Sometimes change just creeps up on you

So I haven't been blogging much at all these few months. I'm not sure why but words just don't come to me anymore. Maybe because these past few months have just felt like one giant, exhilarating, and sometimes scary emotional roller coaster. More often than not, I've felt that each day that passes have to be filled with something exciting or indulging or impromptu or grand, or just something that makes me happy with the preoccupation. Because of this, time seems to be flying, I seem to be barely holding on to my old self anymore, my fingertips are slipping day by day and one day soon, I feel like I'm going to lose my grasp and fall into the abyss of someone else's life. Someone else's simple, straightforward life filled with simple and materialistic joys, filled with fun and friends and simple happiness, but devoid of my late night philosophical musings; of those moments when I just sit and question things - when I just sit and write whatever's flowing through my head; when I just lie in bed staring at the night sky, contemplating the future, the past, the meaning of something deep.

But change is inevitable, and for me especially I mold to the people around me so easily. It's not necessarily a bad thing, in fact I'm happy. These past few months may have been a big blur, but a big happy blur with a few ups and downs and a few tiny small moments of heartache where I felt like tearing my head off and use it to smash a hole in the wall. But other than that, it's been good. I've been good. And you know what? I have faith that the old me will manage to hold on and come with me for the reset of the ride through 2012.

I think one of the biggest goals I should be trying to achieve is to make myself stop being so damn scared of everything. I'm getting there little by little, but I want to be fearless. I want to be confident and unintimidated, to charge through life unafraid of taking opportunities thrown my way, unafraid to go out there and snatch myself some opportunities if they don't come to me, and most importantly unafraid to make things happen, to say yes, to be happy, to stay happy, to live with no regret, no fear, and even no hate.

I want to be one of those people that can make other people happy, that can tease a laugh or a smile out of someone and make their day that little bit better and brighter and lighter.

For now, find me here:
http://lovesongsandrainynights.blogspot.com

(Not to say I won't be back here, I might. Just waiting for the words to come back to me)

Look at that tiny house peaking through the light

The sun's setting gold. There's a tiny ferry tutting across the harbour water, leaving a trail of white. I can see North Head illuminated, glowing because of the sunset. Rangitoto looms in the background like a guard. There are sails and cranes and buildings and people, and in the far far distance, little houses peeking through the light.

The sky's this indescribable colour of grey and blue and cyan and mauve, tinted with a blush of that fading brown. Like the whole world's awash with some nostalgic sepia. I can't help staring at that tiny boat sail back and forth, back and forth. There's someone standing at the balcony window opposite. There's someone walking along the road outside. All these things. All these people. This is the world. This is what being alive feels like. Friendships can break, love can fail, family can leave and people can pass away, but what will never disappear, are the clouds that drift past your patch of sky everyday. The sea that sparkles under the setting sun. The people that keep on walking, the boats that keep on sailing, no matter how you're feeling today; no matter what problems you're facing.

The world will keep on spinning without you, and that's the excruciating beauty of it. The grandness. Your insignificance. How tall the heavens are above you, how deep the earth stretches below you, and then there's just little, unremarkable you. Born into this world maybe by accident, maybe by chance, but definitely not by fate. Think about it. What are the possibilities of you, this exact person, existing in this world? From birth till now, every decision, every choice and every split creating infinite possible futures, pasts, and people with the same name and same parents and same history as you, but are not you.

And yet, here you sit. This precise and irreplaceable version of you that exists nowhere else in time and space. You're allowed to sit and observe the world from your own little corner. Watch the clouds darken. The sun disappear. The lights of thousands of other homes flicker on. The clatter of plates, the occasional bale of laughter. All on a backdrop of stillness. Silence. A serene, serene night, and a low mumble of of the city as it finally settles down.

A tiny flag billowing in the wind; the tap-tap of my fingers on the keyboard. And the thing that makes it all so real, a cool breeze whispering across my cheek; on it I can smell the ocean and taste the salt; hear the laughter and feel the calm of the whole city.

Like in a dream. Such a beautiful, vivid dream filled with details you could spend your whole life observing and pursuing and still never reach the end. Wouldn't it be sad to wake up from such a dream? Wouldn't it be a terrible, terrifying shame if you never got to find out where that little boat went, what it'd be like to live in a little house peaking through the setting light, how the sky would look if you were flying through it separated by only a window?

If reality is only a dream, if life is only a passing gift that we've landed ourselves with by an impossible chance, then why not make the most out of it? What else is there? Incomprehensible nothingness and otherness. We only know this life. What do feelings and problems matter on the grand scale of things? Just look at the world. It's yours to explore, to see and smell and do. Why would you ever want to waste even a second of your life on unimportant feelings and other insignificant people?

Why would you ever want to end this wonderful dream early?

I need to

1. Stop buying things / spending money / buying things for the sake of spending money

2. Stop spending money just because I can / just because there's no one to stop me / just because if I was a Sim in Sims Social my 'social' and 'fun' meter would glowing red with an unimpressed and highly disapproving frowny smiley face next to it

3. Stop raging at that real estate guy (if he replies - if not then continue to slander him with obscenities)

4. Stop thinking about food (ideally the allocation of brain functionality between thinking about food vs.other should be at a ratio of 1:9 respectively. The current ratio of 8:2 is dangerously high and poses a threat to mental health / well being / ability to function normally

5. Stop writing this pointless and extremely unrealistic list because if I don't sleep within the next 45 minutes I'm going to end up as one of those Sims who scares away all their friends by accidentally-on-purpose insulting them due to PMS and a lack of sleep (also since I didn't have time to shower I'm going to smell real bad and have a posy of those virtual Sim flies buzzing around my bum)

So I want to talk about China

I've been too lazy to blog recently. Plus since I got back from China life has been so monotonous and repetitive and materialistic and lazy and safe and devoid of emotional turmoil/philosophical enlightenment, that 3 weeks have merged into one giant long day of haziness. And most importantly, since I feel so useless these days, I wanted to make sure I'd blog about something important. Something meaningful and provocative and good. Today I was feeling reminiscent of China, and I think I found something.

When you walk into a new country, sometimes it's like nothing has changed. Sometimes it's like everything is different. The ground you tread on is a dirt road, the sky above you is a murky grey, the air around you is crisp and stale at the same time, woven together with a tinge of sickly sweet. The 'sickly sweet' is a result of the mid-afternoon sun beating relentlessly on those few unfortunate mandarins that have fallen off from their branch a little early.

That was one of the most valuable experiences I gained on this trip around China. The feeling of bicycling down a country lane past fields of green, acres of not-yet-ripe mandarin trees, and an endless expanse of untainted silence - occasionally harmonised with a few bird calls, the 'ring-ring!' of another bicycle bell, or a steady tutting sound fading off into the distance as a scooter makes its way home.

Of course, it isn't a lost paradise. Even amongst the pandora-like mountains of Guilin, where the scenery along the Li Jiang river is so insanely beautiful it becomes surreal and my eyes at first refused to accept what it was really seeing, there are ordinary locals going about their harsh daily routine to make a living: Sons born along the river spend everyday rowing gondolas for money. Women wash clothes on the banks. The grandpas sit quietly inside century-old stone cottages, feeding chickens, cows and fish eagles. The grandmas sit outside with giant bowls of silk worms, spending the whole day peeling off silk to sell. The little kids run around the streets, playing with sticks, chasing chickens and drawing shapes into the dirt.

Older kids have already left for school in a nearby town. When we asked a little boy for directions, he opened his mouth and told us in a mature and serious voice. He then turned around and carried on playing with his friends and some empty fruit shells on the ground.

People in beautiful places like this don't get to experience the beauty. One of the gondola rowers told me, the locals born into this place often curse the beautiful mountains for existing. They're too steep to climb, too much stone to grow crops on, too stubborn and dense to take down. The only thing they're good for is to look at. So the whole city of Guilin, all the surrounding towns and villages dotted around its many rivers, thrive on the flocks of tourists, laden with cash and LV bags and iPhones, to provide them enough money to send their kid to school so that they can grow up not slaving over manual labour for a living.

My dad said to the gondola driver, "You're very lucky, this place is very beautiful. To be able to wake up and see a scenery like this everyday, you're very lucky."

The gondola driver replied: "Lucky? We don't call this lucky. We think people like you are lucky, people with enough money to travel, to see places, to eat whatever you want to eat and go where ever you want to go."

And my mum said to me, "Look at this place. Look at how the people live here. What if you'd been born here? What if you had to grow up feeding chickens and growing crops, toiling day after day and never given the opportunity to leave or to be better. Isn't it unfair how people are born into different places? Some people are born here, where little kids start working as soon as they understand how; some people are born into a rich house with rich food and never know the true meaning of 'work' or 'labour'."

Isn't it unfair? Isn't it unfair that there even exists on this planet, people who are so fat that they are at risk of dying if they get any fatter? These people whose gluttony knows no boundaries, whose government feeds them, and when they're about to die, gives them an operation worth tens of thousands to save their pitiful life so they can keep on sitting and eating.

Compare them to the old grandmas who peel silk all day to sell; to the old grandmas who walk around the streets picking up plastic bottles and adding them to the big bag over one shoulder; to the old grandmas that swarm around tourist vans gently begging you to buy a flower wreath they weaved themselves for just 2RMB, their eyes filled with sincere pleading.

I know that there are millions, if not billions all over the world living in such undeveloped places, living in the past, living where such ordinary things to us are treated as luxuries by them. I also know that often, the financial situation of families can be so dire that they resort ro petty and cruel ways of making money, getting little kids to beg to invoke sympathy, even mutilating their own child so that they can horrify more people into opening their wallets.

But seeing these people and these places with your own eyes is very different to knowing. The faces of old people pleading me to buy their hand made flowers remind me of my grandma. It reminds me that they're probably a grandma to some kid, and unlike me, that kid might depend on his grandma's many 2RMBs to be able to eat something yummy tonight for dinner or to be able to get a new school bag. Even if these people are knowingly taking advantage of your pity, even if they're tricking you to pay more, ripping you off, even if there are far too many of them for you to be able to help, the truth remains that they need your 2RMB much more than you do.

The most painful truth about all this is that really, there's nothing that can be done to change the lives of these people. At least, nothing immediate, nothing on a scale smaller than a revolution, nothing that can be achieved without ensuing more damage or suffering first. The fact is that China, like India, just has so many people. So. Many. People. How is it possible to ensure all of them can live a decent life? You can't. China's huge. Massive. Compare it to New Zealand, this small, minuscule country with a history of around a hundred years, versus China, the Middle Kingdom that began developing over 5000 years ago, the economy, the culture, the language, the way of living, all thousands of years old. How do you change a way of thinking and a way of living so ancient, so ingrained into everyone there?

I don't really know what I'm trying to say. All I want is for those old grandmas out everyday begging tourists to buy their hand-made things to be able to live a life where they don't have to.

***

Li Jiang River, mountains of Guilin (image edited using iphone)

View from within an alley in a small village tucked away on the river bank

My dad's gondola raft rowing past a patch of houses along Yu Long river

View from my raft down Yu Long river. Surreal beauty. So tranquil. Water so clear and still, it's amazing.

Old grandmas peeling a sort of vegetable by hand in a village

Mother gives her child a ride while doing work

Someone's door

Letting hand made noodles dry in the sun

Three person journey.

That feeling

That feeling of revelation and liberation that you get. You know? Like an epiphany but not really, because what has dawned on you is something that you've always known all along really. It's like you've been living life in a murky marshland swathed in fog and mud and other thick, dirty substances. They just ooze around your life lazily, trying to contaminate you with their nasty little tentacles. Corrupt you. But that feeling of liberation when for one brief second you see everything so clearly, as if the fog has lifted off the marsh and clear sunlight finally shines upon it and you realise it's not a marsh at all, but a beautiful lake of mysterious depths and clear intentions and a wondrous sense of rightness. That feeling is what I'm trying to describe.

Maybe that's why I like going gym so much now, because sometimes after you wipe off the sweat of all that pain and endurance gone past, it's as if life has been put into a new light. Your brain suddenly wants an audience with you. It takes everything that's tedious or troublesome or unwanted in your life, and it presents a solution. It was something you knew all along. You knew that was the solution. But you forced it into the far reaches of the brain, dismissing it. But now the brain dug it out, laid out the evidence, it need not even argue the case, the case had already been won, because it speaks the truth.

And the most important part of this feeling of liberation, is your own acceptance of it. Of what you need to do. Because it was so simple, why wouldn't you do it before? Your brain is now telling you in a tiny but righteous voice, life could be so easy and effortless and wonderful, if you only do what needs to be done in the way that it needs to be done, and voila. So wonderful a time life will present to you.

One can only hope that somehow, this feeling can be grasped and taken hold of for longer periods of time. Maybe there's some sort of magic that can keep the fog at bay. How to stop such contaminative tentacles of laziness, of greed and of the ever growing lure of the material world, so souless and meaningless? They wrap themselves around everyone. It's like a giant shadow engulfing each of us, a black oozing aura; disgustingly obese with sins. But we don't see it. We embrace. We feed and and love it and grow it.

But how do we stop it?

How?

?

Treasures from the past

I was rummaging through my old files and folders from ages ago, and uncovered an old folder of stories.

Reading some of them scared me a little to be honest. Most of them were from when I was 13, and now, as a supposedly mature and independent 19 year-old who's working her way to a university degree (and upon graduation, a job), I feel not only overwhelmed by the passion of my 13 year-old self but also of my lost ambition; of my unwavering conviction of who I was and what I was going to do with my life. I didn't let what other people think deter what I thought. There was so much bravado in my writing. So much melodrama and over emphasise and cliches, yet it's sad to say that I had so much more rhythm in my writing compared to now.

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White flag

I won't go down with this ship
I won't hold my head up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

Will I go down with this ship?
Will I hold my head up and surrender?
Will there be my white flag above your door
I'm in love

Always will be

Look at us, all living little superficial lives

Today for the first time I asked myself a question: why did I not choose to become a doctor? I am a perfectly capable young adult, just at the point of my life where I can choose what to do for the rest of my life. What I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I've always ruled off being a doctor because tbh, it scares me. I'm not strong enough to deal with the responsibility of having so many lives dependent on me. But now I realised how stupid that is. Stupid and naive, as always ignorant.

I was researching for my design brief today, and stumbled across this album of photos taken from the Sichuan earthquake in China, 2008. 70 000 killed and more missing, injured, and god knows what else.

I've never seen anything that's shocked me more. Just looking at it makes me feel horrible. Makes me feel so, so sad. And some photos make me feel like I'm feeling the pain... yet I know I can't even begin to comprehend the scale of their pain, not even a little.

I feel like this is what the apocalypse would be like if it ever happened, this sort of pain escalating all over the world simultaneously. Then I realised how stupid I was. Again, how naive and ignorant, sheltered, selfish, horrid and horrible. This sort of death and disaster is happening all over the world, all the time. Every second of every minute, and every minute of every hour. Out there is someone suffering such an unfair, unjustly delivered pain. 

It's amazing how stupid we can all be. Living in our ignorant and superficial, oh so superficial lives. Everything seems shallow and extravagant. The chicken there I had for dinner? What? Why am I forcing myself to eat fried chicken that I don't even want to eat because I'm already full? Why?? There are people out there with no food, for whom starvation is a cruelly prolonged suffering they endure till death. Perhaps as I bit into that piece of juicy chicken, a child just died somewhere in the world from lack of any food. Oh the cruel irony. I feel sick. Sick at myself and the lives everyone around me lives in. Because I know. We know. Everyone in this developed, safe little nation knows there are people less fortunate in other parts of the world. Of course. It's common knowledge, too common perhaps. People don't feel it. It's not their business to care, it doesn't affect them. Most of all, they only feel the apathy, sometimes a little sympathy perhaps, but certainly not the empathy.

Even those who are doing things to fight for these causes, a lot are doing it without real feeling. Sure, they put up a passionate and compassionate affront, spreading awareness, running charities, events, the whole shizzaz. But when it comes down to it all, who can really truly understand emotionally, their suffering and need? No one but those who've been there, seeing these atrocities live in front of their very own eyes, the death, illness and suffering perhaps only an arm's width away. They could reach out and touch it with their very own hands. Then, everything would be all too real. 

Everyone sits in their own little houses. I am right now. Junk on the kitchen bench. At least 5 electrical devices in a 5 meter radius of me, all ranging over 1000 probably. There's a huge amount of unwanted food lying around. I feel bloated from dinner. I feel sick.

I know what the counter argument is. There isn't that much we can do. We can't give up everything in our own lives. But can't we give up a few of the many and exponentially accumulating, unneeded and sometimes unwanted junk that's just sitting around in our everyday lives, simply adding to our richness and spoilt, superficial lifestyle?

And most importantly, the point that started this debate in my head, there is something we can do. Well I can do. And most people can do too. And that is, do something with my life to make a difference. Whether it be become a doctor to treat people, people who are dying, injured, suffering and are in need of any sort of relief, no matter how small; or to become an engineer, builder, build new homes and new lives for people who've lost everything; or perhaps most influentially a political figure, a leader, a CEO, a boss, someone who will have the power, money and resources to make a difference in all the suffering.

So many of my friends want to become doctors. Perhaps half do it for the money. But they're all doing it. And they will all save lives. A small comfort, but one nevertheless.

My friend once asked me a while back, perhaps only a year ago (although it feels like half of my life for some reason) - she asked me, "Omg Jeannie you're smart I don't get it, why do you want to do art? Why don't you become a doctor or something and help other people!"

I've always denied her logic. My reasoning was that I was helping people, I was going to entertain them. Give interest and creativity to their boring lives, give them something to think about. But now I can see how completely superficial that is. Why do I want to learn things like philosophy? An investment for myself, but all it does is produce intellectual profit for me, I don't give anything, and I won't be able to give anything out.

Right now I'm looking at my design folio on an earthquake fundraiser. Then I look back at these photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12602068@N00/sets/72157605047331184/with/2495875967/

I feel like I'm going to cry again. I feel like my heart is being strangled. It can't breathe anymore, and I want to invent a new meaning for the word 'sad'.

I look back at my earthquake designs where I tried to communicate the feeling of disaster and sorrow. They look pathetic and naive and utterly shallow and superficial.

I hate the fact that now I feel like the naive, ignorant, and stupid little girl that I am of course, talking about big things she has no idea about, things she can't even begin to understand, and still, just knowingly spewing up big words of a depth she doesn't know or will ever live up to.