Dada 151

That slap across my face was the slap of my own history. I had no regret in rising against it. It was like the raising my own black flag. But the hurt had gone now; now was the time for parlay and illusion. The prosecutor was overdoing it. I would have liked to have the chance of explaining that to him in a friendly sort of way. To say it really wasn’t my fault that the whites had ruled this territory, district and city for so many years over the Malay. Yes, the Chinese came and helped them and when the Indonesians burned our boats we had to act superior because this was still our place. But it did no good to ape any of them because we Dayaks didn’t feel that way about any of it ; especially when they roll out the red carpet of the Malay nation with its laws and state and parliament on the peninsula. Who really listens? It was what the dada hated. As for myself I just wanted to be off and sailing like him across the sea with the Blue Funnel line, but I couldn’t say that either. Not least have I told anyone that it didn’t matter? The Dada said that the sea absolved all beliefs and the only wave you should ever pray to was the God without name, one god and one soul, one love above or below the waves’s and no religion south of the belly. To no one else give mention but love your neighbour. I have never regretted anything in my whole life. Things happen and you react or you don’t react, that is all. You live your life under the sun and the rain and the moments of everyday that give you grace. They are all that matters, Wabu Sabi. I’ve always been too much absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to look anywhere else. Of course after my outburst there was never any chance of me being allowed to clear that up or speak again? The prosecutor was now considering the inner life of my character, what he called my ‘alma’