You Can't Take the Sky From Me
I stumbled upon a video series called 'Movies with Mikey' from a YouTube channel called FilmJoy. It's a well-produced series of Mikey's thoughts on the movies of his choice. Good laughs, deep insights, definitely worth checking out while we're all most of us are stuck at home. On his thoughts about the film "Serenity", Mikey closes his video essay with the line that's the title of this post.
In great suffering, I wish I could tell you I was coiling in the abyss, acting on dolour-driven fantasies like the next guy. It had been a hell of a week. I was caught between a rock and a hard place, especially when the best foot out was a half-measure. Instead, what actually happened was that I was alright, sitting on the balcony taking stock of the maelstrom underneath the surface of the skin. Shame, resentment, bitterness, and anger were all the emotions present, manifested as a tightened chest, a lethargy, gritted teeth, and a numbness so specific like the heart walling off itself.
The greatest lesson I've learnt hitherto is that awareness precedes control. And I can sit here, on this balcony, acknowledging these psychosomatic sensations which are just as real as the crickets chirping amidst whirring motorcycles. The more that I accepted they were there, the easier it paradoxically became to weather the storm. And in doing that, it became easier to accept that our darkest moments are as fleeting as our time in the sun.
I tapped the ash out of the pipe's bowl. I may be caught between a rock and a hard place, but right now, I'm only the me that's going to play video games with my friends online on a Friday night.
I found a place I wished to retire to this evening; pumping some fuel for the car on evening rush-hour during a national lock-down gave me the inspiration. It's the petrol station right before the Bukit Jalil toll heading towards downtown KL and Ampang. Ask anyone in that area and they'll tell you what a nightmare it is to wait out the evening traffic; ask me and I'll tell you from experience that it has taken me an hour and a half to get from Sunway to Ampang. It took me ten minutes to get to the petrol station that I was at that day.
Everything was the same but so different at the same time, you know?
I'm talking about roads I've crawled bumper-to-bumper for at least a decade. Now, it's a couple of cars passing through each minute or so. The KESAS Highway was a ghost highway. Quiet and peaceful, what I would expect out of being in Kuala Kubu Bharu rather than on the outskirts of Sri Petaling.
It was beautiful.
About five years ago, I met a lady named Sam at my favourite haunt '28 Fireplace'. Around forty years old, from the UK, never found out the reason she settled in Malaysia. We had long talks about books but even longer talks about the cats that lived around Ampang Hilir. She knew every single one of them, their temperaments, who's the owner, whether they had an owner. It didn't hit me that I was meeting someone who was so in the moment until it was time for her to go. We stood outside the cafe for a parting smoke and while talking about the cats, she interjected herself, "Wow, look at the sky!" She exclaimed.
I looked up. We were in the twilight zone, a nice streak of clouds were overhead with one end darkening with the coming night fall and the other end clinging on to the light of a setting disc. Sam had her arms in the sky, framing the orange, the blue, and the purple with her fingers. "Oh, the sky is just beautiful today," She said with even greater enthusiasm than her compassion towards the cats. "You just see the the colours fade at that point and the clouds just there but not really."
"How often do you cloud-watch?" I asked, nonplussed. Sky-porn is not unheard of but up to that point I've never met anyone who was genuinely that enthralled by the sky.
"Everyday," She brought her gaze back down to Earth with a grin like I had caught her at seven years old again, "It's just... something different every time."
I'm going to pause here to take a deep breath before changing gears. I actually don't know translate what I wanted to say about the title. What I'm going to do instead is write three anecdotes that encapsulates why that line resonated with me.
1.
In great suffering, I wish I could tell you I was coiling in the abyss, acting on dolour-driven fantasies like the next guy. It had been a hell of a week. I was caught between a rock and a hard place, especially when the best foot out was a half-measure. Instead, what actually happened was that I was alright, sitting on the balcony taking stock of the maelstrom underneath the surface of the skin. Shame, resentment, bitterness, and anger were all the emotions present, manifested as a tightened chest, a lethargy, gritted teeth, and a numbness so specific like the heart walling off itself.
The greatest lesson I've learnt hitherto is that awareness precedes control. And I can sit here, on this balcony, acknowledging these psychosomatic sensations which are just as real as the crickets chirping amidst whirring motorcycles. The more that I accepted they were there, the easier it paradoxically became to weather the storm. And in doing that, it became easier to accept that our darkest moments are as fleeting as our time in the sun.
I tapped the ash out of the pipe's bowl. I may be caught between a rock and a hard place, but right now, I'm only the me that's going to play video games with my friends online on a Friday night.
2.
I found a place I wished to retire to this evening; pumping some fuel for the car on evening rush-hour during a national lock-down gave me the inspiration. It's the petrol station right before the Bukit Jalil toll heading towards downtown KL and Ampang. Ask anyone in that area and they'll tell you what a nightmare it is to wait out the evening traffic; ask me and I'll tell you from experience that it has taken me an hour and a half to get from Sunway to Ampang. It took me ten minutes to get to the petrol station that I was at that day.
Everything was the same but so different at the same time, you know?
I'm talking about roads I've crawled bumper-to-bumper for at least a decade. Now, it's a couple of cars passing through each minute or so. The KESAS Highway was a ghost highway. Quiet and peaceful, what I would expect out of being in Kuala Kubu Bharu rather than on the outskirts of Sri Petaling.
It was beautiful.
3.
About five years ago, I met a lady named Sam at my favourite haunt '28 Fireplace'. Around forty years old, from the UK, never found out the reason she settled in Malaysia. We had long talks about books but even longer talks about the cats that lived around Ampang Hilir. She knew every single one of them, their temperaments, who's the owner, whether they had an owner. It didn't hit me that I was meeting someone who was so in the moment until it was time for her to go. We stood outside the cafe for a parting smoke and while talking about the cats, she interjected herself, "Wow, look at the sky!" She exclaimed.
I looked up. We were in the twilight zone, a nice streak of clouds were overhead with one end darkening with the coming night fall and the other end clinging on to the light of a setting disc. Sam had her arms in the sky, framing the orange, the blue, and the purple with her fingers. "Oh, the sky is just beautiful today," She said with even greater enthusiasm than her compassion towards the cats. "You just see the the colours fade at that point and the clouds just there but not really."
"How often do you cloud-watch?" I asked, nonplussed. Sky-porn is not unheard of but up to that point I've never met anyone who was genuinely that enthralled by the sky.
"Everyday," She brought her gaze back down to Earth with a grin like I had caught her at seven years old again, "It's just... something different every time."
Comments
Post a Comment