Posts in category "Thoughts"

Lachrymology

I saw a Mary J. Blige video the oth­er day called No More Drama. I did­n’t real­ly enjoy the song, and thought she looked bet­ter in oth­er videos. Something she said was quite inter­est­ing, how­ev­er. The lyrics go:

No more tears (no more tears, I’m tired of cryin every night)
No more fears (no more fears, I real­ly don’t wan­na cry)
No dra­ma (no more dra­ma in my life)
I don’t ever wan­na hurt again

I thought about the idea of nev­er cry­ing again. It’s some­thing that just seems so unavoid­able, yet so nec­es­sary. I won­dered why any­one would nev­er want to cry again. After all, the only way you can feel hap­pi­ness is by feel­ing its oppo­site.

There is a sci­ence of cry­ing, called lachry­mol­o­gy, but the resources on this are very scant. The only use­ful source on this sci­ence is the band Tool, which, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, is my favorite band. They say that a study has been done and a book on it pub­lished, although any attempts to find such a book have proven fruit­less. Their name is short for tool­shed; when they cre­at­ed the band, they want­ed their music to be a tool­shed for lachry­mol­o­gy.

There are chem­i­cal side-effects of cry­ing, of course. When one cries, chem­i­cals are released which heal the body, allow­ing for much stress to be relieved, not only men­tal­ly, but phys­i­cal­ly as well. It’s not this chem­i­cal process that I’m inter­est­ed in, it’s the very notion of going through life with­out cry­ing that I’m still try­ing to com­pre­hend.

Crying seems so impor­tant, as one goes through many men­tal changes. So many aspects of my men­tal­i­ty have been changed by things that have made me cry. I have learned so much from these things. Some of my best artis­tic endeav­ors were a result of pain in some way.

Does one need to suf­fer to cre­ate? I believe this is true for many peo­ple, includ­ing myself, though not for every­one. After all, some joy­ous works of art come from artis­tic eupho­ria.

Crying can be so beau­ti­ful, and so pro­duc­tive, and so ben­e­fi­cial. Pain can be all of these things as well, some­thing which Tool dis­cuss­es in many of their songs, though not as much, I believe, in their lat­est album.

So why would any­one pos­si­bly want to nev­er feel pain again, to cry again? Why would any­one want to end the world of hunger? Without hunger, we would­n’t be able to appre­ci­ate how good that plain baguette tastes. Without pain, one would become bor­ing, drably, some­thing that I have feared for quite a while.

Everyone needs pain in some way. By avoid­ing pain, we become one-dimen­sion­al, shal­low beings.

We need it to cre­ate, to tru­ly feel. Even if one is not an artist, it takes a cer­tain amount of pain to real­ly enjoy life.

And for this I am thank­ful.

Tell Me I'm Right, Baby

There’s some­thing about a girl that apol­o­gizes. It’s like it makes her more human. I’ve always been one who likes girls who have their off days, instead of look­ing like a mil­lion bucks all the time. I guess it lets me know that they aren’t just super­fi­cial all the time, that they know that looks aren’t always impor­tant.

But when a girl apol­o­gizes, man. It turns me on. They know that they’re flawed in a way, and they have the “con­scious­ness” to under­stand it.

It shows that they’ve reached the third lev­el of under­stand­ing, as out­lined below, the first lev­el being com­plete igno­rance, and the fourth lev­el being com­plete enlight­en­ment:

  1. I don’t know that I don’t know
  2. I don’t know that I know
  3. I know that I don’t know
  4. I know that I know

Not only does apol­o­giz­ing show that one is at a cer­tain lev­el of self-aware­ness, it shows that one is mature enough to admit this to one­self. And, as we know, matu­ri­ty is fuck­ing hot.

It’s the admit­ting to one­self that I find is much hard­er for peo­ple. So many peo­ple that I run into have such closed minds that they refuse to believe any­thing that goes against what they’ve believed for most of their lives. Sometimes, when one admits one was wrong, it inval­i­dates a huge chunk of ones life and world­view. It’s a hard thing to do, and it takes strength, open-mind­ed­ness, and intel­li­gence.

Of course, apol­o­giz­ing is noth­ing with­out change, with­out learn­ing. Someone who learns great­ly from their mis­takes, and who isn’t afraid of mak­ing them for the sake of learn­ing, is just amaz­ing.

It all adds up; almost every­thing that I look for in a girl is encap­su­lat­ed in one sim­ple act of apol­o­giz­ing. It cer­tain­ly makes things much sim­pler.

Yet more com­pli­cat­ed at the same time.

STFU

I found out about a book called Soul Mountain by a man named Gao Xingjian. I read the sum­ma­ry, and found out that it had won a Nobel prize for lit­er­a­ture in 2000. I was very inter­est­ed. Apparently it’s an œuvre in which he explains many facets of his life, which I imag­ine has much to do with per­se­cu­tion in China. I would very much like to read it, but I still have Moby Dick to fin­ish, and the Moonstone to start. I’d also like to get through The Glass Bead Game, which is also a Nobel lau­re­ate, but a book I once found too dense in vocab­u­lary to com­pre­hend. Many of the reviews I’ve found about the Glass Bead Game say that it’s a book which has changed peo­ples lives, and from what I can tell, it’s a book which not many can sort through (i.e. pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als can’t use it as a phan­tom sym­bol of their supe­ri­or knowl­edge).

Speaking of intel­lec­tu­al poseurs, I was in con­tact with one just the oth­er day, though on friend­ly terms. She did­n’t say any­thing that made me think of intel­lec­tu­al super­fi­cial­i­ty, but as I had­n’t spo­ken to her in a while, and her being one of the few that I know, I was remind­ed of this strange com­plex. I feel com­pelled to write about it.

I’m not quite sure what it is about this aspect of a per­son that makes me go mad with frus­tra­tion. Perhaps it’s the fact that they don’t tru­ly under­stand things which I may find beau­ti­ful. All I can think is, “You’re miss­ing the mes­sage!”, or “Who did you get that opin­ion from?”.

Of course, I under­stand that peo­ple may see beau­ty in dif­fer­ent ways, and inter­pret an artists mes­sage quite dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­er peo­ple. I sup­pose that it’s not in their opin­ion that I see shal­low­ness, it’s how they come to that opin­ion.

Take American Beauty, for exam­ple. The pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als that I know enjoy that movie because they find the sym­bol of the ros­es to be so deep. The think that the image of the plas­tic bag is so mean­ing­ful. They don’t real­ize that all of the sym­bols, all of the imagery is just hand­ed to them. All they see is a char­ac­ter who thinks intel­lec­tu­al­ly in the film and they think, “Wow. This movie is so deep”.

I guess it’s bet­ter than an igno­rant per­son say­ing, “I did­n’t like Magnolia, it was try­ing to be all weird and stuff”. At least the poseurs are try­ing to be smart. Of course, I even know com­plete idiots who say that they enjoyed American Beauty because it “made them think”.

I sim­ply wish that a pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al would try to actu­al­ly com­pre­hend some­thing, instead of using pop­u­lar opin­ion, or believ­ing that some­thing is mean­ing­ful sim­ply because there is a mean­ing­ful ele­ment. Or that they would have no opin­ion on a piece of art they don’t under­stand, instead of dis­lik­ing it for the fact.

Of course, I would­n’t appre­ci­ate the tru­ly intel­lec­tu­al peo­ple I know with­out them.

I’m just not sure if it’s worth it any­more.

The Rules

Aaron told me that he did­n’t think I was spoiled today. I was a bit sur­prised, since even I think I’m spoiled to an extent. I real­ize that I take many of the priv­i­leges I have for grant­ed, but I’m always thank­ful of the finan­cial free­dom that I’ve been giv­en. We seem to be able to talk for hours on end, and it’s worth get­ting in trou­ble at work for it.

One thing that we dis­cussed was the rules about accept­able dat­ing habits. The rules that he fol­lows are dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand. One seem­ing­ly uni­ver­sal rule is that you can nev­er date a friend’s sis­ter. It’s hard for me to under­stand some­thing like this, because I’ve nev­er had sib­lings of any kind. I think that the prob­lem would lie in whether a break-up would hap­pen; where would one’s loy­al­ty lie, since you’re so close to both peo­ple? I believe that if both par­ties are mature enough, they will be able to remain friends after some­thing like that should hap­pen. I real­ize that it may not always work out that way, but I believe that the deci­sion of the risk would be up to the friend and the sis­ter.

He also told me that he would nev­er date any of his friends’ ex-girl­friends, and that it was an unspo­ken rule among his friends as well. I guess the rule seems very rigid to me, as I’m sure there should be excep­tions, such as who was at fault, and why they broke up.

There just seem to be so many rules that peo­ple fol­low, good or bad. I know some girls who won’t date guys short­er than them. I can’t even begin to com­pre­hend this; it just seems so amaz­ing­ly shal­low, or per­haps I’m just over­sen­si­tive about my lack of height. I also know Chinese girls who won’t date Chinese guys. The only expla­na­tion I can find for this is that a girl may not like the Chinese cul­ture, so they asso­ciate Chinese guys with this. Yet how can every Chinese guy be com­plete­ly set in the Chinese cul­ture? The expla­na­tion just does­n’t seem to work.

One of my Caucasian ex’s said that she would nev­er date a white guy, because they always seem so shal­low. I was offend­ed because I would­n’t be dat­ing her, had I sim­ply inhab­it­ed pale skin. She real­ized that she was wrong to sim­ply asso­ciate white guys with being shal­low, based on her past expe­ri­ences.

It’s still some­thing that’s hard for me to grasp. Perhaps Chinese girls don’t find the “look” of Chinese guys to be attrac­tive, which is some­thing I could under­stand more. I still believe that one can be attract­ed to any­one though, as long as one keeps an open mind.

An inter­est­ing point that I once dis­cussed with Aaron was whether Caucasian girls found Asian guys attrac­tive the way Caucasian guys find Asian girls attrac­tive. We came to the con­clu­sion that, no, they do not. It lies in the fact that the mon­goloid race has a gen­er­al­ly slim­mer build, some­thing which guys find attrac­tive in girls, but some­thing which girls sure as hell don’t find attrac­tive in guys.

It’s a good thing that I’ve giv­en up for now.

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.