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.
Thursday, June 30
Sunday, June 26
6/26
"How can a knowledgeable person be truly happy without detachment, isolation and pretense?" has been the question that I started to ponder in the past few days. As it seemed to me, whenever I had felt happy in these few years of my life, I was intertwined either with romance or with the lesser-mind, or with a particular professional pursuit whose very foundation is inhumanity itself.
People like me often inherit a habit, save the correctness debate aside, to be able to remain unaffected in light of changes, turbulences and mire. After all, that's how they emerge from the constraints of their reality, and more often than not, the constraints of themselves, to carry on the journey that befits their goal. Yet, the deeper I dive into such a habit, the clearer it becomes to me that this journey is a lonesome one. I've met some like-minded people, some of whom I appreciated and admired greatly. But they all, without exception, seem to content in their own state of contrivance where the majority are but bemused babies, the morality an inevitable yet artificial fruit of human civilization, and that love, friendship, passion, and spite biochemical products that only drive the material part of a human soul. Mind, to them, and to a certain degree, to me, is where the truly transcendental, divine intellect rests.
I have been wrenching myself, that I couldn't derive joy from Facebook or beer or festivals, that I couldn't bear a conversation that has no value or has no end, that I watch Brexit only with cold, calculated and contemptuous neglect, and that, even during the very few times I weep, I weep not to the benevolent acts that would normally cause a man to weep, but to a voluntary urge of feeling humane. As if to the all of my emotions, most of them are merely intricate designs to be performed with a cultivated sincerity likened to that of a seasoned actor. Only the bewilderment, the wrench, and a secretive and abstract yearning to be like the common folks remain. These emotions are so deeply hidden, and well-tailored, that even when completely put out there and exposed, they won't have any discernible weight on my psychological scale. To most people, I probably am living in an unnecessarily idealistic world. But at the same time, they could know too, that living in their world, is my own idealistic twang.
Unlike the many of whom I know, who have chosen various fields and crafts to pertain, I haven't. I'm not interested in artificial intelligence, or linguistics, or physics, or HR, or FinTech, or anything written on my list of interests on LinkedIn for that matter. I'm only interested in using my capability to gain the resources to fulfill. To fulfill what needs or will I truly don't know. Only in the immediate future do I know that I need to care about things that I don't like to acknowledge I have, like career, debt, and tuition fees. For unlike the rest of whom I know, in my mind are only mediocre, sometimes even pathetic misgivings. Therefore, I cannot have faith in the nobler things that are too distant to me; only in the reversion of suffering, of material lack, and of not being able to afford to eat does my faith flower.
Ugh! Ugh! But the grand schemes of things, of these arrangement that have been statistically allocated to me, they are quite interesting. They represent to me the many facets others would never have the chance to peek in; in this playing field of mine are ranches, discarded shoes, noodle packages, beer bottles and dead batteries. These are what I have. Neither inferior nor superior to the shiny stadium or meager land some others may have. I work out my own arrangement, contribute my own effort, shed my own sweat, to make it artistic and deep.
But who knows? Someone could have come and put a pair of glasses on anything, and yell, "look, this is art! This is artistic!"
For after all, who are we but a pair of glasses with life.
People like me often inherit a habit, save the correctness debate aside, to be able to remain unaffected in light of changes, turbulences and mire. After all, that's how they emerge from the constraints of their reality, and more often than not, the constraints of themselves, to carry on the journey that befits their goal. Yet, the deeper I dive into such a habit, the clearer it becomes to me that this journey is a lonesome one. I've met some like-minded people, some of whom I appreciated and admired greatly. But they all, without exception, seem to content in their own state of contrivance where the majority are but bemused babies, the morality an inevitable yet artificial fruit of human civilization, and that love, friendship, passion, and spite biochemical products that only drive the material part of a human soul. Mind, to them, and to a certain degree, to me, is where the truly transcendental, divine intellect rests.
I have been wrenching myself, that I couldn't derive joy from Facebook or beer or festivals, that I couldn't bear a conversation that has no value or has no end, that I watch Brexit only with cold, calculated and contemptuous neglect, and that, even during the very few times I weep, I weep not to the benevolent acts that would normally cause a man to weep, but to a voluntary urge of feeling humane. As if to the all of my emotions, most of them are merely intricate designs to be performed with a cultivated sincerity likened to that of a seasoned actor. Only the bewilderment, the wrench, and a secretive and abstract yearning to be like the common folks remain. These emotions are so deeply hidden, and well-tailored, that even when completely put out there and exposed, they won't have any discernible weight on my psychological scale. To most people, I probably am living in an unnecessarily idealistic world. But at the same time, they could know too, that living in their world, is my own idealistic twang.
Unlike the many of whom I know, who have chosen various fields and crafts to pertain, I haven't. I'm not interested in artificial intelligence, or linguistics, or physics, or HR, or FinTech, or anything written on my list of interests on LinkedIn for that matter. I'm only interested in using my capability to gain the resources to fulfill. To fulfill what needs or will I truly don't know. Only in the immediate future do I know that I need to care about things that I don't like to acknowledge I have, like career, debt, and tuition fees. For unlike the rest of whom I know, in my mind are only mediocre, sometimes even pathetic misgivings. Therefore, I cannot have faith in the nobler things that are too distant to me; only in the reversion of suffering, of material lack, and of not being able to afford to eat does my faith flower.
Ugh! Ugh! But the grand schemes of things, of these arrangement that have been statistically allocated to me, they are quite interesting. They represent to me the many facets others would never have the chance to peek in; in this playing field of mine are ranches, discarded shoes, noodle packages, beer bottles and dead batteries. These are what I have. Neither inferior nor superior to the shiny stadium or meager land some others may have. I work out my own arrangement, contribute my own effort, shed my own sweat, to make it artistic and deep.
But who knows? Someone could have come and put a pair of glasses on anything, and yell, "look, this is art! This is artistic!"
For after all, who are we but a pair of glasses with life.
Tuesday, June 21
6/21
How friendships have actually played out for me has taken a great toll on their meaning. But perhaps, there is no such thing as meaning apart from the concrete, tangible reality itself, or rather, to shed a different light, meaning has always been a sort of elevation that is well sought after, but never entirely found.
Like art, which I regarded highly, and still strive to. It wasn't until very recently have I realized that art is a surrogate figure for me. It's where I resort to when the shiny, hopeful, and worldly things have failed. Only in art did I acquire a sense of righteousness that had otherwise been denied me. But these, these semi-congratulatory, semi-consolatory things, are indeed feeble things. They don't feed me, provide me any monetary support, fulfill any social responsibility, or purchase any BVG ticket. They exist but signify only when they're disconnected from a corporealness I once so ardently yet foolishly despised. I am me, always the person with the whim, the mortality, and the wickedness. This is a fact that, no matter how much literary deviation is added into it, won't change.
For these few weeks, or these few months indeed, I seem to have boarded a trek onto an entirely different course from what I would have dared to imagine. Judging from the perspective of contempt, I'm evidently pursuing very base an agenda. Yet judging from the usual standpoint of any usual office clerk, leading a life that has a routine is a blessing, a decency hardly mentioned in the arts where turbulence and grudge rein.
Is it fortunate? Does it befit my faith where there is none? These are hard questions for me to answer, and probably because they are more hard than they are important, I wouldn't need to care.
For look at me! Look at me! I'm no longer condescending to life! I'm condescending to art! Or to a modernist plague that has bewildered me for so long with its appearing salvation. No longer, no longer, as I put my hands in the suit pockets, swagger across the Gucci store, swipe the employee card on the security door, and go to work.
It is quite curious, now that I cannot write other than when I cannot sleep. The act of writing has been relegated, marginalized, and gradually rendered unimportant. If the words I've written betray any emotion, then I must have indeed deviated from a lot of them. I have come to be one of those people, on one of the subsistences to my distaste. But there's nothing I could make up for it, since I regret none of my decisions, and am rightfully persevere in my pursuit, to the end of which is fruitful or not I cannot tell. I'm already so pitiful as to routinely confront the reality of having to delight in KFC, one of the most soulless consumptions out there and which I readily savor. After all, of the many treats KFC is perhaps the most affordable. Even though the moment I sat done with a bucket of 18 wings, I chanted hence shall I indulge in thy sadness, I immediately began to decry as the near 12 EUR cost has been way past the daily monetary limit I set for myself.
Life could be intriguing precisely because it befuddles. Back when, so I always say, I was younger and more clueless about things, I used to revel in a sort of carefreeness so thorough that it astounds me, and not the "astound" in a calmly joking sense when I say "your eagerness to mate astounds me", but in a more dumbfounding, flabbergasting way. Supposedly I'm more knowledgeable, more adept at waddling through the many serpentinities of life. Yet surprisingly I'm neither happier nor more settled. Worse, I'm often irritable and sad, to such an extent that reminding myself of these emotions has become a taboo which I rarely touch, rarely see and rarely acknowledge. I dodge the many questionings because I think, when the answers are revealed, I don't have what it takes to endure.
But of course, aside from worrying about some gaffes I committed during work, nothing much.
Like art, which I regarded highly, and still strive to. It wasn't until very recently have I realized that art is a surrogate figure for me. It's where I resort to when the shiny, hopeful, and worldly things have failed. Only in art did I acquire a sense of righteousness that had otherwise been denied me. But these, these semi-congratulatory, semi-consolatory things, are indeed feeble things. They don't feed me, provide me any monetary support, fulfill any social responsibility, or purchase any BVG ticket. They exist but signify only when they're disconnected from a corporealness I once so ardently yet foolishly despised. I am me, always the person with the whim, the mortality, and the wickedness. This is a fact that, no matter how much literary deviation is added into it, won't change.
For these few weeks, or these few months indeed, I seem to have boarded a trek onto an entirely different course from what I would have dared to imagine. Judging from the perspective of contempt, I'm evidently pursuing very base an agenda. Yet judging from the usual standpoint of any usual office clerk, leading a life that has a routine is a blessing, a decency hardly mentioned in the arts where turbulence and grudge rein.
Is it fortunate? Does it befit my faith where there is none? These are hard questions for me to answer, and probably because they are more hard than they are important, I wouldn't need to care.
For look at me! Look at me! I'm no longer condescending to life! I'm condescending to art! Or to a modernist plague that has bewildered me for so long with its appearing salvation. No longer, no longer, as I put my hands in the suit pockets, swagger across the Gucci store, swipe the employee card on the security door, and go to work.
It is quite curious, now that I cannot write other than when I cannot sleep. The act of writing has been relegated, marginalized, and gradually rendered unimportant. If the words I've written betray any emotion, then I must have indeed deviated from a lot of them. I have come to be one of those people, on one of the subsistences to my distaste. But there's nothing I could make up for it, since I regret none of my decisions, and am rightfully persevere in my pursuit, to the end of which is fruitful or not I cannot tell. I'm already so pitiful as to routinely confront the reality of having to delight in KFC, one of the most soulless consumptions out there and which I readily savor. After all, of the many treats KFC is perhaps the most affordable. Even though the moment I sat done with a bucket of 18 wings, I chanted hence shall I indulge in thy sadness, I immediately began to decry as the near 12 EUR cost has been way past the daily monetary limit I set for myself.
Life could be intriguing precisely because it befuddles. Back when, so I always say, I was younger and more clueless about things, I used to revel in a sort of carefreeness so thorough that it astounds me, and not the "astound" in a calmly joking sense when I say "your eagerness to mate astounds me", but in a more dumbfounding, flabbergasting way. Supposedly I'm more knowledgeable, more adept at waddling through the many serpentinities of life. Yet surprisingly I'm neither happier nor more settled. Worse, I'm often irritable and sad, to such an extent that reminding myself of these emotions has become a taboo which I rarely touch, rarely see and rarely acknowledge. I dodge the many questionings because I think, when the answers are revealed, I don't have what it takes to endure.
But of course, aside from worrying about some gaffes I committed during work, nothing much.