Two

Looking Stupid: the mark of things worth doing.

“Well… swim.”

I stopped typing in mid dissent-diarrhoea, and stared at the two words in bold red fonts.

There is that, of course.

****************

I’m in my sixth month here. And I’m frustrated.

Every day, I wake up a nanny, and go to bed a zombie. The most fulfilling part of my day is, when circumstances decide to be kind, the precious moment I steal to dream. This is when Time melts away and Distance goes for a ride, creating a vacuum of isolation where dreamers can rent and be left alone to their romantic reverie.

These dreams – they sustain me. But deep down I know that I have to do more than that. I’m in friggin’ America, for crying out loud (no actually, don’t. I’ve got enough of that during the day as it is). There has got to be more to life than just drowning in little boys’ tantrums all day long.

The truth is, I haven’t been writing anything truly substantial these days. Okay, there was NaNoWriMo, but it was so fun that it practically didn’t count. Of course, I also padded so much that “writing” would be an overstatement. I wrote one article for my Stanford class, which garnered mixed reviews during the workshop session, but for some reason, I am just not happy with that piece. I blogged – though the more accurate description would be I spewed thoughts all over here without the decency to make sense, or to wipe my mouth afterwards, but brevity, you know.

Yesterday, as I stood in the shower, letting the rush of water dissolve the day’s lethargy and drown out the tantrum tornadoes outside that little boys reserve especially for mummy and daddy, I thought to myself, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t just be a nanny, and nothing else.”

I have told myself that I would, like every other person struggling for their art out there, write after my work hours. I would send my articles to the publications here. I would pursue the Stories, write travel essays, analyse humanity, change the world and wossname.

The truth is, I’m so worn out every day that I can’t muster the energy to arrange my thoughts, let alone laying them out on paper. Whatever is left standing in my body would be trying to commit suicide, once they discover how to do that while dozing off.

Yes, I don’t have the stamina to be a struggling artist.

I do have the frustration, though. I know I have to get out of this rut of idle mindedness, but I don’t know how. There are a million avenues to try and break through, but I’m rooted on the spot.

I felt like I was fretting upon a fast-melting ice berg, knowing that if I don’t jump to another floating piece of ice, I would sink – into oblivion, into mindlessness, into complacency. But the floating ice pieces around me looked a little too far to leap to. I’m scared shitless. I could see the ice berg shrinking, but I could not bring myself to take the leap.

What if I miss?

“Well… swim.”

Two words.

The sage, who have words like “genuflect” and “ruminative” and “pervasive” and “rapple” and for some reason, “lobotomy” in his repertoire, just gave me two words.

And that two words was enough to push me from my shaky, dissolving, and self-pitiful refuge. I crashed into the water, and it was cold, as cold as Reality, and it woke me up.

It just totally made my whole situation with the melting iceberg and the floating ice things and the leaping anxiety a tad ridiculous, and very obnoxious. Like dressing in Edwardian ball gown to a casual house party.

My first thought was, “Damn. I took a while to think of that iceberg analogy too.”

My second thought was, “Why the heck didn’t I think about swimming?”

I was too caught up with the leap. I was too fixated upon landing at the right places. I forgot that there are other ways – practical, simple and straightforward ways – to reach your goals. I forgot that when it comes to writing, you need to get yourself wet, and you need to work those muscles.

Like my boy reminds me in the picture above, sometimes you just gotta clamber to reach for whatever lofty goals you have, even though you have to look a little stupid doing it. Especially if you look a little stupid doing it.

Because heck, stupidity is fun. And it makes the best pictures.

One

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wants to tell stories.

And so she picked up a pen, which according to urban legends, is mightier than the sword (okay, it’s really because pure steel with ruby-studded handle was heavier than she thought), and set out the treacherous path of looking for Tales.

Obstacles abound, but that was really a mark of a road worth taking. She thought, anyway. Not too deeply though, lest she bump into the lair of Logic and Reason, who thirst for dreams like a baked sponge thirsts for moisture. Dreams were all she had, and have her insides sucked dry would be a tad dampening – or in this case, the exact opposite – to her quest.

And it’s not like she didn’t have other problems already. She had to wade through the icy Waterfall of Collective Doubt from Others, ride – or at least, maintain upright most of the time – in the Whirlpool of Filial Guilt, survive the Delirium of Premature Confidence, hack through the Tangled Vines of Darn-Who-Am-I-Kidding, only to run headfirst into a wall.

Who put the effing Writer’s Block there?

But seeing stars was worth it, once the bleeding subsided, because she did find Stories. In fact, they were pretty much all over the place, if you knew where to look. Some required digging (for politics is a lot like potatoes; it powered the masses, albeit tastelessly), while others you picked with ease, and still others even needed you to do the planting first. There were also those suspicious-looking ones which were jumping up and down desperately to be noticed, and the obnoxious ones that were shoved down her throat simply because they have the purchasing power to buy, err, whatever that is the poetic equivalent of Advertising Space.

So, Pen in tow (or rather, several pens, with the hope that one of them would work), she Wrote.

And then she stopped. Got lazy. Got blind. Got swept away by Life and its Smoulder. Got impatient.

Got stupid.

Writing became merely a pain, a past, a possibility, a perished pride. The blank Microsoft Word page and beckoning prompter is a blatant reminder that her mind was not what it used to be. It is no longer a fertile ground for Words to flourish. Even the bad puns shrivelled, and she had a lot of them.

It is a rocky terrain of a conscience in there, and the jagged hardness give the sloshing brain cells a pretty bloody time. She can only deal with so many howling synapses at a time.

The saddest thing of all is that she stopped looking for Stories. Or rather, she stopped bothering to pick them up. She let them go. And went they did.

For example, the picture above was a street violin player she had the honour to bump upon in New York City. She was just hurrying past with her sister and brother-in-law, when the violin player yelled a question.

“Which country are you from, guys?”

“Malaysia,” her brother-in-law answered, while the patter of their feet grew more urgent.

And then they stopped.

And turned around, mouth agape.

The violin player, with a kind of smug nonchalance, was playing “Negaraku” on his violin. Tone perfect. There was no music sheet in front of him.

“But how--?” they asked in disbelief.

The violinist shrugged. “I like to study the national anthems of different countries.”

The brother-in-law tipped the violinist. They walked away – she with considerable difficulty, seeing that she was trying to kick herself at the same time, for not asking more questions, for not pursuing a Story when it was sitting right in front of her, for being stupid.

Inside every writer there is a story-teller wanting to come out. Mine did, but has, it seems, lost her way in the dark.

Sigh, now where did I put my flash light?

****

And because projects really only mean something when you get right down to doing it, the nonsense above managed to see daylight. This is my first post for Project 52, a writing/photography commitment that HafutotaJE and I are going to undertake (yes, we are ill-advised. Thanks for trying, though). Basically, we upload a picture we‘ve taken and write something, anything, about it, once per week for a year.

Yes, we are still the same people with deadlines/kids to chase and closing week to conquer and procrastination to overcome etc etc. You can tell that sanity and rationality have never been our strong points. For some reason, that is HafutotaJE’s charm, and my demise. Life is so unfair.

Join us in this joy ride if you are ever so inclined. Oh, but do bring your own sandwiches.

And drop us a line if you are hoping on, so that we can also go drool at your stuff ^^

Read-tail Therapy

Today, I decided that it would be quite a good day to shop for books.

Because, gosh, the kids were annoying today.

And ‘cause hey, it’s Tuesday!

And ‘cause, look, I’m wearing mismatched socks!

Okay, I ran out of excuse. I just need to shop okay. And just because my retail therapy happens in a bookstore doesn’t mean I’m a hopeless nerd okay.

Fine, I don’t care if I’m a hopeless nerd, okay.

Anyway, with my Borders discount voucher (which they send you ALL THE TIME, God bless America) in hand, I drove to my favourite bookstore. I heard Barnes and Nobles is boss in Nerdism here, but frankly, I fear too much for my wallet to even venture in that three-storey skyscraper of a bookstore.

I promised myself that I will only spend $10 in Borders. Because yes, that amount is possible here.

I ended up spending close to $20.

It’s not so bad, considering I actually bought only two books out of the six I was considering (among them, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls and The Graveyard Book), after carefully skipping most of the aisles, afraid of what gems I may find.

Behold: my first Neil Gaiman novel.


Okay, to be honest, I bought it really because I wanted to own something that is drawn by Dave McKean. Which is not to say that Gaiman isn’t awesome (he is, immensely). But Dave McKean’s artwork just blows me away and sucks me back in; a sort of visual orgasm, complete with excitable noises.

You didn’t just hear me describe a children’s book with all that.

On the subject of children’s books, I ended up picking this up as well.



I’m not anywhere near a fan of Hans Christian Andersen, but for Joel Stewart’s illustrations, I can very well be. Flipping the pages in the bookstore, I held my breath as the quirkily intricate drawings did nasty things to my brains.

Like shutting it down, leaving me defenceless against my heart.

And the problem with following your heart is that it is never as good at budgeting as your brains. But other than that, there really is no downside.

When I go back to Malaysia, I foresee myself shivering in American-bookstore-withdrawal.

They have rows after rows of all the awesome stuff that you would possibly ever need to read, don’t need to read but nevertheless want to read, and don’t need to read and don’t even want to go near it.

He looks contagious.

I have more things on my mind that I should probably pen down. Like that obligatory New Year post. And the trip to NYC. And Tangled. Alas, dreams beckon, and it seems like tonight, it will be another fantastic one :)