Uneasy Observations

The wet-grass-scented breeze makes me want to sleep in bed with a good book all day long. Recently, I’ve been tampering with the idea of going to and staying in a foreign land for an extended period of time. I don’t mind staying in an old English country house or on the second story of a rented apartment in a bricked building in Hong Kong. Is this some form of escapism or a pining for something that is not to be found anywhere but only when I am still?

For a good part of the semester, I was tired of the campus landscape. AS1, AS3, AS4 corridors, and knowing what to expect every hour of every day in the week stifled me. It was not exactly dreary either. Yet, it was neither stimulating nor quietly compelling in any way. I wanted to go overseas to get a fresh breath of new landscape, just to see something different, not knowing what to expect of leaves against that portion of the evening sky.

Maybe it’s the highs and lows of growing up, but along the way, I fell in love with the NUS landscape all over again. Nothing has changed, the same trees are rooted in their exact spots, the same wooden benches along the walkways, and everything’s the same. Yet, everything was so beautiful all of a sudden, and I was genuinely appreciating every bit of the scenery.

What startles me isn’t so much the speed at which human beings turn our heads and change our minds. But in every ‘proper’ person’s functional life hides an entirely different façade that is not presented in the 9-5 jobs, over lunchtime chats, or in big dinner parties. It is only released in solitude over films, in a museum viewing gallery or behind a computer screen of a blog page. Is this Goffman’s conceptualization of ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’ presentations? I think so and I’m certain every single person has this multiple-dimensioned side. Not just the quirky, wayward ones standing at the back alley silently watching the world go by.