A Diary Entry from Nov 12, 01:26, Monday Midnight

Hi. I stumbled across a girl’s picture on my Facebook newsfeed and I commenced my stalking (standard) for the next God-knows-how-long. She’s just a girl I met in an art class in high school...we probably wouldn’t say hi if we saw each other on the street, but I guess that wouldn’t happen anytime remotely soon since she’s in Australia, babysitting, and is liking it there so much that she has extended her trip to 2 years (so it says on Facebook). 

Babysitting for fuck’s sake. And here I am, taking a “break”, which is more like my way of excusing myself from working (cramming) anymore for my essay due on Tuesday about pornography and condoms. Looking at her pictures—gorgeous person, gorgeous country, gorgeous weather—it writes youth all over her timeline. 

Somehow the first question that popped into my mind was, how long is my youth going to last? The second question that followed, just how important is post-secondary education? 

I know the latter is a question I already have a very decided and mature answer for, but why did I still ask myself then? 

Her photos made me think of the photos that were taken last year in Germany, either by me or of me. I looked probably just as youthful, if not even happier. When do I get to do that again? Why is it that I’m not doing it now? Why is it not something like a job, which we slave away but are only preparing for, that I can pursue 24-7? In a city, a country where I find beauty in its land, where the weather no longer even affects my mood, because physically being there is enough to form the foundation of my happiness. I think this might be how Hemingway, Stein, and all those American artists and intellects felt when they all decided to move to Paris in the 1920’s. 

Youth is too short. Youth is what forms and shapes life, because youth means mistakes and experiences, and youth must mean happiness, more or less. So what exactly am I doing here? When I read that she is being a nanny in Australia, I thought immediately of her future—a nanny as a career? But what the hell, why do I assume that because she is spending her beautiful years in Australia, taking care of more beautiful things, she’s only good enough to be doing the same thing twenty, thirty years down the road? Why are we wired to think so far ahead? What about now? We don’t ever make plans for life because “life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans” (pardon the cliché). Why don’t we make more proximal plans for life—proximal happiness, instant gratification, like having a photograph taken of me standing by the ocean, with the Sydney Opera House in the background under a clear, blue sky? Why is “life” always something in the future, where we are supposedly paving a way for? 

I know when I wake up in the morning tomorrow, I will continue working on my essay, and I’m going to continue university on Tuesday, with the logical and coherent answer of the importance of education and how it acts as an investment in what we call the space and time we live in as “life”. Are these current thoughts, then, a momentary weakness? Or a form of epiphanic realization, or some sort of revolution in my so-called plan, possibly changing my so-called future life? Maybe I can apply the same technique I use in determining if I should make a purchase or not on this dilemma: if I’m still thinking about that skirt after a few days of seeing it for the first time, then I will buy it. Similarly, if these thoughts about pursuing and holding onto youth, making use out of it in a way that deems to be the most youthful, the happiest, and the most satisfying persist after a few weeks (in this more serious case), then I’ll pack my bags and run and hide and giggle and live happily and no one will be able to tell me otherwise. What do you think? 

Why not question reality, actually?

The most vivid memories one has are usually remembered because they are the most vital experiences engorged with the “realest” feelings. However, memories fade with time—rotten, in fact, over time if not relived. Sometimes these blurred memories may even allow the thinker to doubt, if skeptical enough, the realness of these memories, moreover, the activities engaged in the memories. How can one persist to feel real about the memories when they become so abstract and dreamlike, which consequently brings in the following question of, how shall one remain faithful to these feelings and experiences that once felt real, in the forsaken form of decayed memories? 

What is the reason not to be so skeptical of the epistemology of the events that our memories carry? You could be dreaming this very moment and you wouldn’t even be able to know it. Something can easily be remembered as realistic events when it has never happened, and episodes of reality often occur without one’s awareness, thought-process, thus not to even expect it to make its way to the hippocampus. Reality happens in our everyday’s business and when we are asleep... or does it? Until time machine is invented, how is one able to prove the happening of something, realistically? You just can’t. 

Amnesia is a real thing. People lose memories; sometimes of proximal knowledge, sometimes—eventually for some—everything. Names, identities, moments, achievements, knowledge, meanings... How are those surrounding the forgetters supposed to define what’s real? What is real to the forgetters, then? Because for all they know, the achievements and families that they are informed to have built certainly don’t exist. “Nope, never even heard of it.”

So why is philosophy of epistemology regarded as silly and pointless by some people? Have they not once felt real and more sure than ever about something and then losing that grip of sureness? Does it actually mean anything to be certain about something? Maybe, at the moment. When people make vows, promises, oaths, and all these words to describe the gesture of guaranteeing something, either about the past or the future, they still swear by the moment. Forever perhaps only lives in the moment, when the very word is said, or when one is completely and entirely sure about what they are feeling—when they are feeling the realest feelings.  

Space

Space — liminal, imaginary, abandoned, abstract, locative, in-between, nominal, temporal...

Where do you want to be at this very moment? 

I want to go back to that morning when we stepped outside of the electro club at 8 30 in the morning. My hearing, as if shifted gear, as if I changed the radio station, was like separated from the sound of the open-air by something... maybe something like a pair of headphones, or a piece of plastic, that I could almost hear the sound of the space — the space on the streets of Berlin on a spring morning. 

I was not sure if I felt tired, though we stayed up the entire night dancing. I actually don’t remember the dancing part, specifically, but the memory of my self physically being there is clear in my mind. 

We walked in silence, and I pointed out that we were walking in silence, then you said, “it’s like what they say in that movie: that’s when you truly feel comfortable.”

Yes, “when you can just shut the fuck up and enjoy the silence together.”

Whenever I am up early in the morning and am in good company, I always feel like I have entire freedom to do whatever the hell I want, for the rest of the day. That feeling is so incredibly exciting and has so much anticipation to it. It’s like you have all the time in the world. 

I also want to linger in that moment when I imprinted the images into my memory. Images of you sitting in the train, looking out and in thoughts; or when you met me at the train station with your headphones on. You saw me and you smiled. 

I want to be in my small dormitory room again, not in the state when I moved out — blank, just blank — but when photographs of my friends are on the wall, my papers all over the table, light dimly lit, pile of clothes on the chair, bed undone. I would lean out the open window, and light a cigarette. I remember the time when I thought I was exhaling bits of my soul out the window along with the smoke into blue-blackness, because I thought the concept of love was completely and finally crushed for me. It was done. It was over; no more loving and I couldn’t physically imagine being so weak again. There was no more of me to afford. 

But where am I at the moment? 

I am in so many different places. So many. Every hour I feel like I am in at least two different types of space simultaneously. I am walking around in a multicultural city with a so-called “hybrid” identity, where there is a front of interstices, but it is just a front. So much energy poured out into fronting in this country.

I am in silence at home when words should be exchanged, but they just cannot be uttered out. There is just nothing to say, or is there? My mother said, “sometimes it just feels so pathetic eh? There’s nothing to say to each other in the family.” 

I am taking bits of my time out to live the past in the present. 

I am, however, also in a place where I am constantly looking for change. I don’t want changes to stop occurring, otherwise I’d feel stale. 

I am busy, but I don’t seem to be working all the time. I have no time, but I do. 

People often say, oh how I wish to be two places at a time right now. They probably are, just don’t realize how damn confusing it is. 

Hemingway

Cannot resist the impulsion to wanting to share this with you, because it made my heart throb.

From A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway:

"A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin...

...I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wish I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

...I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
   Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor oder any more rum St James. I was tired of rum St James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she's gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

...After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."

The Moments

The Enlightenment, the revolutions, the Modern era, the Jazz Age... like Kazuo Ishiguro writes in his novel The Remains of the Day, enormous changes and turning points as such do not arrive in the public realm of media and acknowledgement as they are—the changes that take place are more so as the conclusions and results of numerous discussions and exchanges of intellectual thoughts that happen in different small corners of the world, where one may not even expect to host the key moments to the growing and developing of grand ideas, and perhaps even to the betterment of humanity.
This makes my every day life and some small movements just that much more exciting.

Have you ever had one of those moments, take a vague example, when you venture to write an email to the staff of an institute requiring questions of what are the possibilities and opportunities that you may entail, either out of an impulse or after nights of thinking and “life” decision-making in the shower (you should try that), and you feel this rush of exhilaration of ambition, happiness, hopes, and basically adrenaline through your body to your mind, and you think: “this is it.” That could be just it—one of the moments, and let me emphasize again, THE moment, that brings you onto the path which leads you to somewhere you may have been dreaming to be, or which actually pushes your own limits which you thought were the most you could do with the underestimated ability and courage that you have, or more so, had, since now you have overcome your underestimation of yourself and successfully “exceeded” yourself. No matter where the path takes you, which may not be the destination where you want to be exactly, but it is certainly on the way there, and many steps away from where you started.
Recently I came across one of Bruce Lee’s inspirational philosophies: “Running water never grows stale. So you just have to keep on flowing.”
I am so blessed to have encountered those opportunities that I took, which are now opening more and more doors to new possibilities. Be the running water, and keep flowing. Like the saying, “The only thing that is constant in the world is change.” Only constant changes will bring you to continuously expand your world and maintain the energy that we all once have. Push and pull to constantly make “the moments” happen. Motivation is not something that is possible of staying by our side at all times, but it is surely something that if we keep flowing, we will come across it and emerge into one great magnificent energy without even knowing.
Roller coasters have ups, downs, and loops. WIthout any one of them, especially the downs, the ups will not be as fun, the loops would not even exist.

Rehab (A Secret Confession Of A Cynic)

Tonight, my fear was that the memories of how it felt—every sensation: the hearing and the speaking to every exchanged word, the sights of your features, fingers running through the hair—fading away over time.
The certainty, as convinced as ever—in fact, as I have never been before—becoming unfamiliar.
The chemistry, although inexplainable, turning into nothing but part of the past, part of the temporary, part of the non-existence in the future.

You want to know the key? The key is timing. Everything depends on timing.
Time is our friend, who fixes everything. It is great company, but everybody for himself, time is just another tool of fate, of Plans.
What if this is the chance and we missed it? What if, in the future, we have regrets because by then there is nothing we can do about it. That is the worst position to be in, a situation where there is nothing you can do about it.

What if we were the lucky ones this time? No? Are grand romantic beliefs so much rejected and frowned upon as to no exceptions allowed at all?
Can one stay hopeful and believe one-sided without looking, or being, a fool, but to be genuinely admired, or even to be rewarded?

The act of falling for someone, when not responded to, will gradually and eventually (also hopefully) change to helplessly and inevitably the needly mandatory act of getting back up; an image of falling on your knees, then with effort standing back up on your feet.
Usually, I feel hopeful for this “recovery”, but at this moment although it has not occurred yet, I fear it. For the reason that I simply want to believe and don’t want to forget.

Suddenly, I don't want to think.

Don’t you sometimes just want to let time go by without a sense of guilt or resentment? It is real guilty pleasure.

Get cozy on your couch (I would not suggest going to your bed because then you are just bound to fall asleep), wrap yourself in a blanket, put some soft music on, and drink a cup of... whatever you like.
Read, write, do whatever you like in the meanwhile, or not do anything. Comme tu veux. The Italians have a term for this, they call it “dolce far niente”: the art of doing nothing. Nothingness is often regarded as empty, miserable, and lonely. Somehow though, at this moment, it’s very comforting to me.
Sometimes you got to lose sight of what you’ve been fixing your focus on, just to breathe and reboot. We, humans, have this mad tendency of making something out of nothing—to make a meaning out of everything just for the sake of having something that gives us a sense of ground—putting so much effort into making things count while knowing that at the end, nothing really counts. We come to the world naked and we will leave with nothing with us. That being said, the nothingness is in a very physical sense. Contribution to the world or to one’s soul is obviously important, such as learning and experiencing, then giving back to the society, to the world. We spend lots of time doing things, but not enough on thinking why we do things. No, we indeed think a lot of why we do things. Perhaps the truth is then, we do not spend enough time to figure out solid answers as to why.
“I actually really like this photo, it’s really relaxing for some reason. Not like I want to smoke and relax like him, but when you look at the photo, it just makes you think, ‘why do you have to worry about that?’ you know?” said my German friend, talking about a poster on his wall. It is of an album cover of the band Arctic Monkeys’, whose lyrics give an impression of as if the band members simply sit down and observe what goes on around them. Berlin here is my friend’s home, a city full of life. Him being a mathematics major once told me his biggest fear of becoming literally insane because all he does is maths. “I’m actually afraid that I will go crazy one day” said he. While he was pausing for a second from his studies and staring out the window, his back profile reminded me of our conversation of his fear of going crazy. It also projected to me a perspective of the “another way of thinking” that he mentioned about what requires one to do maths. Merely the picture of his back profile seems to have brought me to another world for a blink of an eye. How nice it is to be swept off the ground like that and be taken to another level of consciousness, another stage of knowledge where I get inspired through grasping an observation of others, while they have no specific intention in their action. What do I know after all? At moments like these, it feels as if making observations as such then being thrown into another dimension of thoughts, and as if nothingness—doing, chasing after, and worrying about nothing for just mere moments—are sufficient for my knowledge.
Why not pause, if affordable, a day or such to turn off your thoughts and take a break from running after whatever you are running after. You need it. Plus, you will appreciate it. Afterwards you might find that after all you do not give two shits about it, or you might see why it means so much to you.

Confession of a Cynic

Last night, I was so sad because I realized how much of a cynic I have become.

Why do I want to vomit when I hear my friend struggling through poor reception to talk on the phone with her boyfriend, saying “Honey? Can you hear me, honey” repeatedly?
Why is it so striking that she would tell me (someone other than her boyfriend himself) how much she misses him when he is only gone for a few weeks?
Why do I say things like “that is such bullshit” when he tells her that it doesn’t matter what she wears out tonight because she looks beautiful anyway? (By the way, she gets offended and I have to tell her, “don’t listen to anything that I say when you know I’m the one who doesn’t believe in anything.”)
When I see her parents, a pair obviously still very much (and probably forever will be) in love, why does it raise so many doubtful thoughts in my head, put me in so much awe and surprise? Not to mention how difficult it is for me to imagine being their children, who have the privilege of witnessing them being so close after many years of being with each other, everyday. My friend once told me: “I have never seen my parents, for once, not show respect or not pay attention to each other.”

I was lying in bed next to my friend. We were going to sleep.
“You know you still have your glasses on, right?” she says to me.
“Yeah, I know.”

And, why can’t I stand love songs anymore?

“No... it’s okay, just go have fun.” she calls her boyfriend again, “I’m going to sleep, baby. Just wanted to say good night.” Then, I further realized, I don’t have the urge or desire of a girlfriend’s to either do or receive the gesture of “just called to say ‘I love you’ or ‘good night’”, nor do I need to “just hear your voice”.
I felt like I physically lost something. Something that I’m not sure how, if ever, I will gain back.

I was lying there, shocked from this realization, as if I was looking into the mirror and seeing myself in the reflection for the first time in ten years; as if a medical professional came over and told me that I had cancer.
I continued to lie there, with my glasses on, looking into the darkness before me for a while longer—thinking, reflecting.

Is this normal? How long does it usually take cynics to realize how severe they have fallen to be, if at all?
How do I live otherwise, when I find the acts of reliance and affection so appalling and dangerous?
Is it curable? Can I die alone from this?