A hot summer day

I remember the day vaguely. It was a hot summer day. But in Malaysia, everyday can be a hot summer day. The cold January days of Wisconsin were just a blur memory of a past gone by. A time when I was much younger and had six packs to show for it rather than the half-barrel that now makes up my abdomen as my body ages by.

It is always a hot summer day in Malaysia, be it in January or in June. We have 2 weather conditions, hot and wet or hot and humid with the sun pricking your skin like you are slowly being barbecued by Robert Rayford on one of his many barbeque's around his swimming pool.

He has the licence to grill but apparently the Sun has beat him to it. I feel like I am slowly being cooked. This must be what is feels like to be barbecued or microwaved.

I think of the days gone by and the journey that has led me to my current destination. But this is never the final destination.

After all, our body has only one destination, which is to become the dust we are made from. Our soul too has but only one purpose which is to go back to the master energy source which we believe to be God.

As I am skimming through books to take on my upcoming journey, I wonder how many more journeys I will be taking before achieving my purpose. How much things will I see, how many people will I meet, how many will be people I care for, how many will show love and kindness.

Which book do I take on my upcoming journey. The Sea by John Banville which won the Booker Prize award in 2005 seems appropriate but starts out rather boring and cheesy. "They departed, the Gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morning under the bays of milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, rising to unheard-of heights, the small waves creeping over parched sand that for years had known no wetting save for rain and lapping the very bases of the dunes."

Can the sentence be any longer?

Maybe I will go Asian and take Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. I have not read many Japanese authors before, especially a female Japanese. Her books first sentence is, "Whenever I meet a man, I catch myself wondering what our child would look like if we were to make a baby. It's practically second nature to me now."

This is rather an interesting start that maybe makes me want to continue to read this book.

The last book that I am considering to take on my journey is one by a Malaysian author Lim Boo Liat who also writes something that is closer to my heart when he writes about Malaysian indigenous in his book Orang Asli Animal Tales.

I guess it is a collection of short stories and starts of interesting enough. "Being the 'dwarfs' of the forest, the shrews were easy pickings for the larger animals. So small and helpless were these shrews that they had little hope in vying for food against their competitors, much less defending themselves against those who preyed upon them."

It seems interesting but sounds like I am watching some National Geographic documentary.

As I sit here with Al E sighing by my feet, I finish this tale as I leap off from my chair to take him for a walk and then to start packing.

My life journey continues, my soul journey continues. Both searching for the path, the road less travelled or the one trampled on the most. The right or wrong path does not matter, nor does the destination really. The destination has already been predestined. The body will become dust ... from dust to dust. And the soul will become part of the Universal energy.

What matters is what I do on my journeys, on these paths that I am taking. What I have done is past, what I am doing is what matters. And what books I read to past my time on this journey will only guide me to something, be it just information or entertainment.

Which book would you take amongst those above?

Take care and be well.