Whether you like them or not, audiobooks are relationships. Not just between the audience and the authors, but also with the vocal readers: people who are stricken with booklust even in their voices.
This was my first classic offering to the public domain: "Claire de Lune", by Guy de Maupassant, part of Librivox Short Story Collection. (13:00 min.)
Tell me what you think?
She was amongst us until four years ago, but she was already old from the beginning, man. And remained so until she became a baby again and they carried her to Earth's Bosom. It was her oldness that taught me not to fear being her age.
It wasn't that she aged gracefully. Far from it. She was too simple and rustic to be taught urban grace that she was sick every time they put her in a moving vehicle. The poor woman. A lot of polyethylene bags bear witness to her stomach's misery.
Being left to take care of an eldest (grand)child of an intellectual-wannabe family, Simbok had a lot of ambitions to keep up with: They told her to read bedtime stories to the grandprodigy. Bedtime stories would not have been a problem if she were not as literate as a wooden chair. Couldn't even sign her name.
Perhaps, she was just as fascinated so she was inventive with books and read to us, nevertheless, until we loved even the sound of a page being turned.
In her most bumpkin Javanese, she made up the stories; a sentence for every page, a secret of world to hold forever.
"Dadang and Dadung go shower."
(Turns page.)
"Dadang and Dadung go eat."
(Another page.)
"Dadung and Dadung go bed. And happy. The End. Chalo, now you go bed too."
I miss every bit of her. I even miss the cool touch of her wrinkly cheeks. Who wouldn't miss someone whose voice is filled with ancient love and reveals all the secrets behind life's illegible letters?
Let us first set the threats under which made this article published, (let's call them my Ramadanesque Threats):
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This is what fasting Ramadan has been doing to my habits:
1. Grin-and-Bear-It-A-LOT
Before Ramadan, I made the resolution to not complain about the fasting part. Ever. With hunger, sleepiness, thirst, uncontrollable rage, the method is the same: Either I stare it down or break the fasting.
(Occasional cursing still applies, but purely out of linguistic necessity.)
2. Daily Rhythm Challenge
Feeding hours during Ramadan forced me to reset my daily rhythm. Eat, sleep, exercise according to a tight schedule, or else miss my chance and I have to wait until tomorrow to start over. This one is easier because I have social support. The only person whose schedule I have to coordinate with is a hermitic clergy, and he is already for schedules and productive Ramadan by default.
3. Sharpened Survival Instincts.
The prohibitions of Ramadan are set against natural biological needs. The needs that humans, on a normal day, are allowed to bear arms to protect and fulfill. Ramadan schedules and fasting will drive that same survival instinct to full force. It sharpens awareness and readdresses priorities. It is like warming up for a fight, but not really getting into one, because we know that the sun will, eventually, set. This does amazing things to my productivity, while the knowledge that the sun will set holds it back from running demonstrations.
4. Responsibility in Daily Choices.
There is always the "be an egg and put your head under a rock for a month" approach to Ramadan. Except that it NEVER feels as great or as rewarding as "be awesome and take Ramadan by the horns". While picking between approaches, I have to note that the "be an egg" approach is unavailable to parents with toddlers, the poor and people who actually want to do REMARKABLE THINGS with their lives.
*grumbles*
5. Applied Behavioral Modification
I'm craving a lot of things right now. The hardest to ignore is the craving to catch my servant before he leaves and hand his week's allowance. The other is cutting my nails, because they're too long to let me write.
ANYTHING TO GET ME OUT OF THIS DAMN WRITING CHAIR!
The cravings are getting worse by the letter, and I'm only able to write this next sentence without jumping out of the chair is because I had that list of consequences lined up at the beginning of this article. The HORRIBLE THINGS that will happen if I don't publish this really really now.
In applied psychology, the first rule of behavioral modification is simplifying the course from action to really, really clear rewards. Publish, go pay and cut nails. Get off before that, suffer through LONG SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS.
(With my chronic ADD, I am so glad it ONLY TOOK 30 YEARS to figure out the stuff that can make me sit through a writing session.)
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On the other hand, is nothing. Seriously, I'm writing without the usual cigarette in my hand.
I had always believed that I could not write or plug in my brain without a cigarette. And it's not true for today's writing rush; because if I don't write this, I am going to lose a lot more than just writing. So, yeah, my fingers are shivering from withdrawal symptoms, but I'm forced to follow this one condition: learn to write without smoking.
(Shout-out to Fina for suggesting the unthinkable.)
Now, how do I make the good habits stick on off-Ramadan months?
I hadn't seen him since he got married.
But here, while we are alone, he tasted exactly as I remembered. Muscle memory dictating our limbs and orifices. We want this. We want more. We want to remember how good it felt. How important we felt. Important? No, maybe just "wanted" for giving "THE wanted" kisses. Hell, something this good, this simple, why shouldn't we indulge?
The sharp inhale was the sound of a broken kiss. Like a sudden shower. It was cold. Alarming. Unwelcome. No, we hadn't gone thatfar yet. Something awful stopped us mid-breath. Something angry and ugly with grief. Of dear ones _____ if another kiss happened. And the _____ , we sensed, was going to overbalance.
We had to break up. We did break up. When we got on separate trains, back then and this time, it was not for of lack of wanton. No, no, the kisses said plenty for abundant love and lust, reserved.
It's something else. Something sadder. Irrevocable. Finished. Gone. Inarguable. Like a death. Or a fetus. No more. No more. I love you. Yes, I still do. Always will. Never again.
(YES, OF COURSE THIS IS FICTION, YOU NUT! WHAT'D YOU THINK?!)
Everyone loved the idea, except that it did not go so well with her.
Actually, it drove her mad. Seriously, being replaced by a younger woman was something, staying at home moping about it when the kids are all grown up was a WHOLE other kind of crazy. I'm sorry for everyone who had lost their faiths in those days.
Then, four years ago, she finally got her business started up, the thing that made it legal for her to run around town and country with the dignity of a free man.
It is worth to mention that it was also around that time when I started believing in a God again.
When mother was cornered with hectic work, dealing with bedus and bookings, she bothered nobody. She complained all the day, but it was CLEARLY not about us. Bedus and bookings are just migrant fairies from WorkingLand.
As soon as vacation season comes, she starts reciting from the Book of Faults. Faults by the people who live with her, then by the people who live on the phone (as far as Bali and Jatibarang and North Carolina), then the people who no longer live, like my grandparents or her former partners, and eventually by her own until she is paralyzed with faults. Or until vacation season ends.
Do you see my point? My two points actually.
1. Here is to girl power, and boys who want to learn from it.
My mother is a hyperactive mutawwifa; she handles group accommodations, meals and transportation between Jeddah, Meccah and Madinah. In a way, mutawwifs secure the earthly matters for pilgrims so that pilgrims can concentrate on securing their path to heaven. Since going heaven is expensive and complicated, God generously rewards everyone who work on it. I mean, REALLY generously. In Riyals, Dollars and Rupiahs, okay?
Let all of that sink in and then reconsider mother's status as a foreigner and a middle-aged, divorced woman living in Saudi. Everything they say about gender discrimination in Saudi? Half of it was caused by mother's business successes.
2. Nothing beats the blues like work.
People who work with their hands, reach God with their hearts. If idleness is the devil's playground, then work is where God celebrates creating us. Hallelujah, mankind was not a complete mistake after all.
To live sanely is to work; to have something and anything done. Whether it is giving flyers in malls or driving for someone. Whether it is parenting and keeping house or taking pictures and movie making. It is all service. Even if it physically hurts, or does not seem to make sense.
Wait, what am I saying. Of course it makes sense! It makes absolute sense now that we did not stick to the first plan of keeping our mother at home معززة مكرمة بس تجننّا معاها honored and revered but driving all of us crazy along with her.
But do I have to lose one good practice in order for the other to fit in? Yoga is supposed to be practiced on an empty stomach, and if done correctly, both yoga (or any kind of physical exercise) and fasting are supposed complement each other in flushing out bodily toxins.
In countries where the majority is not Muslim, fasting becomes simplified into what it was supposed to be: self-observation. Similar to the basic idea in vipassana: "This is how thirst and hunger and anger feels like. Do not respond. Just observe."
The underline is that if I wanted to make up excuses not to practice, either fasting or yoga, there are ways to be creative. But if I really wanted to have both (beside writing and sleep and other wonderful things), the argument becomes a lot less complicated: STFU and just do it, dammit.
So I did.
And, shit, it was awesome.
I would not suggest this to anyone unfamiliar with their bodies. I'm pretty fit for a slob and this was not my first week or month yoga-ing. In my case, doing yoga while fasting was the only right thing to do because I am wired to practice in the mornings. Besides, yoga at night means having to put up with mosquitoes and darkness and other pesky things.
It isn't like I'm training for a competition or pining to be the next Olajuwon. Remember Olajuwon? His NBA records during Ramadan settled the rest of the issues I had about training while fasting.
Fasting and yoga were not meant to be served easy; they are designed to challenge the things we that take for granted. In calling ourselves Muslims or Yogis or simply devoted, we strive on serving these offerings as pretty and as uncomplaining as the sun that sets every day in Ramadan.
The most obvious thing that crossed my mind was my severely retarded sense of fashion. I would not have delayed dressing up femininely for thirty years if it weren't for their sake; just to make sure that they grew up into real men and that the clothes I passed on to them would fit social approval.
I'm glad that has passed. I still walk like a drag queen when I'm in high-heels, but I'm better at coloring my nails. No worries.
Sometimes, when I try to write stories about siblings, I always stop at the part where the siblings scream at and strangle each other. I break sweat and my fingers become paralyzed under the scrutiny of the almighty super-ego. Until a laughing-memory passes and pats me with pardons. "No, you only wished you did that."
So I might have become a better crime writer, a wilder free-thinker if I did not have siblings. Who cares what the Bronte sister and Stephen King wrote? It wasn't weird enough compared to the worlds that Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch & EM Forster created.
I sound fictional. Heck, only-children are easier to fictionalize. If they keep their parents, they are showered with undivided love and attention from start to end, and a lot of them achieve amazingly because of that. There is no such thing as too much love and attention, see? If you think about it; there are 335 million only-children in China since 2009. Most of them are boys. Just you wait. Eventually, all the Makkis and Ghamdis and Zahranis will become Tangs, Liongs and Chans.
Anyway, I have always thought that our youngest was the favorite. He was everybody's favorite. Poor thing. The ones who got the belt grew disproportionately faster. Hence, for all the years our youngest missed out on beatings and abuses, he has got to make up for them by attending our parents the longest. Such is the life of the only-child and the youngest in the family.
So maybe if I didn't have siblings, I wouldn't have become as highly-mobile and independent as I used to be.
(I'm not as nomadic as before; I am someone's only-child after all. And I am fenced with love and dutiful service that gives freedom another kind of meaning. The kind that youngest and only-children understand.)
Siblings are people we practice with. Now that they are grown up, I feel like I've done my practice. Like, I myself am done. With life. With newness. With children. You know?
What was the question again? "What kind of person would I have become if I weren't born the eldest?"
Pexel 1. Readers will read. Regardless to format or income or legality. 2. Something to remember: The Prophet was illit...
