စိတ်ထဲရှိသမျှ

Weeks have passed, and I've been looking for her. The last time I saw her was just about a month ago. I met her at her usual hangout place, which is in front of the hospital. Then she disappeared.  I longed to see her so badly and asked around, but no one seemed to know her whereabouts. All I wanted was to say her a sweet goodbye before leaving the town.  Today, while on my way to work, I thought of her again. Thank God. A miracle happened.  I thought I caught a glimpse of her as I rode past the hospital, so I turned back to confirm it was her. And indeed, it was.  There she was, pacing back

ပြီးခဲ့သည့် ရက်သတ္တပတ်အနည်းငယ်က Rosanna Ley ရဲ့ (Return to Mandalay) မန္တလေးသို့ အပြန်ဆိုတဲ့ စာအုပ်ကို သူငယ်ချင်းတစ်ယောက် recommend ပေးမူကြောင့်ဖတ်နေခဲ့တယ်။ တိုက်ဆိုင်စွာပဲ လီလီက ကျနော်တို့ မန္တလေးကို မမျှော်လင့်ပဲ ခရီးထွက်ခဲ့တာကို အမှတ်တရရှိနေကြောင်း messenger မှာ စာပို့ထားတယ်။ အတိတ်မှာမနေနဲ့ ပစ္စုပ္ပန်မှာနေလို့ ပညာရှိတွေက ဆုံးမကြတယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် ပစ္စုပ္ပန်ဟာ စိတ်ညစ်စရာတွေများပြီ၊ လှမ်းမျှော်တိုင်း မောရသည့် အနာဂတ်တွေရှိနေတဲ့ ကျနော် အတွက် ပျော်ရွင်စရာ အမှတ်တရတွေပေါများတဲ့ အတိတ်သည် မကြာခဏ ဆိုသလို ပြန်လည်သွားလာနေချင်တဲ့

Rhys Davids drew the distinction between Fate and Karma. He said the doctrine Karma finds a moral cause for the effects it seeks to explain, while Fate is an interruption to this law. Both depend on a perception of the fact that happiness and misery in this life are apportioned with an utter disregard for the moral qualities of men, according to the current notions of good and evil. His examples in glory detail as follows – If one is oppressed, and his persecutor prospers in the world, the sufferer, if

မနေ့က အလုပ်ဆင်းချိန်မှာ မေမေ ဖုန်းဆက်တယ်။ အခု အိမ်ပြန်တဲ့လမ်း မှာဆိုတော့ Oh, are you coming home now လို့ပြန်မေးတယ်။ I sensed an element of excitement in her tone ပါ။ Not our home, but my home here ဆိုတော့ အော်… တဲ့။ Are you happy တဲ့။ I am neither happy nor sad လို့ပြန်ဖြေလိုက်တယ်။ Why တဲ့။ she then continued, "everyone that I came across recently assured me of the affection they have towards the humanitarian works," တဲ့။ (she meant the foreign workers).  I didn’t know why but I felt a bit of indignation ဆိုတော့ ကန်ချင်တဲ့ စိတ်က ထိန်းမရဘူး။ We are the same same but

Do you believe in omens/superstitions? I like to believe that I do not. Well, I still want to keep it that way as much as possible. However, sometimes I went off the rails and challenged my beliefs from time to time. Let’s talk about the date, the 31st of January. There seems to be so much hype around this very date, and I can’t shake off the thoughts. Before the military intervention, this date would have been considered nothing more than a mere ordinary day by the general public, myself included

I float. I float for a good solid twenty minutes day in and day out. I think about life, family, love, hatred, money, and friendship.  Nothing lasts. All thing just rises and recedes naturally, like tides while the meaning of the life seems to remain the same always, which is just to live and be with other people? It's overwhelming that my feelings and experiences are highly intense in one sense and another, utterly trivial because nothing about my life, the job, the desire, the love affairs struck me as permanent. I used to think anything was possible, that there were no doors shut behind me, and that

An extract from my journal: On our return journey, the boatman informed me we would stop at a village named ကုန်းချောင်း (Kone Chaung) by the river for lunch. As the boat approached the riverbank, a few rudimentary bamboo huts concealed behind the wild bushes came into view in the distance. "These people here are seasonal workers but not a native," the boatman explained. "They came from the outskirt of Mrauk-U to do bamboo business here. You would be surprised that some of this bamboo even made its way to Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships. Yes, that far," he assured me. The tide was low. Under the baking sun,

ဒီနေ့က ကျနော်မွေးနေ့ဗျာ။ ပုံမှန်ဆိုရင် မိသားစု၊သူငယ်ချင်းတွေနဲ့ ပျော်စရာအမှတ်တရတစ်ခု ဖန်တီးဖြစ်မယ်။ ဒါပေမဲ့ အခု မိုင်ပေါင်းများစွာ အဝေးတစ်နေရာကိုရောက်နေတော့ I will take things as they come လို့ပဲဆုံးဖြတ်ထားတယ်။ Today’s plan ကတော့ရှင်းပါတယ်။ အားလပ်ရက်မှာခရီးထွက်နေတော့ မနေ့က မသွားဖြစ်ခဲ့တဲ့ ဘုရားတွေ ဆီကို သွားမယ်။ နေဝင်ချိန်ကို ခံစားမယ်။ ပြီရင် local အရက်ဆိုင် တစ်နေရာကို သွားပြီး chill မယ်။ ဒါလောက်ပါပဲ။ ပထမဆုံး အနေနဲ့ the most famous five pagodas ထဲက တစ်ဆူ ကိုသွားတယ်။ ဘုရားရှေ့က ဆိုင်မှာ မုန့်ဖတ်သုပ်စားတယ်။ ဘုန်းဘုန်းတစ်ပါးရောက်လာပြီး မုန့်တီသောက်တော့ သူအတွက်လဲ ရှင်းပေးလိုက်တယ်။ မွေးနေ့ လှူဒါန်းခြင်းပါပဲ။

The main difference between developed and developing countries would be progression and stability, whether politically or economically. If one visited the developed countries some years ago, they are bound to see what one saw back then remains unchanged mainly despite the time. If there was, only be an unnoticeable minor modification. It would be like a pick-up-when-you-left-it-a-decade-later scenario. Sadly, the same thing can’t be said for developing countries. Let alone a decade, even a week, can change things dramatically. I’ve got many examples to support this theory, but I will start with

It’s scary how time flashes by. Times dissolve into a thick dark fog. Things that happened last week seem like years ago, and things that happened last year feel like yesterday. I suppose this is the side effect of growing older. Usually, at this time of the year, I would put ကြုံရင်ပြောပေးပါ (Kyone Yin Pyay Par) by Big Bag and a few favourite Xmas records on repeat, but this year I felt different. I wanted the door to the past to remain closed. Looking back on the year, the most liberating that I ever did for myself in decades, on the contrary to my forced live-a-sensible-lifestyle-Jonathan, was –  I welcomed the year 2022

Julia and Christophe set out for Mrauk-U, a medieval town, famous for the ancient temples, in northern Rakhine state. Two weeks later I met them at a dinner party that they hosted at their residence.  “Mrauk-U is beautiful,” Julia tried to start a conversation.  "We stayed overnight in Sittwe and rented a boat through our hotel receptionist to get there the next day. It was an awful six hours boat ride and the journey was somewhat uneventful, but we shall never forget that sunrise moment we saw from our boat on a misty morning on the river.”  “It was spectacular” she added. “Just beyond my words to

Fate, reality, dreams, expectations, disappointments, money.  “Listen without judgement, help without conditions, and understand with caring and love, no matter what.” Growing up, we all have been encouraged to write our own stories but we are so oblivious to the fact that each of our stories had already been written by “fate” since the day we were born. We have no choice, sadly but to accept them with a little hope that perhaps we may have a chance somewhere along the way to make some minor modifications here and there when times, circumstances, and resources allow us. Nothing more.  “Expect the unexpected so

Lately, I fell in love with a song: ရေစက် by ဖော်ကာ (wanted fokker) which I’ve been listening to on repeat.  It’s the word ရေစက် that fascinates me. I can’t find the exact word in English, however, the equivalent would be “destined” no less or “bound for”. In daily spoken Burmese, often hear oh you and I meet because we had ရေစက် in a past life and when we are about to be apart or comes a time we may never see each other again, say ရေစက်ကုန်ပြီ. 

We misunderstood, misjudged, misspoke, and then we regretted as fuck.  This is because we make assumptions.  We never perceive things as they are - we want to see what we want to see and we want to hear what we want to hear then we like to make an unnecessary drama out of nothing by letting our thoughts run wild.  You see, we don’t need an extraordinary relationship but a simple as

မင်းရဲ့ဘေးမှာထိုင်ပြီး တောင်တန်းဒေသ အကြောင်းတွေ ပြေပြချင်သေးတယ်။ I wish to tell you more about mountains areas sitting right beside you. This reminds me of the day Lilly and I set off, set off to the unbeknown area. The journey, we took together, led us away from the busy city life and toward the green paddy fields and hills of the countryside. See, it’s wrong what people say about the past and how one can bury it. As I’ve learnt it now, one just can’t bury the past because it claws it’s way

We named him စောချက်ဘူး because he could cook and flirt at the same time. စော was an honorific. We met in Sat Puu Taung village, our first stopover. We made our acquaintance to dine together that night under an open sky beneath the twinkling stars, but our break-the-ice session was cut short due to the unexpected rain pouring down in the late evening of early May. Eventually, we got to know each other. Saw Chat Buu was pretty resourceful. He became our cook and carpenter, someone we could count on for anything. He was

It is easy enough for people who are well off to sing of poverty.  We who have gone through it have no sentimental illusions. 

Wistful longing for လင်မျှော်ကုန်း။  Hence U Aung named it လေမျှော်ကုန်း။ But we voted against it and called လင်မျှော်ကုန်း instead.  It’s a hill slope, cultivation of အမိုး where she plants the corn and other only-god-knows vegetables that are scattered across the hill.  A long dead tree trunk lays in the middle of it and serves as an extended bench for a desolated soul to contemplate the meaning of life by looking at the chain of rolling hills in the distance.  The place offers us different sceneries throughout the day too.  In the morning, it gives us a breathtaking misty view, offering the mood of quietness

Sometimes we love people like we love the stars. We love them knowing we could never have them. ငါတို့ဘယ်တော့မှမပိုင်ဆိုင်နိုင်ဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အသိနဲ့ သူတို့ကိုချစ်ကြတယ်။ Rachel ရဲ့ ကြယ်ကလေး သီချင်းထဲကလို — တစ်နေ့နေ့ဟာ အတွေးလေးပဲ အလင်းနှစ်တွေကြာလည်း မင်းနဲ့ငါဝေးနေတုံးပဲ။ One day is just a thought, you and me are still a light year away. ပိုင်ဆိုင်ချင်ပါရဲ့။ နီးစပ်ချင်ပါရဲ့။ ကြယ်ကလေး တွေလို သဘောထားပေးလိုက် နိုင်ပါရဲ့။ — မိုက်ကီ I turned everyone into poetry, The ones that I love, Loved, And tried to love, The ones that hurt me, And the ones I hurt, The ones that are still here, and that ones that aren’t here anymore. The one that were “The one”, But didn’t turn out to be. The one that got fed up of me. I turned each and everyone of them into poetry. — H.S

Stars are the souls of dead poets, but to become a star, you have to die — Van Gogh. Today, the state-owned media publicly announced that two prominent political figures and two activists had been executed on Saturday.  Needless to say, the news shocked the public; the anger, the sadness, and the reactions made by the general public inside and outside the country were