A TragedyThe twenty year old student of a Taiwanese college was speeding down the expressway.Barely missing the maximum speed limit of 100km/h,in his white car going down the road towards his unknown destination.
A black mini-bus on the extreme left hand side of the road,the windows were blackened to protect the identity of the people inside,and in before this man in white t-shirt was a slow moving car,driven way under the speed limit,and driving up the nerves of this hot-tempered twenty year old.He made a cut right,pressed down on the pedal and sped forward past the car in front.As he swerves back into that same lane,trying to cut in front of the slower driver,he cuts in way too early and the back of his car scraped against the hood of the vehicle at the back,sending it swerving out of control into the black van on the extreme left hand side of the highway.
It rammed into the side of the van,the windows broke.The impact sent the passengers to the floor,then as the driver desperately tried to regain control of the black van,it cuts across two other lanes before losing balance,sliding sixty metres down the highway,with the other cars behind still travelling at full speed.One of the passengers,a lady at the window,had her hand outside the window just before the overturn.And as it did so,the weight of the van landed upon her arm,and in between the metal and the tarmac road cushioned her hand,with the skin and bones being shredded into pieces due to the fiction.She mustve been unconcious already,because the initial impact caused her organs to burst into a splatter of blood.
*
It's been on the news the whole day.Interviews after interviews of politicians and singers visiting the hospital where the poor lady was,unconcious and on the verge of death.Microphones and cameras crowding around any known human being outside the entrance of the hospitals,and on the faces of those people,sadness and grief written all over.Tears fell,lips bitten.Under the flashes of the cameras and the poking microphones,still it was hard to hold back the tears and the despair,the impending loss of a great woman our beautiful world.
*
'Why do good people die earlier?' my mother commented.
'That's because bad people dont die soon enough.' i replied.
*
I am not too familiar with Taiwanese politics.In fact,not politics on the whole.Let's face it,superficiality is written all over the face of politics,and no matter how pure and how innocent they try to convince people,even the cleanest and 'whitest' party in any country,has their darker and more undisclosed aspects.I've never been a fan of such conspiracies,or such superficial things.You know,it is as complicated as it is simple.That didnt make sense,which is why it does.Am i making it,any sense at all?
But it is all over the news now: The Tragedy.The wife of the mayor of TaiChung was involved in a car crash on the North-South highway in Taiwan,after attending the rally of a fellow party member down in KaoShiong.The car tipped off balance,crashed onto its side while her hand was still outside the broken window,and slid sixty metres before stopping in the middle of the highway.
She was sent to the hospital,alive and unconcious.Her hand was in a pulp then,and if what was left of her arm didnt hang from her body like that,nobody wouldve thought that that was actually a human arm before the accident.They amputated the arm,removed and repaired the damaged organs,and with only her will to hold on to and hope,she battles Death and his threatening sickle,somewhere between reality and the world of the after-life.The rest of us,people who knows her and people who dont,are trying desperately to put a shield over her body,covering what is left of her brave soul with their prayers and hopes,hoping that Death would skip to the next name on his list,the next bad person,not this wonderful woman.
*
Death on a palette
Death,like colours
Life,a painting faded
Death,most vivid of colours*
Why do we look beyond hatred,beyond disagreements,beyond anger only when death knocks on our doors.Do we not realise the vulnerability of human life?Do we not understand that we havent the slightest idea of when we are going to come to past?We've known that for so long,almost too long.For centuries,people have been dying to know the ultimate question of life,which is the end of it.Death,the final lesson of life,the greatest teacher of all time.Only,all his students never survived the lessons,only to tell their tales in the after-life,if there is an after-life at all.
Humans,of all the animals,seems to be the most vulnerable of all.If not for the physical damage we might experience,we have the emotional burden of life,simply because - unlike animals - we have a conscience.If the car doesnt kill you,if the pills doesnt poison you,if the virus doesnt infect you,you remain as you are in life and you cry your eyes out because your heart hurts too much from feeling nothing at all.Isnt it sad,that humans,of all the beautiful creatures in the world,appreciates and celebrates life the most and yet,suffers and despairs the most from it as well?
Why can't we just accept that,we could die anytime.With a snap of a finger,or a swing of the deadly sickle.We could be dead,gone from the face of the earth,consumed by maggots and other creepy crawlers in the dirt,returning to the most elemental aspect of mother nature.As i am typing on the computer now,an airplane might smash into my condominium building,killing me.The whole building might sink because of the construction of the MRT station next door.I could choke on my own saliva,my own mucus and die on the stop.Another one of those heart burns might occur,and i might find myself on the ground,gasping for air and hoping desperately for the woman i love to be here with me...Anything could happen to me now,my life is at the mercy of powers i can never possibly comprehend.And because of the unpredictability of life,we often take what we have for granted,that what we have is going to last for a long time,and that there is no need for change,no need for forgiveness,no need to express feelings,to forget,to love.
Only when doom is evident,when death is impending,almost inevitable,do we realise our differences are trivial,our frustrations and angers were unnecessary,immature even.We do politicians shed their angry faces,speak in such polite and gentle tones only in the hospital next to death beds,when all they do in the parliaments is to shout at each other,throwing punches?Whatever happened to the vulnerability of life?Or is it forgotten and neglected,ignored for it is bliss?
The news saddened me,for i see the superficiality of life even in the face of death.You think it is compassion,that these people are showing up before the camera with flowers and tears welling up from their eyes?Do we not present these politicians,statues of golden men and their names for Best Actors and Actresses carved into the golden plate?Do we praise these skin-deep schmucks,because some great lady is dying before the world's eyes,and they are showing up to tell the world that they care,when they dont?
Life to us all,is like a fading painting.We see it everyday,but we never notice the colours fading from the gathering dust,the shining sun.The surface cracked,the colours faded,and the image is distorted.But with death,death being the most beautiful of colours,paints over the picture and once again,it is noticed and it regains the attention it had before.Why do we show our emotions and feelings,only when death is by our side,when it is about to take away something,or someone whom we shouldve held so tightly,held so dear?Should we not be grateful?Should we be so unkind?
I do not deny that i fear the idea of death.It runs in the family,the way death runs at the end of the life of everybody's life.I remember my mother telling me about my father waking up in the middle of the night,with his face buried in his palms and crying like a baby.When asked what happened,he told her that he had a horrible dream that she died.
My father never was a person very good at death.It was last February when his father died,and i remember my mother talking to my aunt - his sister - who was trying to ask my mom to calm him down.He was drunk then,after carrying his father on his back to the hospital.He drank a lot,and denied that his father was dead,making a racket in the hospital halls.I wonder what is going to happen when my grandmother passes on as well,now already at an incredible age of 92.Do we only show our love,after somebody hits that age?Is it too late,is it ever too late?
I remember late at night,climbing into my parents' bed and crying,telling my mother how much i didnt want her to die.I feared death,and i still do.But it was an outright showcase of my emotions then,and in inward swallowing of them now.I do not show my vulnerability at the thought of death.I do not ask anymore questions,for i know the end is inevitable,that it is merely part of life.I know that death can be poetic,death can be beautiful.But the only fear i have for it,is not the manner of my departure,but rather the regrets that might come along with it.Words i never had a chance to say,people i never got to meet,books i never got to read,things i never got to do.That is,for me,the scariest aspect of death,especially the ones that come too soon,too sudden,too immediate.
*
In a small forgotten corner of my place,there is a small grassy patch,bordered now by a concrete drain and metal fencing.That was where you laid,on the grass and your bare stomach to the skin.The rise and fall of it,synchronized with your soft breathing in the night,the beauty and innocence involved in this image...no words can do it justice.For you were so beautiful,so beautiful.
Your chest heaved against mine,your hair tangled with the green undergrowth.Your watery eyes met mine,the world quietened down around us.We had a minute or two left,maybe a little more if we got stubborn enough.But it was getting late,and i made a promise.We said five minutes,and it turned to ten yet again.The soft breeze in the trees,the softness of your body,felt through my shirt and in my heart.I shall remember,remember this feeling.This overwhelming feeling.
I wanted to say something,but you prevented me from saying it.Your lips met mine,whenever i tried to speak.But i waited anyway,delayed my speech for the sensation of your lips against mine,the darkness in my eyes with you filling it all over.'Can i say something?' i managed to blurt out,in between more passionate kisses and the soft panting from your nostrils.'What is it?' you asked,now staring at me with those beautiful eyes.
I gathered myself,took a deep breath.A fleeting moment,capture it!Capture it,i thought.I took hold,i made control.Thought about all the things that happened,the things that have yet to occur.I was afraid,i was terrified.I was the mouse in the corner,i was the pork on the chopping board.But i was brave,and i was no coward.And if the world ended,if love seizes to exist right then at the very moment,on the grassy corner of my house's estate,forgotten and neglected...i had to do it,i thought.I had to say it.
'I love you...' i whispered,almost afraid that the world would hear me,that those words would shatter the peace and harmony of where we were - inside each other.
She smiled,the edge of her mouth curled.Her eyes closed,a pressure from the back of my head brought me closer to hers.And as we kissed,for one of the very last few times of the night and in interludes,she whispered into my mouth,words that i said before but reflected in a totally different manner.
'I love you.I love you.I love you...'
*
I was a dead man
As much as i was alive
Fell victim to your love
In the dead of the night
