The United Altered States of Maryam

Calling You - Jeff Buckley
Blogger’s General Warning: I’m in a humorless and corny mood today. Reading this entry might result in various choking and gagging sounds that will undoubtedly attract attention from YOUR BOSS who has long suspected that you’re not doing much work at work. Plus, your co-workers would be greatly disappointed to discover that you’re reading a blog instead of downloading porn.

Late evening in Bangsar. The sun was sagging away down into that horizon blocked by high rise buildings full of anonymous little cubbyholes playing tic-tac-toe with itself. A power outage on Telawi Street Number God Knows What meant that a row of usually brightly illuminated mamaks, cafes and bars were reduced to candlelit caves bustling with moving, talking shadows. The crows came out in full – flocks and flocks, of black feathers perched on matching electric wires, sang the unwelcome song of an apocalyptical choir like a scene plucked right out of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Across the street, a tiny little shopping mall by the name of Bangsar Village seemed to be an entirely different world – an anti-thesis to the world let down by our national energy corporation, TNB. The little building of nondescript yet utterly decent architecture buzzed and glowed with colored neon and white halogen lights like a promised wonderland. Cheesy Christmas jingles drifted out from its doors, fully and harshly illuminated faces and figures – in flesh and in color, each one distinguishable from the next walked in, out and around.

Standing between the darkened side of Telawi and the brightly lit Bangsar Village, in the middle of the road, with a large Mercedes honking at me to get out of the way, I couldn’t help but think about how all this seemed like a lousy metaphor for the nature of time in one’s life. The darkened side of Telawi, a representation of the past – all the finer details, and some less fine ones – pimples, warts, hairy moles, tacky signs, dirty footprints, faded from memory; all that’s left are romantically illuminated outlines of the ‘good, old days’ as they call it. And the crows, the crows were there to feed on the carcass of the remaining past, the collective sound of their grating voices serve as a warning for those who dare entertain thoughts of staying in the shadows of days gone by. Across the street, the brightly lit Bangsar Village with its little power generator was the future present – clear, harsh, dizzying, repulsively enticing and alive. Where I stood, in the middle of the road, must have been the present - a short yet significant transitory stage where one has glaring headlights shining directly into one’s eyes and is given the blind choice to either move along or risk being run over by an irritatingly sturdy European car.

Some things, take that walk with you across the street. Others remain in the dark, shrinking with your each and every step. You can only ever really choose to move yourself. A lack of movement doesn’t ensure the absence of change.

Posted by Maryam on Thursday, December 01, 2005 at 4:10 PM | Permalink