thesharonchin

[thesharonchin]

Hand reflexology

[thesharonchin]

Henna stencils

[thesharonchin]

Mini etchings by Enrica Ruiz, Mexico

[thesharonchin]

The Otter

Here’s a – personal essay, I guess? I performed this 22 November 2019 for Sweatheart, a monthly-ish storytelling night held at Lit Books.

The night’s theme was “tomayto! tomahto!”, so I thought I’d talk about language. And also otters.

+++

THE OTTER

There is an animal in my head. It is an otter.

Did you know that we have otters, here? There are several species native to Malaysia. I didn’t know this until about three years ago! I’d known of the Malay word “memerang”, and that it meant “otter”, but never consciously made the connection –

“Memerang” means “otter”.

Anyway. There’s an otter in my head. I can see her so clearly: her brown-black coat, wet and sleek; her whiskered face, her webbed feet; she chirps and she sings and she wants to slip onto a fisherman’s boat, wants to steal some bait, wants then slip away again.

She peers through my eyes. She cannot squeeze through. She paws through the cage-door of my teeth. She cannot lift the latch on my mouth. She starts to run in a panic – circles-circles – a trapped animal. Rattling, shaking my skull. She screams.

The otter, trapped; the otter that cannot get out –

For me, this is what writing and speaking in Bahasa Melayu is like.

+

Hi. I’m Zedeck Siew. I’m a writer from Port Dickson. I write fiction; with my partner the visual artist Sharon Chin, I wrote a book called “Creatures of Near Kingdoms”.

“Creatures of Near Kingdoms” is a bestiary, a herbiary: a collection of seventy-five animals and plants I imagine living in Southeast Asia.

I write in English – it is my first language – so the book I wrote is in English. But I’d originally dreamed of it as a bilingual work. Early this year, I applied for – and received! – a small grant, to translate Creatures of Near Kingdoms into Bahasa Melayu.

I decided to translate the book myself. This was not the smartest decision, in retrospect? I am now four months past my original deadline. I am stuck.

I have had seventy-five otters in my head. Some of them still cannot get out.

+

It is not like I don’t know Bahasa Melayu. I went to kebangsaan school.

But, like many urban, non-Malay middle-class persons: done with SPM, I would head to college, or maybe uni overseas – actually I just started working here – the thing is, I thought I was going places.

I put the otter into the carrier cage of my head. I wanted to travel, you see?

And I do travel. Australia and Singapore, where my siblings now live –

But also from Subang to Taman Tun to Damansara Heights to Uptown; from neighbourhood, to mall, to cafe, to bookstore. From Twitter to The Guardian to n+1.

If you are of a particular background, of a particular class, you can live on English alone.

You don’t need Bahasa.

+

It’s not like school prepares you, anyway.

The basics of Bahasa Melayu are easy. But so much of common-use Bahasa is context as much as text. There are no tenses, so time is less obvious. And the pronoun “dia” could refer to a person of any gender; an animal; an object.

Spoken Bahasa is all about efficiency: “Makan? Makan? Makan.”

Written Bahasa tends to run-on sentences, a half-dozen clauses linked together, stringing disparate thoughts along, charting orbits instead of straightforward meaning.

It is a quickly-evolving, shifting thing. A language of cues. And, exactly for this reason, if you don’t use it every day? 

Very easy to tell.

Aku switch kejap ke BM. Bagi korang dengar BM aku ni macam mana. Rasanya dulu kat sekolah BM aku macam ni lah. Tapi even now bila aku dengar kata-kata yang keluar mulut aku ni, aku rasa tak sedap. Tak petah. Either sebab gagap, or skema sangat.

Just so – so poyo!

When I locked up my otter it was so very easy to lose the key.

+

The question then is: why? Why Bahasa?

Why not stick to English? It is the language of success, after all. It will get you anywhere that matters.

It is an advantage. Why take the trouble, just to be at a disadvantage? To be vulnerable?

Not being proficient in the tongue of your homeland is embarrassing. I’ve had people laugh at me, judge me. Kata Orang Malaysia. Tapi cakap Bahasa Malaysia tak boleh.

The language divide is a chasm. It shelters ethnic and material resentments. Ultra-nationalists say that those who cakap omputeh are traitors.

I’m sure most people in this room have, at some point or other, sniggered at the broken English of a Vernacular or Kebangsaan Ed person.

I still get cabbies and Grab uncles asking me: “You don’t speak Chinese? You not Chinese? Why you not proud of being Chinese?”

Like an apartment cat, like a loris in a zoo – it’s safer inside, dear otter. The air is air-conditioned and the bars are plexiglass.

+

Amat mudah untuk berpidato; mengangkat senjata kata-kata:

“Jurang antara Bahasa Inggeris dan Bahasa Melayu adalah jurang antara bangsa, dan juga antara kelas. Ia membahagikan masyarakat kita kepada puak-puak kecil yang makin lama, makin hilang upaya untuk bertegur sapa sesama sendiri.

Menjadi tanggung-jawab setiap warga Malaysia untuk merentasi jurang ini. Membina jambatan di antara hati-hati dan minda-minda yang kian lama bercanggah. Menjadi kewajiban kita!

Sanggupkah kita menyahut seruan ini? Mengambil langkah menyelamatkan negara tercinta?

Ayuh – berjuang!”

+

Tapi aku tak ingin berjuang. Aku hanya ingin pecah kunci sangkar kepala aku ini. Lepaskan memerang yang terjerat.

I hear her scratch whenever I talk to my gardener, to the Indonesian auntie at the warung, to the Bangladeshi cleaning the mall lavatory, using the lingua – the bahasa – of the working class.

I hear her whimper when I switch to BM to speak to Immigration; the abang polis; the kakak at the post office. Language deployed as a cynical simulation of kinship, to make my life easier.

I don’t know whether you have an otter. I only know that I do. I locked her up: for her safety; because it was simpler. Through my eyes she sees the green and the birds of the place she was born.

I feel her hands touch the inside bone of my skull – touch, touch, touch.

Telling me she wants to be free. To chatter with her children. To eat fish she catches herself. To swim in the waters of her home.

+++

I’ve spoken about writing in and translating Bahasa Melayu, before – why I think it’s an important thing to do; what I think it means, to be a multi-lingual writer in Malaysia – 

Before this, it’s always come off as a bit self-righteous. A little lecture-y?

But I think I’ve got it, now. The most truthful way to talk about Bahasa is to talk about my relationship to Bahasa.

What it’s like. How I see it. How difficult I find it, how bad I am at it. How badly I want it. How badly I want the vulnerable animal in me to be free.

(Photo by Lainie Yeoh)

[thesharonchin]

[thesharonchin]

gift

[thesharonchin]

[thesharonchin]

Vanessa Stockard (Australian, b. 1975, Sydney, Australia) - Cat Art Show LA (Satan and Kevin), 2018 Paintings

[thesharonchin]

Kusozu, The death of a noble lady and the decay of her body, Wellcome Collection

[thesharonchin]

The “Tigress” Mok Gwai Laan, last wife of Wong Fei Hung performs parts of Hung Ga Kyun’s “Taming of the Tiger in I pattern”, “Tiger and Crane” and Single Whip

[thesharonchin]

[thesharonchin]

[thesharonchin]

Bockstensmanen, a medieval person who happened to die in a bog which preserved his clothes (and more), clothes like hella comfy??

Like seriously. Comfy and warm wool clothes!

(yes this are pictures of his actual outfit, not reconstructed clothing. They were very well preserved in all except colour. The bog gave everything that yellow shade, i suspect)

Picture from: https://www.museumhalland.se/bockstensmannen/kladerna/

[thesharonchin]

[thesharonchin]

Creatures of Near Kingdoms - some reviews

Creatures of Near Kingdoms has been available since late September. I was worried that it’d come out and meet benign indifference. “Oh, okay, cute.”*

But, hey: people seem to love our book! So many have said so many wonderful things about the book – in person; on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook ephemera**; on blogs and Goodreads and elsewhere.

Here are some:

+

“Each story was a perfectly packed spoon of nasi lemak, to use an entirely Malaysian cliche because this book makes me feel so very connected to my roots and surroundings here in the Nusantara, where the bite is balanced and has a bit of everything and just right.” - Syar S Alia, on Goodreads

“… this is probably a very different book if you are Malaysian, or just live in SE Asia, and if you are not … the book is twice-reflected. There is an extra hovering layer of interpretation. And also a lot of it is just the impression of someone in a cold grey place reading about a bright warm place (you actually feel a little colder in comparison when you read) … The extra layer, or double gleam of unknowing, either doesn’t hurt, or helps you feel like you know the place in an intimate way. There are lots of fragments of life that would never show up in any story you would read. You feel like you know what its like to be in a traffic jam because of Buffalo, to worry about parking your car beneath rare and aggressive species, to wake up prickling because of lizards, pigs under the house. Complex meanings in relatives gift-plants, an aggressive bioform on the beach, neighbours with ritual problems.” - Patrick Stuart, falsemachine.blogspot.com

“…  a beautiful and creepy catalogue of the local flora and fauna of Port Dickson, Malaysia, where the writer and artist are based, and offers a sincere vision for writing an environment without taking from it.” - Kaitlin Rees, for the Asian American Writer’s Workshop

“What Zedeck managed to do was letting us see the world through his eyes, but at the same time made us think these are all what we have been thinking about all along.” - Anis Suhaila, on Goodreads

“I suffer from Insomnia. The bad kind, the capital I kind, the kind that dictates the rhythms of a life, that affects my relationships with people. Lately I have taken to reading this curious little book before I go to bed. Three to four stories at a time. Stringing it out, savoring it. The nights that I do this, I sleep easier. Something about this book runs counter to the sharp, jagged metal anxieties that keep me up at night.” - Matt Bozin, tarsostheorem.blogspot.com

“THE LANTERN SQUIRREL: the cellophane squirrel that escapes into the forest to run wild after the lantern festival, & my FAVOURITE ANIMAL of 2018, found in my favourite book of 2018,” - Stephanie Dogfoot, on Instagram

“I wish Giant Skunk Pleco was a real being …  As for the illustrations - so gorgeous! I had to resist the urge to colour them in with all that lovely, lovely white space.” - Alyssa J, on Goodreads

“The creatures are there, you know now, after reading the book. You wish to see them, to touch them. However, you know that your meat-constructed fingers could never brush against beautiful patterns in shadows shaped by true things in the world but misshaped by true things in the mind.” - Khairul Hisham, hishgraphics.com

+

*Sharon didn’t share my fear, because she is wiser.

**There isn’t any way to retrieve / refer back to Insta stories, is there???

Thank you. Thank you. I feel like the Smaug-y civet above, hoarding the warm words everybody has given me.

+

Creatures of Near Kingdoms has gone to a second printing.