Since it is rationally untenable for me to capriciously give up whenever something fails to please me, and also, since I cannot afford to resort to hatred, self-pity or slack in light of a quandary, I must find some other things that bring me comfort yet at the same time satiate my need for verity and expediency.
Many of my colleagues have the fortune to be brought up in religion. They find great joy and purpose in the companionship and rituality of the otherworldly affairs. And others, pampering in melodramas and reality shows, enjoy the ease of not having to think. I'm one of those who, while disputing the former and abhorring the latter, seek to derive consolation from forms that only speak to a few. Literature, classical music, and punk rock, these almost utterly useless and "pussy"-like pursuits are the ones to chastise me when I sink to self-derogation, to sing me lullaby when I wake up in fear of life's weight, and to encourage me when I despair in mistake, failure or impatience. They are the benevolence that has been left with me to cherish.
I needn't reminder that I had not the privilege of a sound environment, of a caring family, or of a likable circle. And these circumstances have perhaps been embedded so deeply within me that now I tend naturally towards withdrawal and timidness. For the people who touch my outward sincerity at the surface, I'm too exuberant and dry; for the rest who reach a little deeper, I become like a substandard Russian nesting doll, crumbling and deforming with each layer. This is my reality, proclaimed in an ever foreboding, inescapable tone.
So, having neither the snug protection of family and friends, nor the establishment of study and career, I'm hung mid-air, grappling with what appears to be a vestige of the passion that drove me here, and of the shred of light I thought I would be welcoming. Tenacity, the imaginary cigarette I sometimes smoke downstairs, and the occasional text messages to nudge my leg, are all but the fragile, evanescent norm I upkeep.
But with the ultimate got-ya question to any literary folly, "what's the point", I would just apologize and begin to chuckle and laugh uncontrollably. Haha, look at the anachronism, the naivety, the self-importance, and the whines to no other's interest. Look at them, quite funny actually.
Just this morning, I have realized that there are many things in the apartment I dwell that hadn't caught my attention and were beginning to. The mangoes left on the fridge to dry, the dirty dishes unwashed, and the eternal floor stain that always comes back despite the landlord's scant effort to cleanse it. I had considered these traits of the apartment physically disconnected from me, that even though I maintain a fair level of dishevel on my own, it is due to another entirely different reason. And I'm wrong, wishfully so. There appears to be, certain uncertain harmony between what I could have for myself and who I am.
I have always had the peculiar sensitivity to where I belong and where I want to go. However, it never occurs to me that, indeed, such sensitivity is rather already a dumbing down of reality than an acute, factual awareness of it. Only this morning, in the things I've long smelled and seen, does it presents itself clearly to me.
Among other things I've likely known, I take literature simultaneously as a selfish means and as a noble end. I dress myself in two-piece wool suit and dangle the employee card every day precisely because while they are now mine, they could as well not be.
For the foreseeable future though, I'd keep writing whenever I feel the need to complain, keep dressing formally whenever I still work for E.ON, and keep being self-righteous albeit I yet am.
