How To Cure Ourselves Of Terminal Mahathiritis (revisited)

DON'T MISTAKE THE MAP FOR THE TERRITORY! 

A lifetime ago I worked in advertising and from that experience have learnt to avoid using meaningless words like "better" (except in reference to those who habitually place bets on everything). When an adman says "We've got a BETTER deal for you!" he rarely specifies better than whose deal. Similarly, the idea of "working towards a BETTER tomorrow" conveniently leaves it to your imagination as to what might constitute "a better tomorrow." Why not focus on being more contented and fulfilled TODAY? I mean, if you're cynical and grouchy now, what makes you think you'll feel otherwise next week?

I love living in this land called Malaysia and calling myself a Malaysian (especially when I'm abroad) - even though I know these are only ephemeral terms of reference. After all, when I was born there wasn't a "Malaysia" on any map. This country was called Malaya; and before that, in the time of Ptolemy, it was known as the Golden Khersonese. If you're into esoteric studies you might even regard this blessed and bountiful land as part of a long-lost continent called Kumari Kandam.


From the paleontological perspective, the Malayan Peninsula was once part of a gigantic mountain range, the lower parts of which became submerged at the end of the last glacial period, disconnecting it from neighboring peaks that now form the islands of the Malay Archipelego.
Contrary to Umno propaganda, Malaya wasn't named for the fictitious Malay race, but was inspired by the Tamil word for mountain, "malai." Interestingly, the Sanskrit name "Himalaya" comes from "hima" (snow) and "alaya" (abode) - but it could also mean "snowcapped mountains." In other words, the fact that my country of birth was once called Malaya doesn't actually mean it belongs to the Malays, whom the Orang Asli regard as pendatang or dagang (migrants or itinerant traders). Indeed, a thorough study of history reveals extensive Hindu and Buddhist influence when it was part of the Srivijaya - and later the Majapahit - empires.

The fictitious Malay race was supposed to have originated from Jambi, Sumatra, but you won't find any tribe called “Malay” there - although there is reportedly a river called Melayu that runs through a tiny village of the same name in the vicinity of Jambi.

A Singaporean friend once joked that the word "melayu" means "to flee or migrate" - suggesting that Sumatrans who fought tribal wars and lost had to flee across the Straits of Melaka and henceforth were called Melayu (fugitives or migrants). I have yet to find any confirmation for this. According to my tattered kamus (dictionary) "layu" means "to wither, droop, or dry up." So even if I were born Melayu, I'd prefer to be called Malaysian, fictitious though the name be (at least it has fewer negative connotations).

I remember once chatting with a couple of Filipinas whom I had earlier overheard yakking away in Tagaloq. The word malaya came up a couple of times, so I asked the girls what it means in their tongue. “Free,” one of them said. “Malaya means free in Tagaloq.” My ears perked up. “You mean free as in free gift... or free as in not owing the bank any money?” The girls laughed and said malaya means free as in having no master. Now that’s a very nice meaning of Malaya, I thought.

It’s quite possible that the Tamil word "malai" (mountain) became associated with the Tagaloq "malaya" (freedom) because lowlanders have traditionally been subject to institutionalized religion, government and taxation - whereas highlanders are usually safe from the grubby, grasping fingers of priests and princes, owing to the inaccessibility of their habitat. In any case, I’d be very happy to be called Malayan – a free spirit.

My point is: it really doesn't matter what fictitious name we choose to call ourselves. What truly matters is whether we feel a soul connection to the land we have chosen to call home. Because it is precisely how profoundly we love the land that separates true people from pestiliential lifeforms.

All indigenous peoples have a psychic and emotional bond with the land where their ancestors' bones are buried. They feel a powerful sense of belonging to the land - not so much a claim of "ownership" through legal or illegal means.

Then there are those descended from piratic tribes who have yet to grow a real root wherever they roam in search of plunder - for they feel no spiritual affinity with the land and are only there as opportunists, to rape and steal and ultimately destroy. These are the ones who wouldn't think twice about clear-felling an entire mountain range just to build a few condos, or poisoning the waterways with their relentless search for precious metals.

For the descendants of pirates it's eat, drink and be merry - before we get caught and sent to the gallows. Can you imagine the scenario for disaster when descendants of pirates end up marrying indigenous princesses and elevating themselves to public office? With no real love for the land they see everything around them as a chance to enrich themselves - and so they behave like greedy caterpillars, gorging themselves off the fat of the land, and stopping short of metamorphosing into butterflies.



Being a pirate is a state of mind. You can be a scion of ancient "nobility" like the Bushes, Clintons and Rockefellers - and still fly the Skull & Bones. After all, traditional aristocracies were really just a bunch of brigands and buccaneers in fancy costumes. Those who fought well and brought back lots of booty for the local warlord were rewarded with parcels of land and titles and named Orang Kaya or Baron or Duke.


During the Mahathir era, the entire machinery of state propaganda was harnessed to indoctrinate the masses with a spurious notion of "development." It was indeed a false glamor, a grand illusion of "success" copied & pasted from the pages of glossy lifestyle magazines.

What our Great Leader Dr M sold us was a false vision - a nicely giftwrapped Pandora's Box of environmental, social and moral problems. But it paid big fat commissions to his family and to his Umnoputera cronies; and it entrenched corporate piracy as a way of life.

So... what bright ideas can I contribute towards "a better Malaysia"? First of all, nothing will change "for the better" until Umno/BN is no longer in power. If the new Pakatan Rakyat government is genuinely open to feedback, it will be our task to reassess our priorities and make our wishes known to them. Do we desire to be truly happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise? Or do we keep going for the Monopoly money and the glitter of fool's gold, enthralled by flickering neon signs and colorful festoons of flashing lights?


What the global financial meltdown offers us is an opportunity to wean ourselves off our addiction to crass consumerism. We can then redirect our attention to the mental and emotional aspects of our development, for so long neglected as we set our focus on the purely physical meaning of growth. We will as a nation regain a sense of perspective wherein we can once again feel a soul connection to the land, and learn to love what's natural and real and truly aligned with life.
A whole generation of unmitigated Malaysia-Bolehism has inflated the national ego to colossal proportions. Look at the phallic skyline of Kuala Lumpur and the gargantuan architecture of Putrajaya – it speaks volumes about a massive inferiority complex, a cultural cringe for which we have been overcompensating.

The Orang Asli have survived for millennia and can show us how to be humble. Our Mahathiritic attempt to “conquer” Mother Nature is like ludah ke langit (spitting at the sky). We end up with spittle in our own eye. Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, take note, and abandon your 13 dam projects in Sarawak. Inviting Chinese (or Tasmanian) contractors to rape the ecosystem isn’t such a clever thing to do – no matter how much money your family can skim off these environmentally disastrous projects. Remember, when earthquakes hit Szechuan, the Chinese had to evacuate millions of people downstream because dangerous cracks appeared in hundreds of large dams.

Abdullah Badawi recently made a big fuss over the upside-down Malaysian flag on Sheih Kickdefella’s blog and used that as an excuse to get the blogger arrested. The flag is only a symbol of the fictitious Malaysia. Why get worked up over mere symbols?

If you really love the land that supports and sustains you, you wouldn’t ever pollute the rivers or denude the mountains.


It’s very easy to mistake the map for the territory. You may destroy as many maps as you want – we can always make more accurate, more detailed ones – but don’t destroy the only thing that’s real, the land where your ancestors’ bones are buried.

"Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long." ~ Ogden Nash

[First published 12 October 2008, reposted 16 September 2012 & 19 September 2019]

HAPPY MALAYSIA DAY!

Five Years After 2012: Are We All Going Crazy? ~ by Flemming Funch (written in October 2017)

Pointless by Cosmic Rapture

A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, I started observing/believing/predicting that our human experience was quickening, and that the rules were changing, in somewhat predictable ways, as things speed up. A metaphorical way of talking about it would be that we were passing through successive "dimensions", each one with different rules. It wasn't my original idea in any way, but I latched on to it, and wrote a few blog posts about it.

One of the key points is that various kinds of things (emotions, thoughts, difficult situations) will come up for people, and need to be dealt with and somehow "processed" on an individual basis, in order to make it to the next level. It would be a moving target. As soon as you find your peace with things, another layer is peeled off, and you need to figure out how to deal with that. You have to keep up with what life throws at you. Now, if you don't deal with things, if you don't pay attention or if you don't bother to do the required personal intellectual or emotional work, you'll be in trouble. Basically, if you keep denying what is going on for you, and you don't do anything about it, or you do the wrong things, you end up going insane.

Back then, I had gone along with the spurious prediction that something big and cataclysmic would happen in 2012. The end of the Mayan calendar and that kind of stuff. Seemed like that might be the deadline for entering the 5th dimension, or whatever exactly it is. Well, 2012 came and went, and nothing really dramatic happened. But well, even if the expected timing was a bit off, it did more or less happen. It is now 2017, and an alarmingly large percentage of the population seems to have gone insane. That should be visible both in the news, on social media, and among people you know personally.

A lot of people are out of their skulls panicking, succumbing to their neuroses, fighting invisible enemies, feeling targeted and victimized by evil forces, freaking out daily about the latest thing they heard, and seemingly having no tools left for rational thinking or for finding their own peace. Some people only do it once in a while, some apparently do it 24/7. Either way, they just can't. deal. with. it. Unfortunately, if they don't, it will only get worse.

Whereas, for people who successfully deal with what is thrown at them, things get better. Currently it might be hard to see, as we could say that we're going through a period of at least metaphorical darkness.

Whether it is entirely clear yet or not, people have picked different ways of dealing with it. The people who are going crazy have maybe not picked very well, and not very consciously, but they have picked. If they simply continue to panic more and more, they'll find themselves increasingly in hell. Whereas the people who've managed to keep their sanity will, once the fog clears, more likely find that new and better things are emerging, and there are paths forward, and they know what to do.

How it will look, with those drastically different kinds of realities co-existing, I'm not sure. Maybe they will part ways in some manner that I can't quite imagine. Droves of people committing mass-suicide, because they can't handle the noise in their heads and the pain in their hearts, I don't know.

Oh, and to not make it too bleak, there's always a choice. Particularly for people who get a little of each, who go a bit crazy once in a while, but who then find themselves. We're all a little nuts, so that's pretty normal.

Flemming Funch

5 October 2017

[First posted 5 October 2017]

The Road to Isengard... (revised & revisited)

In Tolkien's classic Lord of the Rings, we see the rustic charm of Hobbit culture theatened with extinction by the encroaching forces of industrialism and militarism, represented by the ceaseless clangor of Isengard (literally, Iron Fortress) under the misrule of the renegade wizard Saruman and his vicious, mindless Orc army.

In Malaysia the closest thing we have to Hobbit culture are the Orang Asli and their deep connection with their verdant ancestral lands. Substitute Saruman with Rais Saniman, Razak Hussein and their Umnoputra technocrats - and we have Mahathir's ominous Vision 2020, which threatens to transform the entire country into one sprawling Silicon Valley devoid of natural vegetation and free-ranging wildlife.


As I write this, the Civil Defence Army is encamped on the open field at the end of Pertak Village. A few days ago the regular army was here too for a one-day exercise in jungle warfare. At night the noise of generators and the glare of fluorescent lights are a grim reminder of the savage stupidity and gross insensitivity of the Orc mindset. Sweet, innocent young men and women are being turned into a robot army serving Sauron's cold-blooded reptilian design.

The incursion of low-grade consciousness into this high-grade environment can be traced to what happened in September 2010, when BN-aligned businessmen initiated a land grab disguised as an infrastructural upgrading project. They spent RM200,000 tarring a "road to nowhere."

The Orang Asli elders I met when I first relocated to Pertak in 1992 possessed residual traces of natural wisdom and they remembered their own tribal myths. Most of them have since passed on, returned to Pulau Buah (the Isle of Fruits or Paradise). The present generation of Orang Asli grew up watching RTM dramas and TV3 news. Not a single Orang Asli household in Pertak Village had access to the Internet until the era of the smartphone. They are, like Felda settlers, constantly subject to government propaganda via their TV sets which serve as the altars from which latter-day peasants may worship the false god of progress.

And "progress" - no thanks to mercenary contractors better at destruction than construction - has indeed come to Pertak Village in the form of speedbumps, streetlights, traffic signs, and cat's eyes embedded in a bitumenized showcase road.


The Chinese bamboo contractor used to send his lorry in to pick up bamboo three or four times a month. Of late the lorry has been roaring through the forest spewing diesel fumes, spoiling the tranquility of the morning, churning up and dropping big chunks of mud, almost every day. Bamboo grows extremely fast, it's true, but I doubt it can survive the present frenetic rate of overharvesting. In a couple of years, with the bamboo groves reduced to stumps, the forest will start losing more and more topsoil, and hillslopes will crumble.

Azreen Zainuddin (photo by Shane Nunis)

Even though they are being grossly exploited by the towkay - who only pays them RM1 (USD22 cents) per 20-foot length - the Orang Asli seem glad to be earning more cash these days. But most of their income goes towards modifying their motorbikes (to make them noisier) and pickling their brains with cheap plonk at RM3 a bottle. Alcoholism has taken a steep turn for the worse since one of the villagers started selling bottled spirits from her house. In the old days they had to travel 8 miles to town to replenish their supply of alcohol - now it's just a 2-minute stagger down the road.

With increased drunkenness comes increased aggression and violence. The younger males have succumbed to the slimy, nefarious influence of JAKOA, the Orang Asli Affairs Department, now essentially an extension of JAKIM (the overfunded Islamic Inquisition) who constantly remind them that they are materially backward compared to other races - and that the only way they can integrate with the modern world is to join forces with their Malay Muslim brothers against the kaum pendatang (migrant communities like the Chinese, Indian, Eurasian and Caucasians).

In recent years there have been more cases of cats and dogs being poisoned or slashed to death by villagers. Overindulgence in alcohol makes the Orang Asli susceptible to temporary bouts of demonic possession during which the most brutal, ignoble and violent aspects of their personalities emerge. This is a crucial part of the insidious work of the JAKOA - to enfeeble the Orang Asli psyche and make them easy prey for government propaganda. Of course, free meals and cash incentives are an important ingredient in the long-term plan to destroy Orang Asli culture and assimilate them into the lowest strata of mainstream Malay society.

Since 3 April 2009, when Najib Razak was appointed crime minister and his ambitious wife Rosmah achieved her dream of becoming the uncrowned Queen of Putrajaya, the psychic atmosphere throughout the country has tangibly deteriorated. A dark cloud of despair and pessimism hangs over the land. Envy, hostility and resentment have further divided communities resulting in greater discord within families. It is as if the soul of the land has been poisoned.

A nation ruled by voodoo can never attain peace, prosperity and harmony. When people no longer know the meaning of integrity and dignity - and lose all reverence for the sanctity of the natural landscape - you can be sure it is headed towards Isengard, a powerful metaphor for hell on earth.

Many continue to do battle against this evil on the political front - but it is a seemingly futile struggle as their own comrades succumb one by one to the poison and turn treacherous. We see this happening with increasing frequency amongst the Harapan Rakyat coalition, especially in the ranks of PAS and Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

Do we give up the ghost and surrender to Sauron? Never! The unbridled lust for money and power is the seed of darkness and deviousness found within each individual who cannot see beyond his or her own physical survival. We have to acknowledge that "evil" is an integral component of our own psyches - it is really just our own id - and the only way we can transcend our own ignoble tendencies is to become whole by embracing a holistic perspective.

We must gain sufficient spiritual maturity to be able to view even the nastiest miscreants as wayward children. The way to deal with wayward children is not to fear or hate them - but to grow into our own adulthood and firmly prevent them from further harming themselves and others. It matters not what game these wayward kids are playing - some are posing as ministers, some as sultans, and others as police officers and triad bosses. Those of us who have the capacity to comprehend the greater evolutionary plan must now step into our full power as Awakened, Conscious Humans focused on realizing our own divine destinies as fractal embodiments of Supreme Intelligence, Love and Wisdom.

In other words, we must reclaim our original sovereignty as kings and queens in exile and accept the scepter of our spiritual power as divine humans. Only the noblest and wisest among us must be allowed to ascend the throne of worldly authority.

That's how we can all get off the road to Isengard and get back on track to manifesting heaven on earth.

[First posted 15 October 2010. Reposted 18 June 2014, 23 May 2015 & 18 September 2016]

CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THE MOVIE! (repost)

Title: MALACCA GOLD
Author: Wayne Stier
Publisher: Meru Publishing
Pages: 369
ISBN 983-99152-0-7

My trusty Britannica describes Ophir as “an unidentified region, famous in Old Testament times for its fine gold.” In the time of King Solomon (circa 920 B.C.), “Ophir was thought of as being overseas... the Jewish historian Josephus... evidently understood that India was the location of Ophir...”

How does this relate to Mount Ophir (now known as Gunung Ledang) which straddles the border of Malacca and Johore? Was this landmark peak named after an original Mount Ophir located in the Pasemah Highland of Sumatra - where English mining engineers found ancient gold mines dating back at least 3,000 years? Could this have been the true location of King Solomon’s legendary mines?

Farfetched as it may sound at first, the notion isn’t altogether preposterous. Otherwise, Wayne Stier’s rambunctious but highly readable romp through Malacca’s intriguing past and present could simply be dismissed as a darn good yarn spun by a Texan gunslinger-turned-punstringer who happens to write “in a hammock with a laptop on top of his lap on the veranda of a house in a coconut grove on the beach of an island in the Gulf of Thailand.”

This might explain Mr Stier’s “swinging” style - which gleefully combines swashbuckling adventure and historical romance with a dash of mystery, treasure-hunt travelog with a generous dollop of vaudeville comedy, maverick scholarship (guaranteed to annoy the dour academic) with straight-talking, in-your-face satire.

But pure whimsy alone would not have fired the author’s imaginative flair to such a compelling degree of literary ardor and passion. Stier is quite clearly convinced that he has stumbled upon a mystery of mind-boggling significance. Yet, he has opted for a flamboyant, flippant tone - and further protected himself by attributing the entire manuscript to an ex-colleague and barmate named Edwin Prebble - who, in turn, credits the story to a certain Ms Cindy Anna from Montana, salivatingly described as a “luscious, statuesque woman” with “long, blonde hair... long supple legs... powerful lapis eyes... stunning!” Hmmm. Who do we cast in that role? Kim Basinger? Sharon Stone? Uma Thurman? Daryl Hannah?

Can’t wait to see the movie. Maybe if Steven Spielberg turns it down, Wayne Stier will offer the film rights to me? Malacca Gold undoubtedly has all the ingredients of a big-time Hollywood box office hit. The epic action sweeps across time and space: starting on an island in southern Thailand, we’re taken on a dizzy Disneyland ride to Munich, a beach resort in Spain, then on board a gas tanker bound for Tokyo. Our heroine Cindy Anna accidentally falls into the Malacca Strait and gets rescued by a boatload of amateur Gudang Garam (clove cigarette) smugglers. After a brief sojourn in a hormonally charged Malay village, she meets the dramatis personae of the Majestic Hotel - Alfonso Fernandes, Dominique D’Abreu, Jimmy Ng, Arthur Rangjit, Percival Wiggins, and Vijay the newshound - who take turns guiding us on a whole gamut of magical-mystery-history tours.

Here’s what you get for the price of your ticket: Malacca before, during, and after the Portuguese; medieval China, the Revolt of the Red Eyebrows, Shaolin Temple, ta’i ch’i chuan, kungfu monks, and the rise of the Chinese triads; Mesopotamia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Phoenicia, Palestine, Damascus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, cryptic gold inventories; the Knights Templar and the secret history of Freemasonry; Madagascar, the Solomon Islands, and Pulau Upeh (a nondescript isle off the Malacca coast). Somehow there’s even space and time for a few poignant Chinese immigrant vignettes like Tai Tai Bong and Lucky Lim’s amazing lifestories - set against the soap opera backdrop of Malacca’s Baba and Nyonya families, and the hellish horrors of the Japanese Occupation.

Stier manages to conjure a constant undercurrent of mystery in his copious history with titillating references to magical kris (wavy-bladed Malay daggers), “gileega” stones (usually spelt geliga, bezoar stones associated with dragons, the mythical guardians of subterranean hoards), Batu Pahat gold (reputedly the finest in the world), and apocryphal speculations about the cabalistic Keys of Solomon and the precession of the equinoxes.

Among the colorful and everchanging cast of characters in Malacca Gold, two are particularly memorable: the young Portuguese troubadour-chef Duarte Fernandes, and retired planter Percival Wiggins. Duarte Fernandes is portrayed as a prototype Forrest Gump: besides playing romantic lead to the beautiful 16-year-old firebrand Anyi, daughter of Utimuti Rajah, Duarte is credited with (among other things) introducing the joget and red hot chili peppers to Malacca high society, penning the lovesong that would later be adopted as Malaysia’s national anthem, and “donating” a drummer dwarf named Captain Universe (Panglima Awang) to Fernao Magalhaes, better known as Ferdinand Magellan, the “first” world circumnavigator.

Anyi and Duarte’s foredoomed liaison parallels the ill-fated passion of Putri Ledang for her lover, Dua. (Note the “coincidental” similarity of the names Duarte and Dua.) Putri Ledang, of course, was the love-maddened princess and sorcerer’s daughter of Malay legend after whom Mount Ophir was renamed.

Stier’s portrait of Percival Wiggins as the archetypal expatriate-gentleman-scholar-raconteur is charmingly crafted. (Sir Alec Guinness would have been the ideal choice for this plum role.) The fact that Planter Wiggins - the embodiment of the late Classical European mind at its scientific and encyclopaedic best - is named after the Percival (or Parsifal) of the Grail Quest is significant. It reinforces the intricate interlocking motifs of all major planetary myths: lost kingships, lost civilizations, lost treasure, lost keys to the Mystery, lost stories, lost meanings. Wiggins is a crucial lynchpin of this multi-layered, meandering tale; indeed his solid characterization anchors the more exotic sub-plots in the realm of the credible.

Despite her obvious sex appeal, Cindy Anna (from Montana not Indiana) emerges as a perfectly edible... sorry, credible and well-developed central figure (pun intended, if only as an example of the spicy ribaldry that seasons Stier’s storytelling). Indeed she comes across as a fine embodiment of feisty, free-spirited femininity: adventurous, intelligent, imbued with an earthy spirituality. When she describes ch’i as “that mysterious force in the universe that causes water to ripple, and mountains to fold, that puts the spin in planets and makes stars explode and then reform within our bodies,” she makes perfect, poetic, profound sense. The quest for buried treasure - the thematic thread which links the diverse characters in Malacca Gold - acquires an altogether deeper, alchemical meaning in the light of many such metaphysical epiphanies hidden throughout the text.

Author Wayne Stier in his Hawaii home

However, it is as a veteran writer of travel documentaries that Stier’s prose flows most comfortably. The cinematic detail of his descriptions of Malacca and its street life are among the most animated and vivid I’ve read. Naturally he couldn’t resist throwing in a satirical montage of “current affairs” images culled from reading the local newspapers. The Great Malacca Drought of 1991 and the two-million-ringgit “High-Tech Rainmaker” scam receive prominent attention, along with grisly gossip inspired by Mona Fandey (the infamous killer-witch) and the private shenanigans of people in public office.

Occasionally, the narrative flow is broken by the interjection of painful puns and sophomoric sexual innuendoes - which, of course, the reader must blame on gin-and-tonic-loving Ed Prebble, recording angel and interlocutor. Ed comes across as an incorrigible pedant with his poker-faced, pseudo-academic footnotes, signed “Ed, ed.”

Alas, Ed’s pedantry is sometimes unjustified, as his facts are not always impeccably researched. (For instance, Ed informs the reader that Malayan independence was declared “in a ceremony in the center of Malacca” on August 31, 1957. This isn’t completely correct: the imminent granting of Merdeka (independence) was announced in Malacca on February 18, 1955. But the actual Merdeka ceremony was staged in the national capital, Kuala Lumpur more than two years later.)

In a brilliantly succinct chapter on the advent of the Knights Templar as the first international bankers, Stier - or, rather, Ed - misspells the name of the first Grand Master, Hugues de Payens - as well as the last, Jacques de Molay, who was burnt at the stake on the orders of King Philip le Bel, and died cursing the French monarchy. But these are trivial complaints when weighed against the sheer entertainment value and little gems of gritty, witty insight Malacca Gold provides. For example, Cindy Anna on her short stint as a sidewalk mime: “Takes a lot of concentration to stand still. I never realized how much we use speed to help keep our balance. I think that’s why so many people are afraid to slow down - afraid of crashing. It takes guts to do nothing.”

I won’t vouch for the originality of the following quirky quip, but I liked its sparkle: “He calls himself a ‘Heinz 57’ breed, a mixture of a little English stock, Dutch, and probably some orang asli, the aboriginal people of the Malay peninsula. Alfonso hinted that there might also be an orangutan swinging around in Dominique’s family tree.”

Is there anyone on earth who can deny that we all have a primate or two swinging around in our family tree? After all, recent paleo-anthropological evidence suggests that the Adamic race may have been created by the “Sky Gods” - Nefilim from the planet Nibiru (symbolized by the winged orb of the Sumerians/Assyrians/Egyptians and the splayed cross of the Templars) - specifically to mine for gold. Isn’t that why men (and women, too) have always been obsessed with the Metal of the Gods?

Personally I found Wayne Stier’s fantastic patchwork of short and tall stories so engaging and enjoyable, I would have happily kept the Malacca and forgotten about the Gold. But who knows... the world may soon be queuing for the movie version, thereby inspiring Mr Stier to switch from Gudang Garam to Lucky Strike.

Read Wayne Stier's memoirs, Stars When The Sun Shines.

Postscript: In June 2009 I received an email from Mars Cavers, Wayne's wife and lifelong traveling companion, informing me that Wayne had succumbed to the cancer he had been diagnosed with in his early twenties. Seizing life with superhuman passion, Wayne Stier was extremely productive till his death at the age of 62, churning out travelogs, novels, plays and metaphysical poetry. He even tried his hand at woodcarving and sculpture, and did a few tours as an itinerant monologist and raconteur. I dedicate this post to an old pal who made a few inspiring cameo appearances in my life.

[First posted 19 June 2011, reposted 17 October 2018]

Steve Hillage: From Hurdy Gurdy Man To Techno-Trance Wizard (repost)

Steve Hillage's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" - Live at Otto Hahn Schule, Benberg, 1977

I first came to know of Steve Hillage when he was part of the incomparable and indestructible Gong, circa 1973. Noted for his ethereal, bluesy, ecstatically lyrical guitarwork and near lightspeed arpeggios (which someone described as "paint blistering"), Hillage also had a distinctly angelic aura that made him look and sound like a funky Jesus on acid.

When he began producing solo albums, Hillage brought part of the trance-inducing Gong sound with him - but focused more on the metaphysical and theosophical elements rather than on the pataphysical.

While with Gong he met and connected with Miquette Giraudy (synth and vocals). Steve and Miquette have been partners and collaborators since those heady days with Gong. They have been featured guests on many landmark recordings, among the most notable of which is undoubtedly Cyrille Verdeaux's 1975 epic, Clearlight Symphony.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, musical trends moved towards punk and lounge lizard chic - and Steve Hillage found himself producing younger bands like Simple Minds and Murray Head.

By 1989, Hillage and Giraudy had begun jamming with DJs and techno-trance music producers. They enjoyed it enough to form a group called System 7 (inspired by the Macintosh Operating System then in vogue) which focuses on techno-trance and ambient dance music augmented by live musicians. They also have a record company called A-wave (check out some MP3 samples on their site). Click here for a complete discography.


Activation Meditation: The Glorious OM Riff

Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy (System 7 live at the Sonic Rock Festival, Lincolnshire, 2005)


Musick of the Trees (1978)

Giraudy & Hillage: Why get married
when you can make beautiful music together


[First posted 24 June 2007, reposted 28 August 2017]

Musings on the momentous date, August 31st... (repost)

The Nuclear Family in 2013

Every time August 31st rolls around I am reminded of two things. The more significant event of the two, of course, is my very first fuck.

At 14 or 15 I was still wearing stripes & checks

I mean, with a woman. A digression is necessary: you see, at 15 I had ventured, with a few classmates, to Singapore's infamous Bugis Street, where we had decided to collectively put paid to our virginity. The middle-aged hooker I engaged for my initiation into malehood looked fairly attractive in the low-wattage lighting, but when we removed our clothes I noticed she possessed a rudimentary penis. She seemed enthusiastic enough - and who wouldn't be delighted to get paid to fiddle around with a cute 15-year-old, unless they're compulsive virtue-signalers? The scientist in me took charge of the situation and decided that an experience is, after all, an experience.

Besides, I didn't have the nerve to demand my money back and couldn't afford to go shopping elsewhere. After some 20 minutes of awkward fumbling around I thanked "her" and got dressed. I didn't ask my friends if they had had a similar "initiation." We were all too embarrassed by the whole excursion and never spoke about it again.

Beloved mother of my two lovely girls

Coming back to my first fuck. For three whole years I had been courting a feisty, flirtatious femme two years my senior. We maintained an increasingly passionate and playful correspondence while she was at university and I was in New Jersey as an exchange student. Upon my return in early August 1968, she wrote and told me she would be in Singapore on a geography field trip and would be free on August 31st to meet me for a hot date.

Now why does Singapore feature so prominently in every erotic initiation I can recall? Could it be the Merlion Singapore has chosen as its national totem, which combines Leonine and Piscean qualities - masculine rationality (lion) with feminine intuition (dolphin)?

Soulful reunion in 2016

Well, the date August 31st will always symbolize a pivotal moment in my life, a rite of passage, when I not only experienced the exquisite pleasure of being fully plugged into the sacred feminine, the holy of holies, but also claimed my adulthood by becoming a father to my first daughter.

Which explains why my earlier plan to study filmmaking in UCLA, California, had to be scuttled. But 25 years down the line, my second daughter graduated summa cum laude from TCU, Texas, with a filmmaking degree. She also fulfilled my desire to marry a German and produce gorgeous babies, but that's another story.

So for me the 31st of August will always represent a major life initiation, totally unexpected but gratefully embraced. How could I not rejoice to be father of two exceptionally beautiful, honest, and accomplished women who have bestowed quintuple datukships on me?

All grown up, my beautiful girls & their amazing mama

Daughter #1 with her 2 sweeties

As for the other thing, national independence, I must confess I have been indelibly imprinted with the thoughts of Kurt Vonnegut who introduced me to Bokononism in his 1963 novel, Cat's Cradle, wherein he distinguished between two categories of social bonding: the Granfalloon and the Karass. (I suggest you read Gregory Macnamee's instructive essay "On Vonnegut's Karass vs. Granfalloon" for a fuller understanding of this important distinction.) If you can't be bothered to look it up, I shall attempt to paraphrase Vonnegut's definition of a Granfalloon - which is precisely what every nation-state, football club, old boys' association, or ethnic grouping actually is: an assembly of humans drawn together by a common delusion - that there is "strength in numbers" and that people can feel united through loyalty to some corporate brand name or logo.

A Karass, on the other hand, is what Vonnegut calls a true soul family, drawn together by natural affinities and a deep sense of kinship beyond appearances and ideological constructs.

Daughter #2 with her 3 sweeties

It goes without saying that I have never been fond of Granfalloons nor will I ever be. Therefore the thought of celebrating something as meaningless as a brand name (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Great Britain, America, Estonia, Afghanistan, Transylvania) and a corporate logo (Jalur Gemilang, Stars and Stripes or Union Jack) simply makes me chortle till I churn up some loose spittle or awaken a clump of mucus from its slumber.

Go ahead, folks, and wave those plastic flags. It really makes no difference to me if they are emblazoned with a giant M (for Mahathir, Mekdi or McDonald's), a cluster of stars, a few stripes, a maple leaf, a stylized axolotl, or a Mandelbrot Set. Corporations and corporate-states are essentially social engineering constructs, ant-colonies, beehives, designed to gather and accumulate energy (the sweet stuff) for those who commissioned and invested in the project. They may appear to be almighty, indomitable, and indestructibly totalitarian - until you catch a glimpse of colossal ruins such as you will find in Göbekli Tepe, Egypt, Rome, Cambodia, Peru. And here I am reminded of visionary historian William Irwin Thompson's classic observation:

"Civilizations, like the penis, rise and fall, and when the towers and battlements crumble into the earth, they return to the embrace of the Great Mother."

Antares Maitreya

31 August 2019

[First posted 31 August 2019]

Merdeka Message from My #2 Daughter (repost)

Photo by Marcus 

"HAPPY INNER PENANCE DAY TO ALL!"

Received this text message from my #2 daughter Belle on the eve of Merdeka. When I asked her if it was a Belle original, she immediately replied, "Of course!" Just felt like sharing this meaningful Merdeka message with all my friends and loved ones 😂❤️👌

[Originally posted 31 August 2009]

WHAT MY HEART TRULY DESIRES (updated)

1. That Joy and Freedom and Love and Abundance be restored as the keynote features of Life on Earth - and throughout the Cosmos.

2. That my family, my friends and I shall effortlessly draw to ourselves a neverending flow of material and spiritual well-being; and nevermore be in need, nor suffer scarcity.

3. That good health and unbounded wealth, in every form, be ours to enjoy - and that prosperity will continue to increase and facilitate great happiness and pleasure, benefiting an ever widening circle of other beings.


4. That the Love of My Life (in all her enchanting forms) will blossom into my Twin Flame as she yields to the inevitability and undeniability of our boundless passion for one another; that she will love me as deeply as I love her (no matter what form we happen to inhabit) and be inspired to evolve to hitherto unknown levels of awareness, intelligence, power and wisdom.


5. That I will be inspired, motivated, and ably assisted each day to be a conduit of Beauty, Truth and Wisdom in all the things I do - which I shall do with utmost pleasure, joy and masterful ease.

6. That all souls - incarnate and disincarnate - will successfully fulfil their evolutionary potential and destiny, and participate gratefully in perpetual celebration of Life... Life in all its endless mystery, wonder, and exquisite beauty.

7. That all previous conflicts be experienced as Dynamic Tensions necessary to the completion of the Human Experience; and that henceforth all sentient souls shall awaken to the Infinite Glory and Absolute Perfection of Creation in all its multidimensional and kaleidoscopic variety.

I unearthed this memo I wrote to myself several years ago and decided to share it with everybody as a blogpost. First posted 5 May 2013, reposted 21 August 2017.