Romantic Notions: My City & it's Alter Ego ( a Memoir)

For the longest time I’ve been in Brunei, I’ve never cruised its famous capital with the curiosity and eagerness of a travel fiend. Being the inept traveler that I am, I was foreign to its inherent wonder.  Until now I do not know which road leads to where, I still stammer in very limited vernacular, finicky and at most times queasy over its culinary specialties.

Accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the city I grew up in, it was an unusual experience to walk its dismal streets and unfrequented shops that suffers neglect one Sunday afternoon. It was therefore a lonesome walk on a city that seems to have its own earthly pace, a distinct dance of its own time. I yearn my city that bursts with life and danced its mundane dance 24/7, I long to see people frolicking in abuse its decrepit roads and its plush malls. My city, it is restless. Restless and never peaceful. My hurried footing is out of mode with the slow and stately manner of this city’s groove.  I long for my city and its people’s vain ambitions. People with big hearts and fragile dreams.  In an instant I felt what I felt the first time I sat foot on this estranged empire: I was a foreigner, a trespasser, alien to its impenetrable beauty, a mere stranger.  I marveled its mini wonders and believed the unbelievable: that a place such as this, existed. A piece of heaven on earth, an abode of peace whose people are timid and resembles a person you live close by or you've once shared a cramped seat on one of your ride to school. 

I sat in the heart of Bandar’s monolithic landmark facing its monumental Mosque, its bodacious dome daubed with gold, bright and proud as the sun boasting its grandeur that exudes through time. It stood still as if waiting for an unrisen Savior. I sat and divined on its glory and arrogance, suffering the silence that shot like a scream from reality. The scream is the city, the city within me.

***

And from a dim, illiterate mind came a line,

just a line

because the second line

comes too seldom.

Bandar, how different you are but familiar

You are beautiful

too beautiful for words

and i only lisp. 

written on December 14, 2008