singingmice

[singingmice]

energy & how water moves,

[I’ve not done much I’ve loved too little And I’m tired of running] - Frank O’Hara, from ‘Lines Across the United States’, Poems Retrieved Tin, It's past midday, Energy has been low for a while and I tell myself, is it just - to go more slowly, or is that - death shows its shadow and shows us what it is not to live? I try to go deep, but energy dictates everything. One wants to run down the mountain but moves like a sloth, turning the pages of a rain drenched book, an old rusted train unused for centuries. Then I think: spirit wants me back. Nature calls for me. It's there one must go rather than the endless productivity that dictates our times. Perhaps it is not the time for finishing writing, instead to clear through...to open up after this last year and a half of constraints, of collective fear and hesitation. I remember how water calms. I've been spending time recently with those who struggle to notice or appreciate poetry. Os spends most of her time inside or at work and there she is content. I cannot name where our attraction to each other came from, but feel a little foolish for it now. Perhaps loneliness accumulates. Perhaps one sometimes goes exactly in the direction where one is not heading in order, for the millionth time, to know what it is that one needs. I don't understand her at all, or perhaps I do, and this worries me more. The mechanisms of comfort, of predictability - ways to ward off the chaos that attacks us from all angles. And in that ruin, I find strength, and in it - she cleans and scrubs and tidies away that which can creep in unexpectedly. I led a yoga session yesterday and she said, "I feel nothing" and my heart sank. "Mr Duffy lived a short distance away from his body..." - James Joyce But I had missed / being held. And I've been with C in the north of Catalonia, who's living beside a large lake. At least with him we've been heading out to nature, having emotional talks at night. But I confess I miss literature. I miss the challenge to intellect. There is so much safety, routine...soon, I tell myself. Soon all of that will disappear and for the next month slow travels will await. Hiking, meeting some friends. You, snorkelling. How is it to live so close to such a vibrant sea? Have you noticed differences over the years of the life that can be found there? I went to the sea last week with C. Speedboats everywhere. Back on the island where I've been living since April it's much better for wilderness areas, but even then - boats everywhere. I long for a sea too rough for sailing, or too cold, too unpredictable. What happened with your March? We have much to catch up on... I often make Kombucha just with like it is, but sometimes add things like mint. I find it interesting to experiment with the kinds of tea... Fear. There is so much of it everywhere. I will have to go far, far from the city to get away from it. Here in Barcelona I feel it immediately. It's far different from the lake where C lives. I suppose it's my first direct confrontation with it. Fear attacks the immune system, the health inside, all the good we carry. Survival instinct kicks in, but when it never has an off button, because it's constant - exhaustion comes. I've been doing a lot of breath work the last months. It's helped a lot, though I have to be careful to keep up with it while travelling, as it's easy to resist all kinds of routine when away from it. Sometimes I just focus on releasing all the poison from the body and mind with the outbreath. The longer I can go the better. But I feel time also slipping away, as if all this period of inactivity...events to separate the days - brings time into a collective soup of which is there is little escape routes. The lentils cling to us and then there is no way out. The spontaneous is more important than ever but can that be forgotten, or is there some secret stash of the wild left in all beings? Those monitoring lizards are crafty...here it's bats, instead. The stories that best serve us... Perhaps it is just those that go towards

understanding, wisdom. But how to select them? I'm reading a book of a man's walk across Afghanistan currently. I found it in the garage of C of books travellers had left. I walk in the streets of Barcelona and see donkeys and deserts. Perhaps there is little worthwhile news stories, and what has worth is the personal, the way back to our origins, to the nests of where we belong. And breath, the body, the wind, gleaming eyes, animals. The rest - media seems to be stronger and stronger and leaves me weak. Little by little, disentangling, giving it up... My heart would be full of underground passages, some accessible, some not so much. C told me that I'm so much more open about my past than we last met seven years ago, on the way down to Morocco in his camper van. That I speak of my childhood without hesitation, of my father and the darkness there that envelopes. I keep reminding myself of gratitude. It helps a lot. My brother is becoming an ordained Hindu monk next week. It's like getting married / only to an elephant god (amongst others) rather than to another person. Been doing a lot of ancestral work recently, of the past - but I'm somewhat allergic to people romanticising the ancestors. For some of it - this is where trauma gets passed down - all the unresolved - the conflicts, the turned away from, that which is repelled. I for one am not particularly proud of my blood...but it's good to imagine some that are. I prefer, when offering a drink to the land, for it to be pachamama and not my ancestors, who likely had enough alcohol in life and don't need it in death too. You're in rain season now? On the island there are continuous floods even in summer. The lands are changing and people refuse to believe it. For years it brought me great despair to witness the extinctions, the loss of habitat. Somehow now, though the sadness and despair still remains - it almost rejoices, for perhaps now people finally realise. And we will not be forever. And some beings can take our place, and perhaps they will take better care... Well, a hug. One last day in the city, and more and more it makes less sense. Jass

[singingmice]

With feathers, with hands

Where do I even begin, my friend?

I cycled a lot in February and even snorkeled for most of the day on the 15th. Yes, I remember the exact date because, after a long time, I was back in Mama Ocean’s heart. The weather was perfect. It was made for soaking oneself in the depths of the sea and really meet all the glorious fish and bizarre-looking corals and weeds. The gentle waves made the sunlight pass through the waters magically – refracting the soft beams, scattering it on the skin like a reunion with the cosmos. For a moment, no science, just spirit. March was difficult and I'll tell you more about it next time. One thing I can say now is this: forgiveness is a profound journey.

How does your kombucha taste? What fruits do you add to it? I have water kefir. A bottle with ginger and lemongrass, another with slices of mangoes. M loves the one with mangoes. A, the woman I buy the fruit from recently had a haircut, so we talked about it for a couple of days. Her daughters help her out in their little fruit stand. We have warm small talks – usually about avocados. I enjoy it - anyways, what is small or big when you truly put your hearts at the center of the dialogue? As for the kefir grains, they were given to me from a beautiful wooden house surrounded by tall grasses, scented by sampaguita flowers, and lulled by so many birds you can ever imagine.

“There are snakes and monitor lizards around, too.”

T walks around telling us about how and why fear is being fed to us 24/7 nowadays. “We will all die at some point. I will let my body handle it.”

--

Hmmmm I have never used a wake-up alarm for more than ten years. My body does not like it anymore. It has become very unnatural. No judgment for those who find it useful though. I used to live with it: 4 AM for a big bus ride to work in the city. 6 PM to leave my desk and stop browsing online at the office so I could commute to the bus terminal and make it home by 8 PM. As a university student, I would place my analog phone near my ear so I could keep up with the schedule. Now, the birds sing as I open my eyes in the morning. I stand up and flap my arms to feel my own feathers and dance to their songs.

I do remember the fires in Australia, and I did notice how eventually people stopped talking about them. Isn’t it like that with the mainstream media? Control and attention shape man’s modern life. So, how do you raise your awareness higher? How do you awaken your consciousness? Do stories fold themselves into eternal fabrics of memory, then you arrange them in your being? How do you pick the stories that serve you best? So many questions.

I guess people have forgotten the power of their primal spirit. The one that communicates with the elements and honors our Land. The one that weaves stories with the moss and flowers, monsoons and wolves. My father recently told me about how the younger generation cannot even name trees anymore. He rarely shares this kind of thing, Jasss. He is quiet when sober. Every evening, he makes a bonfire in their front yard and drinks whisky alone. The big tree bathes in all the smoke. I go near him when he drinks more, and then we talk a lot. He tells me about his childhood and our ancestors. Vivid descriptions of the good and bad characteristics, but whenever he gets to the part that they have already passed, he would take another shot.

When men drink in a circle here, one of them pours some of the liquor into the cap and throws it away to the soil. “For our ancestors!”

--

You have always been open about how losses and partings really break your heart. If you are to doodle your heart right now, will it still have a degree of wholeness? How does it look like on paper and pencil? I read that you also miss being held. As for me, I miss being surprised by serendipitous human encounters.

--

Ah, my home has a grateful eye for the sunrise, my heart grew bigger hands that touch natural materials and create poems in the form of installations, decors, hot food, and live beverages.

I opened my mouth, and I did not chirp, but hummed a song called “A Circumnavigation”.

Thank you for your life, my dear Jasss.

Tin

PS

The flowering desert makes me tear up. Sometimes the seeds that were left on my planet many years ago, just sprout on a quiet solitary moment/ intense joyful second, and resonance fills me from fingertips to goosebumps.

[singingmice]

story telling and the flowering desert,

[There's this thing called progress. But it doesn't progress, it doesn't go anywhere...It's progress if you can stop the world slipping away.] - Graham Swift, Waterlands Tin, Drinking home made kombucha on a bright and beautiful late winter morning while listening to my morning playlist. I woke early, two hours before my alarm and listened to an Aboriginal essay about the end times and the power of story telling and our relationship to the land within climate disintegration and destruction. Do you remember Australia burning and how terrible it was and then...everybody stopped speaking of it? Everything terrible is replaced by another news item eventually. Then I think of story telling and how important this is to repair us, somehow. To join us back together to that of which we've become separated from. I think of the story I lived within the last weeks (the wreckage is you & the jungle chickens) - that there's still something there that I missed, something at the core, something so obvious that I moved straight past it. Sometimes I feel like this is a huge chunk of my life, sleepwalking past the roots that I've been searching for all of my days. There's something very simple that is almost... irritating about aboriginal stories...but that which finds a way, once I slow down, to go in deeper than other tales. I remind myself that stories are not only just of the words...but of the essence...how words flap their wings towards us. Yes, the police came. They found a snowman with a bellpepper head tied down to the bed, speaking in tongues, coming to consciousness now then and asking..."what have we done to the lands? What is the price of civilisation?" I was walking in the mountains on Saturday cursing the villages and men burning branches by the side of the path. Another hallucination I had thought, but no, they too were real. I thought of how villages are somehow separated from the nature that they are built within here. This great loss of contact with the elements. I spend so much time in front of screens these days with classes. I have three weeks left till I have to beat it out of Europe for my visa. I was in the jungle when it all changed, when my country floated away from the continent. They didn't know that it would happen so fast. Now it's almost unreachable even by motor aeroplanes. They say it takes lifetimes to arrive there. There is a rumour, though, that paper aeroplanes still arrive on the winds. Somehow the resistance is less. Coconuts...how I yearn for them... Why do we drink our lives away? Why do we numb? What pain is so great that we cover our lives up so that they can't be felt any longer?

My brother once researched our ancestors. Perhaps I'll speak to him one of it again soon. But I must be aware that we romanticise the ancestors. Our grandmother spent all her life trying to live like the queen, but drank liquor before midday when nobody was watching. Maybe the queen does too. Who knows. Perhaps I go to the mountains this week with a new friend. Her mother will be there too. F knows I am leaving soon. We are navigating this closeness and upcoming loss. So many losses. I am always leaving. One day, perhaps, a sea will be found where the waves will welcome me home. How is your home, inside? What does your heart cook for you these days? What birdsongs arise from your throat? Warm and tight hugs, Jass

Photo : Atacama Desert, Chile. After almost 7 years of having no rain throughout the region, massive downpours in March caused pink mallow flowers and 200 other plant species to bloom. The phenomenon, in which dormant seeds come to life after rainfall events, is called ‘desierto florido’ or translated as ‘flowering desert’.

[singingmice]

Altar of wildflowers

Awww Jass!

Did the police officers find roasted bell peppers and a snow cave man in your room?

One of my uncles was a policeman. At some point he got promoted as the chief in one municipality...but not too long after, he told me he was retiring early. Sleep became evasive for him, and he frequently visited the hospital. He took both as messages of rest and going back to the Land. Power is not the answer all the time.

I find it funny that they find you weird because I have always felt you are one of the most rooted people I have ever met. Rooted in your level of naivety and freedom. Rooted in your introspection. Rooted in social justice. It gets frightening sometimes when there are people who find authentic simplicity and pure-heartedness strange and dangerous.

And the bitter lady, she is not new to me. I used to be victimized by angry, jealous, and bitter people. I allowed them to. Oftentimes, half-hearted routines do this to us - we become calloused with the repetition and lose our imagination - we project our insecurities to others and blame them when they shine or giggle or daydream.

Is there a nearby mountain that you can befriend these days? Or everything is covered with snow still?

Where were you when your country left the continent? What were your initial feelings? My country has felt Mother-less for a long while now. With this pandemic, I sometimes think how the mothers working abroad cope with all of these. They have left their children here - in the islands, in sleepy foothills, in slums, in places reclaimed by ornamental plants. The children are expected to study and learn from modules and online platforms. Then, there’s TikTok.

On a recent visit to the cove I love, we bathe in the rain, we cooked food from wood we gathered and we laughed so hard our jaws almost unhinged themselves from our mouths. The wilderness offer the most magnificent and strangest sounds. I heard a bird that sounded like an newborn child. Then, we met a young man who climbed the coconut tree in a matter of seconds to get some fresh fruit.

“My Father died when I was very young. He and his friend were drunk and they were smashed by a ten-wheeler truck.”

He laughed while sharing about this.

I wonder if it’s a kind of defense mechanism. Hmmmm maybe those who need to survive, need to move forward faster.

I have been cooking a lot, too. Mostly soups. I enjoy exploring the versatility of banana blossoms and cashew nuts. Two days ago, I started making our own cashew milk. I ache to get near the trees and thank them.

Animism was the core of our ancestors lives, Jass.

They used to make natural altars and offered food to the spirits. Some offered blood.

I talk to the spirits through an altar of wildflowers. They seem to listen to my prayer: “I am inviting love to find a permanent home in me.”

What were your ancestors like? Have you ever tried to find out?

My maternal grandfather was raised by the tides. Maybe that’s why, like now, when I am sitting longer than I want to, I feel the sand on my toes. Then, I get the urge to get up and drink water. 

Tin

[singingmice]

Writing To Spirits

[A little more than a hundred years ago, some moved farther out of the way - into the northern hills of what are now Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. They brought a distinctive script, based on Chinese characters and used for writing to spirits. As both refusal and acceptance of Chinese authority, the script is a neat expression of contaminated diversity: Mien are Chinese and not Chinese,] from The Mushroom at the End of the World : On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Tin, I’m fascinated by the concept of a script used for writing to spirits. As if this script itself must come from the contact with spirits themselves in order to be the guide for the writers to create it. 

Tonight was a strange night. There is something in all of these happenings that is saying : now is a time to gather strength. The storm is coming : I was nine minutes and forty six seconds into my workout that I do every day. That I’ve done for two months now. A knock on the door. I live in a studio above the old town. Above a woman who is rarely here. She’s from Serbia, has lived here for fifteen years and still doesn’t speak French. She has no interest. She has fifteen properties or so around the country, and in Spain. Nor does she speak Spanish. But she speaks German, and I can understand her. She’s at the door. She’s furious. She’s just noticed now that I’m exercising after two months of it. This happens to the bitter and lonely. Time swallows life and before you know it, suddenly there’s another thing to be bitter about. She is really very angry. She says it is not a gym. This is correct. They are all closed due to the pandemic. Go and break in rather than exercise here! I close the door. I begin again. I get another two minutes. She threatens me with the police. Tomorrow the police will be at the door, and they’ll have you put in jail! Instead I met them tonight, cycling in the snow. They pulled into a bicycle path, blocking my way. “Why are you stopping me?” I ask. “Because you’re strange,” one replies. “Why am I strange?” “You’re cycling in the snow.” I gaze up at the falling snow and wish to be taken up there with all the oddly shaped flakes. “Where do you sleep?” “I never sleep”, I say, without skipping a beat. “Why are these times so strange?” They ask me if I’d eaten today. Only the homeless cycle in the snow. I’d been gnawing at the sky all afternoon. I’ll be seeing them tomorrow, I guess, my studio full of snow and bell peppers.

I missed you. Yes. I caught an ecstatic laugh coming from the distance sometimes, in the last years, and it must’ve been yours. It is a miracle how much we are capable of surviving. Not only surviving, but coming out with poetry and truth. I’m very sensitive with what others are going through. I wonder if I would’ve been able to sense your inner worlds if we would’ve collided back then in a kitchen full of utensils. I like to sit inside sinks. Dipping your toes into the water... glowing plankton... I saw it for the first time in Andalusia two years ago, with someone very dear to me. I never thought I’d see it in person. Just as magical as seeing fireflies for the first time. We camped out there for two nights. I went back again a few more times, but never saw it again.

You know, I wrote the last letter coming from Granada. Years later, I would live there after years away travelling Latin America...how lines become interconnected... What would your spirit and characters script look like? The pandemic... it looks a lot like this. Being strange. Feeling strange. Looking out at the strange world and missing feeling it for myself instead of observing, reading...the fear the fear the fear. I fell in love. I broke into art colleges to watch films on giant projectors. I lived in a community where I was never alone. I moved to a studio where I was always alone. Then my country left the continent. As if it just broke away, sailed towards the arctic. I was sadder than perhaps I’ve ever been in. I missed people and wondered why I constantly go back and forth between extremes. Then I decided to become my new best friend. Sometimes we get along. Sometimes we fight. I better sleep. The police are coming soon, and I want to be awake enough to laugh at the situation. I’ve been missing the jungle a lot recently, as well as you in these eight years ;) I will ask the spirits how to find a little more strength and a little more self care. What would you ask them for? Big hugs, Jass

[singingmice]

A breath, an elliptical path

My dear Jass, 

Did I break your heart so bad as I disappeared for eight long years?

I tried sending a bird (specifically a Kingfisher) to let you know that sometimes, when I ached for very deep talks, I did think of you. I wonder if it ever found you while you were out dancing, or in a lucid dream... have you seen it perching on the eyelashes of your fellow hitchhiker?

Forgive me. 

Thank you.

I received your last letter that May of 2012. I could not remember anymore why I stopped writing you. It was never my intention to do it. Around that time, I decided to go back to my hometown after spending more than a year in the city (living almost alone in a big house which I made mention of in my last response) where in the middle of the night, I’d wake up because of panic attacks. It was a very dark time. I’d sit on the sofa near the balcony crying in fear and sorrow. I’d place my palm on my chest as it rose and sank; as my heart almost walked out from my body to find a clay jar or a haystack, and I’d try to calm down by saying a prayer or singing a song. The latter... hmmm I’d oftentimes stop myself from doing so because it made me feel more broken. It is a miracle how I survived, Jass. 

The kitchen was a place I liked a lot. So many utensils for a lonely girl. Knives never attracted me though. The faucet did a lot of crying with me. I also managed to host some Couchsurfers. No one from them ever sensed I was going through a lot - I assumed. Having one or two around made me feel like I was still able to feed the Curious Child within whose eyes were made for awe, whose breathlessness meant - honoring the magic. 

In December 2012, I began a very special relationship which I still continue to cultivate and grow with now. 

I could not remember anymore why I stopped writing you. I remember I had to buy my very first “smartphone” the following year for “work”. It honestly changed so many hand-centered things in my life - some for the good, others, the other way around. 

One of my fondest memories pre-smartphone was when we visited Agho Island. It was my third time there. The island is one of the smallest I have ever been to. I held the tabon birds in my arms, built a relationship with the bronze-skinned family living in a bamboo shack, and received healing from the lush mountains which surrounded it, as if creating a margin that guides the dreamer to the view of an infinite celestial island above. 

I had the urge to walk to the shore in the dimness of the evening. The waves created this soft lull, very calming, very hopeful. As I dipped my toe into the saltwater, it illuminated! It was nothing else I have ever experienced before. I reveled in that moment for a while. Taking in the enormity of wonder and surprise. Letting my smallness contain every emotion. I was very quiet, almost crying. Sometimes I celebrate and revere that way. 

Then, I decided to let my companions know. 

We were children. In bliss. A friend of mine even picked some windswept seaweed and brushed them on his face and he glowed. Ecstasy. 

Ahhhhh, now I feel all humbled and warm just by reminiscing. 

That moment was a gateway for me. I stepped into a space where I had no wounds. I realized so many life-giving beings (and moments) in our existence only appear in the lack of light. So, I read more about plankton. I read more about how they contribute in our breathing. And I looked back to all those nights when I had to sit alone in the darkest part of the house.

To breathe. 

How is it like where you are during this pandemic? What is keeping you alive?

I almost forgot I am writing you during such a strange and challenging time. Our elliptical path, still (as it has been), feels very very very safe. 

I missed you, my friend.

Hopeful,

Tin

[singingmice]

clocks in suits,

Tin,

I've been really, really blue. My eyes have fallen out and all of my feathers too. Constantly in need of drastic change like a fruit tree in the desert. I just can't leave this dry earth. But it can't be physical movement. Not now. Back from Granada in ruins. And ever since. Here we are, singing sad songs. Everyone around me is busy with their lives and has no time any more. Even the ones that complained of having too much time. Perhaps there are people capturing time. Have you ever read Momo, Tin? It's about these people. They wear suits. But time goes so fast. Half the time I pass wishing it away and the other half wishing it back. It's silly.

And my Spanish has combusted ever since the trip. I'm so disheartened that the wind could pick me up and take me away. But it won't no matter how hard I try. 

When I was in London, I would leave secret notes everywhere. Every day I would make up a different project for myself to do. But the notes was my favourite. I would write silly inspirational things like 'LIVE MORE even if you have no shoes'

/

I'm having my existential crisis again. It's horrible. I thought it wouldn't happen this time. It just crept up late.

Starting to read again although I have no books really to do this particular activity. Rosa gave me a book yesterday about conserving fruits and vegetables. It's for househusbands and wives. I don't think it will soothe my need for literature but perhaps I can learn how to shut a jar real tight.

I have to decide what to do for this summer and I'm real anxious.  How are you, Tin?

Tight hugs,Jass 

[singingmice]

that feeling when you are alone in a house with 4 rooms

Hi Jasss,

It took me sometime to write you back, but I kind of like it that way. Slow things. Like snail mails. I remember how my Father waited for my Mom's via par avon envelopes. I would find those old letters when I was around 9 and read them. Bad girl. Intrusive. Curious.I piled them up and spread them on a bed. I imagined what it felt like to be those envelopes. Flying across the expanse of the ocean.

Feeling blank. Hah. I always get that feeling after I take a nap in the afternoon. Siesta. When I wake up (especially around 4/5 PM), I feel nostalgic of something I have not even really experienced. Have you ever get such emotion? It's odd and profound.

Perhaps, we need to feel all these- ache, sadness, boredom, bliss, hunger, restlessness... I don't know why we have to, but I just feel it makes us more alive.

A parcel thrown to the ocean...the ocean found me. It's a sketch actually. Not a photo. All I know is that the artist have been leaving his artworks somewhere where strangers find them.

Have you ever left a poem somewhere?

I know how it feels like to miss someone terribly (who you think you may not meet again--ever). Four days ago, someone I used to miss sent me a spoken word poem. I have not heard from this poet for a year. When I listened to his verses, it brought be back in a bus, where the humidity of May through windows and fabrics. 

"What does your small town look like?"

I told him it has old coffee shops. In one of these old kapehans, I met a couple. He reads cowboy novels. She wears bestidas that remind me of the buoyancy of the ocean.

Hope you are shiny and happy.

Morning view from the window,

Tin

PS

If ever you get to Indonesia with your Dad, let me know. I live nearby. That boy should meet my little brother, Kujhuan.

[singingmice]

the magician and the sad rabbits,

Tin,

I am not a magician today. I cannot bring myself to entertain and so I am here alone for the first night in a week. I may have lost the rabbits I pull from my hat. Do you ever feel oddly blank all of a sudden? It's when they stopped appearing. After the great sparks, the thrills, the highs - this odd desire to replicate or better a great act, great moments or nights. The desire to be as alive as possible but when things become forced, the rabbits come out limp and sad. Now they're not there at all.

I'm constantly swinging between the two extremes of the deep blues and the tremendous epiphanies. 

What was your picture that you received in the mail like?

I feel like I am always missing somebody. This time she may have flown away forever.

My dog is Kudo. Sometimes he trots up to me and licks my hand while I'm drinking tea on the steps and wondering if any of this makes any sense. Apriliana is from Indonesia. My father and her go back with Jasmine every year or so. One day perhaps I'll go too. Though it would be mad to go with my father on a travel. One day I'll go everywhere.  I have to create a birthday card for Ian. He will be six tomorrow & I will let him watch a film about a boat hitting an iceburg during the class as a special treat. This boy has strange tastes for his age. 

Well, wishing you great fantasies and luck,

Jass