the romance of just being...

Rinones, por favor = Some kidneys, please.

the romance of just being alive and in love.
or at least in love with the idea of being in love.
or at least with the sound belief that you are indeed in love.

complicated? welcome to the true essence of love.
made absolute sense? in addition, one finds simplicity in the most convoluted.
the array of rainbow emotions, plus the million nuances you actually get in black. aye, lassie, that is love.

one day you're flitting and flying and smiling at all the irritated road ragers on the way to work and back. you're smiling "tolerance", "patience", and "it's great to be stuck in this traffic jam cos you get to reflect on how special relationships really are". you see the baby blue in the sky. you wonder at the birds singing even though the rains are coming. you could be snow-fucking-white, for the amount of humming you're doing around the household chores.

the next, you're a road rager yourself. and the blackest of moods permeate your weaving through every single daily chore and ritual. you scare the selangor red bus driver into giving you way, with the curse that is apparent in your angry aura. you cringe when you see that lovey-dovey couple holding hands and sharing their pukey special kodak moment together, and you fight the urge to kick some sense into her head and him, well just in his nuts for general good-will.

the next day? you love yourself. you love e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. you stand for. you even love that your knees are so round and that you inherited them from your grandmother through your madre. you love waking up mornings and rewinding over and over all the happy dreams you had throughout the night, where you heard his voice endlessly. he was just talking to you. just calling out your name. you love traipsing into work to find 3 emails waiting for you from him. especially the one liner-one paragraph ones that show that he thought about you throughout his busy day.

then you're back to the black day. and you hate yourself for being so stupid. for believing that love will show him the way and that karma intends for you to be together. you hate the flipping love songs they keep playing, back-to-back that croon out themes of having no choice but to wait as the damned singers are so stuck on the one person, they just can't move on (ahem, don't know how to move on, konon). well you know what, get lives people!!! and then you remember that you too struggle pathetically with just trying to move half a baby-step forward with the sickening realization that THIS man is not going to be "the one" either, sista.

sigh. well, love is a rainbow and then some. and unfortunately, the blackness of all things, stick. they really do. and the real challenge is to keep your soul from disintegrating too badly this time round, when this ends too. and you are back to wearing that same label inside out for all the world to see: unrequited love walking here. you know what? i do believe that this time, i am going to get some cute little neon t-shirts printed with that very same tag-line, and sell them. would you buy one??! USD15 a pop, and you get to send amreeth to the Iguazu Falls...

the inevitable

La cuenta, por favor = The check, please.

well, long have i heard it, and repeatedly in a variety of ways, that the only thing man is sure of the minute he is born is that he will be one day closer to death.
yet, you never really think about what you would do if you knew unequivocally that you only have 1 year to live. most "normal" people think it's a macabre topic and so that's just that... (and we all know how i detest the concept of normal!)
i am guessing that a lot of what you would do next, would in the most part depend on how healthy you are at this exact point, when you receive "the" news, and how long you will stay healthy after.

all a moot debate i suppose, as one never knows how one will react per se. but i now have the ultimate role model. and i will struggle to stay as cheerful, as upbeat, as optimistic and as loving as my dear friend Narelle Cameron was right until the very end. and i will try to embrace each day to its fullest. (aside - Camo married her prince and has gone to heaven knowing how very loved she is. and every single loved one she has left behind, knows too, without any doubt, how very much she loves them.)

and so i started to think, why the heck wait for news like that??! i am almost 40, and have spent the bulk of my life thinking some Bollywood movie is just going to happen to me. but i should know better... and so i made this list of the top 5 things i want to do by this time next year (22 August 2007) regardless of if i live "forever". the list is intended to make my own Bollywood movie, to carve a little of my own karma. and so maybe this list is a little fictional at points, and even maybe a little blue sky thinking given my current life-style and state-of-mind, but as my mates in adidas used to chant - "impossible is nothing".

so here we go-go:

1. i want to be at my own wedding, and as THE bride, i want to be looking into the eyes of MY MAN, who is marrying me as he loves me with the full force of his heart, and i want to see and feel that love without a doubt. oh, and i want to be wearing that exact same lengha that Rani Mukherjee wore when she met Shahrukh Khan for the very first time, in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. so that my hero, my Dad, can dance the Shava Shava song like he promised (he will be 72 next year). maybe i can rope in my crowd-phobic cha-cha-ji and my very suave disco-dancing thayah-ji into the Bollywood sequence. hmmm...

2. i want to have saved up so much money that i can just not work for a year and stay at home and write my best selling... novel? collection of short stories? vampire tales? hmm, how about my suicidal dark depressing unrequited love poems?? whatever! i want to write full time! and still pay all my lifestyle bills. moving along here...

3. i want to start a small center/shelter for education and rescue in honor of my best friend, the green iguana. word IggySingh :) for all the times you have rescued me right back and helped me become a decent human being.

4. i want to meet a vampire. and persuade him that i do deserve eternal life, and that he should bite me. where are you?? what? you don't believe in vampires??!

5. i want to stand at the Iguazu falls and feel the dreams of my childhood... and reflect on how we are all connected, every single one of us, even before we realize it.

so meet back here in August 2008 people, and remember, live every minute.

the end: Narelle is being buried tomorrow at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery, 3pm at the Boyd Chapel, Melbourne, Australia. and she has "organized" the idea of drinks for her friends. to drink to her full life at a pub in North Fitzroy. i salute you Camo. and until we meet again in our next lives, Chak De Sista!

mr. sandman, send me a dream... make it of the Iguazu Falls...

Es usted sudamericana? = Are you South American?
(when asking a male use "sudamericano")
Soy Malaysian = I am Malaysian.

so why is it that while i have desperately wanted to pick up Spanish for years and years now, i still have to depend on my trusty guide book to "speak"?

i have been thinking a lot about this lately. trying to connect with my sub-conscious to see why is it that i still struggle with this language. having been to Spain (and more specifically to La Coruna) 3 times, i seem to understand everything Mama V says to me, provided i clear my mind, and listen with an open heart.

i understand almost perfectly in fact, and am able to answer precisely at the right times with the right answers, so i am not just winging things, and over-using my intuitive side or pretending i understand just to seem polite (as Fer suspects!). so she speaks Spanish to me, and i respond in English.
i do the same with my tutor Luisa (of my now self-terminated lessons) and am able to follow her classroom directions to a 't' but which word actually meant what? sorry lah.

and then this morning in the midst of a text conversation, i remembered again that i used to dream in Spanish. yes, i actually did! it popped right back at me as i was texting mi amigo.

did you know that??! well, when i was about 12, right until i was about 16 or 17, i used to have this recurring dream that i was living on a ranch.

and that we bred horses (my "dream" family did). we had many men working for us, and they wore cow-boy like hats and did the traditional lassos. and they repaired the fences, and moved the horses around en mass and regularly (to graze). and the "country" i lived in? well, in my dream it was vast, and very green. and in reality, i was clueless.

ahuh! one would think i was over-dosing on the John Wayne era of repeats on our local TV1 or 2, except that all the conversations in my dreams were in a language that i had no exposure too in my conscious life. the Duke only spoke English in his movies ;) and i am 100% Punjabi.
so what was the language? i didn't know.

and then my dreams stopped suddenly, and Julio Iglesias made the air-waves of Malaysia, and my friend in Form 4 or 5, gave me his cassette (do you remember those things?? sorry i digress!)

and in a blinding moment of pure clarity, i realized the language of my dreams, was Spanish!!!

only then when i watched "The Mission" with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons (must have been about 1986, when i was 18) did i finally recognize the greenery of my dreams. South America. and the rainforests. and the stupendous Iguazu Falls. sigh.

needless to say, it took me 3 - 4 attempts to finish the film. i wept like a baby from the point Robert De Niro took on his penance and started the track up the jungle trails (De Niro played the slave trader turned acolyte). i still to date, cannot hear that version of that Ave Maria sung in those angelic little children voices without freezing.

do i believe in reincarnation? absolutely.
do i think i lived once on a horse ranch in Argentina? yes.
do i know this sounds nutty? yes.
do i care? hell NO! i do not!

did you know that Mama V was originally Argentinian, before she moved to Spain? it gets more curious...