One Night I Redeemed My Conscientiousness Back

Above all, I appreciate consciousness of action. I appreciate actions that are taken for the goodness of humanity and not of sheer selfishness. Each of every single one of your actions should come hand in hand with the crucial element of consciousness and conscientiousness.

I believe that it is the work of beliefs to do that. A work of something in the greater order than the human unreserved naivety and animal instincts.

We are no longer the animals we were. We have the strong history of civilisation which will improve our actions far better than the shallow, instinctive and immoderate behaviours.

Some of us even have the extra favour by owning a religion for moderation of behaviours.

But I believe that religions have became too ritualistic for that purpose. There is no more strong understanding of religion anymore. What is left around here are just the rituals which nobody even care what they ought to mean.

Nobody takes the tedious task of understanding the consciousness of action, albeit them being the centre of development of many religions.

The rituals of religion somehow overshadow the importance of having conscientiousness. Followers have immediately feel satisfied and fulfilled just by these rituals without them delving much further than that. They will have sheer satisfaction, feeling the godfulness and holier-than-thou-ness without them even trying hard enough to go beyond ritualistic understanding.

If this persists, morality will take over religion in no time. Morality has no God in its name. Morality has no power from above to oversee the adherence to religious conscientiousness. In fact, morality has no specified rituals to follow leaving people in fragile state and possibly in continuous improvement.

I really want to call the way some of us treating religion as secularisation of religion. A very harsh way of describing these people who want religions to be more ritualistic than what they already are.

Weddings, freaking weddings!

I hate weddings. I hate Malay weddings to be exact, or Chinese weddings or Indian weddings. I spent most of my adult life planning a civil marriage followed by a simple romantic reception in the island of Bali.

I didn’t even intend to sit on the freaking red pillow and shake hand and say things on the paper. I can’t even picture myself saying the short phrase and blindly sign the outdated, freakishly weird prenuptial agreements like most Muslims in Malaysia.

Who on earth thinks that the prenuptial agreements signed are not weird and chauvinistic? They are seriously made by men and just for men!

“Jika kamu meninggalkan isteri kamu selama tiga bulan tanpa nafkah, maka jatuhlah talak”

Then he leaves his wife for three months and on the last day he gives her RM10. Then the wife will say “Fuck! This bastard is still here and I am his loser wife”. The husband will say, “Look! Here’s the prenup. I gave you nafkah and technically you are still mine…”.

Not that I say men will do that. But still there are losers somewhere will do exactly that and just get away with it. And I blame it on the the prenups which are outdated by 1405 years.

And I also hate the fact that these people spend thousands on wedding. All on loan! You spend like that’s the end of your life, what would you do after that? Eat your expensive lace from your hantaran?

Talking about hantaran. They are also weird. You give them shoes, don’t you think they already have shoes in the first place? And the cakes! Aren’t they bought from the nearest Secret Recipe? And the sirih ‘f’ junjung. Help me my God.

Can I revolutionize weddings? Can we unanimously say that the only tradition we have is to change tradition?

And I seriously don’t want to go to the Kursus Kahwin and hear all “lawak lucah versi Islamik”.

God! Please!

Summerblockbusterization

I met an old friend who shares my wonderment of human behaviour. We wondered out loud on how people define entertainment as another blockbuster summer movie, of talking lion or another superhero movie.

I would like to shout out loud the sentiment and my wonderment but I guess it would offend so many people who have asked me in the past ‘Have you watched Iron Man?’ or some people that were so impressed when I actually confused Mary Jane as a character in Superman. I am not a bimbo mind you, but these cookie cutter approach to superhero movie-making really confuses the heck out of me.

Don’t say I never tried you know, I used to try to be apart of these crowd. The supposedly in crowd by pretending to like these summer movies but I guess I got C+ for that. I ended up reading imbd.com for some general overview of the summer movies and present them as my thought.

I guess age gives us more perspectives and age defies the need to be in the in crowd. I simply don’t care anymore. I know I have to respect people's choice. I know I have to respect people who watch the blockbusters if they like it but I still want and ache for my little dose of small and honest movies no matter how much you praise your Iron Man. I just want Once with Glen Hansaard’s powerful lyrics. I watched Waking Life (by recommendation from the most unlikely person (yes I’m a bigot)) and I guess it’s an otherworldly experience. I wonder how on earth people have never heard of Before Sunset and Before Sunrise?

And I said I don’t care anymore.

The Lightness is Unbearable

The absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant - Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

I fell in love again with Milan Kundera and his writings in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. As the ideas grow, I find the writings are more bearable than they were three years back when I first read the book. But now, I am less interested to discuss Kundera as a person and the book as a book. Only the ideas contained in the book get me to the heightened state of interest.

May be the ideas of burden or responsibility has been in many literatures and probably in all the scriptures but these fanciful ideas of weight and technically flying because of the lightness are new to me

To compare weightlessness and the being is technically extreme. People talk about emptiness and soullessness when describing the inner being but to say that without the burden, we are physically weightless is strong and strikes ten point.

I believe what Kundera said, he is talking sense and what he said is making more sense as I grow. We all need the burden to at least put some weight to our being and thus help us to remain standing on our two feet.

I am not going to be too obvious here but I guess if you are the stubborn kids who want to defy the conventional wisdom and toy with many ideas of life will somehow came to the state where you believe that freedom to live and to believe sounds worth fighting for. And I guess, some have indefinitely subscribed the notions of total freedom already.

Freedom that frees us from the burden that we thought as ‘burden’ per say but in actuality is another weight to put structure into our lives. I think I’d like to believe that. I think I ought to believe that the structure, the burden, is necessary.

I might sound like a losing fighter of freedom but I guess the process of discovering and the process of handpicking ideas and ideologies is freedom.

Lembing

I don’t usually like to write a travelogue, talking about where we go first and what’s next. It is rather mundane and uninteresting. I would usually lump all the nice pictures from the place and show people; hoping that each picture will tell a thousand words.

But the rules do not apply here, Sungai Lembing is special. Sungai Lembing is not only about picturesque views and wonderfully majestic Pelangi waterfall. It is not just the famous gas station in the middle of the town or the history tin mining. It is more than that.

May be I was being exaggeratingly romantic now but I think Lembing is an attitude in itself, a small town overflowing with eccentricities and romanticism. Qualities that rarely can be seen anywhere else. May be its glorious past with sudden fall from grace sculpted the way the town feels now. The hustle and bustle of the town in yesteryears had changed to simpler and shadier lifestyle. That’s the romantic part of the town, it gets older gracefully. It skins off the edginess of youth and adds vibrancy of antiquity.

Enough of being romantic and shady. Enjoy the pictures I took and lomofied. For more visit my facebook

The Soul-mate Stranger

I watched Paris, Je T'aime the other day and one of the stories stuck in my head. It’s a simple, a very short scene when a man meets a stranger and he simply can’t resist the temptation to talk to the guy. He theorised that he is his soul mate and they should talk. He tried to talk but there was no reply from the stranger as he can’t speak French. Then he left his phone number. I guess it has no sexual, or specifically, homosexual connotation in the meeting. It sounds honest and true.

Sometimes, I do feel that way. Sometimes, I need to talk to a stranger, a girl or a boy because it feels like it; it feels important to talk to him or her. Not out of love or lust, but an honest exchange of words or feelings. May be the souls are interacting and we, the physical bodies can sense it and we feel the urge to physically interact to these people.

We are very practical in making friends; we have school friends, university friends and workplace friends. Aren’t they all practical friends? Friendship that we made because we shared the same space at the same time but finally managed to find simple soul in each other.

How about friends who are not made out of these deprivation of space?

The friends who are soulfully connected, the friends that you meet somewhere in the swiftest time and suddenly know that you ought to talk to him or her and be friends.

I might be awfully romantic and unrealistic in making these outrageous suggestions but I do feel that it might happen one time or another. It ought to and I know there are soul mates brewing anywhere in the world

Join My Pyramid Scheme

I feel the richness of being when I can do or think something like this, something utopia. Something that does not denote any monetary or status gain. Something selfless for a cause.

I pay my greatest respect to people who stick to their principles rather than being rich from stupendously stupid pyramid schemes. You might be standing beside your spanking new Merc, but I just cannot give you greater respect than to the kid who won the game of Monopoly. That is how shallow I can describe the business you are in.

Sometimes I wonder, why should I be surrounded by these people, where are the cool spa owner or artistic movie director? Where are the Doctors Without Borders doctors? Where are the philanthropists who were not get-rich scheme fakers?

Where are the people who can share the greatness of being and not talk about another pyramid scheme?

Thank You for Smoking. You Should Die.

I always theorise about smoking, people who smoke and people around them. The act of smoking itself is a very interesting process very much in need of my funnily juvenile view of psychoanalysis. Some people may have heard my sentiments but it never came across me to sit down and systematically put them down in words. But I guess it is time now just when I realise that human are wilful animals, there are hopes even in the most seemingly impossible case.

The most unique characteristic of smoking is the fact that it is not like eating, drinking or sex. Smoking is not one of those things that we were born to do. People don’t die of not smoking. If smoking is an organ, it would be an appendix that would do nothing except to make noise with appendicitis and later comes appendectomy.

But why? Why in this God-forsaken world would some smoke? Why create appendix?

Forget the fancy ‘peer pressure’; I rather say insecurity. (Hey! Don’t throw your butts to me yet!). I mean, ‘peer pressure’ or ‘rebellion’ is the word to describe it if you started smoking when you were 14 (just like my dad) but if you started when you were 18 or 21 (just like my bro) I should call it insecurity.

Come on! You are not a rebel if you started smoking at 18, the legal age to smoke. You are just insecure and feel that you are left out by your so called cool and rebellious friends. You are suckers to befriend smokers! You are just fucking followers.

Smoking is also sex-related. I saw a father smiling the proudest smile when his son finally follows his footstep. I read his mind and I saw a father who is sure now that his son is not a fag, he has a fag, a phallic symbol stuck between his lips so there is not place for another you-know-what. He was relieved.

I do not quite understand women, but some find smokers sexier than us, the non-smokers. May be women just like men who die faster (next time you drive, see the losers, they mostly have girlfriends beside them). I don’t claim to understand the complexity of sexual behaviour but if you are a lady, do not ever tell me that you like smokers. The moment you say it, I would imagine you kissing a smoker and I really don’t like the view.

Not that I hate you for smoking or because you choose to hog smokers. I am pro-choice and pro-life, you may do what you might but I might as well do what I might by picturing you kissing some nicotine tarred mouth.

The Point of Prejudices

Prejudices are like the yellow strip across the road humps. Telling us to be careful. But not all road humps need you to slow down real slow, swerve your car to the left when the front wheels touching the hump and to swerve back to the right when the wheels are on top of the hump. Some humps are even negligibly low; you don’t even need to slow down.

That is prejudice, the shallowest most way of perceiving. Lumping all people in a group and stick the attributes to the forehead of the people.

While prejudices give us guidelines (just like the yellow strips of the road humps), we ought to give individualistic assessments to each and everyone. People are not ants; we do not use our antennas to acknowledge the chemical of others. We are not that simple and primitive to leave what in the skull without any use.

People also do not live like what the horoscope tell them to. Not all Taureans will feel as ecstatic as I am today, some will be completely shabby and some might win lottery. We cannot lump them together and expect them to behave like a herd of sheep.

Fat people, short people, thin people, handsome people or whatever people might share some identical insecurities related to their fatness, shortness, thinness or handsomeness. But they do not react identically to the insecurities, even the level of insecurities is not equal.

Come to think of it, the effort to understand people by prejudices is just another losing battle. Two persons are as different intra-group as they are inter-group. So I wonder, is there any point in the prejudices anyway?

Simple Exhilaration of Life

I wonder how people can live just by simple exhilaration of simple life. How can people live without toying with the ideas of life, death and being? How can people live without wanting to explore the deeper state of consciousness and digging into the deeper understanding of oneself?

Once in a while, I need to be like the way I am now. Escaping the practicality and simplicity of life and delve into ways to expand the being. Sometimes, simple excitements of rollercoaster ride or exhilarating laughs are not sufficient to be complete and happy. They are part of life, needless to say, but there is more to life than that.

There is this understanding of oneself, there is a universe of questions need to be answered about everything. These questions would never cross your mind when the simple exhilaration of life is enough to satisfy you. They need some deprivation of happiness, some inability to be satisfied by repetitiveness for the questions to pop out of nowhere.

There is always one thing that sometimes prevents me to let go of consciousness, to be carelessly happy, to ride rollercoaster in Genting from morning to evening, to watch TV and doing nothing. I am afraid of losing the edge of awareness, the subtle feeling of life well lived, the purposeful life.

I am afraid to feel a moment of consciousness, to be fully aware that these moments are losing moments. This moment is just another attempt to be happier than the saturation point of happiness, which is impossible and useless.

Maybe it is just a longing for a quiet time in isolation, some moments to redeem the complexity and incomprehensible thoughts that may lose in ecstasy. Or maybe it is just an unconscious attempt to break free and give space for the minds for more excitement and ecstasy to come.

Belly Bulge? Damn It!

I have been living as a thin boy, I was chubby when I was very little but all the baby fat was gone long before my school years. I was thin throughout. Very thin in fact.

When people ask, ‘Which Azrul?’ the answer would be about thinness and tallness. That would most often be the case. That’s my quality, my characteristics that people will know me.

Then one day, this year, I realised that there were some bulge above my belt. I was like “Fuck! I am fat!”. When you run your fingers from the crotch up, it should not be any bulge. Even if you have one, it should not be above the belt. That would be outrageously too much.

I told almost everybody about the fucking bulge. I just could not stand it. When you sit, you have to really, really sit straight up or else the bulge will go over your belt and it felt so extremely uncomfortable. Get my drift? And to sit this straight up, writing a whole blog entry (like what I am doing right now, damn it!), you should just imagine the pain.

May be I am overreacting, but this is something going against your self. This is something detrimental to the one person I always believe I am. Fat people (by ‘fat people’ I don’t mean it to be an insult or embarrassment, it just a condition just like ‘thin people’) may say they have been living like this for years. Yes, that’s why you don’t feel a thing; you have found yourself and got comfortable with the fact. But I never knew I would ever-ever be fat.

I should be thin like a rock star (is there any fat rock star?) or heroin addict, Mark Renton thin. I can consider being vegetarian thin or a little bit on the tough side, but to have belly bulge is beyond me. Far beyond. I need to do some sit up now.

Religion: For Once, I Feel So Sure

One day, about three months ago, I have decided to keep my religious standing to myself. I have forced myself to believe that people want to hear what they wanted to hear and what they already heard so many times before.

Just to make some people happy, I obliged to keep what I think to myself and without making any uncalled statements or to question anything. I was this very sombre and very typical boy for once.

But then something struck me on the head, some realization, some monotonous nagging feeling and some optimism that says people are wilful animals. We want something to be better than it is. No matter how much we seem to have resisted the change, we need them nonetheless. It is just a matter of time. So, I will continue to say what I think, here and rather modestly, outside.

I should call this as dogmatic fear, an established fear. This fear to apply some logical thinking in the way we see religion. In fact, I tried to instill in myself to not apply logical thinking but to no avail, it would simply not make any sense to leave logic out of the door, simply outrageously impossible. So I decided keep counting in logic in my team.

Some people say that the one and only way to heaven is through their way. I didn't even try to believe, it is simply incoherent to say this. While we might have the same core values, we are not a herd of sheep, aren't we? Interpretation and definitions are definitely individualistic. We might have the same God and the same prophet, but might have many differences in matters smaller than this. Rub off your one line to heaven, I simply can't take it in.

Some people say that the new thoughts are unnecessary, the older the thoughts the better they are. It sounds acceptable at first but to think again, I would not accept this as well. How can anyone be so psyched about keeping the old thoughts? I believe that the Quran and the Sunnah are timeless but the interpretation should change in line with time. Interpretation is man-made; they are expected to not survive the test of time. Even the very evidence-based theories in physics are continuously challenged, let alone the very subtle interpretation.

Now, I am happy the way I am. Neither am I liberal nor fundamentalist. Nor muktazillan, nor sesat. I am just finding my way and enjoying the process. Like it or not.

God, Godlessness and Freedom

God is freedom. God is the one main factor of freedom. Religion, in fact, is freedom.

I never saw anyone with greater freedom than people who believe with the deepest submission to their religion. Look at the tabligh followers with full beard and weird scent, aren't they as free as birds? Migrating from one place to another, living with no specific routine. It's like camping, except they do it everyday. And I think camping is liberating, letting go of all our beloved routine which we cling so much to and stay in a foreign land with bare necessities.

How can tabligh people survive this daily camping? How can they even want to be there in the first place? I can only see that religion is the only reason for these behaviours, and the belief should be really, really, really deep.

And these Buddhist monks with deep orange drape, don't their feet ache going slipperless and aren't they feel a little naked walking around without the undergarments? I mean, who could do that unless you really believe in their God/s.

But this guy from Fight Club says, 'Losing all hope was freedom'. They all are nihilists, aren't they? They say existence is senseless and godlessness rules, and they claim they have found freedom. And I do think they found freedom of some sort.
Come to think of it, their freedom can equalise the freedom we see from the bearded men and the monks, the freedom is otherworldly in some sense, weird for the outsiders like us but it's like second skin to them.
Probably it is not God who makes these people do what they do, probably it is just belief, either the belief in God or belief in godlessness. These beliefs ought to be so strong and powerful to get the result of freedom, no question asked, godly or nihilistic, the belief should be rock solid. So, to claim your freedom. God or no God? It's your call...

Writing and Cinema Experience

Writing these words is like coming home, it is like being back to your bed and close your eyes and letting the air engulf you. I miss the act of writing itself, the act of sitting in the dark and typing away. I miss being this purposeless and writing my anger in a blank sheet of 'Journal Entry'.

I am in the end of the so-called one-year objective, my masters degree (God help me!). I guess it's time again to be in the dark and typing. It really feels like home.

This time, I won't try to be anything else but myself. In the sense that, I will not limit myself to certain rules of being in a particular group of people. In the sense that, I could write anything truthful of what I think even though it will go straight to people's hearts. All in good intention, not to condemn but just my thought for the better. Don't need to be all sensitive for what Azrul says, he is just this naïve guy with nice good intention to boot.

People who know me should know this, should know how harmless I can be. So don't go all tensed up and all sensitive with me, I hate that.

Sometimes when I'm writing, just like now, I feel like I'm wasting my time. When I should be doing something better, like doing 'real work', I write. But come to think of it, unlike some people, I rarely watch TV and so rarely I find anything in the cinema to be palatable so writing is my substitute.

So technically, I am in the winning side. I see people in the cinema as escapees who want to be alone with the silver screen in the dark, just them and the screen. Wrapping themselves in sounds and sight that are foreign to them. To have an unworldly experience with the help of these imaginary blasting of sound and beaming of colours on the screen. I view cinema as a lonely experience, you might not go alone but the whole experience is just to be alone in the midst of people. Couples might see this as an excuse to keep deathly quiet and to keep a little bit of their sanity.

With my keyboard and screen, I do that too. This is my imaginary field, where world revolves around me, the screen and the words. I create my field of play, I create my words and expression, the colours are in my head. Movie watching and writing satisfy you with the experiences and I should never think less of what I am doing.

This is my substitute of my movie experience. That's until I find movies with the calibre of Before Sunset, Eternal Sunshine and some say, Juno.