Anais and Henry

Someone sent me this on my birthday last year. It cured me of my melancholia.

The message attached reads,

"This is my all-time favorite love letter, something for you to read today, on you birthday (to cheer you up) :-)"

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In 1932, months after first meeting in Paris and despite both being married, Cuban diarist Anaïs Nin and hugely influential novelist Henry Miller began an incredibly intense love affair that would last for many years and, along the way, generate countless passionate love letters. Below, in my humble opinion, is one of the most powerful examples, written by Miller in August of 1932 shortly after a visit to Nin's home in Louveciennes.

August 14, 1932

Anais:

Don't expect me to be sane anymore. Don't let's be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes — you can't dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous. Everything I do and say and think relates back to the marriage. I saw you as the mistress of your home, a Moor with a heavy face, a negress with a white body, eyes all over your skin, woman, woman, woman. I can't see how I can go on living away from you—these intermissions are death. How did it seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can't picture you moving about with him as you did with me. Legs closed. Frailty. Sweet, treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old—you are a thousand years old.

Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. I read the paper about suicides and murders and I understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one's time, to take it philosophically, to be sensible. Where has gone the time when men fought, killed, died for a glove, a glance, etc? (A victrola is playing that terrible aria from Madama Butterfly—"Some day he'll come!")

I still hear you singing in the kitchen—a sort of inharmonic, monotonous Cuban wail. I know you're happy in the kitchen and the meal you're cooking is the best meal we ever ate together. I know you would scald yourself and not complain. I feel the greatest peace and joy sitting in the dining room listening to you rustling about, your dress like the goddess Indra studded with a thousand eyes.

Anais, I only thought I loved you before; it was nothing like this certainty that's in me now. Was all this so wonderful only because it was brief and stolen? Were we acting for each other, to each other? Was I less I, or more I, and you less or more you? Is it madness to believe that this could go on? When and where would the drab moments begin? I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don't find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever! (Now they're singing "Heaven and Ocean" from La Gioconda.)

I picture you playing the records over and over—Hugo's records. "Parlez moi d amour." The double life, double taste, double joy and misery. How you must be furrowed and ploughed by it. I know all that, but I can't do anything to prevent it. I wish indeed it were me who had to endure it. I know now your eyes are wide open. Certain things you will never believe anymore, certain gestures you will never repeat, certain sorrows, misgivings, you will never again experience. A kind of white criminal fervor in your tenderness and cruelty. Neither remorse nor vengeance, neither sorrow nor guilt. A living it out, with nothing to save you from the abysm but a high hope, a faith, a joy that you tasted, that you can repeat when you will.

All morning I was at my notes, ferreting through my life records, wondering where to begin, how to make a start, seeing not just another book before me but a life of books. But I don't begin. The walls are completely bare—I had taken everything down before going to meet you. It is as though I had made ready to leave for good. The spots on the walls stand out—where our heads rested. While it thunders and lightnings I lie on the bed and go through wild dreams. We're in Seville and then in Fez and then in Capri and then in Havana. We're journeying constantly, but there is always a machine and books, and your body is always close to me and the look in your eyes never changes. People are saying we will be miserable, we will regret, but we are happy, we are laughing always, we are singing. We are talking Spanish and French and Arabic and Turkish. We are admitted everywhere and they strew our path with flowers.

I say this is a wild dream—but it is this dream I want to realize. Life and literature combined, love the dynamo, you with your chameleon's soul giving me a thousand loves, being anchored always in no matter what storm, home wherever we are. In the mornings, continuing where we left off. Resurrection after resurrection. You asserting yourself, getting the rich varied life you desire; and the more you assert yourself the more you want me, need me. Your voice getting hoarser, deeper, your eyes blacker, your blood thicker, your body fuller. A voluptuous servility and tyrannical necessity. More cruel now than before—consciously, wilfully cruel. The insatiable delight of experience.

HVM

Low key affair fortieth

Triple Espresso German Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Caviar Cream and Mixed Berries that I baked for my fortieth last week.

A simple no-fuss recipe because I was very busy yet I wanted to keep up with the tradition of baking for myself that I started a few years ago.

Wish you were all here too. Yes, you. Especially you.

Mama grew up with me

My mom became a mother at the tender age of fifteen. We basically did our growing up together, she living her youth and I was pretending to be an adult. At times I do feel terrible, like I robbed her of her youth and made her grow up extra fast when she wasn't exactly ready for it. I was not the easiest child to raise especially when she was still a kid herself. But through it all we've made it, all the forty years of it. For that I thank you Mama, for giving me life, for the live we lived and most of all for the unique relationship we share.

Happy Mother's Day Mama.

14,484 days

May I always live up to the spirits

of these great women of Islam, 

and also my grandmothers, 

Zeynab and Fatima.

The Promise and Popinjay Soap Part II

Funny how a mention of word could trigger such memories. Someone mentioned the Popinjay Soap on one of my Facebook post yesterday, and that has led me to thinking of Tok Nani and her green  Popinjay soaps. And I started telling the story, bit by bit it blossomed into the post before this and now this one too.

Someone asked me if my Tok Nani or any of us kept in touch with her biological family. Well no, she lost contact with them right from the beginning. She wasn't told that she was adopted until after her marriage, even though people wondered why she looked so different from the rest of the siblings who are younger than her in looks and color. They were all dark skinned and with sharp features. And double eyelids. While she had flat onion shaped nose, eyes that were not quite slits but distinctively oriental. And her skin, creamy soy milk-like, which breaks out with freckles whenever exposed to the sun, something I inherited but my mom doesn't.

Years later, when the flashes of memories finally clicked with the whispers she heard as a child from the nannies, cooks and drivers, she asked around about her origins, but for some reason the adults weren't too keen in talking about it. A few nuggets of informations that she managed to gather here and there say that she may have a younger sister who were also given up just before her parents went back to Japan.

Sometimes during the late 50's or 60's one of my uncles met a lady who was the spitting image of my grandmother, she took to him really well, treating him like a son even though she was some VIP wife in the northern state of Penang. Perhaps she knew something, maybe she had some answers. Too bad my uncle didn't pursue it.

By late 70's and early 80's when my mom and some of her siblings started pursuing the search, most of the elders that may be party to the information has already passed on. Some of her (adopted) siblings and children remain steadfast that she's their biological sister though.

She may have been raised in a typical Penang Jawi Pekan family with strong roots in the Indian Muslim cultures. She may have lived her live steeped in the Mami lifestyle, instilling the values into the lives of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, but there's no mistaking her origins.

disclaimer : this story was written based on stories I heard from my late grandmother, uncles and aunt. while no fictionalization was added, I can't guarantee that all facts are accurate. Like I said, too bad I was born a few decades too late.