Dusun Special

8/3/2019 Dusun Special

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dusunMalaysian e-Journal of the Arts

special issue

January 2012Ridiculously Free


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dusun


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....in wordsand

images

yusuf martin


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I once had ve rabbits

and now I have none

please pardon meif I seem a little glum


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edito

rial

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.


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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 batteredjeep, surrounded by mountains, jungles, lakes and water

buffalo.

He was Guest Writer at Indias Commonwealth Writers

Festival in New Delhi (2010) and Guest Writer at

Singapores 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 aMalaysian Arts and Culture e-magazine and founder/host of

Northern Writers a venue for readings in Ipoh, Malaysia.


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kampong house


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malim nawar morning

surreal hummingbird morning

garden papaya drips dew

kingshers ash blue against candyoss 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 helliconiajasmine

and that mangymangled one-eyed thief into my kitchen

stealing sh

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 nawarpost colonial


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lost tin town

forgotten as the centuries and railway track passes

leaving mrs hameeds bollywood restaurant

feeding post ramadan thosa eaters

sitting between time and teh tarik

another hot day in malim nawarmalim nowhere

sun pinchesforehead furrows

hand shades eyesshouty woman resumes

after metal rabbit break

mandarinsroti cannai puffed and ready to go

stray dog sleeps adjacent to rail line

honda 50 bumps up and over footbridgestoppingmomentarily

gawping at post colonial houses

brick columns

cats shelteringchildren

cockerels pecking colonial remains

muezzin calling faithful to praysweet sounds lling ears

hearts

emptiness left by materialism

kampong house too


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rivalling nightly hokkien karaoke

another ne day in malim nawar

ah lam nets mining pool sh

pa yusop stretches tea

cup to enamel cupglass to chipped glass

dreaming of mecca30 years passing

children goneempty space of departed wife

pregnant lady mountain pushes up

revealing belly

on another bright

clear

malim nowhere dayas my jeeprolls

slowlyon

grandmother screams latah

as I drive

into the kampong

pastblind sisters selling kuih

shed full of catsspilling


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onto the dirt track

chasing golden necked

proud cockerels

intosun dried torch ginger

always on

pufng black smokeback down that memory lane

carbide chimney sold brick

by red brick

dragon fruit weirdness

uffy bunny gardens

chinese school disgorging pupils

bicycles

cars

everywhere noisyon a hot

malim Nawar morning

a chases mm chases paper

khalwat goons

chase both

slipping

slidinggreased palms

ngers too fat to pull wallets

drop cash

balik kampong (part)


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Sun shifts

shade to shade

bananas ripe

papayas ripecoconuts fallsplitpandan water cools thirst

I drink from my old jeep cabindrive

one handedlyslowly

ever on

into the kampong

on

ahot

malim nawarmorning

Sun shifts

shade to shade

bananas ripe

papayas ripecoconuts fallsplit

pandan water cools thirstI drink from my old jeep cabin

drive

one handedlyslowly

ever on

into the kampong

ona

hotmalim nawarmorning

published in remembering whiteness and other poems january 2012


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digital organics

time to dance in the forest of my dreams


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paper blue


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green


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retrospective illusion


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agua air


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you cant take it with you


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back to our roots


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sounding water quivering trees


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sunday


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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, thats all, turned around maybe. It simply wasnt

fair to refer to me as Jim - he went missing in an altogether different

mountainous place and, besides, I wasnt 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, reective time, time to chill. Good, Im glad

that Ive 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 sh and equally cold rice

to eat, and I wasnt best pleased.

After the rst exciting hour of ooooh and wow look at that, the rippling

water and the once interesting wildlife just became pass. 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 shing, water snakes swimming

the last one was more like eeeeeeee, er dont 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 tting 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

its a JUNGLE in therepreviously published in the december 2011 issue of the malaysian esquire magazine


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hadnt 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, infull 3D HD, of other people sweating and being sucked by monstrous

leeches - now that I could endure. Being actually in the hot and humidjungle, 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 af-

fected 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 lead-

ing further into the jungle to areas containing elephants, rope walks

through the tree canopy and myriad other enticements into the land ofJungle 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 didnt have to martyr myself like Humphrey Bogart inThe 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


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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 fol-lowed 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 adven-

turous 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 real-

ise 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 wasin.

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 its 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, founda 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 denitely not lost.


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motherly hills


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a well

remembered

kampong

Hills of yesterday


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corner of the 6x4 print has become creased, revealing the paper beneath the photographic coating, the image nevertheles

he photograph I am twenty years, and hold my rst child of a few months. I wear a newly purchased two tone leather jac

ghter a little towards the camera so that her mother can take the photograph, and clearly see her puffy cheeked daughter.

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

m the elements and, after the photograph is taken, the child is placed back in the buggy, strapped in for safety and comfor

ly rented council house.

es are a little lean. I have recently accepted an appointment as a carer to eleven elderly men - at a home for the aged. I h

k cleaning and caring for the men whose relatives prefer the dirty work done by others, shaving and bathing the ex-husb

ns children, because growing older is a messy business. Perhaps some of this is evident in the leanness of my face, or th

ugh, the camera holder.

childs mother had given up her job in the bakery, selling fresh yeasty bread in the mornings from the home bakery whince her working life as a domestic helper, cleaning in a residence sheltering nurses and enabling them to continue to care

as not an easy time and the white frame surrounding the photographic image puts a neat boundary around that image of

he 1970s. The photograph is unable to depict the smallness of the lives we lived then, unless the observant viewer can se

ured resemblance of father and daughter.

fact that this photograph never had a frame perhaps indicates choices we had to make, between the decorative and the f

thinking to protect this image from times ravages and the future yellowing of the paper from the sun as it frequently bru

were a young couple caught up in the living of life, unable to afford a thought for the future, wrapped in the present and

days other than that depicted in the photograph I would enjoy the company of my small child, she in her buggy and I pus

w giving us both cause for a smile until, out of fatherly concern, I x the plastic protection over the front of the buggy, s

rnatively, the child, now growing beyond her years in the photograph would attempt to catch snow and meld it into a snen covered hands as she does so, with small clumps of snow relentlessly clinging onto the wool of the gloves. She slips

ntal concern, to see that she is ne and once again struggling to her feet and tasting snow on her face with her pink tong

ce of the child.

it is another time. The photograph is an aide memoir. It brings back the child from thirty eight years in the past and del

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 ar

n only look and remember, and in remembering consider what is lost from memory and what little still remains of that p

endless


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mains clear that of a proud father with his rst born child.

bought as a birthday present from the sales in a local leather store. I hold the young child rmly in my grip, tilting my

e image. Behind, the slightly cloudy sky reveals a pale chilled blue. We are glad that the child is well wrapped, safe

he small canopy is rearranged to protect the child from the chilling wind. The three of us turn and walk back towards our

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

s, fathers and grandfathers who are tucked away, out of harms reach, and out of sight of their children and their chil-

mness of the cut of the leather jacket I wear, or maybe in the smiling, yet somewhat distant eyes that look towards and

cented Head Street with its satisfying essence, to look after the child she had borne but, in time, would have to recom-the sick and the injured.

er and daughter, slicing but a fragment from the reality of life beyond the lens, denying the complexity of our lives lived

om the size of the photograph that we were unable to purchase a larger size, to place upon our mantelpiece, to admire th

ional with the functional, inevitably, and constantly winning out. We were a couple with a small child, living in the now,

d our mantelpiece, glancing through infrequently cleaned windows.

ggling to have a future, any kind of future, as long as the future was there.

g, walking behind, making sounds and noises I expected a small child to recognise or appreciate, the slight feathering of

ring the child from the weather and also from the connection we had.

all, failing as the loose white frozen water falls apart and onto the ground, but nevertheless laughing and clapping herfalls 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

nd laughing in that endearing way a very small child has, drawing you into her moment and sharing the joy and inno-

rs her to my sight, stirring my recollections, memories and emotions in a way that little else can. There is much happi-

nd pose for a photograph.

ograph, of my memory and of the bond we had when she was young.

another day


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ways remember Saadi

visiting his rose garden

ersing the songs of the universe

oral dance?

always leang never staying


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deeper forest


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depth


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orchidia


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redon


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dipang


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lemangyou come to meall soft and creamyscents of coconut

rice

bamboo

re-smoke and banana leaf

i sense your rmness

al dente,taste your pliancy and suc-culent 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


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friday nightfriday kampong night

cocks crow

ox tail soup

leaf next to leaf

melting heat

sweat rivulets

wooden stilt housenight heat

bite after bitehungry

like insects

durians drop

abangah in the tree

abanglong

cucumber cool she

hetony curtis

quiff bouncing

boards

creak

cat

mews

shepurrshesighsnd other poems january 2012

kinta


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makanan laut

ikan mati satu


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ikan mati dua


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ikan mati tiga


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udang


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digital organics too

merdeka


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perhaps green


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where no one sees you


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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 bytaking 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 laysprawling, desperately trying to cool their overheated bodies.

The suns ferocity affects our behaviour too, encouraging some of

us to behave a little oddly like taking ones 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 slight-

est 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 unselsh act of butter care seemed perfectly reason-

buttery summerpreviously published in the Expat magazine 2011


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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 at-

tacked 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, t 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 butterfrom 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.


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papan


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buttery summer


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magic trip


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green remembered hills


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phantasy

cheshires


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enchantment


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enigma


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dream


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serene articial breath of inspiration.


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other times


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green glade


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deeper seas


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The rural life was all plain sailing. The warm equatorial night air re-

mained rmly outside my cool air-conditioned room. Frantic mosqui-

toes banged their heads against windowpanes in frustration, and even

the disapproving house lizards had clocked off - taking their amphibi-

ous 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 air-

con blasting and pseudo-sound surround DVD player playing season 6of 24 hours, through our not quite at 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

Cadburys 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 wasnt 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, acomfy pair of smelly trainers sort of life, the sort of life that ts 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 wa-ter 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.

im beginning to see the lightpreviously published in the Expat magazine 2010


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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 gure had raised one nger 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 nd 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 elec-tricity 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 nally discovered the hidden bag

of night lights.

A fresh shift of house lizards gave their tut-tut verdict of my predica-ment, 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 ickering, 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 wasnt 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.


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wira kampong


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balik kampong


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pens


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brigantia


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jack o the green


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eye of the beholder


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in another land


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sky mandala


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falling toward the light


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coming soon....

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