nuggets of truth

The issue is not so much focusing on the right things but rather, not becoming distracted by the wrong things.

There are a thousand and one things we can give ourselves to, but there is going to be one thing above all others that we must devote our highest attention to.

We cannot do everything.

We are not called to do everything.

We should not attempt to do everything.

Stepping out with you,

Other Things

I'm up so late all the time, plouging through some really intriguing sites and feeling quite overwhelmed. There are so many places I want to check out, so many films I want to watch (S'pore Film Fest!) and these are just other things, beside the more important things like getting started on papers.

Other Things by Alvin Pang

To buy a potted plant is to admit both faithlessness and need. To water the plant, perhaps daily, perhaps once in a while when you remember and the leaves start to droop, is as close to love as it gets.

Other things mean other things.

To light a lamp is to hide darkness in the same closet as sleep, along with silence, desire, and yesterday’s obsessions. To read a book is to marry two solitudes, the way a conversation erases and erects, words prepare for wordlessness, a cloud for its own absence, and snow undresses for spring.

The bedroom is where you left it, although the creases and humps on the sheets no longer share your outline and worldview. In that way, they are like the children you never had time for.

A cooking pot asks the difficult questions: what will burn and for how long and to what end.

TV comes from the devil who comes from god who comes and goes as he pleases. To hide the remote control in someone’s house is clearly a sin, but to take the wrong umbrella home is merely human.

The phone is too white to be taunting you. The door you shut stays shut. The night is reason enough for tomorrow, whatever you believe.

Remember, the car keys will be there after the dance. Walls hold peace as much as distance. A kettle is not reason enough for tears.

The correct answer to a mirror is always, yes.

Running

I appreciate the public transport system, bus journeys, train rides, walks to the station, it is a time off from the world, by being in the world. A gap in the day to perch on the fence and people-watch, like a silent observer looking at everyone and everything, without even realizing that introspection is going on. A time of inner silence, immersed in a noisy world, just watching, and listening, and listening and watching.

While surfing around, I found this brilliant article, which I thoroughly enjoyed, by Howard Becker. It is beautifully written, there’s a poetic charm to it, and it captures the essence of Sociology.

http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/articles/observe.html

“We saw things close up as well as from a distance.”

“This gave us a lot of material on differing ways of life to think about.”

“It wasn't undertaken because I was a sociologist and had a reason to be there observing.”

It makes me feel that passion is so powerful and so attractive, more attractive than being attractive.

Zai Jian Wo De Ai Ren

Tonight is slow and easy, against the backdrop of Teresa Teng’s songs. Someone, I can't remember who, sent it to me when we returned last year. This is how I have come to associate her songs with: Mornings of Kaya toasts, after heavy Life Journey nights, Milo, markers on the table, textbooks, colourful friendship band thread everywhere, long rectangular table, that two black-and-white paintings and the red walls, the red walls.

‘I am very fond of sunsets. Let’s go this moment and look at a sunset.’

‘But we shall have to wait…’

‘Wait for what?’

‘Wait until it’s time for the sun to set.’

At first you seemed very taken aback. Then you laughed at yourself and said:

‘I still keep thinking I’m at home!’

Just so. For as everyone knows, when it is noon in the United States the sun is setting over France. If you could get to France in a twinkling, you could watch a sunset right now. Unfortunately France is rather too far away. But on your tiny planet, little prince, you had only to move your chair a few steps. You could watch nightfall whenever you liked.

‘One day,’ you said, ‘I watched the sunset forty-three times!’

And a little later you added:

‘You know, when one is that sad, one can get to love the sunset.’

‘Were you that sad, then, on the day of the forty-three sunsets?’

But the prince made no answer. -The Little Prince

Suddenly I See

When you are happy, everything becomes brighter and bigger. They do become, they don't just appear.

I feel at ease with the world, I wanted to write that down last night but I was so tired, I fell asleep after a Kit Kat. I'm seeing it, finally, and this feeling of liberation is sweet.

It is good that our thoughts are always in line with our mood. Colourful images of kite-flying, bountiful bubbles, laughter. The air smells sunny today. I am filled with a sense of limitless boundaries, that one can do possibly anything at all. You know those rooms with a sea of colourful plastic balls, the ikea one, I always thought wouldn't it be great if it could be filled with the things we love, a sea of ice cream scoops, a sea of longans, anything. If I could, I would do a thousand cartwheels around the house right now.

Cyril Wong has a collection of poems titled "Tilting our plates to catch the light". I guess that's what it possibly boils down to, a constant and continuous adjustment and re-adjustment, till we see that life is a strange, beautiful magic.

The heart never lies

These nights I fall asleep with my computer on, table lamp on, blanket uncovered, and wake up in the early morning hours, full of energy, sitting up, thinking very hard what I was doing before I slip into these accidental naps.

It rained today, the whole of the day, and I found out that the sky is white when it pours. White as a sheet of paper, with no clouds in sight at all, so white that you can’t quite see where the droplets come from, they just start in mid-air and fall everywhere.

I am getting an overload of information from everywhere, I don’t even know what to call it, information is an inaccurate word for whatever it should be called. I spoke to a woman for my paper who told me flatly that Easter and Christmas aren’t found in the bible, that Jesus wasn’t born on the twenty-fifth of December. I am struggling with criticisms of the church, half-truths which puts me up in defense against strong convictions that makes me weary and confused at the end of the day. I am seeking and desiring God, all the time wanting encounters of sorts. The first few times when I went to church, each service was a dialogue with God because the message, week after week, was something I needed to know right then.

My hand was held but somewhere in between, I think I have lost touch and my hand was against air. Last week, after bible study, I asked how do you know when it is God speaking to you and when it is your own intuition, or how do you know certain signs are from Him, when is it not just a matter of personal judgment or misinterpretations. And after talking for a while, perhaps to comfort, the friend I spoke to said, “You are a form of encouragement for me too, the way you seek Him”. But I am discouraged; I want Him to be real, more real, as real as real can be. And I am waiting, thinking maybe it is all a matter of time, or a test of patience. I noted this down in my handphone while watching Jack Neo’s Ah Long movie: Before God entrusts you, you will be tested on your endurance. And this note keeps popping out, before God entrusts you, before God entrusts you.

When do I know it is God speaking to me and when it is not floaty thoughts? I constantly ask this question, mostly to myself. And I found the answer to this question. Yet the answer is ambiguous, I just know when I know, there is no better way to put it. On Monday night, I went shopping for a gift for a friend going overseas. I intended to get him a book, but settled on a CD instead. And I purchased this book called “Listening to God” because the title sounded interesting. I don’t know if it is a good book, if the author is renown, I don’t know who the Shakespeares or John Donnes are. As I read the first few pages today, I smiled and I know this is it, this is when He is speaking to me, this book is written for me, specific advice on every insecurity, and specific answers to questions.

It’s starting to drizzle again, and the air smells of primary school days, early mornings waiting for the school bus to roll in, in this same cool air.

Tender Moments

I feel guilty being online now because there is so much untouched work, papers to write, readings to be done and I am unable to suppress the urge to translate this week into words.

I learnt about “Critical Moments” last semester, it defines that one transitionary point in your life where a particular incident hits you and changes your course of life forever. If I could construct my own list of concepts, the first on my list would be “Tender Moments”. It is that solitary moment when you seek shelter from the rest of the world, where there is no need to talk, there is just you and your weightless thoughts that can venture as far as they can possibly go. It is that moment when you reflect, sitting or standing, in your room, in a place away from people, in your own personal boundary. It is also that moment that gels all of humans’ hearts together. No matter how you present yourself to the world, chatty, giggly, grumpy, or angsty, everyone shares this same moment of quiet thinking, where for that single moment, we all become the same, when we lose the need to argue or the need to pretend, or the need to be somebody, and find ourselves in quiet reflection.

So I sit here, cross-legged, fan blowing my toes cold, with a hot cup of green tea beside me. Doing field research in this quaint little charming place in Singapore has been tiring but immensely satisfying, I did not expect it to be as such, -like an exploratory journey, venturing along streets talking to random people, perfect strangers, finding out a bit more about this and a little about that. Relatives and friends always ask me, “And what can you do?” I am always taken aback because to me there are infinite possibilities and “can” should be replaced by “would”. I am beginning to see Sociology less as an academic discipline, less as a gateway to bright career prospects but more as a way of thinking that changes my vision of the world. I am sure C Wright Mills would be jumping with joy if he reads this and I truly feel that once equipped with the sociological imagination, one starts observing things that were left unnoticed previously, picks up certain nuances, looks at the world in an entirely different manner. It saddens me to think that when I graduate and have no papers to write, I might stop doing stuff like this.

I am terrible at making decisions and it seems like a plague that stays with me because I am always finding myself having to make some kind of choice and being unable to come to any form of conclusion. I don’t know when I made up my mind, I have been praying for a word from God, a sign, a revelation, something. Maybe it was after last night, or watching the video again this morning, somewhere in between I have subconsciously decided. But in full consciousness, I know it wouldn’t be easy and tonight I experienced the first waves of that. This feeling is strangely familiar, it reminds me of the time when I started going to church and the difficulties I experienced in so doing, but it is also the time when I feel that I am closest to God. Last two weeks, I felt that my spiritual life was stagnating, like I have lost that connection somehow. Ironically, at this point when I know I am not relying on my own strength, I think I have found that connection again. Tonight, standing and facing the wind, I prayed for peace, and peace only.