Thursday, December 14, 2006
Free Writing, 20 mins
I need to finish writing this blog in 20 mins. Let's see how far I can go.In one of my 9th-grade ESL classes one day, we did an exercise called free-writing. Mr. T passed out sheets of blank, loose-leaf papers and asked each of us to take one. Then, pulling out a time-watch, he set the watch to 20 mins and said: "From now on, for 30 mins, I want you to write down anything and everything that comes up to your mind. Don't worry about vocab, grammar, making sense or not, or even spelling. Just write, write, and write. Let your mind leads your pen and let yourself follow your thoughts."
Ready? Go.
Sitting here in a cafe that I come so often, 3 if not 4 if not 5 times a week, my friend YC is sitting right next to me. Before we sat down and had our conversation of the day, she stood up and gave me a warm massage. "You are good, so good," I said, amazed by the amount of power and strength that she put on my extremely tense shoulders.
"Could you please relax, May-yi? When was the last time you relaxed? I put my hands on you for a sec and then you tensed up again. This is frustrating to the massager, you know?" She rebuked me.
I was just afraid that people in the cafe might think of us as ... you know.
But who cares? She's one of my dear sisters and friends in the city. We save each other - often - from the darkest pits in life. She's someone I could just call up and say, hey, I need to talk, I need to sit down and share a cup of coffee with someon. I need to process and would you let me process?
Even though most of the time we sit around and lament over the chauvinistic male pigs that cover 90% of the lands of the earth. Or is it 90% of the male population? Can't figure out anymore. Either case, one of them may be true.
The rain has stopped but the little water pools here and there on the ground are now - reflected by the street lights besides - are glittering in such soft, gentle hue that I am reminded of the glittering of ocean waves at a beach, somewhere, unknown. Thailand? Florida? A postcard image? An impage merely existing in my head?
Or an image from a long beloved movie?
Can't remember either.
YC pointed out a few interesting blog sites online. This person is so-and-so and writes about this and that; that person studies bio but is interested in prose writing; this guy, interestingly, writes with such sophistication that sometimes he's mistaken to be a woman.
I briefly glanced at her recommended sites. Such creativy dabbling all over the place. We live in a day and age where people suddenly embrace such freedom of public sharing of the innermost privacy.
Although, at the end of the day, is that reality? Or virtual reality?
If one could true, which reality would I rather live in?
Which world?
Which continent?
Which city?
Which neighborhood?
Which language should I speak, who should I engage my life with, who - should I commit the rest of my life to - for better and for worse, through health and through sickness, till death do us apart?
No ideas, no answers, just increasingly nebulous thoughts. Too many choices end up paralyze all of us.
The woefulness of being a global citizen today. Sometimes, I wish life could be simpler.
Sometimes, I wish I could be a simple college student from TW, who - perhaps - had her very first dating relationship at the age of 19, where relatively more time in college life simply allows for a puppy-style of dating. You ride the bikes with your bf, you go to the dinning hall with him. Forget about this American-cool-style of "we don't date, we just hang out" mentality, and truly come to treasure and cherish each other.
It seems so simple, but isn't that what love is about? 朝朝夕夕又如何？兩人開心就好。Cut the intellectual crap or the evilness of over analyzation. Cut the maturity crap of needing to be considerate, independent, finding the ultimate security and satisfaction in God or what not. Just treasure and cherish each other, each moment, each minute, as if the first time falling in love with him.
Sometimes I also wish I could live in a place where people do speak 3 languages, travel to 5 continents, enjoy cuisines from all over the world and have had some kind of deep, cultural immersion process throughout childhood/upbringing years. People who know exactly what I'm talking about before my sentence is finished; people who know exactly how I feel when I sit in a cafe in Cambridge but miss the "plum-rain" season in Taipei, or the first snow in Japan, or the hot summer days of walking around Shanghai neighborhoods, observing the grandpas and grandmas chit-chattering the afternoons away. Sometimes I wish people could just read my mind and say, yes, I know what you mena and how you feel, 你辛苦了。Or to say, 讓我來吧，不用每件事都扛在自己肩上。
Even though I still stayed up late till 4:30 am last night to make all my travel plans for Christmas. Unfailingly, sometimes the more capable you are the more work you end up taking upon your shoulders.
Only if people could at least appreciate it.
Less than 2 weeks till Christmas, I feel like an orphan wandering in the streets of Cambridge. Don't tell me that it's too sad a portrayal to indulge myself in, because that is the reality. No family no closed one no one to lean upon. I do have a home, although my ability to reach home is, sadly, heavily restricted by the availability of Northwest, United, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines' aircraft capacity. Haha, I wanna laugh - since when airline companies also dominate our ability to go home?
i thought the world is small.
Or since when have I exiled myself from the notion of home? Self-exile? Forced-upon exile? Or an exile that was chosen years ago w/o my personal knowledge or understanding of what that entails?
Exile? No, never would I have thought that that was what it is. "Embrace of another culture," "personal development," or "expansion of a new horizon"? That was what I was telling myself.
20 mins is coming to an end, and I need to close this very free and most random writing. I don't know how many thoughts will remain the min I post this page. But I shall not change it nor revise it nor revisit it.
These and these thoughts of mine - they belong to the 20 mins that had just past, forever, frozen in time.
梅ちゃん at 6:58:00 AM
1 Comments
-
at 12/14/06, 12:55 PM
said... I want YC's massage, too!
In fact I bought a funny machine called massager or something like that. But I prefer human massager...
Don't be upset, at least you have YC there!