...
22.10.11
an empty husk
I suddenly felt a wave of fear and sorrow. I cannot give you some of the things you might want. I don't think I'll ever be able to change that. Are you willing to accept that?
16.10.11
the ninth day
Overdue, again.
Day 9: Two Movies You Absolutely Love
1. Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Ohhhh......how to begin. Let's just say that I adore stories that are complete without being resolved. It's strength is in the poetic story, of vastness that transcends the individual, the utterly absorbing atmosphere, and scenery (it almost seems to project itself into real life!). The power of the imagination behind it. Absolutely adore Miyazaki's work, this most of all.
2. 5 Centimeters Per Second. I'm so in love with this movie; I find myself thinking about it while walking down streets and watching the sun set, even months after watching it. It changed my life, quite literally. Again, it's so scenic it's almost heartbreaking. The storyline is so real. Told with such unfailingly passionate idealism, in a cold world made to crush out all hope of that kind.
Day 9: Two Movies You Absolutely Love
1. Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Ohhhh......how to begin. Let's just say that I adore stories that are complete without being resolved. It's strength is in the poetic story, of vastness that transcends the individual, the utterly absorbing atmosphere, and scenery (it almost seems to project itself into real life!). The power of the imagination behind it. Absolutely adore Miyazaki's work, this most of all.
2. 5 Centimeters Per Second. I'm so in love with this movie; I find myself thinking about it while walking down streets and watching the sun set, even months after watching it. It changed my life, quite literally. Again, it's so scenic it's almost heartbreaking. The storyline is so real. Told with such unfailingly passionate idealism, in a cold world made to crush out all hope of that kind.
time capsule
Yesterday, I met a friend whom I made four years ago. It was quite an experience, in multiple aspects. The last I saw of him was in, what, 2009?
Besides the T-shirt delivery, that is.
He's a different person, even though he's in all ways the same. He hasn't changed; my perceptions have shifted.
That piano he made out of wax. It reminds me of how high he has risen, how far he has flown; his work stands on display. He isn't the same person. Just as that piano's existence makes me think of the shifting times and the days we left behind, the piece in itself is a recount almost nostalgic; it fills in the gaps of the story that I never knew, the gaps that riddled those two years without meeting.
I know I am a tiny part of that story, and I even remember where I came in. Somewhere around high C, with the clips. Those silly, silly days. Getting childishly angry over his equally-childish obnoxiousness. Brief admirations. Music.
The wonders of social media. It's almost as if there weren't any of the years in between this meeting and the last. But there's something of those years we missed, that singing of something I let slip, dreams lost in translation.
Today, I met a teacher who taught me History in Secondary Three. He remembers me because I was a strange person with some sort of non-academic talent in art? music? that no one could harness properly. Or maybe because I once threw a water bottle at him. I wonder.
He tells us of the things that have been happening recently in RGS. Has it been a year since I sang that school song for the last time? Life lies before us, here's luck to the start. It's changed so much; people I once knew are leaving; people I don't know have come.
It's funny to hear stories of RGS. Your time is done and you have left it forever. But life moves on, things continue to happen within its walls, regardless of your absence. Sometimes you return, and realise it's farther down the current from where it was when you left it, and will never return to that place. But we all retain memories, and some pieces are bound to be trapped here and there, in the dusty corners of the school.
I remember the lab where I first made lead iodide. I remember the pigeons in the canteen. I remember the grand piano in the foyer with the broken F string.
It's funny, how far behind the memory of RGS Batch '10 has been left. At least it still means something. At least our History teacher still remembers, and he says we have changed less than we would think.
History teacher. It makes strange sense.
---
Today, I went to a place I last visited in March 2010 to practise a duet. My friend's home. So many things there are identical to before--but today, I looked closer. There is so much there that I didn't see before; was all that there the last time I came? Which of those things were added by 2011? I always wonder, and maybe I'll regret not looking last time. But that chance won't come again.
She told me of things that happened while I was in her class last year, things I never knew. Now we no are longer that close, it almost seems alien to hear of what was happening when we were still, things that started and ended, and never crossed my path till now.
I remember only the piano from that last visit in 2010. Today I discovered, she's changed that piano for a newer one. Isn't that strange?
---
Like the paradox of Theseus' Ship, I am unsure if I can call them the same entities, since they are still the same by name. Or have their parts changed so much that they are not the same things; are they in fact different? Completely? Partly?
Both my artist friend and my teacher have deactivated their Facebook accounts. Another lesson. They move along, and now I will know nothing of their lives. Without technology, I am stripped bare in terms of links to these people. How much wider does the seam tear? I do wonder. Wide?
All of this, I encapsulate and bury. It's a little like what this blog is meant for. It keeps imprisonments of old times, some that enter by accident--some of which I treasure, some of which I wish I didn't have to recall.
All those things, so many things, could have been--but I tossed them away before I took hold of them, they took hold of me--the music of long ago. Choices and random events are continuously passing us by, each leading to a different Somewhere. Maybe if only. If only I'd hung onto some chances, and discarded others. If I'd been a little more truthful. If I'd gone home an hour later on the fifteenth of July. If I'd gone left around the staircase instead of right.
But music, always music. Play with passion, until the concerto ends, and your solo closes everything. No regrets, because the piece is played and the notes have been sounded. Every mistake becomes part of that unique piece of music that only you, at that point, in that state, could have performed. It's quite beautiful.
Besides the T-shirt delivery, that is.
He's a different person, even though he's in all ways the same. He hasn't changed; my perceptions have shifted.
That piano he made out of wax. It reminds me of how high he has risen, how far he has flown; his work stands on display. He isn't the same person. Just as that piano's existence makes me think of the shifting times and the days we left behind, the piece in itself is a recount almost nostalgic; it fills in the gaps of the story that I never knew, the gaps that riddled those two years without meeting.
I know I am a tiny part of that story, and I even remember where I came in. Somewhere around high C, with the clips. Those silly, silly days. Getting childishly angry over his equally-childish obnoxiousness. Brief admirations. Music.
The wonders of social media. It's almost as if there weren't any of the years in between this meeting and the last. But there's something of those years we missed, that singing of something I let slip, dreams lost in translation.
---
Today, I met a teacher who taught me History in Secondary Three. He remembers me because I was a strange person with some sort of non-academic talent in art? music? that no one could harness properly. Or maybe because I once threw a water bottle at him. I wonder.
He tells us of the things that have been happening recently in RGS. Has it been a year since I sang that school song for the last time? Life lies before us, here's luck to the start. It's changed so much; people I once knew are leaving; people I don't know have come.
It's funny to hear stories of RGS. Your time is done and you have left it forever. But life moves on, things continue to happen within its walls, regardless of your absence. Sometimes you return, and realise it's farther down the current from where it was when you left it, and will never return to that place. But we all retain memories, and some pieces are bound to be trapped here and there, in the dusty corners of the school.
I remember the lab where I first made lead iodide. I remember the pigeons in the canteen. I remember the grand piano in the foyer with the broken F string.
It's funny, how far behind the memory of RGS Batch '10 has been left. At least it still means something. At least our History teacher still remembers, and he says we have changed less than we would think.
History teacher. It makes strange sense.
---
Today, I went to a place I last visited in March 2010 to practise a duet. My friend's home. So many things there are identical to before--but today, I looked closer. There is so much there that I didn't see before; was all that there the last time I came? Which of those things were added by 2011? I always wonder, and maybe I'll regret not looking last time. But that chance won't come again.
She told me of things that happened while I was in her class last year, things I never knew. Now we no are longer that close, it almost seems alien to hear of what was happening when we were still, things that started and ended, and never crossed my path till now.
I remember only the piano from that last visit in 2010. Today I discovered, she's changed that piano for a newer one. Isn't that strange?
---
Like the paradox of Theseus' Ship, I am unsure if I can call them the same entities, since they are still the same by name. Or have their parts changed so much that they are not the same things; are they in fact different? Completely? Partly?
Both my artist friend and my teacher have deactivated their Facebook accounts. Another lesson. They move along, and now I will know nothing of their lives. Without technology, I am stripped bare in terms of links to these people. How much wider does the seam tear? I do wonder. Wide?
All of this, I encapsulate and bury. It's a little like what this blog is meant for. It keeps imprisonments of old times, some that enter by accident--some of which I treasure, some of which I wish I didn't have to recall.
All those things, so many things, could have been--but I tossed them away before I took hold of them, they took hold of me--the music of long ago. Choices and random events are continuously passing us by, each leading to a different Somewhere. Maybe if only. If only I'd hung onto some chances, and discarded others. If I'd been a little more truthful. If I'd gone home an hour later on the fifteenth of July. If I'd gone left around the staircase instead of right.
But music, always music. Play with passion, until the concerto ends, and your solo closes everything. No regrets, because the piece is played and the notes have been sounded. Every mistake becomes part of that unique piece of music that only you, at that point, in that state, could have performed. It's quite beautiful.
thrill
There is a thing about exciting things.
The first ride on the rollercoaster is always such fun. It's because you've never done it before, because you're here to try something whose experience and outcome you cannot be sure of, except that you know others liked it. Throughout the ride, as each turn comes unexpected and each bump draws another exhilarated squeal, as your palms grow sweaty, almost slipping, your pupils dilate, and your heartbeat booms like a drum in your ears--there is the fear, the thrill, the novelty. All because you don't know if you'll survive. Then at the end, there is this hope for a second time.
The second time may come in a few weeks, even in many months, a year. That's why it's fun every time. At the eve of each ride, you retain a little inkling--a racing of the heart, a distant burst of adrenaline, the scream far down in your throat as the bends come hurtling towards you--and you take it on again, almost not remembering how it happened last time.
But say you took the rollercoaster every week. Now, the body knows how to adapt, because adaptation is a crucial part of survival. And you start to learn to handle not knowing what comes next--your pulse learns not to rush, the adrenaline learns not to come so fast--because you know the danger will not come. You know you are safe; your body learns that, and learns to cope.
And if you did the same everyday, you start to predict all the turns. Lose all joy for not knowing what comes next. Lose that happiness. The forgetting of the thrill is like a cliff fall--sudden. And it might not come back.
I'm afraid I'm wearing out the novelty of this. Some things make me thrilled beyond compare; this is one of them. I know that the thrill will eventually die, much faster because it happens so often--but I don't want the second scenario to be the one I live through. I don't want to take an overdose now, and fall out, so hard that I lose all ability to be happy when you try it again. I don't want this, ever, to be an empty grey shell of what it formerly was.
I hope you don't mind that I am retreating for a while. I don't want to squander all this joy on the first six months, and lose it for the rest of our time.
The first ride on the rollercoaster is always such fun. It's because you've never done it before, because you're here to try something whose experience and outcome you cannot be sure of, except that you know others liked it. Throughout the ride, as each turn comes unexpected and each bump draws another exhilarated squeal, as your palms grow sweaty, almost slipping, your pupils dilate, and your heartbeat booms like a drum in your ears--there is the fear, the thrill, the novelty. All because you don't know if you'll survive. Then at the end, there is this hope for a second time.
The second time may come in a few weeks, even in many months, a year. That's why it's fun every time. At the eve of each ride, you retain a little inkling--a racing of the heart, a distant burst of adrenaline, the scream far down in your throat as the bends come hurtling towards you--and you take it on again, almost not remembering how it happened last time.
But say you took the rollercoaster every week. Now, the body knows how to adapt, because adaptation is a crucial part of survival. And you start to learn to handle not knowing what comes next--your pulse learns not to rush, the adrenaline learns not to come so fast--because you know the danger will not come. You know you are safe; your body learns that, and learns to cope.
And if you did the same everyday, you start to predict all the turns. Lose all joy for not knowing what comes next. Lose that happiness. The forgetting of the thrill is like a cliff fall--sudden. And it might not come back.
I'm afraid I'm wearing out the novelty of this. Some things make me thrilled beyond compare; this is one of them. I know that the thrill will eventually die, much faster because it happens so often--but I don't want the second scenario to be the one I live through. I don't want to take an overdose now, and fall out, so hard that I lose all ability to be happy when you try it again. I don't want this, ever, to be an empty grey shell of what it formerly was.
I hope you don't mind that I am retreating for a while. I don't want to squander all this joy on the first six months, and lose it for the rest of our time.
13.10.11
This is how it'll always go I guess. You always so far ahead, me wishing to keep up, always wishing, only wishing. We steal whatever time there is to be happy, but when all is considered and the tide of things moves us on, this time is never enough, never close to enough.
I am wise enough to know that I'm far from important (when have I ever doubted?) and that no one without a blood connection with me would sacrifice more than a little for my sake. I know that some things simply cannot change, that you are you and you have so much left of life for you; the world is your oyster but the pearl is for only the hands and eyes of one; that I am I, who will always be so little and so insignificant, no matter how hard I try. There is a price to being talented beyond your years, and that is that there will always be people waiting to wring more from you, each time, every time, time and time again, year by year, routine, even though it's not enough, never near enough.
And I can't comfort myself with the words 'it will end', because it won't. It'll be the same forever, always you, you, there on the pedestal of gods, called to other places, called far away, called to be great and to show something for your greatness, chased around the world by nameless glories--to places where I'll never see you again. And always me, me wilting in the garden I thought would grow but died and murdered me along with it. Always me, the one who cannot keep up, who can't be the same, simply can't be the same no matter how I wish I were.
It won't end. It's simple now; a matter of too much to do and too little time to ration, too huge a possibility to throw away, too huge a glory to forsake, too much of an obligation. Then next time, it'll be those things again, but not just with time but also with love.
I wish it were easier to let you be away and apart. Whenever we part, do you know how I feel? Do you not know that wistful smile? When I gaze up at you and smile, it is not for bliss; it is for regret that it will end so soon. My heart wants desperately to hold, to hold on. Because the time is never enough, never near enough; I stop every second, every petal of our time together, before it can slip through my fingers, wrack it for every drop, strip it of every last iota of happiness I can find. Yet never find enough for myself. Tear it to shreds and tear myself apart, and refuse to let go even then.
I would love to accuse you of not caring. I would love to tell you to leave, for this. Because you have a talent, you subject yourself to this benchmarking, these competitions, these things that make you look like some genius, things you don't even have to do. Why? Didn't you say you don't care? Didn't you say achievements don't matter to you?
But I know that, inexorably, I would not have you sacrifice all you can have and all you could be--the glory of your future--just because I am selfish. I don't expect it either. I don't mean to sound like you do it on purpose, like you're any less than forced--by circumstances and the future and the pressures of the world--to do these things. For your sake. For your good. It makes sense, every bit.
Maybe I do wish you valued our time more, then. It's just the same thing for you, as if we had all day to ourselves, when in fact we have such few hours. You enjoy it; enjoyment isn't the same. You waste it. Waste it still. I wish it meant as much to you as it did to me. I wish you'd treasure it, not just enjoy it. I wish you'd hurt as much as me when you need to go. Because I would die with this heartache.
Maybe I do hate knowing that you're only taken away every day because you are gifted. I hate that thought; I hate it to the core. I should be happy for your gift. I should be glad, and proud to be close to a person so brilliant. I want to be. But if it only takes you away, how can I?
Can't you see, I'm suffering to know I'm obliged to let you go?
I am wise enough to know that I'm far from important (when have I ever doubted?) and that no one without a blood connection with me would sacrifice more than a little for my sake. I know that some things simply cannot change, that you are you and you have so much left of life for you; the world is your oyster but the pearl is for only the hands and eyes of one; that I am I, who will always be so little and so insignificant, no matter how hard I try. There is a price to being talented beyond your years, and that is that there will always be people waiting to wring more from you, each time, every time, time and time again, year by year, routine, even though it's not enough, never near enough.
And I can't comfort myself with the words 'it will end', because it won't. It'll be the same forever, always you, you, there on the pedestal of gods, called to other places, called far away, called to be great and to show something for your greatness, chased around the world by nameless glories--to places where I'll never see you again. And always me, me wilting in the garden I thought would grow but died and murdered me along with it. Always me, the one who cannot keep up, who can't be the same, simply can't be the same no matter how I wish I were.
It won't end. It's simple now; a matter of too much to do and too little time to ration, too huge a possibility to throw away, too huge a glory to forsake, too much of an obligation. Then next time, it'll be those things again, but not just with time but also with love.
I wish it were easier to let you be away and apart. Whenever we part, do you know how I feel? Do you not know that wistful smile? When I gaze up at you and smile, it is not for bliss; it is for regret that it will end so soon. My heart wants desperately to hold, to hold on. Because the time is never enough, never near enough; I stop every second, every petal of our time together, before it can slip through my fingers, wrack it for every drop, strip it of every last iota of happiness I can find. Yet never find enough for myself. Tear it to shreds and tear myself apart, and refuse to let go even then.
I would love to accuse you of not caring. I would love to tell you to leave, for this. Because you have a talent, you subject yourself to this benchmarking, these competitions, these things that make you look like some genius, things you don't even have to do. Why? Didn't you say you don't care? Didn't you say achievements don't matter to you?
But I know that, inexorably, I would not have you sacrifice all you can have and all you could be--the glory of your future--just because I am selfish. I don't expect it either. I don't mean to sound like you do it on purpose, like you're any less than forced--by circumstances and the future and the pressures of the world--to do these things. For your sake. For your good. It makes sense, every bit.
Maybe I do wish you valued our time more, then. It's just the same thing for you, as if we had all day to ourselves, when in fact we have such few hours. You enjoy it; enjoyment isn't the same. You waste it. Waste it still. I wish it meant as much to you as it did to me. I wish you'd treasure it, not just enjoy it. I wish you'd hurt as much as me when you need to go. Because I would die with this heartache.
Maybe I do hate knowing that you're only taken away every day because you are gifted. I hate that thought; I hate it to the core. I should be happy for your gift. I should be glad, and proud to be close to a person so brilliant. I want to be. But if it only takes you away, how can I?
Can't you see, I'm suffering to know I'm obliged to let you go?
3.10.11
the same old disease
Is it too much to ask, to be famed for my skill? To be able to do something and know I'm good at it?
I am covetous by nature. Covetous especially of those close to me. The closer they are, the more I wish I were equal to them. Or better still, better.
I hate that I have no solid proof of whatever "talents" people claim I have.
I am covetous by nature. Covetous especially of those close to me. The closer they are, the more I wish I were equal to them. Or better still, better.
I hate that I have no solid proof of whatever "talents" people claim I have.
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