I am presently in Kuala Lumpur. No guidebook, no strong idea of what is here. I am a bad tourist, for sure. But somehow we've gotten out and enjoyed ourselves the past couple of days—failing repeatedly to get on the Hop On Hop Off tourist bus, mostly because of crowds (it's a four-day national holiday), which means we've been walking. Just walking, just looking around. Occasionally stopping to take a photo or get something to drink. The city feels quite intimate, really—despite the bustle. Today, we'll try for the bus again, maybe hop off at the Bird Park and the National Mosque. Not too much.
Yesterday I came across this post on FB, which resonated (click on it to read it):
And then just now in my inbox, a poem by George Bilgere, which is somewhat in the same vein:
Once Again I Fail to Read an Important Novel
Instead, we sit together beside the fountain,the important novel and I.
We are having coffee together
in that quiet first hour of the morning,
respecting each other’s silences
in the shadow of an important old building
in this small but significant European city.
All the characters can relax.
I’m giving them the day off.
For once they can forget about their problems—
desire, betrayal, the fatal denouement—
and just sit peacefully beside me.
In the afternoon,
at lunch near the cathedral,
and in the evening, after my lonely,
historical walk along the promenade,
the men and women, the children
and even the dogs
in the important, complicated novel
have nothing to fear from me.
We will sit quietly at the table
with a glass of cool red wine
and listen to the pigeons
questioning each other in the ancient corridors.
I'm more interested in sipping wine and listening to the pigeons than in cramming it all in. It's still all of it, in any given moment, no matter what we're doing.
And to close—speaking of being randomly in the right place at the right time—check out this fabulous flash mob performance in, yes, Paris. Oh to have been wandering through that square at just that moment!
