"What if I Died Today?"

What if I died today? 

Would you wake

From our silence, 

Call out my name

Again and 

Again?

What if I died today? 

Would it mean to you

An endless romance or

Just an 

Abrupt end to something

That could have meant 

Nothing? 

What if I died today? 

What if

I died today? 

Would you say 

Aloud you regret? 

Regret 

That we let

Sadness just form itself

Into reality, 

That we let such

A beautiful thing

Slip,

Creep,

Breathe away. 

What if I died today?

How many seconds would

Tears fill my mother’s 

Eyes? How many questions would

Be, but not asked, and

How much void would be filled

With fragments of memory? 

And if I died today, 

How many days would it be

Until you genuinely and 

Completely

Forget 

About me?

"Being" I & II

“Being I: Body”

Body is free 

From company,

Street air, 

Strangers,

Non-strangers.

Mind is free

Again to think about you. 

Separate now

From everyday’s 

Company

And routine

And things to do

And nothing to do

And him

And her

And what else

Then I realized,

my desire is dark

And somehow hollow,

Somehow desperate,

Somehow constantly 

Missing the past. 

“Being II: Soul”

Where does it belong,

This heavy soul without

Mass?

The body is barely 

Dragging it around. 

The body is 

Not merely a carrier of

This massive, loud,

Wild,

Intolerably wishful,

Spoiled soul. 

But a mind of its own? 

What else

"Sleepless Frankness"

At dawn,

Impeccably forlorn,

I

Was alone.

My fears,

My longings

Reappeared.

So clear—

My sleepless soul 

Had dawn woken. 

Unintentionally,

My mind was captive—

Brutally—

Frank and awoken. 

“Einmal ist keinmal” 

Everything is so far away. 

The internet wouldn’t load;

I clicked on your face,

Only blankness floats. 

Warm forehead,

Faint, pained, 

The question wouldn’t go. 

The overwhelming city doesn’t hold. 

The faithful lover wants to grow old

With me

Me, who yearns 

And churns 

For cursed

Timing; thirsts

For heart-wrenching,

Consciousness-stopping 

Lyrics, for

Folded pages

Similar feelings

Touching

Remembering

Not understanding.

Let's get married, here and now.

New article on This Is Vancity: "Pop-Up Wedding Project: Transforming the Traditional for the Modern" 

Sunset

The prettiest colour is the colour of the water, meaning the colour of the sky. In my opinion. 

Ever since I started working at a restaurant locating in the part of the city that showcases the sunset for, so it claims, the longest time, I have begun to constantly hear the importance of sitting at a table with a view of the sunset, especially now that it’s summer, and sunsets have become a thing—not all of a sudden, as sunsets have always been to my knowledge a precious thing, but it has taken up a new level of importance recently. 

I dropped by one of my favourite spots in the city today, right before the sun set, alone. It’s a viewpoint separated from a highway. I looked at the water—the gradual, peaceful waves, the logs in between them, spaciously spaced. The colours of the water and the sky and the clouds and the rays of sun blent in all together. It reminded me of watercolour. I thought about sunsets; although I couldn’t see it in the view, but I could feel it about to happen on the other side of the ocean and I could almost feel it. Sunsets happen every day; the sun rises and sets every day. I would even venture to say that its beauty and, ironically, rarity deserve everyone’s attention every day. So why has it been dumbed down to a thing that has been made special, that is to be watched on special occasions? The sun sets every day. The sun is probably like, buddy, I do this every day, and you’re requesting a table on the patio where you can get the best view of it, on your wife’s birthday, because it makes it that much more special? What are we so busy doing every day that we can blatantly and entirely forget, every day, around the same time, that the sun is setting somewhere where we can get an amazing view of without too much of an effort because we live in this world and the sun is so big that its heat and light have the ability to reach the majority of the planet, meaning that it is always visible somewhere that is realistically accessible. 

What are we so busy doing?

Then I thought about more, and I thought about so many wonderful things that take place every day amongst the nature that we are physically in. How much am I missing? How much have I missed? 

We really don’t live every day like it is the last day, as we often say we should. Some would say, let’s be real. I would say, no, yeah, let’s be real: the truth is that the sun sets every day, the ocean is there every day, the mountains are there every day, the trees are breathing every moment—what can be more real than that? 

What I Stopped Doing

What I stopped doing:

Writing sentimental cards or letters 

Being sentimental

Talking on the phone every night 

Heart wrench upon hearing certain names 

Receiving or writing emails to my dad 

Creating happiness for my mom

Posting pictures on Facebook

Trying as hard to hold up a conversation

I used to feel so much when I was younger, as a child, as a teenager...

I am not certain whether it’s a form of desensitization or not, because I don’t think desensitization is all it is, but this excerpt from the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close seems to capture how I feel about sentimentality slipping away from me year after year just enough: 

“Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did.

I spent my life learning to feel less. 

Every day I felt less. 

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 

It is so sad. What are we capable of doing that we do not know? This is one of them. Autonomic adaptation to life.

Everything was always so easily hilarious and moving and heartbreaking and unusually miraculous or devastating, but everything seems to become less of everything as the years add up. I used to cry whenever we had the moment of silence in memory of those who passed away from 9/11 in elementary and even high school. Now I can’t even cry if I want to. But sometimes, like reading stories about the little boy who was waiting for his dad at the finish line of the marathon got blown to pieces from the Boston bombing, tears just burst out of me two days after reading about it when someone asked me if I were okay. 

It is so deep. Writing sentimental and cringingly cheesy birthday or thank-you cards was my priority and strength in every occasion worth celebrating. I’ve always been a thinker. Everyone was always like, “you think too much.” Then I think I’ve thought less, not voluntarily, it just happened. Not that I’m not a thinker anymore, but I guess eventually I lost track of where the lost thoughts go and what it all means—to others, to myself, and to anything else—so, I jumped on the bandwagon of “don’t think too much about it”. 

Another birthday is approaching. Having less heart-wrenching and passionate emotions, genuinely cannot care more than what I can emotionally and financially afford, and having less energy and motivation to put, not even glue, the broken pieces together—is this growing older? Is this what is coming out of it? 

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live” 

Having just been to my younger brother’s high school graduation and revisiting students’ speech that always repeat every year one way or another, with lines like “ready to take on this crazy thing called ‘life’,” or “life is a game, you just need to know how to play it.” All the while, I was having briefly argumentative and almost condescending thoughts like “no!” and “it’s not true, it’s a trap!”. What it’s like to be naive and hopeful at the same time. 

At the moment, it feels like life is lifting up its veil bit by bit, and I’m hoping there is an end to this lessening of my self and that, there is much more to heartbreaking words put together in books that make me cry and struggling eternally out of an emotional hole. 

What I started doing:

Saving (more than just money) 

Not be too caught up in moods, they really are overrated 

Feeling less sad about sad things

Learning

Accepting changes

Making the first step (e.g. get out of bed, begin typing up an outline, send/reply an email etc.) 

Taking a life to learn how to live would be a waste of a life. No one knows how to live, but we just do, but I guess that is only existing. I don’t want to just exist for a life and learn how to live by the end of it, so I will try harder. 

Vancouver's New Bestie: Currywurst in Chinatown

Recent article on This Is Vancity on the new currywurst joint that opened this month:

http://thisisvancity.com/content/bestie-currywurst-chinatown

I’m Waiting for Nothing to End, for Now.

What if we never see each other again? 

At the parting times, desperation, sadness, spontaneous and overwhelming emotions of all kinds take over, and for those moments we can only focus on the fact that we’re saying and acting on goodbye. Time passes, though. Later on, later on, the question asked above takes on a new face: aside from whether a reunion is likely or unlikely to happen, it doesn’t really matter if we do see each other again or not. Separate lives in different places—each and every person is too occupied and invested with the now to truly make a way—make a way for reunions or forever to happen. What about all those feelings of not being able to live without one another, and what happened to trying, and why was there a meaning to brood over having to part from each other in the first place? Do we just enjoy being melodramatic on the stage of life, where scenes of parting are a nature and, in my opinion, too recurring? The passing—coming and going—of emotions; we are all brilliant actors for nailing those parting moments with tears and breaking hearts, and thereafter allowing life to go on, because life does go on and the story between you and me seems to play out to be just another scene in a movie. Memorable, but somehow we just cannot break our “big plans” and not put an end to something that we consider wonderful, because more and better adventures are always to come. Things can always be better, so when are we going to be satisfied and make a choice?

“I know that people say 'life goes on,' and it does, but nobody ever tells you that it's not a good thing. Why is that?" 

Because hope remains the last thing in Pandora’s box. We have hope for the future—the “bigger” plans. But we often forget the initial paradox of hope being an object amongst all in Pandora’s box, which is supposed to carry all the bad things in life. 

I don’t want to focus on the present and only enjoy the now. I want to continue this and wait for it to never end. Now just let me be melodramatic and contentious, and feel again in a couple of days that although I’ve said goodbye too many times, it might not be a good thing, but it will still be okay. 

This Is Vancity: on Hawker's Market

Another article, published before Tangoo. Check it out.

Hawker's Market: Bringing International to the Table

New article on This Is Vancity: Tangoo

Tangoo: A Re-Imagination of the Familiar

Sons of Granville: Vancouver's Musical Flesh and Blood

Have you met Sons of Granville? Check out my new contributing article on This Is Vancity.

http://thisisvancity.com/content/sons-of-granville-vancouver-buskers

Full-timers vs. Part-timers

                                                                  ☐ Full-time                   ☐ Part-time 

Whenever I come across these two checkboxes in a job application, somehow the full-time checkbox is never an option. It’s almost like I have this voice in my head, once my brain recognizes that that says “full-time”, it immediately says “no way”. I’m even going to venture to say that sometimes I feel a sort of fear seeping up within me merely by seeing the word “full-time” being a choice as I come face-to-face with having to tick in one checkbox, which is hardly a dilemma. 

I know what you are thinking: you’ve never worked or even considered a full-time job? And you must be thinking that in the most (be honest now) condescending way. 

Even if I were to tell you to consider that I am finishing my bachelor degree within four years, I, myself, am not even convinced that to be the reason why a full-time job hasn’t been an option to me practically or psychologically. 

Having given out a few résumés recently in search of a part-time job that is not related to my studies in particular, but a more or less mindless job, the process of job application really got me reflecting on the emphasis of temporality I place in these potential jobs; not only are they part-time, but when I really think about it, if I were to get hired at one of these places I applied to, I don’t have any long-term plans with this part-time job, nor will I ever. When I see photos of cubicles and a working space in the offices where some acquaintances are currently working full-time (presumably) on Facebook, with captions like “Monday blues”, or “survived the first day of work!”, the first thing that comes to my mind is something along the lines of “a full-time job in that cubicle, for how long?”. Then at some point, I got to think about myself and my future career (and all that), because work is work, I will eventually be bound to settle at a job, a full-time job, which I will wish (or feel the obligation) to maintain for as long as I can. Now, why is this such a repulsive realization? 

There was one day when my friend and I were having a coffee during our stay in Heidelberg, Germany, and we got talking about “full-timers”. At that time, being on the verge of turning twenty-one, we were joking about how we were definitely full-timers when it came to partying (I know, forgive me), and we joked about some friends who were absolutely only “part-timers” in the same regard. It really is funny, almost in a bittersweet way upon thinking about this bit of memory from my travels, because I realize I’m definitely not a full-timer in so many aspects of my life. Potential relationships, now I would call it “just hanging out”; jobs, sprawled and part-time; prospective city to live in, most likely won’t be staying there for more than two years. Is it genuinely merely the fact that I believe in change being the only constant, and I would henceforth participate in merging the ideal of “flowing water never stales” with my lifestyle, or is there a part of me, to put it most simply, that is not willing to settle (for something, for anything)? Is this some kind of commitment issue, you reckon? People say “20’s are your selfish years”, though there is a distinction between being selfish and being a free child who is ultimately afraid of settlement, stasis, and either possess a fear or a disbelief of the notion of forever. 

Simultaneously, are we to be called selfish because we truly do not want, or unadmittedly, are simply afraid to invest our precious time, energy, and faith in one job, one relationship, one address, where anything can go wrong, because things tend to rot over time and familiarity? Or purely because we wish to experience everything else we do not have already? Assurance and certainty are nice things, to a certain extent only if they are predictable. Unfortunately, settlement involves risks; risks that involve possibly taking a toll on our emotions. Risks like guaranteeing time and space that we have no control over, feeling the obligation to have a “home” because that’s what everybody else does. Furthermore, there are always more than only one path that we have a choice over. When you take one path, which if is slightly less than what you desire, then you cannot help but wonder the what-if’s: what if you took the other path? It is most correct to think that there is no such thing as a right or wrong decision, but it is how one deals with it afterwards. After all, though, can you truly say that you don’t think about the other possibilities? And, what is so wrong with thinking about what more you can have, and achieve? Why settle for anything less because of the time being, or of moments that only last for the moment? 

Real Noises from BECKstravaganza

Check out my contributing article for This Is Vancity on a local performance of Beck's new album, Song Reader:

http://thisisvancity.com/content/real-noises-beckstravaganza-vancouver

Presencing

I want to write. That’s what I’ve been thinking about all day today. So I will do that now.

I didn’t have a topic particularly in mind that I wanted to write about, but I know I want to write, so surely. What does that mean? 

Logically, perhaps I’m just trying to make real an act I have, in my head; an act that will result in a product, that is not necessarily tangible (how much of our interaction nowadays is in fact tangible, anyway?), but definitely something that is perceivable. Something solid in an abstract sense. 

That, is my idea of presencing. Making something present.  

I recently learned about the Miltonian belief of the soul and body being one from doing some close reading of Paradise Lost — the inseparableness between physicality and spirituality. To Milton, there is something very physical about the spirit and the soul; similarly, tangibility in everything around and of us is indeed very much integrated in our mind, in our spirituality. This oneness and this sense of unanimity intrigues, because it is so interrelated with what we do diurnally. 

Think: when you’re simply walking down a street. The motion of your feet in your shoes stepping carelessly over whatever is on the ground. Every blink of an eye, a slightly different frame of picture per millisecond. Turn around, and the view of what is behind you was where you were perhaps just a minute ago. If you are really thinking about this, and apply the same concept to another mundane scenario, how strange and mind-blowing is the concept of presence? It is absolutely not absolute. Presence in fact takes on an extremely inconstant place in reality. How are we ever 100% present? 

Human beings are naturally moving subjects. The ability and intellect that allow us to do all sorts of interactions with each other prove that we are not meant to be habitual to one single space throughout our lifetime; we are beings in motion. Naturally, though, we also attach to our surroundings so easily. Sickly, powerlessly easily. What do we do then? We try to live in the moment and be present. We came up with measures like time, attention levels, grades in exams, and ideas like commitments. Things that will merge our wandering selves and minds with something unmoving and lifeless. In turn, these mixtures become meaningful to us, because now we have attached a sense of significance to them, and they somehow rightfully reflect our presence. We essentially frame our presence into a stable; a concept tainted with a sense of restrain (from–either the mind or the body—being elsewhere) and self-control. However, presence is a fragile thing. Presence exists in the second, the moment—the space in time that cannot be captured nor measured. Presence represents a form of attempt in merging the spirituality and physicality of oneself, including the space one is in, together. 

Absence, in contrast, carries far more concreteness than presence. 

When something is missing, or simply not there, the actual absence, the outline of the person, object, feeling...whatever it may be, and the emptiness derived from it appears to be much more apparent and present than the memory of him, of her, of it physically being there. 

It entertains to think that we are constantly creating something, even our own presence. Presence can only be treated, realistically, in a very abstract sense. Meaning, you may probably never have my full attention, nor may I have yours. 

Now, consider this simple example of another way presence presents itself: having a meal in a group. We are capturing a sense of space and making a time that has the potential to be memorable together as individuals. The process of sharing captures it. We make present a sense of presence of a group, in which there is interaction, and of space and time. The presence of the meal, the people, and the particular time of the day is framed into one in the moving world. Isn’t this a magnificent thought?