Thoughts, Truth and Censorship

It's ironic how at the busiest moments in our lives, where the ceaseless bank of events, incidents and memories is at its peak, it is also the time we write the least - when, there is of course so much to write about.

And then when life momentarily pauses - for its various different reasons - you suddenly re-discover that desire to write. And if you don't seize that moment - the glorious details of that memory is gone forever, never written, never articulated - and perhaps only possibly reconjured by random triggers in the unpredictable and unreliable future.

So here I am - trying to remember this moment in time, where I feel once again, this familiar, strong urge to immortalize my thoughts. It might not be a particularly pleasant moment.. maybe it's better off being forgotten. But at least I have the joy of thinking it through, turning it round in the mechanics of my mind... and writing it in a tangible and visible form.

I was in the library today and was meant to be doing my research for an upcoming 5,000 word essay (I know...again!) on London but somehow, in the midst of dozing off on the table... and randomly writing essay thoughts... I found myself writing Thoughts, truth and censorship on the heading of my free PriceWaterHouseCoopers stack of paper.

I hate the fact I have to censor my thoughts when I write them out. But it's not my style to write personal details. Some things are meant to be read by others and some are not. I would like to think I have a choice in deciding who reads what, especially if I'm the author. If I were to write down EXACTLY what I've thought and felt today - the results would be shocking.
But are personal thoughts ever the contrary?
That is the startling truth about the nakedness of the human mind and how unaccommodating it is to received public opinion. Some people manage in the end, to shamelessly say it as it is. Perhaps 'shameless' is the wrong word. Maybe the right word should be 'courageous'. If only we weren't conditioned by society to understand the concepts of the personal and privacy, then perhaps we'd be like Adam and Eve before they ate the apple of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, who realised afterwards that they were naked, and to think they were perfectly happy and contented and oblivious to that concept before they were tempted by the serpent for the fruit.

Sometimes the need for catharsis is too strong that one doesn't even care if anyone is reading or not. And so, I am going to attempt to write down the 22 statements I wrote today in absolute truth right here, right now.
But I cannot deny censorship will inevitably exercised. I hate that idea. I wish I could write exactly as I feel. And perhaps in some other area I can. But for now, this little exercise could prove quite interesting.

1. I dislike London. I don't hate it. But last wednesday, visiting the grotty, gritty areas of a prospective college life there for one year totally put me off. The bleak weather and its dirty streets with its dodgy pathways and alienated faces strike me as a sad, melancholic area everytime I am in its presence. I can understand why it has grown to be a metropolis, and I understand why some people live there. But no one ever wants to die in London. And that speaks volume for itself.
I say this only because studying London on one of my film modules, and visiting it, has only reinforced this initial perception of mine. I kind of pity the people that say they love living there - for it is a place only bearable when you are young - or have the energy to fight that pervasive bleakness - or if you were conditioned by the society and environment you live in, pride does not allow you to articulate otherwise.
I read today in this book London from Punk to Blair where Peter Keiller says 'the problem with London... is that... it is simply not Paris.' I think about representations of London through the films we have watched - not many, if any, of them were cheerful representations at all.

2. I am stressed. With a high level of anxiety. Which stems from a various number of reasons - health, work, commitments, ambition, money, drive, and friends.

3. Someone owes me 10 pounds.

4. I need to cook for the house.

5. I need a long, good, relaxing bath. (which I'm happy to announce I had today - the first bath in three weeks at least, and the first time I've spent more than 10 minutes in the shower. I usually rush so much I jump in and just get out as quickly as possible. Never underestimate the power and luxury of a good, long, shower.)

6. I need a good *

7. I want to go crazy. Mental. Lose all my sensibility for a moment. But that isn't going to help anything. Because the bitchy thing about life is, whatever you do, regardless of time, context and space, you have to answer for your own actions. As Flipper in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever says, 'I gotta/will take responsibility for my own actions'.

8. * is starting to annoy me with its politics.

9. I need to sell my Tap Show tickets.

10. I wish * wasn't in *.

11. I wish I didn't have doubts.

12. I wish I could absolutely believe I've found * at 21.

13. I wonder if I'll be * to * with * for the rest of my life. But I once read somewhere that if you can do something for one day, you can do that same thing for a week, and if you can do it for that week, why can't you do it for years? It's a matter of taking one day at a time.

14. I hate the prospect of being *.

15. I hate sretaehcs. But I have * before.

16. I'd hate * who * on * and will never *. But how many times have I had such similiar thoughts and justified it to myself?

17. But I have also not, I stress, done any of * by *.

18. Faithfulness is such a fragile concept. And so life is.

19. I wish * didn't smoke all the time.

20. I * * and I * *. More than *, but no one has ever given me a better *

21. I am tired. But I hate that feeling. And I shouldn't be.

22. I want to get * in a church and have two boys, one girl and an orange cat.

Everyone is entitled to their own thoughts.

23. I hate feeling stupid. I also don't like the fact that once something is said, it can never been taken back. I don't like the idea of revealing a side of yourself to someone which displays your insecurities and desires. You might believe it at moments that it is inevitable you will at some point, but at some other point, you realise that it's not such a good idea but you can't do anything about it.

24. I feel sad that once a point in time has been reached, you realise something, which might have been true at the start, is no longer true, or have lost its effect further down the timeline.
Time changes everything, so they say. If we could experience everything exactly the way we experienced it the first time, even though we've done it loads of times before, wouldn't life be better? Would it get too tiring? Would the same excitement, then turn into a similarly ironic boredom after awhile?

You read between the lines.
I provide no solutions.

Happy Chinese New Year

I remember those mornings when I was aroused from my sleep by distant noises of firecrackers and loud chinese songs playing in the not-so-far-off living room. As the sounds spiralled into my consciousness, I always slowly became acutely aware that all the racket was produced by one single cd which my loyal mother never failed to play on every Chinese New Year morning. She always believed in 'creating the atmosphere' - whether it was CNY, or christmas, or.... korean soap opera night.

Of course, on less lucky years, I would be rudely woken up by loud music singing 'gong xi fa cai' above background accompaniment of 'dong dong dong qiang' PLUS my mum creeping into my room only to hit me on the arse with a new year greeting along the lines of 'qi lai le!' I also remember, with fondness, how mum and I would go shopping for new year clothes a few weeks before and I'd wake up in the mornings with this anticpation and excitement of wearing new clothes that had previously been prohibited, awaiting the first day of the new year.

This year, however, I woke up - twice removed from my own bed - feeling slightly melancholy, strangely aware that these memories have not had a chance to renew itself in physicality for the last three years.

That loud ruckus that so characterised chinese celebrations - which simultaneously puts me off and endears me to it - is what is sorely lacking. I'm unsure I'd love it if I were surrounded by it, but I would like to think I'd have that option.

I don't regret it. But I do miss it.

I hadn't thought of it before, but this perhaps explains why I couldn't go to sleep last night - I stayed up most of the night battling movements in my stomach and churning past memories over and over again in my head. I fell at last into a restless sleep and I must have been tired because the next thing I knew, it was morning, and I opened my eyes in full awareness.
The feeling slowly grew stronger, crept over me and fully manifested itself when J left, I heard the door slam shut, and inexplicable tears threatened to spill itself at the rim of my eyes.

I felt so silly, and so strange. But I then realised what I was experiencing was the feeling of missing something... anything... that is and/or was once such an integral part of your life.

.....................

I did, however, try to simulate my own mini CNY's eve reunuion dinner at mine last night, with the house and couple of guests... and cooked a meal even my mum would have been proud of. I'm not a cooking person, I'd never willingly spend time in the kitchen. But when I do do it, I will bloody do it well. And I did.
It struck me then, that if I was willing to make the effort to dish up for my close friends, then why can't I do the same for my family?
Whenever I go home, I keep saying I should do something... but I never get down to it. It's probably due to having a maid, and enjoying the convenience and pampering I get at home, that stalls me from any serious effort.

I resolved to re-make my new year resolutions - Bec said last night it's unfair that we chinese get a second shot at our new year. R said she didn't even know I was chinese - she assumed my nationality was my race. that girl has funny concepts of race. After explanation, she somewhat concluded that I was like 'a bisexual of two cultures and races' - meaning being both english and chinese. And maybe so I am.

I have been re-thinking and contemplating the latest developments of my life of late - and relating it to the rest in context. I concluded I need to be less 'affected' by the world - it's one of the foremost Christian virtues that everyone takes for granted - but it's so much the key to happiness. Constant expectations and ambitions stand in conflict with some of the realities I am now facing. But if I proclaim not to judge, and remain open-minded, to be different - then practice it I shall. It is inevitable that everyone judges in some way or another...JW once said only by judging, can you determine your own values and what's important to you... I don't necessarily agree but I recognise the element of truth in its inevitability. The important thing is at least I try.

The crux of the whole matter is to achieve a balance. And with that in mind, it will be the one word philosophy I will seek to exercise in my life in this new year.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone.

Time

More than two weeks has past since my last essay nightmare.. and I haven't found the time to write since then.

It's times like these I really admire those who so faithfully update their blogs; time to write is a luxury I haven't been able to afford recently. Yet, we always do what's most important to us at that time, don't we?

I discovered something today that made me feel totally gutted.

I missed a film screening on monday so I had to get out the DVD for Fallen Angel by Udi Aloni. It's a film about the Israel and Palestine relationship... and at the back of the dvd box, it was printed:


'The closest you can get to an intellectual orgasm'
- Slavoj Zizek, Philosohper, Lacanian & cultural theorist.


You can imagine how horrified I was - if you look in my archives, about one or two years back, I wrote of coining the term 'intellectual orgasm' having never heard anyone use it before. I loved the sound of it. And now, I realised it's been used before.

It's truly a post-modernist nightmare where everything has been said before and the only way to say something is to acknowledge that someone's said what you wanted to say before.

Has anyone ever wondered what will happen after the post-modern era? How would critics and theorists 'label' our period a hundred years later, assuming post-modernism has evolved to something else by then? When everything has been destroyed and deconstructed, what then?