On The Train on the way home at around 1000 hrs (Tragedy, Death and Brain Dead), Mar 15, 2007

You read and watch all kinds of tragedy happening from the newspaper and television and always amazed at how thing could happen, bizarre or not, not in a bit realizing that all those things could certainly happen to you or your family. You know doubt feel sad and sorry about those things but we seems to thing we are immortal and immune to those kinds of things. Under this circumstance that I received the news of the death of my cousin pretty badly, he felt off his roof, and my first reaction was to submerge my real feeling. I failed miserably after about two hours when all kinds of memories started to flow within my brain.

I am currently reading Steven Johnson’s Mind Wide Open and from my initial reading understand what I am going through now. My aunt has had several deaths that she had to bare already and I am not sure how she would handle this one. Thinking about this really saddens me the most. She has been strong before but how many deaths that one could handle. I am going to face her, inshaAllah, in three hours and I already dreaded how I am going to react to that.

The brilliant morning sun is coming through the glass window of the train as we are approaching Bandar Tasek Selatan. That change my mood a little bit, just a little bit, that help me. I look up at the glass right in front of me and I see my own black reflection sitting alone. My reflection is lonely and although there are few people on this train I look lonely. My brain is going deeper I guess.

The part of the Steven Johnson’s book that I am reading talks about the ‘tracks’ that have been created in your mind due to certain powerful feeling. You are not aware of this until similar incident triggers your memory. The past weeks due to certain thing I entirely forgot my ATM pin number so much so I had to get it replaced with a new one recently. Just now as I walked out of the building I stopped at the ATM machine inserted my card and just punched in the number, the right number for the old card. It was just instinctive and sadly immediately after that I could not remember the number that I had keyed in. Reading the book now I am in deep thought as to what actually had happened in my brain. The number is always there in my brain but what actually triggered me to instinctively key it in I am not sure. Was it the sadness? Or was it because I was too anxious or stress out? Probably I would know once I finish the book.