The annotated budak

Sleepwalking

Tomorrow begins a bout of duty in Bangkok and so tonight demands early slumber. The past weeks have been a mental straitjacket in which thoughts refuse to emerge and words fail to protrude from my lips. To mrs budak, I plead a stifling of emotions that renders me dumb and numb in mind, and hope that silent gestures of feeling might have made up for affections left unexpressed.

The seconds pass every morning like chimes of an unwelcome spire, as this leaden body departs to chart a new day of dreams. In this state, I ply hazy tunnels between visions of doom and the whiplash of reality – mundane in mission and yet mind-sapping in its demand for mercantile dynamicism. A tiny, untrodden path, shrouded and shadowy, beckons amidst this voyage of déjà vu; but dare I forsake this foothold of seeming stability for a step into a realm of self-made hopes and unhedged risks?

The blues

Nothing more than feelings? Or nothing less?

We are creatures of emotion, for all our boasts of logic, sense and rationality. Fear, loathing, anxiety, frustration, despair and discomfiture; such sentiments of disaffection bind the mind, shutting out hope and twisting dreams into hollering banshees that will not grant the heart rest, even in the darkest hours. It becomes an ordeal simply to sit and wait, for the nagging worm attacks in moments of stillness, twitching and buzzing, stirring and stinging. Only by losing myself in activity does the beast cease its assault. To counter this demon, it seems I must unlock the door to another, and unleash a biochemical battle that may yet repair my sanity. But at what cost?