August 13, 2010

29 9/12: The Rocker

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Music has always been a big part of my life, so it’s strange to con­sider the fact that I only seri­ously took up an instru­ment the year I’m turn­ing 30, which I gen­er­ally con­sider late to be start­ing any­thing new.

I used to play piano and flute, but that was never really my choice. For the for­mer, it was more of my mom want­ing me to be a good Chinese boy, and me not want­ing to let her down. When it came to the lat­ter, my school had a strong empha­sis on arts, and either visual arts or music were manda­tory. I chose music1, and played the flute; far from ideal for a teenager going through puberty and an iden­tity crisis.

I bought my first ukulele a few months ago, and I don’t think I’ve stopped play­ing since.

Self portrait at 29 9/12

Jammin’ in my jam­mies. With what may pos­si­bly be an erection.

Photo by Jess.

So much of my life has been filled by those four lit­tle strings. It’s an entirely new medium I’m still explor­ing, a mus­cle I’d yet to flex, a way of express­ing myself that’s so unlike any of my other outlets.

I get pains in my fin­gers and wrists from play­ing too much, so I struc­ture my life around the breaks; doing laun­dry, writ­ing, clean­ing my room, sort­ing my paper­work until the tin­gling or pinch­ing goes away. The pads of my fin­gers are dead. I used to fall asleep think­ing of her — now I work out scale pat­terns and chords across the fret­board in my head until I pass out. I even decided to make the ulti­mate com­mit­ment and grow out the nails on my strum­ming hand because the longer they get, the more pleased I am with the sound (and I find both long nails and asym­me­try absolutely dis­gust­ing).

It’s come to the point where I’d rather play ukulele than play games, or go out, or talk to peo­ple. I love play­ing so much that I enjoy it even though I’m still no good at it.

I turn 30 in three months, and music is my hot hot bath, my dead end, and my girlfriend.

The Turning 30 Series

  1. Ironic that I’m so much more of a visual artist now. [↑]
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July 31, 2010

you got to hold on

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I have all this stuff I mean to write but when it comes to typ­ing it out, it seems point­less. I don’t mind feel­ing this way any­more. I’d much rather come off as witty or inter­est­ing, but I can set­tle for honest.

My pol­icy nowa­days is to act the way I feel. Instead of try­ing to cater to other peo­ple or fit into social norms, I do what I want. It takes some trust in myself to believe that I’m gen­er­ally a good per­son, but every­thing seems to be work­ing in my favour.

bird

With another wed­ding booked next year, I was able to jus­tify a new lens. The final one in my lens path: Canon’s 70–200mm f/2.8 IS II USM. It lets me take pic­tures like this.

I have some­thing major going on each month until December, at which point I’ll prob­a­bly her­ma­tize for three weeks until another round of hol­i­day craziness.

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The sum­mer has been warm and fuzzy, and it’s filled me with con­tent­ment. I don’t care about the future any­more. I’m liv­ing in this moment, and thank­ful it’s a nice one.

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July 13, 2010

29 8/12: The Son

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There’s no rev­e­la­tion more star­tling than the fact that your dad is cooler than you.

This is espe­cially true of my own father, who isn’t just cool for an old guy, he’s cool period. As a teenager, I remem­ber him wear­ing a leather bomber jacket, and learn­ing to ride a pur­ple Kawasaki Ninja sport bike which he even­tu­ally traded in for a sil­ver Porsche.

When I was even younger, my friends would tell me he looked like a secret agent. One time he came to help me move out of res­i­dence, and his jeans had wider cuffs than mine (and back then I loved wear­ing wide-leg khakis). I can’t remem­ber a time when he didn’t wear some­thing by Lacoste, Polo, or Tommy, and even though he may dress far younger than his age, he can still pull it off.

Now he’s a man mov­ing closer to his 60s, dri­ving a Mercedes and a BMW, with what seems to have a coterie of women whose com­mon inter­est is him. He watches pop­u­lar movies, prac­tices singing, and dances on a reg­u­lar basis. Even my grandma once told me that peo­ple like him because he’s the fun one to be around.

Self portrait at 29 8/12

 

This is all very dif­fer­ent from me; a shy, intro­verted, awk­ward per­son whose idea of a good time gen­er­ally involves being in front of a computer.

Still, with all these dif­fer­ences, I know I’m his son. Just a chip off the old block, with the same work ethics, the same per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, the same neu­rotic tendencies.

We get grumpy when we’re hun­gry. We hate feel­ing sweaty and some­times have to shower twice in a day. We make the same silly jokes when we’re around new peo­ple. We dec­o­rated our houses exclu­sively with mod­ern, min­i­mal­ist fur­ni­ture before we knew what each other’s houses looked like. And as I grow older, I’ve also started devel­op­ing the same night owl habits, care­free atti­tude, insom­nia, and diges­tion problems.

I turn 30 in four months, and I’m becom­ing my father’s son.

The Turning 30 Series

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May 13, 2010

29 6/12: The Arrival

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I haven’t had much to say lately. Suffering has always been a pre­req­ui­site for my cre­ativ­ity, as I only need to write when unful­filled or unhappy, and lately I haven’t felt either.

The real­iza­tion that I was happy only came when some­one asked how I was doing; I responded with my usual, generic, “I’m doing well, thanks”, and for the first time in as long as I could remem­ber, I didn’t feel like I was lying.

Self portrait at 29 6/12

 

Not that the desire to write has left me com­pletely. I still want to, though only because it’s an enjoy­able exer­cise in itself, not because I need to get some­thing off my chest. The world finally makes sense, and I won­der if it’s nec­es­sary to have this blog a place to sort out my thoughts anymore.

I’m sat­is­fied with the per­son I’ve become. I’ve stopped try­ing to change, or con­stantly fig­ur­ing out how to improve. I like me.

The seren­ity is get­ting bet­ter still, almost to the point where it’s an uncon­scious state-of-mind. Things don’t bother me the way they used to. I can dream with­out desire, I can live with­out bias, I can give with­out expect­ing, I can think with­out worry, and I can enjoy with­out guilt.

I turn 30 in half a year, and I finally feel like I’m where I should be.

The Turning 30 Series

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April 21, 2010

Protected: The self coming true

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April 16, 2010

On The Path

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I’ve been feel­ing serene lately.

Serenity hasn’t been some­thing that lasts for me. It comes and goes in cycles. Eventually, I fall off the path, because anger, impa­tience, love, over-analyzing, are all habits of mine. Habits that resur­face when I let my guard down.

The goal now is to keep the seren­ity going. The hard­est part is the fact that I have to be con­scious in my attempt. It’s a con­stant work in progress, and some­thing I can’t stop work­ing on, lest I fall into the trap of my old self again. I’m hop­ing that even­tu­ally, I’ll be able to make this into a good habit, and this peace will come on its own.

So often, it’s hope that gets me through. But I have no need of hope, or clo­sure, or jus­tice any­more. None of that mat­ters. Life is what it is. I’m start­ing to let go of every­thing I used to hold dear.

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February 28, 2010

Slow Down Honey

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Thumbnail: Egg yolk

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“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song dur­ing a recent tran­si­tion, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — con­tent­ment, sad­ness, lon­li­ness, morn­ing, mourn­ing, and moulting.

Thumbnail: Bloody Mary

In a way, I’m forc­ing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my ther­a­pist rec­om­mended, it explains “Change requires will­ing­ness to expe­ri­ence pain”, and I’m going through this exactly. I’m con­stantly step­ping out of my com­fort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trep­i­da­tion than excite­ment. It’d be so much eas­ier to fall into old men­tal habits, as unhealthy as they are.

Thumbnail: Games night

On morn­ings like this, I sit in my liv­ing room with the cur­tains open. It makes me self-conscious to be sit­ting there with houses across the street get­ting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that some­one else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibrancy, and peo­ple just like me.

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February 25, 2010

Protected: Prescription for Love

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February 21, 2010

My Therapist is a Rockstar

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As I was writ­ing notes for ther­apy tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I didn’t feel like I needed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I didn’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s never been any­thing permanent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­ify my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cover such a com­plex topic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↑]
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February 2, 2010

Lover/Dreamer

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(+5 bonus points if you get the album reference.)

Thumbnail: Heart in the window

I really do have love to give! I just don’t know where to put it!

—Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, Magnolia

Okay, I’ll admit it.

I need to love. I need it, the way I need to eat.

This is the same part of me that notices the faint out­lines of hearts drawn in car win­dows. Also, the same part that mar­vels about that ado­les­cent point in life, when one would draw some­thing so sim­ple and insignif­i­cant because the only worry was whether or not some­one liked you back.

So when I don’t have some­one to love, it fuck­ing kills me.

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February 1, 2010

No Motive

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You know it sucks, real­iz­ing that every­thing you believed in is com­plete bullshit.

—Some guy sit­ting on a bench in some movie

This is how I’ve been feel­ing lately. I’ve lost the plot. I’m wan­der­ing and won­der­ing. Aimless. Floating. Disconnected. Questioning what it’s all for.

It’s not that I haven’t been able to keep myself occu­pied. My cal­en­dar until March is quite busy actu­ally. But I feel like a spec­tre, float­ing through the world; ethe­real, imma­te­r­ial, intan­gi­ble, and unable to be touched or affected by anything.

On the other hand, music is hit­ting me pretty hard right now. I tend to dance a lot, mostly in my room. I actu­ally recorded myself danc­ing to see what it looks like. I can only imag­ine that it’s on the same level of embar­rass­ment as get­ting caught mas­tur­bat­ing to fur­ries (yep, there’s a porn for that) with bean dip smeared on my chest.

I’m in a No Motiv state-of-mind; that strange period between Jacky and Louise, when I was liv­ing on Island Park with Trolley, and we would go for car rides in the sum­mer to Diagram for Healing. But it’s And The Sadness Prevails that I’m redis­cov­er­ing, hear­ing the songs from a dif­fer­ent point in my life very dif­fer­ent from when I last gave the album a thor­ough listen.

When John asks me how my day was, it seems like my answer is always some­where between “shitty” and “like some­one took a giant shit on my face1″. And when he asks what hap­pened, I can never give him a spe­cific inci­dent. It’s just this depres­sion, this sag­ging feel­ing that’s been weigh­ing so heav­ily on me, because I haven’t been able to let go as eas­ily as I’d like.

I’m try­ing to find my foot­ing in the Tao Te Ching. Verse 44 in par­tic­u­lar is speak­ing to me right now:

One’s own rep­u­ta­tion — why the fuss?
One’s own wealth — why the con­cern?
I say, what you gain is more trou­ble than what you lose
Love is the fruit of sac­ri­fice
Wealth is the fruit of gen­eros­ity
Be con­tent, rest in your own full­ness —
You will not suf­fer from loss
You’ll avoid the snare of this world
You’ll have long life and end­less blessings

The tran­si­tion continues.

  1. I should post­script this with a note that I wouldn’t enjoy this [↑]
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January 31, 2010

Images

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This week I’ve been see­ing images when I wake up in the mid­dle of the night. Usually in the form of slow, flesh rip­ping decap­i­ta­tion, or bul­lets enter­ing non-vital parts of my body, like my arms. Not of self-mutilation but muti­la­tion of the self. These images, in some form or another, have fol­lowed me my whole life, and went away after I started ther­apy1. Now they’re back.

There’s been a new one lately though.

I have a one-inch thick, two meter pole through the heart, stick­ing out per­pen­dic­u­larly to my body in both direc­tions evenly. My heart and lungs have grown and healed around this pole, and even a gen­tle impact on either end, due to the mechanical-force mul­ti­ply­ing nature of the ful­crum that is my heart, could dis­rupt my organs and kill me.

So as I’m try­ing to fall asleep again, I see myself going about any reg­u­lar day, stum­bling around with this unwieldy pole, hop­ing I don’t trip, and no one bumps into it.

  1. Or per­haps, co-incidentally from something/someone else. [↑]
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January 22, 2010

I’m the hero of the story

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(This first. Listen to the clar­ity of the lower octave notes that Regina adds in waves and waves at the end of the cho­rus; you can tell it’s a qual­ity grand piano just from how those notes res­onate — an upright would sound much mud­dier at the low end. This is the song that plays on day (408) and it’s fuck­ing per­fect. Also, title from the lyrics.1)

It would appear that some­one made a movie of my last rela­tion­ship, and (500) Days of Summer is to #8 as Eternal Sunshine was to #4. The inter­est­ing part is that it was released early last year, dur­ing the rela­tion­ship, and I won­der if it would have changed any­thing on my end, had I seen it then. And if she saw it now, would she under­stand things from my per­spec­tive? Or does she under­stand already? And if other peo­ple saw it, would they under­stand how one could unwit­tingly get their hopes up when things are so clear from the beginning?

I’m so glad Marc Webb, the direc­tor, treated the mate­r­ial with such grace. You can tell it was based on expe­ri­ence because the ten­der moments come from a real place (co-writer Scott Neustadter admit­ted Summer was based on a girl who “returned his kisses but not his ardor”). In an inter­view, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said, “I’ve had my heart bro­ken before. Truly, truly bro­ken. But when I look back at me in my heart­bro­ken phase, it’s pretty hilar­i­ous, because it felt so much more extreme than it really was. One of the things I love about (500) Days of Summer is that it doesn’t make light of what we go through in romances [empha­sis mine], but it is hon­est about it and shows it for what it is, which is often pro­foundly funny”, and I com­pletely agree. I also appre­ci­ate the fact that they don’t vil­lainize Summer because she never takes advan­tage of Tom2, and at the same time, it doesn’t make the ago­niz­ing days he goes through any less sig­nif­i­cant or dif­fi­cult. In a pro­found way, it brings jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to every­thing I was (or am) going through. I sup­pose I’m just wait­ing for the punchline.

Hah.

Watching it has left me feel­ing emo­tion­ally dev­as­tated lately, almost as if I’ve regressed, and lost months of progress. John says it’s because see­ing it was like see­ing her again, reliv­ing the entire thing from day one, from when we had met in the office. Like a recov­er­ing alco­holic falling off the wagon and tak­ing his first sip in 5 years. That doesn’t mean I don’t appre­ci­ate the mes­sage, and as well as the rec­om­men­da­tion to watch the movie from Darren.

Even though I’ve tried to com­pletely for­get and move on, I’ve come to learn it’s not that easy. It’s almost as if you have to accept the all the mem­o­ries, both good and bad, as much as you accept your own qual­i­ties and flaws.

The days, months, years you spend with some­one sig­nif­i­cant will inevitably change and shape you. To deny them is to deny yourself.

I found it fas­ci­nat­ing to trace the plot devel­op­ments to parts of my own story. The entries I’ve writ­ten over the last two years echo the sen­ti­ments so strik­ingly in dia­logue, songs, and voice-overs.

Things in block­quotes are either nar­ra­tor voice-over or direc­tors notes. I listed the events lin­early too (even though the film is pre­sented in non-linear fash­ion) for the sake of clar­ity. It’s also inter­est­ing to see how the cal­en­dar title cards change back­grounds, from bright and sunny, to red and sim­mer­ing, to grey and bleak.

(1)

This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen, of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believ­ing that he’d never truly be happy until the day he met “the one”.

From my entry The Penultimate Letter — “My whole life, I looked for some­one like you. Someone who was capa­ble of rais­ing me to my poten­tial, some­one who was wor­thy of the love I have to offer. But even then, I never knew I was capa­ble of a love that res­onated so deeply in my person.”

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  1. Or is it? [↑]
  2. Ironically, the gen­der roles are reversed, and it’s Tom’s date who’s the voice of rea­son here. [↑]
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January 13, 2010

29 2/12: The Lachrymologist

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I used to be a crier. Any strong emo­tion, good or bad (though more often the lat­ter), could bring on tears like a reflex. Now, I can’t remem­ber the last time I cried, which means it’s been a while. More than a year, I suspect.

Getting misty-eyed doesn’t count; that’s too easy. A poignant scene in a movie, the right song at the right moment, even see­ing some­one demon­strate a Tai Chi move­ment with mas­terly detail and pre­ci­sion can cause my heart to swell, but the feel­ing only lasts as long as a few blinks after the blurred vision. When I refer to cry­ing, I mean when the tears are enough to over­flow and leak.

Self portrait at 29 2/12

 

When I was young, the kids in school would laugh at boys who cried — much less socially accept­able in this cul­ture — but I was never embar­rassed about it. I thought it was nat­ural, the way some peo­ple are gay or Caucasian. I thought I’d grow out of it, the way one grows out of a fear of the dark grad­u­ally and sub­con­sciously, but I kept cry­ing well into my 20s.

I’ve always won­dered if my dad has ever cried, even as a child. I can’t pic­ture him doing it, not even when my grand­mother dies. He’s so care­free and log­i­cal that I can’t see any­thing affect­ing him emo­tion­ally. With my dad as my early model for a man, I’m sure this is part of the rea­son I don’t feel like an adult yet. Society teaches us that adults, or male one’s at least, aren’t sup­posed to cry.

I’m not sure why it’s been so long for me. Maybe the ther­apy, com­bined with my study of Taoism, has evened out my ups and downs, help­ing me acknowl­edge my weak­nesses (so I’m not as hard on myself), as well as the uncon­trol­lable nature of life. Maybe my life is sta­ble enough now that I didn’t need that kind of release.

I turn 30 in 10 months, and I won­der when I’ll cry again.

The Turning 30 Series

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January 11, 2010

Undiscovered Fetish

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Lisa’s recent com­ment, where she says that some­one who’s able to teach you a lot sex could make up for unflat­ter­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics like closed-mindedness, got me thinking.

I know what I like, sex­u­ally. As a guy, I’ve prob­a­bly seen it all, espe­cially after being unable to look away at the train wrecks on eFukt, a site with the tagline “Porn you wish you never saw“1. If I had to make a gues­ti­mate, I’d say that my sex­ual deviancy is about aver­age; I’m far from vanilla, but on the other hand, I don’t get aroused at watch­ing Japanese women tak­ing ene­mas of yel­low liq­uid, shit­ting it onto heated pans, and hav­ing a group of peo­ple eat the cooked con­coc­tion2.

At the same time, I’m far from hav­ing explored every­thing in the bed­room, mostly because I’ve never reached the right level of inti­macy. It’s not that I’m embar­rassed; they’re just things I want to share with some­one spe­cial — the way some female porn­stars share anal sex with only their boyfriends, or some women save it for mar­riage — and no one has been that spe­cial yet. That, and the fact my sex life has never become so bor­ing that I felt like I needed to change things up. Besides, secrets aren’t so bad; the fun is gone when when all the secrets are out and there’s no mys­tery left. But even though I haven’t explored these things yet doesn’t mean I don’t know what I like, and I’m pretty sure that’s mostly been deter­mined already.

The last sex­ual thing to blow my mind was when I dated Louise and she intro­duced me to the whole Dominant/submissive sub­cul­ture, of which I had pre­vi­ously been com­pletely unaware. As with a few other car­nal flavours, it’s some­thing I’d like to try with another part­ner in the future, but prob­a­bly only on a con­tract basis because being a per­ma­nent dom3 is too much for me. That was back in 2004, and there hasn’t been any­thing quite as erot­i­cally eye-opening since. Maybe because it was some­thing men­tally sex­ual, not just a phys­i­cal but­ton to be pushed in a dif­fer­ent way.

It feels like there’s lit­tle new to learn about my sex­ual tastes now. It makes me won­der what’s left out there for some­one to teach me (I mean, aside from learn­ing the pref­er­ences of the per­son you’re hav­ing sex with), or for me to dis­cover. Then again, just last week, I read a news arti­cle on a sub­ject of an indi­rectly sex­ual nature, and one part had me think­ing, “Wow, that would be pretty hot”, when it was a very innocu­ous thing that I’m sure most peo­ple wouldn’t even think twice about, so who knows.

  1. I’m not going to put a link from my page, you can just google it. WARNING: VERY, VERY NOT SAFE FOR WORK. And pos­si­bil­ity, san­ity [↑]
  2. I didn’t have the stom­ach to watch the video, but John did, and he gen­er­ously gave me a play-by-play of it as I pre­tended to be involved in his movie col­lec­tion to dis­tract myself from the gross­ness. I remem­ber him say­ing, “Now they’re blow­ing on it because it’s too hot to eat” and real­iz­ing he was actu­ally watch­ing the video and not just mak­ing it up. [↑]
  3. i.e. 100% of the time. I find I’m gen­er­ally dom­i­nant 95% of the time in my rela­tion­ships. [↑]
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