Zathura

Zathura was at a fork - an intersection - again. It's unfortunate to have bifurcations like these on a road. Her father knew better. Her omnipresent father; her egotistical, mad and analytical father, sought knowledge beyond himself; sought knowledge to transcend himself - knew better. This is a disastrous situation.

It was an unusual road. One in which she had never experienced in her life. Zathura knew it existed - such snaking, dual paths, but she was not prepared to face it. What a journey it had been this year. What a journey - of knowing hypocrites, of naivetes, of those cumbersome infidels and ignorants, and of course, of those scheming and conniving fruit flies that call themselves human beings. This snake-tongued road that marred a smooth gravel path brought the reminiscences of a complicated year. How unfortunate to have a split of consciousness to the memory banks of... the amygdalae. Irrelevant. But how dreadful... How bothersome - to have to confront the memory of knowledge in physical reality. Zathura felt the weight of this year compressed within this moment of time and space.

She asked petulantly, "What say you divergent road? What wisdom do you impart? You ask to split my self to two and offer no convergence of such an unnatural split. If I follow left I lose the knowledge of the right, and should I contravene my first choice I am sutured to ignorance of what lies within the left. A wholeness in being through fragmented knowledge? What nonsense. Oh, yes, I may walk back and take turns in both roads. But each path changes in time. Time is what I cannot reverse. I may not enjoy the fruits of knowledge that presents itself to me now if I took one road over another. Tell me, what should I do?"

Here lies two shifting directions in which she was witness to its ever slight changes. The soft breeze bats the ground and a visible wave of dust tosses to the side. The canopy of leaves relinquishes the hold of its dead children and they sway ever so nonchalantly to the crusted earth - ready to be consumed; ready to be fertilised. And she could not help noticing the little yellow bird dashing madly through and fro between the pathways, unperturbed by the frustrated furrow of Zathura's brows. How is it possible to freeze time so that one may traverse infinitely without the loss of knowledge? It must be true then, she thought solemnly, that to understand one's being-ness, we have to relinquish certain desires, certain knowledges, certain fulfilments. Loss is the constituent of our ontology. Loss is the discourse of epistemology. Unconsciously, she bit her lower lips till it bled.

Zathura sighed in mock relief that she only encountered a bifurcated fork. It could have been worst. It could have been five scratches on the ground clawing towards the horizon. Right... so what would it be then? Follow one and lose the other. Zathura could not decide which. To her untrained eyes, both routes looked alike. "Come on... Think!" she bellowed to the environment. She asked, why couldn't she have both? People lead double lives - don't they? Don't people have multiple selves? Do they not enact multiple selves everyday? After all, one could be a teacher, a lover, a wife, a child and a clinician all in the same day. Zathura pressed a hand on her sweaty forehead and aggressively smacked away the droplets on cooling skin. "Never of the moment," she whispered hoarsely. "Never in one moment could all those selves coalesce together." Multiple selves in fragments of time frames our ontology but could never compress its selves to one self within that mote of present time.

"Aargh!" and that screech sent the yellow bird darting quickly out of sight. She thumped the ground with aggressive feet. She kicked any unfortunate stone along the track and also a few stray bugs that paid its karmic debt by catapulting across the dusty eminence. She throttled the already cracked earth and somewhere, deep within the cavernous ruins of the arid ground, something must be hysterically laughing at her stupidity. Zathura stopped, spat right within the hollow vein on the beaten footpath, breathed a few ragged breaths, and then, suddenly, burst into laughter.

She finally caught her breath and whatever was left of sanity. She bent forward with her hands resting on the rounds of her knees while her forehead dripped incessantly to the parched floor. Finally she stood up and confronted the forked path - one last time.

Zathura heaved a sigh and said to no one, "You win. You win, you fucking bastard. I could stay right here and not traverse any path, but that would be ruinous to my life. I could walk back and retrace a different horizon of knowledge but there would always be memory to contend with. After all, the first sip of drink from a vessel would not change the texture of taste on the second sip, even though the act of drinking might have been slightly altered. So I have that forward move to anticipate. Something different, something exciting, and something worth losing. Very well then, let me ask you, whoever you are, which would you choose? The right or left path?"

The 'unchanging' path moved slightly. Somewhere, beyond sight and sound, something altered the course of those two divergent roads. It could have been an animal or it could have been a seasonal flood. But somewhere, somehow, maybe those roads collided - maybe. Would you take the risk? Would you? Would you dare risk the possibility of an imagined quality of life? Would you take such losses? Would you? Zathura asked silently and answered wordlessly.

Yes. But... what have I irretrievably lost? Would I ever know? Would you?

Letter to the Singapore Ministry

[A letter that I wrote in support for the amendment of Singapore's Penal Code that castigates homosexuality in section S377A. Check this article for further details: Singapore NGOs call for a repeal of gay sex laws.]

Dear Sirs,

SUBMISSION ON THE PROPOSED PENAL CODE AMENDMENTS

In response to the Ministry’s request for public comments to the Consultation Paper on the Proposed Penal Code Amendments, I advocate the following:

1. Total repeal of s377A and decriminalization of all consensual sex between persons above the age of 16, regardless of their sexual orientation or preference; and
2. Total abolition of the marital immunity currently awarded to man who engages in non-consensual sex with his wife.

I wish to advance the humanitarian cause of PLU through a brief explanation of the historical genealogy of sexuality. It is my intention to highlight the archaic and antediluvian prejudice of Singapore’s Penal Code of s377A, a prejudice that is the legacy of Singapore’s postcolonial condition. While it is not in my expertise to critique the marital immunity that is currently offered to heterosexual marriages, I believe that it would almost be commonsensical to suggest that marital immunity to non-consensual sex invites the exploitation and rape of bodies. Thus it is in my professional opinion that the total repeal of s377a and marital immunity to non-consensual sex be mobilized as soon as possible.

In the genealogy of sexuality, the prejudice against homosexuality occurred most virulently (and expressively) in the Modern age. Prior to the 1500s, sexuality was indeed, as most advocates for the Proposed Penal Code would agree, a matter of personal taste. While there were ethical and moral frameworks for the enactment and asseveration of desires, the criminalization of homosexuality was never (as some fundamentalists would carp) a decree of Nature or metaphysical Law. Sexuality has shaped and re-shaped itself through culture and history and has never – I repeat, never – been an immutable condition of humanity.

The Penal Code of s377A could be traced back to King Henry VIII of England in 1533. He first declared and formalized the criminalization of sodomy as a cardinal transgression against Nature. This unfortunate legacy has shaped the legal doctrines of both Singapore and India’s postcolonial society. While we might believe that the first-world advancements of Singapore have fully removed itself from the colonial conditions of British rule, this is not reflected in our legal discourse. To form a democratic, even if a pseudo-democratic society (as Lee Kuan Yew used to call all forms of democracy a pseudo-democracy), it is important to relinquish antiquated laws against sexuality. To castigate another person’s desires that are shaped by the same socio-cultural conditions of heterosexual ardour is not simply a prejudice, but a severe expression of ignorance. Both sexualities learn the codes and semiotics of courtship; both engender commitments and responsibilities to persons; both are caught in the struggle for companionship and love; neither rape nor plunder because of their sexual preference. While the differences are marked in affectivities and gender preference, the similarities are also markedly obvious.

Both PLU and Human Rights activists have given enough time and energy to the rescinding of s377A’s discriminatory law against homosexuality. And time runs out for every teenager that suicide from sexual ignorance and intolerance, every HIV/AIDS person whose life is attacked by homophobic eidolons, and every gay family meltdown that is caused by the government’s refusal to action and emancipation. No longer do I ask or plead with the government to repeal s377A. I demand, as should all who believes in basic humanitarian rights, the elimination of the archaic, sexual bigotry of homosexuality in Singapore. The insouciant close-an-eye system of Singaporean ethics can no longer be applicable to the diversity of bodies that diligently and conscientiously work towards the social health and economy of this country. The Ministry must take the emancipation of queer individuals with the uttermost exigency and care.

Yours faithfully,

...

The Conditions of Past Tests

There's a point of convergence in life - a dialectic that comes to a fruition of possibilities, or rather, may ignite further possibilities. I come to a trapped node of consciousness that forks out beyond myself; beyond knowing, beyond yearning, beyond lacking. Here at this centre of being, I contemplate - I meditate.

Coming so close to the end of the year, I am inundated with thoughts of the future. This phenomenon of planning, goal-seeking, life-making habit of human beings is an irritating disposition. But before we leap across a chasm of incomprehensibilities, I seek the reflected image of myself. In this metaphysical pool of being, I saw the tested mettle of patience, ardour, stamina, endurance and courage.

Patience: The ability of one's self to withstand provocation, misfortune, pain and love. It is the test of composure, the catechism of persistence, and the examination of sufferance. Patience wrought the metaphysical ley-lines of my life like the rhizomatic madness of bog trees. Each mishapen root simply branch out-toward space without a care of the barriers that reality conjures. And so I walk through the extremities of pain - emotional and physical - so that I may come to (with)stand - scathed and maimed - and spit at the sky in contempt and ecstasy. In this I have always been tested and succeeded.

Ardour: The very constituent of desire, passion and affectivities. It is amour, fervour, zeal and inconsolable burning of the loins. For this I call upon it a malediction, a bane, an objuration of pain beyond physical limits. Indeed, and contradictorily, ardour is the point for escape; it is the condition to free from the bastion of the body; it transgresses the physical capacities for lust. For in the transgression of the physical we come to know the unlimited expanses of love. But herein lies my plight for I am always sutured before, and always before, the limits of expression - of love. Herein I am recumbent on a bed of broken glass, each pressing its jagged edge on soft skin, testing - always testing - the mettle of patience. For when will I come to free myself? When will that edge present itself for my suicide? Who will lead me to transgress? I am still tested.

Stamina: The expression of drudgery; of a mule that hopes to lick the carrot before itself. It is the making of endurance, the structure of power and will. For in stamina one is levelled with others - your peers, friends, relatives and lovers. What are one's reserves which could brace and prevail against anxiety, aggression, maliciousness, and intolerability? Stamina strikes the anvil and spreads the dust of life's fire across the floor. Stamina is the hammer that will scrape and scrape the steel of oneself until all that is left is a tempered and forged weapon of reckoning. This test is but a beginning of my ordeals - a trial that has just been initiated.

Endurance: How long could one last? Last against hardship, stress, expectations, and existence in general. This is when the breaks are on one's fingers, the nails between the crevices of nails, knife through and within organs that cramp affectivities. Yes... in endurance is sadomasochism. Endurance carves itself through our skin and into the very heart of each being. Could we understand that in which we desire without first going through the misery of understanding? In the mastery of ardour is also the mastery of endurance. This is the test of vitality.

And finally Courage: To face no body - that is the final fear. The expectation of facing someone could meet lasciviousness, horror, anxiety, love, compassion, and even peace. To face no bodies, nothing - ever - is to lack humanity. Do you brave the conditions of being inhumane? Do you have the courage to disassociate from the conditions of patience, ardour, stamina and endurance? For in all these conditions there is the 'other' - the person, the human - is always present even if invisible. In courage is the metaphysical quality of mind and spirit that enables the forging through, and the detonation through, people. In courage we face enemies and antagonists. But where is courage to be alone? I have none. I realise this this year. I have a lack of courage. I am always surrounded by beings of every nature. I lack courage for no bodies. This test I failed before it has even begun.


And so my past is manacled by these conditions of being: these five strands that twist and meander through the physical and mental capacities of my existence. In my vocation as an academic, I wait patiently for an institution that would pick me from the rubble of prostitution while enduring the limited expression of one's value. In ardour I skip the tip of waves and plunge into the depths of affectivities. Though I have stamina to withstand the cold depths of emotions, I have yet to master endurance for I cannot be hurt too long. And in my grandmother's death I learned courage for I cannot live without bodies. I learned that I lack the courage to lose bodies and in this I shall strive to empower. For one day we must have the courage to lose and be lost.