searching… what gives to the giving

We live in a world no short of crisis, tragedy, misfortune, and mishap. I have never doubted that. Then again, I have no key to its comprehensive entirety. Like anyone else riding with me in this public bus today, I have some observable morsel of clue to their lives, as they probably would mine, but beyond that, I have no reasonable idea.

I’ve met people. These are stories I have never imagined before stepping foot into the Action for AIDS office- the stories of the affected and the infected, of those who live with three letters that have no known cure. HIV. AIDs. I have overheard, met, listened, peeped- the last time I heard, it was a boy no more than 17. It’s more complex than losing a limb, much darker than living through a stroke. The irretrievable lots they have been assigned to, for life. Chained, to themselves, to the growing demands of their bodies, burdened on a secondly basis to the material costs of keeping themselves alive. This is a disease that strikes hard- it captures a vulnerable human, it proceeds to not only disarm a body’s natural immunity, it mutates proteins, it mutates the images of which the human has worked to acquire. It causes you to question your social support system; it tests your ability to tolerate living in a community. This is a condition that eats away at a person’s sense of self-worth. We will be hard-pressed to find another medical condition that will necessitate such an alarming level of blame, shame and hate in this century.

What does it mean to work for a cause? Does it blind rationality? Does it make me champion the minority- a view of the hackneyed – compelling but ultimately one that runs separate and parallel to the mainstream consciousness? Do I lose when I seek to find, accumulate and catalogue, live with –all probable reasons to give- and then can islanded in my grand canyon of purpose, with a bunch who declare no beneficial similarities to me?

I cannot afford to grow insular in growing my own passions for the cause. Just as there are typhoons and floods, wars and broken families, this cause exists as a particular unit of plight amidst the others. There must be a way to make one’s help to all these, non-exclusive. If everyone gave to the world’s problems, surely the problems would not only be solved at its best efforts, but diluted? Sure, granted this is impossible because we all live in individual realities as opposed to collective communal consensus- than surely the next best step is to find a way for people to quantify the efforts they contribute to live in this world?

We live in a world no short of crisis, tragedy, misfortune, and mishap. This is un-true unless you inhabit all whose lives you deem needy, unfortunate – ‘charity cases’. Until you become one. But such foresight is impossible. So it’s my job to make you try.

Filed under: working world

Long-tailed macaques

swing across trees, from towering to feeble trunks, to branches and vines, the leaves quiver and awake, fast become greenery that quakes in the wake of the monkeys and their nimble sure-footedness. They approach my space in my morning wait for the bus. Hardly any of my bus-shelter companions blink an eye. They don’t see them.

Monkey approaches the green dividers- dividers that mark pedestrian from mammalian, constructed from divine, their way versus ours- and perches himself securely onto the railings. He’s eyeing the trash-vomitting public dustbin at our shelter. He accesses his potential finds. His family continues to quake in the greenery behind him, he has to do his work soon to show his leadership.

Monkey chooses Macca’s coffee over a bumper-can of Tiger beer, stuffs a quarter slice of toast into his mouth and pushes accompanying bread ends away, peers into emptied-out F&B packaging in disdain.

I recall my supper last night and my well-stocked fridge. It’s good to be human sometimes.

Filed under: quirks

one-week anniversary

Identity.

Two nights ago, I found out that it was an 80 year old man who was crushed under the fully-clay-laden 15-tonne truck last Wednesday morning. It’s been a week since his passing. Eighty years old?

Fatality- confirmed.

There was even a picture of one forlorn bicycle wheel that remained visible beside the fully-tented body. He was crushed, and died on the spot.

Dispute.

Eye witness accounts say that the pedestrian lights were red when the cyclist proceeded. The ‘dazed’ driver said he saw no one when he turned.

Fustration.

I can’t locate the clipping online now.It was a 04 september report by TNP.

Filed under: daily grind

the sound of a punctured life

is ringing in my head.

This morning I rode into sunshine. The air conditioning in the bus was refreshingly cool, the sun was warming up the day outside. I messaged a friend whom I hadn’t had time to catch up with these past couple of months, he chirps back a cheery reply over sms- and I tell him,

I’m doing well too… Good to be alive! :)

I get off my bus. I have vague plans to help a friend today, and the intended errand takes me away from my usual route to work. I drop two bus-stops before my usual stop. I brisked walked once off the bus, each step I took was filled with purpose, it honestly was. Only the red lights at the pedestrian crossing had reason to slow me down in my tracks.

And then that sound. Like a clap of thunder. The two men standing beside me recoil and walk off in the direction we came from. They re-circled their steps- they still want to head the direction I was headed for – but something ahead was hindering their path. My eyes search ahead.

I thought it was a traffic cone. For some reason, the bright orange colour registered. Something on the gravelled road. No, the orange something was someone. Then I realised it was a man. It was a man who was flattened by a huge industrial truck that had tried to beat the lights. The man was lying not 1 metre away from the bulbous tyres.

His misshapened head kept my cold attention. I feel hot, and yet I feel cold. It was all black hair, and fresh dark red life dotted the gravel – the splatter makes a straight line, marking the crushing impact of lost life. I wanted to walk away, and yet the incident was far too bizaare for me to just shrug it off and turn away. Someone just died before me.

The bicycle he rode became him. Only one wheel portruded from his distressed form on the road- one wheel, not spinning, flush against him, pressing into him, and he’s pressed upon the road.

I don’t consider it a coincidence that I celebrated life literally moments ago, before witnessing a life put out in front of me in such a gruesome manner. I’m not sure yet though, what this is supposed to make me do, but it is a call for some kind of action.

I think he was a foreign man. He must have a family somewhere else, folks still not made aware of the freak accident that claimed him. The road, someone’s actions, his own haste and his abandoned mind when he biked across that crossing took his life.

And there is a reason why I was there and then.

If you are reading this now, I’d say good on you. I’m immensely glad we’re alive.

Filed under: moronics