HOME...

Home, though 'home's an increasingly fugitive prospect...

Sorting through impressions of the last week...still in the midst of this quantum space-time jump plus atmospheric pressure drop.

For those not yet in the know, we received notice two Sundays ago of my dad's operation for cancer; had the tickets booked two days later, then the packing and shifting and cancelling and arranging and scheduling to see friends on abrupt notice. Sudden time to 'balik kampung'...

Was squished against the window as the plane took off, watching KL's bright constellation of messed up streets and highways...a wholly different pattern materializes several thousand feet up in the air. Saw Putrajaya briefly hovering like a dayglo crop-circle (with extruding staff) before the clouds took over and the cabin lights came on, throwing back only my pale reflected mask against the outer dark...

So now the journey shifts the other way – hard not to see a narrative current to it – and maybe this journal's readership will transmigrate to our motley crew of new-found friends. Too numerous to name, but we're sad to leave you so soon...and we can't thank you enough for making our stay in KL the warm and wonderful experience it's been till a few short days ago: Hamir, Nani, Peter, Ahri, Aswad, Nazim, Sharon, Daniel, Hisham, Intan, Aisya, Ajez, Jai, Ray etc. etc. We hope you're all well and enjoying the heat

We touched down in Seoul...wished I'd taken a picture from the plane: a sort of Bladerunner-esque mirage of smokestacks piled high against misted mountains. Slept in the visitor's lounge, then picked up a carton of cigarettes for the long haul...

Exited the Vancouver airport as if through a double-negative...almost exactly twenty years ago my clan huddled out of immigration to a pristine view of cardboard-cutout mountains. Sunny and unreal cold...passing through streets that are exact phantom replicas of their former selves. The old family house on Victoria Drive now sporting a new coat of grey-green paint...couldn't place it at first.

Found my father looking better than expected, with family calm(er than usual) and everyone getting along quite nicely. The operation's scheduled for the 24th of this month, and Kas and Kim, my two other brothers, will be here shortly.

So...now shaking off jetlag (sometimes the world dims uncontrollably around 9 pm) and coping with the cold (it's usually only about a balmy 4 degrees) as we've gotten soft in the skin with nothing much in the way of warm clothing...no mits, scarves or thermonuclear underwear to tender the post-tropical shock. Weather ranges between bright chill (that clear and wondrous wintry light I must confess was beginning to miss) and constant needle points of rain raking across the streets. Waking daily to parchment-dry skin stretched taut over hands and face (from the hot air heating, sucking all available moisture from the air)

Tess is now in Kelowna to see her folks; just got a job helping to build A-Frame houses... gets to wear a hard-hat, plaid lumberjacks jacket and boots --- the works! Plus lunchtime delivery on a houseboat on the lake, one of the perks of hard labour in the Oky-nagan. Anyway, she's one up on me on the business of cari makan, what with about 50 bucks on myself with the smoke rations quickly dwindling.

Stayed late into the am editing video for the April show at Sek San's gallery; new footage spliced, replete with bats and lightning. Also reading my dad's in-progress family history of the Goh / Lim clan, which he's hoping to get serialized somewhere in the Malaysian press. Spent the morning engrossed in tales of my great-grandfather, Lim Boon Beng: sold into farm labour in Fujien province, only to run away to the Nanyang as indentured labour, living in a Kongsi house, learning to read / write, and eventually becoming foreman then partner/director of a building contractors, building the road up into Fraser's Hill, before succumbing to opium addiction. Rich stuff...not TV soap opera at all but real life

We'll keep you posted as to what develops here...more art or mischief as the case may be. Take care...


– K