Imagined Mouthpieces

Burying one's darkest thoughts in cyberspace is the ultimate irony.
After you click that "publish" button, the words are released into this massive and nearly meaningless infinity, for the viewing of random eyes and whatnot.
In the end, it's just like contributing more junk to landfill, feeding more drivel into the chaos of information overload that has completely taken over our lives.
If you have a strong grasp of what reality is, does the internet and your activities therein figure largely within that perception of your existence?
How much cyberspace do you own, and does it really belong to you?

Lumps in my chest

Let’s say this is a sort of monologue but also a letter to my mother, and probably also my father.

2010 sort of ended with a health check-up in November. Ultrasound scanning your breasts instead of the agonising squishing through a mammogram was kind of a relief, but not the results: 2 rather large 2 cm wide lumps fused together in the right side. And who knew that a biopsy meant sticking a needle into your body and chopping up cells with the needlepoint to harvest them?

I don't have cancer.

It's just 2 lumps, cysts, fibroids, whatever they are. They are just there.

The most stress came from the maternal freak-out which led to the whole desperate rush to the breast doctor and then the TCM doctor, just a day before leaving The Stewing Pot that is the home country. Or should I call it The Pressure Cooker?

It was hard enough keeping the doctors' sessions a private affair. Isn't the medical consultation a matter of confidence between 2 persons, the doctor and the patient? I am no longer underage, nearly ten times the age of three, and surely I can make up my own mind about my own body without an overly anxious elder hovering around over my shoulder.

Are you going to insist on accompanying me into the gynecologist’s room to stare up my vagina too? And get all pissed off when I refuse? I am not going to let you invade my privacy anymore, and you have to let go of this need to control my life, just as I have to let go of my festering anger towards you that I can never tell you about.

I have a warped attitude towards all figures of authority, and that probably boils down to the issues I have with my parents, hey? So much baggage, so much damage…

 Of course, the TCM doc's diagnosis about emotional issues and the resultant problems it might cause in the body was creepily on the dot, and again, it came down to keeping the depression a secret from the folks.
And that whole conversation about how emotional instability could easily be a hereditary thing, well that’s intriguing speculation, probably also easily proven with research, but don’t tell the mother. I have no problems with admitting that I am nuts, but she isn’t that open-minded. 

I could try jokingly yelling it to her sometime, just to let off steam.

Now the thing is, I am turning into her, and by God, I want to do everything I can to avoid that. It’s funny how the actual geographical and physical distance facilitates this clearer perspective on the whole situation I have had with her all my life.

I was a sick child. A weak, constantly ill, eventually asthmatic, accident-prone, in-and-out-of-hospital every few years, often struck by coughs and colds and sore throats and fevers sort of kid. Yes, I began my life as an unhealthy, weak, sorry little ass who was constantly in need of care and attention, and my mother’s reaction was to turn into the model helicopter parent.

My mother’s love was an over-anxious, obsessively protective, fear-ridden perpetual panic attack that kept all the chocolate and ice cream out of my childhood consciousness until I was in my early teens, which was a miracle in itself considering the hedonistic 80s and 90s.

Trauma begets trauma, doesn’t it? Could she be suffering some form of depression as well? Would this ever get out into the open or will it always be shuttered in the closet, since that seems to be the family policy about emotional problems and such?

Here I am, on the cusp of marriage, a rather late bloomer, probably going to be an over-age mother, thinking about the relationship I have with my own mother, and not really feeling the sort of warm and heart-string-tugging positive vibes that I should be feeling.

I have a great amount of anger, frustration, and irrational guilt repressed within when I think of my parents, that I know for sure. I do not know how to deal with it, and I am so glad that I am not near enough physically to expose this horrible rage accidentally. The distance is a relief, because you stress me out, and if I was on the wrong drugs I might even kill you without meaning to. Thank God I am not.

It seems my panic attack is to waste the prime of my life striving for and failing to achieve any success in whatever endeavor I put effort into. Then the nightmare leading up to the so-called mid-life crisis: languishing in the no-man’s land of mundane mediocrity, letting foolish material pursuits take over your life, meaningless corporate-ladder climbing, politicking in a world where the boss’s decision, the bottom-line and profit margins reign supreme, and then crashing at fifty or so, seriously sick, obscenely overweight, completely burnt out. 

Well. Not that I want to live that long anyway.
 
When I think of returning home for good, I dread the constant pressure that they will exert upon me to live according to how they perceive my life should be. That was one of the major reasons why I was so desperately craving escape from Singapore, despite my embarking on a committed romantic relationship with my now-fiancé. I felt that I needed to get away, as far away as I could, and so I decided to make the move to Melbourne.
 
I hope you realize by now that I knew I had to follow my guts and fulfill my dreams, in case I died before I hit thirty, which happens to be an ominous dream I had. (I dreamt that I would die at 25, in which case I have outlived that omen by 5 years already, and could be living on borrowed time.)
 
Considering that you always talk about dying and leaving us to fend for ourselves, or threatening to die so that we would learn how valuable you were to us, I guess I get that inclination for morbidity from you as well.
 
I also needed to figure myself out without any external influence, without having to face the pressure of living up to your dual expectations. Yes, I know my younger brother is better off, seems more independent, has achieved success earlier, earns more, has his head on his shoulders, and seems to know where he’s going in life. But does he, really? Or is he living out your expectations too?
 
What the fuck is so called ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ anyway?
 
I probably will never know until we stop comparing ourselves to others, especially within the same family. Are we too stupid to learn that nothing good comes out of it, only negative vibes and shit judgements that destroy the very spirit of unconditional love and support that a family should have together? Not that these bonds are very strong in the first place anyway. 
 
So why is my mother so seriously unhappy with her life, and why can’t she deal with it better? Why can’t she just let go of all the bad and feel the benefits of all the good?
 
Ha. I should ask those same questions to myself. 

I know how desperately I need to fix myself before I can do anything with my life.
 
Maybe it’s all part of being flawed and human, to lose sight of the blessings in your life and obsess over the pain, suffering, and tragedy. Maybe it’s part of our make-up to be melodramatic and self-pitying. Pathetic mom leads to pathetic child? Oh fuck.
 
Will we ever learn to let go of these burdens that are quite literally manifesting as lumps in our bodies?

...

remember the day i was gone...

but first the memories

of how you played in the sun
slowly building some fortress from sand
cupping with naive hands what could have been invincible
and then the waves came, and brought it all away
how delightful was this laughter in destruction
rising like the tide of love in my chest

my heart would have withstood barbarian hordes to preserve your joy

remember the time i stood by you
grasping your shaking form with silent faith
believing in no less than your penultimate triumph
joining in the chorus of your screaming euphoria
how sharp was that gleam of knowledge in your eyes
that none had the power to wrestle that moment from your mind

my heart was swollen, drunk on pride, senseless with vicarious victory

now, mourning transient happiness, passing with such haste...

remember the time you cleaned, packed, and left

and did not need me

time came and went and washed out my heart

leaving a hollow echo of wandering questions about you unanswered

remember the day I faded and vanished

but you did not notice

remember the day I was gone?

RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT

by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

Re: REMEMBERING FIREWORKS

REMEMBERING FIREWORKS

Always as if for the first time, we watch
the fireworks as if no-one had ever
done this before, made shapes, signs
cut diamonds on air, sent up stars
nameless, imperious. And in the falling
of fire, the spent rocket, there is a kind
of nostalgia, as normally only attaches
to things long known and lost. Such an absence
such emptiness of sky the fireworks leave
after their festival. We, fumbling
for words of love, remember the rockets
the spinning wheels, the sudden diamonds
and say with delight “Yes, like that, like that”
Oh and the air is full of falling
stars surrendered. We search for a sign.

Elizabeth Jennings
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NEW YEAR’S EVE 2009: FIN

With good omen, there was the downpour.

“Ah but all this water is a symbol of prosperity to come,” we joked.

Cold, wet, gently mocking

The rhythms of nature rebukes these revellers in vain

There is no cure for the mania of youth.

Drums, frantic beats, writhing limbs, pumping muscles, sweat mixed with rain, and fervour, so much anticipation, to mark the passing of time.

The roar of the countdown sends waves of echoing shrieks from this mob so hungry,

So hungry for a climax

It began, the soaring spinning whirling spiralling explosions of light and colour, set off from great heights, so dazzling in the darkened stormy skies, greeted with approving cheers and such heated enthusiasm

Perhaps the damp would vaporise from my soggy clothes

And thousands of cameras, risking the wet, captured thousands more shots of such ephemeral moments, memories living now, dying now.

As the dawn slides into consciousness, inexorably, always, as, with all the certainty of existence, the time will pass and

Eat us all, remember that we will forget.

Always. We forget all the madness and euphoria, the joy, pain, sorrow, pleasure, punishment, all the suffering and the sweetness, and

that tender grinding ache

that life is.