What-ifs, Wherefores, Why those

Returning from abroad is exhilirating. It is energizing. It is exhausting. It is like a beginning to the shining middle and an end to that rotten beginning. It is also rather dangerous because this very illusion of new found hope starts to get you dreaming - dreaming like you might have scarcely dared to before.

It fills you with a vigour upon whose pace you travel with such speed and motivation that it scares even you. That feeling of expanse and a deep connection with the earth, real, hard, terra firma can do that to you. It is rather dangerous, really, all the things you see yourself accomplishing and daring to hope as you might have never hoped before.

Change is a very organic substance and is, I believe, the base of every single thought, phenomenon and action in this world. The difference brought about by change; Derrida, he was on the right track. That idea of difference is the power that change grants and there is no power so heady nor so combustible or useful as change. It fuels originality in thought, in design, in life, really; our need for change makes us think, wonder...so I quirk one eyebrow up and ask the most quitely dangerous question: what if?

What if, indeed. What if - so many things! Where to begin, and where to go once the beginning has been determined? And it has...my beginning has been 20 years in the making...but whence to proceed from here? There are about a million and one possibilities and iterations and I almost wish I could send out a dozen copies of myself to take different tracks and report back to me upon merger 40 years later.

I promised myself that I wouldn't be overwhelmed and inundated; that I would relax and take it as it comes. So far, that is proving to be the right thing to do, even if it is rather (read horriblee) hard for me to do. I keep having to shift my mind away from the niggling thoughts but I think eventually that will become second nature. There is really just so much to tackle: pick your cause. I'm having a hard time (or was) picking mine. Which is funny because no one really asked me to pick in the first place; everyone assumes students will eventually leave their shelter of hallowed halls and change the world in new and wonderous ways. The problem is that I love it all too much. I love it all, I'm passionate about most things and am far too interested and curious for my own good. Also, I don't trust our generation to be the same way; very few of them are and of those few, you must weed through the self-proclaimed, arrogant and pseudo-intellectuals to reach the actual stars. So I feel it is encumbent upon me to pick all causes and save the world - oh, I almost long for the days to come when I'm 28 and disillusioned and bitter like Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson.

I find myself lingering on every sight and sound that passes my way with a new energy that has been missing for almost four years now. It is surprising what a new wardrobe can also do. Filling one's life with only the pieces that make you happy and energized and...important. There is nothing like it. And if I sound unbearingly optimistic, I don't apologize but only hope to re-iterate that I am a realist - who is currently on a high.

It seems strange to say it as a marker of what seems so right these days but my skin seems softer, my sleep feels deeper and hair looks nicer, even if I've tumbled down from bed. Maybe this feeling will fade and maybe it won't but, as of now, I'm not too worried either way. Yes, I am sunk in debt; yes, I am not nearly as mobile as I would like. But...its not like those things seem any smaller; only more doable- more changeable, more manageable. More likely. This life seems more likely, no matter what track.

As a sign, when my mind starts to wander and ponder on the various alternations of futures that could be and makes mini, start-plans as to how to get there, I instantly feel nauseous. But now I am really enjoying going through all the what ifs and thinking further, without the strain of actually trying to make it happen. I guess I am saying - I'm happy to be in the moment, allowing myself that luxury (for once). The what-ifs don't come accompanied by can-dos. They just stay their lovely old states of what-ifs.

What are the what-ifs? Good gosh, too many.

What-ifs to scripts and novel ideas. What-ifs to getting published. What-ifs to volunteering and teaching in Macchu Picchu and exploring the Himalayas. What-ifs to leaving civilization for a few years and changing the face of education and misguided mindsets. What-ifs to writing for Conde-Nast and National Geographic (*faint*). What-ifs to Brown and Rhodes, browsing beaches in Maine, to Carnegie Mellon. What-ifs to street theatre, kathak dancing, scholarships to Delhi. What-ifs to curating or publishing or designing or working at the MMoA/Bartle-Bogle-Hegarty. What-ifs to dual citizenship and splurging rent money on Jimmy Choos. What-ifs to working for idols and invitations to premiers at Leicester Square. What-ifs to changing the face of inspiration. What-ifs to meeting and falling in love to changing lives and healing them. What-ifs coming to terms with all the past and forgiving and moving the fuck on.

So here's to all that was- that can be, that will be and, mostly, that is.

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.