“Fine”, he said.

He orders something and seats beside me. His appearance has changed a lot. It took me several seconds to remember him. He is a poet and he and some of us wrote poems and discussed about poetry on the campus. We were very crazy about poetry then.

“So, what do you do?”

“Me? Technically, I don’t have a job”, I say.

“Oh, that’s the problem everyone is facing nowadays. You are not the only one who is unemployed.”

“I heard that you decided to be a professional poet.”

“Yes, I did. I have made this decision foolishly. It is not realistic.”

He said, his eyes reflecting a faint of disappointment.

“I think this country is the worst country in the world for poets. No one gives a shit to your work”, he proceeds.

“I know. My skills in poetry were never more than an amateur’s. I don’t try to publish. So, I did not meet the same fate as you.”

He chuckles,

“Yeah, I was dumb enough to try it.”

“No, you weren’t. One day you will be successful, I am sure.”

The waiter brings the food and soups. We stopped conversing and eat them in haste. He wipes out his lips with tissue and asks me.

“Where are you going?” he says.

“I don’t know. Maybe home. You?”

“I don’t want to go home right now. I want to spend my time somewhere nocturnal. Do you want to come with me?”

I look at my watch. It is 8:30 p.m. There is an abundance of time for me to have night life that I had not had for ages.

“Sure. I want to have some life. Let’s go somewhere. It’d be fun.”

We board a taxi to the restaurant. It stands magnificently in the night with technicolor electric light decorated around the trees and shrubs in its compound. It seems, however, more of a discos club than a restaurant given that the discos light strew on the stage where a girl is singing and dancing and the light is provocatively dim everywhere.

The waiter approaches us. We order beers, whisky and some crisps. There are not many people.

“So, what did you do after graduation?” I said. 

“Well”, he said, “as you might hear, I immersed myself into the world of poetry and literature – I worked in vain in several magazines as an assistant editor –a shitty kind of job. Meanwhile, I contributed my poems to all the literary magazines and journals. Some of them were published, some not.”

“That’s terrific! I remembered almost all of us wanted to have such kind of life several years ago. Now you have that life. Congratulations!”

“No, this life is not something to be proud of, I finally realized. It is not walking-on-the-water.”

“How come?”

“Money matters. I am never financially independent of my parents. When the magazine I am working for ceases and gets out of business for financial reason, I have to search for another job.”

“I know literary magazines are not much perennial.”

“Yeah, they don’t hold much of public interest. The poets and novelists have a lot of difficulties to make a living. Now I am brooding all day about my future. Maybe I should give up my life as a poet and do something literally different.”

The drinks and the food are arrived. The girl on the stage finished her song and came down. The band tunes their instruments to adapt to the next song’s melody. There is uncomfortable silence between us. Neither of us wants to converse and we are occupied with our thoughts and drinking beer. We drink beer and see the girls wearing provocatively on the stage and that’s the things we are doing for an hour.

“Do you want some beer?” he breaks the silence calling the waiter for more beer.

“No. I think I should leave.”

 “I want to give you something. This is my poetry book I have published. It is not much of a commercial success. But it is a milestone for me.”

I take the book saying ‘thank you’.

“I will read your poems.”

“Yeah, please do.”

We leave the restaurant and heading to different direction –our homes. When I reach home, I feel really tired and peculiarly exhausted. When I fall asleep, I have the same dream in my sleep…………………………………………………………..

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I am very sweaty when I wake up. I put the poetry book on the table. I change my clothes and sit on the bed glancing through my diaries that were kept in a wooden box.

I suddenly want to read it and feel I will get all of my memories as soon as I read it as if something divine with which I wrote in the diary jumps out of it and there will be something miracle. I open one of the diaries and read. I read page by page and in the middle of reading I find one piece of paper stuck in my diary. There are a few sentences written: Hitler achieved all of this without war (and there are now some historians who state that had he died in 1938 before the mass executions began, he would have gone down in history as the greatest statesman in the history of the German people).

I cannot think of anything why I happened to write about Hitler in my past years. I am not interested in history and at school my history marks were lower than the average student. And I did not learn history in my university too. I cannot think of a reason I wrote that. Having no idea about it, I am about to let it go but I find a comment in the bottom of the page.

“Hitler is my hero no matter what other people thinks.”

I am really surprised. Why did I write that? The handwriting is clearly mine. Hitler is no more than a villain in the history of world to me. I don’t know much about him. It adds up a lot of further consideration to me. My mind goes numb. I stop reading and go outside for a brief walk.

I decide not to sleep in my bed or in my house tonight. I am in the small room with a hooker. She is lying on the bed, naked just looking at me with her little, rounded, lustrous eyes. She has an average height and beautiful breast. Her body is slim and her breasts are small. Her whole body is lying stiff as if expecting something fierce. Instead of peeling my clothes off, I sit beside her without looking at her. Not until she sits up behind me, do I not know how much time I have spent sitting idly.  

“What are you going to do?” she said.

I don’t look at her. I light a cigarette and take a very long puff of it.

“If you are not going to do anything, I will go. I don’t have much time for you.”

“How old are you?” I asked while she is picking her shirt on the chair to get dressed.

“19. Why? Do you think I am underage?”

“No. I just want to know.”

“Will you do what you are doing or do I have to leave?”

“I am not doing anything but please don’t leave. I need your company.”

She sits down in the chair, she is fully dressed now. She is charming as-a-matter-of-factly but her charm is buried under make-up and cosmetic she is wearing, since her profession demands.

“I need your company”, I repeated.

“I know. That’s why you paid me. And I am ready to entertain you but you did nothing.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I need someone who is beside me.”

 She is gazing at me.

“You look more beautiful in your clothes than without them. How do you think of me?” I said.

She laughs and says,

“I don’t know. You are just my customer who pays me to have sex and you own some of my hours tonight. But if you want me beside you all night you have to pay me more.”

“Ok, I will. You just stay and you don’t need to do anything”, I said.

I take a very long breath. I do not have any word to say. I get a book from my sack which I bring from home. She asks me what book it is.

“It is ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ by Fitzgerald. I love this book.”

“Fitzgerald? Who is he?”

“He is an American writer”, I said in brief, getting to reading.

“Do you read English novels? Can you?” She looks at the book and me surprisingly.

“Yes, I can.” I don’t look up from the book.

She does not say anything. Five minutes later, she is sleeping on the bed .It is 4 a.m. when I finally finish the book. This is the third time I read this book. I look at her. She is in her deep sleep. Her face resembles a familiar face of someone I know but I don’t know who it is. She said she is 19 years old. I know that is a lie. She must be more than twenty five because this is what everyone in this industry does –just to give their customer a satisfaction that they are having sex with a teenager or a virgin. She is sleeping in an enchanting way. I want to kiss her and it is solely independent of sexual desire. I kiss her on her forehead and that wakes her. She is half-sleep though.

“Hey, how is your book? Is it good?”

I don’t say anything. I just look at her.

“Have you read the book?” she asks.

“Yeah, it’s good. Well, I have to go.”

“Wait, you have to tell me what the book is about.”

“It’s just about the two couple who are nouveau riche.”

“Well, I want to listen about them. Tell me.”

“I don’t want to talk about the novel as it is completely fictional. I want to talk about mine.”

“Do you write stories?” she asks me.

I say yes and tell her my epic which is, except its true facts, a story – how long I have been tortured by the dream. She does not utter a word, listening carefully to me.

“This dream always seems to root inside my protagonist like a parasite. It sucks everything he has got. What is he supposed to do? This is how he lives his life,” I said, my voice tremble as I told her.

She is constantly solemn as she listens to me as if she is watching the film or reading a book.

“Well, it is interesting. What is the ending of your story?”

“I haven’t written it yet. Maybe the protagonist commits suicide just to get back to his normal life. Would it be a great tragedy?”

“No way. It’s just a dream. Everyone is dreaming. You don’t need to suicide to stop dreaming.”

She repeated, “Maybe, it’s just a dream. All you need to do is wake up. Let him wake up.”

I could not say anything for a minute. Then I stand up to leave. But I have changed my mind and my lips are on hers. I have brief intercourse with her. She is lovely in bed, too. In the while, I think t what it would be like to have sex with the girl in my dream, which actually I should not think or it’s impossible.

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I meet the psychologist in the next day. We have talked a great deal. It shows a little progress because I feel less irritated by the dream.

“You have to see it as it is. Sometimes, our feelings and perceptions are exaggerated, developed and finally hallucinated by ourselves,” she said before goodbyes.

On my way home I meet the coconut oil seller.

“Hi, how is your business?” I greet him.

“It’s fine. Do you want to buy some from me?”

“Not now. I don’t need it.”

“Call me if you need some. I am commuting your street every day.”

“Sure, I will.”

When I get home, I lock the door and get down reading my diaries. I want to discover the relationship of me and the girl in my dream. I found a spot that says the day we were friends. It is written the same as my dream –everything I said, my actions and words. I try searching more than that but I can’t. My eyes start aching and I give up searching for extra information about her in my diaries.

I leave my house just as I leave the hooker or the psychologist or the friends –not looking back. The girl in my dream would be just the production of my hallucination, I am not sure of it though. There’s no point to moan because I don’t have her. Or because she always stays inside me. Maybe you cannot have somebody if she is in the deepest parts of you.

I want to go away from my home now. I want to run away and merge with people or friends.

After that, I won’t go home because for sure there will be that dream waiting for me. Maybe it chases me everywhere I go but I just have to run away from it as if it’s my responsibility. For now, I am disappearing into the crow. Which somewhat makes me larger.

                                                                                                               

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Science of silence

“I was neither reborn nor dead. It was only that I was revived,” my friend grinned as he was dusting the bench for both of us to sit.

“How do you feel about it?”

Just as I was judging whether to ask that question or not, it jumped out of my mouth as if someone else outside asked on behalf of me. Abruptly, I felt worried if it was somehow an insult to him. Only after I did not detect any trace of reluctance or anger in his face, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You mean about my family?”

“Yes”

“You know, what they say, it is karma. My father was destined for that, so were my brothers and I don’t want to put all the blame on my mother. As a fragile woman, how could he bear it? It’s good she ran away. Perhaps that’s what she is destined for. She would settle down with a new family. I’d rather like it than seeing her all day crying.”

The April sun was producing as much heat as it could scorching everything in our vision. Despite being under the shade of the banyan tree, we were the victims of the burning sun, too.

“So how long have you lived here as a monk?” I asked.

“For almost six years. As soon as my father and brother were killed in a car accident and my mother abandoned me, my father’s best friend took me here. I was too naïve to decide anything or stay alone.”

“How could someone who took you to a monastery and make you study boring prayers be your father’s best friend? I am here because my father wanted me to. I’d hate this place unless I made a friend with you.” resentful, out of consideration, I told him.

“You could not take it that way. People have their own problems,” he said, his voice full of serenity and maturity. I did not say anything. He did not say anything. We were just sitting in silence. His eyes were at somewhere distance. Maybe he was seeing the birds on the boughs of the tree. Maybe he did not watch anything at all. There was prevailing silence that relatively seemed an hour or two between us. Then we left the bench for the building where we had to practice meditation.

On the way to meditation centre, I said him sorry for what I said. He said ok. There were a lot of monks and nuns in the centre. Most of them were temporary monks but there were monks who left all the things they belong to and seek refuge in Vipassana. I was the first type. I will not be a monk when it is time for Thinggyan, the water festival.

Not until I started to meditate, did I not really know how it was really like. Under the massive silence, no one moved, nor they spoke, all concentrated on the language of their mind –how every bit of the mind was created and then destroyed-, such a difficult task, each inhale or exhale done with consciousness, started to feel something calm and mellow in the innermost part of my consciousness,…

I could not keep the stability of my mind more than a half hour. All of a sudden, it broke out. It was as if the old reservoir did not have enough durability against the endless bombardment of the roaring storm of the current of the droplets of water and finally it pumped out everything it had stored in it creating monster waves.

 “They are nothing,” I said to myself in silence attempting to detach from the impure states of mind in vain.

I am sure I will not pass the matriculation examination because I did not answer anything at all. My father will kill me if he knows it. I said him I will get at least four distinctions in the exam. I don’t want to think what will happen when the exam result comes out. I should do something before it.

“Well, I should put my mind in the complete inner serenity.”

And my girl had gone. I heard she’s got a boyfriend. Oh, my! I am so stupid and pathetic. Why don’t I have the courage to face her and tell my feeling instead of waiting silently? Why can’t I grab the chance when it is for me? She is…

Her appearance was conjured up in my mind, recalling everything from my memory somewhere deep in the cells of my brain. Both are sure –I will fail the exam, lost the girl, lost everything- I am such a loser. Is it worth living?

“That’s just my past life. Now I am a Buddhist monk. I have to do what a Buddhist monk do, not what a boy do. I must keep it in my mid. They are nothing but sensual pleasures that will only leave pains when they are gone. Concentrate on breathing, come on! Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…”

I can’t let it happen when my friends pass the exam. I will fail. They will be happy and I will be sad. And my angry father………….. Everybody will look at me like an idiot! It is me who has to be blamed for. Why haven’t I studied enough? I am afraid of my father. Mother, where are you? I want to see you! You had left us too soon. I want to see your face. You will protect me from my father if you were alive, if you were alive… She will press me to her bosom and I could cry like a baby. If only she were alive…

I started to sob uncontrollably. I tried to swallow my sobs but it became louder. I felt everyone looking at me. I heard monks coming to me. I closed my eyes. I felt one hand on my shoulder. One warm hand.

“Are you ok? I think you must take some rest,” my friend sat behind me and asked me.

I followed him leaving the crowd practicing meditation. He took me outside.

“It is normal,” my friend told me as I was gazing at the blue sky with some tiny clouds. “When I arrived here, I cannot keep up with it. Only later, I was used to it,” My friend had been a monk for a couple of years so he knew it. We had been friends for a week but we were having a conversation with much more intimacy.

“You know, there’s a lot of things I have to worry about,” I said. “When I closed my eyes for a certain amount of time, they appeared. I can’t help it. I am just scared to meditate again.”

My friend looked at me, his eyes revealed his understanding. “If you feel reluctant to do it, don’t do it. I will tell other monks your problem. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, please don’t do that. I am alright. I just missed my mother who passed away.”

“I know your feeling. Two of my family members passed away. I can’t still believe this.”

“Yeah, I just can’t accept it too,” I said. As the sun went down gradually, there are monks bathing. Some people were entering the monastery to donate cold drinks to the monks. There was a small pagoda in the monastery compound with a few monks saying prayers to the Lord of Buddha.

“I don’t know what I want to do in the future,” I said. “Buddy, what you gonna do in the future?” I asked him, “I mean are you just going to be a monk or you, uh…,” I could not find any words to go on. I wanted to ask what his ambition is but I was not sure if it is appropriate to ask a monk what his ambition is.

My friend answered in short, “I would like to be a good monk who can follow Buddha’s teaching.”

 “You really want to be?”

“Of course, I do, why not?”

“It’s great.”

There was growing darkness outside. All the monks in the building were falling asleep. I got up, took a coil of rope and a three-legged stool, and went out of it. I went to the banyan tree, which seemed like a ghost sitting in the dark. I asked myself what I was doing and I was scared, I was like sleepwalking. I sat in the dark to decide carefully until I noticed someone was beside me –my friend.

“What happened to you?” he asked, his eyes inspecting around, and he comprehended the situation.

I was trying to explain something about it.

 “Yeah, I know. You don’t need to mention. We are just…”

“I was depressed and I just want to let it go.”

“I understand. I had tried to do it when it was so dark for me but I have just sat for a while in the dark. That’s all”, he sighed.

I nodded turning to him and said,

“It’s dark for me now. I am hopeless.”

 “See around. It’s dark but it doesn’t mean you are blind, are you? You might stay in the silence; it doesn’t mean you are deaf. They are only the influence of your surroundings. You are in it but it is not in your body.”

“Maybe,” I said. We both left for sleep.

After a week, my father came to take me home. After paying homage to the abbot, he said, “Is everything ok with you these days, son?”

“Of course, I was very happy, such incredible experience.” I answered.

“Are you ready to go?”

“I guess I am not.”

I wanted to say good-bye to my friend. I went to look for him. To my astonishment, I could not find him anywhere.

“We don’t know him. There’s no one in our monastery with this name. Maybe you got the wrong monk,” the old monk said.

After asking a couple of other monks, I accepted what the old monk said. He just visited me. I had no more words to say. I just returned home with my father.

“So please share your experience with me. How does it feel like?” my father asked me while driving.

“I was neither reborn nor dead. It was only that I was revived,” I said. The car was running home."

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The Latecomers

It was 10 in the morning when I woke up with a headache. I could not think properly. I felt my body was stuffed with everything I had talked or everything I had drank or eaten. My conscious mind warned me but I indulged myself and drank with my friends even though alcohol is not my favourite pastime. Now I felt guilty. I felt guilty about my mom who passed away, I felt guilty about my life, and I felt guilty about everything.

I got out of my room and looked around in the house. I suddenly felt weak and melancholic because there was as much sheer desperation as never before. There were no people in our house and it was more like a ghost house. My sister had gone to her work. I did not have a good relationship with her as we had had in our childhood – in fact, there was little communication between us and if we did, it’d be a fight.

We had been close siblings – in the dense small family of four members, we were more of friends than brother and sister. This fragile little world was gradually abraded by everything that was followed by the sudden death of our father –and now our mother.

I had a glass of water. Cold water climbed down through my dry throat but the row I had with my sister last night cannot be swallowed with the cold water. Her words still echoed around:

“Mom has just died. Do you want to know why our mother died? It is money! We don’t have the money to give her the treatment she required. You should quit having fun with your bastard friends and find a job,” she shouted at me resentfully when I reached home after drinking with my friends.

“Who said I don’t’ want to work? I am just unemployed,” I murmured.

“You are unemployed and you still had money for drinks? Three years you’ve been wasting your time,” she said.

The drink had clouded my memory. I did not remember what happened next. Maybe I’d shouted “I’ve been finding a job!” or just said “Shut up!” Maybe we would have shouted at each other for a while. All I remembered was she was as furious as I, and I could still see her eyes that were brimmed with tears. I wished we had not shouted at each other and fought like we ever did. I had decided to be a good brother or I somehow wanted to show her I was something she could rely on or respect. Everything was stuck in the first step – getting a job.

“I must get a job,” I murmured to myself. I couldn’t let things going on.

I did not want to think anymore and left for the tea shop as this is a part of my daily life. There were a few people in the tea shop as I went in for breakfast. I did not find anyone I know. Maybe it was early for them. I lit a cigarette and ponder the future ahead – gloomy and disabling everything of me. I had not thought about my future much. Now it had changed.

I thought a lot about my future as I gazed into people in the street. Every single thought flew away came back to or metamorphosed into what was the very center of my thoughts –how to get a decent job and settle down. I was thinking to be an entrepreneur but I needed money to start my own business. An old friend with whom I had been friends since childhood popped up on my mind. He had worked in Malaysia for two years and I thought I could ask for his advice. Or, specifically, to ask for his financial help.

I called his number. The same voice that I was familiar with two years ago answered.  Not meeting or talking for a long time could not attenuate our friendship. It was the only friendship I had that lasted after childhood. We could not talk everything on phone. He told me to meet him at the restaurant tonight. I said okay and hung up. I went back home and slept all day. Sleeping was the best way to kill your time especially when you have nothing to do. It was getting dark when I reached the small restaurant where my friend was waiting for me. It was rather a cheap restaurant with cheap rum and other cheap alcoholic beverages.

“It’s very tiring, you know, I worked in a factory there,” he said, “I had to work like a dog. If I don’t do overtime, I won’t be able to send money to my parents. Finally I quit and came back.”

As soon as we poured rum into both of our glasses, he talked about his previous work in Malaysia. It amazed me because I did not ask him. It seemed like he himself wanted to tell someone voluntarily about it. So I listened to him.

“Factory? You are a graduate. Didn’t you find a job in …” I paused, I was selecting words.

“A job in an office?”

“Yes. Can’t you find?”

He laughed as if releasing something that was disguised under for a long time.

“I am a graduate here, but not there. Nobody gave a shit what is my education. I went there illegally. But don’t tell it anybody. It’s a secret,”

“Alright, I won’t.”

“Tell me what are you doing now?”

 “Almost nothing. My mom had just passed away and I have to work now or else I will starve to death,”

“That sucks! I went abroad because I know there is no job prospect for me here.”

We graduated in the same year majoring in philosophy – people said, because of no job prospect for this major, only fools would choose this major and yes, we were fool enough. We just followed what we wanted to learn after we knew our matriculation marks were not high enough to enroll in so-called safe-for-life universities such as Medical College. He risked working abroad and I stubbornly stayed here to find a job or, as people might callously comment, wasted the precious time of my youth.

“That’s my problem. Been three years looking for a job. I don’t have enough money to set up my own business,” I said resentfully, even the food I ate was not tasteful just as this thought came.

I continued, “I really hate that when people say ‘I don’t have a job or I don’t work’, they just see that. I am really tired of trying to get one. My sister thinks I am lazy and I don’t want to work like everybody does. This is so wrong. The first thing in my mind when I wake up in the morning is how to get a job, how to get money. I understand, as a man, I could not survive without a job. But nobody wants to hire me. When I went to a job interview, there would be a sea of people waiting with goddamn certificates. I did not have any certificate and my degree is not something the employer wants. One job vacancy and more than hundred people! What I know for sure is they wouldn’t hire me. At the moment, it felt like falling into a hole that I don’t know what is at the bottom, just falling down,” I gulped down my drink and continued, “I am really depressed right now,” I sighed.

My friend looked at me solemnly as if sipping my words.

“Maybe you should give up searching for a white-collar job and try realistic one instead.”

I had thought about it long ago. I never let myself realize that though. Beneath my dignity. Which was nullified by the series of question in my mind: ‘where or what is my dignity’. He continued,

“It will be difficult for me too. I did not have much money with me. You won’t believe. I drank there and did not save.”

“Really?”

I found myself unable to say anything when I heard that. That really disappointed me. I discreetly hoped he would lend some money to me and then it’d be the start of my own business. Now it washed away my hope.

“It is stress. I drank because of stress in the work.” He said as if explaining his fault.

“That’s funny, we are completely opposite. I always say I drink because I am under a lot of pressure. I don’t have a job. That puts me under pressure.”

We burst out into laughter. We were slightly drunk.

“Whatever, tonight we are drinking till we pass out. Don’t give a shit to anything.”

As we drank, our conversation shifted from one thing to another – football, money, girls and even politics.

“Tell me changes in our country. When I was in Malaysia, they asked me about our country and I did not know more than they. It’s embarrassing!” my friend told me.

“It’s not changing much as the media think but it showed some paces. That’s all.”

“If we have democracy, we will have growth and development, won’t we?”

 I was allergic to such words as democracy, transparency, and politics while I was not having a stable life. Normally I’d shut my mouth and just nod but now I was drunk. Willing to have an argument.

 “Come on, we don’t even have a job. That means we don’t have money. I am feeling like shit when people are shouting democracy and human rights and so on. For me, I need a job, I need money. That’s all I want,” I said.

“Democracy will give you everything,” my friend said.

“We want democracy because the current system is unfair. But no God or saint will give it to you. So you can’t just hope even if you got democracy. Have to struggle.”

My friend nodded.

“I know that. I wish I would be born to a rich family. When you have enough money, you can use it as a magnet to draw more money. Life won’t be too difficult. You can be a douche bag but you will have a good life in the end.”

After finishing our last drinks, we were quite drunk. Before leaving, he said,

“I lied to you. My money was stolen in Malaysia. I did not drink.”

 It rendered me speechless. As we left, I find myself unable to walk home. But I have to save as much money as I can. The roads were teeming with buses and cars. There were many people waiting for a bus and some already in buses. They wanted to go back home from their work surely. Unlike me, they had jobs. I cried:

“They have jobs!”

Maybe some of them had been under a lot of stress from their work and were going to commit suicide when they reach home. But they were still luckier than me. Their family would worry if they were late.

“Congratulations people,” I fell somewhere and was not able to get up. It was warm and safe hugging me tightly to her chest like my mother used to give me strength with her beautiful arms.

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                “Welcome sir!”

I greeted the fat man with a smile as I was taught to do. I opened the door of his glamorous newly-imported car. His spend on dinner in this restaurant would be more than my salary. I wondered when I would have enough money to buy this car. Maybe some point in my life, maybe never.

My friend was true. I finally made a pragmatic decision which could at least feed me. But I did not know how to mention my job, parking lot security in a restaurant when I met with my old friends. I was still looking for the smart job or a chance to be an entrepreneur. But I was just unsmart for the time being.

                                                                                                                           

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