Poignancy

I was at my grandmother’s place for the recent Mid Autumn Festival. Usually I would go to festivities with a book to read or something to do because I see the whole idea of having a family gathering is to merely show my face. But this time, something has gotten into me. Perhaps it was a guilt of having been disrespecting tradition for so many years. Perhaps I was longing for a get away from all the books that I had since drowned myself into all these years. And so deliberately I left the pile of books that I had gathered at home before I leave.

It was hard at first to do absolutely nothing, because barely 5 minutes into sitting down on the couch staring at relatives arriving one after another and saying hi to some while avoiding eye contact with others, my hands were itching for something to do, so I grabbed the newspaper and began reading. But I managed to put it down a while later. Newspapers these days can’t be read, especially those with an overtly pro-establishment agenda. That’s another blog post altogether.

There is a sense of emptiness that pervaded my heart that night. Nothing seemed to excite me. Such gatherings felt different each time I attended them. We have a very big family and my grandmother has about 7 children and each of these children in turn have their own children. As a child I was really looking forward for such gatherings. So many people, so many conversations, so much joy. I once designed a house where we live together under one room and each nucleus family had a section of their own. But for the past few years, the number of family members had become countable. Grandfather had passed away in recent years. My cousin brother whom I grew up with is studying in the US. A few cousins got married to somewhere far away. A few can’t make it home for some unknown reasons.

Even among those present, we increasingly grew apart. A few cousins entered the teenage years and would rather stick their Ipod earphones to their ears rather than mingling around. My dad and uncles have their own issues to talk about as adults. The kids are busy with their games and playful acts. We simply grew into our own world.

I watched as the young kids of the family light up the candles (a Mid Autumn Festival tradition), burning anything like dry leaves or papers or basically anything within their reach. I remembered doing that as a child. Together with my cousin brother who was about the same age, though he was older, we were the notorious duo of the family. I remembered that childhood urge of “annihilation” when I was a kid. The enthusiasm had indeed waned over the years. I don’t feel like getting my hands dirty anymore. Watching from afar and rekindling the olden days were more than enough to overload my heart with a kind of poignancy and yearning for some unreturned nostalgic childhood events.

The family had indeed outgrow itself. I am now a young adult and I have my own things to care about. Ambitions, challenges, career, and future was all I think of. I could no longer stay carefree as I was as a child. Same goes to the teenagers, the adults, and the older ones. We were all compartmentalized in some ways. It was as if we had all been assigned roles by society, trying to live by the rules that the roles stipulate. In the absence of someone to talk to, I sat next to my grandmother. I don’t talk often with her anymore. We rarely meet up and even if we do, she has hearing problem can’t seem to hear what I said. She rarely spoke. She just sat at a corner and watched people.

My grandmother watched everyone, and that was somehow enough to put a smile on her face. She derived fulfillment from the mere presence of the family members, even though there are less conversations with her, less laughters about her. Listening to their voices, watching their faces, and knowing that they are still here and in the pink of health was her source of amusement. Out of nowhere she would tell me cousin X is taller now and cousin Y has grown fatter. Oh, I was also told I am now a good looking young men *brushes hair aside* which I am *clears throat* used to anyways. Grandmother was perhaps the most ardent audience of the family’s growth and changes. She perhaps understood more than me that changes is inevitable and the present is transient, gone in an eye blink. And she is quietly savoring every single moment of it.

As much as I like changes, there are certain things, certain good times that I wished could be eternized or immortalized. Such was what I felt about those good old days. Indeed it is now gone, existing only as immaterial state of mind, resulting in an emotional vacuum in the bosom of my heart.

The moon cakes tasted a little different that day. But it adequately fills the void in my stomach, and my heart, as I put each one of them into my mouth, knowing that very soon, modern day innovation would rendered the future moon cake in a different shape, smell, color, and content. For that, I savored every bite of it and indulged in the sweetness oozing out of the lotus paste. Just like how my grandmother had savored every moment of our presence.

On Language

As an ethnic Chinese who speaks both English and Mandarin, I must say there is indeed an unofficial “hierarchy” in the community that divides the English speaking ones and those more fluent in Mandarin. As it turns out, the English speaking ones are generally viewed as a class above their Mandarin counterpart.

When I was little, I attended a school where the medium of instruction was Mandarin Chinese. I recalled vividly that for some reasons I love writing essays in Mandarin. I would often take great lengths to incorporate Chinese idioms or words that screamed “verbosity” in my various composition.

Then, I went to high school. The medium of instruction was no longer Mandarin Chinese and it was of course a less homogeneous schooling environment. Mingling with people who spoke English with relatively high degree of proficiency admittedly aroused my inferiority complex. As a result, I constantly strive to improve my English proficiency. In the last few years of my teenage years, I had officially became westernized. I swapped Hong Kong drama for American TV series. I read all things English and shunned all things non-English. I mingled with English speaking people. I initiate conversations in English. And ultimately, my thoughts are couched in English. In the process, I begin to develop some sort of disdain for people who cannot converse well in English.

The King And I

9.30am – the watch on my left wrist read. It has been 9.30am for quite some time. I wanted the performance to be over as quickly as possible, but as with all bad times, every second in the backstage seemed like an eternity. I stood mechanically in the backstage while resting the violin on my left shoulder complete with complex wirings of a remote microphone. But my calm façade was misleading.

Increasingly I grew conscious of the air gushing in and out of my nostrils as I recalled the grandiose reception for “the man” that I witnessed earlier of the day. Ushers bowed on their knees as he graced the red carpet accompanied by sweet sounding gamelan music. He then stood before the edge of the VIP viewing chamber. As the police marching band performed the national anthem the audiences below the VIP viewing chamber realigned themselves to front him, a dramatic scene not unlike the movie poster of the Disney’s Lion King depicting a lion roaring above the cliff while its subjects concede its authority.

The “Ambitious” Cynic

It had dawned on me that many of my acquaintances remembered me as “the ambitious guy”. At first, or rather, ostensibly, it sounded like an ego-massaging description that put you together with the famous people you see on newspapers who have routinely been assigned a desirable attribute. But I have since discovered that there is really nothing glamorous about being said to be ambitious.

Being said to be ambitious is unlike being told you look like Kang Sang Woo or you write like Hemingway or you are the next Tom Ford or Kenny G or Steve Jobs. Appraisals like these were manifestly more concrete and evident, not to mention challenging and difficult to achieve. Being ambitious is however, really quite an easy feat.

Supernatural Obsession

I once saw a moth while at school. It was black, embellished with white symmetrical patterns on its wings. My usual reaction would be to spend no more than a fraction of second worth of a glance for it. But on that day there was something more than a nonchalance. The appearance of the moth inspired a string of speculation and hypothesis, that began to terrified me.

The tales from my relatives began to flood my memory, tales which I admittedly had dismissed and denounced as I had always an utter disdain for all things superstitious. They say a moth is the reincarnation of the deceased and that it will “visit” the bereaved family after death. A part of me ridiculed the idea of reincarnation and insisted that there is nothing supernatural about our world. At the same time, I was bewildered standing before the moth, especially knowing that my grandfather had indeed, passed away the day before.

5 Feet 9

Today I realized I was only 5 feet 9.

For much of my teenage years, I was largely unpertubed by my height and had on numerous occasions assured myself that “everything will fall into place”, perferring to outsource my vertical accendancy – and those sleepless preoccupations – to nature.

I craved for 180cm. Or more. Nature gave me 175cm eventually. And if the last word in the previous sentence triggered an annoying blip on the radar of the most conscientious of readers out there who would spring their feets and advocate for concise writing and truncation of unecessary words, in a while they will see why that is necessary in aid of the understanding, and to put into context, the despair of this author. At the ripe age of twenty, nature dictates that there is little, if any, that I can do about my height. And so the pressure is on to forgo the dream, which I am sure shared by many men out there, to look like Kang Sang Woo – 6 feet tall and ripped.

Change of Mind

I had a staggering change of mind today. While I rummaging through the torrents of information on web pages of various universities, I realized my previous ambition of waltzing past a Gothic stone arch of a Ivy-League standard institution, suddenly became so alienating. 

I have set aside five esteemed insitutions to which I will painstakingly populate empty spaces on the application forms and diligently write application essays, having thought that these “untouchable” super five are well-endowed with academic features and opportunities that would without any doubt appeal to me.

Under My Own Steam

In the very last sentence that we exchanged, my dad hurled that “d”-word, finally. Those words penetrated my eardrum and echoed in my mind while I racked my brains, trying to figure out what to make out of the hostile situation. I smirked, with a bit of nonchalance. All that I suspected about how he felt about me since my great rebellion five years ago was confirmed true.

“Disappoint”, he said of my latest complicity to him. Truthfully, it was a meaningless word for which I had developed an emotional immunity. For I had broken too many hearts; I had crushed too many expectations. 

His glances – emanating disdain – during that past few months, which he reserved exclusively for the unschooled kid, foreshadowed the drama last night. Just what did I do? I did not kill or steal. Nor I get addicted to gaming, do drugs, or patronized bars in downtown. All I did was to postpone my college education to engage in some personal pursuits. Was this such an unaccepted decision? Apparently so for an educationist who lectures chemistry in a local university. 

He hates to be home, he said in that fateful no-holds-barred conversation, because of my constant presence at home. I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it invites comparison between his under accomplished son and the neighbour’s son who was of the same age and currently in university and thus had way more social mobility, and that his self-worth is somehow tied to my advancement on the social ladder. Or perhaps is it a reminder of his frail authority and his utter failure and inability to assert his demands and orders on me.

Disappoint? Did I disappoint him? I think not. His expectations on me disappointed him. He should not have any of those. In a huff, I wanted to tell him that.

Five years ago in the same car, we engaged in a similar hostile episode. I was a Form 4/Grade 10 student, apparently struggling academically. Bad grades wasn’t the issue; topping the academic chart a year ago and emerging with red marks on the transcript the following year was. I was the fallen angel, but I did not feel an iota of guilt. I had completely lost the faith in the education system. I resisted against his demands of my academic performance. Since then, everything seemed to be couched in reference to the “inveterate disappointment” that he claimed I was. This is the very same man who warned me against spending time on a competition which I “will not win”; a competition which I eventually got a national recognition of sort. This is also the man who thought I was kidding when I was recruited to play the piano at some of the finest hotels in my city and at a billionaire’s party, who thinks it is fucking silly and meaningless to summon the courage to play the violin on a busy street in the central business district.

I feel like an island. An emptiness stemmed from my lack of support system. Thanks to that, I feel more like an individual, away from the collectivism that he so fondly champion for, albeit subtly. I don’t need support, for I had my own beliefs and faith to buoy me through adversity. I certainly do not need people to tell me what I can and cannot do.

I really wanted to tell him those. But prudence warned me against intruding the state of torpor in the car, for I could exarcebated an already muggy situation. The dreaded realization that my current survival is on his hands, held me back. I am incapable, financially, of getting a home of my own, feeding myself, getting myself items that I have always wanted. I am in no position to negotiate and take an active role in this argument. I had violated a social contract – my survival is ensured, but I had not, and will never succumb to his authority. 

Slowly, and surely, I will secede myself from him and his money. Already, I am paying my extremely expensive violin and jazz piano classes on my own. I have stopped asking for a new violin despite the embarassment of having the cheapest violin among my orchestra friends. I have stopped asking for a new computer and a saxophone. Someday, very very soon, I will not need a single penny of his.

I will equip myself with skills and knowledge for utilization on the day I become fully independent. I am going to accomplish great things that I’ve always wanted. I will search for the vindication of all my decisions that he ridiculed. I will prove him wrong about the things which he thinks I am incapable of. I will sidestep all obstacles. And I will climb, conscientiously, altitudes after altitudes on the ladder, to the pinnacle of all the things that I do. I really will.

Without Mast and Oars

I feel like I was drifting on a wooden raft in the vast open sea. In the specter of not accomplishing anything at all within this twinkling lifetime of mine and not being able to enjoy the gratification striking through the items on my things-to-do-before-I-die list one after another, I suffered an inexplicable inner spasm and apprehension, tinged with despair.

My preoccupation occurred as I contemplated my intended relocation to another city in a year’s time as I am resolutely convinced that the present city that I called home is unable to provide me with the necessary personal growth I needed to hike to the pinnacle. Unless, of course, if there was a political change in the city government yesterday, which I don’t recall seeing it on the news today. Another reason to despair. 

I realized I had all the while – blithely – ignored the intricacies and challenges that I have to undergo to attain everything that I had dream of. I had visualized the end, but never the means. I saw the peak of the mountain, but I have never traverse the beast-infested thick dense jungle footing the mountain. 

Why did I even – expectantly and clumsily, not to mention hastily – think I could make it to the peak? Perhaps because it was much easier, it feels much better. My fears were not that of dreaming big, but my inability to see the means to my end, that I am currently at the brink of being overwhelmed by the necessity to re-evaluate and faulty assumptions of what I am capable of, which I have vehemently refused to do. Because somewhere in a remote corner within my bosom, I still believe dreams are possible. Just a little. 

But right now, here I am, without mast and oars, on a small wooden raft in the vast open sea, with one iota of faith keeping me from plunging into the torrents of blue waters. Unsure, uncertain, crestfallen; staring at the same old horizon not unlike the monotonous fabric of life’s tapestry, still searching, still thinking.

Three years ago…

…something happened. In the spirit of being cryptic (from which I derive so much pleasure), let’s just say I ended my friendship with person X, who shall remain anonymous. The relationship headed to a point of no return, triggered by a silly statement on my part, which in turn was buoyed by my constant denial on some issues. (I know, it is confusing)

My point is, I was devastated at that time, so much that nothing in life seemed to matter to me. It was the “middle ages” of my life, where I would readily declare that “life sucks”, where I adrift in the sea of meaninglessness, unable to find a direction to move on.