The air holds you down here, the sun obscured by haze. On the Malaysian Peninsula, I’m told that the burning of crops on islands to the east, Borneo and Kalimantan, brings the smoke that screens the sun.
Yet the heat still travels and is held thick in the air, comforting whilst leaving an air conditioned room, embracing your body and ushering you to move slowly. Sweat leaks out of my pores causing my legs to slowly uncross as calf slips across knee.
The direct translation of the word for sun in Malay is eye of the day. And so it watches me, through a smoke screen, sitting on the porch of my grandparents bungalow in Petaling Jaya, 30 minutes outside central Kuala Lumpur. It watches the plants that gather in my grandparents garden, potted or planted, by my grandmother. She cannot care for them all like she used to, those that take too much work to look after in her old age are left to prove themselves able to thrive under less active care. All the plants remind me to be calm. They are where they are and there is nothing they can do about it. They appear static and unable to do much but it is clear that they live very full lives. Holding posture against the light breeze, colours vibrant within an orange hue. Dancing on the wind, their leaves wave to no one in particular.
Nature does as best as it can with what it’s got, I believe that every part of it, you and I, that we do our best too.
Written 10/09/19
