What's your secret?
For the first time in my life, I'm scared the path I've chosen for myself at 5 years old is wrong for me. Not because I reject it, but because it keeps rejecting me, like a bad organ transplant. I wonder if anything can substitute natural aptitude--a question that rarely occurs to me because I've so often had it on my side. For this, I do not.
The older I get the more my tears are for things, not people. People change. People can be left. People are also fundamentally good, their first mantra always to do no harm. Things make no such promise. They are hard and immutable and devoid of moral value. My secret is that I've attached my desires to the wrong category. Perhaps to the wrong Thing. My secret is that the sunk costs have become insurmountably high. My secret is that the option to quit (never an attractive one) is no longer available. My secret is that I can only fight. And that I might lose.
**
Monday, August 20, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
let go
“The world is won by those who let it go.”
— Lao Tzu
This one is for my uncle. He didn't want to let the world go for a long time I think. When his mind started to deteriorate after his stroke, he decided to write down his memoirs while he could, including the entire family history. The children born to his parents, even those who did not survive, all of their birth years and why they couldn't make it. His memory of his mother trying to leave them because it was one too many mouths to feed. His underlying resentment towards his dad. His pride and slight envy of my dad, his younger brother, who got to go to college and make it in the city.
He shoved his memories into my hands four years ago when we visited. There were several notebooks' worth. By that point he had devolved into a childlike mind, repeating things four or five times to anyone in the room, whining about wanting juice, complaining to my dad about how their dad was the worst, even though my grandfather passed away decades ago.
I didn't say much, I knew only passable mandarin and even less about my dad's side of the family and their rural life. So I flipped through the pages while my dad listened patiently to his brother's ramblings. I remember grimacing at some of the cliches in the writing, the grandiose-ness Chinese writers are prone to. I remember the shock of how little I knew about my dad's life, how he never spoke of the siblings he never knew or knew for only a little while, and how poor people can be, so much so they die from it. I remember the elegant, elegant penmanship, a mark of scholarship in Chinese culture. It belied the fact that my uncle was deprived of the education he deserved, the education my dad was lucky enough to get because of his being born a decade later, after the cultural revolution.
My dad took the notebooks as we were called to lunch. He took off his glasses and tried to hide the tears. I looked away. It was too much to see. I think he always felt guilty of the opportunities he had that he knew his brother should've also had. I think in a time when they were so steeped in poverty that parental care was a luxury, not a right, his brother took care of him more than maybe their parents could have. Once, when my dad was a teenager, they both rode miles into town to get my dad new glasses, on the way back my dad was so exhausted he said to my uncle: I don't think I can go on anymore. So my uncle went into a store, bought a rope, tied their bikes together, and dragged my dad's bike behind him the rest of the way. I don't think that story made it into the notebooks. But I knew it was the one my dad was thinking of when he was flipping through them.
I stayed away from reading the notebooks after that, they made me cry and my family is easily embarrassed by displays of sentimentality. I did, however, photograph almost every page on my digital camera, because I knew my dad would want to read them, because I knew after my uncle died very few people would, because I knew there was a great likelihood they could even be carelessly thrown out.
Because they might be let go. Because they scream my uncle's desperate attempt not to.
**
— Lao Tzu
This one is for my uncle. He didn't want to let the world go for a long time I think. When his mind started to deteriorate after his stroke, he decided to write down his memoirs while he could, including the entire family history. The children born to his parents, even those who did not survive, all of their birth years and why they couldn't make it. His memory of his mother trying to leave them because it was one too many mouths to feed. His underlying resentment towards his dad. His pride and slight envy of my dad, his younger brother, who got to go to college and make it in the city.
He shoved his memories into my hands four years ago when we visited. There were several notebooks' worth. By that point he had devolved into a childlike mind, repeating things four or five times to anyone in the room, whining about wanting juice, complaining to my dad about how their dad was the worst, even though my grandfather passed away decades ago.
I didn't say much, I knew only passable mandarin and even less about my dad's side of the family and their rural life. So I flipped through the pages while my dad listened patiently to his brother's ramblings. I remember grimacing at some of the cliches in the writing, the grandiose-ness Chinese writers are prone to. I remember the shock of how little I knew about my dad's life, how he never spoke of the siblings he never knew or knew for only a little while, and how poor people can be, so much so they die from it. I remember the elegant, elegant penmanship, a mark of scholarship in Chinese culture. It belied the fact that my uncle was deprived of the education he deserved, the education my dad was lucky enough to get because of his being born a decade later, after the cultural revolution.
My dad took the notebooks as we were called to lunch. He took off his glasses and tried to hide the tears. I looked away. It was too much to see. I think he always felt guilty of the opportunities he had that he knew his brother should've also had. I think in a time when they were so steeped in poverty that parental care was a luxury, not a right, his brother took care of him more than maybe their parents could have. Once, when my dad was a teenager, they both rode miles into town to get my dad new glasses, on the way back my dad was so exhausted he said to my uncle: I don't think I can go on anymore. So my uncle went into a store, bought a rope, tied their bikes together, and dragged my dad's bike behind him the rest of the way. I don't think that story made it into the notebooks. But I knew it was the one my dad was thinking of when he was flipping through them.
I stayed away from reading the notebooks after that, they made me cry and my family is easily embarrassed by displays of sentimentality. I did, however, photograph almost every page on my digital camera, because I knew my dad would want to read them, because I knew after my uncle died very few people would, because I knew there was a great likelihood they could even be carelessly thrown out.
Because they might be let go. Because they scream my uncle's desperate attempt not to.
**
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
epicureans' mistake
A respite. A sudden silence amidst a downpour. A -- dare I say it? -- moment of exhilaration. I hardly know what to do. How to reconcile this with what I've been internalizing so far. I don't worry much though. It is far easier to internalize good things than bad ones. I will swallow this up. Lap up the last drops. Make it define me more than it should.
The Epicureans believed that pleasure is only the absence of pain. You would think this experience has proven to me that they are right, that the best we can hope for is a rest from the pounding rain. But the opposite. Relief is only relief. The first relief is even less. The first relief comes with fear of temporality. Fear that it is only a blip and that the default state of being remains the crushing torrent. Pleasure is something else. Of what I'm not sure. But its absence has only convinced me all the more of the Epicureans' mistake.
**
The Epicureans believed that pleasure is only the absence of pain. You would think this experience has proven to me that they are right, that the best we can hope for is a rest from the pounding rain. But the opposite. Relief is only relief. The first relief is even less. The first relief comes with fear of temporality. Fear that it is only a blip and that the default state of being remains the crushing torrent. Pleasure is something else. Of what I'm not sure. But its absence has only convinced me all the more of the Epicureans' mistake.
**
Thursday, July 5, 2012
do not
Do not let your fears be downsized by others, because it is a monster that grips everyone differently. Its talons will reshape only to scratch where the membrane is thinnest. Do not expect words to translate these fears fully to others. Do not expect the others to understand. Do not give away the fears lightly, because the worst another can do is not to use them against you, but to diminish them in a way that makes you carry their weight yourself. Do not confide in those who call your feelings melodramatic. Do not trust those who admit no fear after you've admitted yours. Do not divulge these secrets hastily even if the weight becomes too much, because a fear rejected by others is ten times more crushing than before. Many are happy to take on your happiness. But even more are afraid to take on your fears.
**
**
Saturday, June 30, 2012
cuts and scrapes
I wonder what a spine is. What it means to have one. Is it to fight back? To walk away? To float alone? To struggle in midst of seediness? In human life, how much to forgive, and how much to avoid?
These questions always circle back around. This time easier than the last. Still, the fear never subsides. The fear of being alone, the fear of being unloved. Which poison more tolerable?
It's a stewing process. The skin slowly forms new, thinly stretched membrane as the immune system learns the toxin. No sharp victories here, but at least a continuous overcoming. Letting the self tap into its own resilience and watch as a parent watches the child fall from those first bike rides. Never knowing what the next fall will be like, but trusting it will be like the one before, and the infinite ones before that in the human experience.
**
These questions always circle back around. This time easier than the last. Still, the fear never subsides. The fear of being alone, the fear of being unloved. Which poison more tolerable?
It's a stewing process. The skin slowly forms new, thinly stretched membrane as the immune system learns the toxin. No sharp victories here, but at least a continuous overcoming. Letting the self tap into its own resilience and watch as a parent watches the child fall from those first bike rides. Never knowing what the next fall will be like, but trusting it will be like the one before, and the infinite ones before that in the human experience.
**
Friday, May 25, 2012
between sinking and swimming
I have never spent so much time in the land of mediocrity. Did you know you still have to apply for a work visa here? The elite laugh over their sparkling wines, explaining that trying is what differentiates them from us, delivered with a smile and a tsk-tsk, one of which is sincere.
But staying in the land of mediocrity is itself work. Simply floating, without attempting to swim ashore, takes exhausting, wild, desperate treading of the feet. An immense output of energy. No less than those already parallel with the waves, their fluid bodies billowing in time with the tides. I wonder what it takes to go from vertical treading to horizontal swimming. I wonder what truly differentiates us and them. I wonder if knowing the answer would help us, or sink us further.
**
But staying in the land of mediocrity is itself work. Simply floating, without attempting to swim ashore, takes exhausting, wild, desperate treading of the feet. An immense output of energy. No less than those already parallel with the waves, their fluid bodies billowing in time with the tides. I wonder what it takes to go from vertical treading to horizontal swimming. I wonder what truly differentiates us and them. I wonder if knowing the answer would help us, or sink us further.
**
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
mice and men
"What things are steadfast? ...
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
...
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring...
...
We love a little, as the mice
huddle..."
--Linda Gregg
I found this poem a couple of nights ago, what a moment of serendipitous premonition. Had I known how perfectly it would fit this moment, 48 hours from when I first fell in love with it, I would have said: you say you are in love with these words (and other fanciful ideas), but you have no idea. You who barely tasted the air above the well of infatuation, beneath which a current runs to the oceans and other oceans. I would say, you are as brief, as contained, as mouse-like as this poem accuses you. You who wear the target this poem aims at, but have yet to feel the arrow's sharp piercing. Even 48 hours from now, the silver will only have scraped by with barely a scratch.
But who listens to the poets? What I have now is infinitesimal compared to the seas; what I had then was smaller still. Somewhere on dimensions not mine, the gods are savoring all things huge and mad and ignited, rolling them around their tongues as occasional flames escape out of their lips. While I--
while I barely make it into the world of mice and men.
**
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
...
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring...
...
We love a little, as the mice
huddle..."
--Linda Gregg
I found this poem a couple of nights ago, what a moment of serendipitous premonition. Had I known how perfectly it would fit this moment, 48 hours from when I first fell in love with it, I would have said: you say you are in love with these words (and other fanciful ideas), but you have no idea. You who barely tasted the air above the well of infatuation, beneath which a current runs to the oceans and other oceans. I would say, you are as brief, as contained, as mouse-like as this poem accuses you. You who wear the target this poem aims at, but have yet to feel the arrow's sharp piercing. Even 48 hours from now, the silver will only have scraped by with barely a scratch.
But who listens to the poets? What I have now is infinitesimal compared to the seas; what I had then was smaller still. Somewhere on dimensions not mine, the gods are savoring all things huge and mad and ignited, rolling them around their tongues as occasional flames escape out of their lips. While I--
while I barely make it into the world of mice and men.
**
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)