4 posts tagged “life”
When I was little I used to worry about whether things were right or wrong all the time . One raya (Eid), I ratted on my cousins who were several years my senior, for gambling upstairs out of moral concern. They were so angry but I really did worry then about them. I didn't understand why gambling was wrong, I didn't understand why smoking cigarettes was wrong but I knew everything had their consequences and I didn't wish for theirs to be bad. I would take my mother's Salems which I found in her bathroom and throw them out the window, onto the roof, into the bin or flush them down the toilet (until I realised they wouldn't submerge in water). I was 4 to 9 when I did these things; when I counseled my uncle for smoking because it gave you AIDS, when I would dream of my parents dying of alcoholism or smoking for having dinner with their friends. My mind was filled with sins, worries, all of which now, I see, even I succumb to them.
In high school, I told my parents every bad thing I did. I was so honest about things. My brother hated me for it but I was honest to my parents about everything I could be so that in the instance that I had to lie, I would get away with it better. I was a good kid in high school. I rebelled but I never smoked, I hardly drank, I never got drunk. Now my friends on set ask me to do things like checking the authenticity of their drug props on set because they think I know these things. I do, but in truth, I don't live up to their expectations. In a lot of cases, I don't think the real me lives up to quite a few people's expectations of me but that applies to everyone. I don't always know how I know what I do, maybe I'm just a nerd. I let my eyes wander and my mind, travel. As I grew older and experienced more as people do, the guilt faded, as did fear. Other than bad deeds, the other thing that I feared was ghosts. When we were little, my cousins and I would get into circles, cup our hands like good little Muslims and pray when we heard the dogs howling outside the house. When the dogs went silent, there was a sense of achievement and a connectivity with God. Sort of like Captain Planet and how when our powers were combined, we could call on him to save the world. You can tell I've outgrown cartoons since then. Now I have bigger things to fear than ghosts and God in my life now plays a different role.
I've been on a cigarette binge for the past week. Prior to that, I went nearly a month without smoking. There was a time before I started smoking. I would be worried sick if the boy I liked smoked, then I started to love when my boyfriend smelled of smoke. Gradually I first took up smoking because I had my heart broken and I didn't know how to make the pain go away. It was at that point where I started to run out of cures, retire from vis medicatrix naturae to additives and I no longer moralise things such as these. Now, cigarettes are company when I want no one around. I smoke out of heartbreak or when I feel completely at peace, sometimes as a social lubricant. I can smoke more and not feel sick; inhale the ends hard and not have headspins. Ironically the man, the smoker who I used to always be around hardly smokes anymore. Every day I find less reasons to be afraid of my fears, more reasons to force myself to function. If anything, I'm terrified of not achieving anything. Not failing, of missing the boat. That one day I'm going to die and forgot I had all this time to do shit. I've retired from my need to be 'intelligent' or surround myself with 'intelligence'. I had intelligence, tried wisdom, now I'm going with clever because with clever, you get things done. They're like phases. Words don't cut it as much as hands do. I'm adamant now on measuring myself by my actions so that when everyone's done talking about their lives, I would have hopefully lived mine. You're not an existentialist because you say you are. You're not smart because people think you are. It's simple physics. Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be transfered. If you don't transfer it onto something concrete, you never move. If your energy goes into mere words, you'd better hope they at least move neurons.
I think it's a shame when people think that the world is full of ugly things and ugly people who are all out to hurt you. They're too afraid of looking into the Pandora's Box to find hope too. Maybe that's why I love controversy and think that humanity makes the best entertainment. Shakespeare was right when he said "all the world's a stage". You can judge and moralise, worry about getting it wrong or right but these are things that are just a part of every day life. Sometimes you just need to move. Maybe it doesn't sound like much to you but when you're contemplating the controversial for the conservative, these are things which one would consider. I'm going back to a core - I am my own actions, flawed or no. I'll do as I see fit because I believe in humanity, I will defy these ugly beliefs incurred by conservatives, that human beings are instinctively cruel when it is evil that inspires good, that completes the satisfaction of good deeds. We need more faith that people are capable of good before evil, and learn that all things are a process to a goal which we will never meet in life. But take responsibility in knowing that all our actions have reactions, and not to destroy other people's journeys as they have theirs too. Choose the energy out of yourself which you wish to transfer onto the world. No one is watching you, people can only guide you so much and it's in these actions, these hands, where life begins and castles start getting made.
Whatever it is that you want from this earth, I do hope you get yours. Good morning, good day, good luck.
I'm so glad to be back in QUT. I love my classmates and how professional everyone is. Everyone knows their place and position. There's nothing I appreciate more than people who are professional about their work. It's like butter and honey, I swear to god, I love it that much. They're such characters that I almost want to kick myself for ever leaving them for New Jersey, but then again I needed the move then.
I'm glad that I'm good with opportunities and surviving. I revel in being back in Brisbane and I'm surprised that I'm actually sad about leaving these people when I've been begging to graduate. These awesome, awesome human beings - I forgot how much I loved my friends in Australia. I think back to what I learned in New Jersey and wonder if it was worth it. In terms of film and technical things, I learnt very little, which I regret. Yet I don't regret that the experience made me so much stronger. I don't think I got enough of an academic education out of it but I got savvy, maturity, experience. You can't put a price on that. I think it definitely helped my writing skills and how I read people, direct actors, see stories and my survival skills.
People think I'm crazy for wanting to shoot a feature in KK. Of course. But I'm not in this (and by 'this' I mean life) to do what everyone else has done. I'm 21, I have the rest of my life to get paid. I want to struggle, I want make an effort to come out with something exquisite until it doesn't work anymore; till either I die or it becomes an absolute necessity for me to sustain myself because I'm getting evicted from whatever gutter I have to start living in. It's okay. I'm trying to milk my youthful enthusiasm while I still have it.
Dream Cradle is going to happen. I'm so worried about finances because 35mm lenses are gonna cost $AUD3000 for that week alone. I need a job. Things have changed since the 80's, I can't sell my blood like Robert Rodriguez did and I'm hesitant to make use of my pert rack for artsake only because I do still need to prostitute myself to my conservative Asian nation first and foremost. I'm going to call for donations online soon so once we start a blog, tell your friends. Advertise me if you can, I'd appreciate it so much that we can be friends. Yes. Real friends. I offer, in return for your amazing support, my friendship and eternal gratitude. If you won't spend on this short film, at least consider some more lucrative and deserving charity association to do with a good humanitarian cause or some terminal disease that involves women or children. It's the gift that keeps on giving!
"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal." - Albert Pike.
And with that I've just incurred guilt into your souls with some dinky quote I found on the internet. But think about the possibilities. It beats paying for Astro (satellite TV).
I was in utter despair yesterday. While scribbling my fury into my journal on the train back to New Jersey, this older man came and sat next to me.
"What's that you're writing? A journal?"
"Yes."
Sometimes people disturb me when I'm writing in my diary, sometimes they don't out of courtesy. Sometimes it's invasive, sometimes it isn't. The man smelt of whiskey and cigarettes but he was dressed nicely enough so I took his gesture as being a friendly one. What can I say, I like my whiskey.
He was from Arizona. He spoke to me about his 29 year old son he was trying to bring home; a failed recovering drug addict. His daughter who he enjoys drinking wine with and her three month old son. We talked about life, cheesy as it sounds. I can have these conversations with 60 year old men and feel more myself than when I'm talking with anyone else because that's how I write in my journals. I write because I have ideas sometimes too complex to speak out loud but older men understand completely. I guess with older women there's a physiological aspect of it where we start to relate to one another. A maternal aspect that I'm not prepared enough for nor do I sense them as being universal enough for me to comfortably follow.
"Why do you write?" he asked.
"Because I there are some things that I can't say out loud."
"Like secrets?"
"Some of it. Sometimes it's just that the language or the level that they're on, I don't think my friends would understand or it would be an effort for me to make them to understand."
"But why do you write? I mean, you're happy with yourself, aren't you?"
"Most days, I am. Just like everyone else, I have my days... I write because I have a terrible memory."
I'm not as good at getting things out of other people but it was a great conversation. He missed his stop so I called him a cab.
"Do you ever read back to what you wrote?"
"Sometimes. I can't always because I'm not good with humiliation."
"Humiliation? What's there to be embarrassed about?"
He offers me a cigarette, which I accept.
"It's just that, you spend your whole life trying to get better. You go through things in the past, mistakes that were necessary but once that phase is over, it's hard for me to look back at it because I know now how I could have handled it better and it's a little embarrassing that I made these mistakes but I don't blame myself for it. I wouldn't be who I am now if it wasn't for them."
"That's right but it's nothing to be humiliated about."
"Besides, writing is important because even if I push that phase of my life away and it's almost impossible for me to look back sometimes, it's like I've paid my respects to who I was at that point in my life. Everything passes but that version of me existed and I have proof that it did."
"If I was fourty years younger, sweetie, I would love you."
"Do me a favour and tell the boys that they should know better."
While waiting outside my dorm, he found an old vinyl record in the trashcan which he recognised and I didn't.
"Once you hit 61, you're 21 (points at me). Once you hit sixty-one, you have to punch yourself in the head to get out of bed. You lose that youthful enthusiasm and you wake up wondering if you're gonna die yet. You anticipate it."
"I think I look forward to it."
"Dying? Sweetie, you don't wanna die."
"No. I definitely want to live but... in a nice way, I look forward to the idea of dying one day. I see death as kind of a rite of passage, like puberty or menopause."
"That's twisted."
"See, that's why I have to keep a journal."
"I like you."
"I like you too."
"You know life doesn't get any better than this, right?"
"I know. I really do. But you just have to keep making each day look a little more different."
"And you try."
"... and you try."
So he rubbed my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. When the cab came and left with his souvenir. I call it a coincidence that he found that vinyl. That conversation was supposed to happen. I wondered where he was the first time he heard the record. He used to play the guitar and thought about those days while he softly hummed songs he forgot he knew.
The past week has been tricky but last night, although I haven't quite figured out why, made me feel better. It just showed me that I knew myself really well. That and I have the maturity of a 60 year old man. Coincidences come when a phase of my life is sealed or when change is imminent. I've moved out of my dorms, semester is over. Time to turn a new leaf, new continent over. You'd think that I'd still have plenty of time to start getting older but I rush things. I don't want to put my life on hold for anything anymore.
"I hate horses. I think they smell and I don't like how people ride them, control them."
"I like horses. I like to think I can talk to them and they can understand me."
Some things come back to haunt you no matter how far you go. Turning 21 wasn't a problem. Facing facts that I had to start cutting people off was. It's uncharacteristic of me to do that to people who I don't feel aren't complete reprobates. I'm surprised at myself, really, that I've adopted the politics of becoming an adult. I don't mind growing up but I was a little ashamed of it. I am ashamed of closing doors but I had to keep big, bad wolves from coming in. I benefited from it largely and have never been happier. I think it's just the giving up on anything that really bugs me.
I'm not afraid of celebrating birthdays anymore. Other than last Sunday which got intense when I had a close encounter with two guys who were trying to kill each other with their eyes because they respectively wanted to sex me up at 4am. I was tipsy and twisted them into cockblocking each other out till I decided it was time for bed alone. Now that was a birthday party.
I liked 19 and 20. They were both good years and now I've 361 days of 21 to look forward to. Weeks before turning 21 I could feel my body changing; pubescence was ending. I no longer lose weight, my fat just shifts to the right places no matter how much I work out, which isn't so bad. Curves take place where bones used to protrude and I can't imagine now what it feels like to physically feel any older. It's unfathomable but getting natural curves like Bellucci is something to look forward to.
21 means getting stronger without getting deterred or distracted; no longer being afraid of being alone - a very impressive lesson to learn at my age. I'd take the single life to being treated like trash any day by people I put on pedestals and I'm glad I've outgrown those days where I'd take someone's abuse for the sake of feeling. These people bore me to tears and I'll no longer. Not if it compromises my dignity, integrity or reputation but most importantly - my progression. Love, I am free from your shackles now. Have a good life.
- "Bare Hands" (before colour correction)
