But CAN You Sing with all the Voices?

I'm wandering the farm's weed-tossed walkways, singing "Colors of the Wind"* at the guava trees. I'm confident, without a trace of malu.** I know, I know, it seems amazing—I myself wouldn't have believed it possible a few days ago—but I am no hero, friends. I am just a woman, a woman who had a simple dream: To sing a corny Disney song about nature unabashedly into the wind.

I'll be honest: It was no easy task getting here. It took a few days of reconciling with Finola's perennially skeptical gaze and Khian Ee's probing tongue. It took a few days of remembering that I don't care to take life or people's opinions of me too seriously. It's been a long journey, a journey replete with sneaky humming cut mid-melody and silent longing stares into the weeds. Sometimes, when I've thought myself alone, I've even sung the song full out, rerouting the melody only upon discovery by my detective-eyed friends in order to obscure the song's true origins.

This morning, though, while clearing a bed of its irreverent, fruitless green, I felt my outer skin begin to peel away like a rolinia rotting in the sun. I yanked a deep root from the ground and let Tegan and Sara bubble from my lips. I turned and the rhythm picked up pace. I did a little internal jig. Today was the day, I knew. Today was the day I'd fulfill my life's purpose and become a Disney character. Today was the day I'd sing with all the voices of the mountains.

We finished our task and I left Matt (Ben)*** humming quietly beside Finola. They tramped away from the patch, and I drifted into the wind in the opposite direction.

I took a minute to savor the final moment before my world was to be revolutionized, looking pensively into the mess of vine-climbers and moldy tree stumps.

And then it began.

A grave question started to rise in my mind, slow at first, then faster and faster until it was clamoring against my skull with the urgency of a thousand impatient revolutionaries. I steeled my nerves and prepared to make history. "How HIIIIIIIGH does the sycamore growww?" God. I already knew the farm's colonizing retort. I sang louder.

"If you CUT it down, then you'll NEver knoOOWWWW. AND YOU'LL NEVER HEAR THE WOLF CRY TO THE BLUE-CORN MOOOON FOR WHETHERRR"

Damn, it felt good, siding with Nature. I turned to see Finola sitting in the distance, a cigarette on her lips and a hand draped lazily across her knee. Her face seemed turned deliberately away from me. She was definitely judging me.

But it was too late. I was on a high-speed train to Fantasyland: Malaysia Edition, and I couldn't have stopped for anything, even if I had wanted. My destiny had taken over.

"YOU THINK THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO ARE PEOPLE..."

Finola turned her body slightly further away.

"ARE THE PEOPLE WHO LOOK AND THINK LIKE YOUUUU!"

I followed the path, which happened to curve closer to my best friend's perch. My volume dropped. "But if you walk the footsteps of a strangerrrrr..."

I could have imagined it, but I swear I saw her lips moving in time with my own. She took another drag from her hand-rolled cigarette, shifting her arm to the other knee.

EPILOGUE: "Come run the hidden pine trails of the fooooreeest. Come taste the sun-sweet berries of the eaaaaaaaarth. Come rooooll in all the riches all aroooound uuus! And for once, never wonder what they're woooorth."


*Note: This post is in no way an endorsement of the Pocahontas cartoon's historical inaccuracies or tendencies to cultural appropriation/misrepresentation.
**"Malu" means, roughly, "shy" or "shyness" in Bahasa Malaysia.
***See post titled "Goat Manure."