I have not been in the best condition for the past few days. I am suffering from a cough that threatens to worsen. My eyes are tired and my body is lethargic. My bloodied knee continue to seep blood and pus, making every re-bandaging a tedious and painful exercise. I have not weighed myself, but I know surely, from looking myself in the mirror, that I have lost a pound or two.
I curse this physical frame. I hate it for being weak. For all my efforts at bulking up and strength-training, it remains unresponsive. I should have been stronger, faster and sturdier but I seem to be getting weaker. It will not be long before I end up being one of those sad sacks who can never pass their annual physical fitness test, or the jokers who claim to be weekend warriors but look in danger of expiration ten minutes into a football game.
I curse my intellectual faculties. My learning curve should have been sharper, my memory more reliable, and my reasoning powers crisper. I am not happy. I feel that I am barely above the dullards that make up most of the general population. The more I read the more aware I am of my intellectual incapability. The difficulty in focusing, and the concentration lapses that seem to be increasing in frequency are worrying. I fear that I may be senile before I turn 35, and drooling away while mumbling 'gaga...' before 40. I have never known anybody who is 'gracefully senile', not in the way some who 'age gracefully' are. Former atheist philosopher Anthony Flew is a prime example. The Old Dog Thief who recently changed our National Pledge to 'National Aspiration' is another. There are men who have gone - to borrow from the Lass - wonky and died soon after. Then there are those who linger on like restless and vindictive spirits out for revenge, bringing pain to themselves and the people around them. Death is a mercy, and sadly it comes too soon for some, and too late for others.
Why am I writing this now? I have no idea. It is one of those days when you decide that you just have to ramble meaningless things that are meaningless to everybody else and equally as meaningless (well, almost) as they are to yourself. Some wit once said that writing sets you free. I presume he is now dead - and free.
Freedom is a strange word in these parts. Uttered frequently but never taken seriously, it has degenerated from a pedantic ideal to lip service, and now it is associated with anarchy and fear. What form will its degradation take next? Can it sink even lower? Give it a spade and let it dig, I say. It is but a mere word and nothing more. Just empty rhetoric and a 'mere puff'. How can anyone enjoy freedom when tyranny is in power? How can there be freedom when people do not even recognize they live under the thrall of oppression? How can people recognize freedom when they do not even bother to think beyond what the state propaganda machinery infests their brains with, or worse, fear to think for themselves because as we know, thinking too much does nobody good?
The Seventh Month is upon us. The streets are littered with scattered Hell notes, ashes, and remains of joss sticks and offerings. The air is arid, its smell the stink of Gehenna mingled with the smokiness of Hades. The perfume houses ought to bottle it up. It will be a great hit in Milan and Paris. Heavenly scenes are so passe. Hellish is in; they can name this perfume Hell, by Coco, or better still Stink, by Shithole. A fitting tribute to a land that sits in the middle of the Hells, haunted by the disembodied shades of Freedom, as it begins its inexorable descend into more abyssal realms.
What greeted me during lunch was hostile scenery. We are truly an inferior species. I choose the word 'inferior' over 'infernal' so as not to draw comparisons with the lower planar beings in mythology. I do not wish to insult them, even though I am an atheist and to me, they are nothing more than figments of some wild imagination. With these lower planar creatures you know what you are going to get. The horrible ones are suitably horrible looking (although still resplendent with horns, tail and bat wings). The beautiful ones (the sucubi and incubi) are simply stunning.
On a scale we would be somewhat in the middle, although in some cases the balance would be skewed towards the grotesque. I think we are an ugly people in general. Let's just leave noxious habits like booking seats with tissue papers and spewing Singlish like it's some legitimate language aside, and focus on the physical aesthetics. On a scale of 10, maybe I will give us a 3.5 or 4, the kind of score that hovers between outright failure, a provisional pass and a bare pass.
Many of us either appear malnourished or overfed. Many of the females look like they are permanently stuck in puberty. The thin ones are often short, reed skinny, flat, in some cases, have rough complexion. The fat ones have a propensity to dress themselves like they are some roast piglet about to be served as part of a wedding feast. The males are no better. Lacking in height and manly musculature, many carry beer bellies, thin shoulders and/or bad complexion. Our gene pool is undoubtedly bad. Considering our easy accessibility to food and healthcare, our bad physical attributes cannot be excused. It is all too easy to blame it on our humid weather. Why are Malaysian girls better looking than our local girls then? We live in the similar climates, eat basically the same oily food and why are the results so different? I think for males we are taller than our friends across the border but that is not an issue I care to concern myself with because I am not gay.
It is extremely demoralizing to wake up in the morning, board the overcrowded and suffocating train and find yourself encased (it feels more like entombed) along with specimens who are not only aesthetically unimpressive, but bereft of soul and spirit. There is no spark in their eyes, no energy in their movements. They could have been walking corpses, save for the barely inaudible sound of their breathing (wheezing). I could have been one of them. I am hardly impressive-looking myself, although at least nobody would ever mistake me for Frodo. The devil is in the details, and the details are in my eyes. Nobody will ever mistake my spiteful glare for the resigned look in the eyes of the doe-eyed sheep.
I am spiteful because I am stuck here. Stuck in this place where meritocracy is merely mediocracy, nepotism and cronyism repackaged, where efficiency is mistaken for effectiveness, where dreams are shattered and hopes trampled underfoot by an unyielding and spiritually repulsive mercantile culture.
My national aspiration is to live in a place where I have elbow space wherever I walk. A place that does not send people to court for the slightest of infringements. A place where people are truly diverse, not merely in the sense of skin colour, but in viewpoints and characteristics, and that the celebration or condemnation of this quality is not enforced by draconian laws and social engineering, but by the will of those who choose to live thus. A place where liberty is a necessity, not a privilege, where freedom of speech and expression is inviolate and the people allowed to pursue their dreams and live as they will. Most importantly, I desire a place where I can break free of this mediocrity, and raise to my potential, to self-actualize, to become. Never mind if this comes at a cost. The higher crime rate, the racism and the status of being a non-citizen (or a second-class one) cannot compare to the zombifying existence in this Hell. Some people live their lives, some earn their living, others just hope to die quickly and hope to be reborn in a better place. What chance of the first in this wretched place?
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