Monthly Archives: October 2002

You Never Know Until It Happens

I believe my grand­moth­er is dying. I don’t have many details, as I haven’t been well informed (though I’m not sure that I want to be). I tried to vis­it about three months ago, but my work and cir­cum­stances pre­vent­ed me from going. I’m going to Hong Kong this Christmas, which should be amaz­ing, and hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to see my grand­moth­er one last time. When I spoke to her on the phone, which is always as awk­ward as ever, she sound­ed very light-head­ed. My moth­er told me that she sound­ed more healthy than before.

I once talked to Ms. Patricia ______ (I can’t believe I for­get her last name) about my grand­par­ents. I told her that I always felt like I loved my grand­par­ents, and that I was always wor­ried about their well-being, even though I nev­er real­ly had a life with them. They briefly raised me when I was too young to remem­ber much. I have always won­dered whether I would cry if they should die. One can always say that one won’t cry, but when the sit­u­a­tion aris­es, things can be quite dif­fer­ent.

I also told her that I hoped that they would die at a time that was con­ve­nient for me. This wor­ried her. I asked myself, “Is this real­ly what I wish? Will I feel dif­fer­ent­ly when the time comes? Have I tru­ly become so cere­bral, so engulfed in a Lermontovian nihilism, that I can say such a thing?”. I’m not even sure if this is some­thing I should be ashamed of. I mean, these are peo­ple that I’m not close to. Is it pos­si­ble to love some­one sim­ply by blood? I believe it is; I know peo­ple who only know how to love by blood. However, it is not pos­si­ble for me. In fact, blood has no bear­ing on what I feel for a per­son. I wish I could even begin to under­stand this. I believe that my grand­par­ents love me. I feel it in the way that they look at me, the way they treat me. I always won­der if any­one else has the same con­fu­sion. Do I love them as they love me?

I can’t tell.

I Write This After Dinner

These titles are get­ting rather vague, which can be a good thing I sup­pose. They sort of remind me of the way Tool names their tracks (Sober, Parabola, H., Stinkfist), which is sort of an equiv­o­cal, gen­er­al state­ment on what their sub­ject mat­ter cov­ers. After all, Stinkfist is great song on fist­ing and soci­etal stan­dards. I’m still unsure as to what my favorite song of all time would be, but that one is def­i­nite­ly with­in the top 5.

I had a great night, feast­ing on Prime chick­en thighs sim­mered in a cream of mush­room sauce on a bed of rice. I tried out a new cider, called Blackthorn, which I find is very sim­i­lar to Strongbow, with a dri­er taste. I’m still fin­ish­ing my Hong Kong milk tea as I write this, made with con­densed milk, of course. Best served very, very strong. I could­n’t find any of the Rickshaw brand, so I went to a med­i­cine store in the mid­dle of Chinatown and bought half a kilo­gram there from a sweet old Chinese woman. It was the first time in my life that I had to use my knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage, as I guessed she did­n’t have a prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of English.

I found anoth­er Dears song called No Return, which just sounds so great. It tru­ly fol­lows the form of their “orches­tral pop noir roman­tique” style, where­as some of their songs don’t. Blood Roses by Tori Amos is pret­ty good too, as I enjoy the sound of a harp­si­chord (though my ver­sion of Aria from Goldberg Variations is piano), if it did­n’t have what I feel is too dis­so­nant a vocal part near the end.

Black Nails

I don’t real­ly know what to say. I’m just gen­er­al­ly feel­ing shit­ty. I can’t con­cen­trate on my home­work, I’m slack­ing off at work, and I have lots to do. I did­n’t know I had an assign­ment due today, so I hand­ed in some rough work of about a quar­ter of the assign­ment. I actu­al­ly had the whole thing done, but I did­n’t bring it to class. Then I have a mid-term tomor­row, for which I’ve only stud­ied about an hour, worth 30% of my final mark. I just can’t seem to con­cen­trate on any­thing. So I paint­ed my nails black today.

People some­times ask me why I do it. Whenever I tell them, they nev­er under­stand, which would­n’t both­er me so much, if they would actu­al­ly try to under­stand. But peo­ple just judge, and nev­er ques­tion. Fuck.

Ignorance, Humility, And The Need To Be Understood

This is such a grand top­ic for me that I don’t believe I will be able to go into suf­fi­cient depth today, but I will try.

Ignorance is some­thing that pains me. When some­one is igno­rant, I can usu­al­ly deal with it. After all, what can one expect of the world? However, when some­one tries to push their igno­rance on me, not only by patron­iz­ing me, but by being so zeal­ous in their beliefs as to not accept any­thing else, then it trou­bles me. Well, first it enrages me, but when that sub­sides, I am trou­bled.

I always ask myself, “How can you be so igno­rant? How can you under­stand noth­ing, and yet be so firm­ly plant­ed in your beliefs? How is it that oth­er­wise, you’re a lik­able per­son?”.

Something that comes into play is my need to be hum­ble. Humility is some­thing that is very impor­tant to me. I believe in only stat­ing my opin­ions when they’re asked of me. That’s prob­a­bly because it’s very rarely that peo­ple accept my opin­ions, and usu­al­ly I’ll see it as wast­ed time when I try to explain some­thing, and some­one will refuse to see it.

My tita­ni­um ring serves as a reminder. Whenever I feel the urge to speak out, I’ll sub­con­scious­ly adjust it on my fin­ger, and remem­ber that speak­ing out is not a good thing. It’s a very sim­ple ring, with­out any designs or pat­terns, except for a pale gold band in the mid­dle. It cost me a cur­rent months salary, due to the dif­fi­cul­ty in forg­ing tita­ni­um in an oxy­gen free envi­ron­ment, but seems as sim­ple as a mod­est band. A sym­bol in itself.

When some­one just aston­ish­es me with their stu­pid­i­ty, the need to speak can be very over­whelm­ing. I find that I can con­trol it now though, that my patience has increased. It would be great if peo­ple could under­stand me. There are only a few peo­ple who tru­ly do. It would make my urge to speak sub­side. I believe this urge stems from a cog­ni­tive need to be under­stood.

Instead, I have to deal with igno­rance, peo­ple not accept­ing any­thing past their expe­ri­ences or past their own fal­li­bil­i­ty. It’s some­thing that once cost me a sta­ble rela­tion­ship.

But it was worth it.