He Smiles

There is an event on Creative Writing/British Media Awareness Training Session tomorrow at Malaysia Hall London, organised by UKEC in cooperation with the Malaysian Students Department UK and Eire. The respective speaker is Mr Wan Ahmad Hulaimi, the former NST correspondent for London and Europe.

Sadly, it is on Tuesday.

Unless the event is nigh to my place, any excuses to miss this are deeply unfathomable. Lest to miss the golden views from the speaker, I shall convey a bird to bring me back a letter of wisdom from what the event may bring.

Kudos to the rest who are going to spend their Tuesday for this.

Upon this posting, shall of us take a few minutes to ponder on something that is a certain in this life, but the enjoyment in life always do the injustice in reminding us about this.

Death.

It is not a moment of sadness, it is the moment for us to remind about it. And certainly, appreciate death.

I witnessed death at a young age when my friend and I promised to each other that I am going to be his best man when he gets married and likewise for my occasion.

Out of the blue, it was like a slap on my face.

Yup, it was painful and the sky fell on me when the incident happened. However, a wise mind will think and reflect on death.

I believe, that knowing your life has an endpoint will help you appreciate every moment your alive.

And, death helps you understand life's precious gifts. Every single of it, even the one we rarely think of. Anything. Anything.

It makes me wiser, I want to grow through life. I do not want to just go through life. Mark this dichotomy.

The world flashed its teeth to me in 2003, four years ago.

LOVE STORY FOR KAKAK
By Nanim (a piece written by my secondary school mate, who is now pursuing her dreams in journalism)

My sister asked me to tell her a love story, any love story for that matter, to give her some ideas on what to write for her assignment.

Love story. Uhh. I shudder to think of the word love.

Lest u think I’m a sceptic, oh I’ve been in relationships before. I have known love and love has known me. However, for some reason, love has eluded me, or rather, I have ran away from love.

You see, I had a very tragic first love. Ah... the mere mention of first love... brings back the memories, doesn’t it?

I was 13 when I met him. We were young, naïve and foolish. He wasn’t the best looking guy in school, nor was he the richest. Well, he was well off, but there were better looking guys compared to him.

His name was Ryan.

You see, I was infatuated with another boy, and Ryan was initially enlisted to help me win the attention of the boy I liked. I would look for him before, in between and after class everyday to know more about my dream guy, his likes and dislikes, what he did in class, little things like that. And Ryan was more than willing to indulge me with the information.

But little did I know, we would start sharing the same interests. He loved grunge – the music was so popular back in the 90s, I thought KL was Seattle – and I was into the genre too. We liked the same movies, the same comics, and we have the same favourite colour and the same favourite number. In fact, we even shared the same birth date, except that we’re 5 months apart.

So anyways, the infatuation didn’t last long, but our friendship did. At 15 years of age, I found out through a friend that he had feelings for me. I guess I could actually saw it coming, but nevertheless I was pleasantly surprised. A best friend who is like-minded in so many ways, that fits you like the missing jigsaw piece you just found under the bed, to become your boyfriend. What more can you ask for?

This story should come with a happy ending. However, I am sad to say that it won’t. We were together for only 2 months, but rest assured, the drama lasted longer than your favourite Philipino soap opera.

I abhorred the sight of him and the mere mention of his name. I wished I never found out that he had another girlfriend. That alone single-handedly shattered my esteem, my self-confidence, my faith in him. U can’t imagine the wounds of adolescence. It hit me rock bottom. He would say sorry, and I would take him back, then he would break his promise, and I would vow to stay away from him, and he would say sorry again, the vicious, incessant cycle exhausted me.

However, as we grew older, we somehow managed to salvage the friendship that we had, thus explaining why I never got rid of him in the first place. We had ups and downs, and he had always hinted that he still loved me, but for the sake of our friendship, I just never entertained it. We fought, like we always did, but we also supported each other, in an eccentric yet special way that only both of us knew. The fights were often ugly and public. The good parts, however, were never known to our peers. They only thought we would fight all the time. They say don’t hate someone too much, or you’ll end up loving them more than you think you would, and I found that to be true in the cruellest way possible.

Without a doubt, he was my first love. And do you understand me when I say that you would automatically assume that your first love is the one that you’ll marry? This is very foolish of me to admit, but I once thought that I would marry him. But things happened the way it did, and he once assured me that, no matter what, even if I’m a mother of six, married to someone else, he would want us to still be friends, so that our children can be friends like us when we were 13. I simply nodded at that time. I never knew how much it would mean to me later.

Today, the day this story is written, is the 13th. It’s our favourite number. He would have turned 22 today, had he survived the car crash. It has been four years since his passing, four years since I received that fateful phone call about his accident. It was never easy for me to recall any of these, I was depressed for quite a while before I could stand on my own feet again and moved on. Time heals pain. Time dulls pain. And time can also make you forget.

I remember the day of his burial. His cousin came to me and whispered, “The cards that you gave him, are still on his study desk. He often had them nearby whenever he studied.”

Another friend, who was close to him, told me something I never expected to hear, “Let it be known, that of all his exes, he loved you the most.”

Time is evil.

Time took him away from me before I could tell him I never meant to hate him for his wrongdoings. Time snatched him away before my children and his children could be friends like how he wanted.

But I have no power to bring him back. It doesn’t matter if my tear ducts are dry from crying, there’s just no rewind button to push on time.

Sometimes I do see him in crowds. That split second at the corner of your eyes, when you’re glancing, that’s where I always see him. And I know, for a thousand years more, he would be in that special place in my heart.

Does this affect my current relationship? Oh yes, it does immensely although the influence has been subdued lately. For all the pain that he put me through during his infamous infidelity (geez, we were only 15 then), I often demand my boyfriend to be what Ryan was not. And that can be straining. I’m in a long-term relationship that sometimes drains me. The line between love and dependency has since blurred. It gets me thinking to remember what Ryan used to say, “as long as it makes you happy.”

The innocence of first love is what I missed most. Nothing else mattered much then. It was stupid, but it was also true.

I’m sorry, dear kakak, my love story isn’t a happy one. I am forced to grow up too fast for falling in love too early when I was 15. I hope you would have better luck in love than me.

The End.

And I told her, do not cry. Achieve what you want to achieve in life. He will be smiling from there.

And I am doing the same.

I will keep on walking alone around the lake, sing the song sang by the swans, look at the trees, breathe the crystal air, and think. The silence breaks once in a while when I step through the bed of falling leaves.

And my tears fall unnoticedly, in harmony with the caress of the wind.

Wikipedia.org :

Pokarekare Ana is a traditional New Zealand love song, probably communally composed about the time World War 1 began in 1914. East Coast Māori song-writer Paraire Tomoana, who polished up the song in 1917 and published the words in 1921, wrote that it emanated from the North of Auckland and was popularised by Māori soldiers who were training near Auckland before embarking for the war in Europe.

There have been numerous claims and counterclaims regarding authorship over the years. Although the matter has never been definitively settled, guardianship of the words and music are held by the family (descendants) of Paraire Tomoana.
Although the Māori words have virtually remained unaltered over the decades, with only the waters in the first line being localized, there have been many different English translations.

Originally sung in a subtle 3/4 (waltz) time, since World War 2 it has been heard in a more plodding 4/4 time. The song is performed, usually badly in Māori, wherever Kiwis congregate anywhere in the world. It is very popular in New Zealand and is sometimes called the country's unofficial national anthem, although it has been adapted to commercial advertising and by sporting groups.

New Zealand soldiers taught it to Korean children during the 1950-53 war, and it is now much sung in South Korea.
A schoolyard parody, O curry curry arna, I found a squashed banana, is well known to New Zealand school-children, and was being sung in Melbourne playgrounds in the mid-1970s.

The tune of Pokarekare Ana has been borrowed for an Irish wedding song A Mhuire Mháthair sé seo mo ghuí.

Late in 2003 Pokarekare Ana featured on the Pure album released worldwide by the young New Zealand soprano Hayley Westenra. Pure is the fastest selling debut album ever on the UK classical charts. Internationally known New Zealand opera singers to previously record and perform Pokarekare Ana are Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Dame Malvina Major. Dozens of other artists throughout the world have recorded this song.