Posts in category "Thoughts"

Switching Books

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?

Bachelor

Megalomania is watch­ing a man with a brain in a jar court a woman who laughs like a mule, and believ­ing that it’s the sto­ry of one’s life. Weakness is los­ing a thought to a pret­ty face. Concupiscence is the inter­pre­ta­tion of awk­ward rough­hous­ing as a pre­lude to fuck­ing. Jealousy is won­der­ing why one nev­er had the same oppor­tu­ni­ty, and accep­tance is real­iz­ing that one did.

In the end, it’s not the sit­u­a­tions we relate to, it’s the hope­less­ness of being stuck with the deci­sions we make. Of being caught between the risk of set­tling, and the fear of not doing any bet­ter.

Happiness is free­dom from both.

HK Fullscreen, Revisited, Again

Here I am, try­ing to get anoth­er entry down, but there’s a movie play­ing on OMNI.2, one of Canada’s pre­mier mul­ti-cul­tur­al chan­nels. Although the pro­gram­ming of OMNI.2 is aimed for 22 dif­fer­ent eth­no­cul­tur­al groups in 20 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, Saturday nights are always in Cantonese. Almost just as invari­able are the roman­tic come­dies of Hong Kong cin­e­ma that they broad­cast around this time.

It makes sense of course; stud­ies have shown that by 2017, vis­i­ble minori­ties will top 50% in Toronto and Vancouver, with Chinese peo­ple mak­ing up over 500,000 of that per­cent­age. Add to this the grow­ing fas­ci­na­tion of younger peo­ple with the Asian cul­ture, and recent flicks from Hong Kong are the per­fect way to build a strong mar­ket pres­ence.

Unfortunately, the movies are most­ly trite: a col­lec­tion of pre­dictable, sac­cha­rine love sto­ries with lit­tle artis­tic intent, and the one on now is no dif­fer­ent. I have to admit though, as sim­ple as these movies are, they still affect me. When I see the char­ac­ter­is­tic neon build­ing signs, home­ly food stalls filled with wok hey, and claus­tro­pho­bi­cal­ly busy streets of Hong Kong again, I’m filled with a cer­tain inex­plic­a­ble roman­ti­cism.

And I can’t seem to get over it. All I want to do is go to Hong Kong again and share the expe­ri­ence with some­one. An expe­ri­ence that’s heart-rac­ing­ly poignant, like the ado­les­cent mem­o­ry of a first date, when you’re build­ing up the courage to hold some­one’s hand. Perhaps, like Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita, the mem­o­ry of my child­hood has frozen some­thing in me. A mem­o­ry that’s beau­ti­ful.

Simply, pure­ly, beau­ti­ful.

Trinary Maturity: The House

In the last year of high school, I was called into the guid­ance office for some direc­tion in choos­ing a post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tion. The coun­cilor, a very, very Caucasian man, went through the fea­tures of each uni­ver­si­ty, not­ing espe­cial­ly the ones with nice cam­pus­es. In an effort to save his time, I explained that the esthet­ics of a uni­ver­si­ty were of no con­se­quence to me, because they would­n’t affect my life. Apparently this was a dif­fer­ent approach from oth­er stu­dents, whom he believed decid­ed on the direc­tion of their edu­ca­tion through a desire for lush lawns and big dorm rooms.

I’d always believed that I’d feel the same way about a house as a cam­pus. Give me enough room for my com­put­er with walls thick enough to crank my music and I’ll be hap­py, I used to say. While this may still hold true, I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m even hap­pi­er with a nice place. I final­ly under­stood that coun­cilor, four years lat­er, after chang­ing uni­ver­si­ties for a brief post-grad­u­ate stint. The new cam­pus was big, mod­ern, and inspir­ing; quite a dif­fer­ence from my pre­vi­ous uni­ver­si­ty with its brown build­ings and con­stant con­struc­tion.

It’s the same when com­par­ing a rent­ed place of res­i­dence and an actu­al house. A house begets secu­ri­ty, and in turn, a sense of con­fi­dence. There’s a dis­tinct feel­ing, every day, wak­ing up in one’s own home. Knowing that every pay­cheque is going towards some equi­ty, a lit­tle piece of prop­er­ty I call my own. Having a com­fort zone, a place that I don’t have to deal with any­one I don’t want to. A place where I make the rules, not hav­ing to answer to land­lords or secu­ri­ty.

It was the process too, that helped me grow. Aside from the com­mon sense of own­ing a house as a long-term invest­ment, I was inspired (or should I say “dri­ven”) to move because of a room­mate. After one par­tic­u­lar­ly child­ish con­flict, I decid­ed more than four months before I actu­al­ly had time to look, to buy a house and take Trolley with me. We moved in before the lease was up on the apart­ment.

I went through the entire process myself, know­ing noth­ing at the start. I had nev­er done any­thing on this scale before, and while it may seem triv­ial to those who have been ini­tia­tors their entire lives, this was a big step for me. It let me know that I could actu­al­ly accom­plish the things I want.

And that cast aside all the doubt that was hold­ing me back.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion

Trinary Maturity: The Girlfriend (or The Lifestyle)

It’s easy for some­one to asso­ciate an expe­ri­ence with the last mem­o­ry involved. I’m not with­out guilt in this issue myself. I’ll admit that the rough patch­es near the end of my rela­tion­ship with Loo have come to define the expe­ri­ence a lit­tle unfair­ly. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how much it’s helped and changed me.

In real­i­ty, I learned more from my time with Louise than from any pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship. This was a per­son who inspired (and pushed) me to be bet­ter, but it was­n’t only her, it was the lifestyle as well.

I try not to have too much respon­si­bil­i­ty at this stage in my life, so when I do have it I take it seri­ous­ly. Being a dom­i­nant means that respon­si­bil­i­ty is assumed over anoth­er per­son, anoth­er being, anoth­er liv­ing soul. To be giv­en this respon­si­bil­i­ty, as a bond of supine trust, pro­vid­ed me a sense of con­fi­dence I had nev­er felt before.

And with this trust came a reju­ve­nat­ed zeal for self-improve­ment. She was strong her­self, so I had to be stronger. If Louise’s con­tri­bu­tion was to push, my con­tri­bu­tion was to grow. It helped me fig­ure out what I want in the next few stages of my life. I stopped slouch­ing. I start­ed speak­ing with more author­i­ty. I start­ed walk­ing into restau­rants first, some­thing I could nev­er do before, for rea­sons I could nev­er explain. I demand­ed more out of life.

In the end, it did­n’t work out. The dynam­ic was­n’t right. Unfortunately, I nev­er felt like I was able to com­plete­ly han­dle every­thing until it was actu­al­ly over. Funny how life works out like that. What I’ve lost is only rel­e­vant now.

But what I’ve gained is more impor­tant.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion