Union

What with the hate mongering flying across religious lines, my mind went back six years to our wedding day and the way we betrothed officially and I suppose, ceremoniously. Found a transcript of my impromptu address etc. so, here goes. 

My tailor was a Muslim, my garb part North Indian Islamic, part Sinhala Buddhist. Hers was traditional South Indian and her ornaments and mehendi, traditional North Indian Hindu. The cake was made by a Sinhala Christian. The event was cooked up and choreographed by A Tamil Christian. The site was a boathouse. The music was a guitar and the artists who could wield one well were many among the gathering. The whiskey was flowing like wine. The chairs were plenty but their use was optional. The date rubbed shoulders with Christmas and the decor was holly and Christmas lights. The gifts were symbolic, from us to the guests not the other way around. The notes that accompanied them were personal messages that encompassed everything they were to us over the years. The theme was Celtic pagan. The toast was by a Sinhalese Buddhist spiritually supported by his Burgher Catholic wife. The witnesses were a small group to whom religious labels meant little for their spirituality rose over and above such treatment of it. The officiating master of ceremonies was a man with a highly questionable spiritual pedigree - me. Questionable to mainstream thinking that is. Not to the folks who were gathered to witness it.

Reading that, I am sure a person would imagine it to be a typical hippie punch up of a marriage ritual but no, the exact opposite was true. Sure, no one stood on ceremony for such standing is required only when people are wary of one another. Rather, it was for us, a very deep, happy, easy, fun, festive, thoughtful, careful, reflective intermeshed union of souls.

It was also a ceremony where the words of the followers of the Lord Buddha, Lord Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohamed (pbuh), Lord Shiva, Lord Krishna were spoken by a practitioner of the systems of all of these great leaders. The sources were the Tripitaka, The Holy Bible, The Holy Qur’an, the Rig Veda and the Baghavad Geetha. These were spoken by us to our witnesses. I wish this becomes more of a norm than an exception. That was to start it off. Then we exchanged two pairs of rings – one pair for union of spirit, the other pair for union of body. Then, I addressed our gathering. It was the closest thing to a sermon but it was, and still is, both important and relevant to us in times when highlighting differences is more fashionable than acknowledging similarities.

The Celtic Shield that served as the headpiece mounted on a GI pipe

Dear friends,

Truth is a good place to start defining a union. Union is a good place to start defining truth. There are only four truths that have lasted more than a few decades and each of those have last over a thousand years. The core ideas of these were what I articulated just now. Although I used four languages and four spiritual systems to do so, each of these says similar things about similar things. Yet, despite similarities, the peopled earth split into four different segments along these lines because of the deadly desire in mankind to negate the simple truth that the sum lot of all of us is, pretty much, the same. By the desire to think that individuality is an asset greater than collectiveness. Over the last four hundred years, when diverse peoples came together, instead of connecting, they clashed. They fought and killed for the right to establish, strangely, absolute truth in terms of subjective world views. Yet, there is no indication whatsoever in the four facets of truth I mentioned that they could be established by force. So, the denominations and religions are not of the truth but despite it. They are constructs of mankind and man is fallible. Man fails and man has, failed. The proof is that we are collectively teetering on the brink of death despite our earnest belief that we, alone, by our individualistic, flawed ideas of right and wrong will be saved. We are so far removed from the truth that we are not even dimly aware of the root causes of our diverse, variable schisms.

But this way madness lies. This way must change. Our union here today is a statement of intent and a prayer for the greater union of peoples. To bring us all together under  empirical truth and not separate us on subjective perceptions of it based on denominations. The Celtic shield motif you see behind us and on all the tables is the one engraved on the primary rings we exchanged. The rope work upon it, creating hearts upon armor is an unbroken continuity symbolizing unity. Her's was made  by a Sri Lankan artisan. Mine was made in Ireland by a couple steeped in the lore of wiccan and pagan sensibilities. The soundness of those sensibilities, the world is increasingly accepting via a tortuous route through science. Behind us the shield hangs on a GI pipe set in concrete. It is made symbolically of materials used for construction and must serve as our poruwa. The shield is for protection. The ancient Celtic spiritual traditions did not use symbols of aggression but rather of defense. The four segments stand for the link between the four elements of earth, water, fire and air. But they also stand for the link between the four great spiritual leaders whose truths have stood for ages. The secondary rings we exchanged contain the Star of David, symbolizing external and internal union. 

Important they are but in the end, they are but symbols of something greater that needs to be proven on the ground. And here, honoring us with their presence today, are a small group of people who have done so. Thirty two of the most farsighted, most uniquely talented, most intellectually insightful members of our country are here to witness our marriage. In our association, ever have we seen that connect with truth  in your dealings with the people around you. Truly, we are lucky to call you our closest friends. Hailing from all religions and all races that have existed in harmony in our nation, we are aware of the greater union among us all as the two of us pledge our fealty to each other.

Union is a good place to start defending truth. Truth is a good place to start defending union.

Sincerely, we thank you once again for being our whole world. Sincerely we thank you for being the whole world.

We treated our guests to spirituality, spirits and song as both our duty and our grateful thanks for their presence in our lives

Then we drank. Then we sang. Then we ate. In no particular order. Did I sing Billy Joel’s Summer Highland Falls? I cannot remember but that song hung over us and that boathouse like a spiritual halo. I definitely know that young Oshani sang the Circle of Life for us and that was a real halo. Then it was not time to go home. Then it was over. 

Vultural cultoorists

“Sri Lanka has a rich cultural heritage” is an oft heard cliché among certain segments of society. It is a catchall used to describe something that is understood but vaguely if it is understood at all.  Else it is used as a defense of a country found wanting in things other than culture or heritage. Sometimes it is a heading for sections of tastily decorated brochures screaming weird looking masks, dancers, implements and such truck at people who are outsiders who want a quick look-in.

That last is important. It is a phrase useful only to foreigners and not all foreigners are non-Sri Lankans. Cultural heritage is the physical materials and their means of creation together with the intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations.  So, its relevance is only for those Sri Lankans whose lives are bound up, interlaced and glued together by it. For them, it is a living, slow changing, constantly referenced reality without which the very reason for their existence ceases to be.

Those who like to use the phrase “Sri Lanka has a rich cultural heritage” like to think of it either as art or as artifact. They are, without exception, discomfited, irritated, angry and scared when confronted by the living, continuing, growing fact of culture and heritage, taken either separately or together.  They, without exception, want it dead.

What the &%NM!*?????? The horse belongs in a
Hindu Kovil not a Colombo band stand

Who is this charming bunch of fellows who would like to see our culture, our heritage as a has been instead of as an is?

The first group is that set of moneyed, urban wayfarers with negligible stock in terms of either roots or geographic belonging.  Not very significantly, they also hold Sri Lankan passports. For them, ownership of a heritage artifact gives them a sense of superiority in their social circles and bragging rights over their peers via a kind of self-validated illusion of insight into culture. It creates a veneer of the fashionable rustic. It provides credence for their delusional identification with Sri Lankan nationality.

For them, the rarity of cultural objects or their unusualness are the key factors. This means that if a given heritage facet is no longer living, the worth of its residue increases. If traditional farming societies ceases to exist then the search for the implements used by those societies by these blokes is comparable to sharks after blood. If the hoary old Hindu temples in the north are gone, then the ancient idols and effigies at which hundreds of thousands of the faithful worshiped over millenia become must haves.

The second group is that layer of middle classes, newly prominent glitterati and nouveau riche hailing from urban backgrounds with no idea where they belong, who they belong to, what they belong to. These try to buy themselves a cultural identity through carefully worded lies. “I used to run across the niyara to school as a child and took my meals off a nelum kole” such a one could be heard saying with a pride matched only by its hollowness. “You know, our ancestral name was Manabharana Parakramabahu but that is such a jawbreaker darling? And  Sandra going to school in the USA and everything? W e made the hard choice to use our great-aunt’s surname John” croons another.Ask the first why the midday meal served to a farmer in his field is called the ambula or ask the second who the hell Manabharana was… ? heh!

For these, who do not or cannot own artifacts, the problem reduces to inventing artifactoids - preferably rooted in the aristocracies of the Govi Gama or Vellalar.

The third group are at present a relative minority. They are irksome now but possibly very dangerous in the future. These are the through-and-through Sri Lankans who believe everything Sri Lankan is beneath them.  At least their accents and supposed ignorance of the vocabulary seems to indicate this. They  are hilarious. When they speak, they sound like members of a small Central African tribe who have been speaking Sinhalese or Tamil for a week while having a continuously upset stomach by being force fed indiappa.

The incongruity of a traditional grain storage facility in the foyer of a five star hotel or the presence of a wooden sculpture of a sacred cow in the garden of an upmarket restaurant has to be seen to be believed. The rasping jangling discord of some crackpot Sri Lankan ID-card holder complaining in the African tribal version of Tamil that she doesn't like eating idly vaday has to be heard to be believed. I mean, what are these dirthay boundahs thinking eh?

Well, they aren't thinking well but they were certainly thinking.  Here is what they think: “How can we kill off culture and heritage so that we can cannibalize the flotsam and jetsam to make a fashion statement with the culturally vacuous? How can we get every last water buffalo in a zoo? How can we convert every sacred ritual into a pageant suffused with bling? How can we make speaking broken, accent ridden Sinhala and Tamil fashionable?” In short, “How can we ridicule this stable, deep, even life-system that was hundreds of years in the making in order to give validity to our fluff and glitz alternative which has a history of a decade?”

The plan then is clear. They will make ridiculing and belittling our living culture and heritage as fashionable as acquiring the remnants of it. If marketed well, critical mass can be achieved and there would be a wholesale turning of the people from that which sustained them to that which will eventually kill them and their ways. It will also pave the way for these literal culture-vultures to engage in a carrion feeding frenzy. They can also satisfactorily rub their bloated bellies and say “Sri Lanka used to have a rich cultural heritage but all that is left are these valuable little somethings that I, being such a home grown Sri Lankan, want to preserve before even this is gone forever”. Or they can say "This nagula belonged to my great-great-grandfather. He was a great rate mahaththaya in Gampola you know?" or they can say "Oh thank god that mad culture is gone. Finally, we can feel secure in our vapidness"

Hrmph!

Well folks, if you are part of our living heritage, our living culture, then, the next time you see part of the fact-of-life of that history mounted or displayed as art, artifact or artifactoid, go to the police. That has become quite the fashion these days you see. Hit the nearest police station and lodge a complaint on behalf of Sri lanka’s living heritage and the people of Sri Lanka who may or may not hold a Sri Lankan passport but who are all worthy of being called by that name. Tell them that a set of mass murderers has been killing both of these off for years. Talk to the TV channels. Get the message out via gossipy FB posts all flush with photos. Make sure, fashionably, that the culprits are brought to book.

These පොල්කුඩු සුද්දාs with the හිරමන  accent එක and the හොර වස්තු belong in හිරේ, නේද dear?

(Subsequent to this being published, friend Mihiri Weerasena said this to me: "Dear Arjuna,  About your article 'Vultural Cultoorists': Do you know that feeling when you read something and it feels as if you're reading a solidification of half-thoughts that you've always had on the subject. You kidnapped my brain children before they were born. I might sue you for pre-intellectual plagiarism".

I am mortified but I acknowledge her mental contribution. Those amongst you who would like to know more about psychic  triggering, please, join up - I do classes on the subject via sky-pee. *winks*)

Music … as something that matters

Lets start this slow and build it up shall we? A bit of background, a bit observation to setup for things that matter more...

There are many ways in which the story of a nation can be encapsulated.  Art, dance, words, music, architecture have all been used through varied processes of distillation with varying degrees of impact to give us everything from small experience-capsules to great swaths of place-time massed in tiered temporal silos.

The story of Sri Lanka, its people, its places, its lives, its livelihoods, its loves, its tragedies… These have been most evocatively captured by its folk song or jana gee. Why we make that distinction is beyond me for all “gee” is pretty much “jana” regardless of where that sinduwa (song) or prajaava (community)  hailed from.  Regardless of phrase roots, in Sri Lanka it has remained almost unchanged in form, meter and style for a couple dozen centuries.

Right at the other end of the spectrum of musical expression of life, sits jazz. It is a musical form that is impossible to pin down and indeed, no one tries to do so either – not even its most famous practitioners. As one of its exponents, J.J. Johnson said “Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and never will”. I would hazard a vague definition for it as “a careful construct of lines, tangents, arguments, hyperboles, capitulations and recaps thoughtfully and lovingly drawn out of a limited number of musical plots”.

Alright. That should do for setup.

Now here is an intriguing thought. What happens if we mix jazz with jana gee? What happens if we put the unstable and the stable together?

That depends. It depends on who is mixing them, how they mix them and who gets to taste it afterwords.

 If you add floodwater to still water, you get a muddy mix you cannot see through. Add fire to it and you get a choking steam.  Sodium will give you an explosion that takes your head off. Oil will separate from it while salt will painlessly dissolve into brine. Minerals will make it tastier. None of these are either good or bad but can be either life-giving or life-terminating, either espoused or rejected, either loved or hated at a highly personal level. Jazz, by its irritability, its persnickety, its individuality and its essential collectivity can bring any and all of these to jana gee either singly or in combinations.

We are then on dangerously unstable ground, and it would take a seriously insightful set of minds to ensure that we don’t sinkhole as a result. A gathering of hearts capable of something not entirely unlike magic.

Dr. Sumudi Suraweera

The Serendib Sorcerers, a group of creative musicians from Music Matters, an institute of music that introduces western music to Sri Lanka through a process where the essence of human creativity is given precedence, did exactly this with its debut album, Jana Gee Reworked, launched recently at a concert at Gallery 706 where they performed material from the album among other works. The ensemble were all teachers cum creative artists from Music Matters and had Madhavi Shilpadipathi (vocals), Derek Beckvold on the alto sax, Sarani Perera on guitar, Issac Smith on double bass and Dr. Sumudi Suraweera on drums. Eshantha Peiris, who, along with Dr. Suraweera co-founded Music Matters and worked on this album, was unfortunately overseas on the day of the performance so we missed his violin.

Talented they are. Brave are they. These people. You see, jazz is an acquired taste for most and particularly for Sri Lankans while Sri Lanka’s folk music has become something of an artifact.

Consider: It is an age of texts, snaps and gossipy short chat where “janathaava” is determined by the number of hurried “likes” of things one sees for a second on a smartphone. A time where "sinduwa" is not, unless it is in binary form and drowning in diabetes-inducing sugar-sweet major-minor cadences and where jazz means something only because it sounds like a term used to measure the number of sex partners one has made it with. An era where everything useful has to make sense to Neanderthals or lower for that is all we are now capable of assimilating as a race.  A sociology where anything that is more complex than 1+1=2 is to be discarded immediately with the phrase “can’t be bothered” which is an abbreviation of the phrase “I am dumb, I do not wish to appear to be dumb, therefore, I will reject anything and everything that proves that I am dumb, so that I can continue to be dumb and run with the rest of the dumb”

.  

Yet, these sorcerers deigned to defy the dime-a-dozen, cookie-cutter status-quo of aesthetic appreciation with something disarmingly simple, yet deviously rich in the insight, understanding, skill, effort, thought and love that have obviously gone into it. They've done something that mattered for a society in flux with their living musical aesthetic.

Eshantha Peiris

Else, how can one make an acoustic drum kit sound like a battery of geta bera and thammattam? How can one possibly imagine the overtone projection of a raw, rural, Sinhalese woman farmer’s voice despite the clear indications of a throat trained for different musics in alternate climes? How else can a New Zealander thrum a drum like the vigorous rubbing of the velum of a yak bere on a double-bass or an American sound a horanewa on a sax?  How would it be possible to seamlessly connect western musicological sensibilities into those of rural Sri Lanka? How else can one take the four-tone wail of a jana gee and interleave it with magics that are multifarious in origin and still manage to preserve the cultural evenness of the one and the improvisational tradition of the other while dotting the tapestries with a myriad of futures, a multiplicity of possibilities?

It takes a group of integrated human beings to swing that let me tell you. It takes a lot of presence in the here-and-now to be able to mesh these things together without fusing them into an unpalatable brine. It takes, um… how should I put this: “significant capabilities to make oil behave like salt and salt behave like oil in their intermix with water”. It is easy to fuse and I hate fusing things because they destroy the elemental base of the separate parts. It is not that easy to connect, to entwine. Quite refreshingly, the sorcerers have managed to do that. It took them a year. That’s how long it took. This was certainly not an exercise aimed at emotional convenience, financial expedience, the rhubarb of the music industry, the quick-fix shallowness of pop culture. Rather, it is a series of studies of great musical empathy with societies and stories in the plural, the multicultural, the multi-traditional.

Serendib Sorcerers at their album launch concert at Gallery 706

Should I walk you through each of the tracks? Give you mini-biographies on the artists perhaps? Maybe say something smart and silly about this riff, that progression, the other solo? no!  no no no and again no! The compositions should trigger things in the minds, hearts and passions of individuals at an individual level. For that, go now and buy the album. I guarantee you that the thousand bucks (equivalent to 1 ½ packs of cigarettes or ½ of a decent meal, or eight beers or a bottle of cheap booze) will be spent towards opening a different window onto the same familiar countryside. A more esoteric view that has the potency to become increasingly commonplace as each one of us cracks that window open and stares out because we want to, not because some nutjob is telling us to.

Derek Beckvold, Sarani Perera and Issac Smith

At the end of the concert experience, enhanced by wine, my lady and a rare song, I picked up the album. When I got home, I flipped open the cover. Me: “What’s this? A shiny line of gum across the inner side? Oh… love? Can you give me a hand here … the CD seems to be stuck inside…?” She:  (less drunk than I am) “I think it’s glued to the cover”. Me: Ah, yes… yesss… good, let me tear it apart to get at it… there… there we have it” She: (smiles) Didn’t they say that the band had put the CD covers together themselves?” Me: yes… a lot of love, a lot of glue (grins).

It takes both to create the brilliant, simple musical joy that was made that night. It takes a bit of work to get to its heart. Like handmade, love tooled albums and their covers.  Like Jazz.

Good people? Make the effort. Serendib Sorcerers? Salute! 

The New Year

(This was written almost 14 years ago in 2001 where the mad juxtaposition of a "new year"with a presidential election triggered the thoughts. Just as appropriate today I suppose.)

The New Year

It is coming up. “Always be thou in that state” is my fond hope and wish for every single type and form of New Year. Coming up. For those of us that believe in being tired enough after a year of not shopping to actually go out and start a feeding frenzy at the various boutiques and booths that spring up around this time in anticipation, there is always Avurudu[1] For those that believe that the New Year dawns only as often as every next election there is the next election to keep them happy. This time around, by wonderful coincidence these two events are happening around the same time. That racket should be awesome! 

On the one hand politicians of all sizes, symbols, colors and promises are swearing us a perpetual New Year beginning when they get elected. On the other, the stars tell us that its time to crack out the crackers. Both talk bunkum in loud voices and both leave a bad taste in the mouth once they have come up and gone. And, both cause massive hemorrhage in our financial organs be they macro-economic or micro-wallet. I myself would have rather had both the astrological and political New Year in a suspended state of “coming up”. We can all live with a vague question mark exclamation point combo-symbol hanging in the air, do nothing much, earn nothing much, have an alternative to weather as a way to open conversations with strangers and blame all of everything on the stars flying through the sky and those perambulating on the ground.

Having said that, well, the poem below the two following paragraphs is not about any of that. It’s about puppy love and I have tried to get that point across without quite succeeding. Be that is it may, it still remains one of my personal favorites.

I had taken the curve towards Nugegoda supermarket junction (from the Bo-tree junction into Stanley Tillekeratne Road that is), when I happened to notice an emaciated old man seated on the ground on the side of the road and flashed him a smile. He smiled back at me and said “Mahaththayage shirt eka hari lassanay[2]  ”. I removed it and gave it to him. Don’t ask me what the shirt looked like because frankly, I can’t remember. I simply lost track of it the moment it left my hand. He accepted it with grace. I was not ecstatic but maybe content that the balance of universal need, desire, worth, worthiness and ownership was restored in a small sense? We gifted each other one more pair of smiles in parting and I was on my way to the best, which was yet to come, just about twenty feet down from there.

Those twenty feet took me to where the church is you know? On the left, that cream colored building? Attired in faded jeans and skin from the waist up and I see this dog. Mange ridden to the point that his skin was gray but gosh! with the most expressively beautiful eyes I’d ever seen in a canine. I bent down to stroke his head for his eyes were saying “welcome” so invitingly and one thing led to another so we decided to sit down in the middle of the pavement to discuss all of that a bit further and this conversation I record took place amidst the cacophony of the Avurudu shoppers.

 New ‘ear 2001 - Nugegoda

(dunno why the doggerel said hi to me...maybe he says hi to everyone...maybe I smell bad enough for him... who knows...god and I both know we burn...for the chance hi's that come our ways...lil fella...I return courtesy with courtesy and pause to say hi to him in turn...he turns with a slow shake of head...I imitate him...we both got nothing worse to do...and nothing less to loose...but the waves of screams and waves of be-fabricked humanity that overwhelm us both...he lies down in the center of unattraction...in the middle of wherefrom to whereafter...across from the church of light and hope...beneath the rain and grime and smoke...I stop and raise me eyes ta really see...I think its a kewl place ta be... I grin boyishly at him and he grins back and winks at my  dishonesty... I am not....young... or ever needed ta be...) 

...and the insides of their homes

need spots of newness

to cover the drabness

encasing the fabric of their souls.

the fabric of their clothes 

oozes too much of the

the slime of their innards...

after all

a year is a long time

for pieces of cloth

to hide the stink

of mouldy bodyparts

and rotting minds...

(pooch sits by my feet in all his mangy glory ... I like the lil fella...he got no fabric covering *his* bare skin ... he don't mind...and he don't mind that I don't mind... like I said...I like the dude so I sit beside him and light up a fag and he sneezes in mild rebuff ... but I just lost the shirt on me back and he don't object that I got no fabric ta cover *my* skin ... he just don’t like smokers is all and we strike a compromise...he licks at the sweat...trickling down me leg... and I blow smoke in his eye ...he makes like  "snewfff...snewfff" at periodic intervals and I sympathize and make like "ick... ick" in syncopated time...works ...I lay me palm upon his head... he licks me hand and smiles...I smile back in holy communion...we exchange narco-tine and tar-nine...synched and pated in time…and return vague attention to the raucous mime ...)

...so the insides of their homes

unable to bear the stench

spit them out once a year...

desperate nostrils flaring,

clawing the air

with insane sucks,

sniffing, sniffing

that next bargain 

sweet things cheap

cheap things sweet.

(Pooch don't like the shirt seller...I know he surely bites his arse from time to time...he got that look in his eye...and the painful wheeze as he nurses bruised ribs as he breathes...and the shirt seller got this scar on the fabric of his pants...he glares in supportive evidence and seethes...there's an adult buried in a booth full o' slippers...with his head buried in a children's book. with a fish on the cover…eh? Flipper? ...maybe he burying in his past…maybe he learning children…maybe he learning his self…but wait! …hold up…he got it wrong…the book is wrong side up… he shielding his self as the rain slips down…oh lordy lordy…he’s flipped the por flipper…  I laugh and point out the slipper seller... to the lil fella...he gives him a reverent look ... I giggle knowingly... he smiles benignly...ya brother o'mine...I tickle his chin...he doon national dooty he is...we bow to him once in unison... his brand says "omega"... we look for the last word… we look for each other...we shake each others heads...and get back to the smoke and saliva)

They turn within without 

screaming over the rest of the screamers

as they are screamed at by yet other screamers

who wear slippers on their hands

bought half price from the lil fella's hero

selling shirts at half price

to women bearing husbands at full price

and screaming children at full board and lodging only

no love here at all...

just desperate hands clapping slippers

and screamers

outside in... upside down ... inside out ... UGH!

(and so this frothing sea of insanity…parts in waves around our island of humanity…and bumps into each other…rather than give either of us any bother…shoots us frightened glances…rather than smile and take their chances…unable to give me the benefit of their lies…they avoid mine and look instead in the doggerel’s eyes…maybe they think my look is  worse than his sight…maybe they think my bark is worse than his bite…maybe they’ve given it all they got…maybe they are terrified of what they are not…maybe they are just too tired…and perfumed and wired…who knows…they don’t…I care…they won’t…they stare…and I too agree with them on this…and stare …until human foot falls inches from his snout...I cover me eyes...pooch merely barks..."BEEEEEEF"...me opens me eyes kinda careful like... holy shit… he barks in soprano...oh mah gawwwwwd..."BOOOOOF" I mimic him in bass and we exchange startled looks...I make like a sneeze and he makes like a wheeze...I grab his ear...point it to a human paw armed with a slipper..."go on dude...take the slipper  and run...go on...get some fun"...he gives me the "areyanuttersorareyajustinsane" look...I return that by giving him a back rub...he don't like it...he got bruised ribs ta nurse I remember...dang...I mumble sorries and he whispers no-probbies...then he snarls at me...I make like "whatthefuck"...he gives me the "nahhhhh" sneer...I back off... we sniff each other from a distance...i smell honest dog... he smells dishonest nicotine...we decide to respect each other...whew...i want me arse intact ... don't mind the fabric ... just the rear...end...i think he decides that he likes his space…I decide ta abide by his decision...and whimper off a foot or three and hop on the church steps ta pace...he staggers ta his feet...we smile boyishly at each other... and grin at our mutual dishonesty...we are neither... young... nor need ta be)  

what a mess ... poor nation o'mine

they toss non-money at non-entities

they toss signs upon hearts

they toss crosses upon ballot papers

they toss life at lust and sin

they vote their innards a new beginning...

they vote the new year in ...

the old government votes them in...

they yay for assault and plunder

and claps and screams and thunder

and homes, new years and fame

and fear and fall and shame...

I giggle again

and tongue the pain

as pooch registers his vote

in golden honesty

against a lamppost...

along the lines of rain.

(the lil fella blinks at me...I return the salute...he gives me sorry-sorry looks and walks off...I give him so-long-'ol-fren looks and slink off...we knows where each of us be goin’...him to wash the nicotine off his bare skin and shine... me to lick the spit from off of mine and pine)

                                                                                    (Pagoda, Nugegoda, April 2001)

Please don’t piss me off by not liking that one. At least, it was a rare moment in my life when I managed to network myself into a comfortable position with real things and beings? I am begging your indulgence here friends. Please. It’s this this-here kick-ass reality I am talking about. God knows I’ve had problems coming to terms with it and am rather proud of myself on the few occasions that I do. Now, the virtual variety of reality is something else again. I have no problems with that at all. If you ever met me online you would not have found me begging for indulgence - or anything else for that matter. There, networking is easier and no one needs to convert a sidewalk into a sitting room in order to achieve it.

---

[1] The Sinhalese and Tamil New Year which happens around the 14^th of April – the transition of the Sun from Pisces to Ares

[2] Sir, your shirt is very nice