(no subject)
hello journal. it's sad that i don't write to you as often anymore. not that i haven't been keeping to my resolution, which is to write more. it's just that priorities have shifted to some other platform. other platforms mean other kinds of writing, the sort that doesn't have similar texture and contours as the ones i get to shape here.
not writing here means i look back less. there is a certain lightness to my life now. i read a book recently. it describes where i'm living quite accurately. here's a short excerpt, 'in this fast young city, he did not want to sleep, he did not want to stop. this was a place that had no past, only the present. what happened yesterday was a dream; last week was forgotten, last month never existed at all. every night was the same.'
i take in a lot everyday. probably more than i ever did in that languid life i once new, far far away from here, where, at the age of nineteen, i escaped to. i often forget in the course of my five years away, i was trying to run away from this place. nostalgia turns. i longed for return and now i come to face its uncompromising reality.
a friend suggested today that she is intending to take up lessons in malay language, so that she can learn how to write malay properly. she wants to absorb its reality rather than resist it. for many of us, it's a tug and pull game. it's also a class game. it's something we negotiate with everyday. i get tired from this.
i wade through different realities each day and it is not easy. trying to find something from the region is what i want to do, but most people here just want to find a country they belong to, or perhaps an identity they can belong to. then i look at the island down south and they have moved so far ahead, perhaps away from all the hung up most of us are trying to come to terms with. not so much as having transcended them, but having lifted themselves from this geography so that it doesn't matter anymore, doesn't matter at all.
i hate to believe that i need to get out of this city every two weeks, to go somewhere else. anywhere really, to be reinvigorated again, from the middle class ennui i often feel. i thought i would fit right in, because, after all, this is my history and i want to work with the history. the problem is this place has little time for history, much less personal history. history is always fighting against another big history. so slowly but surely, i too forget what i promised myself to do, to write about a life that does not necessarily telescope into a bigger picture. bigger pictures are often shallow.
i want it to be easier to live here. but clearly it is not. i have a one year window left. then i will have to decide whether to run away again. but to run away is to lose all hope and i know i will abandon my project which i have set out to do but fail miserably. yet, it is almost impossible to do it here.
i saw a video of some college student dancing cheesy moves to a pop song. it brings me back to the turn of the century. the problem is, unlike someone who have lived through the sixties, seventies or eighties, growing up in the nineties means that i have fond memories of it. i like its belatedness, it's failure, the feeling that it's at the end of the line for anything meaningful to emerge in pop culture. it is a very special feeling and sometimes i believe only those of us who grew up then can truly appreciate this.
anyway, everything, being too late, appeals to me. it's such a sad feeling. i want to keep this feeling and live with this feeling because it's the only thing that makes any sense to me.
not writing here means i look back less. there is a certain lightness to my life now. i read a book recently. it describes where i'm living quite accurately. here's a short excerpt, 'in this fast young city, he did not want to sleep, he did not want to stop. this was a place that had no past, only the present. what happened yesterday was a dream; last week was forgotten, last month never existed at all. every night was the same.'
i take in a lot everyday. probably more than i ever did in that languid life i once new, far far away from here, where, at the age of nineteen, i escaped to. i often forget in the course of my five years away, i was trying to run away from this place. nostalgia turns. i longed for return and now i come to face its uncompromising reality.
a friend suggested today that she is intending to take up lessons in malay language, so that she can learn how to write malay properly. she wants to absorb its reality rather than resist it. for many of us, it's a tug and pull game. it's also a class game. it's something we negotiate with everyday. i get tired from this.
i wade through different realities each day and it is not easy. trying to find something from the region is what i want to do, but most people here just want to find a country they belong to, or perhaps an identity they can belong to. then i look at the island down south and they have moved so far ahead, perhaps away from all the hung up most of us are trying to come to terms with. not so much as having transcended them, but having lifted themselves from this geography so that it doesn't matter anymore, doesn't matter at all.
i hate to believe that i need to get out of this city every two weeks, to go somewhere else. anywhere really, to be reinvigorated again, from the middle class ennui i often feel. i thought i would fit right in, because, after all, this is my history and i want to work with the history. the problem is this place has little time for history, much less personal history. history is always fighting against another big history. so slowly but surely, i too forget what i promised myself to do, to write about a life that does not necessarily telescope into a bigger picture. bigger pictures are often shallow.
i want it to be easier to live here. but clearly it is not. i have a one year window left. then i will have to decide whether to run away again. but to run away is to lose all hope and i know i will abandon my project which i have set out to do but fail miserably. yet, it is almost impossible to do it here.
i saw a video of some college student dancing cheesy moves to a pop song. it brings me back to the turn of the century. the problem is, unlike someone who have lived through the sixties, seventies or eighties, growing up in the nineties means that i have fond memories of it. i like its belatedness, it's failure, the feeling that it's at the end of the line for anything meaningful to emerge in pop culture. it is a very special feeling and sometimes i believe only those of us who grew up then can truly appreciate this.
anyway, everything, being too late, appeals to me. it's such a sad feeling. i want to keep this feeling and live with this feeling because it's the only thing that makes any sense to me.