That dealer I barely knew but had sex with, has died.

I know his name. Other things, not so much, only that he was that dealer who pushed his stuff to other dealers, his little lambs he called them. He was the guy who knew every boy in town, who drove a different car each time, who kept moving from one residence to another in and around Kuala Lumpur, who always seemed to be on the run. I don’t know what or how to feel about his death or that if I should feel anything at all.

It always catches me off guard at how deficient I can be, at times, in processing news of death, like it’s nothing when it’s absolutely life-altering to the people who loved him or those closer to him, or even to the others who had enjoyed him but barely knew him too. He was in his late 30’s. Too young to die. But Death is timeless, we never age in his eyes.

It was a one-time fuck, back in 2012, and it was a good fuck. He asked me out after that, to hangout at his place, get high sans sex, where we talked a lot yet we talked nothing at all. He texted me sometime again, asked me to come over and meet his two friends (read: foursome), all goods on him, on the house, but I told him the truth that I had some writing to do. He offered this twice and twice more I used the same reason. He wanted to fuck bareback then, which he had never insisted before, and why it was easy for me to say no. This is my prejudice.

Two years later I bumped into him in the lobby of a residence hotel. His new home, I suspected. We did the pleasantries: shook hands, hugs, how-are-yous. He had lost his muscles and was looking worryingly thinner. I wanted to ask why he had stopped working out, a jest, but I had to bite my tongue. It was not the proper thing to say anyway, to highlight his drastic change like that. And that was that.

Until that morning in early October in 2016 when I received texts from two mutual acquaintances that he has died at the hospital. I shared my condolences to the mutuals; they too never knew him enough. I didn’t ask what it was, how he had gone. I don’t know why I didn’t ask, why I was not inquisitive with questions. And now this ambivalence is washing over me.

I’m recollecting the bits and pieces of memory I have of him, that maybe I could reverse-engineer the connection we had between us — which was nothing but physical — to make sense of it all. I want to remember him and the time we had, that I should celebrate his life nonetheless, no matter how weakly connected we were or how distant I had been to him.

Death is no stranger to me. I’ve had tea with Death, and bargained my life with Death over a game of chess. Perhaps this is the reason why I don’t feel much about the passing of a man I barely knew yet whom I want to know more of, to feel his absence, now that he’s gone? I don’t know. It’s a mysterious feeling.

The Man Who Knew Everybody But Nobody Knew Him Enough was originally published in CROSSIN(G)ENRES on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A declaration of nine writing principles advocating a minimalist, ambient approach to creative writing.

Vessel
(n.) a person as a container of qualities or feelings.

1. Write as a vessel, extract ideas from the dark, from obscurity to mind to hand to pen to paper.
2. Write in moods. Become the characters, embrace their emotions.
3. Writers must trust their readers and address them as equals.
4. Write to express, not to impress.
5. Words are images. Show what is and tell without naming. Words are necessary only to a certain point. Trim.
6. Writing is design is architecture. What is not told creates space. Indulge in it.
7. Writing is curing. Time is an ally.
8. Write with the motivation of immortality. A writer’s consciousness lives in the pages.
9. Write, and live forever.

ZED ADAM IDRIS, Writer.

The W Manifesto was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What happened to the first two? I quit on them. I spent about three years on two unfinished manuscripts. Both of my previous attempts had different stories but I could no longer progress with either of them, so I stopped halfway and shelved them. I don’t feel like looking back and try to fix them or make them workable. I haven’t look at the files since then, I don’t want to open them. Not yet, maybe. For now, they must stay unfinished.

Why would it be different this time though? Would I not get stalled or stuck again? Because this time I’m not forcing a novel to happen and immediately, it feels different. I no longer choke my characters into rigid, concrete moulds or braid the plots into an ending that would never be. These are among the causes which drove my previous two manuscripts to their untimely death.

I have written and published seven short stories and two short memoirs in various anthologies and publications from 2009 to 2015. I wrote all of them on the go. I don’t own an extensive library of drafts because I like to write mine from scratch. I know that I flourish from discovery-writing and improvising, winging my way through. Yet somehow, I never did realise until much later that I wasn’t myself when it was time to write a novel. Writing an entire book seemed out of my league, at the time, so I tried to play it safe. Too safe. I followed tried-and-true methods of my favourite authors. I’d take notes of their various writing processes, copy their writing timetables and be amazed at how one author completed his novel in so and so ways. I was emulating them so strictly that I had actually adopted a fascistic approach to writing. I had placed the novel on a pedestal, and eventually, I was being hard on myself. Worshipping the novel didn’t work, twice.

I ventured away from my comfort zone and it destroyed my writing. Wrong move. I thought it would be wise to control everything — premise, plots, characters — but I know now that such method is not right for me. I should have trusted my guts and write my novel like how I wrote my short stories: with ease and a sense of discovery.

In all of my seven years making it as a writer, a vital lesson is learnt: let go and a story shows itself. Short story or novel, writing goes with the flow. Just ride the wave, take a step back and simply be the scriber. Don’t fight or deny what comes natural to you. In writing, comfort zone is conducive. Stay in it, get comfy and flourish.

It’s best to keep things moving. And so, I’m attempting, for the third time, to write my first novel. I’m already a quarter way through.

Manifest is the working title for my third manuscript. It tells the story of an architect and his two children living in seclusion in the eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula. The father, assisted by his children, commits suicide; the daughter, on the verge of puberty, befriends the neighbouring rainforest and its creatures; the son, young and impressionable, confronts a haunted shadow his father leaves behind. (More about Manifest in the coming parts.)

The subject of suicide is one that is very close to me. I had a personal experience with the condition and wrote about it in my other Medium post, Death, My Friend. I’m dissecting this condition further through the character of the father. I’m turning it over to him so he can take it away from me. A closure.

Vignettes On Writing documents this solitary and at times personal journey in writing my first novel. Vignettes come in series, in parts where I unload thoughts and tips, mistakes and regrets, and other by-products of writing.

Writing is my solitude. But it’s also a journey I no longer need to keep to myself. It’s time to share what little I know along this quietness.

Vignettes On Writing was originally published in Writers on Writing on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I attempted suicide, twice, but seeing my own demise fuelled me to take more risks and to achieve something greater than myself.

Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece The Seventh Seal is one of my favourite films. The film questions the legitimacy of God and His passivity when the Black Plague ravages Middle Age Sweden. In the film, Death as a proxy to God, engages in a discourse on God’s indifference with Antonius Block, a knight who has survived the Crusades. The personification of Death is portrayed as polite and understanding. He appears to be friendly and is never forceful. Although he is stern, he also listens and contemplates.

Death is like so with me. He greets me like a friend I love and hate. He comes to me like he intuitively knows that it’s his cue to appear as another friend of mine, his colleague — depression — is already getting intimate with me. When these two get together to hang out, being my good friends that they are, I can’t help but see my mind construct my own departure, where it would take place and how it would be done.

I had attempted suicide, twice.

The first attempt, twelve years ago, was out of fear and rejection, a cry for help more than anything else. I ingested some poison. It was an attempt whose consequence I had to endure when I vomited nine times throughout. I did get an intense abs workout though, from the stomach contraction and the purging of, what I could almost feel, my innards being hurled out of my body.

However, the second attempt was the most earnest in its intent. I wanted it to happen. I didn’t even bother to leave a note. I didn’t let people around me know that I wasn’t at my healthiest state of mind, that I had masked my emotion like a brilliant actor. This attempt was driven by acute numbness and severe apathy born out of depression, shaped out of heartbreak. This failed too, obviously, but it was an experience which gained me an enlightening end.

Three years ago, I sat on a steel railing by the rooftop of a twenty-six-storey condominium. It was early morning. There was a pool but no one else was there. I took my time, took in the view of central Kuala Lumpur. I looked down. If I were to fall, I would hit a quiet back lane of a nearby hotel where delivery trucks unload their goods. It was time to go. I put my feet down on the outer side of the railing. I leaned forward with my hands gripping the railing behind me.

I was on the verge, of everything. I was ready.

I was calm, content, there was no fear nor tears. Everything seemed to be at peace. I didn’t know how long I was in that launching position but it felt like hours. I was still holding on to my grip when a tranquil feeling of awareness washed over me.

Time stopped. I had an awakening of phenomenal dimension.

Right there and then, my outlook of the world had shifted. I began to see with such clarity that nothing else mattered, how everything seemed to be trivial and petty yet everything was also beautiful and significant in its own way, that things happened for a reason and how they seemed to fall into place like the revolving teeth of a heavenly cogwheel that fit perfectly between the teeth of a bigger, godly cogwheel which eventually manifested everything into existence.

I took a deep breath.

All I needed to do was to release my grip. But, I gave myself a chance: a bargain.

“You have nothing to lose. If things still don’t work out for you, just come back here and jump.” I pledged to myself.

I pulled my arms back, climbed over the railings and put my flip-flops back on. I breathed a sigh of relief and walked away.

“I have nothing to lose.”

Confessing to having suicidal thoughts is not without stigma. People are quick to assume that you are either mentally unstable or very selfish, or both. It’s easier to come out as gay than suicidal. That residual impression of being suicidal stays with you and people tend to see you with a certain bias: pity. You are now seen as a delicate porcelain easily broken.

People who wrestle with suicidal tendencies are often caught in a dilemma. Should we come out about it, we would be judged forthwith, or worse, religiously preached, yet to stay silent is unhealthy and harmful.

If a friend comes to you to talk, who has revealed to be haunted from such thoughts, please take note. Be calm and never impart patronising opinions to that friend. “You are coward and selfish to do this” is the usual reaction. Not only it’s a tired statement but it’s also very useless. “Is it not selfish of you too to want me to live for you?” is what I would say back at you. But yes, intervention must happen. What you would want to focus on, what as an optimist I often reflect myself upon, is that of bravery:

“You are very brave. If you have the courage to arrive at this point in your life, to possess the power to decide your own fate, think of all the great things you can do. It’s all in your hands.”

That night on the rooftop had brought me closer to enlightenment than any meditation I have ever done. When the fate of one’s life lies in one’s own hands, there is also profound power found within.

I’m not afraid to die because now I know that other than the universal fate that happens to us all, I too hold the fate of my own life, to have the choice to live or otherwise. Yes, I’m fully aware that I’m not even supposed to choose, but to know that I possess such power is a very potent motivation that drives me forward.

Now, whenever Death knocks on my door, I simply invite him in for tea and biscuits. We’d talk about the weather, some rhetoric on climate change, debate on politics or play a game of chess. Like an old friend who suddenly appears, he would gently assert his ulterior motive as how I would always, with such tender, steer it aside.

Death never taunts but he tempts. He entices me with images of the wondrous hereafter and feeds me with the most serene visuals of the universe. He would take me travel at the speed of light to whichever galaxy I want to visit, watch a black hole devours a star, and witness the birth of another star in a nearby nebula. I’m already an inquisitive person and if anything, these temptations only make me more curious about afterlife which strengthens the idea of suicide, which is not good at all. I hate Death for his seductive ways.

But, Death is also the bearer of renewed hope and a new beginning. His presence takes me back to the night on the rooftop with that pledge of mine. He is a fitting reminder which has nothing to do with dark thoughts or death itself, but everything else that has to do with love and life, and self-empowerment, and second chances, and glasses of half-fulls. Every time he reappears, I always choose life. To see my own demise fuels me to do great things. And for these reasons, I thank Death.

Death, My Friend was originally published in Be Yourself on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This void in my heart could hide an entire universe. If I closed my eyes and be still for a time, would everything else around me collapse? Would I then be at one with the universe? My eyes were open, my mind was awake but my body refused to rise. I propped myself up. I had to.

I opened the tap and washed my face. I inched closer to the mirror, examining my red eyes. My irises looked like the surface of the sun only burnt brown like toast. I could almost see a shooting star from the corner of my left eye crossing to my right. I made a wish. I just want to be happy.

There was almost a stranger in the mirror. These eyes — looking lifeless from too much sleep — were the only recognisable feature as everything else seemed vague. I felt uneasy from what I saw: a mere impression of me, a hazy façade of what I had become. My wholesomeness is fading. I had been ditching my workouts and lost the mass that was my pride. My clavicles had become more apparent, rising like a pair of mountain ranges I could almost hear the angels yodelling.

I needed some air. And I had to start writing again after a stretched period of unwelcome idleness. It’ll be like riding the bicycle again. I prayed for that elusive flow. It will flow.

I packed into my messenger bag a notebook, a hardcover I kept trying to finish, my favourite pen, earphones and a beeswax lip balm. I decided not to take the train but walk. Where do you think you’re going? I had no idea where I was going but I’d reach somewhere somehow.

I put my earphones in and unpaused a track:

“…and at once I knew, I was not magnificent…”

How apt but please, not now. Next!

The streets were devoid of cars for a Sunday. Like most weekends, tourists outnumbered locals. I walked further and there was a homeless man rummaging a garbage bin in front of a 24-hour convenient store. He had with him two plastic bags of crushed cans and a grin on his face—he must have hit the jackpot. I slowed down, observed him. Is he happy? Do the little things in life really make a difference, make it better? I walked past him and smiled. He simply grinned back at me. I wish him well.

After walking through a handful of ambient songs, I reached a quaint kopitiam. I ordered a tall glass of iced coffee and got myself what I deemed as the best table in the house: an unobstructed view of the quiet street.

I couldn’t take my gaze off the street. Its uneventful state calmed me. I took out the notebook and my favourite pen. I kept glancing at the blank pages hoping that a first sentence would simply appear. Nothing.

About an hour had passed. Pages were still blank. My mind was wandering in circles, going nowhere but orbiting a sun that was the past. Accept it, let it go, then move on.

I loved him. I’m still in love with him. It happened when he went to India for three months for work. He had found himself a fat camel cunt. Take a deep breath, Zed.

We were together for nine years.

There had been a time when he was stressing my flaws, finding reasons as to why he had swerved, picking bad moments like picking rotten fruits off a tree and in his palms he would present them to me. He couldn’t see that there were also bunches of ripe, lovely ones. With such effect, he had underlined my failure as his partner. Goddamn yes, I am flawed.

After he had returned from India, he was different. In my eyes, he had changed. People change, Zed. You’ve changed. I could no longer see him the way I had, he could no longer fit into my box of expectations. My mistake to keep such a box. I had this illusion of seeing him like a mirage—distant and intangible. He had become a mere impression of the man I had fallen for. I was struggling with myself, pushing away and pulling into a gamut of emotions. It was a confusing phase of yes-or-nos, a time when only one question had mattered, lingered, in my mind: should I stay or leave? Yet my intuition was adamant: just go with the flow.

We never fought, we had dialogues. We were so good at it. Our talks were intense at times but nothing was raised, not our hands nor our voices. Sometimes tears would flow, yet we seemed to have the tendency to top those talks with sex. We were that attached.

It was getting dark. The street was calm as ever. I could sit gazing at it all day. But the retrograding had to stop. I got up and walked to the nearest metro.

I glanced at the unmade bed, at the state of the room, at myself. I took my shirt off and looked in the mirror. Perk up! I put the towel on but crawled into bed. Is it me or does the ceiling seem higher?

I took a bagful of deep breaths. I closed my eyes, flared my limbs and lay still. Shavasana.

The space around me is slowly collapsing.

Something sparked. Thank you, universe! I opened my eyes and got my first sentence. I knew now how to begin the article. I rushed for my notebook but a thought stopped me. I realised that this opening was a confession, a nod to my state of being.

I wrote down the opening line: This void in my heart could hide an entire universe.

The first cut is so deep it reaches a depth where depression oozes out, thick like blood. It feeds off the past — regrets and bad memories that refuse to die — clinging onto your synapses like a parasite. It feels like you are being pushed off a ledge falling into a deep chasm only to be teleported onto a higher ledge just so you would fall into a deeper one. Thus how the cycle runs.

As an optimist, depression has caught me off guard. It behaves very much like a black hole: silent and imperceptible, you would only know of it when it has you orbiting it, draining you of energy. You gravitate towards its core as your light gradually fades.

We exist partly and simultaneously in all of our many possible states that only when a state is observed that we could see the truth in ourselves. Depression infects the other possible — beautiful or happy or introspective — states we could be in. It is a fog that does not go away, that turns solid as concrete the moment we deny or suppress it. The fog will only pass when we see it for what it is, when we acknowledge its existence.

Depression has taught me to savour every little happiness you could ever muster. Little things matter. If tea makes you calmer and happier, then for your own sake brew it. Meditation helps — a rendezvous with the universe, it resets my thoughts and realigns my energy. But thankfulness is the most effective. No matter how bad of a shape you are in, always express your thanks. Always.