15.12.23

I’m on a bus from Kuala Lumpur bound for Melaka, the old Dutch/Portuguese colonial outpost.

Tin was the main product Malaysia provided, then rubber, now palm.

The air is soft.  The sun is still.  Just enough.  Perfect, is what I said to the man cutting my hair
yesterday.  He laughed and said that people who live in hot places dream of the cold and vice versa. 
We yearn for distant sensations.

I want all places.  Want to spread myself so thin, thinner than air, thin as spirit over all the earth. 
And maybe into space when I’m older.  To make myself disappear that way.  To go out light: not
a body at all, but sub-microscopic particles that couldn’t be called matter.

<>A quiet has come over me.  I am about to die.  We are all about to die.  Yet I live: here, on airplanes,
in hotels with friendly lobby staff (who are also about to die), on buses that pass new houses
with traditional and religious design elements.  I am alive because I go to new cities; I shake
the hands of foreign people and they feel like my own no matter the shade of my skin,
the shade of theirs.

How insignificant, how wasteful, to become so angry.  To be so small and yet so angry. 
To be so light yet feel so heavy.  How much better to be patient, to radiate light.

How beautiful this manipulated land seems.  So many trees giving the same juice, identical fruit. 
Filling trucks with their pregnant offerings.  And the colours we add to bottles, thinking up names,
printing lists in many languages—origin stories—FOR SALE.

And the markets.  And the markets.  Dangling with our colours.  Negotiation.  Prices.  Bargains. 
Bagging our purchases.  Constructing our image of paradise, in our own home and in the gifts we give. 
The gathering of the earth to us.  The memory of trees on a hill.  God’s name written in our words. 
Sung in our voices.  Allah.  And the sea we cross over.  And over again.

15.12.25

Joyeux Noel de Melaka!!!  Happy 27th to me!  Rod and I
spent a quiet Xmas eve, ordering room service (Nasi Goreng
and Tiger beer) at the Orkid Inn.  After dinner, we went
to midnight mass at St. Peter’s Church, the oldest Catholic
Church in Malaysia.  The priest was either French or Portuguese
(spoke English) and a little crotchety, but the service was packed,
 including filled pews, plastic seats and standing on the Church grounds. 
Rod and I arrived at 11:20 but still had to stand at the back of
the Church.  The service was in English, including hymns which
the congregation sang whole-heartedly.  It reminded us of
last year in the Philippines…  Although Malaysia is a Muslim country
other religions are tolerated and the priest read a Christmas card
(apparently the first) from the new Malaysian Prime Minister.

Rod and I started our Christmas with a can of Guiness.  This will be our last year spending a low-key,
tropical holiday season.  Although we miss the family, turkey and snow of Canada, we are also revelling
in this fleeting opportunity.  We arrived in Melaka by bus on December 23rd and stayed one night in
a scrotty place on the edge of town before switching to the Orkid Inn downtown.  We’re paying a lot more
but decided to splurge a little for Christmas, and it does include buffet breakfast.

Malaysia is the most racially diverse country we’ve visited in Asia.  There are the original Malay people,
most of whom are Muslim and who hold the political power.  There are also Indians who’ve been in Malaysia
for 2000 years, as traders and later imported by European colonialists (Dutch, British, French) as labourers. 
The Indian population includes Hindus, Muslims and Christians.  The third main ethnic group of Malaysia are
the Chinese who are Buddhist or Christian.  Then of course the inter-mixing over the years of these groups.

Tomorrow we attempt to make it to Taman Negara, the jungle/rainforest.