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the things we carry

2

I can’t fig­ure out why I’m so moody lately. Maybe it’s been too long since I smelled the wood of my gui­tar. Maybe it’s the fresh Autumn colours that tend to mag­nify my emo­tions. Maybe I’m feel­ing over­worked, over­stim­u­lated, and too rarely under­stood. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had a moment to myself in what feels like weeks, with so many feel­ings of lone­li­ness amongst so many people.

Autumn stream

 

I always think of exile in times like this, and in par­tic­u­lar, a stanza from Yevgeniy Onegin:

From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
to every­one a stranger, tied by noth­ing,
I thought; lib­erty and peace
would serve instead of happiness.

Luckily, I’ve been read­ing The Poisonwood Bible, which reminds me that the only prob­lems I have are first-world prob­lems, and that I’m rich in ways many will never be.

I find it amaz­ing, the immen­sity of it, how any sin­gle per­son can be respon­si­ble for a tome of such rich sto­ry­telling, obser­va­tion, and wit. It’s the only book I’ve picked up in years, and I only started read­ing to get into her head as much as pos­si­ble (and piqued by my curios­ity on how she could describe a story of the Belgian Congo as sexy). Unsurprisingly, her favourite char­ac­ter is the strong, faith­ful, war­rior daugh­ter. Mine is like me too; the dark, brood­ing, intel­lec­tual child, dizy­gotic twin to hers. It makes me won­der if lik­ing one char­ac­ter over all oth­ers is too often an exer­cise in vanity.

In the end, Onegin real­izes he was wrong about exile, that he couldn’t fill him­self with empti­ness to replace the sad­ness, some­thing he only fig­ures out when he finds some­one worth lov­ing. That’s what’s pulling me back too, keep­ing me grounded amongst those dark moments of untem­pered emo­tion. I carry the image of her smile with me, the only thing as dis­tin­guished on her face as her Spanish eyes, and the rea­son I call her Cheeks from the way the flesh pulls up to round her face. I’ve stud­ied this smile for so long that I can see it every time I close my eyes, and with that, I carry a strength of my own too.

Date  October 17, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Random

My Interest In Russian Literature

2

The story of a human soul, even the pet­ti­est of souls, can hardly be less inter­est­ing and instruc­tive than the story of a nation…

Many of my ear­lier entries con­tain ref­er­ences to Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture, but I’ve never explained my fas­ci­na­tion with it. I’ve always iden­ti­fied with ideas of the Byronic hero and Nihilism, whether they were ideals or philoso­phies I felt drawn to. It was one book that intro­duced me to these ideas, called A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, a Russian poet (in the truest sense of the word) who died in a duel at 26. Whenever I meet some­one from Russia, I ask them if they’ve read it, in the hopes that per­haps I can gain some insight into this book from some­one who under­stands the orig­i­nal lan­guage. I read it when I was in grade 9, and so much of what the pro­tag­o­nist, Pechorin, made sense to me.

Death

Ah, well! If I must die, I must! The world will lose lit­tle, and I am weary enough of it all. I am like a man who yawns at a ball and doesn’t go home to sleep only because his car­riage hasn’t come.

During a brief phase, I’d say about year off and on in high school, I was at the very depths of depres­sion and some­what sui­ci­dal, but I could never bring myself to do it. I was just hop­ing death would take me. It was an easy way out. Not only did I have no rea­son to live, but my life was quite unpleas­ant. My best friend had ditched me for the pop­u­lar crowd1, so my time at school was mis­er­able, then I’d come home to an empty life and par­ents that ignored me.

Ever since, I’ve felt like I’ve been liv­ing on bor­rowed time, wait­ing for the end to come, when it should have already arrived. That’s why I remain unp­hazed by the idea that I’m going to die, and accept­ing of the fact that it’ll hap­pen one day. As Pechorin says near the end of the novel, “After all, noth­ing worse than death can hap­pen — and death you can’t escape!”

Onegin painting

There’s a par­tic­u­lar scene in the movie Onegin2 that cap­tures the spirit of this mor­bid accep­tance. Onegin (played by Ralph Fiennes) has been chal­lenged to a duel that he can­not back out of, lest he be the sub­ject of ridicule, so he accepts. He’s fired upon as he’s walk­ing towards his oppo­nent, and, faced with death, sim­ply closes his eyes. The expres­sion of calm in his face shows that it’s out of reflex, instead of fear.

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  1. This was made espe­cially more painful by the fact that I was so inse­cure that I defined myself through oth­ers, being left with­out being anyone’s “best friend” meant that I was worth­less. [↑]
  2. Written by Alexander Pushkin, arguably Lermontov’s biggest influ­ence. In fact, as the char­ac­ter Onegin was named after the river and lake, Onega, Pechorin was sim­i­larly named after the river Pechora. [↑]
Date  August 5, 2009
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Categories  Random

Nothing In Particular

4

It’s late. I should really be in bed. My eyes feel super dry and tired. I don’t even think I have enough energy to floss before brush­ing my teeth, but I’m going to force myself to do it cause I have a den­tist appoint­ment on Wednesday. At least I’m show­ered, warm and comfortable.

I haven’t sat down in my chaise to write in a while, although I should because it feels so good. The two-day writ­ing sched­ule fits nicely in with every­thing else going on in my life.

It’s been busy. Andrew and Alex left last week, so I have to the house to myself again. The com­pany was a fun change. Through them, I met Ziny and Ellen, whom I did pic­tures of yes­ter­day. Hopefully I’ll be doing some more of Paige tomor­row, as well as more work on my next project in the upcom­ing week.

Dolly by the window

My sleep­ing sched­ule is still some­what messed up, but only because of engage­ments that keep me up late. Thanks to smoothie power, and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to con­trol my eat­ing through bouts of IBS, my stom­ach is much bet­ter. I’m still break­ing out pretty badly though.

Went to see Dan today. I haven’t been to his place since last fall. Last time we hung out, it was for phở and to watch Being John Malkovich at my place. Every time we hang out, we play musi­cal ten­nis, where we take turns lis­ten­ing to a song, and giv­ing another song rec­om­men­da­tion based on the pre­vi­ous one. This is super fun, and only Dan has a taste in music as diverse as mine to play this correctly.

Drove to Quebec for the first time, and the roads are pretty bad. The lines have mostly faded and the shoul­der has encroached on the road, so you can’t tell where you’re sup­pose to be. On top of that there are pot­holes every­where, and the usual assort­ment of bad dri­vers, and this makes dri­ving in the French province less than fun.

Since I don’t take the bus any­more, I don’t have any time where I just sit down, hence no time to read. With the time I’m sav­ing, I’m try­ing to read before I go to bed. My book rota­tion right now is the following:

  • a fic­tion book, cur­rently Last Light Of The Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay
  • a Taoism book, cur­rently Awakening to the Tao by Liu I-Ming
  • a Tai Chi book, cur­rently The Essence Of T’ai Chi by Waysun Liao
  • a book rec­om­mended by my ther­a­pist, cur­rently Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko

In the next cou­ple of week­ends, I’m try­ing to hang out with Darren, Navid, Pat, Julie and Blake, Frédéric and Misun. I don’t like to mix friends. It’s not as effi­cient, but I pre­fer to con­cen­trate on one (or one cou­ple) at a time.

Through all of this, I’m miss­ing Bronwen sooooo much.

Date  April 12, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Switching Books

0

Over the week­end, with the cozy com­fort of my duvet, I fin­ished read­ing the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The story took me by sur­prise. I had no prior knowl­edge of the plot, char­ac­ters, or themes, so I had the lux­ury of read­ing with­out the taint of another opin­ion. Even as a teenager, Duddy has the ambi­tion to pur­sue his dream of own­ing a huge plot of land before he’s even legally allowed to own it, but he loses his human­ity in the process. It was a fairly gal­va­niz­ing story, some­thing I’m not sure I could say if I knew more about the book before read­ing it. It’s his drive, his ini­tia­tive that I admire.

Yesterday, I started The Republic of Love (on the rec­om­men­da­tion of Karen) by Carol Shields. Even though I’m only through the first chap­ter, I can already tell that Shields knows what she’s talk­ing about. She knows how rela­tion­ships dis­in­te­grate, knows how peo­ple think, knows how our daily lives are a reflec­tion of the moods we have and mind­sets we wear. I’m reminded of Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese philoso­pher and author of The Prophet who wrote as if he under­stood love and the spirit on a com­pletely dif­fer­ent level. Even though he never met the love of his life face-to-face (they knew each other through pub­li­ca­tions), their col­lec­tion of love let­ters shows an under­stand­ing and har­mony deeper than any other two peo­ple I can think of.

It always makes me won­der: how much of an author’s writ­ing is from expe­ri­ence and how much is from imag­i­na­tion? The details, sub­tleties, thor­ough­ness of the char­ac­ters they develop, expressed in the inge­nu­ity of the words they use must be from more than mere under­stand­ing. Would Frost have been able to write his rural poetry with­out mov­ing to New Hampshire, spend­ing his time there as a cob­bler, farmer, and teacher? Would Irving have been able to write from the per­spec­tive of a teacher at Bishop Strachan, with­out first watch­ing the girls in their plaid skirts being picked up by their wealthy par­ents? Even in the pref­ace to A Hero Of Our Time, Lermontov admits, “oth­ers del­i­cately hinted that the author had drawn por­traits of him­self and his acquain­tances” and brushes this off as a “thread­bare wit­ti­cism”, but could he really have cre­ated such an amoral anti-hero with­out a lump of burn­ing indif­fer­ence in his chest?

Date  July 20, 2005
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Categories  Random Thoughts
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