Beautiful Amnesia

The light was calling to me one day last week. It was an irresistible call even though the usual after-work idleness was tugging at the seat of my pants.

I took my cameras with me and went for another drive to St Kilda. All the way I could not help but notice the way the sun felt on my skin and a strange but recognisable sacredness in the bubble of my car. Although thoughts came, some uncomfortable as is now usual for me, I quite easily let them go with the light of a fading day.

I never feel quite as complete as I do when I’m out in the world alone with my camera. In the perfect moments, I am not self-conscious nor am I afraid. Everything was glorious - the light, the shadow and all the colours in between glistened with almost visible energy.

Three times I tried to walk away from the sunset and three times I failed. Once, I walked so far away from it that my tired feet protested almost as hard as my soul was tugging me back towards the beach. The third time I stood on the seashore, I stored my camera back into its little red bag even though my mind was calling out “keep taking pictures … it’s so beautiful“.

But I already had my pictures. And my heart was strangely rapturous but still - it seemed to be cradled between the softness of clouds, just like how the sun was blazing pink and orange but seemingly suspended in timelessness. My heart felt safe and it beat with the rhythm of the waves. I added my silhouette to the picture and sat in perfect bliss as my world fell non-dramatically into place.

I had another difficult morning today, so I’m allowing myself to recall this magic and to try and bring it to my presence again.

I discovered an amazing florist over the weekend - they are called the “Flower Temple“. Now, I’m not generally known for my affiliations to nature and all that is green but of late, there has been a sort of an awakening. I have been noticing flowers a lot more. I’ve also been photographing flowers a lot more. I’m not sure whether this new affliction has more to do with the recently purchased macro lens for my camera, or whether is coincides with my current almost scientific quest for spirituality. In an almost weird way, I’m starting to notice how science and the spirit have been converging and might even be one and the same. On that note, I am probably starting to sound quite off the radar here so I’ll move back to the topic of flowers.

The Flower Temple was not your typical floral boutique with roses and tulips (though they did have some of those). There were exotic species of strange plants and flowers of colourful and mysterious brilliance in there that one does not usually come across at a florist. The place itself was pleasantly serene - tranquil music and the sound of running water soothed in the background. And importantly unlike most shops, there was space to be.

I was having a most relaxing experience browsing in the store surrounded by the sweet scent of flowers and was perfectly happy marveling at the different varieties of floral matter. Then, I came across the phalaenopsis orchid and fell in love. You know how it is when you simply can’t take your eyes off someone, even if it’s in a crowded room full of other someones? That’s how it was for me and the phalaenopsis orchid. The flower itself was a sight of such delicate perfection. It’s petals were bright white and covered with the tiniest sheen of glitter, as if to say “look at me, look at how alive I am”. Right in the centre of the flower I made out a being so complete in itself that it was beyond beautiful. So much so it took my breath away. I couldn’t keep my eyes off that flower and was amazed at how it exuded an overwhelming presence that is quiet and unassuming - when I looked closer, I could see a meditative form awakening in a glory of subtle colours surrounded by the pure white of nothingness.

As insane as it may sound, it was the first time I’d ever felt so connected to a plant. I will now be watching carefully as the other buds begin to blossom in my home.

A friend of mine is in a very dark place and I can only sit quietly with her. Not physically since we are oceans apart but with my heart. I’ll sit with her in my heart. It took a few harsh words from her for me to realise that that’s all I can do. I sat on the initial hurt and in that silence, realised that she wasn’t actually angry at me. She is in a lot of pain and that is her pain manifesting itself. I saw her as she is right now. In my folly, I had unthinkingly prodded a scared animal with a well-meaning stick. Tried to clean an open wound and it must have stung. Normally I would have shrunk away, my ego all defiant and inflated tenfolds to defend myself - “well if you don’t know what’s good for you …”.

The difference now is that I know that I don’t know what’s good for anybody, when not so long ago I would have insisted and fought tooth and nail for “my way is the best way”. To a very large extent, the knee jerk reaction is still there - the hurt is still felt but I didn’t let it linger - I sat with it in silence and then I let it go. I don’t have to be right, I can only be there ready to sit with and listen when the moment is right. You, him, her, them … no one’s ever really right - only the moment can be and I trust I will know it when it comes.

Sleep was filled with images last night - people who don’t live anymore, people who are alive and hopefully well that I don’t see anymore, people around me. People. People. People. Slowness, fluid and seamless I slid from scene to scene. Strange emotions sniffed around the senses in those dreams and in the morning, like a hazy whiff dissipated through my body. Now they are leaving again.

Grandpa, I met you again in the other place because this is the only realm through which I can see you these 12 years past. Grandma, you too. I’m glad to see that you were both still strolling together last night. I cannot remember your faces and what we were doing, or where we were in the dream. The details have fallen away just like how hours have passed since I woke. But I remember your white singlet grandpa. You seemed to have lost some weight though I cannot quite grasp you enough to confirm that. I suppose what’s important is that you both are still alive within me and once in a while, like last night - you say hello.

Once again, I’m not quite sure what to write about anymore. I seem to have lost my capacity for words but it’s not really such a bad thing. My mind, instead of being convoluted with black alphabets that need to be spit out is a little clearer at this point in my life. I am being inspired instead by how blue the sky can be, by the clarity of a new season’s entry and the inevitability of life.

I have also been photographing more and reading more. I’ve read more books this year than in the past two or three years put together I think. Through others, I have obtained some great insights that have kept me busy trying to put them into practice - also, when you are privy to so many wise words and teachings it becomes more and more difficult to envision how my own petty thoughts are of any significance or could possibly be of any use to anybody. It used to be important to document what I’d done over the weekend, make humourous observations about something or someone, or just vent about the systems on this earth to find my place. For me, that importance has faded, if not a lot, then at least a little.

Of course i am still fighting my own internal battles, and of course I still have my hopes and dreams - but more and more they become less and less of an issue in the grander scheme of things. I can still find a lot of myself in my images and in the sprinkling of words that sometimes come to me that I will continue to write in here. However, I am no longer what I think, want or write, even though I still think, want and write - but what I am and what I create.

If nothing else, then this is an aspiration to be what I know is true.

It has been a month since I last wrote in here. All that time went by quickly, almost too quickly. When I look back upon the past month, I would have to chart it with each punctuation I had to make at various pit stops. By that I mean the moments where I literally had to stop myself from doing whatever I was doing, grab myself by the hand and say “hey Wen, just hang on for a minute”.

The moment I stepped foot in Singapore, I should have been fined for speeding. Speeding through all the things I had to do (and there were so many), the people I had to see (and there were so many) and the lessons I had to learn (and there were so many). In between all that, I took off for China and spent 7 intense days with my father. There I continued to learn. Mostly I learnt about the man who although always present to me, had in more ways than one been a stranger. With difficulty, I engaged just enough courage for him to see through my imperfections. Those seven days away from the world as both of us knew it, allowed me a strange re-birthing. For so many days I cried like I had just been born. I cried just like how I must have cried when my soul was forced out of the womb against my will. I cried till my eyes were sore and my heart was empty. I am not quite the same anymore. But neither is my father. The change is not obvious, just the slightest tilt. It is like shifting ever so subtly in an armchair from a position that has numbed your body because you’ve sat that way for so long. As such, some things have eased but others have only just begun to tense up. Just that little bit. Enough to make some very important but invisible differences. At the end of the day, you’re still in that same damn chair but maybe more at ease. For now. Maybe.

There were many sorrows encountered in this journey back home, and a few more truths to acquire. I have learnt that the people around me all suffer but in different ways. I have learnt for the first time, truly, that my problems are huge only when compared to myself. I have learnt for myself, how I cannot reject the fact that my culture is actually important to me despite a lifetime of denial. Australia, though a land now my home, is not my birthplace, has never been and never will be. At best, this land is a decision I have made. Mostly though, I have learnt that through all our joys and laughter, the jewels of vulnerability and fragility come from the same roots. My soul has been just that little bit lighter, and strangely with that, I feel a lot older.

To the many people I love that I’ve left behind, our times apart have only served to let our times together be check-points. A “Hey, let’s just all hang on for a minute - where have you been? Where are you now?” sort of a point. Through these times, I have also learnt to grab myself by the hand and say “wait, what’s happening around me - right now?”. For all too often we are either rushing forwards or falling backwards.

I am back in Australia now and it is like the calm after a storm, a cycle I have grown accustomed to. The slight melancholic low after the high until it all evens out again. In contrast to Singapore, here I have endless amount of time to stand still. It is a point for me to rest again now, and to try to gather all that I have learnt. There is a time for everything.

I can’t bring myself to pack. I can’t bring myself to clean. I can’t bring myself to do anything really. I’m looking forward to going away from here, at the same time I suddenly can’t stand the thought of it.

I don’t think I’ve been eating properly - Big M and half a bar of Twix wasn’t really dinner - but I haven’t really had the motivation to get myself proper meals. Maybe I’m hoping I’ll just wilt away and no one will notice.

Anyway, I have two piles of clothes in my luggage now. One for the trip to China and the other one for my two weeks in Singapore. For some reason I am resenting having to bring warm clothing for China - not that anything I do or feel at the moment really makes much sense. Work has been sort of an anchor. Sitting at my desk with my fingers on a keyboard and my eyes on brightly lit screen - just so I have something to focus on.

Anything so I don’t have to think. Sometimes the invisible band around my brain tightens and I can feel my head hurt. Literally. These words that someone once said to me have been ringing in my ears lately, “your purpose here is to learn suffering”

Tonight. Must finish packing. Must do laundry. Must clean kitchen. Must. If not, then what?

So there I was, at the Docklands apalled at the miniscule outdoor area that was mostly take up by a large portable toilet van. Great. Hello Earthdance 2008! We got tagged with one of those annoying wrist bands that you can’t get off without a pair of scissors. “I sure hope there’s more to this” I thought as I tripped over someone dressed in a skin tight black latex skeleton jumpsuit. Nice.

Dreadlocks everywhere - I mean, I almost felt like me and my standard bob cut was the extraordinary sight in this place. I felt conspicuous! Outside, people in neon, fur, leather print, stockings armed with toy spidermen gathered in tight groups, joined together by their cigarettes. Why there was a large green van selling soft serves parked right in the middle of the already tight area is beyond my comprehension when we were already literally fenced in in the tiny outdoors. I had to force my way past the greatest bottle neck to get in and out of the shed, sometimes on tippy toes (because yes that makes me so much thinner than I already am), sometimes finding my self face to face just millimeters away from someone with ghoulish face paint trying to get out. That did something to my digestion.

There was alcohol served in a deep dark corner of the shed. It seemed so seedy, all tucked away behind the few other standard market stalls selling herbs and trinklets. It was so dark in there people hardly had any silhouettes. Scary stuff. Smelt funny too. In fact, I think I only realised it was there because I smelt it. All that being said, it was not that much brighter in front of the stage. There was half a shed at the most and almost pitch black. There was a corner where people were playing poi and twirling staves and this almost chubby little girl was really going at it with the hula hoop. One guy was just amazing with the pois and he was possibly the most interesting thing at the entire event. Oh maybe him and this girl with hardly anything on trying to twirl glow pois in a supposedly seductive manner which wasn’t really so I had to laugh. A lot.

The laser lights were pretty though, I suppose that’s maybe where our money went (I mean, $20 for Earthdance?). I had few good dances to some awesome techno trance but too quickly they switched to hip hop which is never danceable for me. Time for outside for some food.

My beef burger cost $8 and the patty was only semi-warm. I was trying to feel the peace but it was very difficult. Luckily, the firetwirlers came on outside when the sky darkened and I enjoyed that immensely even though I had to push past a stocky old man in a trenchcoat to get a view. I didn’t really care at that point and was ready to head off after people started stomping around to tin drums. Not because I didn’t like it, I just didn’t have any space! Overall, the experience was extremely disappointing although I did have fun people watching. The dude in a red dress was one of the top ten spots that day.

Anyway, here are the photos that I actually managed to take considering the conditions (i.e. too dark in the sheds and no room on the outside).

[Show as slideshow]

As time creeps closer to my expected departure date from Melbourne, I find myself getting more and more edgy. The razor sharp anticipation cuts into my skin in a metaphor that I half wish were real, just so there is release. This release from stagnation - the chasing of my own devil’s tail has proven to be unbearable, its pointlessness stark and intimidating. It is almost as if I am trying to subdue my internal restlessness by promising it an escape route. Almost as if I am saying to myself “just sit still for a little while more and then you can run like the wind”.

I feel like a kid, being made to hang out for that ice-cream because that ice-cream promises her a salvation that her child-like intellect will perceive as everlasting. In reality, we all know that’s not true, but at the moment I’m pretending that it is because a temporary salvation is well, better than non at all. I simply want to be able to welcome other perspectives and maybe for once, be able to hold on to some. I am tired. It has been a very personally tough year and I am tired. The awful thing though, is that I am mostly tired of myself.

I had lunch with a colleague today. He is well-travelled and comes well-equipped with stories from all corners of the world. I listened to his tales and felt a little glimmer of light creep back into my eyes. My face warmed in the glow of spring’s sunshine. 16 more days. 16 more sleeps till I am on a plane.

Despite all this, despite the blind hope that I will be able to find my breath again. Despite my eagerness to tred on soil that has never held my footprints or to be blanketed by the shade of the sky in another land, there is apprehension - it is there and it sits quietly quivering in the outlines of my vessel. There it sits, hardly visible till I acknowledge it. And when I do, there it is holding its protective shell over my sanity. My apprehension. My one greatest saviour and one greatest enemy of too many yesterdays and too many tomorrows.

What I do know, is that this trip will also be a test - I will be travelling alone with my father whom I have not had more than a few weeks worth of personal contact over the past few years. My father and I whose conversations if they lingered, did so only tentatively and never more than on the surface before they quickly flitted away again to an uncommon detachment. Like a big brown funeral moth. Dull and short-lived. Like a superstition. All the big things left unsaid between us sheltered by its big dark wings, I’m not even sure if they exist. My father, whose awkward and overwhelming fatherly love for me has all but drowned my soul in the years gone by and silenced any affection I have for him into deep unspoken wells in my heart. The depth of my love is boundless but it has never seen the light of day.

This trip will mean many things to me and one of the most important will probably be this - that it may be one of my few chances left to get to know him at all. And also significant, for him to know me in some way. Just a little way. That will be enough for me. Know me just a little. I almost want to say “please”. Then comes the other million dollar questions - will I be able to let him? Will 7 days be enough for a lifetime?

No doubt it will be a test on my patience, my adaptability but most of all on my maturity. Have the years made a difference?

But till then, I am sitting still. In anticipation. With apprehension. Perhaps in hope.

Insomnia - a condition that doesn’t strike me too often. I am the deluder, the one that crawls under the covers and escapes to dreamland when reality isn’t quite working out the way that I want it to. But I think I have been sleeping far too much and far too long my entire life. Last night was the second time in the last month or so that I have been stranded on my bed, eyes shut as tightly as possible, but unfortunately, miserably and reluctantly wide awake. I tossed and turned, trying to find a physical discomfort that I can soothe but there was none. My mind raced ahead blindly in the blackness- too fast for me to even keep up and too dark for me to see where it was trying to go. In fact, there wasn’t a distinct direction obvious to me and I hate feeling stuck.

I’m exhausted. I swore at shitty drivers the whole way to the market this morning though I’m sure if I were more awake, I’d realise that I was the bad driver. I’ve been debating just sleeping the afternoon away but the thought of tossing and turning all afternoon scares me so I’ll just hang about online being non-productive as usual.

I would meditate if I were feeling a little less agro and restless. I know that this is precisely why one should meditate in the first place but I’m a very lowly human being and I simply cannot meditate to alleviate my agro-ness when I’m feeling agro. *runs around in circles chasing my imaginary tail*

So anyway, on to other things. Kerry and I went by the gallery where my picture was hanging. To my part amusement and part horror, my little mounted print was being listed for $550. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry so I did neither. They didn’t even have my name on the price list which pissed me off a little, but not too much because I just had the best Turkish pizza for breakfast earlier and its little packets of happy were still bubbling in my tummy. I know it’s not the gallery’s fault, more so that of the organiser who had arranged to have RedBubbler’s exhibit. I guess I should have stayed on the day of the hanging to make sure that everything was right, but they told me 5.00 to 5.30pm and I had no money for my parking meter. The organiser was late and perhaps to my biased opinion, flippant about artists she personally didn’t find was worth her time. I had sensed this from the start by her e-mail reply to my query about the exhibition. I guess that’s ok, most folks don’t spare two seconds for people they have absolutely no interest in. I need to learn to do this then I’ll have so much more time available to me. But then I guess I’m already THIS bored so any more extra time will just be wasted on me :p Anyway, busy as said coordinator may be, how can she leave an artist’s name as unknown and set a stupid price on the work without my consultation when I had explicitly sent her an e-mail with all the details she had asked for. I guess my photo has been hanging in the gallery with listed as “unknown” with a price tag of $550AUD for the past week. It has since been changed, and at the end of the day I am not actually bothered just mildly amused but not in a positive sense of the word.

Remind me not to blog again on lack of sleep because it makes me sound like a self-indulgent bitchy bitch. You know, lack of sleep = lack of vocab so yea, whatever.