dusun
January 2012 Ridiculously Free
Malaysian e-Journal of the Arts
special issue
dusun
yusuf martin ....in words and images
I once had five rabbits and now I have none please pardon me if I seem a little glum
contents
page 6
january 2012 cover editor
yusuf martin yusuf martin
yusufmartin51@googlemail.com
Dusun TM
dusun is a not for profit publication
editorial
page 8 yusuf martin brief bio page 10 malim nawar morning poem page 16 digital organics images page 26 it’s a jungle in there short story page 31 a well remembered kampong images page 34 floral dance? images page 42 lemang/friday night poems page 44 makanan laut images page 48 digital organics too images page 52
buttery summer
short story page 58 phantasy images page 66 i’m beginning to see the light short story
editorial
Welcome back
Dusun is rapidly becoming established as THE place to go for insights into Malaysian Art and Culture.
Each issue we bring a different aspect to our eager world wide audience, trying to bring the very best to you in the spirit of a NOT FOR PROFIT e-magazine (e-zine). Dusun is open to article contibutions - on Malaysian Art and Culture, poems and short stories which have a Malaysian connection.
Dusun seeks to promote modern and contemporary Malaysian Art and Culture, and in this issue Dusun excites and delights with a brand new theme. This is a special issue of Dusun - one of many to come.This issue focuses on one creative - Yusuf Martin, his poetry, short stories and digital artworks spanning over a decade. Yusuf creates in whichever medium seems appropriate at the time, and moves between image making and telling texual narratives. Now read on...........................................
Ed.
Yusuf Martin was born in London, 1951. He is a writer/poet/ designer and a graduate in Art History, Exhibition Making, Graphic Design, Philosophy and Social Work. He has travelled most of the known world and lived in Britain, India and Malaysia where he built a house and has lived writing novels, poetry and short stories while tending his battered jeep, surrounded by mountains, jungles, lakes and water buffalo. He was Guest Writer at India’s Commonwealth Writers Festival in New Delhi (2010) and Guest Writer at Singapore’s Lit Up literature festival (2010); he has read in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh Malaysia (2011).Yusuf writes articles on Art & Culture for magazines and newspapers and designs digital images. He has been the editor of Dusun – a Malaysian Arts and Culture e-magazine and founder/host of Northern Writers – a venue for ‘readings’ in Ipoh, Malaysia.
kampong house
malim nawar morning surreal hummingbird morning garden papaya drips dew kingfishers flash blue against candyfloss sky judy collins sings of chelsea warming chill of my jeep cabin softening hard pangolin killing road taking me back to the three cat stooges in my compound warming sun brings bougainvillea bright golden helliconia jasmine and that mangy mangled one-eyed thief into my kitchen stealing fish brighter hotter morning sky cleared to pale blue sun pounding grass to yellow bleaching paintwork sending cobras slithering for shade another languid day in malim nawar post colonial
kampong house too
lost tin town forgotten as the centuries and railway track passes leaving mrs hameed’s bollywood restaurant feeding post ramadan thosa eaters sitting between time and teh tarik another hot day in malim nawar malim nowhere sun pinches forehead furrows hand shades eyes shouty woman resumes after metal rabbit break mandarins roti cannai puffed and ready to go stray dog sleeps adjacent to rail line honda 50 bumps up and over footbridge stopping momentarily gawping at post colonial houses brick columns cats sheltering children cockerels pecking colonial remains muezzin calling faithful to pray sweet sounds filling ears hearts emptiness left by materialism
rivalling nightly hokkien karaoke another fine day in malim nawar ah lam nets mining pool fish pa yusop stretches tea cup to enamel cup glass to chipped glass dreaming of mecca 30 years passing children gone empty space of departed wife pregnant lady mountain pushes up revealing belly on another bright clear malim nowhere day as my jeep rolls slowly on grandmother screams latah as I drive into the kampong past blind sisters selling kuih shed full of cats spilling
onto the dirt track chasing golden necked proud cockerels into sun dried torch ginger
balik kampong (part)
always on puffing black smoke back down that memory lane carbide chimney sold brick by red brick dragon fruit weirdness fluffy bunny gardens chinese school disgorging pupils bicycles cars everywhere noisy on a hot malim Nawar morning a chases m m chases paper khalwat goons chase both slipping sliding greased palms fingers too fat to pull wallets drop cash
Sun shifts shade to shade bananas ripe papayas ripe coconuts fall split pandan water cools thirst I drink from my old jeep cabin drive one handedly slowly ever on into the kampong on a hot malim nawar morning Sun shifts shade to shade bananas ripe papayas ripe coconuts fall split pandan water cools thirst I drink from my old jeep cabin drive one handedly slowly ever on into the kampong on a hot malim nawar morning published in remembering whiteness and other poems january 2012
digital organics
time to dance in the forest of my dreams
paper blue
green
retrospective illusion
agua air
you can’t take it with you
back to our roots
sounding water quivering trees
sunday
it’s a JUNGLE in there previously published in the december 2011 issue of the malaysian esquire magazine
To put the record straight - I was never lost. At no point was I lost, there was never any lostness to my being in Taman Negara. I was just, well, slightly disoriented, that’s all, turned around maybe. It simply wasn’t fair to refer to me as Jim - he went missing in an altogether different mountainous place and, besides, I wasn’t missing. When, eventually, I found the rest of the party it was because I had actually wanted a little time apart, some time to myself, reflective time, time to chill. Good, I’m glad that I’ve got that straight. It took about three and a half water-splashed and heat baked hours by agonisingly slow, rickety, boat to travel up river from Kuala Tembeling. We headed to the 130 million year old national park, having just travelled an almost equal amount of time in an ancient, beaten up,VW minibus and then waited around with nothing but cold fried fish and equally cold rice to eat, and I wasn’t best pleased. After the first exciting hour of ooooh and wow look at that, the rippling water and the once interesting wildlife just became passé. The heat, however, was relentless. Once more I was in a small craft, this time going up a river and not on the open sea. Once again there was no canopy, but there were other passengers - all going ooooh and wow look at that, as we passed water buffalo bathing, heron fishing, water snakes swimming – the last one was more like eeeeeeee, er don’t look, then - ok you can look now and so on and so forth, for three and half water-borne hours. The small jungle resort was nothing much to look at from the river. Once we had disembarked it seemed maybe a little odd, standing out from the jungle like a sore digit, rather than fitting in as we had been informed. But I was so grateful of that incongruous chalet for all the time I was in Taman Negara, for it was my sole source of air-con. I
hadn’t realised - until that trip, just how dependent I had become on air conditioning and a cool atmosphere. I confess to being an armchair explorer – watching videos, in full 3D HD, of other people sweating and being sucked by monstrous leeches - now that I could endure. Being actually in the hot and humid jungle, with the prospect of meeting hissing, snorting or sucking wildlife face to snout was not my idea of an ideal holiday. It was not just hot, but humid. It is a natural fact that the larger you are the more you are affected by both the heat and the humidity. I was affected enough for at least two people. Every time I emerged from my beloved air-con the sweat would just pour down my face, under arms – well you can imagine. I must have lost weight there – the amount I sweated, it was like a sauna - but jungle version and no running around being whipped, or did I miss that party. From our ‘encampment’ it was possible to hike along various trails leading further into the jungle – to areas containing elephants, rope walks through the tree canopy and myriad other enticements into the land of Jungle Jane and Tarzan. I chose the canopy rope walk. Maybe that was because it was the nearest, and because being Indiana Jones was ok for Indiana Jones but probably not ok for middle-aged keyboard plonkers or full HD touch-screen watchers. My faithfully following wife – followed faithfully. There were, thankfully, no leeches so I didn’t have to martyr myself like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. It was the dry season, and the thousand and one different kinds of snake (well, 37 apparently) kept well out of our path, which meant that the slack-paced jaunt to the canopy walk was relatively incident free. As a matter of interest, and also as a warning, we were told
of a biologist who had wandered off the path, got lost, and had to survive on the jungle plants until she eventually found a village. Was that true or was that the jungle equivalent of an urban legend, maybe a cautionary tale, who knows, but I took note like Little Red Riding Hood - not to step of the path. We climbed and we climbed but not to China Mountain, instead we followed the rope walk, watching incredible birds, gawping at the canopy, sky, the wonder of it all, on what was advertised as the longest rope walk in the world. It was amazing, exhilarating and all those wonderful adventurous adjectives pushed together – and then some. Half-way through the spectacle of that rope-walk is where faithful spouse decided to get down and wait until I completed the course – which I did. I did not realise that the end of the rope walk was not also the beginning. I exited in an altogether different sector of the jungle from that which my wife was in. Standing alone in a strange sector of the jungle, sans signs, was the point at which I started to take stock of my survivalist skills. It was quickly done – none. Ok, so which of these berries is edible and which will lead to an agonising death – duh, er – pass. Where can I live off the water from plants, when it’s not raining - ah, um; ok so where is the nearest mall, shopping complex - 7/11 or LRT. There was the stark realisation that the jungle and I were not made for each other. We would have to part, go our separate ways and promise to stay friends. I could hear voices. I followed those voices back, found a trail, then a wooden sign and discovered wife and entrance to canopy walk at one and the same time. So I will say again, I was not lost, just a little wrong footed perhaps, a tad anxious - but definitely not lost.
motherly hills
a well remembered kampong
Hills of yesterday
one corner of the 6x4 print has become creased, revealing the paper beneath the photographic coating, the image nevertheles In the photograph I am twenty years, and hold my first child of a few months. I wear a newly purchased two tone leather jac daughter a little towards the camera so that her mother can take the photograph, and clearly see her puffy cheeked daughter. It is the tail end of winter and we are all a little fresh faced from the cool of the wind. I rest against a wooden gate, a prop fo from the elements and, after the photograph is taken, the child is placed back in the buggy, strapped in for safety and comfort newly rented council house. Times are a little lean. I have recently accepted an appointment as a carer to eleven elderly men - at a home for the aged. I ha week cleaning and caring for the men whose relatives prefer the dirty work done by others, shaving and bathing the ex-husba dren’s children, because growing older is a messy business. Perhaps some of this is evident in the leanness of my face, or the through, the camera holder. The child’s mother had given up her job in the bakery, selling fresh yeasty bread in the mornings from the home bakery whic mence her working life as a domestic helper, cleaning in a residence sheltering nurses and enabling them to continue to care It was not an easy time and the white frame surrounding the photographic image puts a neat boundary around that image of f in the 1970s. The photograph is unable to depict the smallness of the lives we lived then, unless the observant viewer can see captured resemblance of father and daughter. The fact that this photograph never had a frame perhaps indicates choices we had to make, between the decorative and the fu not thinking to protect this image from time’s ravages and the future yellowing of the paper from the sun as it frequently brus We were a young couple caught up in the living of life, unable to afford a thought for the future, wrapped in the present and s On days other than that depicted in the photograph I would enjoy the company of my small child, she in her buggy and I push snow giving us both cause for a smile until, out of fatherly concern, I fix the plastic protection over the front of the buggy, sh Alternatively, the child, now growing beyond her years in the photograph would attempt to catch snow and meld it into a sno mitten covered hands as she does so, with small clumps of snow relentlessly clinging onto the wool of the gloves. She slips a parental concern, to see that she is fine and once again struggling to her feet and tasting snow on her face with her pink tongu cence of the child. But it is another time. The photograph is an aide memoir. It brings back the child from thirty eight years in the past and del ness in the recalling, but a little sadness too that I am unable to reach out and touch that child, take her, once more, in my arm I can only look and remember, and in remembering consider what is lost from memory and what little still remains of that ph
endless
ss remains clear – that of a proud father with his first born child. cket, bought as a birthday present from the sales in a local leather store. I hold the young child firmly in my grip, tilting my
or the image. Behind, the slightly cloudy sky reveals a pale chilled blue. We are glad that the child is well wrapped, safe t. The small canopy is rearranged to protect the child from the chilling wind. The three of us turn and walk back towards our
ave bought a cycle to help me travel the two miles to work, twice daily, as the job entails split shifts. I spend most of my ands, fathers and grandfathers who are tucked away, out of harm’s reach, and out of sight of their children and their chile trimness of the cut of the leather jacket I wear, or maybe in the smiling, yet somewhat distant eyes that look towards and
ch scented Head Street with its satisfying essence, to look after the child she had borne but, in time, would have to recomfor the sick and the injured. father and daughter, slicing but a fragment from the reality of life beyond the lens, denying the complexity of our lives lived e from the size of the photograph that we were unable to purchase a larger size, to place upon our mantelpiece, to admire the
unctional with the functional, inevitably, and constantly winning out. We were a couple with a small child, living in the now, shed our mantelpiece, glancing through infrequently cleaned windows. struggling to have a future, any kind of future, as long as the future was there. hing, walking behind, making sounds and noises I expected a small child to recognise or appreciate, the slight feathering of heltering the child from the weather and also from the connection we had. owball, failing as the loose white frozen water falls apart and onto the ground, but nevertheless laughing and clapping her and falls in the snow, laughing but with a slight quiver to her lip as the surprise of the fall gives her a shock. I rush out of ue and laughing in that endearing way a very small child has, drawing you into her moment and sharing the joy and inno-
livers her to my sight, stirring my recollections, memories and emotions in a way that little else can. There is much happims and pose for a photograph. hotograph, of my memory and of the bond we had when she was young.
another day
I always remember Saadi visiting his rose garden
traversing the songs of the universe
floral dance?
always leafing never staying
deeper forest
depth
orchidia
redon
dipang
lemang you come to me all soft and creamy scents of coconut rice bamboo fire-smoke and banana leaf i sense your firmness al dente, taste your pliancy and succulent delights i want to drizzle you with wild bee honey drip over your sides bite into you your sweet stickiness dribbling into my beard while you kill me slowly softly
published in remembering whitene
ess and other poems january 2012
friday night friday kampong night cocks crow ox tail soup leaf next to leaf melting heat sweat rivulets wooden stilt house night heat bite after bite hungry like insects kinta
durians drop abangah in the tree abanglong cucumber cool she he tony curtis quiff bouncing boards creak cat mews she purrs he sighs
makanan laut
ikan mati satu
ikan mati dua
ikan mati tiga
udang
digital organics too
merdeka
perhaps green
where no one sees you
buttery summer previously published in the Expat magazine 2011
For the rest of the world it is summer. Hard working people begin to have their dreams of sun-drenched holidays realised. Here in Malaysia the sun, practically, always shines. So, while sun bathing beauties – male and female alike, relish their moment in the sun on pristine white beaches. And as they drip with suntan lotion and oils, cooling off by taking dips in the azure seas, the very same sun which glints off their bronzed bodies is also responsible for shrivelling our fruits, heating the inside of our cars and forcing our furry friends into the shade to lay sprawling, desperately trying to cool their overheated bodies. The sun’s ferocity affects our behaviour too, encouraging some of us to behave a little oddly – like taking one’s newly purchased Irish butter for a walk. Okay, so it was into an air-con restaurant and I can justify my actions because of the heat and the likelihood of said butter melting into a pool inside the car. Taking pats of golden butter for walkies was not my normal practise until I moved to Malaysia. In fact, in cooler climes, I had not the slightest desire to take any form of dairy produce for walks, saunters or promenades - be it butter, cheese, cream or indeed milk, but the heat, here, does this to a man. It was hot. I bought the butter from the local retail outlet of a major international chain. I held it, in its distinctively coloured plastic bag, as I entered the Indian restaurant and marched straight into the air-con section to keep the butter and me cool as I waited for my meal, and after, while I ate. At the time, that unselfish act of butter care seemed perfectly reason-
able, logical even. I prided myself on quick thinking. However, on my return home, and after handing over all the shopping bags to my wife, she gave me a quizzical look - why was the bag containing the butter so much cooler than the other bags. Like a husband caught cheating – I inwardly panicked. Self-doubt attacked me like a club. Had I behaved crazily, was I mad to have taken the butter, and only the butter, into that eatery. Matters got much worse as I looked at the sad sorry mess the cheese was in.Yes, I had forgotten that the cheese was in the other bag – the one not taken into the air-con. The Australian cheese lay, squashed in its plastic wrapper, oily, rubbery, fit now only for cheese on toast and forever to be shunned by the Branston sweet brown pickle. I too was in a pickle. I had mixed emotions. I was glad that I had saved the Irish butter from a similar fate to the cheese, but guilty that I had no such caring thoughts for the Australian cheese. Was I subconsciously favouring my Irish heritage by rescuing that butter, knowing somewhere at the back of my mind that I was leaving the Ozzie cheese to a fate worse than death. Can you be retrospectively guilty of racial favouritism when it comes to supermarket purchases – was I therefore guilty of gross grocery neglect. As I said - the heat does strange things to us ex-patriots. Remember this, the very next time you oil-up, ready for your sizzling summer holiday on the beach. Someone somewhere has a pat of butter to protect and, while he does so, in a climate like ours it is imperative that he does not forget his fragile cheese, lest he forever shun the idea of sandwiches and settles for Welsh rarebit cheese-on-toast.
papan
buttery summer
magic trip
green remembered hills
phantasy
cheshires
enchantment
enigma
dream
serene artificial breath of inspiration.
other times
green glade
deeper seas
i’m beginning to see the light previously published in the Expat magazine 2010
The rural life was all plain sailing. The warm equatorial night air remained firmly outside my cool air-conditioned room. Frantic mosquitoes banged their heads against windowpanes in frustration, and even the disapproving house lizards had clocked off - taking their amphibious negativity with them. My wife being absent in Kuala Lumpur, earning a crust to pay the necessary bills, I sat smugly, revelling in the wondrously technological 21st Century, comfortable in my castle, lights dimmed, Neo-Plasma aircon blasting and pseudo-sound surround DVD player playing season 6 of ‘24 hours’, through our not quite flat screen Sony television. At that moment life was at its most perfect. On the side table, within my easy grasp, lay a freshly unwrapped bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut chocolate, slightly in danger of being warmed by a mug of freshly brewed Nescafe, both anxiously waiting to be consumed. I confess - it wasn’t a rich life, not a sparkling, effervescent, jet-setting, dinner in Paris, silk, satin and rosewood sort of life by any means but, at that moment, it suited. It was an old pair of jeans sort of life, a comfy pair of smelly trainers sort of life, the sort of life that fits you and only you - a life to be revelling in, when the time suits of course. And then, as they say, it all went disastrously wrong. Without a shadow of a warning, my sorely needed electricity went off. One moment TV, lights, air-con, next moment dark and silence, save for some mocking amphibian choking with laughter outside. This was no mere inconvenience. I desperately need air-con. My entire being revolved around being cool, there in the tropics. I needed lights, warm showers and mind numbing television to stop me from thinking too much about ants, snakes and mango shoot munching water buffalo and what the hell was the government doing with all those billions. I needed the comfort of access to the internet, microwave ovens and all the electrical paraphernalia of a modest modern life.
Suddenly the plush contemporary world went quiet. Radios stopped, TVs stopped and all the VCDs, DVDs, CDs and MP3s remained hushed, as if some godly figure had raised one finger to lips - but the world kept turning. Grasping for the trusty torch, I pushed the button and the torch went on giving life saving light - then off. I shook it - back on came a yellow bland sort of light. The very sort of dimness that makes you fall over cheap plastic Japanese slippers - on your way to find candles. Candles, why would we want to hide candles. It seemed beyond me. What was my thought process when I buried candles at the very back of our cupboard. Maybe at the time I was in deep denial that the electricity would ever fail again. But to bury them so deep, back beyond the boxes of old clothes, ancient photographs, bits and pieces of things we might need one day, but never do. On the electricity went - then off, mockingly. There was no television, no satellite TV, no MP3 player, no internet, no Facebook, no Twitter, no light until I finally discovered the hidden bag of night lights. A fresh shift of house lizards gave their tut-tut verdict of my predicament, frogs found newly inspired voices and insects competed for ‘Insect Idol of the year’. A brand new, brave new world opened up its vistas. A world of nature and of flickering, romantic candles – a world of reading and writing, an excitingly fresh new world of literature and meaning - only it was too dim to read or write, but at least I wasn’t forced to watch the 5 year old British soap operas being aired on Asian Granada Satellite TV. The very minute that the electricity eventually came back on, all was forgotten as hero Jack Bauer once again saved the American day and I was suckered back gawping at the contemporary world and all thought of inconvenience and rebellion nestled to the back of my numbed mind.
wira kampong
balik kampong
pensĂŠ
brigantia
jack o’ the green
eye of the beholder
in another land
sky mandala
falling toward the light
coming soon....