Beautiful Amnesia

With fuel prices sky-rocketing in a fashion akin to speed of a reverse bungee with no end to the extension cord, I have been contemplating the necessity of maintaining my car. It is not just petrol that is costing a fortune, the six monthly servicing is costing me $300 a pop. The monthly payment for car insurance which I have never made a claim on because my excess is too high and because it will affect my ability to claim my 10% premium return. In the course of the year, I have had my car window smashed once and my car buttocks disfigured. I won’t even begin to mention the parking and speeding fines although to be fair to myself it hasn’t happened since I’ve gotten a little bit more experienced on the road.

All that being said, is all that money worth the convenience and the ability to go wherever I want whenever I want? Excluding petrol, the car is costing me about $2.2K annually to maintain including the re-registration. That’s crazy. Stupid crazy. Crazy crazy.

Unfortunately, I have already named my car.

My latest photo montage.

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Whenever I feel like writing nowadays, my words always carry with them a tinge of melancholy. It has been a revealing few weeks and this is where I am right now, at this point today. Nowhere but here. In a well that is deep and dark.

But it is not my well, and it is not my water that I am drowning in. So why am I here at all? Because love takes you places and then you get lost, but it is alright because there is a hand to hold and it’s not my own.

I got my WESC headphones delivered to my work today. I’ve been waiting a week for them and it’s super exciting that they come in a bright pink box. I chose black headphones because they go with everything though I wish I could afford all the different colours for different occasions.

I’ve been wanting to get nice headphones for a while and I was considering the Bose on Ear ones but they cost AUD$199. Although they sound unreal, I’m really not that much of an audiophile. I’m actually more like a wannabe-phile so I got these ones from WESC. They are great and look pretty funky (can I use the word funky at age 29?) and the sound quality is not too shabby at all. They supposedly use Sennheiser parts. For AUD$65 (includes courier) I’m very pleased with them. I’m sure I will put up a whinging post if they break but it’s only Day 1.

Ah winter. Once I had not known seasons and now that I do, I am not the same. I write about the them all - summer, autumn, winter and spring - and I think about how in the grand scheme of the earth’s orbits and rotations, winter is really a beginning and not an end. It is like opening a brand new colouring book and then waiting patiently for the world to fill in the colours until once again you have a fairy tale in your hands. Even autumn, with the fading of summer, is vast in its richness of deep and sensuous tones. When the last leaf has hit the ground, when the reds turn to earth and the sky drains of its vibrance to present a desaturated, empty vastness - it sometimes brings about an unexplained shift in one’s psyche, a similar drain of colour and liveliness. I suppose most people don’t see winter as metaphorically as I try to. As if correspondingly dulled, people hide themselves in dark muted colours and shun the bitter bite in the atmosphere.

I was recently introduced to the term SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I have always been a fan of the terminology “winter blues”, seeing it apt and poetic - a term rightfully belonging to song but I had never known its reality. SAD can be a serious depressive disorder where sufferers experience symptoms of depression during the winter months.

Admittedly, the wonder of winter has lost some of its lustre as the years have gone by and I am more than noticing icy cold, dry hands and the chattering of my teeth. That dreaded moment before stepping out of a hot shower is akin to the anticipation of a slap you know you can’t avoid but you would like to put off for as long as possible. The cold and flu bugs that fly around the different zipcodes and into your system can be quite unappealing as they settle into your lowered energy levels. The short days and long nights seem to drag out our shadows.

Perhaps it is because I hail from the tropics (Singapore is not known for its variety, either in seasons or anything else) that I still find winter to be somewhat of a novelty so much so I can remind myself why it really isn’t so bad. For example, I like winter because I like beanies, and scarves and jackets. I like winter because I adore how white fog puffs out of my mouth in the mornings and I like winter because condensation settles on glass and shields the greyness with an air of hazy mystery. Most of all, I can like winter because of its vast potential for new beginnings.

I hope you smile soon.

It’s midweek and there is usually a sense of weariness associated with this particular day. I like to call it the “nowhere here, nowhere there” day. If you are a a slave to the 9-5 wage person like I am currently, Wednesday is the day when you are exhausted from having worked the previous Monday and Tuesday. It is also the day where there are another two days to go before the weekend. I’ve always had a slight prejudice against Wednesdays.

I’m having a night off from the usual sitting on my ass on the couch in the living room. I’m instead, sitting on my ass on the chair in my bedroom (which by the way, I have concluded is definitely not as comfortable as the couch). Anyway, I came home tonight with a multitude of things that I wanted to do. I wanted to read my book, I wanted to watch Oprah, I wanted to have my ipod set up to my stereo, I wanted to fiddle with some photographs and do some drawing. I couldn’t quite decide what to do so I did them all. It’s 9.25pm and I’ve read a chapter of my book, watched Oprah, set up my ipod to my stereo and now I’m about to start fiddling with some old photographs and I might attempt a little sketching before bed. On top of all that, I’ve also managed to tidy my room - that is if you can call moving the pile of stuff from a prominent location to a more discrete one in its entirety “tidying up”. I’ve also squeezed in a fifteen minute nap and a long hot shower so I feel very productive. It’s funny how my mind tries its hardest to stress me out when there really shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Looking back at how 3 and a half hours ago, my mind going into overdrive trying to prioritise everything I wanted to do with my evening, it seems almost silly - laughable. It’s only 9.30 and I’ve done everything I wanted to do and then some. I suppose I should try and apply this lesson in the things that I do from now on.

I can’t do everything in one moment - like how my mind tries and bullies me into believing that this has to be the case. I’ll have to take it one at a time, step by step and enjoy the process as it happens - because voila! I achieve a lot more and I am actually feeling relaxed. What I’m trying to say is, tonight is a prime example of how I should just remember to watch my breathing.

Also, tomorrow is Thursday and not Wednesday.

Pseudo reunions, although wrapped under the guise of a friend’s 30th Birthday gathering are really not my thing.

I am naturally uncomfortable in large social situations and I typically feel about as awkward as I would feel if I had a sock stuck in my throat and a part of it hanging out of my mouth. For better visuals, imagine toe-end of toe-socks in rainbow colours. Although the years have lent me some interactive skills, it is usually important to remember that they are borrowed and not intrinsically mine.

I only went to the 30th party because it was for a friend. That, and because I knew that Ant will be there to talk to me in case no one else does. I knew full well that I will more than likely run into a few, or more than a few faces from my college days and although apprehensive, I was also filled with a vague sense of curiosity. It didn’t turn out as badly as I thought because things got easier after the second beer went down. I actually managed to display resilience and stay for a solid four hours at the party.

By the time I left the pub, the air outside had frozen a bubble around a me, and my scarf though double wrapped around my neck felt like paper in the wind. The tram was full of heavily built party goers dressed in unflattering fluorescent outfits. They were climbing all over the seats and singing really badly at the top of their voices. It has been a long time since I have been on public transport in the early hours of a Sunday morning and I was rudely reminded why. The sight of the girls’ wobbling fats barely contained under bright pink/green/flowery spandex whilst they paraded loudly up and down the length of the tram made me more sick than all the beer I had drank. I decided to walk the rest of the way home and the silence that greeted me as soon as I left the city was like a long lost lover whose embrace I fell into easily. Leaving the random hoots of Saturday night live behind, the Yarra river glistened with uncharacteristic calm, reflecting the lights of the city with a subtle charm. The sound of my own footsteps on the pavement helped sooth the pounding in my head and I found comfort in the shadows of the trees thrown onto the ground next to the yellow of the fallen autumn leaves. For the first time in a long while, my thoughts were as clear and crisp as the night air and I kept my hands shoved into my coat’s pocket to keep it from the cold. It was as if I had walked out of a huge mess and into serenity and it was overwhelming how inherently alive it made me feel. That was my favourite part of the whole night and I didn’t want my trip to end.

Anyway, back to the party. As I had expected, not too many people recognised me and strangely enough, I liked it that way. After all, I am quite a different person now. A few faces have gotten bloated over the length of some ten years, a couple have the same issue with their tummies. A girl who used to try and physically pick me up and served in the same committee did not seem to register any recognition if our eyes happened to meet when we looked up from our drinks. The boy who was loud at college was talking about buying and selling companies and the next flash car he was going to purchase. The indonesian basketball player has kids of his own and built his own house in a suburb out of Melbourne. That good looking boy in college is getting married to a sophisticated woman with blue eyes. The questions were polite and predictable, the answers even more so. After ten long years of absence, how are you to summarise in fifteen minutes or less, the answer to a simple question like “So, what have you been up to?“. And really, do you even care to know or are you just listening because it’s what you do in a noisy pub filled with the hum of conversation and the thump of music. I suppose that’s what I hate so much about small talk. It is such a waste of time and it harbours about as much depth as the next photo of Paris Hilton. With the most surface of tidbits thrown my way I pretend to almost put together the roughest of rough outlines of these people’s lives since college. Well, that information will just as quickly disintegrate and self-destruct as the night wears on and the next ten years roll on by.

“Hey, so it was really good seeing you again, we should definitely catch up! Here’s my number”.

So I suffered a setback today. The ego seems to have an uncanny knack of becoming your worst enemy at the most inopportune of times. But what do I know of setbacks?

I remember how there always used to be so much to write about. That dinner party I had gone to and mixed wine with beer or was it the other way round? Who cares? Maybe the strange old man who had lugged an old piano onto the middle of Bourke Street and was tinkling the yellow keys like he was live in Hamer Hall. Sometimes I would write about the comforting crunch of gravel beneath my shoes … the same sound constantly reverberates in my daydreams when I am looking up at the clouds.

I wonder where my knack of picking details have gone in recent times. It almost seems like I have sucked up all the world I could see in my younger years and kept them in my memory. It is as if reality now revolves only within me, and this other strange dimension on the outside functions only as a platform for me to carry out the daily routine of living. And it was like this, as gradual as the melting of winter into summer I found myself here. There. Where? Alone. One day I woke up and I didn’t know where I was and why I was feeling such pain. It was as if I were both a mother and a stranger to my emotions, one day identifying with it as who I am, and another completely rejecting its animosity. I stayed like this for quite a while, battling the world within against the one on the other side of the glass - each of them parallel but never quite meeting. Like a pendulum driven by an energy source beyond myself or my comprehension, I oscillated from one end to the other only rarely ever finding that mid point before I was on my way again. Caught in this craziness nothing really existed anymore. I got so tired so often, but my dreams kept on fighting for me at night whilst my body gave the impression that it was at rest. However, more often than not, I would wake to find my physical self striking out with frustration - still looking for that metaphorical punching bag. The colour I gave that bag was bright red.

Colour. Even the word itself soon became lack luster and it would be factually incorrect for me to give the various shades I saw that same label. I spent a lot of time not talking because even my words confused me as with other people’s speeches. I did all the things that I was expected to do. I wake up and I brush my teeth - sometimes I ate breakfast but most of the time I did not. I got dressed every weekday morning and I went to work. At work I smiled at my colleagues not caring whether they could see the vacancy that resided in my form. This was not because I didn’t care, but it was because I could not. There was a whirlwind enveloping my mind and its tendrils stretched beyond this consciousness - a natural disaster was happening, perhaps an earthquake maybe a 9 on the Richter Scale - but still my exterior would not crack. Until one day it did.

It was without warning that it happened to me. It was at the mid-point between lightness and darkness, wakefulness and sleep. It was at the mid-point where I so often passed without stopping because my vehicle seemed to have no brakes. At that mid-point, I heard the cry of a little girl and felt the crushing pain on my chest. In my chest. On my chest. I didn’t know what was in or out, real or not. I did not know whether I was dead or alive but then all I knew did not matter. From that night on I tentatively slowed … 

The autumn leaves this year have filled me with the greatest wonder. I notice their red and yellow outlines on the pavements marking each and every of their own lifetimes. Although fallen, they have done so with such vibrancy … such splendour … such pride. Walking around campus the other day I saw a yellow cloud of autumn leaves softly descend upon a group of young pedestrians as they struggled against the slight wind with worldly books clutched against their chests. My own then felt a lightness it had not experienced for a long time and discrete tears appeared without a command. The light was golden like syrup and spread carefully in an almost invisible flow across my field of vision. I can slowly see again.  

Life has been little like this photo lately. Patches of intense fire mostly, bits of clear sky at times and the rest of it shrouded in darkness.

I suppose I stopped writing in my blog because life told me that it was time that I needed to start looking for something so that is what I have been trying to do. It is a difficult assignment when you don’t actually know what you are looking for with only inward intuition to guide you. There has been deep introspection and the process has been long and difficult to put it mildly. I have taken the time to examine the scale of my own humanity and the discovery has been immense if not overwhelming and what I’ve learnt is that there is still a long way to go and the only way I can deal with it is by the minute, no .. by the second … no by the very moment itself. I am extremely grateful for days when I can see the azure in the sky but I am trying to be patient with myself in my flashes of darkness. I am also eager to shed light on my shadow so that the flames that burn are ones of life’s brilliant intensity and not of shame.

So anyway, here I am. I’m back and I shall attempt to keep this blog going with little tidbits from a life so ordinary. Maybe my friends will stop asking “hey what happened to your blog?”