[you only love] once

On inexplicable deep connections </3 and fleeting encounters.

(i) “more than lonely lumps of metal”

There is this quote from Murakami that I’ve been obsessed with for the longest time. Though I do need to preface that I’ve taken this quote out of context and as a standalone prose because I have never been and will never be a Murakami stan. As a self-professed deep lover of brief romances, this quote is simply quintessential to a specific yearning that is felt from the profoundly short timeframe in which these encounters take place and yet seem to be felt into eternity.

“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

There is some strange magic in the crossing of such paths, set in motion for days, weeks or even years before the synchronous energies accumulate into a reveal of pure cosmic entanglement before continuing on our separate orbits, thoroughly transformed, so much more than lonely lumps of metal. This is a kind of romance I take pleasure in, no, not the heteronormative “grow old together until we die” romantic love, but something more akin to what the period of Romanticism was all about, described by Baudelaire as being “situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling”. This kind of romance rejects rationality and logic and instead, persists in the mysterious and unnamable.

**

Many moons ago during my month long residency in Bandung, I spend a long afternoon at a warung located beside a train track. I had been interviewing children and youths who were not documented due to being born outside of marriage and somehow that morning, I had ended up outside the gates of the orphanage run by a Catholic church. E who was my assistant for the project had dropped a text saying she’d be really late and asked if I was able to conduct the interviews on my own. She told me she’d meet me later that afternoon. As I rang the bell, the pastor and two sisters greeted me warmly and ushered me inside.

I had asked the pastor several questions and then as arranged, met two teenager girls who had been at the orphanage since they were six. The pastor left us. I asked them about their time there and about their dreams and aspirations. The entire interview felt rehearsed, as though the girls were coached by the pastor to be aligned to the church’s mission. Both of them wanted to serve the church after completing their studies as it was necessary work that they wish to continue. One of them wanted to be a pastor too and start her own orphanage to help other orphans like herself. Yet somehow the energy of the room seems to be off. The door of the room was left half open and as the girls were conversing, their eyes darted to the opening several times. I did not probe and left shortly after that.

It was kite season in Bandung and I caught sight of a kite flailing in circles at the top of an electricity pole located across the road. This was such a recurring sight; kites in trees, on top of buildings, on lampposts and electricity poles. Near the pole was a small warung and since E was going to be late, I decided to have a cup of coffee and spend some time trying to document the details of the two interviews. The warung was manned by an old man in a white singlet. When I arrived he was faced away from me, busy with some tasks. Pak, Good Day satu! I requested as I settled myself on the makeshift counter, grabbing one of the chairs. I was his only customer. At the side of the warung were train tracks with open access, not fenced up like the ones back home.

The man made coffee and turned to finally face me, smiling as he handed me the cup. Dari mana ma? he asked and I said Singapore. Libur? I do look like a tourist I thought, but an odd one especially in an urban neighbourhood, faraway from the tourists spots, in the middle of the day. Bukan pak, riset. I had said and the conversation seem to have ended as it normally would in most exchanges in Bandung. People are warm there but always respectfully so. After a couple of sips, I took my camera and walk over to the tracks. I could feel the ground grumble and the train lights flicker from a distance. Two men looked at me curiously. No trains back home?, they asked. I squinted from behind my camera, we do but not like this. When the train passed, I felt the force of it, that sharp suction sound followed by a feeling of being stretched across thresholds. I saw the men on the other side and as the train left they posed for me, as they hugged each other, warm smiles across their faces.

I returned to the warung. The man had watched me the entire time curiously and then pointed to my camera. Does that help you see? he asked. Sometimes. Most times I just want to capture the moments, in case I forget them. He had made a cup of coffee for himself and offered me some snacks. Let’s share experiences but only if you want to, he said with ease and we shared stories like old time friends over coffee and cigarettes.

You know sometimes, there are girls, slightly younger than you that would come to my warung and they’d sit where you’re sitting now and some of them look troubled. No, not troubled, but lost. Not many, maybe five of them so far over the years. You remind me of them somehow but they seemed sad. I caught one of them crying quietly, just couple of months back. When I asked her, she said she feels confused, on the inside. Do you understand? They all came from that orphanage. Some lived there their entire lives.

I did not tell him about my research and my visit to the orphanage earlier that morning. Had he seen me leave the place? Put two and two together? Offered me a narrative I was looking for? Or was it just coincidence? I smiled at the man and asked for his name. Pak Faijo he told me, that smile never leaving his face. At one moment Pak Faijo lowered his voice and said you should always be careful who you talk to especially at night, turn around slowly and you'll see three gembolans right behind you. Thinking he was pulling my leg, I slowly turned and saw at the corner of my eyes, two men and a woman looking intently at the both of us. At night the desperate of the lot will just stabbed you and steal from you Pak Faijo said. Aren't you scared then being out here by yourself Pak? His eyes gleamed. I am already sixty-seven years old this year my dear. If I am scared of death, how can I live my life?

E had dropped me a text saying she was on her way and to meet her outside of the orphanage. Pak, can I take a photo of you? He held his hand up declining my offer but then quietly turn to face away from me again. As I was packing my things, he had put on a nice batik shirt. How about now? You look really good in that. Pak Faijo smiled with ease and I snapped the photo, the click of my trigger felt like a heartbreak. He took my pen and scribbled inside my notebook. Here’s my address, please send me the photo. In case I forget you. I told him I would visit when I’m in town but we both know that our paths will never cross again, at least not in this lifetime.

(ii) You don’t know me, but I know you.

In December last year, a TikTok post of a woman making quick cuts between a framed photograph of her great-great grandmother and her own face, zooming into their similar features before ending to a close-up of their eyes. They seemed to be the same exact person split between timelines. This was set to a specific part of Laurie Anderson’s incredible song O Superman that goes, “You don’t know me, but I know you”. This trend is still my ultimate favourite. I scrolled through video after video of freaky coincidences, past lives and supernatural connections, screaming at the audacity of it all, that the universe has such a delicious sense of humour.

From a deer + dead mother reincarnate at a wedding to a couple safekeeping matching parts of a torn dollar bill unknowingly like some cosmic promise ring or someone being obsessed with some stock photo of some random kid as a child only to birth an exact human copy of that photo years later, just brrr goosebumps all around. That’s string theory for you I guess and we’re all connected above and beyond this physical realm. Here’s a quick explanation:

‘To be sure, though, string theory is primarily a theoretical framework that some physicists think could maybe explain things like, ya know, the fundamental forces of nature (quantum gravity, anyone?), whereas, invisible string theory is a metaphorical concept to explain how some people and things just seem to keep finding their way back to one another.

“Invisible connections, energetic ties, and unseen spiritual bonds can link us together,” says Van Horn. “It’s a concept that believes that despite physical distance, there are subtle links between souls that are interconnected—as if they’ve been orbiting close to one another in a different dimension before eventually meeting [in this world] in divine timing.”’¹

Although I love these vibrational invisible string theory as the source of deep connections, I find myself thinking of these connections as more complex in nature. Like a big giant cosmic net stretching infinitely across space-time. In Mahayana Buddhism, there is this metaphor of Indra’s net² that illustrates the interpenetration, and interbeing of all things. The interbeing-ness of all things teaches us that no phenomenon exists independently. Whatever is, comes into existence because of factors and conditions created by other phenomena. When factors and conditions no longer support that existence, then that thing ceases to exist. The Buddha said,

When this is, that is.
From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
When this isn't, that isn't.
From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.

In short, everything contains everything else and for that everything is nothing. I know I don’t make much sense here but maybe these strange occurrences of synchronicity is getting a glimpse of the interpenetration at play. Anyways, here is an excerpt from the animated series The Midnight Gospel describing the Indra’s net. (Also please watch the whole series, it’s super yummy and illustrates different ideas of existence ((and death)) with beautiful animation and heart-wrenching narrations for every single episode.)

A: Wait you were talking about…

B: A Hindu theory, Indra’s Net.

A: Right.

B: So the concept is that all consciousness in the world are connected. Imagine like a giant net, like, a glowing, blue net in infinity.

A: Like a quilt?

B: No. More like a net. The Hindu view of this is that it’s the nodes that are important right? And the points of net, the connections between the lines, those are consciousness. Those are Atmans. The Atman is conscious. It is consciousness. And each individual consciousness is God. And in its own way, is the totality.

A: It’s the soul of a butterfly. The soul of a… I don’t know, like a single -celled organism. A bacteria to the soul of the Dalai Lama to the soul of a as-of-yet-contacted hyper-intelligent, as of the…the Gods themselves.

B: Yes.

A: It’s like every soul is like photons coming out of the sun.

B: Right so the Buddha looks at Indra’s net and it’s basically the same topography, but he says, “It’s not the nodes, it’s the connections.”

A: Ah cool.

B: And so this is like the diagnostics of the Buddha. It’s like we think we exist and therefore we suffer.

A: Sorry, we exist therefore we suffer?

B: We think that there is something essentially true about reality. You only have the illusion that you are a separate self, because it’s a point at which a network converges. The important distinction here is also this is not nihilism. It’s not nothing is real. It’s that everything is empty of inherent quality, meaning non-essentialism. There’s no essential, one true “Clancy”. There’s no essential one true “Jason”.

A: Right.

B: There’s no essence of anything. The Tibetan Buddhists call this the clear light, understanding the essential non-existence of everything.

**

(i)

I found you first in a cardboard box, stacked against other cardboard boxes. You appeared from the first one I had picked though I thought nothing of it. I did not know much about you and was genuinely uninterested. But in the two weeks I was there, I met you several times through the stories of others who knew you well, through your pastel coloured paintings of vaginas and penises penetrating various objects, your shimmering Legong costume with this faint floral fragrance that lingered trailing me the entire trip, the ghost of it, the ghost of you. I felt possessed, by your face, the brightest smile and watched you on a projected screen in your last days before you succumbed to the cancer that was eating you away.

In that two weeks, I met you every day except that last day when the trace of you have failed to manifest and I no longer feel your presence. I was tasked by a dear friend before the trip, to deliver photographs to a Topeng master in a secluded area of Bali. There we sat over tea and snacks. I handed the pictures over and chatted freely with the instructor, his son-in-law and his daughter. What are you doing here? his daughter asked me. A few performance, an exhibition as a tribute to a famous artist from Bali. Oh yeah, who? Murniasih, I said, your name no longer a foreign thing but something so intimate. I don’t think I know who that is. I showed the images from the last two performances, and then an old photograph of Murni, putting on the same costume I had danced in for hours. The woman held my hand gently and looked at me. She’s my student. I taught her this dance. This photo was taken here at this school.

I came back from that trip transformed; I moved differently and created with a sense of pleasure when before, all I did was put my body through was discomfort and nothing more. You became my teacher, entered into my consciousness several times since then, through dreams and whispers, reminding me to create for myself, from myself, with the magical energies of joy and pain and everything else will flow.

(ii)

Just weeks before, I was somewhere else. It was in the middle of a sweltering afternoon and I was at Kampung Nelayan looking for you. The driver had parked at the side of the road and I approached, purely from a feeling, two men who walked pass. Do you know where I can find fishermen here? I asked. Again, possessed by something inexplicable. The men nodded enthusiastically and we walked for about fifteen minutes. I was in my first trimester, and the lethargy was palpable. We came to a house and let ourselves in. Are we intruding? I thought as I sat closer to the door. There you sat with another man, pieces of papers laid out on the floor. I thought to myself, what are the odds to be here in the moment to witness survival. In the months followed, I returned to this house several times, my belly swelling with stories of the sea and grief. You and your small family became my spirit surrogates, bringing the deepest parts of me to the surface.

The last time we met was outside Objectifs. You asked if I could find you a cassette tape of the band XPDC and bring it over the next time I visited. You told me you love their music. But I never made it back. Sometimes when I’m telling your stories, or the moments we shared, or even during the times I am out at sea, I yearn for a return back to us on your boat, in the quiet.

(iii) in another life when we are both ____

This requires some kind of suspension, thick in fiction and time bends. At every turn, I was making my way to her, or she to me, I’m still unsure. Maybe both, simultaneously, an ancient thing, some soft combustion, she and I stubborn debris clinging onto each other. A friend texted with what I hope to be the best of intentions, “I hope you find strength and alignment in the reason you chose to keep her during the pregnancy. Sort of like reaffirmation,” when I was in a spiral and offloading the terrors of raising my child in a neurotypical heteronormative world. The knowledge that she does not have anyone else if anything were to happen to my partner and I. That we are her entire world.

When I found out and was offered termination as an option, I chose to continue with the pregnancy. Do I regret this decision? On rough days, I play the scene over, me in that chair, the sudden shift in the posture of the ultrasound technician, the way her voice had dropped and how she left the room to find a doctor. I remember it clearly and play it over in my mind as I push my child in the pram, how the gynae on duty had explained that she was missing a box in her brain, that it was incomplete. I was offered several times to terminate the pregnancy and immediately, without much thought, I had turned it down. I think about it on our best days too. Did I consider the consequence of my decision? Yes definitely but that knowing feeling outweigh everything else. It felt inscribed in the scales of time, that she will be born and raised by us as though it had happened before, in different lifetimes, on different timelines.

When time is a snake devouring its tail and we are caught in its slithering, there is no distinct beginning. Maybe it began with Pirate, the three legged neighbourhood cat that appeared out of nowhere. I had no affinity to any strays before this, just random hellos and packets of cat food but Pirate was different. I rushed home each night and jingle my keys and in a couple of tsk-tsk, Pirate would be running towards me. I was allergic to cats in general and avoided any form of contact. My eyes would water and swell into slits and my face would itch. Cat fur would make me sneeze for hours. But Pirate would climb up my leg, onto my lap and pressed her entire face into mine and there would be no adverse reactions, no rejection from my body, just a slowing, a safe feeling.

After coming back from a two weeks trip to Vietnam, Pirate disappeared just as she had appeared, suddenly and out of nowhere. Just like that she was gone. More than a decade later, my child does the same thing, press her face against mine, and we are caught in the slowness, and I am safe again. The dust from the debris is varied and many, and over the years, she was becoming and I was readying myself to her. Little things like the girl, who did not speak, in the ruined grounds of Bakthapur with the rubber band tied tightly around her right ear who had played hide and seek before running off or all those times I had applied for jobs to teach at schools for children with disabilities. When you know, you know. And I knew before that moment, and in the thick of it and long after it has come to pass and she is finally here, every breath marked on each day, strong and aligned, against all the bleakness and despair. The brightest sun in a darkened room.

***

It was Ramadan and my partner and I were both fasting. We did not think it through when we decided to go to Sungei Buloh for a walkabout on a hot midday afternoon. With no way to hydrate ourselves, we were already feeling beaten down the moment we arrived. But a date is a date and we both took pleasure in going for long walks with no specific destinations. The place was scattered with bird-watching uncles; their giant binoculars around their necks, and cameras with enormous lenses upon their shoulders. The place seem to shaped by sound, of birds and insects at every turn and yet it was hard for our untrained eyes to spot anything. Through the normalcy of the day, as we walked the paths around the area, there was a strange sense that something was a little off or maybe out of sync.

Finally we reached a viewing tower in the middle of the mangroves, about four-storeys high. Being all in at this point, with our parched throats and tired bodies we made the climbed all the way to the top. We did it silently and at first I thought that it was probably because we were conserving our energies but in hindsight, I remember that everywhere around us, everything has suddenly grown incredibly quiet. Reaching the top I remember both of us holding on to the ledge as we caught sight of a silver feathered bird flying towards us. The wingspan of the bird was unusually large, maybe about 2 meters across or more, and standing about four to five meters away, I could almost feel the wingbeats of this majestic animal.

When the bird spotted us, it seemed to be reversing backwards from its flight path and did this swoop of a U-turn before flying in the opposite direction, disappearing into the horizon. Spellbound and swallowed up by the silence, we made our way down as though nothing had happened, as if we did not want to break the magic with the inadequate words fearing it might diminish the encounter. Even writing this right now, I am struggling to capture the feeling, something divine, something quantum, but with no specific conclusion. Not until years later, I am brought back to that room, with the missing box in her small head, in that chair, the cold surface of my belly, the wet sounds of a heartbeat, of the bird and the same wingbeats, in its silver blur, headless and in flight, manifested before me. Aligned and strong, when you know, you’ll know in time eternal.

And here, many years later, if I were to choose again, it would be a yes, in all the multiverses, a yes, in all lifetimes past and futures, a yes and always, in another life when we are both _________, I will love you only once (and forever).

1. https://www.wellandgood.com/invisible-string-theory/

2. Francis H. Cook describes Indra's net thus:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.^[6]