here, i have lived

Some of these posts make me cringe. They are but spontaneous. A matter of getting random thoughts on paper. Anyone can do that. And I'm not about to prove to anyone that I have attained a propensity for whim that is beyond the average person. And even such cannot be considered an achievement. Surely it cannot be! Anyone can write random thoughts. Anyone can walk in the park, breath, put food in his mouth, sleep. At least I'm bold enough to step out and press a footprint onto the still-wet cement and say, here, I have lived.

miss marion

A word about Miss Marion. Incredible energy. Yes, most young people nowadays are depressing, but when you come across those with immense potential (and I’ve seen quite a number of them in my years of teaching), you say to yourself, I gotta get better too!!! I got to! Miss Marion strikes me as being pretty, but also, she has a creative/artistic depth which I like. It’s not the artsy type. That gets developed later, sadly, through going into places like OCAD and hanging with people who smoke grass. But the creative/artistic depth I’m referring to is like… Betty had that. A little bit. It’s that new curiosity about the way boys and girls work (this sentence sounds terrible). It’s that curiosity about the first-love story. This curiosity has to be just about right. Too extreme, you’d get OCAD beasts. Too fluffy, you’d get invalids who maul over cheesy Asian dramas. It has to be just about right, and I do see some of this depth in Miss Marion. Just some of it. It also helps that she happens to be pretty. How much her prettiness contributes to this depth I have no idea. And it’s something I’ve long been curious about. And it’s been one of my life’s petty queries. Does being pretty add to this artistic depth? Does being pretty entitle one to dream in a way that ordinary-looking people cannot? Sadly, I’m tempted to answer yes. I don’t feel pretty 100% of the time. In the times I feel less than 100%, it’s like my dreams shatter, and only after I’ve discovered the infinite possibilities of short story writing, I realize a hero need not be pretty to star in a story. But then, it may also be argued that having a creative/artistic depth makes one prettier.

Today I feel pretty. Inside of me lives this 16-year old school girl. I don’t know how she got there. But she had been there for as long I could remember. When I was younger than sixteen I had thoughts beyond my age. Now, I still think (and even write) very much like that 16-year old girl. I know the limits of this uncomfortable quality. But I know I can make it serve me.

Look at her. She has things dangle here and there. Her dress is made up of this dangly fabric. Her handbag has red trims. A thing dangles off her cellphone and the way she holds it and snaps it shut can be so incredibly attractive.

I’m just rambling here. Really rambling. If I don’t leave now I might not be able to. Now, I’m not blaming myself for having spent almost two hours here and not accomplishing a thing. But hey, that is the cult of productivity. I’m living. Maybe that’s how I move forward, I need to know how I stand in order to move forward. But I can’t let that happen all the time. How is one supposed to walk if every step one has to check to confirm that the earth beneath his feet is solid?

teach me how

Even though my father wanted me to go into business, he never got me to feel the same kind of excitement he felt about his work. I knew he was proud of his work and he was always excited by the prospect of opening new restaurants. I had seen him, in the middle of the night, sitting there, with ruler and pen, drawing and redrawing the draft of the floor plan of his newest restaurant. I knew he was busy.

Yet he never took me by the hand and said, “You see how fun and worthwhile this is?” He would not have said that because his work was not that fun. I realized this after I got older, when my father and I talked less and less.

Even if his work wasn’t fun, he still could have taken my hand and showed me how to develop the strength to work even when you don’t feel like it, how to put on that heavy business attire under the Hong Kong humidity, how to endure waves of financial pressure, how to contain elation in times of success, how to sustain relations with friends and business friends and how to differentiate them, how to read people, how to strike, how to defend, how to pay for a bill in a restaurant before the other person grabs the tray.

i flicker lonely as a

I'm tired of being a dotted line. Solid lines win solid love.