FOMO
Back in Singapore for a week, and I've been more restless than I'd bargained for. I change the water, air myself, feed at regular intervals- just like the monthly Carrefour bunch sitting pretty next to the TV. Shedding the shyness of its youth, with only hard brittleness left intact, the peonies have more in common with me, in second death than in their air-freshener glory.
It's taken some time for me to admit that life is not a party you can conquer by dressing to kill, showing your face, and leaving early. I don't even like parties. Sure- the second decade does take on the quality of dissonance when you're fighting past a sea of faces to get to the sardine sandwiches. Or when you go through the pleasantries of politesse, of London bridge hugs, "we'll love to have you over sometime", and love distilled into little Instagram hearts. But life doesn't boil down to the breaths you hold, or the ones thrown off with a downcast glance. Gestures are concomitant to life, no doubt, but somehow these gesticulating limbs don't strike a convincing pose. I guess that's the source my fascination with the Mechanical Turk and Painted Skin comes from, that once feelings of alienation are stirred, they don't dissolve like sugar in beverages. Always that cloying, coy voice played back on recorders, that sounds nothing like the one it cohabits with.
Self-care is something I've gotten really good at, and if I flatter myself, I've picked up tea-tasting, acrylic, accessorizing, and a host of useless but edifying accomplishments. It's been a marvelous year of cultivation, as long as I'm careful not to prick the bubble with thorns that bristle at the thought of becoming a center-piece. Even if ostensibly, this centers around my character and the pieces are the missing ones for assembling a whole/less-holey self.
What I'm terrible at, however, is living outside the extended metaphor. Almost like my extended family, really- I know nothing of them and have no intention of altering the present situation. The same can be said about reality. This ennui envelops me like the humidity- my insides pulsing to the same beat as the psychrometers, giving name and number to the human body's approximations. Maybe they should hook me up to one of these machines, so I can peer into the psyche, and figure out what ails me. Teenage angst? Not when you're twenty. Unreciprocated feelings? Maybe.
I- If I had to say it simply, one character, a letter, would suffice. They say that your childhood memories determine the rest of your life, wide awake or fast asleep. I remember clouds of midgets buzzing over a classmate's hair during morning assembly. I didn't know then, that this is how it'll be, for the rest of your life. Bite-sized thoughts bugging you, from dawn to dusk. You can chase them away, kill a few, stop the rest in their tracks, but you'll come to realize that the two-legged creature with toned calves ridden with mosquito bites won't ever find respite. There's no running away from yourself, or as Truman Capote's spurned gigolo puts it
"You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."
I just want my life to snap out of this stasis. Having breakfast at Tiffany's isn't tough- having prata for supper, karaoke sessions, dare-deviling and demon-hunting... all the imagined and real communities I'm scared I'll never properly experience.
It's taken some time for me to admit that life is not a party you can conquer by dressing to kill, showing your face, and leaving early. I don't even like parties. Sure- the second decade does take on the quality of dissonance when you're fighting past a sea of faces to get to the sardine sandwiches. Or when you go through the pleasantries of politesse, of London bridge hugs, "we'll love to have you over sometime", and love distilled into little Instagram hearts. But life doesn't boil down to the breaths you hold, or the ones thrown off with a downcast glance. Gestures are concomitant to life, no doubt, but somehow these gesticulating limbs don't strike a convincing pose. I guess that's the source my fascination with the Mechanical Turk and Painted Skin comes from, that once feelings of alienation are stirred, they don't dissolve like sugar in beverages. Always that cloying, coy voice played back on recorders, that sounds nothing like the one it cohabits with.
Self-care is something I've gotten really good at, and if I flatter myself, I've picked up tea-tasting, acrylic, accessorizing, and a host of useless but edifying accomplishments. It's been a marvelous year of cultivation, as long as I'm careful not to prick the bubble with thorns that bristle at the thought of becoming a center-piece. Even if ostensibly, this centers around my character and the pieces are the missing ones for assembling a whole/less-holey self.
What I'm terrible at, however, is living outside the extended metaphor. Almost like my extended family, really- I know nothing of them and have no intention of altering the present situation. The same can be said about reality. This ennui envelops me like the humidity- my insides pulsing to the same beat as the psychrometers, giving name and number to the human body's approximations. Maybe they should hook me up to one of these machines, so I can peer into the psyche, and figure out what ails me. Teenage angst? Not when you're twenty. Unreciprocated feelings? Maybe.
I- If I had to say it simply, one character, a letter, would suffice. They say that your childhood memories determine the rest of your life, wide awake or fast asleep. I remember clouds of midgets buzzing over a classmate's hair during morning assembly. I didn't know then, that this is how it'll be, for the rest of your life. Bite-sized thoughts bugging you, from dawn to dusk. You can chase them away, kill a few, stop the rest in their tracks, but you'll come to realize that the two-legged creature with toned calves ridden with mosquito bites won't ever find respite. There's no running away from yourself, or as Truman Capote's spurned gigolo puts it
"You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."
I just want my life to snap out of this stasis. Having breakfast at Tiffany's isn't tough- having prata for supper, karaoke sessions, dare-deviling and demon-hunting... all the imagined and real communities I'm scared I'll never properly experience.