Fruitcakes and Meet-Ups

 The silly season is upon us and I am technically on leave from today, but I have yet to close the bumper issue (there are two stories outstanding) and so here I am, at the computer, typing away. Going through stories. When I should be out delivering fruitcake.

On a side note: Last year, many of the fruitcakes I had baked turned bad and mossy when I unwrapped them (or didn't unwrap them and just gave them out). So this year, I stuck the fruitcake in the freezer and so far, it's been great. I have 7 left of the 20 I baked. Kevin got the first one, Ron the second, BC the third, Yaso the fourth, I gave one out at the office (no there was not enough to go around), I gave one to SK because she enjoyed it so much, I brought one for the team during our Christmas party at the office this year, Shabana, Mikey boy, Dadda, Anita's mum, Rose and I brought one to an outing at a farm for a Sunday lunch because I didn't want to turn up empty handed. 

Right now I am fielding WhatsApp messages from people wanting to catch up (pre-Christmas coffee), from designers who want to know what changes we need to make, etc, etc.

Just had a long conversation with someone who was let go during the MCO and went into depression. I didn't know. I didn't realise. I knew I should have kept in touch...well, I'm glad that the fruitcakes give me an excuse to.

Bric-a-brac

 I'm covered in dust and sweat. At 10.30pm or thereabouts, I decided that I would get my 10,000 steps for the day, something I hadn't done in weeks, if not months. I let it go, like I let everything else go, driftwood that get swept up in the tide of my indifference, or rather my lack of application.

But today, a Sunday, the first day of my week of leave, I wrapped two presents, wrote out two cards, cleared three stories (and sent them), walked 10,000 steps (my calves are protesting now) and rebaked some fruitcake because when I unwrapped it after a month, I discovered it was soggy.

And I texted Ron to see where she was to give her her fruitcake and a Christmas card and her present, a book on cats. Fiction. My house is starting to pile up with presents (and fruitcake) and so I wrap them up and try to see who I can deliver them to. I want to get the fruitcake that is ready for consumption, off my hands. To do that, I need to write out some more cards. I have loads and loads of Christmas cards and this year, not many to send them to as the post office firmly shut its doors on my face, not allowing me to post anything overseas.

I finished listening to Saving Missy by Beth Morrey on Audible and have decided that it is one of my favourite books of the year. The person who read it was so very good that I revel in her plummy accent (switching to Irish, switching to northern - the verbal class distinction, by now should be antique, if you talked like her, sir, instead of the day you do, why you might be selling flowers too).

I discovered the book because I am on the mailing list of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights and this was on its "Best books of 2020" list. When I read the description, it was the one that most caught my eye. Of any on the list. And I was right. In an age of flippant books which have the depth of a souffle, this one was a rich, plummy fruitcake.

With a satisfying aftertaste.

And then I watched one episode of Social Distance (the one about the Zoom funeral) and one episode of Song Exploder (the one on Hamilton's "I Can Wait"). They are  a break from my normal Korean/Chinese/Christmas fare because I read about them on Wired and The New Yorker. 

I'm being forced to read more for inspiration and information. But a side effect are the books I learn about and the Netflix shows I watch.

Time for a shower and then, to bed.

Oh wait, I have two more fruitcakes to wrap.

I'll tell you tomorrow who I deliver them to.

Why did Massachio die so young?

If he had lived would he have been another Leonardo or Michelangelo?

Work to do

The truth is I prefer to hide as much as I can because I'm ashamed of me, I'm ashamed of how I look.

And this thing comes along and it forces me to stop being invisible. Truth is, I don't have the time to hide anymore. I'm still uncomfortable with attention, uncomfortable about being seen, but now I have no time to brood over it. 

Even if I look more and more hideous, sorry can't wait for you, sorry, just coming through...don't look at me if you don't have to. 

I have work to do. 

Happy Endings

I know the title is a little risque because there is a world out there associates happy endings with massages rather than faerie tales. But I grew up on a diet of faerie tales. It was what sparked my interest in reading in the first place. 

And so for me, happy endings, are always, the happily ever after that was supposed to ensue after all the bad stuff had happened. What was the point of it all, if not? 

But here's the thing. You need stamina for a happy ending. You need to be able to see it through and come out on the other side. You need to have grown to achieve or deserve your happy ending. You need to follow through, move past the miseries, forgive the hurts, forgive yourself, transcend the unhappy situation. 

I don't think I ever got a happy ending. I never stayed with any situation long enough. When I was miserable, I needed to leave. I didn't believe in happy endings anyway. Not for me. So I moved from miserable ending to miserable ending. 

Many times I wanted to end it all. And after my mother died, there was really nothing holding me back. Well, there was Arnold. And after Arnold, there was Sylvie and Bruno. And after Sylvie and Bruno, there was Ebony, then Sheba, and now, five different cats, all needing me, the youngest being a spunky little kitten who was abandoned at a week old, alone, possibly the runt of the litter, not expected to live. 

After two months of steady feeding and tonics and immune boosters, she still has developmental disorders and is terribly tiny for her age. 

Ebony fell off the balcony and died. 

Moonbeam died when she went for surgery. I loved them both. 

There were no happy endings there, just enduring the misery of their passing too soon. People make fun of my cats but they provide me a reason to live, to wake up, to go to work, to earn some money. It's not a happy ending, but merely an enduring because my life means something to some helpless creatures whom I don't expect anyone to take in, if I am not here. 

That's got to count for something. I've had happy beginnings. I need to find a way to transcend my life, to transcend my heart, to transcend my soul and find my way to a happy ending for once. 

Just for once.

The Idiot

I dreamt of someone I have hated for so long that I forgot I used to have a crush on him. In my dream, he seemed to revert to who he became so impossibly horrible and I remembered how much I had admired him. Nothing ever happened. It was one of those crushes, where you admire from afar and do nothing about it.

We were in another place, a place I could not identify, maybe Johor, although there were hints of PJ in it. He had cats or rather furniture that had been mauled by cats, like me. He was quiet and gentle and I felt stirrings of the old attraction as if all that had happened in the intervening years had disappeared. It was strange. 

I used to admire him so because he was unfazed by life and knew how to shortcut any process. I was overwhelmed by life and didn't know how to shortcut anything. I always took the long, ponderous way, and spent way too much energy on anything.

He had a light touch and I had the tread of an elephant. I never learned to tread lightly and take things as they come. 

Everything spilled over with me -- too much emotion, too much reaction, too much anger.

No wonder people recoiled. We live in a light touch world and those who go about, stepping lightly are those everyone wants to be close to.

I am reading The Idiot by Elif Batuman and wondering at how she goes along with everything her crush says although I can't really figure out why she has a crush on him. And I thought about how I hated the all-nighters, how I hated going along with things - how my present desire and common sense were always at odds.

Oh the stupid things that I did and went along with. Oh the stupid things that I initiated.

When I watch the Chinese or Korean shows or even read this book, I am amazed by how self-contained the women are, how dignified, how they didn't feel the need to go along with everything.

The dream left me with a strange feeling inside, like something resolved. This was a grudge that I forgot I carried. It was lodged deep in my gut, only surfacing if this particular guy somehow surfaced in the new, in social media, in my environs. I took my hate for granted, it felt righteous, and I didn't even think that much about it.

But now, I guess, I can let it go.

Six impossible things before breakfast

When things start disintegrating, at first, you expend all your energy trying to stop the disintegration, trying to keep it all pieced together. At this point you haven't learnt yet, the pointlessness of it all. And trying to keep everything together, well, that's something you have to do, a rite of passage, so to speak. 

It is important, in hopeless situations, to not lose hope too early.

At some point (depending on how resilient you are), you let go and everything crumbles beautifully and truthfully you feel a little relief that what was supposed to happen, has happened. You let it all go.

And then you watch all the pieces fly every which way in slow motion. It's beautiful, kind of like when you are projectile vomiting after a night of too many drinks and the pieces fly out of your throat to everywhere, coating everything. And you lie exhausted in bed, too tired to mop it all up although it stinks something awful, but you think, in the morning, I'll do it in the morning.

And you like back and take a much-needed rest, because now that the worst has happened, you're no longer anxious, you no longer care, you'd just like a little sleep, for a little longer, pretty please.

What happens after the worst has happened?

What happens when there's nothing left to hold on to?

What happens when everyone has deserted you and you no longer have anyone who loves you, who will take your part?

What happens when people watch you tentatively from the sidelines, not willing to catch your eye, in case you engage with them and beg them for help?

What happens when your life is a train wreck, a 10-car pile-up on the highway, a bloody broken thing of gore and twisted limbs?

Why was I born? What's the point of it all? 

I'm just too tired, OK?

No I don't want to get up. No I don't want to try again. I don't want to and you can't make me.

Just go ahead without me.

How long is a piece of string?

 

In the daytime I feel fine and things cohere. A little tired but fine. It's at night that everything starts to unravel, everything starts to shred and I feel myself come undone. 

I think that maybe, that maybe, I am two different people. One person occupies the day and another arrives to take over the night.

And she makes the switch when I am not looking, before I realise.

But when I look again, I realise that this familiar sadness is back and that it overwhelms and I stand before it, helpless, abandoned, alone.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to face these phantoms in my head, in my mind, in my body, in my apartment, who swirl, who swirl, who keep swirling so I can't pin them down, can't look one in the eye and say, I know you, you are you, you are you, you are you, this is here and now, this image is DEFINITE!

Who are you?

What do you want from me?

Haven't you taken enough?

I have nothing left to give you.

Please

Please

Please

Let me be.

The Law Of Attrition

 

It's funny this law of attrition. At first you can hold it back, or at least, you think you can. Somewhere along the way you get weary of trying. Or you just give up. It takes too much energy, it's just too much pain. And there is no reason to hold back the tide. 

Canute couldn't.

You can't.

It's as simple as that.

And it feels like I've been running on empty for a long, long time, just clothes over a corpse pretending to be alive.

I pretend to care but I don't.

I save a kitten because she is given to me a week old and helpless, but it is the dead helping the dead.

I feed her, she sucks at the bottle, and stops. And doesn't put on weight, doesn't grow. 

I hire Rose to come take care of her when I can't be there, but she doesn't put on weight and doesn't grow.

I spend most of my salary on her babysitting but she doesn't put on weight and doesn't grow. Her eyes look sad and pained.

I take her to the vet, finally, who says there's something wrong because she is way too small for her age.

I give her tonics and vitamins and immune boosters (all prescribed) and she grows. A little.

But I'm tired.

I'm tired of all the meaninglessness that I have to wade through, coming back to the start over and over again.

I'm tired of the evil shadows that adhere to me like barnacles, that I can't shake off, that smile at me and pretend to love me, while I feel their teeth lodge in my neck as they drain the life force out of me. I'm so tired.

I'm exhausted.

I don't know who you are, I don't know at which point you appeared, I don't know when the switch was made and when you came in and replaced a living person with your shadow. 

The Buddha says you know that the sea is the sea because it always tastes of salt. And you know enlightenment is enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.

But you taste of shackles and shadows and the deep bitter tang of unhappiness, of subjection. You taste of confusion, of lies.

What could you be, oh, what else could you be?

And I'm so tired of fighting you.

I'm so tired.

I just want to lie down here, and give up.

And let all that is to die, die, beginning with tired love.

The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul

A heaviness lurks in my soul. I don't know who put it there. It came on when I was not looking, not noticing. 

It's this great sadness that grows and grows in me for no reason at all; or perhaps every reason. I find myself letting go of life, letting go of longing.

It's weird how I spent most of my 20s lost in yearning, for something, I don't know what, although at that time I thought I did. I pinned my yearnings on things so small, so insignificant, and didn't get those either, because even though they were so small, so insignificant, I was not worthy of them.

I was not worthy of anything. I deserved my unhappiness and I crashed into it, like a train wreck, like a car accident, like destiny.

And now I've lost my yearning, lost my looking to a better day, settled into the greyness of this world, which is sort of blurred, where one day follows another in silent succession, and there's nothing much to look forward to.

Did I reason myself into this state of non-existence?

Did I pare down my life, getting rid of everything, until there was nothing?

Is this all there is?

I wish I knew. I wish I could snap out of it. I wish I could move from this ever-darkening world into something light, something bright, something that fills my heart with wonder, something that fills my heart with colour, something that fills my heart with joy.

But what?

I don't even dream anymore because there is nothing to left to dream about.

Kissing Strangers

It's the darndest thing, but most of us are out there trying to kiss strangers, as uncomfortable and as discombobulating as the experience usually is. We watch a show and fantasise about how it would be like to have this piece of fiction in our lives because of the character they have created on screen. Which has nothing to do with who they are. And has nothing to do with who we are. Or what we need.

(Which is nothing, if you dig down deep enough. Nothing and nobody. At least, not in that way)

A stranger always feels strange. They stare at you with indifferent eyes because you are simply a face, a not very interesting face, in the crowd. 

And in the intimate setting of a smoky bar, a stranger, with their liquid, whisky-infused eyes, looking at you less indifferently, is still strange. Everything about them is strange, especially this need for fake intimacy brought about by longing and loneliness and the search for any port in a storm.

Because you have no idea that you are holding your breath; waiting to exhale.

But after the high, the hangover.

After the loving, the morning after.

It feels like a desperate scramble to feel something, to make something out of nothing, to pretend for just a few minutes longer.

It is madness but you can't see it if you're caught up in it. 

It is madness because it leaves you emptier after than before.

It is madness because it is not nothing, and you can carry this not-nothing for life.

A lifetime of scars, of empty encounters, of dwindling into nothing.

Kissing strangers.

It's unbearably sad. 

It's hopelessly desolate.

It's always strange.

Focus

I became scattered because I allowed myself to be. I had 10 shows in progress on Netflix. I would pick up a book, read a few paras, then put it down and pick up another.

My mind could not focus on anything. It was as if it shied away from looking too long at any one thing, and could only nibble here and there as I drifted.

I remember reading the first Malory Tower's book - and the speech Miss Potts or Potty gave Darrell about being wholehearted. She was copying Alicia who was brilliant and could dabble in this and that and still come out on top. And she did really badly in class, probably for the first time in her life. And Potty gave her a speech about being wholehearted that has come back to me. I find the wisdom contained in it very sage.

I forced myself to finish watch 10 Miles of Peach Blossoms until it finished and was off my Netflix list. I accidentally clicked two Southeast Asian movies that I ended up hating so I simply let them run their course while I faffed around the apartment doing other stuff. (I was clearing clutter on my Netflix).

Now I have only three in my "continue viewing" list and am sorely tempted to click on other stuff I want to watch, but I'll wait until I've reduced this to one. I will get through my seventh viewing of The Untamed (after a while it just becomes familiar and comfortable) and I will finally finish Nur (the funny thing about it is that I find the villain so despicable that I cannot bear to watch it because of him).

I'm reading Kathryn Mannix's book about dying properly (Dying is an art...and she's not talking about it that Sylvia Plath way) which I find oddly comforting and although I've lined up a few other books to follow it with, I think I'll wait till I finish this one before I move on to the next. Committing to review the books for a new blog helps keep me on track.

I had planned to answer emails today but my little kitten Jinny has taken up most of my time. Hopefully she will be weaned soon and less dependent on me. She's still very tiny so I cannot leave her alone with the other cats for fear that they will do something to her. Boom Boom has made herself a mother figure, but having had no kittens before, she's a sort of clumsy, affectionate, well-meaning mother.

I've been trying to move the art around in my apartment in a bid to brighten things up a bit. 

I need to go make milk now for Jinny to have her last feed for the night and change the water in her hot water bottle so she can sleep all nice and cosy.

Later for you.

Endings

When I was younger, all my endings were dramatic, full of emotion, saying goodbye with all my might, yet holding on because there was still so much between us and nothing had sunk into indifference. I wanted out, but I didn't let go.

Not really.

And now, endings have this inevitable tiredness about them.  Exhaustion. I stop replying because you take up too much energy. And I can't pretend to care. I don't.

And I'm not going to imagine how you feel, to empathise, to make your pain my own.

Because your pain is your pain.

Your mess of complications is your own.

It has nothing to do with me. And although you reach out to me, although you ask me to spend this time with you, all you're asking for is a little companionship, I can't.

And I won't.

It takes too much energy. You take too much energy.

Before I would have paused, because this makes me a bad person.

Now, I don't really care.

I'm too tired.

You've exhausted me.

I don't hate you because I don't feel anything.

And it is this not feeling anything for you that exhausts me most of all.

The Thing About Soulmates

It's weird but I think love is all about restraint. Anything excessive is much of a muchness. Too much of a too muchness. Be it emotion, expression of emotion, physicality - all this simply cheapens what could be beautiful. And then it dissipates and there is nothing left but contempt.

Begging the question: were you soulmates in the first place?

Isn't a lot for what passes as love and longing nothing more than a temporary addiction?

Or maybe, the fear of being alone? Settling for a warm body, any warm body to ward off the terror of loneliness?

And when the addiction passes, you're left with more emptiness.

I thought emptiness was absolute but it isn't.

There are gradations.

It's better when the love remains there, unexpressed, potent and ultimately, undefiled.

Especially when the one you love has gone away. And is never to return.

We live in a time of instant gratification, but what that has done is spoil everything, soil everything, cheapen everything.

The person you really love, you're going to keep on loving anyway. Not because you try to, not because you "work" on it, not because you cultivate the feelings, but because it's there, in your heart, like a piece of flint, like a scar, like something apart, but always present.

It's there whether you wake up and choose to feel the ache and the longing, or choose to ignore it.

It's always there because it's not something you can help.

Like the loss of a limb, you learn to live with it.

Focus on all the other utterly exciting parts of your life, lose yourself in distractions, tell yourself that it's OK, you're fine, you're really fine and you need no one.

But the thing about soulmates is that they linger on, when everything else is gone, when everybody else is gone, in the silent watches of the night, in the busy watches of the day, when you're juggling all the quotidian tasks of life.

They linger on inside you and the more quickly you come to terms with what you can't change, the better.

Love is not love which alters.

So it doesn't.

It doesn't.

It just doesn't.

True value

Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have 'seen the elephant'? These are petty and accidental uses; just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones; for everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

(Henry David Thoreau)

When every step outside in the poisoned air makes me feel just a little sicker, when my throat closes over and it feels like I've been trying to swallow glass, it's better to stay at home, it's better to abide by the lockdown (a movement control order by any other name would feel just as restrictive), it's better to be alone, but for the cats.

And being alone gives me acres of time to think. When I'm not sleeping or watching Ashes of Love and feeling sorry for the Night Immortal because he became was an outsider and only managed to make himself more of one by trying to force his way inside.  So delicate, so precise, so peaceful, so heartbroken. And in the end he gained everything and lost everything. Alone in a vast hall, cold, austere, lonely.

My thoughts circle in various rutted grooves with some new ones. I realise that I don't have love in my life because at the very core of my being, I don't believe I deserve it. Like I'm rotten and unworthy and even if you can't see it, well, if you can't see it, I'll show you, I'll tell you and then I'll pull away.

I'm comfortable in this vast empty hall by myself. I've been alone for a month and a half now and maybe I'm starting to unravel, I don't know. It could be. Which is why I feel like this.

Funny how things can change from minute to minute. Funny how human beings want comfort and warmth and certainty.

What kind of monster prefers to be alone?

What kind of monster feels the world needs to be protected from her?

Nothing I do will ever make me worthy. I can't scrub out this feeling that taints everything inside me.

Not good enough.

Never good enough.