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| is anyone still here or did everyone defect to fb??
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| shellsjs1218: well, hun, in the end, u can't keep everyone u like
shellsjs1218: but u find more people u do like
shellsjs1218: only the very imp stay around
10th January 2007, 1:14 am
what is clingyness but an impossible complex about friendships? it is a
complex syndrome with an equally complex evolution. the cliched shy,
gawky grade-school girl-caterpillar first emerges from the confinement
forged from natural tendency, rigid upbringing, or a combination of
real and imagined unattractiveness to become the fragile
adolescent-butterfly. perhaps it was the crucial move away from a
stifling hometown, liberating it from a previous prison of social
expectation stronger than a cast-iron cocoon. perhaps it was the
much-needed blessing of a makeover by a glamorous girl-crush who knew
infinitely more about bras, boys, and Balenciaga. whatever it is, this
adolescent-butterfly begins as scarcely more than a mirage, only
shimmering shadow-wings that hide, when viewed at a distance, the
slightly fuzzy, squirming core.
as time progresses, one of two things can happen. the butterfly can be
trampled, often accidentally, wings torn and forever stuck on the sole
of some careless stranger's shoe while the caterpillar wriggles away
into the safety of the earth's cozy homeliness. or, it can continue to
grow, shedding skin after skin until it becomes hard, waxed of its
fuzziness, and utterly impregnable behind the pretense of new adulthood.
this living, writhing creature becomes a portrayal; a shiny portrayal
that manifests itself in a multiplicity of ways, from slightly
excessive, friendly facade to carefully chosen facebook photos with not
a single one straying from the ideal photographed angle. each photo is
a snapshot of faux life, capturing only the most Kodak of moments - the
clink of bubbling champagne, the softness of dimly-lit skin, the
wild-angled limbs from moments in flight, the kiss of ephemeral
friends. but behind this the fuzzy ugly creature is never lost, i
think. it only hides.
let's talk about the complex. it is fundamentally a complex borne of
fear. the creature's evolution of wants has come a long way since the
fully-grown butterfly was a humble worm. at first, when it was in the
wasteland of loneliness, it only wanted a close companion. a couple of
close ones would have been better, a group, a posse, a clique, a
steadfast haven from T.S. Eliot's hell.* when it finally got a couple
of friends, it yearned to please crowds, to be everyone's favourite
girl, even at the expense of being trampled on. then age and
disillusionment allows it to dust off the footprints of others'
careless missteps, and concentrate on the golden balance - not too many
friends by way of numbers, but each one preciously guarded and
treasured.
but it can never truly be comfortable in its skin because in the
wasteland of loneliness was a sandstorm of desolation, a sandstorm that
tears, ever so subtly, on the fabric of one's social confidence so that
the rents forever inhibit the ability to trust. to trust in what, i
cannot fully define, but i will try - it is not so much a simple trust
in others, i guess, but more a deeper trust in oneself, in one's
desirability, necessity, and ultimately, ability to be loved, fully and
purely, to keep and maintain a friendship for years, decades, a
lifetime.
and what's worse - life is always in flux. friendships come and go as
all things do, the good ones fleeting, the bad ones lingering.
rationally speaking, this is a natural evolution of changing
geographies, professions, interests (see the infinite wisdom of
schonmei up above). irrationally thinking, this is yet another
testament to one's imperfection, proof that nothing has changed about
the fuzzy, insignificant critter that nobody in their right mind would
regard as a worthy compatriot.
there is a room temperature i hate, approximately 65 degrees
fahrenheit. it is the canonical temperature of paralysis that is warm
enough so that turning the heater up cannot be justified, but cold
enough to chill me. i remember this temperature well. it was the
temperature of a dark corridor the mind once traversed while the
fingers played a sonata, anchored to the keys with fear, and the
sunlight slanted through the living room not beckoning, but taunting
and jeering with the threat of the social world. it is the temperature
at the dead of night, when the day's pleasant distractions and
conversations are at an and, for some reason, the ghosts of friendships
past diffuse through the windowshades and taunt as the sunlight once
did, dipping cool fingers to stir the doubt that one will, at the end
of the day, end up back in the wasteland, stripped of shell, stripped
of wings, only listening to the quiet rustle of the wind like happily
chattering voices beyond some horizon unseen.
~*~*~
now comes your question; i have predicted it from the beginning. you
are asking, in your mind, whether this creature is me. but this is
somewhat of a nonsensical question, because you already know it is me.
what i am asking is whether it is also you.
*"Hell is oneself, hell is alone." -T.S. Eliot
*~*~*~
Accompaniment to sketches no. 18 - my motivation, my release
Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope,
serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are
asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write
because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do
normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books
like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry
at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing.
I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write
because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of
life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write
because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I
believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in
anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write
because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the
glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I
write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all
of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be
read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I
want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I
write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries,
and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is
exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write
not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to
escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just
as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.
-Orhan Pamuk, Nobel acceptance speech
7th December, 2006 | | |
| post post post
just posting to keep this thing alive..
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| A case for requited love Stayed until 1:30am at the Donut Wheel because it is absolutely the only place in Cupertino open 24 hours (Lyn, did you mention this to me before, maybe I just forgot?). Yes, we are the bad apples of our crime-free suburb, which has a curfew at 11pm. So bad, in fact, that the reason I was out, was to work with my bro on his college essay. College essays are funny things that I (dorkily) miss. Don't laugh. I write, all the time, but mostly lyrical nonsense I don't even fully grasp. In case you couldn't tell, most exerpts remain discombobulated and meaningless downloads of erratic thought, collisions of raw emotion I don't have time (or am too intimidated) to analyse too deeply. They are sanitized and detached from me, rarely written in the true first person, stories I have yet to live, crafted not from truth but from a psychedelically exaggerated hyperreality. So anyway, that is why I needed the college essays, because they forced me to come back down a plane and link these wild and unrestrained emotions to a coherent life story. Love has been the topic of choice lately, for I learn a little bit more about it day by day, on a strenuous and frequently painful journey. This is all quite new to me, for those close to me will tell you that I rarely upset. While I care deeply for all my friends, feeling pain is uncommon for me. It is possible that years of childhood as an awkward pianist-nerd in a school in which I was nearly a complete outcast has given me layers, not necessarily as opaque and blunt as indifference, but of more subtle cellophane sheets of cautious reason that enscone each emotion. I had thought that I upset frequently only with my parents, the only ones who got to me before those cellophane sheets obscured my heart from the world's easy access. They are also, as I realized in college, the providers of the most colossal loan of my life. But lately, I've realized the pain also extends to another. Is it because I realized that he was ultimately the manifestation of my parents' one weakness? With him, they worried about things they had never needed to worry about before with their cliche and proverbial first child. This is, of course, a thoughtless exaggeration, as the "failures" I'm speaking of are really just a scattering of B's across an otherwise impressive course record (but since when did Asian parents have remotely reasonable expectations?) Ultimately, as the Chinese proverb says, you remain but a inch-long blade of grass unable to reciprocate the beneficence of the sun, so I could never even begin to repay my parents for the magnitude of my debt...except through the care of my one and only little brother. Children are cruel things. The jealous first-born accustomed to love and attention as an only child is probably the worst. I had never been kind to him, not until high school, when I realized he had grown to an actual living and thinking being that wasn't just a blob of soiled diapers and unreasonable bawling. By then I feared it was too late. In the years I had spent enraptured by the selfish pursuit of my own goal to get as far away from our sleepy town as humanly possible, had I lost my chance? I hope it turns out that I hadn't. My mother (perpetually the wiser one) was right - in this bewildering world of 6.6 billion milling souls, he was the only one besides my parents who I was born obligated to love, no matter what. And the only one who was born obligated to love me back. Then one April day he was visiting me in my apartment in New York, and we had crashed after a tiring day of touring the city. I had promised to take him in for a haircut and was attempting to coordinate that, but now work called, pulling my mind in that other direction, so I was at once planning the next day and wrapping my mind around what needed to be done upon my return to the office the day after that. The permutations are always endless and insomnia-inducing. I tried so hard...I was tired. And then, a voice drifted over to me in the darkness-
Je, is there anything...you know, you want to tell me? What's going on with your life? *~*~* This type of love is dangerously egotistical, because it assumes the worst - that you alone must protect, must weather hardship, must do a duty resigned to martyrdom. It claims absolute dominance and an impregnable perfection, of the grudging ability to take care of anything and everything, because they are the weakest link. Then, once in awhile, you will find that from under your tattered wings the object of your love extends wings of its own...(to your surprise) reciprocating in its own right by tending a vulnerability you did not even know you had. | | |
| the lonely new york night The lonely new york night begins with a glass of wine (or two), usually after a long new york week. Walking home from the stately vertical labyrinthe of office buildings, our step unknowingly quickens with anticipation what is to come. The click-click of heels on cement begins to complement the other night noises, horns occassionally blaring, sirens in the distance, the slow rush of traffic like an eternal river. The music we sway to is a mixture of newfound liberation and delirious lightness. Fatigue, tension, self-deprecation and anxiety disappear as a delicious opaque gauze is pulled over our consciousnesses, inflated suddenly to the invincible. The air around us is crisp in our nostrils, sharp and clean to the dulled senses. Home looms ahead, a haven for the ritual undressing. Have you ever watched a woman dress before a night such as this? Though layers are carefully placed one by one, it is actually an act of erasure. Foundation a shade lighter than skin erases facial planes and valleys, leaving only the trace outlines of a face to be hand-drawn later. High sweep of artificial cheekbones and artfully shadowed cheeks recreate what nature had neglected. And last but not least, dark liner and heavy mascara shield the earnestness of actual eyes, masking in one sweep every remnant of delicate human expression, leaving in its place only an outline, an idea - doll's eyes. She leaves the house a ghost - nothing more than the clothes she wears, and an idea. Away from the city lights we thread, from dark hole to dark hole, each one throbbing with the pulsing beat of empty-eyed youth. Scintillating city lights dim to red. We are lost in this ocean of anonymity, bumping against each other in the womb of the earth with a desperation that borders on desolation. Every face is a reflection, hollow cheeks, empty eyes, slack lips lost in strobelight snapshots. It is a canonical masquerade, this twilight rite of heady rhythm. Presently, the waltz begins with such a purposeful kinetic bump. What starts as an anonymous mass of mask and limb has a voice, a name. Often this name does not matter, not yet, for in this red world in the womb of the earth the bothersome nuances that define us as human are meaningless, purposely hidden and sanitized and simplified down to nothingness. We are comprised of a simple concept - a simple summation of our desires, our motivations, the consciousness pared down to the Id. The waltz continues from hallway to spacious room, laid out in pure minimalist style that puts Ikea to shame. Artfully placed mirrors counterpoint smooth panels of mahogany and oak. A flatscreen gleams emptily, its function purely show. The seemingly endless expanse of white hotel-grade sheets beckons at even the most diligent of souls. The waltz continues, no longer the throbbing headache of the club but the deeper udulation of the heartbeat. Can you imagine the freedom of two souls freed completely of the constraints we unknowingly consent to daily? Propiety, place, awareness, shame, all dissolving in the swirl of if wine, warmed wantonly to the temperature of human blood. The layers of clothing that hide our shame grow weak and loose, allowing the sudden infiltration of the evening air (admist a few bubbles of delirious giggle.) The lonely new york sky scintillates with the tempetuous daydreams of artificial stars, overwhemling in its complexity. It is not beautiful, this sky - only overwhelming. If there is a Creator who looks upon us he is surely on hiatus at this moment, for momentarily spreading across this sprawling metropolis is something as dark and vacuous as infinity. In this darkness we wander, collide, lose direction, and love (but love as rhythmic and unfeeling as strokes of an elliptical trainer...just as perfunctory!), until amidst the city lights, we drown. | | |
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