flightseeing

This story is a jagged piece that arrives too late. The candles are blown and the curtains are pulled, as the whole realization is now cobwebbed beyond recognition. A junkie's pissing dream and a faint trail of smoke from the dying flame arouses a certain curiosity. The junkie is being transported to one final craziness that comes with a fatal understanding that the one thing you wanted the most is irretrievable and irreplaceable. As final as some number carved in white granite on a tombstone on the outskirts of Lorong Betek 3.

Yonny Yonson as a weeping youngling had decide that if she wished for things harder and more deafening than anyone else then the Universe would be left penniless and trotting in tattered rags. Yonny Yonson would have extra large meat pizzas and ice cream cakes of seven wonder flavors at her birthday party. Glittery streamers kissing the white walls and plush purple velvet love couches. Yonny Yonson's brother would not have move away to a different suburb where a colossal imitation Sphinx sleeps waiting for the dawn of resurrection, breaking itself free from the shopping mall. The Sphinx puts on a little music and does a bit of crying. The tears are stored in a porcelain Snoopy cup. Yonny Yonson would have parents whose marriage wasn't built on a foundation of dust accumulated from disintegrated butterfly wings. Exactly twelve years of dust on a journey of finite wishing and infinite injuries. Yonny Yonson knew she was only communicating with a plastic heart fool, but now is not the time. Now is the time to get up and go to school.

Before the minute hand of the clock tripped towards a 6:30am arrival, Yonny Yonson was already out of the door. The straps of her washed-out blue pinafore hung over her broad shoulders, two basins of expired blood. Yonny Yonson remembers the first day her mother had brave the traffic of Lebuh Pinang to purchase the items needed for Yonny Yonson to begin her first year at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bahan Biru Steam. It was a small mom-and-pop business located at those touristy shop lots with their nostalgia inducing multicolored floor tiles. Yonny Yonson's mother had chose blue pinafores of a less fitting size for Yonny Yonson and commented on her plump stature. Yonny Yonson concentrated her attention at the dusty bulb flickering a hideous white light to distract herself from being affected by her mother's uncalled-for comments. Four years later today on this balmy morning, the waistband of the pinafore and Yonny Yonson's waist rarely meets each other. Yet her mother says nothing this time. The pinafore uniform is now Yonny Yonson's version of an elegantly beaded flapper dress but with cigarette burns and hanging loose threads.  

Yonny Yonson's neighbor dropped off his two daughters and Yonny Yonson at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Babi Babi Sial. The entire school compound was painted in a tacky orange paint supposedly to stimulate happiness and eagerness. My ass. On the south end of the wall, a massive mural of a beautiful Malay lady donned in a classic kebaya playing the traditional gamelan was painstakingly painted in two days under the hot, unforgiving sun. After a few years of a single dimension existence on the now sun-beaten wall, the mural has been reduced to a silly scary story. The mural supposedly cries at night. Wet trails of tears appearing under her black eyes have been spotted by passersby late in the unholy Maghrib hours. Yonny Yonson walks over to the wall and caresses the faded mural cheek. 

Yonny Yonson begin to walk, and walk, and walk. Till she has exited the orange colored funk prison. The asphalt serve as a canvas for a mosaic of dried leaves, cigarette butts, crumpled plastic bags and broken lidi sticks. Yonny Yonson continues to walk, and walk, and walk until she reaches the dirt path that led to the train station. This is Yonny Yonson's favorite train station, LRT Sentul Timur. Because right beside this train station there is an Indian temple that practice the rites of an open burial. This place blessed Yonny Yonson with the assaulting smell of a burning corpse and the black smoke that soar proudly and surely into the bright blue sky. Yonny Yonson loved those rare occasions. Look at Yonny Yonson's heart throbbing red and alive like a banana flower, while someone is being burned to dust. There is no red line that separates both.

Yonny Yonson is skipping school. Ponteng sekolah. Something that would gnaw on the bitter bones of Yonny Yonson's parents. But Yonny Yonson made no attempt to conceal her ritualistic Friday truant. Yonny Yonson doesn't have to hide if no one cares. RM3.50 to KL Sentral, no questions asked and no puzzling emotions to unravel. Yonny Yonson's brother taught her to get off at Masjid Jamek station, paying attention to take the long stairs that leads to a different underground railway line. The train that departed from Sentul Timur stands high in the air on concrete foundation and on a complex mechanical system that feeds the train's relentless wheels. Once the train enters the half mouth of a glass dome that encircled KL Sentral, Yonny Yonson knew she is halfway arriving to where she intends to go. Two massive purple banners with squiggly yellow alphabets promoting cheaper flights departing from KLIA2 flashes for a moment and two... The train purrs to a screeching halt. Tired bodies dressed in black ironed slacks, stiff yellow collars, knee-length office appropriate skirt, clawed briefcases and loose unenthusiastic ties. Their stiff necks turned upward from their mobile farming game flashing blue flowers, green clouds, and yellow earth on the screen of their smart phones. Now the remote farmers are forced to delay the virtual watering of their rare square watermelons for the realistic responsibilities of holy reality. Yonny Yonson exited the train and stood by a far end corner to observe the swollen knees and brittle toes carrying the bodies forward, to a certain walking destination where they get to sit on slightly uncomfortable grey wheelies chair for nine hours sans one hour for mind resting and half eye closing. 

Yonny Yonson exited KL Sentral from the Burger King side. Yonny Yonson always thought the front-row high seats at Burger King were probably the best yet most uncomfortable eating places available in the burgeoning history of KL Sentral. 360 degree of unobstructed view and being viewed like an animal without a care or a thought, gnawing on a dripping triple meat burger as the world passes by hurriedly. Yonny Yonson takes the stairs that lead to the dark wet underbelly of KL Sentral. Dingy long white bulbs are covered in the eternal soot produced by buses and black cobwebs are swaying to the low disembodied hum of sleeping buses. These buses parked here are the cheapest option for one to travel to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Autobahn rakyat marhaen. Yonny Yonson paid RM35 for a one-way bus ticket to the airport. The price of three skipped dinners. The Indian guy with a faded denim fanny pack tied to his sweating beer belly tore out a thin piece of ticket and wrote the date of this Friday on it with a blue pen. He eyed Yonny Yonson and her school uniform with his dark eyes suspiciously.

"Dik, pergi mana? Kenapa pakai baju sekolah?"

"Saja... nak pergi jalan jalan..."

Yes, jalan jalan, makan angin. Eat air, for the air in the airport is scented with endless excitement and artificial sorrows. There are no dead ends and the light is waiting to turn green. 

The bus exhaled one final black cough and begin its four-wheeled slow crawl to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. After an hour or two of toppling tower sights that serve as very good climbing posts for colossal creatures, the bus begin to reach the latter part of the journey where it's only the sight of man made highways and Lord God Sky conjoined via the hips, as far as the eyes could reach. With each curving junctions, half moon circles and passive turns that the bus embrace, Yonny Yonson's banana heart leapt with childish joy. Knowing from banana heart the width of every grassy knoll and how each individual grassy blade turned its blunt face heavenwards. A village of rocks bearing the identities of a butcher, baker and candlestick maker. An army of dandelions, withered daisies and paper rhododendrons. Flowery pink powers. Weathered banners promoting hair pomades and water theme parks performing a mythic dance of irrelevancy that only people under the age of twenty could decipher. There are three visible vegetarian sheep dogs nipping high on the blue sky today, a sign of auspicious omen on days of imaginary departures. Don't worry baby.

Because rich people don't care for buses except for when they are in London, so there was not much urgency to upkeep the appearance of bright luxury for the parking lots designated for buses. Look there in the middle of the yellow rectangles painted carefully onto airport earth, there are wet and dark drops of tears left by buses that perform their thankless task everyday. Sometimes, the buses' insides rot so drastically that black oil begin to leak and seep into the ground. The buses are bleeding from their neglected insides. Yonny Yonson stood up and smoothed over the wrinkles of her pinafore uniform as the bus parked itself in the yellow rectangle square faithlessly. 

"Terima kasih bang." Yonny Yonson said. The Indian bus driver shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly in lieu of a polite response. He looked out towards the gleaming, cool steel structures a few distance away and lighted a cigarette. As Yonny Yonson exited the bus, she thought of how it is an utmost responsibility of the citizens to always thank their bus drivers. Especially the ones who don't question teenage girls yang ponteng sekolah in their pinafore uniform on a Friday morning. 

A rush of cold wind pregnant with impossible possibilities wrapped itself all around Yonny Yonson as the automatic doors glided itself outward to perform its thankless task smoothly and soundlessly. These automatic doors placed strategically around Kuala Lumpur International Airport are not bleeding from the inside, Yonny Yonson made a mental note of that. Every nook and corner of the airport exudes a feeling of steel white opulence. The sunlight streams into the airport and reflected itself through the glossy-coated flooring that emanates a soft cool glow. Everywhere a female voice of grand happenings of big and small, each taking their turn to chime into the surround speakers: arriving, departing, checking in, checking out. These daily rounds of little matters that are trifle at first thought slowly adds itself to the bigger picture: arriving and departing of fates, makings of happiness, comfort and sorrow of beings. And hung in the air of the grand floor, there are twin clocks depicting the local time in Norway, Colombia and the capital of Russia, Moscow. Mossy cow. Mos-cows. And in the middle of it all, Yonny Yonson in her blue pinafore uniform and Bata shoes who couldn't afford shit. But that's quite alright on all terms, as there is a quiet lounge equipped with charging sockets available for people like Yonny Yonson who wants to flightsee. Unlimited internet connection for four hours. Just type in a made up name, date of birth and email address. Today Yonny Yonson is Oddball Listerine, born on February 2nd 1894 (age: 1382) and can be reached at screaming_t0ilets@hotmail.com. Today for four hours at least, Oddball Listerine will travel to a remote Polish village, to the Siberian prison where Dostoevsky wrote The House of the Dead, to the village of Macondo; home of the Buendia family where they first discovered a river of mirrors.

Yonny Yonson sat herself down onto the uncomfortable lounge chairs, remove her backpack and place it on her thighs that shiver upon contact with cold steel, but Oddball Listerine himself is in a man made insect-shaped machine travelling high above the pillow clouds enjoying artificial orange juice. One day, Yonny Yonson will be like Oddball Listerine. But not yet, for Yonny Yonson is only a mere child of seventeen seeking solace from the future: of a Oddball Listerine, believer of God's tidy makings and bottom of the banana heart honest work will be the ticket out, far, and above.