rice porridge

Completely paralysed yesterday all day twelve hours gone and I did nothing nothing nothing but lie in bed and eat cookies and listen to my new CDs and lie in bed and eat cookies and ponder the ceiling and walk downstairs and upstairs and eat more cookies and how easy to pass twelve hours when you got plenty cookies at home and a few new CDs to listen to. All that work. All that work that I should have done yesterday I did today and it took me only an hour and a half! whereas yesterday I couldn’t finish it in twelve hours. It’s okay. It’s past. What ever will be will be… Is that green flower?

Tiffany went to buy school uniform for Sunny today and it was pretty emotional, especially when Sister Fay started to question Tiffany about her past and her family and Sunny’s identity, all the while Sunny only stood there not saying anything, completely mesmerized by how Sister Fay can get her fingers so close to the sewing machine without getting cut.

Had a box of fried noodles today at T&T how being in that place feels like being in Shanghai and how funny a look the lady gave me when I brought my tray of $1.99 noodles to the cash she looked around wondering why they forgot to give me my rice porridge, then I said to her I told them I didn’t want the rice porridge, and she thought I could have gotten it and given it to her. Next to her was the hot water dispenser for tea. A man went to get water but complained that the water had gotten cold. The lady told him it's still boiling. The man poured the cold water from his styrofoam cup into the little gap between the machine and the counter thinking that the gap is for dumping water. The water spilled all over the counter where placed two stacks of styrofoam cup. "What are you doing?" the lady said to the man, frustrated, she had to wipe the counter.

pea and no man

Sing us a song you piano man…

Sluggish was how I started I woke up from my two dreams woke up not knowing what to do typed a bit of my story now I know what Tiffany would do when she enters the apartment I left home at 1pm and the subway took me to school safely and I was there, wrote a midterm test, wrote a test, a test! My first test in university since the olden days of my undergrad years, in fact I wrote two tests today and I aced them both, yippee… I bought pizza and papaya juice and had a light dinner and a reflective moment in the Hart House canteen where there were no empty tables because everyone gathered to watch Emmanuel Sandhu skate and I recall the days I loved watching figure skating and how Lillehammar is already 12 years ago, he skipped a jump! Why do they do that? Is it the timing? What explains? What’s it like? Failed? Then I went up to the living room with a high ceiling and big chairs and big tables where a boy in the corner was playing ‘sing us a song you piano man’ on the piano as I reviewed my notes to Dubliners for my second test and it occurred to me that it was V-day. What is the theme of Dubliners? Paralysis! Nationalism, imprisonment versus escape, corruption, Ireland past and present, catholicism versus Catholicism. What’s the symbolism of the gold coin? What about the girl who walked in with flowers? What about the way I walked eastward on College Street instead of taking the subway home sauntering about telling myself how I deserve a little walk after acing the test and how I ended up crouching by the street chewing my panzerotto watching people walk north and south. A lady hurt her neck on the bus. The driver asked me if I speak Chinese, I said yes, and I did translation for the lady but she spoke Mandarin, and I told her you have to go to the hospital, you have to go to the hospital, so they took her away, the driver shook my hand, and the lady said thanks and I stayed on the bus a voice came on in my head repeating the same questions why why why why why. I recall a poster on the subway station that shows a subway operator and a policeman and a transit constable standing there like action figures one can buy from Toys R Us and I thought to myself how funny and how sensible of me to leave McD’s and forget that sundae for had I lined up longer I would have missed my bus. In the last five minutes of my busride I closed my book, closed my eyes, and thought of snow and snow and snow and… it was quite sad actually, quite sad, but… What is the theme? And here I am I have school next morning early morning and here I am writing what about?

I want to do for Hong Kong what Joyce has done for Dublin.

The phrase runs through my mind the whole time I was walking and thinking… no I didn’t think of snow until the end of my busride otherwise it would have been too sad and if there are many degrees of sadness and if there’s a word that describes clearly each of these tiny slots of what would be sadness and describe each so precisely so lucidly we’d no longer feel sad and there’d be only a kaleidoscope of funny feelings you know what I mean? And snow falls and covers the whole city.

stupid cupcakes

First dream:

I was sitting in the back row of a classroom next to a girl who sat against the wall. We were taking notes, writing things, I was writing a sentence about cupcakes, about stupid cupcakes and going over the funniness of it how cupcakes cannot be stupid… (wait… I recall more about my dream)… suddenly this big young man in a black jacket with a black face walks over, squeezes his big body into the gap in front of our desk, I looked up, and I said a sentence that goes something like, “Suddenly I was swept by a sudden darkness (something nonsensical),” and then he says to the girl next to me, “Let’s have cupcakes after school,” then she says, “But it’s best friend day!” then I said to the girl, “Is that like a movie?” Then somebody from the front row turns around to acknowledge how I made a ‘good one’ which I don’t understand. I woke up and my alarm clocked showed 6:39am

Second dream:

I could have gotten up for I was quite awake but I fell back in bed and tried to analyze my dream and in the process of analyzing this dream I had a second dream. This one is not as vivid. I was teaching in a classroom, or it could have been a lecture hall, and we were discussing a short story, or possibly a movie, where the characters are shooting arrows at each other. I discuss the significance and symbolism of their arrow shooting, then I asked the class to turn to the story called, “Lily”. Then I woke up. My alarm clocked showed 9:39am. I had slept for ten hours.

The first dream left me with an indescribably good feeling. I gave me a picture of clear blue skies and cottony clouds and fields with cattle like some dairy product commercial.

Yesterday, I attended a school staff meeting where they talked on and on about recycling. At night I taught a grade six class. Later tonight I have a test on Joyce’s Dubliners.

dreams and anxiety and everything in between

Do you think I’m immature? This, I asked my friend. I would not say this to you if you didn’t have what you have, I said to her, you have… emotional capacity. It saddens me, it saddens me that my friend has grown up. This last sentence sounds silly but that’s what the situation essentially is, and I’ve made up my mind I will not grow up, made up my mind that my friends will drive nicer cars and live in bigger houses and have more toys for their kids to play with, I’ve made up my mind. This is the path I choose to take and I have no reason to expect my friend to follow my path, buy my friend had so much going for her, she had, had, an emotional capacity that brought me out of my troubles and it hurts me so much to see her consumed by gray buildings and gray jackets and bank notes.

I told another friend the other day, I will be a teacher, I said to him, while he talks about going back to HK to work in a big company, and asks me if I’d join, then he said to me, I thought you were gonna be something great. I really thought you’d be something great, he said. I wasn’t offended, but it sounded funny, I didn’t laugh, I wasn’t sure to laugh or cry. I’m still great, I said to myself, then I said to him, how do you know I won’t write the next Great Canadian Novel?

I’m okay. I have lots about me I need to fix and I know what they are and I’ll be okay. I need to feel my presence. I need to feel my space. Had a bit of an anxiety attack today, it happens.

I was holding back tears talking to my friend today.

If a body catch a body…

Gray jacket metal wrist watch guys are always standing around the rye field, smothering dreams.

And like this I am reminded, of why I want to be a teacher. . Rise. Rise.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Few years ago I visited my girlfriend in Japan and went to the little shack where she was living, a crummy old place which she has managed to keep clean despite the crumminess of the structure. How can they do this to you? I asked her. She didn’t answer. She was out on her own, working to support herself, while I was still a highschooler looking forward to university. How I lagged behind. She turned 25 yesterday. I thought about sending her just a little message, but I didn’t. It would bring back so much. I didn’t want to go there. No no nonononononononononononononononono.

I’m okay.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Can I say this?:

I don’t get it and I never will for if I get it it’ll become boring so I’d rather not get it.

But I know in a few years I’ll be in a situation in which I have to get it and when that comes I will get it.

And even when I get it I can still let myself not get it and if I don’t have to get it I’d rather not.

But really, I get it. Deep down I get it. I might look like I don’t get it but I get it and when gun points at my head I do get it I do I do I do. It’s just when I don’t have to I’d rather not.

Is that selfish?

Would you want this kind of boyfriend?

I shouldn’t have asked that.

birthday

It's my birthday today but according to the lunar calendar it is also 'people's day' which means that it is supposed to be everybody's birthday according to Chinese customs which is why I woke up this morning and received a red pocket money from mom. And so in class I told the kids it's my birthday then Phoebe says 'it's also my birthday!' and Wendy says 'it's also my birthday!' and Felix explains to the class today is 'people's day' which means that it's celebration of birth for every human and then I said but it's really my birthday and it really really is but they don't believe me so I smacked the table comically and said it again, annoyed, and they all laughed, and I said 'happy birthday everyone, see you next week,' and they file out of classroom and some of them told me happy birthday, even though birthday is not a big deal to me anymore but I remember when I was their age birthday was a big deal and they remind me of that feeling the way they came up to me and said to me happy birthday and Iris asked me 'how old are you?', I said 26 but she heard 36.

slippery days

In lecture we were discussing the ending of Raymond Chandler's Red Wind. The professor asks, "What do you make of the ending?" The class tries to answer. The professor pushes on. "Don't you see something more to it? Something symbolic, perhaps?" Then I raised my hand and I spoke. I raised my hand to speak in the middle of a lecture for the first time ever since I entered university seven years ago. I forget what I said. But I spoke... I told him my name, and I expressed my interpretation of the ending, and he made a check mark on his list. Informed participation. Check. Yippee.

Moments slip by... moments that could be stepping stones allowing me to step off and propel forward but sometimes they slip because there's not time to sit down and record. And so it makes me wonder, these people who move so fast, do they ever come to the realization that they are missing a lot?

Paralysis! -- is the central theme! says my prof when we were discussing the first few stories of Dubliners.

I said something to myself this evening while reading Dubliners in the library.

"Talking to someone interesting is not as interesting as talking to someone who makes you feel interesting."

It is the latter I strive to become for I already find myself quite interesting.