the art of letting go

being a grown up
the super ego prevails
heartbreak of the id

Two lefts don't make a right

I don't believe in the one, the right person.

But there are people who are more mature and ready for a relationship; the person who doesn't always have to be right, or in the right, but validates your feelings equally alongside his.

You're in a tricky situation when you are with someone who thinks they are in the right; they are justified. In doing so, they invalidate your feelings. Ie in their head, your emotions are irrational. You are in the wrong.

The person who always wants to do the right thing often ends up inadvertently doing damage. They doesn't see the grey. They bottle up negativity and hide weakness. For underneath the guise of loving words and long-suffering silence, barbs of self-righteous contempt for you cut more slickly than overt argument.

You could both do the same; both think you're in the right; sweep frustration under the carpet. Or you could end up playing the weak, irrational tyrannic who can only do wrong; a narrative written by their desperate need to do right.

Saudade

I wouldn’t;
but the coincidence of dates and glimpses
dislodge the scrapbook box of
memories
scattered
seeing the pieces of you
hearing
the pieces of us
as one snap shot
topples deck after deck -

watch us listen
to the cinematic
orchestra to
build a home in
our dialogue of paired response in
laughing at who's line is it anyway, or in
watching movies
wrapped up warm in the blankets of each other arms
in the cinema
in the opera house
in the bed
I; snuggled under the tent of your yellow T-shirt of a big bird in a small cage
you; too snug in a pair of green checkered shorts

haunted now these
spaces these
places these
windows these
views these
pictures
of a startled naked man with a fat cat
of a tiny ship in a massive storm
of cleats soaked through with your dried sweat
of a broken shower head with a water fount for two
of a little red Subaru holding hands between gear shifts as we feel the engine purr
of our Field of Giggles - I giggled whilst you dribbled and we played bunnyhop football
of a pair of badminton racket covers by a Bruce Lee statue
of a backpack of apples 'cause we filled it till we spilled it.

Out of the woodwork they came; I was numb
yet surprised to find
that the pieces of a mending wall
were made to be re-broken
and sadomasochistic vindication
by their penetration.

Nothing remains of us now
but fading sepia
and the elegiac -algia of knowing
there is nothing left -
but the time I lose
as I pick up
haphazard
higgledy piggledy
the memories amassed
a mess of them
hastily - oh that I could throw them out!
as time runs on
leaving me




momentarily
scattered.

On Relationships

The key to a healthy, adult relationship is being able to accept each other. To see someone for who they are. To understand the strength and reason behind what appears to be weakness in the eyes of many others. This is foundation of selflessly respecting and loving someone.

Ironically, one of the keys to being selfless is to recognise your own needs, so you can work out how they fit in the context of the partnership. It involves learning your own boundaries, personal space, and limitations.

It seems like a paradox that in order for healthy attachment and dependence on each other, one must first learn independence. But in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."

Perhaps it is for this reason that I am so mistrustful of praise in courtship. In a subtle way, flattery is holding a mirror to someone else and saying, you are amazing, and I noticed it, therefore I am amazing. Being absorbed by the admiration of the chosen other can amount to narcissistic navel gazing.

Although it feels good, this ends up being very damaging, because you then expect that person to live up to a perfection that does not exist. At the end of the day, this is mere infatuation.

Put in other words, it is easy to see a loved one as an extension of self. The person who completes you. Praise and flattery is the stepping stone to developing an idealised perception of how someone ought to be. But it is simply not right to project that perception on that person. If you do, you end up feeling frustrated by their weaknesses and inequities, because you see them as a reflection on yourself, and resent it.

But in the right context, it can also be encouraging, confidence-building and inspiring. The Pygmalion effect, as it were, to live up to someone else's belief in you. Alain de Botton puts it beautifully in his book, Essays on Love:

"Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are. Our selves could be compared to an amoeba, whose outer walls are elastic, and therefore adapt to the environment. It is not that the amoeba has no dimensions, simply that it has no self-defined shape. It is my absurdist side that an absurdist person will draw out of me, and my seriousness that a serious person will evoke. If someone thinks I am shy, I will probably end up shy, if someone thinks me funny, I am likely to keep cracking jokes."

In this modern age, marriage often ends in divorce. But divorce is a paradox. Marriage is simply a lifelong agreement to prioritise each others' needs, and do our best to fulfil them above all other personal agendas in life. Divorce says, I put my own agenda first. My agenda to have another love interest, or to prioritise my career. Simply put, it is self-defeating selfishness. It denigrates the sanctity and trust which everyone should accord to their word. It denotes a lack of self-respect, as self-respect gives way to self-interest. For it is admitting that I break my vow. I contradict myself. My words are meaningless.

We will likely fail miserably many times during a lifelong commitment to be patient, to be kind, to be understanding. Marriage will not always be happy. For better or for worse, after all. But it is through the imperfect process of attachment, and learning, and constantly recommitting to loving one person for your entire life, that you truly, madly, deeply learn to love, and learn to love everyone else better for it.

breath/life/willy nilly

breathe in to inhale

quince scent in the unwashed sheets 

wrinkled of you still

an empty bed is

harder than your shoes to fill

an empty heart, harder still

breathe out to compose

and create composure still

rememb’ring not love

broken composure

lost in the passage of time

not love, but self will

Good with words

I love listening. I used to think that listening was more important than talking, that I talked to get people in a position so I could listen to them. With a certain kind of arrogance, I used to think that being good with words is knowing when silence, when listening, is more important than what you have to say. Being good with words, is looking through the unique turns of phrase or accents that each person has, and being able to understand what they are saying, and empathise with what they actually mean.

With time, I realised that the obvious was true: being good with language wasn't just about listening, but about talking. I wished I had a more engaging charisma, a more appealing timbre and accent - to be the kind of person who actually could engage people with my insightful words of comfort, or witty repartee, or dramatic tales, or effortless small talk. Instead, I'm the kind of awkward that can't even finish the punchline to my own joke before cracking up.

I realise now that being good with language just isn't about having the widest vocabulary or the most lyrical turn of phrase. It isn't about having an appealing vocal timbre, or enunciating all your ending consonants. Being good with words is knowing what to say in love, just as the good book says (1 Cor 13:1). Being good with words is knowing what to say to make someone else understanding you, to get on board with you. You might not have to use big words or fancy high-falutin' phrases, and in fact you most probably won't have to. What you do need to do is know the other person well enough. You need to know what words to say to so they understand, not your words, but your meaning.

With time, and as it turns out, with almost with no bearing on language at all, I realise that in the best relationships, being understood is just as valuable, and important as understanding. Yet with sadness, I realise that may never exist.

the undergraduate

a poem for two

for memories' sake inhale

sweet quince and milk chocolate 

roughly, stubbled cheek on mine

the nighttime effervesces 

an aged, brittle me-ss morphs into you-ngness

a fearful asymmetry
burning bright 

it heats the night

a fine balance

to enwrap ourselves as one

only with one eye on the door

one ear on the driveway 

adrenalin pumping 

surreptitiousness 

into pleasure - 

making
half-smiles

and muffled noises

redouble 

inward esctasy.

I was young once

you are young now 

is what my hands tell me

they go places long forgotten 

have I never loved before?

they never knew my hands before

they just needed feather dustin'

faded jeans and young hands

loosen old knots and loosed love

while time ticks on

embers die off

leaving the unbearable cold deadweight of duty

a whiff of quince and 

the scent of Cacharel

has a hot headiness of its own

to be enjoyed
only with another eye on the door

another ear on the driveway

adrenalin pumping 

blood rushing

into pleasure - 

making
half-smiles

and muffled noises

redouble

unforgotten

Bite the dust

The ghosts of him haunt every corner -
her wistful longing hunger
knawing through,
attempting to ignore this still -
they drift past, they pass through
she feels the icy chill; she trudges
on as the frost sets in on branches while
higher still, the infernal sun drenches
the world with vibrant ultraviolet oncogenic colours,
its tearing heat
welling up
torrid and torrential raining sun
sweltering down,
it does not warm
her beading brow,
or light her shaded eyes. Still
she cracks her pained face into a painted smile,
a paragon of politesse,
she remarks on the weather, and continues
her marathon through ice and fire,
as the ghosts of him around her loiter.

Words unsaid

We want to say 'I forgive you'.  We want to say 'I understand'.  We want to say 'I know you've been through a lot, and I get that'.  We want to say 'I'm sorry'.  We want to say those three words.

But these words rise up inside of us and get caught at the back of the throat, like a fishbone that refuses to be coughed up or swallowed down.  Instead we say something easier, hoping that by the slightest of changes in attitude, like by being slightly nicer to someone, or by sharing our problems with a third party, somehow, the other person will know how we feel.

People say that it's pride that gets in the way.  But sometimes it's just the awkwardness of saying something as if out of the blue.  It's the fear that in expressing a sentiment, you might find yourself unable to follow through.  It's having experienced something together, but not knowing how to deal.  It's seeing the person, and not knowing what to do.

Love like a double-edged sword.

'There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love and then you don't have it? What if you like it and lean on it? What if you shape your life around it and then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is death ends. This? It could go on forever.' 

- Meredith, Grey's Anatomy Season 7 Ep 22

Constantly torn between the romanticism of love and the reality of it.  One minute, one day, one moment in time, you're filled with the possibility of love.  The next, reality hits you in the face and you realise its impossibility.

So I face reality, and I realise that as much as I make out of my friendships, there is a gap between my ideal of friendship, and the reality of what kind of friend I can be.  We're supposed to feel, then think, then act accordingly.  But there's a gap.  A gap I wish I could fold like a piece of paper to make two ends meet, but I can't.  

Then, there's the gap between what I make out of the friendship, and what my friend makes out of the friendship.  We all have different ideas of intimacy.  There's always an imbalance somehow.  And as much as I'd like to bridge the distance that exists between one person and another, there's a gap.  A gap I wish I could fold like a piece of paper to make two friends meet, but I can't.  I'd rather not break the ice if we both get caught on the shards.

Meredith: We are not better! [pause] Cristina, a psychiatrist given several opportunities has deemed me unfit to do my job.

Cristina: Well he'll get over it, just go back in a couple of days.

Meredith: You are not better!

Cristina: Well, in a couple of days I'll be better too.

Meredith: In a couple of days you'll be married.

Cristina: Are you trying to talk me out of this?

Meredith: Look at me and tell me you're sure.

Cristina: Okay, you know what? You don't get to do this. All you get to do, is help me break the tie between the lilies of the valley and the peonies. That's it.

Meredith: No, I do get to do this. Derek is the love of my life, but you're my soulmate. I do get to do this. I mean, why can't it wait six months? Your flowers aren't going anywhere! You broke up with him because he couldn't choose you. Just why does it have to be right now?

Cristina: I think, I think you should tell Derek about the miscarriage.

Meredith: We are talking about you.

Cristina: We are talking about us not being better? Then you need to tell him.

Meredith: He's not ready. He's not okay.

Cristina: You're not okay! You should tell him!

---

Cristina: I never gave you any crap about your post-it.

Meredith: You look beautiful.

Cristina: I know. How's Owen? Is he good?

Meredith: Owen's perfect. He's perfect.

Cristina: Thank you.

- Grey's Anatomy Season 7, Ep 1

If only life was the way they portray it on television.  To have the soulmate, the friend who sticks closer than a brother (Pv 18:24).  To have the kind of friend you can crawl into bed with at the end of the day, and be welcome, even when they're married.  To have sentiments toward each other that are equally reciprocated.  But reality is that such friendships don't exist beyond the silver screen.

And if I already feel that way about my friendships, what of love? What is love?

They say it is better to have loved and lost, than never have loved at all.  But if all I feel is an emptiness that belies my sense of loss, maybe I've never really loved at all.  Maybe, I never will.

There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone.

Pins and needles

[SPOILER ALERT]

I watched an episode (4) of House, M.D.: Season Five today in which an adopted Chinese girl sets out in search of her birth parents, and ends up gravely ill.

In the end, it is discovered that her parents placed pins into her brain in an attempted murder, because China had a one-child policy, and the parents wanted a boy.

When her adoptive parents hear the diagnosis, they request that she not be told that her parents attempted to kill her because they didn't want her. They understand her to be emotionally fragile and fear that she may react badly, especially as she had history of alcoholism and smoking. However, the doctor explains that the pins pierce through specific areas of her brain, including her addiction centre (I'm guessing the VTA / some part of her mesolimbic system).

"She may not be as fragile as you think," the doctor says.

"We know our daughter," they respond.

He says, "It's not her fault, she's not who you think she is."

[/SPOILER ALERT]

How much of how we behave is really comprehensible to the people around us? It's so easy to look at someone who's a drug addict, or who's got problems stealing, or with violence, and to say, "I'm not like that. How can they go about ruining their life like that..." It's so easy to judge others, and delineate them as different from ourselves.

But do we really understand exactly what's going on in their lives, in their minds? How much of what they think and do is really of their own volition? If you were placed in that situation, with that brain chemistry, can you say with conviction that you would choose to not be a druggie?

In fact, when you stop and thinking about it, how much of what we think is in our conscious control? That girl had physical, metal pins in her head that affected her and caused her to behave differently than what is biologically considered to be normal. But we have pins too. Maybe they don't seem to be there in a literal sense, but our genes code for our neurocircuitry, and much of our behaviour is learnt and imprinted on us by our environments. Although it may be slippery slope to say that free will does not exist, perhaps it is a less evenly free playing field than we imagine it to be for the other person.

It seems strange to think it, but I think what Sara Crewe, a privileged heiress, says about Becky, a poor servant girl in the same boarding school, about sums it up:

"Why," she said, "we are just the same--I am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!"

- A Little Princess, Chapter 5, Frances Hodgson Burnett

It is a scary thought, perhaps. Especially when we pause to consider that we are not so very different from the people we disdain or dislike, as much as we would like to believe it. In reality, there is perhaps little besides God's grace, or "accident", that separates one person's personality or fortune from another.

But ultimately, I think these thoughts point us in quite a refreshing direction in attempting to relate to other people: understanding, respect and love. Even of the less than loveable.

Just another blog post

It's been so long since I wrote one of those update-people-about-your-life kind of posts that I thought I would.

So anyways, I guess if you haven't talked to me in a long time, and want to know what's going on in the life of this nose on an ever-sideways-enlarging-stick...

1. I just enrolled in my first-ever extra-faculty course, called Reading Performance. Performance studies is an exciting field of study which explores mind-bending issues like 'Is all the world really a stage?' and 'What isn't a performance?' 
2. I can now dance again!
3. But most life-changing of all (yes, even more so than my ability to dance again), my church organised a week-long camp called Mid-Year Conference.

They do this every year, but this year, since I had no excuse for not going, I ended up going. Despite my initially blasé attitude, it turned out to be meaningful for me as it helped me to sort out various life struggles and drastically change my attitudes towards life and relationships.

The first one was the issue of managing time and talents. It's quite a big question in my mind, as I always wonder if I'm making the best use of what I have, especially given the fact that I waste a lot of time. It's also an issue in the sense that for me, blind ambition was not exactly discouraged, although I was always told to keep a grip on reality. The more I go through life and think about things though, the more an existentialist crisis seems to grip me - the Ecclesiastic 'everything is meaningless' sort of mentality.

However, one of the electives I attended in the camp, about spiritual gifts, radically changed my mindset. As opposed to mystical gifts, what one might expect, the speaker emphasized that everything in our lives, from our state of marriage, to the people in our lives, to our administrative abilities - all is a gift from God. As such, we should use these gifts to glorify Him and to edify, or build up, the church, which is really just a term for the fellowship that can be shared in Christ. The speaker drove the point home for me by giving the example of someone who spends all his time honing his ability, and asked us rhetorically if it was really the best use of his time.

As someone who struggles with people interaction at times, I tend to prefer to escape into some task - be it reading a book, or watching a movie, or dancing, rather than spending time meaningfully with others. Yet what he said made sense. I am beginning to see that there are opportunities for me to be using my life to build up the church. Most of the time, all that's really required from me is time, and a willingness, rather than any special ability.

The second issue is that of relating to boys. Being an only child, and then spending most of my pubescent life in a girls' school, I had no significant interaction with the male gender until junior college (two years pre-university education). Then, I was suddenly thrown into the deep end, as I happened to land myself in a boys' school.

As a result, I decided that I could treat guys exactly in the way I treated girls. Chat late into the night, invite each other to do stuff together, and joke around. I always figured as long as I didn't lead a guy on physically, or bat my eyelashes, I could be there for my guy friends the same way I could for my girl ones.

But over the last few years, I was grappling with the fact that the relational stance I was taking was not one that always agreed with society's notions of propriety. While I had always scoffed at gaining the good opinion's of others (at least outwardly), the fact that my church seemed to take a very traditional view of gender roles, and my experiences interacting with members of its congregation, made me suspect that I could be in the wrong.

MYC got me thinking about it again in the context of fulfilling my place or role in the church - part of that role is being a woman. Reading a couple of good books also gave me some perspective. One of them helped me to see that a component of my desire to be so buddy-buddy with guys was a type of self-centered, approval-seeking behaviour - wanting to show that this girls'-school girl could be accepted by boys too.

The other book was Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control, by Elisabeth Elliot. It's a very readable book that I'd highly recommend. Basically, it's a narrative of the love story between Elisabeth and Jim Elliot, a missionary. But in the telling of it, she stops to discuss her views on various important issues in boy-girl relationships, and her clarity and godly perspective really won me over.

Mostly though, her humanity - her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her waverings - were what made the book a good one for me. I could tell that although she was a strong, godly woman, she was just like me in the humanity of her struggles, and that made me sympathetic, and more ready to accept her point of view.

It's quite hard to pinpoint exactly what she says that really changed my mind, but I think a key questions she asks is:

Is it fitting? Is it in accord with the pattern in my life that I'd like to follow? Does it harmonize with my best understanding of God's plan? What is it that brings God's men and God's women together with delicacy and grace? Do I want to walk, here as in all the areas of my life, by faith, or will I take things into my own hands?

After talking to my bible study leader about the matter, I realised that a married person's point of view is a definite vantage point in some ways. Although I cannot see myself as having the (really rather doubtful) gift of marriage, I can see how my relationships may discomfit my friends' future spouses, just as how my mother's male best friend made my own dad a bit jealous. Seen in that light, it does seem to be a kind of consideration to keep a greater distance.

Despite this though, putting thought into action remains a challenge. But as a Christian, knowing that the Holy Spirit is dwelling in me, encourages me to put to death the flesh, and fix myself on 'whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things' (Philippians 4:8).

Room 5.312 was getting a little warm

Trapped heat can't breathe - it's stifling in here

as my palms get sweaty and

the temperature goes up

while I chat to a friend about

uncomfortable stuff.

I can't get no air as I feel

unwelcome clamminess

beading in the creases of my palms

the increasing heat

hits me with a force that impels

me to open the window,

or strain to open it,

while knocking over cups on my messy desk

in an effort to get the right leverage.

As I break out in sweat from all the wrong places,

and the window panes slips in my grasp,

and the liquid spilled spreads dangerously close -

its close proximity to my technological equipment may mean damage if I do not act fast enough to stop its furthering.

So I end it,

putting down everything else -

to give it a quick wipe down with a convenient rag.

No dramas* -

there's no use crying over spilled milk.

Suddenly the room feels drafty -

the window's let too much cold air in;

I need to tidy up the mess.

Life goes on.

*'No dramas' is Aussie slang for the American equivalent of 'No big deal'.