I have been looking at Facebook and suddenly am so conscious of how much time has passed and how old I am getting. In everyone's photo album are wedding pictures, a family friend whom I have always felt is a little girl is now writing insightful and mature thoughts on the meaning of education in her final year in college. Where did all these time go? And how do I feel about these five years that have passed me by ever since I left the small sunny island on the equator?
The feelings I have are complex, and are hard to articulate. These is a nagging sense of sadness, at the things I have missed. Somehow I feel that these five years have been a blur and a blank, I feel that instead of moving forward, I have been stationary, on a still sea with my sails unfurled waiting for the next monsoon wind, and I have been waiting five years.
When I look at all these changes from my friends' lives and watch them all one by one step into next exciting phases--building their own homes, chasing after their dreams, or even exploring the world, I feel the nagging sense of fear that has seeped into me since my move. I have lost so much of the old confidence I had when I was younger, and with nothing to show for or to explain this mysterious loss.
I feel a sense of loss, of time, of myself, of possibilities. I feel that instead of exploring, I have been growing inward into myself these past five years. I don't know if it has to do with uprooting myself, or just an innate cowardice that has to do with my own personality, but I feel so afraid these days. Of things invisible and hard to explain. Have I lost my idealism? Perhaps, but it is not that which I mourn. I have lost the best years of my life and the lives of those around me in this inexplicable stillness called adaptation. Yes, moving is a kind of freedom, but there is also a deep sense of isolation. I feel like that guy in Cast away who was stranded on an island and have lost all sense of time. Living days inside of himself and returning to catch a glimpse of the ghost world he has missed in his years of isolation.
Perhaps even time is communal. Perhaps, it is because I no longer have others around me that I no longer follow their direction and growth. I told my co-workers the other day, how glad I am that I no longer have to suffer the same kind of social pressure in Asia now that I am here, but the social pressure is also where one finds the strength to push ahead. Because your friend has become a mother and has shown the way, you know you will be ok when your time comes. One feels a social bond and a kind of confidence that is found in those around you.
I miss that sense of community. I grew up with these people, and I miss them. I have this fear that when I return to witness their big moments, I will be an outsider. Perhaps that is why exile is such a fearful thing--to be torn from this community by force. What I have missed is more than this concept of home, it is this knowledge of the lives of those around me, and the confidence that arise out of shared experiences.
Mostly, I feel alone. Sometimes I rejoice in that, because I am safe from critical eyes and set time tables for maturity, but in moments like this, I feel my loss deeply.
Perhaps, it will always be a case of "what if". What if I had never moved.. But the answer will always be silence, just like the way my heart resounds now when I think of how the road will branch from here, and how I will only move further and further away from those memories that still ground me when I think of home, when I think of friends, and when I think of my youth and the confidence I once feel in a future I know now that I am only ever unsure of, like a shifting ground of sand.
By: Nippy | Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 11:10 AM | | 
I read the first 99 pages of No Country for Old Men in Borders yesterday while waiting for Lee for a movie we never watched. The book was a little hard to get into at first because I couldn't visualize what was happening very well. I think it has to do with the description of action being inexact or vague or it could be a case of me not understand certain vocabularies, but once I can visualize the whole landscape, and once dialogue begins, it was just so riveting.
McCarthy has a way of crafting these amazing scenes. It is the landscape. It is the way people talk. It is the grit, the sparseness, the blood and the gore.
It cuts to the bone of language and storytelling. And he has these jump scenes in his story that goes from one character in place to another without confusing the readers.
The book is also framed by a kind of internal monologue by the voice of a Texan sheriff. Italicized, readers hear the thoughts and voice of a law enforcer. I was wondering why McCarthy did it. It seemed a little sentimental at times. But it also seems to me that it grounds the book emotionally. So that readers are placed on the side of the average man who abides by law watching the voilent and at times horrific scenes of saveage butchery occur. It speaks to me as a reader, and I guess it makes some of the violence tolerable and even gives it some kind of meaning.
But that is just my guess. And I will have to finish the book to conclude. Besides, I will need to read it a second time. But more on that later. For now, work.
By: Nippy | Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 1:43 AM | |
I'm in Seattle right now, waiting for the Japanese friend I'm travelling with to wake up. Seattle is a charming and quaint city. I've never been to England, but I picture that Seattle looks a little like English suburbs. Like San Francisco, Seattle is surrounded by water and is a maritime city. The bay sits on its outer rim and walking along the pier, I had a feeling that I never left San Francisco.
When I talked to Lee last night he asked me how I was enjoying my stay in the city and I told him "it is not quite..."trying to find the right words and he finished it off for me "exotic as you think?" I guess that it is just another American city and I had expected a change of scenery. But it is a very beautiful city and walking along the streets downtown, there are moments when I feel that I have gone back to Hong Kong, and by the bay overlooking the port of Seattle, I feel as if I'm back in Singapore except for the cold, it is something I can almost believe in. Homesickness always comes with traveling--it is a kind of bitter sweet freedom. One always thinks of home on one's journey, or the abstract idea of one.
At night, at the modest hotel my friend and I are staying in, I watched the Twilight movie (yes the vampire movie) and it made me realize something. I can see the appeal of the movie. I have never read the book, so I can't quite discuss the writing. But the movie, the movie..it was gripping. It was literally hard to stop watching the film. It made me once again think of story construction. If a writer can get a reader to wonder what would happen next to such a degree, they will stick with even the silliest dialogues and crappiest special effects.
Besides, I can understand why young girls love the books and movies. The whole idea of a supernatural forbidden love eternal, and an invisible protector. What is more erotic than the idea that there is a kind of love when one's very physical existence is threatened. I suppose it is romantic and erotic, to love so strong and so deep, and even unto death, to believe that love is all powerful.
Of course it is silliness, and anyone who has been in a relationship understands that love is more than that or perhaps in ways less than that. But I didn't want to write about love, I wanted to write about storytelling.
I think Shakespeare understood what Twilight movies captured--there are things that people enjoyreading, watching: scandals, sensationalized drama, love unfulfiled, revenge, murder, insanity, and as tacky as it sounds, I think some deep part of us crave this kind of stories. Call it escapsism or immaturity, but I can see why something as "terrible" as Twilight can be enjoyable. Maybe I should read those books to find out what made it so effective. I'll consider it.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 1:42 AM | |
Why are bosses such A-holes? It is a universal truth in life that the main difference that divides a boss from a worker is that one is an A-hole and is proud of it, and the other works for the A-hole.
I was in a such a bad mood today after work that when a black cat crossed my path on my way home, I actually chased it down. I don't know what it is if it is not a sign of madness.
It was the last straw. Poor cat, because it picked a bad time to cross the road. A bit of bad luck for it, I say. Yeah. Yeah. Karma. I know, I was not so sorry as I thought it funny. I really am going slightly mad...
By: Nippy | Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 11:10 AM | |
Elegant simplicity is so hard to achieve.
There is a kind of see-through clarity and sincerity. A kind of X-ray vision striping everything away, but in such a way that there is more beneath the surface than one expects--just like the boa constrictor in "My Drawing Number One" in T
he Little Prince.
By: Nippy | Monday, January 17, 2011 at 2:48 PM | |
Billy Joel, I will marry you for writing this song.
Don't go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don't imagine you're too familiar
And I don't see you anymore
I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times
I'll take you just the way you are
Don't go trying some new fashion
Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care
I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.
I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.
I said I love you and that's forever
And this I promise from the heart
I could not love you any better
I love you just the way you are.
By: Nippy | Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 1:52 PM | |
Charles McColl Portis 's
True Grit is on my to-read list. (Excellent, excellent film by the Coen brothers.) As is,
Blood Meridian and
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.
I have resisted classic adventure stories for the longest time. Never wanted to read
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
Treasure Island,
Robinson Crusoe and etc.. But I am currently reading
Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and it is one of the best stories I have read in a long time. Every single character in the first 12 chapters has been so colorfully illustrated through Melville's words. I can picture everything. From the cow slipping on fish head on the beach to the boarding house lady demanding Queequeg's harpoon.
It's been so long since a book has been this exciting for me. I look forward to a year of exploring the masculine, the gritty and the adventurous in literature. From hunting whales to Westerns, I want to experience this same blood throbbing excitement this year in books.
By: Nippy | Monday, January 10, 2011 at 7:08 AM | |
I'm telling you I'm addicted to those damn things. Once it gets dark, at around 7pm, I start craving those buggers really bad. It's like I'm morphing into a Mr Seashell Chocolate Edward Hyde. And the only cure: some other unhealthy snack.
By: Nippy | Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 12:12 PM | |
One: Finish my story.
Two: Travel more.
By: Nippy | Sunday, January 02, 2011 at 6:12 AM | |
