Sunday, 7th August 2011

The Pony

You'd think it's one of those wonder tales you hear the pub, an extravagant yarn that's stretched beyond physics and reality but good all the same on the retelling. It's out of your mind sadly once the ale is drunk and the sawdust is swept under the tables and into the fire place. But you might be wrong.

Sometimes, when you lurk a little at teh local you can get yourself some good material. who am I you ask, I'm the unobtrusive patron sitting at the end of the bar. The guy nursing that one pint, creepily, hoping you'd tell a tale worth remembering. Worth one-upping. Sometimes, I'm that lucky bastard telling the tales and getting a free pint or two along the way to keep the throat wet and the words loose.

Lots of young'uns these days are used to the pony stories. Flying ponies, magick ponies and unicorns that fly. Jokes about teh Pegasus Galaxy! Puntastic that was. Ha, occassionally I wonder if MLP Corp really knew what they were experimenting with. And if they knew, would they still have gone ahead.

they used to be expensive pets, custom creations to pander to the rich and famous. Now it's like Planet of the Apes with more benevolent ponies instead. What's PotA? never mind, you probably haven't seen it ... It's ok, the Pony over there didn't hear or rather doesn't care. Not all of them do. There's only so many of us left who remember the 'old days' and I can't even call them the "good old days". It was no Golden Age, because seriously, they weren't. We were running ourselves to ruin anyway, why quibble over how we no longer believe we rule the universe?

My ma thought they were real cute. My sister grew up wanting one just like everybody else. And me? I just grew up.

And that pony story. Yeah i heard that one before. But not like how the boy told it. Now that's a story everyone thinks they already know but something changes with each telling. And everyone's got a sister or an aunt or a girlfriend who went through it. Yeah, meeting a Pony for that first time sort of story.

A few older gals would say, they knew someone who had a Pony. And that was something special back in those days. They used to come with your cereal boxes and possibly on display in aisle five. Just kidding. Course you can't fit the whole Pony. Just a little picture tellin' you, you'd won that chance to meet one. The boys and gals that got that... went away and most times never came back. You're always left with second and third hand taleson what happened. Like my second cousin twice removed had this old school friend, who's sister went and came back. That's an odd one. The gal never spoke again and used to watch the skies on the odd rainy day. But whenever someone mentioned "Pony", she'd cry like her heart was gone.

Now, you tell me, how's that for a happy ending?

Monday, 13th May 2013

Nul Points - Dix-sept heures, j'attends a qui?

Sometimes we find ourselves waiting. Wondering where is Godot? Why is he late? Ultimately who has summoned us here to wait or who is actually keeping us here waiting. Who is Godot?

Quintessential question that is never asked, who are we to wait?

13th of May 2013. 13/5/13 would you still call it a palindrome? What is time to a palindrome?

I'm wondering if I on purposely named this entry Nul Point since there is No Point to make. I seem lost on a Monday.

Wednesday, 27th June 2012

Sora Mimi Green - Stories from another land

Often a traditional tale will begin with “Once upon a time” and “there was a little boy/girl”, this is not one of those stories. This is not a fairy tale or a tale of suspense and intrigue. Nor will it contain excitements of adventures on the high seas. We often find that things are easier defined by what it is not, rather than trying to define what it is. It’s like asking you to define the colour ‘white’. It is not black or blue or gold or purple. Yes, that was a bad metaphor. Buit the stories need to be set. Storytellers always want to set the scene, set up the audience, the readership for a story of their lifetime, so we begin as how we were taught to read or were read to.

Once upon a time, in another land, across the ocean and far away from here, there was a large family living on a farmstead. It was a rather large family and they had many acres of lands. The family was prosperous and was counted as one of the firsts in the village in prestige, knowledge and wealth. The head of the family had five children. Each of these grew up, married. When they married and started their own families, they were given parcels of the land to keep as their own so the wealth generated would support them and their children. Dowries of land or goods came with a new bride and dowries were given away with the daughters. Even in the days of the grandchildren, the family was still considered wealthy. Many of the children were well-educated, but the fifth child grew up to be spoilt. Let’s call him Ah-Wu (literally “number-Five”). He did grow older and got married and had his own children. This is not the story of Ah-Wu and how he squandered away the wealth which was a fifth of the family lands. This is not even the story of Ah-Wu’s brothers and sisters who tried to help him to stop gambling and be a man who supports his family. This is a story of Ah-Wu’s youngest daughter, Wu-Niu, literally “the-girl-child-of-Five”. She was the fifth daughter of the fifth son.

Fairy tales always talk about the seventh son of the seventh son or the seventh daughter having a destiny of their own. That’s not the case in real life. Oh, did I not tell you this was a real story? Well, it’s not fiction. Not all the stories here are the truth, but none of them are lies as I know it. But then, I’m only the storyteller. I didn’t live during the time of Ah-Wu and I didn’t know Wu-Niu as she was known then.

So Wu-Niu grew up in an age where good and pretty daughters had their feet bound so their lotus shoes will fit and they will marry well. Despite no longer having the wealth to provide a significant dowry, she was still apart of an influential family. Ah-Wu’s oldest brother’s oldest son (Da-Ge) and his first wife took Wu-Niu under their wing. So great were the ages between Ah-Wu and his brothers and sisters that  Da-Ge had a daughter of similar age to Wu-Niu. Their feet were bound each day together in the mornings. Da-Ge’s daughter would obediently sit, cry patiently and silently through the pain and boredom. Or maybe she learnt to embroider and sew during those dreary hours. Wu-Niu cut the bindings and ran away to play in the fields outside of the estate walls with the peasant children in the village. This small rebellious act would ultimately separate this pair of little girls and change their destinies.

Monday, 16 January 2012

The day I decided on adventure

It wasn’t really an auspicious day. It’s the Mayan Haab 8, Muwan' 14, the world is not ending, yet. Indeed a number of feng shui tools actually tell me it is ‘inauspicious’. It’s actually the 23^rd day of the twelfth month in the Year of the Rabbit. This is the day I chose to start. Start another journal. Ha, you thought I was going to say “journey”! Not all adventures start with walking… or a destination. Someone told me once the best type of adventure is when you start with no destination and no expectations.

Wondrous expectations! I often wonder why I have so much of this and so little input into the outcomes. I keep failing to meet them and once that happens much is left undone or half-baked. So my therapist says I should keep a journal. It doesn’t matter about the journey you take as long as you record how you feel and how your days have progressed. This will help you figure out how your expectations are formed and where they fall short or fall into a pit of darkness.

How many times have you heard a book, movie or a blog start with that line? “My therapist says I should keep a journal.” Does it trigger a sense that the author of the following text would be incomprehensibly Chomsky-esque or fatalistically Freudian? An absolute self-critique through shades of grey and darkness, filled with imaginary moments of illusory and imaginary happiness. An author, who through self-delusional, knows they’re witty by using literary techniques of alliteration, allegory and allusion. At least going through a checklist of the ones that can be identified and then combining them in to make an edifying text.

Well, I’ve always wanted to write but never found much in my own life to write about. Other people’s lives seem so much more interesting and filled with meaning and adventures. So I live vicariously through other people’s memories, photographs and tales over drinks at the local. Stalker-ish isn’t it? But modern technology makes this a seamlessly non-intrusive process. I’m facilitated by various providers, from blogs, discussion boards and Facebook. Other brands you would recognise as my fodder suppliers from Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr to Pinterest.

How does one begin to write? Burgeoning ideas of theoretical dissertations of identity examination comes to mind. Dissertation topics where you biologically dissect icons of popular culture and the emotive obsession that it generates could be a fun start. Then again, how does this make this journal different from any other pompous self-starter who emotes and states the world doesn’t provide a stage light? Literally, shooting off an opinion to cyberspace and expecting echoes of applause. Who or what does this serve? “How did my therapist think this would work?”

Looking at the travel photographs of one friend, I wonder at the audacity to travel to places like Laos on a whim. I consider myself whimsical. Indeed I'm much prone to flights of fancy and distractions.

It’s hard to picture the excitement of travelling when you have no wish to leave where you are. The novel aspects of landing on foreign soil is exactly that, foreign, at least to me.