One's ambitions

I did a little jump while reading Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box, Uncollected Short Fiction to the last piece, entitled 'Code to My Career as a Writer for Periodicals'.

It brought me to my senses and realisations.

Can I say that my spatial awareness is consciously high?

Vonnegut writes about what it is like to be a native Middle Westerner. He mentions something that strikes me:

To grow up in such a city, as I did, was to find such cultural institutions as ordinary as police stations or firehouses. So it was reasonable for a young person to daydream of becoming some sort of artist or intellectual, if not a policeman of fireman. So I did. So did many like me.

If you were to stroll along the main roads and observe many of the 'billboards' or huge posters that plaster the board next to bus-stops, you would realise that NTU is advertising its faculty, in time for publicity for the university admission. (The polytechnics and ITEs were doing it a month or more back, but that's another story.)

The cynic in me made me laugh when I saw the poster of the Humanities school at NTU. It says you can be an intellectual (in a bold, serious font) if you join their school for the Humanities.

The more I pondered, the more I realised what a huge contrast little Edward is experiencing compared to Vonnegut who grew up in Indianapolis in 1922; the more I wanted to laugh at myself for dreaming to be a great writer in Hougang New Town.

As I set about having my breakfast, getting used to a schedule I've arranged for myself in my neighbourhood, I discover that realities are built differently here. With the history of being once a sleepy kampung area, it is quite natural that old mindsets and ambitions are deeply rooted.

My intention is not be deprave anybody of his or her dignity, but more importantly, is to convey the idea that one is 'very okay' if a young boy finishes school, armed with a higher education than his parents (and his ancestors), goes to look for work. The elusive dream of becoming rich is strongly conveyed through the consistent and dogged play of lottery.

For this, I usually do not disclose to anyone, especially to someone who questions my intention and purpose of this life, that I wish to be a writer. "For someone who loves reading, it is only natural to emulate." As a young child in a neighbourhood, I learnt quickly that adults only ask of your ambitions so they could have a conversation starter, turning to impose their beliefs and stereotypes on you, and most of the time, concluding that I'm likely to be as good as they are, or a bigger loser than they already are. (Of course, we do meet angels along the way.) For this game of wheel of fortune, I like to play along with the adults and reveal to them all sorts of occupations I've come across as a person less than ten years of age: I happily proclaim that I wish to be a chef, a postman or a policeman. My mother, even till today, still reminds me that I used to tell her that I wanted to be a doctor. It is difficult to explain to her that with my Arts background and the rigidity/inflexibility of the local education system that it is an uphill task to be able to switch to a Science background that will allow me to enrol in say, Medicine school. Perhaps I could try now, to explain to her that I could still be Doctor Lim, but not in medicine and in a different field of study. (That might take another five years, to enlighten her, not just to take on a course of study.)

Do I feel weighted down by this seemingly lack of ambition in my home town?

*

And, I do wish to know whether Mister Vonnegut felt pressured to enlist in a profession that lives up to his home town of Indianapolis.

Pretending

Sometimes I feel like I'm foraging in the jungle for an escape route out of the greenery, or at least, to find the river so I'll have a water source and hopefully as a guide to find the way out. It's been like that, switching on and off like my table lamp, for the past few weeks. It's not exactly tiring, but I get weary of people, of faces and of the body expressions of individuals and groupies.

It is like coming out of prison, and then attempting to find your bearings in a rapidly-changing environment.

I'll be free from national slavery this weekend, but I constantly feel that the shackles are tighter, and the claws are sharper. Digesting Sophocles' Oedipus drew me closer to the realisation that there might be a supreme power, a (mister) God, and Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich made me consider about how my life would look like should I be death, in my coffin. One of the main reason why I picked up that book was because I wanted to understand where Kurosawa was coming from as he did Ikiru (translated to 'Living') in 1952, in black and white film. Death does not only have to be in physically and of bodily presence, it can manifest in a special form of stoppage (that does not necessarily accept the termination of life).

Death, in a way of expression, can be found in many of the living, breathing human beings on earth, walking on land. I would like to question where their souls can be found at, but I must learn to understand that the answer does not lie with whom I am questioning, instead, I have to answer my own question.

As I walk out to the open sky, I carry within me the understanding that I'm walking, inching closer to death. I do not question it, but neither have I accepted the Grim Reaper's call.

I stopped writing this year partly because I was heavily distracted.

I still am, of course.

*

You're in a car ride. A fairly comfortable car ride, with the nuances of everyday-car travel; the air-con, the leather seats with the same smell, your favourite radio station is buzzing in the background, and you're definitely not being driven through a cemetery or caught in heavy traffic.

But you need to get to somewhere, a destination. I do not speculate whether it is important, but it's certainly urgent. As a young, perhaps brash, surely impatient young man, I want to be able to get to that destination right now. Immediately, right now, 'no-sir-ee', I do not want any delay.

Of course it's not possible, because plain logic requires that you travel, and because you need to travel, there is a journey.

Impatience breeds like a gremlin (or mogwai) exposed to water - not lights, because light kills them - within you, and I find myself cursing, even if it happens only in certain areas of my grey matter residing in my head. How do you deal with it? School taught me to tackle the problem head-on, to find solutions using my creative thinking-life skills, and viola, there is no such problem without a solution. Of course, nobody ever mentioned about the Middle East conflict.

I do not know for sure whether churches, temples, or mosques teach their people of worship that one cannot deal with the problem in such a manner for every obstacle in their way. You pray yes, but perhaps if might be worth dealing with the circumstance by 'absorbing' it and accepting everything about it in its way. To some, this might be called the passive solution, and to others, this is a no brainer: there are problems you can solve and there are problems you cannot solve. Those you can, solve it, get on with it, and for those you cannot, live with it, and move on.

*

It is pretty much an accepted piece of law in physics that for a force exerted, an equal amount of force comes back in return. It means, in layman terms, that when one punches a lamp-post with full force, the lamp-post 'punches' right back at him with equal strength, which explains why one feels an intensity of pain when one does so. Natural forces, very much so in tune with the concept of karma.

When you give, can I safely assert that you expect something in return? We stink of revengeful thoughts in our minds, yet only a select few consider the possible repercussions in giving that sucker punch. I have been always intrigued by the motivating force of Mother Teresa, and John Paul II singed to a similar tune, answering his own question with, "... she found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart". Mother Teresa has mentioned this herself:

"Something very beautiful... not one has died without receiving the special ticket for St. Peter, as we call it. We call baptism 'a ticket for St. Peter.' We ask the person, do you want a blessing by which your sins will be forgiven and you receive God? They have never refused. So 29,000 have died in that one house [in Kalighat] from the time we began in 1952."

In accepting death, do we then accept everything wholly and peacefully?
(For the ignorants, Mother Teresa is not Indian. She's Albanian, born in Macedonia. She left for Calcutta in the late 1940s, and years of the harsh sun in India must have made her darker significantly.)

Am currently reading Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and I suppose it will yield some answers and more questions.

(In case you missed out on the advertising they've been carrying out in the media, here's it once more- the MOSAIC Music Fest '07. I'm awfully keen on the 7.30pm show on 17th March with Rachael Yamagata, because her voice's amazing and this might be my best chance to take advantage of the concession for the $88 priced seat paid at $60, which two years approaching, I've not used it before. Another to-do before I ORD involves getting a membership at S'pore Film Society.)

I recently completed my first read of a piece of novel by Mister John Irving. Honestly, someone I've been putting off reading for a long while, simply because his novels, or rather the ones I own, do not have appealing covers. Hotel New Hampshire. Fortunately for myself, it was an engaging read worthy of a movie production. It does, strangely, brings me back to my first novel with Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City (actually, pretty much so nobody's first book of Kerouac, since most Kerouac lovers started off with On The Road, something I've still not read, Big Sur or Dharma Bums).

I do not feel strangled today, and I only feel so tonight on my way home because I must had been feeling oppressed all along (which dates a while back , I reckon). It is comforting to know there are various ingenious and surprising solutions which pop up every now and then in this complicating era. The geek in me and you would understand this simple comic strip (a new comic site I discovered and bookmarked with glee), which explains why Pearls Before Swine never fail to cheer me up. Two things to do before the sun gets too hot: have the opportunity to communicate to Bill Watterson and Stephan Pastis how much they've kept me away from the sleek, comfortable, air-conditioned psychology-therapy room because of what they convey with their form of expression.

Kerouac wrote a simple line in Big Sur that caught my eye and has flagged at my train of thought a couple of times now, so I thought I should share them:

"Cliches are truism and all truism are true" [found in Chapter 7]

It is a line that appears in parenthesis, so it probably wasn't that important; he was just rambling on, that stream of consciousness style of writing.

Fast forward to what Mister Douglas Coupland writes in Shampoo Planet:

"In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into otheres and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves." [page 171]

The more ambitious among us seeketh to be humble and noble. Can I eat my humble pie and declare to myself that perhaps I am not up to the task of assisting in someone else's life, and that it is one noble act to step back firmly and completely, because letting go allows that particular someone to grow, and to achieve?

In Irving's Hotel New Hampshire, Lily Berry decides to label her attempt to write as 'trying to grow'.

I'm trying to grow too.

もおいちど、おねがいします.

もおいちど、おねがいします.

It is strange to conjecture, from one's hands, that passing a year has made one wiser. Because experience does not necessarily bring about change to one's life, nor can it possible dent some damage in the history of one's life.

'Because I've walked this stretch of road before, it means I will be able to walk this road of stretch of road again without difficulty, and soon, I can even run on this stretch of road.'

Children take things to a new perspective because they are not arrogant, because they are not stubborn. We say children are great discoverers and explorers, and we are inadequate to assist them in their journey. I am holding dearly my belief that there is a metaphorical leap of faith (many such leaps exists in our pitiful life) when we ascend (or descend) from childhood to teenage, and to adolescent. You can see, if you observe carefully, that every individual encompasses such values, beliefs and habits picked up from young. Many such, shatter in pieces when the leaps of faith is done, but some survive. In many adolescents, I see the jagged juxtaposition of the old and the new, and the inability to soothe and piece the jigsaws together. The inability to do so, will kill many.

'Because I am young, because I believe I know everything I wish to learn, therefore I can swagger and behave like a young prince or princess.'

Many, forget to step down from the thrones of being a temporary prince or princess. The throne is not lost, neither is it taken away. Their kingdom, is the one taken away from them. For a while, they muddle around and try to test the waters. A split decision has to be made: should they abandon the throne and join another kingdom as a commoner, or should they continue to remain on the throne, status quo. Again, many linger over the decision made, or cease to come to a decision. The result is a lost kingdom, a kingdom created from their own debris.

*

Welcome back, if you've been reading my blog. Edward has never been away, merely just exploring.