What lies beneath the MAC foundation...

Make-up is something you put on your face.  To hide things.  Among other things.

I got up late this morning.  A phone call from Mama got me out of bed.  I cleaned my sleepy face with water and pat it dry and look into a mirror at myself and look, I looked at its reflection long and hard.

This face doesn't look anything like the one on stage last night.  I was belting out happy tunes and when I walked into the audience to sing, a lady whispered loudly to me over the music and say, "You are so beautiful."

Good make-up hides many things.  Signs of aging, results of lack of sleep, not-so-flawless complexion, a skin break out, etc...a bad life style.

It's karma all right, what you do to your body (or not do to your body) will manifest and sprout signs of bad karma all over your...your face.

That's my morning today.  Part one of the story was my dream.  I was idling in a house, it felt like both my house back home at parents' and J's house.  It felt like days after a funeral, my folks milling about doing chores, or some cooking, something...to try to get back into some normality of life. There were visitors around whom we were trying to send them back to their normal lives too, arranging transportations.  I remember desperately trying to help a lady go back to Johor Bahru.

I remember telling my dad (or was it his dad) that my big iMac has stopped working but I would like to use the big screen on a new computer.  I remember walking out to a wet market, a square that I have never seen in my life and watch trucks driving away with their wares and little wind of dusts circling round and round the square.

A few moments later I notices a change of time - it signalled to me as the end of a school break and school season was starting.  I saw droves of school buses full of kids in blue and white school uniforms driving into the market place, I saw a private car driving towards me, in it sat a parent and his two teenage school-going boys.

I wish somehow by strange fate, or some out of the planet (out of the dream) magic would bring him back to life.  I told myself it doesn't matter even if he doesn't know me or love me.  Maybe he could come back as his silly and younger self, like that uniform-clad school boy in that car.  I don't mind.

I stood there with emotions and stared, stunned by what I felt.  Then my phone rang and I woke up.

It was Mama.  I was part relieved, part happy to see the caller ID on my phone.  It was like she got summoned to get me out of that poignant, melancholic situation.  She called to tell me that she's made some fried peanuts with ikan bilis and want me to have some.  She offered soup.  She knew I have a show today.  She asked me if I have time to go over to drink the soup and take the peanuts home.

This would be another long day out on the field, doing my thang...like how he used to put it, he liked watching me doing my things: singing class, rehearsals, talk a lot...singing, hair appointments..

Lunch at Mama's, singing class with Cecilia at 1pm, hair appointment at 3pm, sound check at 5pm, vegetate till showtime at 830pm, catch a show at No Black Tie at 10pm.

The signs of undesirable life style is showing on my face.  Late late nights, skipped meals.  Mainly just these two vices, big ones.

I have to tell myself I have to keep this body well, for him...because the music has to keep playing.

Routines and bag habits are tough to break.  But the hard work has to start somewhere doesn't it?

Letter one hundred and twelve - the days go on - Valentine's Day

Dearest J,

It's Valentine's Day today and this is a love letter to you, my valentine.

I dreamed of you again last night.  You were not with us in the dream but we were there with piles and pile of photographs taken by you.  I was given an envelope of photos too, it contained photos of me, taken by you.

These days I live on dreams and hope, from inspirations to aspirations.  I live on what's left on my plate: an unquenchable thirst for life that you have left me in.  This is the life you have lived to teach me to live - to love what I do whole-heartedly and to chase my rainbows passionately.

I miss you shamelessly.  The thought of you steals me away from my busy train of activities and plunge into deep indulgence of memories of us.  When am safely tugged under the blanket of memories of you, I would purr and want to sleep in this eternity of our romance.

Your voice still linger in my ears whenever the thought of you come to me.  The image of your smile still tickle my heart into a delirious choke of happiness and laugh.  The security of your loving embrace and your loving glance of confidence are my pillar of strength.

The reminiscence of our love is the light in my tunnel.  Whenever I slip near any bleak thought of future, I just have to raise my gaze high enough to see your face and I am reminded of your love for me.  You have no idea my darling, that your love was so great that just the slightest reminder of it is enough to pick me up from my lowest on a stormy day.  The knowledge of your friendship and love remain one of the most potent ingredients in my happiness these days.

And whenever I sing on stage, I imagine my every soaring note, every soft whisper of lyric into the mic, every sighs of crescendo, is a dedication of my true love to you.

Fairy tales, dragons, astrology, guardian angels don't have a place in our belief system.  However, we had each other in our belief system - we believe in love and we believe in each other.

Love never dies.  Love will keep us together.  Love is all we need.  Love will lead the way.

I know I will never get over you in this lifetime and I never spend a second worry about that.  The way we loved each other each will enable me to go on living a beautiful life, I may be missing your hand by my side but for as long as I have my memories intact, you are never far from me.

I remember you told me to go out and find me another soul mate should you leave me one day.  You want me to always have someone lovely to hold and to cherish.  Maybe I will find that new lovely man of a soul mate, maybe I won't.  But whatever and however things would turn out for me in the future, please know that I will always be loved, because you loved me.

Here's a poem I wrote for you, my angel, my lover, my best friend, my man, my heaven, and my earth...

My beauty may fade
My hair will thin
My voice will tire
My cat may start talking one day

The music may end
The sun will grow old
The flower will wither
The birds may stop singing one day

But not us
Not our romance
Not our conversations
Not our ideas for life
Not our longing for each other

We are beyond this planet
We are above this earth
We are made for the heaven
we are designed to fly forever
Together we are love.


Happy Valentine's day.

Love forever,

B

Dream a little Dream of me

Not too long ago I dreamed of J, I was crying good and loud in his arms. That felt very good, I only wish I get dream like that more often. It felt good because I was with him again, you know, literally with him - in his arms. From that experience I think I understand why people go to the medium to talk to their departed loved ones...you miss someone so much that you'd do anything just to 'see' him and 'talk' to him again.

Everything has been working out just grand in his absence. I can't say if I have willed everything to turn out this wonderful for me, single-handedly...me - manifested the whole series of good things. It's not my nature to think that naturally.

But when I stop and ask myself, then what did? I couldn't see other reason or cause of event other than the cause of ME. It's too funny. I had spent the good whole eight years of our relationship dedicating all my gratitude for all the good things in my life to having met him and made him loved me. And now, still living in the shadow of our memories, I think I have taken over the entire responsibility of my mental and household welfare and sanity, among other things.

That's a potentially really stupid statement, how else would a person NOT be responsible for her own welfare? That was me, the last nine years or so, thinking that he was my universe which has provided me with all the most important things for a person's welfare in many ways. I learned to drive because he made me go to driving school. I left my day job to be a singer because he took my hand and told me he would help me in all that he can until I could stand on my own. He went house shopping with me and gave me a home in this wonderful down town flat.

Anyone could have done all of that by herself and more. Well, I had him.

Then, as if I was possessed, I started taking charge of my own business. As if I had just been given my first magic wand and a book of spell, I start to cast wonderful things all over me.

(Including going to bed at 4am!)

I cooked a big pot of courage and started getting myself somewhere with my music.  I invite myself to the stage of KL's most prestigious jazz bars.  I start singing songs that I didn't dare dream of performing.  I started to say yes to travelling.  I started to scat at performances.  I start to read more, and listen more.  I started going to jazz gigs a lot more, alone, to just listen, and learn.

And the rest of the movement just followed.  I started getting more bookings, more frequently...etc.  A whirl of new activities came and more new ones followed.

Amidst the buzz of things I would feel a hungry yearning, a throbbing desire to talk to him, to hold him and make him see my life now, and wanting to seek his approval in all I do. I would sometimes stop in the track and look out somewhere, hoping to catch a glimpse of him somewhere so I can look him in the eye and say, "See, am a clever girl.