Posts in category "Thoughts"

Memories Of My Own

They’re out now, the lot of them. Out-of-town­ers who drove five hours to cel­e­brate with one of their own. People I haven’t seen in years. Seven maybe? God, I feel old. I’ve known a few of them since grade three.

But bar hop­ping isn’t my scene. There’s also this dull, nag­ging headache from stay­ing up yes­ter­day into the ear­ly morn­ing. Catching up like old times. I’m remind­ed of the sleep­overs. Summers putting on plays and learn­ing how to make piñatas at Camp Creative. Catching min­nows and cray­fish in the streams back home.

I’m a dif­fer­ent per­son now though. I was a dif­fer­ent per­son from them then even. I nev­er real­ly fit in the group.

Sometimes I look at the pic­tures of their trips and events and I think to myself, “I wish I was more social. I wish I had more mem­o­ries.”

But I know it’s not in me to be social.

I have to her­mi­tize or I get over­stim­u­lat­ed. It took me until my ear­ly twen­ties to come out of my shell. Then I think of the par­ties I’ve been to, the times I’ve had, the pic­tures I’ve tak­en, and real­ize that I do have mem­o­ries.

I have enough.

I have my own.

Becoming One With The Tao

After 26 years, I’ve real­ized that I’m a Taoist.

I dab­bled in Existentialism (after read­ing Huis Clos, revis­it­ing it when read­ing Thus Spoke Zarathustra), athe­ism (when I was dat­ing an Anglican), agnos­ti­cism (after we broke up), Nihilism (while read­ing sev­er­al books of Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture), Buddhism (in ear­ly uni­ver­si­ty), and Christianity (through­out my life). None of it ever felt com­plete.

In 2003, I hap­pened to come across a few vers­es of the Tao Te Ching. The con­cepts were dif­fi­cult to grasp at first1. Eventually, with the guid­ance of some Chinese elders, I came to a sol­id foun­da­tion of under­stand­ing, then approached it slow­ly and care­ful­ly. I had put so much hope in find­ing a sys­tem of beliefs in the past, that I was scared of hur­ried­ly align­ing myself with the first one that bared a pass­ing resem­blance to my own.

More specif­i­cal­ly, I’m a philo­soph­i­cal Taoist. I don’t believe in any poly­the­is­tic aspects of the reli­gious side, the div­ina­tion of the I Ching, or any of the archa­ic sex­u­al prac­tices of ret­ro­grade ejac­u­la­tion and the like.

This does­n’t mean that I’m a per­fect Taoist, inso­far as there are no per­fect Christians, or per­fect peo­ple. The Tao Te Ching is my bible. It guides me on how to live and behave as much as it is a label of my exist­ing beliefs. There are things I have yet to learn, apply, or both.

I think I’ve always been a Taoist. I just nev­er knew it. For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve lived by the prin­ci­ples of bal­ance, empti­ness (or recep­tive­ness), and strength of flex­i­bil­i­ty. I’m glad that it’s a part of the cul­ture of my blood. It makes me proud. Understanding Cantonese has cer­tain­ly helped me appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of it all.

One does­n’t decide to become a Taoist. The Way is described as hav­ing no begin­ning or end. You must become one with it.

As such, a trav­el­er is at his des­ti­na­tion at every part of the jour­ney.

  1. I’ve come to see that the ideas are eas­i­ly lost in trans­la­tion [↩]

Thoughts On Missing A Play

In post war England, an immi­nent mur­der is announced in the local paper. A mur­der does occur, but not the one expect­ed and it is Miss Marple who comes to the res­cue to solve the mys­ti­fy­ing case.

Two tick­ets, but I’m on the down­swing. It’s the intro­vert­ed end of my cycle and I can’t meet new peo­ple or go out­side with­out feel­ing some kind of anx­i­ety. I used to live two blocks away from the the­atre, pass­ing it many times but nev­er in atten­dance. I always kept an eye out for a play I want­ed to see — Equus, or Hamlet, or Picasso at the Lapin Agile — but noth­ing piqued my inter­est. This time, the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself, Pearl dou­ble-booked with extra tick­ets, and I could­n’t say no.

I force myself to go.

It’s a lit­tle warm to be wear­ing a blaz­er, but noth­ing else affords me the pock­ets for my Moleskine, pen, lens cloth, and iPod. Waiting at the bus stop, I write.

At this time on a Sunday, I’m usu­al­ly wind­ing down. Taking out the garbage, doing the dish­es, fin­ish­ing off an entry, get­ting things squared away for anoth­er week. Instead, I’m head­ing out. For days I’ve been try­ing to write about how jum­bled I feel. There have been new devel­op­ments, both good and bad, leav­ing me with a mix­ture of excite­ment and dis­ap­point­ment. The most I can say is that it makes sense, how I feel, and I can trace every emo­tion to a cause.

The bus comes. On it, I lis­ten to my music but I can’t get in the right head space. Nothing fits. I’m not feel­ing sad, or hap­py, or jad­ed, or ener­getic. I skip song after song.

Stepping off the bus, my ago­ra­pho­bia begins to choke me.

Continue read­ing “Thoughts On Missing A Play”…

The Old and Immature

My mom called.

She start­ed about some trans­fer forms, unfin­ished busi­ness in the wake of the divorce, but care­ful­ly segued into ask­ing if I want­ed to take a trip to the States with some oth­er fam­i­ly.

This is how she tries to make amends. She does­n’t apol­o­gize or ask how I’m doing because she can’t. She can’t admit that she’s done any wrong, not even to her­self. Her inse­cu­ri­ty does­n’t allow her to show any vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

I keep my rage in check, but it’s a hard fire to fight. After what I’ve been through, after telling her nev­er to talk to me again, she has the audac­i­ty to ask as if noth­ing has hap­pened.

With a firm voice, I tell her no. No to the trip, no to her, and this caus­es her tone to grow angry. It’s fun­ny to think that she may be angry at me, like a rapist being angry at his vic­tim, but I know it’s not anger. It’s sad­ness, but she masks it with anger, the way she hides her guilt behind her excus­es and expla­na­tions.

It’s eas­i­er to deal with the loss of your only child when it’s his fault.

From what she says, I can tell she’s more wor­ried about her image of being a bad par­ent to her friends, than to actu­al­ly being a moth­er to me. This was the per­son who “raised” me. The per­son who was sup­posed to teach me to be proud of who I am. To not be super­fi­cial. To be hum­ble. To own up to my mis­takes. To take respon­si­bil­i­ty for my actions. It’s a scary thought.

I can read my mom like a book. Not because I’ve known her for so long, but because she’s still a child. I know exact­ly what she’s think­ing, and at the same time, she shows a total lack of self-aware­ness. She still has­n’t learned the impor­tant lessons, the epipha­nies one expe­ri­ences through child­hood, ado­les­cence, and young adult­hood.

Talking to her is like talk­ing to myself at an ear­li­er stage in life.

Guest Entry: Inspiration is Everywhere

This is a guest entry by fel­low 9rules mem­ber, Dave Seah. We start­ed this entry swap­ping ven­ture as an exer­cise in writ­ing out­side of our nor­mal styles. It also let us see how dif­fer­ent­ly we would explore a top­ic that was defined by a sin­gle sen­tence, which was “Inspiration is every­where”.

I approached Dave because he writes with a deep insight in his words while pre­sent­ing it with a light can­dor that draws the read­er in. Not only do I admire his writ­ing style and con­tent, I’m envi­ous of his abil­i­ty to come up with cre­ative, phe­nom­e­nal ideas. I’m glad that he agreed to par­tic­i­pate in this exer­cise, and leave his words and ideas as part of my per­son­al jour­ney.

You can read my take on the sub­ject at Dave’s site here.

If I were in your shoes and got hit with an hap­py-sound­ing phrase like INSPIRATION IS EVERYWHERE, I’d men­tal­ly spring into one of three mind­sets: 1. Skepticism 2. “Amen, Brother!” or 3. Apathy. I’d also make a few assump­tions: that the inten­tion behind such a procla­ma­tion was to be inspi­ra­tional in itself. Furthermore, the meta-assump­tion is that we’re all look­ing for it, or need it real bad.

Continue read­ing “Guest Entry: Inspiration is Everywhere”…