Today's the day

 I lay next to mum on her bed. I could feel the warmth of her body, hear her breathe softly. The meditation music I put on in the background sent her off to sleep. I closed my eyes and meditated for a few moments...

"Peace, happiness, freedom from suffering... Peace, happiness, freedom from suffering..."

A last hour of my twenty-seventh year, and I was lucky to spend it lying next to mum. To think, so many, many years ago, I was still inside of her, I was still so very small, so innocent, so ignorant of the ways of the world. To think, so many, many years ago, mum was younger, stronger, and healthier. A simple cough would not make her vomit. She could go to work during the day, come home to cook, and take care of a husband and two children. She could go anywhere, do anything she wanted to at will. Now things are all different... I have grown up, I am for the most bit away from her, and she has grown old, grown ill, and slowly, slowly is losing control of the movement of her hands. Much of mum's waking moments are coping with pain, bearing the sores of her aged and ill body...

I opened my eyes and looked at mum's face.. how wrinkled it is, how much sweat and tears that face has shed over the years, and never for a moment did she complain anything was too hard, too unbearable. Instinctively, I reached over and stroked mum's hand... how wrinkled it felt, how much those fingers have worked and toiled over these two, three decades from the day I was born, to provide for me, to care for me, to love me in so many different, different ways...

"I have burdened you..." Perhaps my touch had woken her up. The meditation music reached a crescendo.

I closed my eyes and turned away. "Don't say that!" Mum perhaps does not realise how painful it is to hear that... Even if at times, I feel it, even at times I feel like my life has not been going anywhere because of the circumstances she is facing, it still is very painful to hear mum say that. I know being by her  side for so long has greatly tested my patience, and there are moments I have been impatient, I have been rude to her, I have been frustrated and angry at her, I have perhaps made her disappointed and feel pressured to "get better" when she is not getting better... Even so, I am just trying, trying to cope, trying to do the best I can and with what I know. Even if mum were a "burden", what  am I supposed to do? Just leave her on her own when she cannot even properly use utensils, let alone cook for herself? Just leave her when she has so little will to go outdoors, and everyday looks so sad and depressed? "You are my mother! How can you say that?" I closed my eyes even tighter.

I can only do what I can do. And nowadays it feels like I am able to do so helplessly little, which pains me, which frustrates me greatly. For growing up, mum could always make me feel safe... growing up, mum could always heal my wounds, and make me feel better again. And yet now, I am unable to do the same for her. I cannot make her feel better. I cannot make her better, whatever I do.

"I'm worried..." mum said faintly, and coughed. Her closed eyes squinted, a sign she was in pain.

"Worried about what?" I played with the heat packs I had just removed from boiling water. The packs are supposed to ease the soreness around mum's shoulders and neck, and are supposed to help her  sleep easier.

"About you. Brother is already married, but you..." she strained to speak. The four sessions of CyberKnife treatment, though swift and seemingly painless, have as expected damaged her throat even further. Her throat has become swollen, and when she coughs, there is yellow phlegm.

I closed my eyes, as if in closing them, the lingering sadness can be shut aside. If not, at least the tears that threatened to seep out could be shut inside.  Mothers worry about their children, that cannot be changed, and especially Asian mothers worry about their children's marriage. Even in her state of discomfort and pain, or perhaps exactly because of that, mum's mind is still preoccupied with me and my life.

"I cannot control love or who loves me..." I said, "However much I wish to have someone in my life, I have no influence over that..." I was again reminded of  the conversation mum and I shared on my 'real' birthday, the one my parents remember mainly, two weeks ago. Mum asked about my ex, but I did not want to go into details. All I said was that I have not spoken to him much for two months, and that I hope he is happy.

"Why don't you think of yourself? I am still young, I have a life ahead of me. But what about you? Why spend you time worrying about me, worrying things I have no say or influence over, when you could spend time thinking about what you want to do with your life?" I held mum's hand. I have said this to her so many times, and I know deep down she too wants to plan her life after retirement, I know deep down she too wants to enjoy her life as best as she can. But the physical is a huge obstacle standing in the way, and nobody can really understand how much she hurts, how much she is so weakened and so burdened by her deteriorating health and having to hear again and again that the cancer is spreading... As she said to me once or twice, "You're not the one with cancer..."

We were silent for a few moments. Mum closed her eyes. The music continued playing. I looked at her, at her aged faced, at her wild, uncombed grey hair. I looked at her nose, her lips, her chin, her cheeks ever so closely... Have you ever really looked at someone you love and care about from so close? Have you ever looked at your own dear mother from so close?

I see my dear, brave mother, see her age, I see her slowly grow weaker and more ill by the day. How far we have come together all these years... how much longer and further can we journey together in this life?

Can I again take her traveling and can I again show her the world and its many beauties? Can I fulfill her dream of finding a partner with whom I can settle down for life, so that she may leave this world at ease? I stroked her hand, softer and gentler this time, for fear of waking her again, like I did before.

Just as I thought she was already asleep, "Thank you for everything..."




What’s the trouble on your mind? 你在煩惱什麼
(translation mine)
There is no flower that will not wilt,
There is no tide that will not retreat,
There is no light that will not darken,
What’s the trouble on your mind?

There is no scar that will not fade,
There is no wound that will not heal,
There is no despair that will not stop,
What are you being melancholic about?

Time will never reply,
Life will never make a turmoil,
Even if there is only one moment,
I am not afraid,
It is that one moment that makes up forever…

Leaving greacefully...

“There is no medicine. All you can give is the love of family, love plus care.”

I bought the movie Leaving Gracefully (帶一片風景走) some weeks back, hoping that we would have the time to sit down and watch it together as a family. I knew the theme would have a lot of meaning for my family, but in the evenings mum has either been too tired or too ill, so we never got around to it.

Only today, on my birthday, or because of my birthday, did mum and I manage to watch it. Half way through, brother called from the other side of the world to say he arrived home safely. Tears I shed were just drying when he called. 

The movie is based on a true story. In 2008, a husband and his wheelchair-bound wife, who is diagnosed with spinocerebellar atrophy, spent 84 days and walked over a million steps to circumnavigate the island of Taiwan (a distance of around 1000km). The working class couple touched many hearts as they walked around the island, and the media dubbed it “Love of a Million Steps”. How far would a husband go to share how much he cares and loves his wife? What would you do with your life when there is limited time and space? As the wife slowly loses her motor skills and ability to speak, the husband decides to fulfil a promise he once made to her. He wants to take her oyster hunting at low tide, he wants to take her on their first honeymoon, for they never had one; he wants to take her on a final journey, and defy what the doctor said about it being impossible. 

And they did manage to do it, in a revamped wheelchair, with a flimsy shopping cart trailing behind, and with the husband pushing all the way. One step at a time, slowly, in sunshine or in rain. Passerbys offered them encouragement and support, some gave them shelter and food, some even offered them rides. But the husband refused, for he said he wanted, needed to walk this final journey with his wife. Just the two of them...

“Even though we cannot walk hand in hand, our shadows on the ground are together…”
 

I shed tears quietly at many moving moments, and quietly wiped away the tears. At one point, the wife insisted to return home after already walking for over a hundred kilometres, in order to sing happy birthday to their daughter. That scene was perhaps even more touching as today was my birthday. The lady, though she has almost lost the ability to speak, tried hard to sing "Happy Birthday" to her daughter. The daughter, obviously moved, ran to hug her mother, and together they cried... Another touching scene was when while going up a steep hill the husband fell, but the first thing he does is ask whether his wife is alright and tends to her needs… Such is their love, the husband's deep commitment to the care and comfort of the wife till the very last moment of her life. How beautiful that is, that love, that affection, which is unconditional and resolute, which transcends the purely physical. "I will grow ugly..." the wife, knowing how the disease will affect her looks and make her  eyes bulge and her arms shrivel, said to the husband at one point, to which he replies "And I will grow old..." He loves her not for how she looks, but for the person whom she is, until the very, very end. Their marriage vows were truly forever. 

The doctor who initially diagnosed the wife became deeply touched and inspired. Though there is no cure, he realises, of all the patients he has seen before, this couple defied his opinion of what a person with a degenerative brain disorder can achieve. Whereas everyone will gradually disintegrate and die in the end, the couple showed their determination to decide life for themselves, and how “Just being happy is good enough…” 

It is not without reason why I wanted to watch this movie, especially watch it with mum. It is my hope the movie will fill mum with hope. Perhaps, seeing that husband and wife, she will be inspired and tell herself: “If they can do it, if a person who is wheelchair-bound and has lost all control over her body can, then I too can live and be happy…”

(translation mine)

Can the soft, soft wind hear? Hear me quietly describe the past?
Don’t let that past vanish. Your little smile was so beautiful.
The waves made up your face, the sky was full of rosy clouds.

The spray of the waves is emotionally attached to the blue, blue sky. The tides never forget the vows of love.
Tightly, tightly [I] hold your little hand, [and] remember to take love away.
Longing is like the tides and is not dispelled, [it] is before one’s eyes.


[I] cannot differentiate whether it is the rain or tears,
Please, moon, [I] hope she can accompany you,
And fly away with a little smile…

One Native Life

There are in life fleeting moments that remain. A face, a scene, a voice, a sound, a feeling. Something that captures you, or that you capture. And deep down inside you feel as if there were an overwhelming and profound realisation that somehow things, people, time and places are connected. You cannot explain it, you cannot name it, but you feel it. Or it feels you.

In the subway tunnel I walked, glad to have escaped the night chill and slight drizzle of snow. He walked toward me, I took a look at his face. That fleeting moment. It was as if I had seen him before. His toned skin, wrinkled with age, with experience, with sorrow. His hair, rough weathered and graying, tied at the ends into two short braids. The expression was one of tiredness, but one that betrayed that however tired he was, he had to go on. His heavy boots echoed in the long, narrow tunnel, and on his back he hauled a small sac, as he hurriedly passed me by , on his way.

I looked ahead of me, allowed that image to sink in, to connect, to be realised. I turned back to look, but the tunnel was again empty. Into the warmth of the subway I had come, whereas out into the cold, cold night he went.

Perhaps I let my fantansies and stereotypes drive me and what I want to see. Perhaps "One Native Life" I am reading has coloured my mind to see the Native Indian in everyone with tonned skin and braided hair. But in those few seconds as our paths so unexpectedly crossed and then again traveled in separate ways, in separate directions, it was as if I could sense that man's pain and burdens. The one shared by so many First Nation Natives who are wandering the estranged lands of Canada in search of the native land once was truly theirs.

After one reading of Objibway Richard Wagamese's autobiography does not make me an expert in what is a complicated and troubled chapter of Canada's history. But the author, in such simple words, has crafted and captured a world and a past that is not only his story, but perhaps the story shared by many natives forcibly uprooted from their birth communities in childhood, and subsequently placed in residential schools in an attempt to assimilate the native children into (white) Canadian society. It was believed that though you cannot change the fact that they are (native) Indians, you can remove "the Indian out of them". What ensued is over a century of segregation, discrimination and destruction of native peoples, their cultures and languages. The result is a generation of vagrant natives growing up in foster homes, often subject to abuse, belittlement and inacceptance. The traumatic effects explains much of the homelessness, employment, substance abuse and high incidence of health problems and depression among First Nationals.

The irony is that the natives were there before the white Europeans and other immigrants. The term 'Canada' itself is a Huron term for "our village". "[H]ow cruelly a nation could forget one of its founding peoples", and dismiss the ways and livelihoods, the coexistence with nature and this wide, mysterious universe as savagery and hedonism. The First Nationals live(d) in harmony with the land, awed by the spirit of every rock and tree and creature, seeing and respecting the life and the beauty in the world around them. Modernity, imperialism and racism together aims/(-ed) to tame the land, to make slaves of the world and its resources, and worst of all, to tame peoples who once lived wild and free.

Now hundreds of thousands have lost their traditional connection with the land, their land, and are struggling to find themselves, find peace, find acceptance in a land that has become all too foreign. Many Natives wander the streets as "one of the lost ones, one of the disappeared ones, vanished into the vortex of foster care and adoption", thrown into a world of "separation, of cultural displacement". Yes, the government has apologised, and there are compsensation and survivor programmes aimed to wash away the anguish and pain. But how do you repare lives lost and families torn apart? How do you erase the memories of abuse, neglect and living life as ghosts that nobody sees and recognises?

Perhaps... perhaps that man, that stranger who seems to have suddenly become all so familiar for some unexplainable reason, is not a Native, is not lost, and is not longing for belonging. But that fleeting moment in the subway was reason enough to connect, to reflect, to realise, and most importantly, to share.

For he and I, and you and I, are all human beings trying to make the best out of time here on this land. We all have traumas, jubilations, defeats and triumps. We all shed tears of joy and sadness, and we all gaze with awe at the beauty of the rising and setting sun. We all marvel at the wonderful creatures that nature has adorned the land to keep us company. We are all in search of a home, in search of peace, love, security, and the kindness and compassion of another fellow human being.

That's what makes us human. It's not the colour of the skin, the culture we were born and live in, or the language and ways through which we conduct our lives that makes us human. It's in sharing a simple story, in sharing a little bit of all those simple but profound elements that make life worth living is captured, felt, and... shared.

Savour Milk

Credits: http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/festival/fp10/presimages/HarveyMilk.gif

If you missed the Pope’s latest message of love and peace a few days ago, I will try to capture one of the essences. The Pope rightly reminds us that it is not only humanity’s responsibility to safeguard the “earth, water, and air as gifts of creation”; we must also ensure that the “order of creation” and the “nature of the human being as man and woman” be respected. Any “devaluation” of that order will lead to the “self-destruction of man”.

The general media is right to quickly jump to the conclusion that this is the latest attack on homosexuality, something that the Pope had earlier labelled as a "tendency" towards an "intrinsic moral evil”. In the true spirit of Christmas, the message of brotherhood, love and peace continues with His Holiness’ call to “defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity”, and to defend “the nature of man against its manipulation”. According to Benedict XVI, modern conceptions of “gender”, so “often expressed and understood”, has led humanity astray, driving man to “act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him”, even if it means “living contrary to the truth”. So much for his Orbi et Urbi speech a few days later proclaiming that “hope – the heart of the Christmas message – is meant for all men and women” and that “the grace of God has appeared to all”. The words and emphases are His, not mine.

It is sad that such a message comes out of the mouth of one of the most influential religious figures, who is supposed to be God’s representative on Earth. And this coming three decades after the first openly-gay American politician Harvey Milk was cold-bloodedly assassinated.

Milk’s political career and rise is wonderfully captured in the movie with the same name. A somewhat soft-spoken man, he ran for office from his little camera shop on Castro Street of San Francisco. He mobilised the gay community and gay-friendly businesses and associations, galvonised workers’ unions and ethnic groups on a liberal platform. Milk’s campaigning would become a grassroots and integrated political process that championed not only equal rights for homosexuals, but also social welfare for the disadvantaged and marginalised. After a number of elections, he finally became a city supervisor. During his term in office, he spearheaded the passage of a gay rights ordinance in San Francisco, despite the fact that all throughout the US various counties and cities were rolling back equal protection of rights to work and privacy for gays.

America in the 1970s was marred by Christian fundamentalism. In the aftermath of various bans on same-sex marriage in various states of the US in November 2008, it is perhaps striking to draw parallels with America of then and today, which is similarly lead by a (neo-)conservative political force buoyed by a strong religious right wing. Then, with the likes of Anita Bryant, the ‘Save our Children’ campaign aimed to spread “Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the perceived threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation”. Today, through similar Bible thumpers and orthodox religious fundamentalists, such fabrications of truths and false propaganda are still being perpetuated and sanctioned with people’s blind faith in God. The spreading of fear about threats to core family values, myths about the “gay plague” and the “corruption” of children is used to startle and scare. It would be only a matter of years before people ‘came out’ to reveal the hypocrisy and “true nature” of priests who on the one hand preach against homosexuality and condemn child abuse, yet on the other hand commit such ‘sins’ behind the altar.

In messages and words similar to Obama today, Milk emphasised hope, and the need to give people hope. It is hope that can lead peoples previously sidelined and forgotten to unite and believe that change is possible. It is hope that can transcend the imaginary boundaries of sexuality, gender, class and race to forge an unstoppable force connected with shared longings for equality and social justice. It is therefore no wonder that Time proclaimed Milk one of the 100 most influential persons on the 20^th Century.

Shortly before Milk was assassinated, he uttered these bold words:

“If a bullet should go through my head let that bullet go through every closet door.”

Indeed, as the bullet pierced through his head that took his life, the bullet symbolically opened the doors of many previously closeted gays and lesbians. The assassin, a political rival of Milk, was left off lightly. An anti-gay jury agreed that junk food caused chemical imbalances in the perpetrator, and this defence was enough to lower the sentence to five years imprisonment for manslaughter.

Milk’s death, and his life of political activism, however, set an example for other gay-right activists to follow, and set a precedent for the gay-rights movement. Milk’s refusal to be silenced or to admit defeat when the country seemed to be against him, were based on that firm belief enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence: that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”.

I end where I began, and return to the enlightened message that not only the current Pope, but also many before him, have repeatedly brought across to millions and millions of believers, young and old.

Lest you have forgotten, salvation comes to those who does the Creator’s work, and lives by the Creator’s rules—despite the fact that this same Creator, His very grace and benevolence, are supposed to have appeared “to the whole of humanity”. Though the Creator has created all men equally, the Pope kindly reminds us that the perversion of sexuality and sex is a great threat to the human race—a s great a threat as global warming and the continued destruction of the Earth’s fragile eco-system. If we do not recognise and deal with these threats, we are on a path to self-destruction. We must live the Truth, and defend the message and one and only “nature of man and woman” that our Creator has willed and created. That is the work and responsibility of the devout and the true.

This kind of message is also the seed of discord, intolerance, and wilful ignorance that has led to countless crusades, inquisitions and the spreading of despicable acts and words of violence and hatred in the name of religion.

Nothing says it best, or better, than Milk’s own words—or perhaps warning too: “That, THAT my friends, is true perversion”.

Kicking the bucket

Imagine if you only had a few months to live. How would you live? Most importantly, "Have you found joy in your life and have you given joy to other people?" These are wonderful questions that are asked in the movie The Bucket List.

My brother had recommended the movie to me back in February, but because of all the personal issues happening then, I avoided watching anything which I thought might make me even more emotional. Indeed, as predicted, the movie made me cry. Not just a tear out of the corner of my eyes. But really cry, as in, tears flowing down my cheeks, and my heart filled with such heart-wrenching sourness and pain from having been so touched and moved by the lines and the interactions between the characters.

The fate of two dying men portrayed by Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholaso are brought together when they go into hospital to be diagnosed with incurable cancer. One is from a simple family, filled with love and happiness, and clings onto hope and faith. The other is a bitter and successful millionaire who has little love and boundless amounts of money, but is an utter cynic and has no faith. Their last days are intertwined as they make a list of things they wish to fulfil in their last days. Not just fun and excitement, but also reconciliation and making contact and peace with lost loved ones. Because there is no greater pain than dying with regret.

Seeing the two lie in bed, with tubes connected to their bodies, I cannot but think back to the image of my own dad lying in bed, silent and dying... He did not speak. He did not struggle, and now and then he opened his eyes to look at me. I smiled back, and still he did not speak. He could not speak. But what was going through his mind? What did he want to say? What wishes did he want to fulfil?

The thought of this made me cry... the thought of my hands cupped around his, that feeling of his skin against mine, that warmth of his cheeks clinging onto mine... I miss that. How I so miss that.

The Kite Runner

I read the book, and I went to watch the movie. The Kite Runner is an extremely moving tale about friendship, betrayal, and the hauntings of the past that return to haunt. As a line in the movie simply puts it, the longer you do not deal with a problem the worse it will get.

Set in Afghanistan, you follow the childhood and adulthood of a boy. Kite flying brought him much joy, and was a reminder of a past in which the snow was pure, and the streets still filled with the smell of kebab. The invasion of the Russians, the grip of the Taleban, and Afghanistan was changed. And so too was the life of the boy. He left, to start life in the promised land, yet images and bonds of the past were not so easily cast away.

Touching, moving, tear-jerking. Not only because it deals with the struggles within each of us to be honest and brave even in times of fear, but because it reveals the truth and the its forcefulness to transcend lives, times, and places. The truth tears people apart, but also eventually serves to bring strangers together.

And it reveals another truth too. One that too often this sexist world is unwilling and unprepared to face... that boys, and thereby men, for men are but boys of bigger growth, can be rape victims too.

I came out of the cinema, eyes still somewhat moist from the end scene. Awed, and taken aback. And taken back...back to when...

"Wow," my friend said, "What a great movie."

I agreed with her.

"It's horrible... Sodomy. How could people do such a thing... to kids?"

"It can happens," I said, "It happens a lot."

"Yes, and the sad thing is it's not talked about. It happens a lot more than we realise, but men just have a hard time talking about. Society just cannot see men as victims."

"True. It's hard to talk about. You're looking at a victim right now."

Alles is liefde

Sinterklaasavond is the eve before Sinterklaas returns back to Spain. On this night, the Holy St. Nicolaas pays every household a visit, and leaves a gift for those good people who deserve the best things in life.

Even my office closed early today, and by 4 pm the streets were packed with cars as people rush home on this Dutch version of Christmas Eve. The tradition is that you put your shoe next to the fireplace, and by the morning, surprise, surprise you will get goodies. By 4pm, everyone had already left the office, but I stayed behinda bit longer...



I had bought some sweets and chocolates letters, and tip-toed around the office and putting it on the desk of my colleagues. It's something I do every single year to friends. I secretly give them a chocolate... sometimes simply by putting it through their mailbox, or placing it in a place they'd find it, or by sending it to people who live in another country anonymously. I don't really want anything in return, and I don't expect anything either... To me it's just good fun, and I like to think of the pleasant sweet surprise people get when they receive an anonymous gift. Spreading the love, if you will...

Yet, stil, on this evening when family gather around a warm fireplace, when dreams and wishes are made and fulfilled, when loved ones thank one another for all the happiness and warmth they give one another, it is lonely being alone.

After I delivered a gift to a special friend who has helped me a lot in the past year, I wasn't sure what to do next. It was around seven, and the streets were deserted, and cold. And it rained too, making it seem even more dreary. I went into a restaurant and had a cheap meal of Indonesian food, and then wandered the streets a bit more...



Then I saw something as I walked past the cinema. A poster for the movie "Alles is liefde" (Everything is love). I've heard about it for sometime, and knew that it was a Dutch movie based more or less on the original "Love Actually", which is a romantic comedy based around Christmas, when miraculous the most miraculous consequences occur, and strangers find one another and find love. The big difference with the Dutch version of this movie is that it has a gay couple, who kiss a number of times and even get married. Thanks to Dutch open-mindedness...

To be honest, at first, I was a bit uncomfortable going to the cinema alone, especially watching a movie that is about love and falling in love. All around me in that cinema hall, where around a hundred people, couples, families, young and old, and it seemed like I was the only one there all alone. But when the movie started, I blended into the dark and didn't mind too much any more.

The story-line is simple. Set in Amsterdam, around the time of Sinterklaas, and random people meeting by chance find one another, while others rekindle their love and rediscover one another's feelings for one another.... about families coming together again after troubles, and about a long lost son who discovers his long lost dad... It's sappy and romantic, the kind of things that you can easily lable 'movie magic', and the kind of coincidences that could only occur on a big white screen... Even so, this movie made me wipe away tears from the corners of my eyes. It was so touching for some reason, even though it was stereotypical, it touched me so much, because it embraced many of the dreams and ideas I live and long for...

"When you're young, you'll believe anything. Spinach will give you muscles, your father is the strongest man in the Netherlands, and Sinterklaas is real. But there will be a day that you look at the man's shoes and think... wait a minute, those are my fathers shoes. You always suspected something like that but it's all getting through to you now. It's nonsense to believe there's a man with a long white beard in Spain who takes the steam-boat to the Netherlands every year to put something in your shoe. And another thing, spinach won't give you muscles, The Netherlands will never win the world cup and you won't marry your teacher.

You will get older and more miserable. The only moments in life that you feel the same like you did back then are the moments you love someone. Truly love someone. Everything that is stupid or hurts falls away. Love is all and we have to keep believing that. So what if we all together decided; Sinterklaas is real. We'll still know that we'll have to buy the presents ourselves but it's the thought that counts. That we keep believing that it can still work out for us, with love. Because love is like Sinterklaas, you have to believe it, because else it's all lost."

It sums up my thoughts very well... and the actors, many of them famous, bring the dialogue and comedy and romance alive. Love is out there, to be found and unwrapped, like a special gift you have been waiting and wishing for, and will eventually receive. Even after disappointments, even if people let you down or don't give you the same in return, you have patience. Little gestures, little words, little glances, little moves... not just the love between lovers, but also between friends and family, between strangers too.

Because love is everywhere, and everything is love.

"If it's about love, then sooner or later we're all too lat. It's about those tiny happy moments in between. Moments when everything just about then fall precise into their places."

"Woman see lot of things"

Woman see lots of things, and undgo untold many more.

It was a painful documentary to watch. Sitting there, at times you would hope the retelling of the horrors experienced by the three former girl soldiers in Sierra Leone would stop. But that is a mocking comfort, which perhaps comes from some twisted form of voyeuristic pleasure, you have as a member of the audience who can get up from his seat and just walk away after the 65 minutes of the film is over. For these girls, and many others, the horrors are retold and relived. Daily.

The descriptions are graphic, aided by well choreographed close-up shots of the women's faces, sullen eyes, scarred surface of their skins, and the moisture on their wavering pout lips. Unborn babies cut open alive from the pregnant woman's womb... orders to gouge out the heart of a hanging corpse to prove readiness to join the rebel forces, the rapes of infants below five, abused and tortured girls with swollen stomachs left on the roadside to succumb to a slow and undignified death... These are but some of the tragedies lingering from over a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone and neighbouring Liberia. After the war, the women continue to be victims in a society that shuns and openly tolerates the discrimination of women. Out of desperation, many turn to prostitution, while others willingly submit themselves to become slaves in exchange for meagre food and shelter for their children.

Words cannot explain the pain. Not even the tears. War is violent, and sexual violence had until recently been a taboo not recognised as a crime against humanity. Yet, the overwhelming majority are women who suffer at the moment literally the unspeakable is done to them, and who continue suffer pain and shame long thereafter. It is upsetting to just hear, to just imagine, but what is it like to be the victim?

But in these women, and in the children who run around with smiles on their faces, you see strength so lacking elsewhere. You realise that despite all odds, despite all the worst excesses of inhumanity that they have had to see and experience, there is hope. Hope of earning money, getting a proper education, and being able to open a shop, of being able to be an independent woman in a society dominated and corrupted by men. Hope of perhaps one day leaving the country and travelling abroad where it is easier to make a living. Whatever hope it may be, hope seems to transcend the horrors before, and spring eternally.

Never again... never again... You would think to yourself, and you would hope for the victims and for the children who run around and enact scenes of soldiers they have witnessed at border posts checking the papers of fleeing refugees...

But it is happening. Over and over again.

Kigali, 1994

"Are you a survivor of the genocide?"
"Sort of."

No one survives a genocide. Not even those alive today.

The above dialogue begins the account of French journalist/director Jean-Christophe Klotz as he returns to Rwanda ten years after to try to piece together the people and places that had captured him ten years earlier in his documentary "Kigali, des images contre un massacre" (Return to Kigali).

Klotz was one of the few journalists who stayed behind when the killings began around April 1994. Most foreigners, including embassy staff, and the majority of UN staff had retreated as the country descended into chaos. But he chose to stay behind, determined to show the world that this is a place not to be forgotten. Being a Frenchman, whose country of origin actively supported and armed the very government that instrumented the genocide, he was putting himself at risk. Yet his determination allowed him to see and shoots scenes and moments that otherwise would have been lost in history. Or better said, lost in a version of history rewritten later to safe the sorry face of the incomplacency of the world.

With the benefit of hindsight, Rwanda will never be forgotten. But in the ensuing three months till July 1994, while close to one million Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) were masscred in their own homes, the 'international community' wilfully chose to turn a blind eye and forget, if only temporarily, that one of the worst excesses of human inhumanity was taking place in a far away land in Africa.

The documentary is a cut and paste of filming taken as the events of the genocide unfolded, and of interviews conducted in the present with those that were there at the time. The journalist visited a church, where more than a hundred women and children sheltered in the belief and hope that the government-sponsored troops would spare the House of God. But they did not. Safe for the priest, and a handful lucky others, all other civilian refugees were murdered, some inside the congregation hall. The image the cross hanging above the ransacked altar, a symbolism portraying Christ who died for the sin of man, evokes a sickening sense of sardony, as sickening as the children outside drowning in the pool of their own red dye.

No where was safe. Not churches, not homes, not even schools, where even children stabbed their fellow classmates to death. Everywhere, in Kigali and throughout the country of barely 7 million, bones and rotting remains were strewn like garbage. Children played football with a skull, as government-sponsored (Hutu) militia-men raided and cleansed the country. "The Beast", the locals called it, wreaked destruction and death wherever its presence was seen and felt. Men were brutally severed and killed with machetes, screwdrivers, hammers and stones, children and babies were split into two and shot, and women and girls (as one put it) like "abandoned pets", were raped and abused. How can it all be put into words? How can you describe something that doesn't make sense, asks the representative of the ICRC (Red Cross).

The "international community" knew, but did nothing. Western correspondents retreated as the last westerners withdrew, citing instability as the reason. But as the cameras and reporters left, the massacres and horrible crimes against humanity did not leave, only intensified. The Canadian UN commander in Rwanda pleaded for intervention, a French envoy called the White House, the Elysée, Westminster and the UN in New York, explaining the situation. But no help came. Instead, they had no alternative to sit down with the very Rwandan government ministers who were clearly behind inciting and initiating the systematic and organised wiping out of the Tutsi population.

The world watched, and stayed silent. As silent as when Auschwitz took place, as one put it. As early as 1993, more than a year before the events, foreign journalists filmed mass graves being uncovered in Rwanda, and confirmed reports of systematic killings. At the same time the former Yugoslavia was experiencing its own massacres and despicable acts of inhumanity. April to July 1994 was only the unstoppable climax of the rampage and insanity in Rwanda. But the world stood by. And thereby is just as guilty for its inaction as those who acted in the name of ethnic purity and hatred. Hatred for "not what they (the Tutsis) had done, but for who they were".

Three months and close to a million deaths later, France gloriously led a UN mandate into Rwanda under Operation Turquoise. Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, then spokesperson for the French Cabinet, trumpeted France's role to end the killings and bring justice. Much bloated and much belated. As French troops moved in, the media swarmed back to Rwanda again. They filmed rows of cheering crowds wielding the French Tricolore and shouting 'Vive la France'. And the media filmed refugees pouring towards UN troop outposts, in dire need of protection and food. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), who previously were fighting the government to prevent further massacres, now became demonised as the wrongdoers. Nobody bothered to check the facts, and the streams of refugees were taken for granted as victims fleeing their homes from the rebels. But in fact, many of the refugees were the very Tutsis, some of whom had been involved in the killings, fearing retaliation by the rebels, and now seeking protection of UN forces. Journalism can inform, but is also a powerful tool for political manipulation and deceit.

Suddenly the "international community" which for so many months sat by and wilfully watched hundreds of thousands massacred, were welcomed as saviours from afar, and glorified as the provider of aid and safe-haven. A travesty of the truth. A few months later, in November 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established, as a shining symbol of the "international community's" resolve to strike justice on those responsible for the "genocide and other systematic, widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law". Justice late is better than justice undone.

But close to a million have been killed, and millions more have been traumatised. And this was in the glorious years of the 1990s when people celebrated the new post-Cold War peace and prosperity.

Could it have been prevented? Yes, if only we had cared a little more. If only we had bothered to find out what, and why as countless fellow men, women and children suffered and died.

Cinema and Justice

I left the cinema unsure what to think, even more unsure whether I had indeed left my seat. Perhaps it was 'good' to be numb, awed, and in a queer way inspired. Or perhaps feeling nothing and thinking nothing is exactly the effect it's supposed to have on people.

I attended the opening evening of the 3rd annual 'Cinema & Justice' festival offered by Filmhuis Den Haag, which is supposed to bring the many international tribunals and courts situated in the city closer to the public through a series of lectures, debates and movies. The programme is wide-ranging, from the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Sudan to Sierra Leone, conflict, human suffering and attempts to secure peace and justice are the common threads that tie these far away places together. And in a way, bring the public closer to the victims you would other wise read about or see in sensationalist reportings in the comforts of our own living rooms.

First, was the short documentary 'Children under Fire'. What it is not long in length it makes up in the personal tales of young children as they recount their experiences of the war in the former Yugoslavia to a child psychiatrist. By recounting their experiences, it is hoped that the children can deal with their fears and anxieties, and move on. Shocking are the vivid images that the children paint with their words and crayons of long-tongued monsters rising out of the earth swallowing people and houses whole, while birds flee into the sky and villages burn in the background... Even more shocking are the words of a seven year old boy who blurted out that 'they' will get what they did to 'us', that he will make the children and grandchildren suffer as he and his people have suffered at the hands of the enemy. It is a most disturbing example of how some children internalise the destruction and death and "worms coming out of mouths, ears and eyes" and process it into hatred and a desire for revenge. What will such children grow up into? What will these children mean in the future and for the prospects of peace after war?

But then there are children who write. Who write to try to come to terms with their fathers brutally taken away and killed in the woods nearby, who write to convince themselves that their loved ones are indeed gone, even some twelve years after the event. But of course war is not just one event, not just one trauma... it is a series and continuous breakdown of events that unfold, a repeated succession of traumas that, as one child put it feels like a movie played over and over again, continue to be ingrained on the minds and nightmares of innocent youths. As one girl read out her letters to her dead dad, her wavering voice and tears that splashed on the crumpled letter triggered my tears to fall, even though it was in another language I could not comprehend. But it just goes to show, human pain and suffering need not be spoken or read to be understood. It is a common trait of experiences and memories that make us so vulnerable and so very human, however much we try to deny or suppress them. It makes you wonder, how grown-up grown-ups really are to neglect the silent suffering and traumas of children in their rash and utterly useless whims of evil to seize arms to kill and mane? As the lyrics of a famous Dutch song goes, you can take the child out of the war, but can you take the war out of the child?

[...]

It is a mask I wear,

So solid and so safe

Like an armour and a sword;

For I am invincible,

I am fearless and I am brave.

But inside, somewhere

You know deep inside,

A face is clouding,

Howling, thundering, moaning,

A child is crying.

(A Dirge to Childhood)

Who in conflict has time to breathe or reflect? With no time to breathe "Rape: A War Crime in Bosnia" rolled onto the screen. A powerful and provocative documentary, which began with a former soldier telling how he together with four others raped time and again a twenty-year old, while others just stood by and watched. Was there remorse in his eyes? Was he apologetic? No matter, because the echoing effects of rape are felt mainly by the victim. It was only in recently that rape has been classified as a war crime by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, even though it is an instrument of war that has been used since time immemorial. It is a power weapon used to induce fear and terrorism into the local population, and, as in the case of the former Yugoslavia, systematically perpetrated to 'cleanse' and 'purify' populations of unwanted ethnic groups.

Rape is not just sex. Sex is but a minor, but by no means insignificant, part of rape. No one could possibly begin to imagine the physical and emotional scars that are left behind... the feeling of powerlessness, of forcedly denied your freedom and will, and forced put in a position of humiliation and act of the utmost degree of privacy ruins a person and denies his/her innate humanity. The pain lingers, accentuated moments, months and even years after the event(s) by the subtle but nagging feelings of (contradictorily) guilt, shame, distrust, even in some cases social ostracisation, and is felt in every aspect of daily life that leaves the victim paralysed and numb, robbed of innocence, and denied the very foundation of human dignity. It is trauma pur, followed by haunting nightmares, relived memories that surface sometimes at the slightest touch or sound resembling the experience. Even if you come to overcome the trauma, to find a way to open up and confront the fears and anxieties, it will still be a dark shadow that hangs over your head, body and mind. Perhaps only death will rid the victim of this invisible yet invincible ghost of the past. Believe me, I know.

And the documentary showed that well. Courageous women faced the cameras, some for the first time, to talk about their experience(s), shuddering and tearing as the words poured out of their mouths. One told of her struggle to raise a child born out of rape... of her deep love for her daughter, but at times the simple disgust she feels just by touching her own daughter. How will the child react when she learns the origins of her conception? How does family and the community react to learn of this? And this is but one story of tens of thousands of women in the former Yugoslavia, and of many, many more women who suffered, and some continue to suffer the effects of the forced robbery of their souls and bodies.

Some women have found the strengths not only to 'come out' of their hiding and shame, but also to form support groups to help others, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians alike, help themselves. It is not easy, especially in communities where such topics are taboo. Some of the husbands and children do not even know (or perhaps do not even want to know...?) what their women, daughters, sisters underwent in horrible make-shift bordellos. And what if it happens in your own home, in the village where you grew up and have lived all your life? Yesterday's neighbours, colleagues, teachers are today's monsters you dare not look into the eyes of. Your homes becomes painful to bear, even more so when you know that the perpetrator(s) are walking around freely, or have even been ushered into positions of authority in hasty efforts by the (so-called) 'international community' to reconcile populations. International forces may be there to keep the peace, to reconstruct and rebuild communities... but are failing in attending to the personal wellbeings of so many millions affected by the very wars which may very well have been prevented in the first place. Wars of death, destruction, suffering, and so many years and victims left behind in the madness of trying to attain territory, to aggrandise nationality, to pursue personal wealth and interests. Is it worth it, if anything at all?

In a setting of lush green mountains, winding picturesque creeks, where today many are still trying to rebuild their homes, many more are trying to rebuild their hearts.

A mighty heart

It was a powerful, but painful movie to watch.

Especially the scream… the long, howling wail as the wife discovers after almost two weeks of waiting and hoping that her husband, who simply disappeared, had been brutally beheaded by Jihadi kidnappers. The scream, her banging against the walls, the tears streaming down her already darkened eyes from lack of sleep, the saliva clinging onto the corners of her mouth as she wails, and wails and wails till there’s nothing else to wail but a heart-wrenching emptiness.

Nobody can imagine what it’s like to loose a beloved. Nobody can imagine what it’s like to wave goodbye to your beloved, believing later that night you’d meet again. Nobody can feel the pain and sorrow of Marianne Pearl.

A … Heart is a really touching movie based on the true story of a wife’s search for her husband after his unexplained disappearance in 2002. The main characters are no other than Wall Street Journal journalist Danny Pearl (…), who on his final day conducting investigative journalism in bustling Karachi was lured into a set-up by a terrorist cell and held hostage for many days.

What follows is the undying faith of his wife (Angelina Jolie) in love being able to survive and be felt despite the unknowns, despite the separation. Feelings more accentuated as she was at the time carrying his then five-months old baby in her. Within two hours, the movie is a powerful mix between intrigue, thriller, and suspense, captured in chaotic scenes, and depicting the consequences of the ‘humane treatment’ of (so-called) “illegal combatants” held captive at Guantanamo Bay, and what tormenting consequences it had on the Pearl family as events unfolded. It shows how the worst excesses of misguided foreign policies and wounded national prides can so perfectly intertwine with the deep-seated fanatism and hatred that can lead to such extremes of compelling people to hurt and instill fear into others in the name of the religion, and of vengeance. Anger leads to anger, and leads to violence, and leads to a self-perpetuating cycle of anger and violence that fuels feelings of ‘them against us’.

The husband does die. But the wife is brave and fights back the tears on TV. How many people are kidnapped everyday in Pakistan (or the rest of the world for that matter) and do we not feel their pain too, she asks. Indeed, in a fast-paced need for news, sensationalism and snapshots of weeping relatives seem to sell better than how people really feel. With the journalists brandishing cameras and constantly creating a nauseating fever and frenzy with their blinding flashes, there is a subtle critique perhaps that is best echoed in the line “Have you no soul?” which Marianne Pearl harks back at a TV interviewer. We may hope that those words echo stronger and linger longer than the few seconds that they spread in living rooms worldwide.

Most moving of all, strangely perhaps, was the moment when she gave birth. A moment of release… a moment of long-awaited anticipation… a moment of joy, that after all the waiting and longing, it was not in vain.

Birth after death, creation after destruction, love after hatred.

Loving Annabelle

Sweet but short was this movie I watched today. And so will be this review!

A rebellious teenage girl is sent to a Catholic all-girls school. She smokes, has a pierced nose, and wears this bracelet she refuses to take off. A frustrated teacher, who devotes more time to her students than her own love life with a wonderful man, begins to see through the girl... and see herself.

Great movie, with touching songs and quotes, like:

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Creepy....

I ran out of the cinema as quickly as I could. Fumbled for my keys, unlocked my bike and dashed home like crazy.

A quiet night alone at the movies turned out to be a complete creepy nightmare! I had been wanting to watch this Mexican movie called Broken Sky (El cielo dividido) for sometime, and finally had the chance tonight, since this local art-house movie theatre was showing it as part of a series of gay-themed movies they're showing over the summer.

Bought the ticket, and stood around in the hall waiting to get in. I immediately noticed people staring at me, mostly old(er) men, and I just looked away, pretending not to notice. I felt like I was some kind of exotic object, and people were just watching and watching... I was just dressed as I usually am, just being myself, but that somehow attracted a lot of attention. The unpleasant kind of attention... I'm not that good-looking... am I?

As the gates to the cinema opened I lined up to get in. And I noticed this old man looking at me, and watching my every move. He let people go first, and 'accidentally' stood next to me. I ignored him, and just go into the cinema quickly. I noticed him following me, so I made a big circle and went to the furtherest seats, and sat down next to a couple.

There were many seats, more than enough. But to my surprise that creepy old man sat down next to me. I smelt his body scent as soon as he sat down. I took out a pamphlet, and pretended to read and keep myself busy.

The movie started, and I was captured by the beauty and silent powerful emotions of the film. It was so artistically shot, the characters deep and touching, sceneries smooth and telling. Even though there wasn't much dialogue, their movements, kisses and love-making were able to tell a complicated love story more than words ever could. Love, and the way it consumes you, the way you long for it like a drug, and the way it leaves broken and ghost-like after it slips away....



I would have enjoyed it more, but throughout the two hours I was sitting literally on the edge of my seat very uncomfortably. Not because of the suspense in the movie, but so that that creepy man wouldn't touch me. I was trapped, sitting in the middle and couldn't get out at all. Every now and then, he'd just turn to look at me, and make me so uncomfortable and disgusted. He put his arm on the armrest of my seat, and had his elbow really out toward my body. So I basically was leaning to the other side so that we wouldn't touch. He had his legs wide open, and I swear a number of times he 'accidentally' brushed his leg against mine.... sending shivers up my spine.....

I felt pretty sick, and was hoping he'd just go away. In my mind I was thinking of things to say to him, and wondering what he wants from me. This isn't the first time people have done that to me, and it really frightens me. I thought if he touches me I'll scream and say something so that everyone would know he's a pervert trying to stalk me...

All the while, the movie was playing and there were all these homo-erotic scenes of the two main characters making hot, passionate love... It was beautiful to watch, but then next to me was this perverted old man who kept on watching me everytime I moved...

Normally when I finish watching a movie, I sit there a while, and watch the credits and let the responses that the film triggered flow over me. But this time I didn't have time. I just wanted to get out as quickly as I could.

The creepy man stood up, and looked at me again and had his eyes all over me. Quickly I grabbed my jacket, and pushed passed the other movie-goers, pushed out the door and ran to my bike. Shivering, creeped out, and feeling dirty from the whole experience....

Believe

Children as young as five, crying, praying, fainting together at the command of the preacher.
Intense, shocking, emotional.

Children homeschooled and taught that there is no truer word than the word of Jesus, and that all you do in life, you should pray for his blessing, and repent for your sins.

Children indoctrinated by 'born-again' fundamentalists, and who believe that Christianity must take over the US, and who believe that Bush is on the right path to rooting out the evils of abortion, liberalism, homosexuality and anyone who is not like 'us'.

That's what Jesus Camp was about. A beautifully made Oscar nomination documentary about the lives and one summer camp of an evangelical children's group who are taught to be God's 'soldiers', and told to wage war against everyone who is not with them, and anyone who is against them. A message that is perhaps all too similar in the War on Terror.

I sat there in the little art-house cinema, disturbed, and shaking my head, but at times also bursting out in laughter at the absurdity of it all. I have no problem with religion... but taking and forcing it on young children and filling their vulnerable minds with black-and-white messages of sin and salvation, good and evil, them and us, Jesus and the devil is just psychological torture and traumatic on the upbringing of so many innocent children who may grow up trapped and confined to this narrow and closed-off world of God, gospel and prayer.

My friend sat next to me, and she too was shaking her head in disbelief, and was even at times horrified and embittered by what she saw. Religion can heal, can fill gaps in people's lives, but when taken to an extreme of fanaticism, it becomes pure propoganda and a drug to control and subdue people. It becomes a means to create senseless masses with no free will, with no freedom of dissent, and creates a whole hysteria based on blind faith and following.

And to think these kinds of people are governing and guiding the most powerful and supposedly freest and most affluent nation in the world is just baffling...


After the movie, my friend and I went for a drink. Hours just flew by. We just sat down and talked and talked and talked. First about the movie, sharing our ideas and thoughts, but eventually we went deeper, and started to share our lives and pasts.

It's refreshing to talk to someone, one-to-one, and amazing how you can get to know a person, and realise how people have so many similar fears and needs. It's like holding a mirror to yourself sometimes... and just listening and watching, while the image talks. You learn, but also 'teach', and in 'teaching' you learn. Sometimes it takes listening to just help someone. Offering a few simple nods, or a smile of sympathy, or a short but meaningful phrase like " I understand" goes a long, long way.

And then there are those beautiful moments, when you tell other how much they mean to you,
how much they changed your life for the better, how much they've give you guidance and support. It sends shivers down your spine.... shivers of pleasantness, shivers you get only when you've found and treasure something so precious and close to heart. She admires me, and I look up to her... it's like we have this symbiotic relationship at this time and this moment. And that's a miraculous thing, in this great big world with so many people to just meet someone like that, some you can take from and is willing to give... someone you are willing to give to and who will take from knowing it's out of concern and 'love' or one another, and out of the purity of friendship. It's special, unique, like everything was meant to be.

We talked a lot about love and relationships. And one thing she told me very frankly, and that I never realise was this: am I really ready for a relationship?

I may be constantly longing for it, and constantly complaining about being lonely and alone, but it will come when the time is right. Perhaps it's just too early, and I'm not prepared at all. Perhaps all I want is to have that feeling given to me, but not really realising what 'love' or a relationship means.

If I were to have a relationship, would I not just completely and totally depend on that person and expect so much that I cling on and never let go? Isn't that unhealthy and just too needy?
She was really right... I should use this time alone to figure myself out, to find out things I enjoy and to learn how to be alone without being lonely.... basically to learn to like and eventually love myself, before I start to like or even love another person. Only then could there be balance. Only then could a relationship be healthy. Too much longing creates too much expectations... and will be painful and hurt deeply if those expectations are not met. She was so right...

It will come, in time, when I and the rest of the world is ready.

We parted, at close to 1am on a cool night. But inside I felt pretty warmed and comforted.