Today I read an essay by Umberto Eco analysing Casablanca by way of Roland Barthes, all about what kitsch means, and I loved it. I watched a fireworks show on Saturday and they burned a wooden man to the ground, after, and then the girls bought me a Happy Meal because I wouldn’t shut up. Today it was so cold I walked everywhere hunched in a green hoodie with a pair of headphones keeping my ears warm. Last week, I finally begin to understand what it means to choose, and I think I’m starting to grow up. Today I read a small section of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves; the first time in 2 weeks I have read a book that has nothing to do with my course. I re-discovered how continually awesome God is, if that makes any sense, 4 weeks ago.

I have finished my essay. I have done my readings for tomorrow. There is a David Foster Wallace story I just plucked out from my pigeon hole and I have all the hours of the night.

So much of this place, any place, is the illusion that you are doing all you can to have an awesome time because you will never have this again, because people tell you this is the Time of Your Life, Son, And Don’t You Forget It, but of course that’s not true. All time is the time of your life, and I’m counting down the seconds, with glee.

here’s to everything.

so how about it, it’s just the thing just the thing just the kind of thing you’re looking for, laughed the man in the hat. it wouldn’t cost a thing no not a thing no barely a thing, mint condition all you wanted, he added slyly, because let’s face it’s like things were set up this way, just for you now isn’t that special. look, isn’t this getting old, I said, you’re an allegory, a kind of fable, you and your stupid hat both and I’m not interested. now, he said, looking hurt, now there’s no need to say things like that, to get personal, to hit below the belt, because you know I’m telling the truth when I say you won’t get this superbly good a deal again cross my heart and hope to -. no, I said, no, I don’t know that, of course I don’t, but I’ve made up my mind, superbly good deal or not. and I think I’ll take my chances with the other guy, I never heard him try to sell anything

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. Really written. This is, of course,
temporary. Of course I would say that it’s temporary. But I think
it is.

Things are happening, changing, sliding in and out of
focus, but really the truth is
the truth is the truth and
I can’t change that.

I don’t really intend to.

And perhaps it’s abit of a cop-out that right now the only thing i can tell you is NOthing, but that’s just the way I roll, baby, that’s just the way it goes. There are times and there are times, and hey, there’s poetry in the blank spaces too, so who says this is necessarily a bad thing?

But I’m not worried. I haven’t been for a long time.

I can’t tell you how good that is.

commitment issues

Desire and sex. Intimacy and affection. Understanding and vulnerability. Relying and being relied on. Taking and filling. Love.

The idea that they’re problems small, neat and discrete that can be wrapped up in a ball and disposed away. Or a thinly layered tissue, pulling back the outer edges with a scalpel and picking out the parts that make us uncomfortable.

But they’re not. It doesn’t matter how much you know or how hard you try these are things outside your control.  You can’t decide on the aspects of a relationship you’re willing to commit to, you can’t pick and choose, and this is something that’s deeply terrifying for people too used to control.

Because, let’s face it, we’re living in an age that’s all about control. You are in control of your grades. You are in control of your diet. You are in control of your image. You are in control of how you spend your time.

The constant fiction that we are responsible for our happiness.

That’s a word right there that has stopped being helpful. ‘Responsible‘.

I am taking responsibility for my future. I am responsible for myself. It’s my responsibility to see me through in life, because nobody else will. These days it’s sold as a virtue, the idea that you and only you are sufficient for yourself.

But you’re not. Of course you’re not.

None of us know what we’re doing, or where we’re going, or how we’re going to get there. We spend our time making little compromises for reasons we’re not sure of, and hope things will turn out better. We want change and we want direction and we want to be special, or at least, loved, but nobody has any idea how to go about doing these things by themselves.

Think about what facebook and twitter and the general internet culture mean. We bombard our friends with asinine information, or photos from that TOTALLY AWESOME BASH last night, or the absurdity of a spiralling ‘Friends’ count that goes into the hundreds and keeps climbing. We need these markers and signs. We need these pokes and updates. We need this validation.

It’s because we want to know we are alive. We want to know that we’ve controlled the day, tamed it, shaped it to our general happiness.

Fair enough.

But what does ‘our general happiness’ look like? What do we want to shape our day into?

Remember, this is of course, DIFFERENT from what actually HAPPENED during our day. Facebook, blogs, twitter, they’re all narratives. We pick the things to include on them, we’re actively marketing an image that we want to believe in. Facebook doesn’t tell you anything about how your friend’s day was. It tells you what they wanted it to look like, to them, in retrospective. Take a look again, and think about that. What are the things that people choose to post? What does an ideal day look like?

Do any of us know?

The implicit assumption is that whenever things go wrong in life, it’s because we didn’t take enough control, but maybe it’s because we’re trying to take too much.

-

28“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11: 28 – 30

essay essay essay

‘Oh just write something about Tennyson and Browning’

‘Go crazy’

‘Really it’s okay’

Man I love this subject. Though ask me this again after my first essay crisis.

Also: God’s been very very good recently. And very…interesting. LOTSA THINGS GOING ON, HOMES

I wrote a frankly quite brilliant short piece for my last assignment and now I’m wondering how to top it. I really should save this stuff for essays.

Might skip the lecture at exam schools today. If I do, it leaves the rest of the day free to do whatever I want like laundry, finishing this assignment and friday’s piece, and then maybe reading some Woolf that I bought from Blackwells. Oh, and maybe visiting bi min for some unconditional mothering and free food! The glamorous life. Of course, it’s technically a compulsory lecture, and I’m torn.

Still can’t decide what to do for my next assignment

indelible

Getting a tattoo is a statement that you believe that you are cool enough that your sense of style won’t deviate too much from where you are now, for the rest of your life, and that you are willing to bet on this by getting a permanent reminder. The reminder will be a monument either to your awesomeness or your stupidity for the rest of your life. There are of course drunk tattoos, or tattoos you get on a dare, but those are really things your friends pressure you into because they’d like a good laugh

I think it’d be quite awesome to get a simple little ‘textosterone.’ tattoo, and in the most boring Times New Roman font. Depending on how I feel about this in three years I’ll see what happens.

Climbed a tree today. Ran into an almost-naked guy yesterday in 10 degree weather (strategically placed duct tape). I hear the assistant dean ran into him too 5 minutes after I did. Apparently the massively tall brit guy across and upstairs ‘got into a spot of bother’ last week and got into a fight with some townies. We theorise the quiet Lithuanian math major is secretly a KGB agent. Nearly got run down by a van crossing the road. Everywhere there are the shells of bikes, wheels stolen and left to rust against walls. Decided to buy two locks. Senior tutors seem even worse organised than we are, I walk into his office for a tute and there’s books and food everywhere, his monitor is balanced on top of 3 thick copies of the Oxford English-Latin Dictionary and his keyboard is precariously wedged on top of a barstool. Oh, it also transpires he just came back from writing a novel about an interior designer named Alizia.

For while Alizia has a Design for everything from relationships to work to motherhood, the people who matter most to her refuse to fit. As the gloss she has put on her life begins to crack she realises there may not, after all, be a Magic Motto for everything. And where can she find happiness then?

He also wrote a highly scholarly tome on Victorian Poetic Forms. Hm.

Spent last night enthusing over the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and talking into the wee hours of the night.

This place is overflowing in alcohol.

how things are going

It’s so different here.

I’ve been abit dislocated for a little while, mostly because being asian and not having a british accent means there’s a little bit of a communication barrier. I’m doing pretty well all things considered, though things might take time.

But I gotta say, God is so incredible. It’s enough to make me want to chuckle, everything is so well-planned. Meeting people and talking to them at JUST the right moment, for you and for them. Having things just…work out even if the morning left you feeling a little cold and a little miserable.

I just spent the evening talking to and praying with a New Awesome Friend (about which I am very, VERY happy), my tutorials start next week, I have monday off to go shopping and finish my assignments and OH FREAK IT IS COLD HERE I need to learn to start buying food for myself. I woke up this morning and basically found fruit and cereal for lunch. Which is alright…if the weather wasn’t so miserable. Brilliant, sam chan.

I know I keep on saying that it’s only going to be a couple of months and that it’s not a big deal, but really, deep down I’m thinking of times and eras and the fall of empire and the Industrial Revolution.

6 months on I’m less willing to leave than I thought I would be 6 months ago, but that’s okay. I believe, really do, that there’s something for me anywhere I go, because God works like that. Looking forward to meeting people and finally being able to have substance for lit that exceeds my convictions.

I used to think the future was like an onrushing train, quite oblivious in its inexorability, and at least irresistible. An iron-tracked wall of mystery. It’s more like a low swamp, fog, brambles, hobgoblins, and maybe a dim path I guess. Except you don’t walk or bushwhack through it, but you’re suspended high in the air over it, a vast sweeping expanse of complexity that isn’t really that complex anymore when you can see everything laid out like that. It’s a shitty metaphor but I don’t think I’m entirely here anymore.

There’s nothing I would change

See you on the other side

- <3 Sam