That Great Philosopher, Mick Jagger

Last night, Singapore time, I was trying to sign up for my classes. And I found that, thanks to some stupid technicality and the fact that I am a mere 3 creds away from being considered a third year student, that I cannot take third year courses. Even though I am a third year student. I kept panicking. I kept trying to call the English Department, I kept getting impatient and angry at their lack of knowledge, their response. That I, the student, had to outline to these dunderheads my situation and then light the path of solution and problems with the solution FOR them. That I had to wait for a response from people who seemingly sit on their ass and do nothing while a whole ocean and several countries or a whole ocean and half of america separate me from Toronto.

So I raged. I cried. I stormed. I left a long, detailed, slightly-shaking-with-anger message on the Undergraduate director's answering machine. After thinking bitter, surging thoughts of the level of incompetency in departmental offices of academia, I fell asleep.

They say everything looks better with sleep, but this is rarely, if ever, true. I was just as angry, just as annoyed and panicking jsut as much in the morning. But the plight of the situation and my own mental neuroticies spurred me to think of another way to reach the same goal. I couldn't do anything; I might as well sit back. I realized, I was re-evaluating, as we must do, when things aren't going our way.

I knew my end goal and decided that, before freaking the hell out, that I might as well see if there were any way to get what I wanted, what I needed, to be done if I took another tack. I'm not going to give up by any means - I am still going to rage and storm and push until they give me third year classes. But...I will be okay and the world will not collapse if, in some bizarre and alternate universe that I don't get these classes.

Mm, perspective, it is a lethal weapon. Would I be able to breathe were in toronto? Would I have ben able to let the matter lie so quickly and decide to search for an alternate solution so quickly had distance and three time zones not separated me? Probably not. I would've charged over there the next day and demanded to be seen, and then using my Inherent SuperPowers of Rhetorical Persuasion (also known as annoying persistence like that of a housefly), I would've gotten what I wanted.

But then I remembered those famous words, bless their drugged british rock hearts: you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes...you get what you need.

Which allayed my fears only slightly but worked to calmm me. Speaking to a friend this morning (her night), she updated me on her life. Telling me that she was going to be coming to the same university as me and then outlining her thoughts, her goals. I started to think...gosh, I didn't see that happening. Who would've thunk it? Could I have ever honestly imagined that, a year later, she would be at the junction where I was, a year earlier, emotionally mature and ready to explore? No. Again, time and space grants you many boons; one of them is this. As ecstatic beyond words I am at the fact that she will be in toronto, that I will get to see her and that FINALLY she will be purusing what she wants, I realized again:

What she wanted changed so dramatically. A year ago, if you had asked her what she wanted, it would've been something completely different. And yet, here she was, standing at this crossroads, ready to take the plunge. She tried to plough through...then she tried to change her life. And maybe it's not what she originally wanted. But she got what she needed baby. She got what she needs. I am proud of her - and equally astounded with the veracity of those words.

Seeing this in action...sort of blew me away. Filled me with disbelief and then gratitude that I could see these eternal words in play. Put things into perspective further for me.

Because you can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes....you get what you need.

Ohhhh baby.

In the Here. And Now.

These are not New Year's resolutions. Personally, I think new year's resolutions are silly and one dimensional and I'm simultaneously amused and aggravated by the need for a new year to come so that change can be spurred.


However, I'm not completely closed off to the infectious reborn spirit that tingles the air.

The past few weeks have been...tumultuous. I have sunk from one low to the next and have wrote such depressing posts that they are fit only to be unpublished and I hope they never surface and see the light of day. I think that was really important though. I surrounded myself with every single thing, thought, notion and aspect that would overwhelm me in mourning and grief. Music, places, feelings, thoughts, artifacts, plans, pro-con lists. I spread it all around me and devoured every last one.

There are two points in a mourning period. One, in which your grief overwhelms you; the more you think about lifting your head, the farther it drops. You want to grieve, you want to be depressed. And the other is when you completely shake off this feeling - not only of the grief, but also of that feeling of wanting to drown in its swell. People say that this is when you get over it. But that's not true. This point is when you meet the grief head to head. When you've sunk so low that you can finally meet that grief and come to terms with it.

In a manner of speaking, I was grieving. I was grieving for a good many things, good people. The loss seems like a death of sorts - death of a love, death of a dream - and the unknowing: not knowing, as I stand at this crossroads, which path I should take, how much I trust myself, where to turn and whom to turn to. How to pick what it is I want to do, or change or be when there's just so much to do and change and be.


I have finally reached a point in which I no longer want to grieve. I no longer want to sink and wallow and tread. I am still in the process of discussion with that grief; we're still setting out the terms. But there are certain things that we - I - have absolutely established beyond a modicum of doubt.


Firstly, what is past...truly is past. It is gone. It is neither touchable through memory nor through time. It is gone. What could have been will always be rosier than what is now. That is a given. Secondly, from what is gone, something can always be rebuilt. I think of this like the rebirth of a phoenix or the remains of a hurricane. A phoenix dies by erupting into flame and as a piece of matter that once was, it leaves behind other matter - ashes. The death is heartbreaking but it is organic. Because there is always matter left in the wake of the destruction with which to rebuild oneself, to be reborn. The baby phoenix rises from the ashes. A hurricane ravages and eats and completely consumes people's homes, their livelihoods and any ounce of sense they have been able to understand. But once it quietens down, the remains of wood and debris, of cables and clothes, are the symbols of destruction with which people's lives are rebuilt.


Matter begets matter. One is never left with absolutely nothing. One is never washed ashore with nothing. In the chasm between what once was and what is now, there is a vaccum for the birth of what will be.

I'm not yet sure what it will be. But I think that I've been putting way too much emphasis on what it should be and setting myself up for disappointment. There is nothing exploratory in an absolute projection of a future. Telling myself, internalizing, that things will be this way and that, that I will be this way and that, is silly. It makes no sense. I'm not getting out there and doing it, fulfilling it - whatever it may be. Instead, I'm moping that it's not happening and I'm not there. But I didn't know where exactly I wanted to be.

I'm going to go really slow. Intrinsically, that is very hard for me - in fact, is goes against the very definition of me. I'm impulsive and emotional and heady (Aries, after all :D). I jump from one thing to the next. But I'm really going to take the time to take it all in. I'm not going to ride the constant adrenaline wave because, really, I can't anymore. I've lost all sense of direction and I need to regain it. Well, I need to gain it because who knows if I had it to begin with. Everything seems illusatory and dream-like these days.

Anyhow, these are some things that I have carefully thought in what seems like my time in exile. Not hasty, impulsive decisions, but real, actual actions.

I'm going to volunteer. One of my problems these past few months have been that I've been completely overwhelmed. I'm absolutely, mentally swamped with everything - the state of the world. There are just so many causes to take up, so many ways in which to advocate those causes and yet still many more places in which they plague. There's injustice everywhere. How do you tackle it all at once? How do you save the world from it's own catatonic self?

I'm going to write a letter to him. It will not be a silent one. It will not be a disasterous one like the rory-writes-dean-a-letter-and-he-gets-thrown-out. It will be an apology letter. It will be a letter not because I have no courage to face him but because somethings are better said in print. With such fragile memories as people have come to have (slight sarcastic undertone), a letter would seem to have greater longevity. And brevity. The boy I knew is done and gone now and there is nothing so relieving as that lingering note of finality. He is - in a manner of speaking - dead and this new person is a stranger to me. I have no intention that our lives should ever cross again but if it does, I want there to be no bitterness.

I'm going to take dl.

I'm going to create. I'm going to give life to all those ideas. I'm not going to leave them half-baked. I really do think creation is complete immortality and beauty intertwined and forgive me for my follies/vices but I do want to be part of such a beguiling thing.

I'm going to see the city.

I'm going to learn one new thing every single day. No matter its triviality.

I'm going to be wrapped up like this - cautious and deliberate - for a while, until I figure everything out. Most importantly, I'm going to be in the here and the now, Now.

Siesta

Perhaps the most perfect thing about my time here is that in one moment I can absolutely love life and totally curse my existence for different and overlapping reasons.

That, in one moment, I am utterly thankful for all the stupid small things and completely unhappy with the state of things at large.

That everything - music, colours, life, love - is, beyond a shade of doubt, tumultuous and yet alive in every notion and aspect.

That I am who I am and though I totally hate who I am, I wouldn't change anything. That I can look forward to silly feel-good movies, and dream and talk and retain a shine and twinkle. Possibly, I am describing some sort of bipolar attitude here but hey! What is the point of all of this - all of THIS - if one cannot feel every single expression and emotion that may come their way?

I'm completely lost and I dont know what the fuck I'm doing with my life. I know I'm meant for great things but that definition is relative. All I know for sure right now is that everything is imperfect and perfect and beautiful but destroyed.

And you wouldn't want it any other way, no, because then neither could you appreciate the beauty without pain nor pain without beauty.

May the beautiful destruction never end. And if it must, may every last drop of love and emotion and thought be expressed before everything finally shuts down for the turn of the era.

Why? Because.

A very very close friend, so close to my heart that they might be my heart itself or I am their soul. Understood, as the understanding that comes with these sorts of relationships. Asked myself, why? Answered, because. Sent this my way so that I had all my incoherent words once again articulated. Or else, I saw that shining thread that bound all these thoughts and a resounding recognition that I could not ignore etched deep in these words. Believed once more, for a moment, in the Soul of the World.

Why Study the Arts & Humanities?

Because, that's why.

Because a man downtown with a voice like the sea against the rocks told me I should.

Because my mother told me not to. Because she said mathematics, female engineering - engineering female. Because she spends so many nights in paperwork, dreaming herself into fairytales.

Because of the bruises etched into a Grade 4 spelling partner's cheek each week by his father.

Because television sets are alive and sucking patience out of brains like electric leeches. And it could take hours to perfect this sentence.

Because the average Canuck consums 140 percent the caloric intake required in a day.

Because KKK.

Because Chagall's 'Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers', did not quite make it into the Saturday morning comics.

Becase Adolf Hitler and Staling are the only two I've learned about.

Because it's been scientifically proven that listening to Mozart sonatas improves bad hearing.

Because the Burmese government is carbonated in every can of Pepsi Cola.

Because East Timor is on channel 3 and my brother is watching The Simpsons.

Because painters did not build atomic bombs. Because poems dissect them.

Because advertisement agencies are calling themselves creative.

Becayse a beautiful woman is a dress and a breast size and no longer compared to a summer's day.

Because no one's homophobic but alot of people stared when a girl kissed a girl at the bus stop.

Because sometimes even starving artists like to eat dinner.

Because time spent with family is marked between 6 and 7 o'clock in the daily agenda.

Because Picasso would tell you that skyscrapers do not quite equal the beauty of all the daffodils they have swallowed.

Because two boys in a coffee shop carried out a complete conversation and say nothing.

Because I don't know whether I'll be clubbed for saying Black People if I should be saying African Americans.

Because the government runs on monotone thought.

Because a successfully cloned sheep.

Because.

Because sometimes you see yourself more clearly in the characters you are writing than when you look in the mirror.

Because ulcers are nibbling away on stomachs everywhere.

Because graffiti is getting a little bit repetitive.

Because I'd rather be short than vertically challenged.

And if that's not quite enough...

Then because I can write these things to you and go to math class tomorrow and pretend that they weren't written for myself.

Age of Reason

It is a strange thing, an odd feeling.

As I walked the cobblestone of the crossing on the campus today, I realized something that I had always known and spotted all along but had not necessarily given voice to. My life...and those of many others, has been spent almost entirely in residual guilt.

So much guilt, in fact, that I cannot fathom ever being the girl in that KT Tunstall song. It has nothing to do with low self-esteem or a habit of self deprecation that wasn't caught early. It merely is the state of things.

It was bloody windy and my hair whipped around me, as though underwater, suspended up, down and all around. I felt as though I was underwater, my actions muted and my voice dulled. But my heart...my heart it both soared and roared: with guilt.

Depending on how self-righteous a person is, or how young they are when that sense of "duty" cultivates, guilt can root and blossom, forming the basis for the most ugliest to the most loveliest of decisions. At this point, I cannot figure out if guilt is a constraint or not. In the light of recent happenings known only as "life", I'm wont to say that it is indeed a constraint for it is certainly not a catalyst. However, my reasoning would thus be flawed; for one cannot conclude that if something is not substance A then by mere default, it is must be substance B because the negation of substance A cancels out the opportunity for substance C. In short, I am undecided.

A thousand naysayers would say that guilt is a festering disease that needs to be terminated. But that is easier said than done when really our entire social culture depends upon, runs, and feeds on it. If you think about it, guilt is often a major or secondary theme in many works of art both film and language wise. Almost a perversion, lessons of guilt are laid upon us in parallel with lessons on distinguishing between right and wrong, archaic black and classic white. What is guilt, I wonder then, if not black nor white, considering we don't question or classify it? Is it the grey? Then how can you terminate the grey when there are no set definitions or borders, no upper or lower bounds?

Most importantly, I think, how can you terminate something that is so very ingrained in almost every action that we take, the ying to our yang. Though the notion is arguable (as shades of grey are wont to do), think about it. Everyday, we make choices, whether small or large, that are some form of definitive. These choices set off a series of other choices, consequences, actions and reactions in a sort of series-circuit effect (if only they were parallel...). What causes us to make one choice over the other? The consequences or results, the pros to the cons and which one weighs heavier. Yes, one can objectively lay out the pros and the cons (so termed for their "good" and "bad" connotations) and it would seem obvious to any outsider that the choice more beneficial, that is deemed to be more "good" should be the one you choose.

But one person's good may be another person's tepid, mediocre, fantastic or horrible. So then, logically, you define your own sense of "good" and "bad" when making these decisions according to your own sense of self, calling on your own past experiences that were ingrained into you since childhood. Children learn fast. And bad habits die hard.

Then what is explicitly spelling out and defining consequences is not objective definitions of good and bad but rather subjective views that are molded and created by a combination of circumstance and guilt from those circumstances.

As human beings, we are lucky enough to feel a wide range of emotion. Linguistic doles out various names and labels for this often confused but not so varied spectrum of emotional range we traverse almost everyday. There's your basic anger and happiness as well as sadness, rage, delight, joy, amusement, and such. But mo matter how you classify them and what you call them all emotions can be thus categorized into one of two fields: that which feels right and good and that which doesn't. To a simplistic mind it should seem only natural that that which feels right and good should be the path to take and the decision to make. This is part of the reason children, with their simplistic world views, often strike a pang of recognition in adults and have that uncanny way of telling the truth: because they call it as it is without any worldly complexy charade or facade that we are forced to put up as we mature into society. It's simplistic. But, of course, we must make things more complicated than they must be.

If it's so simple and elementary why the Prozac Nation? Why is it that most people pick and choose the path and decision that makes them unhappy, that feels so bad? Fate? A Freudian sort of self hatred? Is it opposite day? None of the above?

If you picked none of the above, kudos to you, you must be a 7 year old with that creepy childlike 7 year old tell-it-like-it-is bit going on. It is circumstance. And it is the guilt that is induced into a person from trying to leave, change or alter those circumstances or even trying to make a decision whose result might negatively affect those involved in those circumstances.

It's all personal. Doesn't mean it should get shoved under the carpet. The wife that works as a full time doormat makes choices that she must make for the "greater good". What great is there to the good if her feel-bad decisions render her nothing but grief and are steeped in guilt? Resentment crops up overtime as time and again she sacrifices with no recognition. And resentment is the real festering disease that needs to be vanquished.

What about the child who keeps his word, who puts away his dream for the sake of his parents respect, opinion and love? They reason that they must think about everything their parents have done and will do for them, how much of their lives they have given for the sole happiness of one being. That's not logic, that's guilt talking.

What about that single mother who loves her daughter but craves some sort of companionship? But this may decision may affect the stability of her child's life, so she must tread carefully if at all. The pull of the umbilical cord is stronger and creates some sort of guilt; whether you want to call it parental responsibility or not, by mere definition that I've laid out above, this is some form of guilt.

I'm not saying that it's good nor am I saying it's not bad. I'm just saying, it's there. And to be aware is the first step. To try and combat it, is the next. You ask, if I'm not giving it a negative connotation, why try and combat it in the first place? Simple. If, after a hot shower, your glasses steam up upon entering a cold room, you're not going to be able to see. In this case you're going to want to automatically do one of two things with the same goal in mind: either you'll want to take off your glasses and wipe them on your towel or keep them off altogether. With the sole purpose of trying to see better, clearer.

Metaphor fly over your head? Okay. Basically guilt, while neither good nor bad as I see it, can and may lead to good or bad decisions that aren't necessarily steeped in reality. And you always want to make sure your view or perspective is the clearest, the least "foggiest" or murky. Because that's when you miss things and don't take important details into considerations. Small but powerful details that could spell the downfall of the choice made. Case in point: Achilles' Heel. Your decisions should be informed, the choices you make, whether they result in a feel-good or feel-bad outcome should never be formed out of guilt for anything because this clogs your judgement almost as much as something positive like love.

Yes, for the most part and to most people, guilt sucks. It hurts. It pains. And it never goes away. It always stays like some dark crevice perpetually etched into the corner of your mind and always leaves a nagging feeling like someone constantly tapping on your window or that jerk of missing a step. Less methodically speaking, in my world at least, I want to avoid guilt because it makes me make bad decisions. And because martyrdom is something most of us try and achieve at some point in life (c'mon, who doesn't like to be hero-worshipped for their pains?), most of this guilt weighing activity when making choices goes largely unarticulated. No one knows what you've done till you've done it but they'll also never know why unless you tell them. But who wants to say why you've done what you've done? Exactly. And that's where the resentment comes in. For me the guilt creates resentment, something whose effects, combined with my short-fused temper make for....explosive results.

But I'm really keen to make some sort of demarcation. Again, guilt, in my definition is neither good nor bad because everyone's version of "good" and "bad" are completely subjective and thsu can never be equated on the same plane due to individual circumstances. This much I know for sure. There's a point, in fact, where guilt and responsibility blur. Parents make decisions, putting the needs of their children first, eve though it may not feel good because that is what is expected of them. They may not like it...and while this is partially spurred by guilt (as in, "well I had better make this choice because I'll feel guilty if I make the other and my child is hurt because of me."), it comes under the parents responsibility to provide for their child first. But see, responsibility is positive. It is the right thing to do. It is clear, defined and has an upper and lower bound. It makes nothing foggier, just restates what must to be done.

Guilt is what ought to be done, to exagerrated proportions such that one reasons that if they don't they'll face consequences in which their loved ones will be hurt or poised for hurt. To that I can only say: yes, it's hard. But it takes courage. The same kind of courage you read in Pooh and Narnia and Harry Potter books, yes, but with a lot less Christian-based controversy. It takes courage to stare guilt in the face and refuse to make a decision marred or clogged by it. I think of guilt as a sort of cling-wrap. It protects and protects well but put it under the heat of a microwave and its little tiny molecules start to break down and seep into the food.

For all my preaching and sorting, I want to say, I am nowhere as near to battling guilt as I would like. But I'm getting better. Call it stubborness or what you will but for the girl who could stand up to the world but not those who mattered, it's some shred of courage to wake the spine. I want to somehow try and fight this guilt. Not because I'm feeling guilty for feeling guilty...but because my guilt was never protecting whom it was supposed to the most.

Me.