Love me tender

I have a way of writing in ambiguity such that most of what is documented becomes unfathomable, it feels personal yet detached, it seems clear yet incomprehensible. I never cared whether people reading this understood what I was talking about, whether they could relate to shared accounts, because writing, to me, is very much for the self.

But this entry shall be different; I have an experience to share and I am going to do so as explicitly as I can.

I began my semester wondering what love is. In one of my older entries in August, this is how I felt:
What is love, really? I am starting to believe, that love is made of emotions rising at certain moments, it is made of impulsiveness, it is made of sonnets that romanticize the mysterious thing that nobody knows, of songs that sing, “He fills my soul with so much love that anywhere I go I am never lonely”. But how long does it last, that after the years that passed, that you still could be passionately swept away.

Characterizing love is not difficult. In love, there is some care and concern, pain and tears, happiness and sadness. And love is varied, holding different kinds of relations together, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters, men and women. I seem to be able to tell what love is. Yet, to look at a scene of tenderness or to feel a certain emotion, realizing that is love and telling myself this is love is something I have difficulty doing. I think I know what love is, yet I am unable to pinpoint it.

These few weeks have been days of small discoveries and growing. I do not have clear answers but it is a notion that is becoming less vague. The biggest revelation to me is actually very simple: To feel love, one must allow to be loved.

I went to church a couple of Saturdays ago after a long hiatus and made a choice to open my heart. Service was scary as much as it was impactful. I was amazed by the level of faith and belief that others held, and I was more aware of the huge disparity that lay between me and them. Stepping up and taking a leap of faith was definitely not a moment of awakening, of certainty or conviction. As I stood, the only thoughts that were running through my mind was that it is very cold, am I ready for this choice, I ought to be more prepared this time round, it is really freezing.

This bout of doubt and uncertainty comes from the mindset that one’s level of faith has to reach a certain benchmark for the threshold of something new. In faith that dwindled, and amongst faith that appears unwaveringly strong, I felt I was not ready. But I had made a decision, a second one, and within insecurities and doubts, I decided to give myself a chance. On Sunday night, the same night I wrote an entry and said, “Tonight I will try”, I took out the bible that has been kept away for years and read it. I was expecting revelations, tears, an impact, a great one, I was bent on looking for the breakthrough force that people always talk about. There was none, I read it, it was comforting, but there was none.

When I related this to a friend the next day, he said many things, but the one thing that struck me was this, “Faith is like a muscle, you’ve to exercise it. Love is a choice.” I reaffirmed my choice that same night, in reading and in prayers in the nights that follow; I only wanted to reach out.

But sometimes, it is difficult. Stepping into and out of church is, like what another friend told me, “crossing between two worlds”. Returning home and going back into the world of realities feels like leaving something behind. Sometimes, in this sphere, within the walls of my room, in school, in between journeys, all that I really long for it to recreate that same experience in church, feeling His presence. So in faith that is on a constant fluctuation, some days big and other days small, I did the same thing I have been doing since the first night: reading and keeping in prayer.

And when I say the notion of love is becoming less vague to me, it is because I am able to pinpoint it, even as intangible, as invisible as it may seem, I find myself moved.

Last night I was confronted with the same feeling of loss that comes from leaving church and returning home. I fell asleep with “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”

He works in ways we least expect. This morning, I received a letter, it is truly through God’s grace that I received it and in my shocked happiness, as I read the words on the letter, the only words that registered are those I read last night. As the letter is perhaps a new beginning of sorts, that Saturday is definitely a new beginning.

To feel love, one must allow to be loved.

where paths meet

Between everything else and listening to Sundial Dreams and realizing that today is the first day of December and that the year is coming to a close and soon it will be new goals new plans new resolutions, I must mark down certain things, not in fear of forgetting, but because, just because- their relevance speaks out to me.

Drapes of conversations with different people, lines from text messages, online chats, I don’t think talk is all that empty. It is bountiful, typing these; I feel like I am transported back to that moment and space where the conversations are played through again.

“You don’t need to expect anything; you just need an open heart.”

“I felt like tearing.”

“Faith is like a muscle, you’ve to exercise it. Love is a choice.”

“Your one step equals to ten steps.”

“I guess it is about merging the two worlds together everyday.”

“I can go on arguing and probably make a good argument but nobody can argue with you about the experience you felt.”

Glass coverings

My mother returned from a wedding dinner last night, sat down beside me while I ate a chicken pie. I was supporting my head with my hand and felt a strained fatigue after removing my contact lenses. She asked me how I was; I said I was Good and that I have been studying. She spoke of the dinner, of the 47-year old groom and the 34-year old bride, of happiness, and burdens. I was listening mostly, but not speaking because with mothers that is how it is, a space of comfortable silence. I was finishing the last bits of the pie and I declared it is from Polar. To which, she replied, Amazing, you are my daughter. I looked at her, eyes behind glasses, and laughed. She waved her hands and asked if we would be best friends if she were my age. I got up, brought the plate to the kitchen and said Mummy, no, because I cannot imagine telling you all my secrets. She frowned and said, but you tell your friends secrets right. And I sat down again, Maybe, not really, I don’t know and suddenly, that seemed like a perfect moment before she went into I think life is miraculous, how people are related because of ties like ours. I got up; I think so too Mum, went to my room, crawled into my bed, blanket over everything else and fell asleep immediately.

I can't think of a title.

Sometimes, I feel that I can no longer put thoughts into words. I am unable to choose the right words and there are just too many thoughts- I don’t know which the dominant one is or whether there is one. Last night, I felt that I needed to talk to someone who has been here before but tonight, tonight I feel that talking and talking or writing and writing are just words, verbal and written, heard and read. And so tonight, I will try.

once in a lifetime

Sentimentality and indecisiveness would kill me.

Tonight, I am very happy. Class 95's playing. I like the smell of soap in my room after baths. I treasure smells a lot; I think they are more important than all our other senses. Places are marked by smells, memories are evoked by smells, people are remembered by smells, emotions are loaded with smells.

On a Sunday, I walked past a constructor worker carrying a bucket of cement and the smell belongs to Laos.

Everything in this world is differentiated by their scent: a double decker smells different from a single deck bus, which is again different from the smell trains carry. There is nothing to describe departures, arrivals, vacations but the whiff of air-conditioned airport air. A sunny day is a trail of fields of crisp grass, a rainy day holds vapoured air that smells heavy.

On a Tuesday, it is so hot I am perspiring and this wrinkled leaves smell belongs to Laos.

What do people do with all these remembering, all these recollections? I cannot even place a finger on what I miss really. I have three thousand photos, and the people who created these memories are here.

Tonight, I am reading ml's blog and she says, "too many commas, commas will run out of commas sometime , yet I don't like full stops".
The other day, we were paying for our White Water Rafting trip and Fam said, “Have you started packing?” Guan said, “We’re leaving soon.” I said, “Yah, two days after exams right.” And I think the moment stood there-three of us standing, in a kind of circle, pretending we’re leaving again.

Devouring emptiness

This morning I walked into Cold Storage, they were playing Christmas carols and suddenly this festive season has a new attached meaning, readings mixed with Santas mounted on glass windows. Things seem to be on a standstill for now, the days have become incredibly dry. This is a period of monotony, of waiting for days to go by quickly, for exams to be over, for this bland coven to be gone.

It is not that I don’t enjoy school, I am happy that for the first time in my life I feel that I am finally getting a real education that makes sense, that is purposeful, and that I can look forward to everyday but I dislike the intensity of formal education that impedes all other kinds of learning. How a book has to be kept away, a film delayed, productions that I can only read reviews of, enticing events listed in Arts Beat that remains in that form, text on magazine paper.
I rented Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 today because this restlessness has become stifling and I think I am searching for something moving, endearing, evocative, -to create emotions of some sort.

humming and humming

Weekends are defined by Class 95, “soft rock”, “all 90s”, “Y2K”. A neighbour is having a barbeque dinner and the evening smells of smoke, like the last night in Laos.

At Cedele, I hated it whenever someone orders a Meringue pie. Not that cutting it was difficult or that I had to run the knife under hot water longer so that the cut would be smooth. But that a slice of it crumbled the meringue and it gave it such an unflattering flatness.

I’m sitting here listening to the radio’s recycled songs and staring at my calendar. I am in need of some boost, like the shot you add in Espressos, the fragrance of Himalayan tea that stings your ears, a good dinner that leaves you too sleepy for anything else.

"If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"-Norton, Fight Club