equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
Viewing entries tagged with "writing"
Pages (2): 12
09 Dec 12
6

old heroes and new lives

My entries used to be filled with so many details, moments, thoughts, and emo­tions. I used to believe every­thing I wrote was impor­tant. Not that I was ever a par­tic­u­larly good writer, only a per­son try­ing to be hon­est with him­self, and that was the way for me to sort out the things in my head.

Now that need isn’t there any­more. Instead, I write to keep track of where I am, know­ing that in time I’ll be won­der­ing how far I’ve gone, and let my pic­tures fill in the blanks.

Banc Sushi and cleavage

On my birth­day, Lisa treated me to all-you-can-eat sushi at my favourite restau­rant, and cleavage.

The new Leonard Cohen biog­ra­phy is out and Genevieve tells me it’s amaz­ing, or at least a great deal more infor­ma­tive than the course we took last year at Ottawa U about the birth of the roman­tic trou­ba­dour. I used to be com­pletely obsessed with this man, but now I can’t remem­ber the last time I put on one of his albums for a straight lis­ten through. I knew he was com­ing to Ottawa this Friday before tick­ets went on sale, but never both­ered try­ing to get my hands on one, even though it used to be a goal of mine to see him per­form live before the booze and sex took him like a true rock­star. He rep­re­sents a part of my past I hardly relate to now, and it’s left me feel­ing like I need a new hero (who has some very big shoes to fill).

birthday boy

Little boy’s birth­day par­ties involve a lit­tle less sexy and a lot more chaos.

I have so many friends with their paths set out for them over next 20-odd years cause of jobs and kids, yet just as many who’ve arrived at adult­hood and are now won­der­ing what’s next. After find­ing a career, buy­ing a house, and get­ting mar­ried, they’re learn­ing that these were goals they never wanted for them­selves, only things peo­ple have always been telling them they should have. Now they’re won­der­ing where to go from here, and how to find a true sense of fulfilment.

I went through the same cri­sis years ago, but feel no less uncer­tain about future at this point. It’s only nat­ural to go through con­stant cycles of strug­gle and res­o­lu­tion if we’re deter­mined to grow and improve, not to men­tion the curves life tends to throw at us. I’m start­ing to view it with a sense of free­dom instead of doubt.

tagged with #Lisa #reflection #self-evaluation #writing / filed under Photos Thoughts
19 Aug 12
1

a reason

In those moments between our­selves and the rest of the world, it’s hard to think of any­thing but how good you look with curls in your hair, and how you never worry about tear­ing your del­i­cate dusty-rose dress when you think it’ll look sus­pi­cious if we’re gone for too long.

I need moments like this — like good­night kisses and the things you tell your friends about me — all the lit­tle details so many take for granted. That’s why I haven’t been able to write. Not because I’ve been too occu­pied with life, but because I’ve become numb to every­thing else, and inspi­ra­tion has always come from my capac­ity to feel.

So brush your hair behind your ear, take another walk with me, and give me a rea­son to speak to the world.

tagged with #inspiration #writing / filed under Random
21 Mar 12
5

the other side

Lila’s been my inspi­ra­tion lately. Her pho­tos are of such rou­tine sub­jects, but every frame is more than that moment. There’s some­thing about them that exudes glam­our and inti­macy, as if her entire life was filled with cham­pagne and Channel.

I asked her what the­ory she fol­lows, what equip­ment she uses, expect­ing to learn some basic tech­nique I’ve some­how missed. Instead, she tells me she doesn’t do or use any­thing spe­cial. She doesn’t even know what she sets for expo­sure and tone, cause she always plays around and changes them for every photo she takes. A true Taoist when it comes to pho­tog­ra­phy, and a true pho­tog­ra­pher after my heart.

lila

“best birth­day ever.”, “coolest guy on the block”, “he is the one”, “London, I love you”.

One of my favourite sub­jects is her perfectly-coifed, impeccably-dressed Norwegian boyfriend. Sometimes he’s just lying by the win­dow, and with his shirt off you can make out the fab­ric creases that have marked his back, reveal­ing that he’s recently turned over on the bed. It makes you won­der what’s hap­pened, or what’s about to hap­pen. These are the details she’s cho­sen to cap­ture. These things were impor­tant enough for her to pick up her cam­era. There’s such affec­tion under it all, and per­haps that’s why it’s so fas­ci­nat­ing to see how the girl looks at the guy.

It’s the same with Aurora’s old entries:

Rolf is sit­ting a few feet away from me on a Sunday night and we’re about to play Settlers Of Catan online together. He’ll wake me with a kiss in the morn­ing and we’ll drive to work together. I’m full of a tasty new sup­per that he intro­duced me to. We’ve just fucked on the floor.

Do I love him? Or do I love this? How big is the difference?

I’ve always won­dered what a per­son would say if she ever wrote about me the way Aurora wrote about him. To see a lover learn­ing and grow­ing, fig­ur­ing out their life and the world, and dis­cov­er­ing what part I play in all of that.

tagged with #inspiration #photography #writing / filed under Photos Thoughts
15 Aug 11
8

cause you're bored and you can doesn't mean you should

I always won­der if I’ll ever reach such a com­plete peace that I’d stop writ­ing com­pletely. One of the rea­sons I started this blog was to have a place where I could get things down and sort my thoughts out on a page, but I don’t need to do much of either nowadays.

I know so many peo­ple who’ve con­tin­ued writ­ing, even after find­ing that kind of hap­pi­ness in their lives. Unfortunately, hap­pi­ness has robbed them of lit­er­ary inspi­ra­tion, and now they have noth­ing inter­est­ing to say. It wouldn’t be so bad if they stopped writ­ing, but they post for the sake of post­ing instead of hav­ing some­thing to say or express or vent, and it reeks of des­per­a­tion and insecurity.

I used to worry that hap­pi­ness would make me a bor­ing per­son too, but now I wouldn’t mind as long as I real­ized it and gave up this blog. It’s so embar­rass­ing to write out of a belief that it’ll make you inter­est­ing. Or even worse, to be obliv­i­ous to the fact you’re writ­ing about the most inane things.

tagged with #happiness #realization #writing / filed under Thoughts
01 Jul 11
1

Protected: round my hometown memories are fresh

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tagged with #Darren #friends #music #realization #Taoism #writing / filed under Daily Life Photos
29 May 11
9

Dear Lisa

It was this suc­cinct wit. She could say so much in a line or two, and any­thing left unsaid would only serve to feed your curios­ity. You’d be given the punch­line, this blow that would knock the wind out of you, then won­der what cir­cum­stances could have led up to that. I’ve always been after that style, that abil­ity to move peo­ple with words the way hers used to move me.

Dolly and Lisa

Of course Dolly has to sleep on any­thing new in the house, regard­less of whether it’s your sweater or not. It’s part of the sass, and yet one can’t help but reward her with cud­dles and love.

For a few years, I lost her to the hap­pi­ness (where I hope to lose myself one day) until we spent a rainy day together, blissed out and hope­fully obvi­ous only to the check-out lady who scanned all our vari­eties of chocolate.

Dear Lisa believes in me, and that’s the only rea­son I believe in myself too.

tagged with #Dolly #interesting people #Lisa #writing / filed under Daily Life Photos
12 Apr 11
2

The Process (or why a tree is not a tree)

Take a leaf off a tree. Is it still a tree? Take a sin­gle twig off a tree. Is it still a tree? Remove an entire branch from a tree. Is it still a tree? Take off half of the branches. Is it still a tree? Cut down the whole tree, leav­ing only the stump. Is it still a tree? Many peo­ple would say no, it is no longer a tree, though the roots may still be in the ground. Well, where did the tree go? Removing a leaf, it remains a tree, but not by remov­ing all of the branches and the trunk?

In the real world, there aren’t any things as we com­monly think of them. A ‘thing’ as we refer to it is only a noun. A noun is merely an idea, a men­tal con­struct. These ‘things’ exist only in our minds. There is no tree, there is only the idea of a tree.

—Anonymous

I’ve been writ­ing here for almost a decade, pour­ing 10 years of my life into this blog. I recently con­sid­ered clean­ing up the con­tent by delet­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of my old entries; I’m not the same per­son as when I wrote them, and I don’t even like who I was back then. Not to men­tion the fact that some are rather embar­rass­ing, like read­ing your old diary in high school when the biggest prob­lem was what peo­ple thought when you wore your uni­form cause you for­got it was a Civvies Day.

The prob­lem I was faced with was decid­ing what should be deleted. People aren’t sta­tic; they’re processes, events, evo­lu­tions, made up of cells that con­tin­u­ally renew them­selves on a daily basis. At what defin­able point can I say these entries are no longer me? It could be argued that even posts as recent as a few months ago aren’t an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, though there may still rem­nants of the old me in the habits of my thoughts.

Then I came across this pas­sage in The Tao by Mark Forstater, on the sub­ject of how using human lan­guage to encom­pass and describe a con­cept such as the Tao is log­i­cally sus­pect: “Reality can’t be enclosed and described by words. Symbols aren’t real in the way that a tree is real, and how­ever much we may delude our­selves that they are, we’ll even­tu­ally find that the word ‘water’ won’t quench our thirst.”

I came to accept that the things I write here have never been and never will be a com­plete reflec­tion of who I am, so I’ve decided to keep all the entries. The ones writ­ten by my old self serve as a reminder of who I was, and at the very least, they tell me where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

tagged with #reflection #self-evaluation #Taoism #writing / filed under Thoughts
04 Nov 09
19

Publishing Necessity

John asked me, “Why? Why do you write these things and post them, when it clearly shows that you’re not over things?”.

I told him I’d rather post them now than in a year from now, because they have to come out sooner or later. This has always been nec­es­sary, even if it’s a lit­tle embar­rass­ing at times, and I’ve never cared who reads, and who judges me. It’s my cathar­sis, my way of deal­ing with what can’t be changed. Sometimes, peo­ple find relief in know­ing they’re not alone in hav­ing painful emo­tions, in mak­ing mis­takes, or expe­ri­enc­ing unre­quited love. I don’t write for them, but if they can take some­thing away from my words, then it helps me know I’m not alone as well.

tagged with #writing / filed under Random
26 Sep 09
2

I made too much about you now to lie

Sometimes, I write these entries in my head over sev­eral days, but when it comes to get­ting them on the screen, I can’t. Not because I don’t feel like it, but because the words come out with such difficulty.

So I sit in my room with the lights off, hop­ing for some­thing to give me courage, some­thing to move my mute fingers.

Instead, I pro­cras­ti­nate. I buy myself time by play­ing a game on my iPhone, or surf­ing the net. It’s like I’m stalling, I’m build­ing up for a moment that’s no more impor­tant than any other, like a ner­vous school­boy try­ing to ask his crush to the prom; pick­ing up the phone, dial­ing a num­ber, and hang­ing up again.

Maybe if I bury it after a bunch of incon­se­quen­tial thoughts — like how it’s hard for me to write about some­thing — then peo­ple will get bored and won’t bother read­ing the rest. I try to con­vince myself that every­thing will be for­got­ten much quicker than it took for me to write this. Nothing works, when all I’m try­ing to say is that every time I lis­ten to Letter Read by Rachael Yamagata, I imag­ine she’s lis­ten­ing to the same thing at the same time.

So some­times, you just have to say fuck it and write it any­way, even if you’re afraid and you can’t breathe, and put it out of your head that you’re left vul­ner­a­ble, that any­one could read it, that peo­ple know some­thing that you prob­a­bly shouldn’t share, that you’re still think­ing about her when every­one is telling you not to, because none of it mat­ters when it’s the truth, and telling the truth is what makes you you.

tagged with #self-consciousness #writing / filed under Random
18 Sep 09
0

Protected: The Continuation of Love and the Letter

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tagged with #love #reflection #relationships #writing / filed under Random
04 Jun 09
12

Feather Fountain Pen

Feather fountain pen

Pat and Jen bought me this feather foun­tain pen set from their hon­ey­moon to Europe. It comes from an Italian sculp­ture store, Fabris Giuliana in Venice, Italy.

Feather fountain pen writing

The nib is super fine; I don’t think I’ve ever owned a foun­tain pen with such a small nib, which is per­fect, because I tend to have small hand­writ­ing. You can’t even tell which direc­tion the stroke is going. So far it writes a lit­tle rough and scratchy, but with enough use, the nib will break in to my writ­ing style.

I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing. Not just the con­cept of putting ideas into more a tan­gi­ble medium, but the act of writ­ing itself, whether it’s on a key­board by night, or flow­ing lines on a sheet of paper.

tagged with #presents #toys #writing / filed under Photos Random
29 Apr 09
8

Revealing Words

A reader recently sent me an e-mail. This was the last paragraph:

Lastly and please don’t take this as being bold, I want to keep read­ing and one day read that you are noth­ing but happy and ful­filled. I would never post a com­ment because I am too shy and also pretty prone to being embar­rassed by peo­ple who are cooler than me (and I con­sider peo­ple who blog as peo­ple who are cooler then me), but many times when I read your entries I feel like I am watch­ing a pro­tag­o­nist in a favourite movie or re-reading Siddhartha. Does that make any sense to you? I’m cheer­ing you on and I’m in your corner.

It made me won­der: if she wants to read that I’m happy one day, does that mean that I’m not happy now? It forced the real­iza­tion in me that the answer is no. Obviously no. Life isn’t great. But do I only write about the bad stuff? I’ve always believed that you have to suf­fer to cre­ate. I’m one of those, so maybe this is the case. I imag­ine it’s the oppo­site with my Tai Chi or table ten­nis part­ners, who must think my life is per­fect, because of how happy I am when I’m doing those activities.

It also made me won­der how much of myself is revealed here. Someone once told me that she sees two dif­fer­ent sides of me: one who is seri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing from the things I write, and another who is easy-going and relaxed over the phone.

So what comes through in my words? Certainly not every­thing. But it’s the same as any­thing else, because it’s hard to get a total pic­ture of some­one, unless, per­haps, you spend an appro­pri­ately uncom­fort­able amount of time with them.

tagged with #reflection #self-evaluation #writing / filed under Random
25 Apr 09
0

Jump Right In

The about sec­tion of my site has always remained some­what spar­tan. Even though blog­ging gurus say you should have a blurb about your­self so your audi­ence can “iden­tify” with you, it’s always seemed point­less to me.

I’ve never been one to describe myself. I pre­fer to let my writ­ings be my descrip­tion, espe­cially since I’m evolv­ing all the time, and it’s reflected even more in the changes to my writ­ing style. In English class, you learn “say, don’t tell”. So instead of writ­ing, “Tim was scared”, write some­thing like “Tim’s fore­head tight­ened as a bead of sweat fell across his trem­bling face”.

About sec­tions are the telling, but entries are all about the say­ing.

I also tend to write with­out explain­ing things. Like the fact that Dolly is my cat (although I don’t think many peo­ple are named Dolores nowa­days), or that John is my best friend. Entries are a stream of thought, instead of stop­ping to make sure that new read­ers are caught up. That means any­one who fol­lows me here is jump­ing right into my life. Sure, it’s prob­a­bly hard to fol­low with­out all the con­text — like try­ing to watch 24 by start­ing in the mid­dle of a sea­son — but I’d rather assume that peo­ple already know what’s going on.

It doesn’t make me very acces­si­ble, but the things I say prob­a­bly aren’t that acces­si­ble to begin with.

tagged with #self-evaluation #writing / filed under Thoughts
27 Jan 09
8

To Write And To Remember

I admit that I not only save other people’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be reminded of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemeral nature of blogs in gen­eral, com­bined with the fickle nature of ado­les­cent writ­ers still try­ing to “define them­selves” on a free medium, that gives me the itch to save. So many writ­ers I used to fol­low have changed domain names, started pro­tect­ing their entries, or deleted their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be for­got­ten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exactly the way it was spo­ken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfor­tu­nately, depend­ing on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there any­more, doesn’t mean they were never spoken.

There are con­se­quences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

tagged with #equivocality #writing / filed under Random Thoughts
17 Oct 08
5

A Change In Writing

There’s so much to say, and not enough time to write. It’s obvi­ous that I haven’t been stick­ing to any kind of post­ing sched­ule lately. The ben­e­fit is that I don’t feel the pres­sure of hav­ing to write some­thing every day, the draw­back being the fact that things I want to get down are often lost. When I do get a chance to write, it’s like I’m per­pet­u­ally writ­ing about thoughts, feel­ings, and events that are a month old.

Perhaps another evo­lu­tion in the way I write.

I used to write my thoughts quite often. Things I had to fig­ure out or get off my chest. Now, it’s mostly things that hap­pen in my daily life, and some­thing ran­dom here and there. It’s like I’m mov­ing beyond my con­fused ado­les­cence into some sort of reflec­tive dotage.

The entries from the first year were writ­ten with so much more fre­quency — roughly three times a day. Then that changed to once a day, then every other day. A few times, I tried to write less fre­quently, with­out a set sched­ule, but that never really worked. The writ­ing itch was always there. At one point I took a month-long hia­tus.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m try­ing to say.

The thing I par­tic­u­larly miss are the entries writ­ten late at night. Spilling my soul out in words, with the music, the sky, and the empty streets guid­ing me. As tired as I would be (I swear, some­times it was the exhaus­tion that brought it out in me), I always went to bed after feel­ing satisfied.

Now, I’m not sure what this all is.

tagged with #expression #writing / filed under Thoughts
Viewing entries tagged with "writing"
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