sangrmahlia

of room and memories.

they painted my room orange once, they wrote the wrong code down.
it was supposed to be red, red like the surge of positivity through your lumbars, red like it was to right something wrong.
i think it brought my clausnophobia back from my childhood.
everything in my room went bad very quickly. i can’t tell you how many half-drank milk boxes that was only opened in the morning and had to be thrown out before noon came. my mother, in her usual condescending tone, commented that it was the dampness. the ceiling wasn’t high enough to support air circulation and heat from the shower to recycle. the cold wind from the air-con always stayed near the floor, thus the middle part became a meeting ground of awkwardness and discomfort.
fifteen years i’ve lived here. fifteen years seven months to be exact. i moved in when i was nine. it was a school day. i arrived from school to the new house at three in the afternoon. my father was there, outside the house, beeking. my mother inside making sure everything was aligned. at seventeen, seven years ago, we renovated the house. i got to pick my own wall paint color. i picked red. it came out orange.
we are moving out in a week. for a while i’ve been thinking of how i was to cope with the loss of my room, a space i had grown so attached to, its walls became my second skin, the noisy air-con a second lung, the peeling paints a happy snowflake over my bed. all the flaws have become mine, just like all my mistakes were conceived here. there is a pang of sadness, a taste of longing at the back of my tongue, already longing for all my mistakes to come together and blanket themselves around me.
my room is now an empty space. every anonimity boxed. they are moving my bed. i am peeling off a poster of my childhood idol from the wall. a chip of paint sticks to the tape. i fold it. put it in my pocket.

(no, i haven’t moved out yet. we just bought the new house but it’s still very ugly so we’re going to spend a good amount of time and money to renovate it. meanwhile i will be in my room writing sappy goodbye notes. to my room. k.)

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Notes

you and me, we are a universe of blushing cheeks

the sun has been shy, lately, i noticed,
as we have been to ourselves.
the cliff where we used to sit, our small feet
hanging towards the indefinite harm
of the unknown floor, i notice, too,
it has been cracking slowly
towards its own feet.

the evenings i spent these past weeks
scratching my back, my stomach, the
skin stretched across my protruding ribcage,
south of my navel and next to my left nipple,
the moon has also been shy,
as rain turns aggressive and ready
to capture a young boyish victim.

my hives have by now formed amusing shapes
they keep me company at the early hours,
approaching the blushing dawn, when
you are too shy
to spend the night.

* i do realize i’m much inspired by bin ramke’s cliff dwelling (posted just this morning). but what’s humanity if it doesn’t have traces of other people?

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oh, isn’t this wild.

(excerpt from the afterhour draft script i’m working on)

EXT. NIGHT CLUB PARKING LOT – NIGHT

Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing can be heard with a low volume.
the group walks outside. the boys are walking together. GIRL 1 and GIRL 3 walk hand-in-hand, very friendly. GIRL 1 can seem to keep up with GIRL 3’s antics. GIRL 1 has another cigarette on one hand, this time it’s just been lit. she seems unaffected by the outdoor, despite her lack of cover-up. GIRL 3 has a balmain-style blazer drapes on her shoulders. she is well intoxicated, but she still carries a glass bottle in one hand. GIRL 2 walks a little behind the rest. it’s a bit windy. GIRL 2, completely sober, feels this well. she grips on her cardigan sleeves. she keeps staring at BOY 4. BOY 4 occasionally replies her eye contact, but he keeps it very low. BOY 1, his t-shirt too thin for the night, puts on his simple jacket as they walk. GIRL 3 lets go of GIRL 1’s hold as she dances and imitates the guitar riffs. GIRL 1 just smiles thinly. the boys laugh at her antic. BOY 3 walks a bit further from the boys, making space for himself to play air guitar. GIRL 3 (just out of frame) suddenly trips on something, probably her own dangerous-looking shoes (music stops abruptly). BOY 3 and BOY 4 laugh loudly in reaction to this immediately. BOY 1 and BOY 2, despite the look of obvious humour on their faces, run to help her. GIRL 1 also walks to help her, although she is less hurried. GIRL 2 stands behind the boys in shock.
GIRL 3 fell flat on her face. the glass bottle she was holding lays a couple of feet away, broken. she seems a bit out of it for a while. BOY 1, arriving on her feet, and BOY 2, on her side, flip her over carefully. GIRL 3 opens her eyes almost immediately as she is being flipped, and laughs as if it is the funniest thing ever. GIRL 1 arrives on her head, wipes her hair to the side. on one side of her face, GIRL 3 is scratched and starting to bleed. on one hand she still holds the neck of the glass bottle that broke. the rest of the group already crowds around her. BOY 4 uses this moment to try interacting with GIRL 2. she looks relieved that he finally interacts with her, and he looks sincere. they converse as everyone is kneeling around GIRL 3.
BOY 1 pries the neck bottle out of her hand, and the three of them help her up. there is dirt all over her lower legs, but she doesn’t seem to have any serious injury.
BOY 2 walks GIRL 3 as she feels her head buzzing from all the movements. she apparently isn’t in any way affected by the fall and scratches. cheekily, she starts teasing him and they start kissing, BOY 2 chuckling in surprise at first but eventually going along. they kiss as they try to walk alongside the others.
GIRL 1 takes a small glance at them as she passes, looking unimpressed. she keeps walking, faster than the preoccupied couple, and joins the boys from behind. they welcome her into their loud conversation, although she stays in silence. they are already talking about something else, no longer minding what just happened. BOY 4, who previously was talking to GIRL 2, turns toward her as soon as she joins. GIRL 2, mid-sentence, stops as BOY 4 turns and leaves her to walk with the group. GIRL 1 stares at her for a beat, knowing but indifferent, then returns to the boys.

hope you guys enjoy that little bit just as much as i’m enjoying working on it (because i fear this is growing into another passion project only appreciated by one person: me. well, and my mother, but it’s called unconditional love.)
aaanyhoo. back to work. hopefully this project can fit into the end-of-year schedule.

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again, it’s you.

time passes by so quickly without you. it’s perhaps because i close my senses to the world whenever you’re not here. the street words buzzling with lights and paranoia blur together into a porridge of truth: i am scared and i am bold both without you. do i not miss you? sometimes i wonder. sometimes i wonder if the pace of time i’m running past is a silent but obvious clue to my forgetting you. but i should know better than time’s inartifice journey. i don’t miss you, i am missing you in my heart. you, an inexplicable, untameable mass of nothingness in between the chambers of my heart that cannot be seen, but can be felt. i can feel you when you’re not there. sometimes i think it’s a delusion keeping me going. it’s probably because i never learnt to trust myself without you. but i know now. it is fairly certain, if i don’t miss you, it’s mostly because i’ve been missing my senses since the morning you were gone.

- attending an empty gallery, october 27 2009.

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steam: a fogged memory

i remember a tiny notebook i brought into the steam room once in a while, now wavy to the extreme end, shaped and stretched by humidity and then preserved by dryness.
months later i decided to read the rule board of the steam room attached to the entry door for the first time, and i realized bringing in papers was not allowed.

“there are no faces in the steam room.”
only figures. trapped between levitating water drops, a face is a minor feature that got lost in the hazy fog of steam. the fog gave a manipulative effect to the yellow light, making it seem like a dying sun. the only identity left is that of navels and pubic hairs. and limbs. and nipples.”
outside the steam room, everything walks in fast pace. such pace that left you in isolation from the whole world and yourself. the pace will run over you, bulldoze you, kill you and leave you numb as it has no time to recollect you anymore. your faces become my enemy. your attire become an impossible standard that started my lies and self-abundance. and so we are a society of faces and labels stitched on the inner line of our clothes.”
steam room becomes my only moment of solace. far from the gym, where we strive to kill imperfections. from the locker room, where we showcase how we killed flaws. but we undress and we take a shower, washing away all the things that make us, and step into the steam room and become strangers to ourselves.”
in the steam i am dark nipples and heart-shaped pubes. i have no friend in the steam room, yet i observe every visitor and soon found schedule mates. they are pink nipples, abnormally large nipples, and pointy nipples.”
pink nipples, abnormally large nipples and i shared our first steam room session together. the steam machine was broken at that time. there were only dews sticking on the ceiling and a hint of heat. we dared not take our towels off. the two women before me were both a little older than i was, one stocky and short-limbed, the other tall with a clean hollywood pubic hair, or lack of. from then on, i always see them together in the steam room. they come in together, usually before me, and i left in midst of their conversation. they talk about their children, office work, husbands’ affairs. they wear panties into the steam room even though it is clearly stated otherwise is expected on the door. pink nipples is presumably younger and abnormally large nipples sounds like she enjoys dictating her. their conversations agitate me but i sit trough every time.”
on other times i meet pointy nipples in the steam room. she seems to enjoy silence. i always found her during low-occupancy time at the gym, like before sunrise, during lunchtime or after dinner on weekends. she always steps in already fully naked, with no inhibition at all. if she comes in before me, her towel would be about fifty centimeters away from her hands. her breasts are small but her nipples are extremely pointy, so asserted that i feel they talk to me and stare at me. pointy nipples never seem to trim her pubic hair, and they grow wilder and wilder each time i see her.”
she brings an olive-scented oil which she smears all over her body and injects the whole room with the taste of olive. there are days when i stand near the steam room and taste olive vaguely in my tongue and nostrils, pointy nipples must be smothering herself inside, and i would somehow come in, even when i’ve showered. inside, we never talk, but the texture of her skin is so familiar i’ve read her whole life story without speaking. she and the crème-colored mozaic tiles are perpetually blending in, but they never obscure her. a certain poise she possesses, it exudes a humane truth trough her nakedness and leaves me to see clearly in a pool of humid clouds. i would hit her unintentionally with my towel and she would leave a greasy trace of oil on the seats, but there would never be a lie here.”
there’s nothing there but the truth. everything else is blurred. elsewhere, where the air is clear, only the truth looks like steam. blurred, grayed, and impartable from lies and made-up stories. my pointed nipple friend and i both get up and wrap ourselves with towels. and then we step out of the steam room. i don’t recognize her face. i only taste olive, vaguely.”

now i am no longer steam room mate. i am sauna room girl. as fat and retained water have chiseled my limbs in ways i could never seemingly undo by fitness training, i decided to just forget about it altogether and show everyone my stretch marks.

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