I decided to type in here, because I wanted to remember something, or how someone made me feel.
I met someone nice today, and even though nothing developed, I wanted to remember it, because it’s been awhile since I felt this forgotten, pleasant emotion.
That’s really the best I can do to describe the person and the emotion: pleasant, nice.
There’s no need for extreme superlatives, because I can’t extrapolate the future, nor did I go out of my way to impress said individual, it all happened like a casual conversation, she seemed down to earth and we didn’t really expect anything more, or anything less.
In case anyone (read: the two giraffes and three possums that read this blog) is wondering, she was not the “fascinatingly scary” girl mentioned in my tweets. –> here.
No. This was the simple, vanilla girl that took my blood sample and handled some of my administration when I went down to the clinic for a medical check up. Through casual conversation, she knows I’m going to start teaching in the near future, and I know she’s going to enroll in medical school later this year. Very plain things, but I’m a vanilla sorta guy, and it doesn’t get more vanilla than this. Okay, maybe going to med school’s sorta like having cookie dough in your vanilla ice-cream, but that’s it!
So there were no exchanging of numbers or anything, because, nice and pleasant as she was, I think she would be a little too young for the time being, or I’m not exactly back in the game myself (self-imposed exile since I have no work.) But I wanted to type this in here, because it was nice, to notice women again, or at least be attracted on that level.. y’know.. a tiny clue that your heart hasn’t completely turned to stone and that you still have some emotion left, plain as they may be.
It’s amazing how often I actually come into this blank space with nothing to say. It really is a blank slate, the title to this post probably won’t be thought off till something just randomly pops into my head closer to the end. Honestly, in this version of my blogging/writing style, there is very little thought that goes from brain to screen.
For example, my blogging platform (wordpress) just generated “353″ as my default permalink, of which I will definitely change, but I’m telling you that now to demonstrate just how much I am not thinking at the moment.
It’s nice to type in here without that sort of pressure.
I suspect I do not function well under pressure. I secretly am afraid, and pressurised if someone tells me that I write well, or do various things well. I usually just try to say thank you, and not let it get to my head. The moment I do, constant editing and a quest to write the perfect piece takes over, and I just get paralyzed. I’m the sort of person that flows, I react more than I plan.. it’s just the conditions I thrive in. These are not necessarily the skills that will make you a successful person, but you will find a richness in life that money doesn’t always buy. You see things that other people don’t see, you thrive on little quirks that make you raise an eyebrow, as you give a silent chuckle to yourself as you get the little inside joke that is inherent in all things life-related.
Today, while working on the video project, I guess I could finally articulate just what sort of creative person I am. I think I am a rather subtle person. Perhaps I would do better at a cinema-verite style of filmmaking where I just like things unfold in the frame. It’s a slower way of telling the story, but I think I like letting the audience unpack what they are consuming. Open to interpretation as they say. Leave a few visual markers here and there, light shifts in tone and pace.. nudges instead of signposts that lead you on. Where meaning is discovered rather than explained.
Perhaps I’m like that on a daily basis. As much as I’d like to know where I’m headed, I’m also very much intrigued by what is going to happen. Good things still surprise me, bad things are expected, but when you see something marvelous, it truly is a beautiful sensation. That’s why I’ve matured from just being a cynic, I’ve been lifted out from that pit that the earth is a cold dead place. I know that it is, but the wonderment comes from actually being alive, and being pleasantly surprised when life sometimes deals you a good hand.
In some sense, it’s perched on the old saying that you can choose how you want to feel. It’s true, in life you get dealt shitty hands, and you get dealt some stellar hands. But life isn’t figured out in a lifetime, as long as you are still open and you haven’t completely closed your heart, you just prepare yourself that much more should something good come along, or at least pass you by. When you close your heart, you close your eyes, and you only see what your brain’s been conditioned to think. It’s different from having an irritatingly sunny disposition, but an open outlook to both the beauty and darkness of the mortal coil.
As long as we’re still breathing, I’ll try to keep my heart and eyes open. If you blink, you might have just missed the spark that’s in all of us, in all created things.
Where do we find love?
Do we find it in the places we shouldn’t look?
Or in the secret places?
The nooks and crannies,
The malls and the museums,
Or maybe, the leftover plenties.
Where do we find love?
How did we lose her in the first place?
Did she get lost?
Or did we just let each other go?
To faraway places, where no one could reach,
To strange alien lands, where no one bleeds.
Where do we find love?
I could spend this whole life searching,
For something that resembled a heart,
And yet, were I to find yours,
I’d forgotten where I last placed mine.
Another day has passed and what a day it’s been. It wasn’t exactly my busiest day, but I feel like I’ve accomplished a fair amount today. I went to church to oversee a video project I’m working on, worked out some further kinks, and the soundboard looks complete. That is until some last minute changes came in, and I’ll have to go back in tomorrow to see just how much, or little changes need to be made.
But anyway, I then braved the rain to go for remedial training, which is a fine mess I’ve gotten myself in for not passing my Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT), and also defaulting my last round of remedial training. That’s a nicer way of saying I failed the expected fitness of a Singaporean reserve in the army, and I was a no-show for my last bout of remedial training. I could be considered a felony in a more militaristic country. But the important thing is that I ran 2.4 kilometers in about 18 minutes? That is revolting. There was a time when I used to run it under 10 minutes, and now I’m reduced to this flabby pile of laziness.
Oh, then it was off to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and it was a great one! Many good friends at the gathering, many good conversations and laughs. One that particularly stood out, was when we were debating if Singapore had a culture. I supported the idea that we did, mainly because I’m a culture junkie, and I do think that there are things unique to Singapore. Unfortunately my opposition was more forthcoming in his arguments, and I generally lose to heated debates because I automatically lose interest. I suppose I was never born and bred in the fine arts of debate, haggling, confrontation or just saying no. I’m a dreamer, I hate to admit it, but I am. I like to see the good in people, and really do want to be surprised by someone when they do something so wondrously spectacular just because they believed in it. What I don’t see is the fighting and diplomacy that goes on. I’m just so blind to all these things that I never got to say what I really want to say, or do what I really want to do. Some people see the world as their right to pick, I on the other hand see the world for everybody to enjoy and don’t mind sharing what little joy I have.
And that scares me, going out there to get what I want, what I perceive to be rightfully mine. Where hard work isn’t enough, and you have to go further than getting what you deserve, and taking what you desire. I don’t work hard in that department at all. It saddens me, because I see all the nice guys finishing last, or not competing.
And that’s the question isn’t it? Are you in the race? Racing for the prize, giving everything up for the prize. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here, the same way there’s no right or wrong answer to whether Singapore has a culture or not. I still believe I do, and I still believe that I don’t necessarily have to compete in the race to find happiness. All these benchmarks, or evidences and validations to prove our way is right, is not the only way to live this life, or be happy in it.
Maybe you don’t need certain things before you can be happy. Maybe you can be happy today when you have nothing, but you just can’t see it that way yet. I know I still can’t see certain things, but I hope I do.. I want to live in the light that shines from the inside and not the artificial ones that society shines on when they fawn over the latest do-hicky.
So sue me, I’m a hippie.
Posted: May 19th, 2010
Categories: Journal
Tags:
Comments: Comments.
I came down with a cold, cough and sore throat this morning, even though I’ve been nursing it for the past three days. I think it has something to do with being stuck in a stuffy room with zero ventilation for three days that ultimately caused me to fall ill.
I hate being ill. I cough like Armageddon, I sneeze in threes (that feels good), but oh my, I can’t taste or smell anything and I have to avoid cold drinks. Avoiding cold drinks in Singapore is like walking on railway tracks. It’s stupid.
And now, I think my medication is kicking in, and I’m starting to feel a tad drowsy.
Life is a struggle, from the moment we are born, our mothers suffered in discomfort as much as it could have brought them joy. It’s a funny thing, but life is a struggle.
Some people say that life is a disease we’re dying from. Looking at it that way, our lungs struggle painfully each day to take in oxygen, until one day.. they give out.
Life is a struggle to stay young, where we fail with each passing day. It’s a struggle to stay relevant as new ideas and mainstream thinking set to impose their collective wisdom on your individuality. It’s a struggle to stay unique in the cesspool of mono-thought.
We struggle daily to find our worth, and fend off the demons that seek to place doubts in our minds. It’s a struggle when we give, or we receive, what we say, what we do.
We struggle in our times of rest, to lay the thoughts of productivity at the door. We struggle to make our balance and find our peace. Our freedom was bought from the struggle of those who fight, and those who died. Our wealth from the struggle of the poor. Our poverty from the struggles of the rich and powerful.
This is our struggle, this is our keep as long as we are alive. Like worms squirming in the ground, not knowing up from down. This is our struggle in the vast cosmos that seeks to devour our souls, as we struggle to define our physical and spiritual integrity in the face of a force of nature that contains the same elements as all of us put together. It’s a struggle to maintain our physical forms made up atoms and molecules, like everything else in the universe. As we fight against gravity but standing on solid ground, not being sucked into a black hole. All these forces and reactions, just because they don’t cause you pain, doesn’t mean struggle is not in play. Friction, opposing forces and energy all hitting against each other to maintain order in the universe.. everything that prevents us from merging with the singularity.
Struggle, is like black against white. When you struggle, you make meaning and you see things that weren’t there at first glance. Struggle from the day you were born, till the day you die.. breathe your last and be taken back to the earth, the molecules that gave birth to your physical form. Your spirit, back to the heavens.
I will write in here until my eyes bleed out, that much I can promise.
A lot has changed in the past year, that’s all I can think of. Soul searching here and there, finding out where my strengths and weaknesses are, what I wanted to change, and changing some, stagnating in others.
That’s life. It’s not really the success story of perfection that the world constantly tells us to achieve, even if they’d like to admit that we are all masters of our own fates. The reality is that society expects various things of us, and maybe I’m not really that brave with regard to the unknown. For starters, the need for a job and a source of income. Support our families and loved ones. Even if I’m not married or have a partner, my family is a responsibility, one that I’ve grown to accept, and appreciate. There will always be things that I hate about them, but there’s also so much more that I could love. Though it’s not a matter of having more loves than hates, but learning what family is during this last year, and the things we do in the name of family. I can appreciate, and I’ve been blessed to be allowed to appreciate.
A vengeful spirit that counts the cost, leads us to be conservative in how much we want to give. But I’ve learned that you can give you all and still not receive, yet.. the less you give, the more you fade from existence. You disappear from the hearts of people when you seek solitude. Sometimes, I liked that solitude, other times, I scream at the walls. My neurosis means that I tell myself that I have to pick one. My growth tells me that they each exist as two sides of the same coin.
Duality is the main idea I’ve picked up this past year. How one person can be two different things, and not be fake. It’s not about wearing two different masks, but accepting the good and the bad that exists in all of us, and in all situations. To keep walking even when you’re not fully healed, to stop walking so you can heal yourself. It’s like walking forwards and backwards at the same time, or walking two different paths at the same time. Life.. simply isn’t a linear phenomena.
I just signed a teaching contract with MOE, and there are still doubts in my head, as there is sureness as well. It can be both the best and worst decision I’ve made my entire life. But there’s something about Singapore’s meritocratic culture that tells us we have to make only the best decisions, as if it were a multiple choice answer. I reject that. The best choice is also the worst choice. There will always be something down the road that will ask for our sacrifice, or make it seem like we made a bad choice. But that is the reality.. we have to experience the bad, as much as we experience the good. We cannot go through life experiencing only good things. Even though we crave for comfort instead of struggle, life itself is a struggle just to stay on the path.
So, it might sound like I’ve gone no where in my quest for an answer, but I think that my thinking has matured, and can finally accept both the good things and the bad, and not just seem them as singular concepts, but a holistic concept affects the human condition. That’s a good thing, it’s a step forward. It might be a bad thing, because I’ll end up over-thinking and paralyzing myself again. But hey, life’s a ride.
The Autobots were known for their organised crime.
So here’s a quote from All Hail Megatron #6, by Kup, a war veteran and one time trainer to Optimus Prime. For some reason, it spoke to me, and why it was still important to believe in something, even in today’s day and age:
Megatron can’t destroy Matrix. It’s old. Older than any of us. As long as we have Prime, the line can’t be broken. He thinks Prime’s dead. He thinks we’ve been set adrift. For all of recorded history, a PRIME has guided cybertron. A leader that represented a higher ideal. A leader chosen by the Matrix…
Our belief in something greater than ourselves is what sets us apart from the Decepticons. As this war rages, lines blur, promises are broken.. to each other.. to ourselves.
The Matrix is our connection.. …it’s our way back.
