November
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November Adrian Loh
It rained a lot that November, swells and crashes all around him, frantic and nearly devoid of breathing space. Amidst telecasts of bankrupt democracies and burning tourist landmarks: a rebirth of wonder. The news resounded as we danced and prayed together, knelt before the withered altars of a new world order, chanting holy incantations of “Oh well, whatever, nevermind.” “In ten years, I’ll just be another chapter about a girl you knew once and how you almost became a father.” “In ten years, you just might be the love of my life.” It consists of things, “a series of flashbacks” as one would say. So vivid I can barely recall the shreds of light in that hollow cathedral pregnant with laughter and forgetting. A history of systematic longing. Yet another oversold tale of the absent father and the indifferent Creator. Get them while stocks lasts! Between Friday prayers and Sunday worship, between fractures and talk of how everything breaks and nothing makes sense anymore and every thing is so fucked up. I wonder if we are freed from the velocities of youth. If we are ever freed from those sullen conversations of the one that got away, or the one we were going to be married to some day. From dreams we awoke, shivered and wept till dawn and morning prayers, I wonder whether time has let subside those great visions and revisions, whether time has made us abide.
“Nothing of this world is ever really worth building,” he said, “no becoming that doesn’t instigate our unbecoming.” November left us warm and empty, nestled in the valley of creation, in the eye of storms. We stumbled out into the burning city, into the shivering hollow of ambition and at every turning I was afraid, that you had taken nothing and left nothing. I remember those seasons of night and our voices speaking, whispering memory and sweet nothings (this voice that has ever only known itself speaking to you). As the rain fell past midnight, I listened to conversation subside into the monosyllabic slur of an Alzheimer’s patient clutching to that very last song of youth. I followed that absent-minded trail of discarded articles of clothing and lost hope, towards the winter bedroom... I lie here awake, in this bed of memories. Awake, in this eternal chamber of echoes. It was the season of light and remorse. “I come bearing gifts,” I said, and the stories of my grandchildren. I bring with me their birth rites, their marriage vows and insurance policies. Their genetic memory forged from my convulsive follies. I listened, as conversations subside (I should have said these things to you then, but one hardly ever gets around to such things). Silently we gazed out, upon that receding coastline where everything that once was is no more. “Your generation,” he said, “has been given the chance to undo and redo everything that has come before.” I finished what remained of the whisky and ordered another one. All around me the incantations swelled: last call for one more round and a new world order, last call to repent, and to understand how it all might have been,
how we were given a chance and other such vague generalizations — each more profound with every pint. Somewhere in the distance the bartender pours the last shot, a man on his phone dials an ex-lover: “Darling, I want you back,” but no one answers on the other end. Then “Here’s what we’re doing about global warming,” someone says, but I can’t hear them over the sound of the rain, and the ice breaking.
Kuala Lumpur, December 2008
It rained a lot that November, swells and crashes all around him, frantic and nearly devoid of breathing space. Amidst telecasts of bankrupt democracies and burning tourist landmarks: a rebirth of wonder. The news resounded as we danced and prayed together, knelt before the withered altars of a new world order, chanting holy incantations of “Oh well, whatever, nevermind.” “In ten years, I’ll just be another chapter about a girl you knew once and how you almost became a father.” “In ten years, you just might be the love of my life.” It consists of things, “a series of flashbacks” as one would say. So vivid I can barely recall the shreds of light in that hollow cathedral pregnant with laughter and forgetting. A history of systematic longing. Yet another oversold tale of the absent father and the indifferent Creator. Get them while stocks lasts! Between Friday prayers and Sunday worship, between fractures and talk of how everything breaks and nothing makes sense anymore and every thing is so fucked up. I wonder if we are freed from the velocities of youth. If we are ever freed from those sullen conversations of the one that got away, or the one we were going to be married to some day. From dreams we awoke, shivered and wept till dawn and morning prayers, I wonder whether time has let subside those great visions and revisions, whether time has made us abide.
“Nothing of this world is ever really worth building,” he said, “no becoming that doesn’t instigate our unbecoming.” November left us warm and empty, nestled in the valley of creation, in the eye of storms. We stumbled out into the burning city, into the shivering hollow of ambition and at every turning I was afraid, that you had taken nothing and left nothing. I remember those seasons of night and our voices speaking, whispering memory and sweet nothings (this voice that has ever only known itself speaking to you). As the rain fell past midnight, I listened to conversation subside into the monosyllabic slur of an Alzheimer’s patient clutching to that very last song of youth. I followed that absent-minded trail of discarded articles of clothing and lost hope, towards the winter bedroom... I lie here awake, in this bed of memories. Awake, in this eternal chamber of echoes. It was the season of light and remorse. “I come bearing gifts,” I said, and the stories of my grandchildren. I bring with me their birth rites, their marriage vows and insurance policies. Their genetic memory forged from my convulsive follies. I listened, as conversations subside (I should have said these things to you then, but one hardly ever gets around to such things). Silently we gazed out, upon that receding coastline where everything that once was is no more. “Your generation,” he said, “has been given the chance to undo and redo everything that has come before.” I finished what remained of the whisky and ordered another one. All around me the incantations swelled: last call for one more round and a new world order, last call to repent, and to understand how it all might have been,
how we were given a chance and other such vague generalizations — each more profound with every pint. Somewhere in the distance the bartender pours the last shot, a man on his phone dials an ex-lover: “Darling, I want you back,” but no one answers on the other end. Then “Here’s what we’re doing about global warming,” someone says, but I can’t hear them over the sound of the rain, and the ice breaking.
Kuala Lumpur, December 2008
