solitarystar89

看见朋友在照片里逐渐变胖，我不经感叹时间的残酷。

看见朋友们和伴侣一起快乐地发胖，我不经感叹单身的可贵

看见自己的腿渐渐变形，我不经感叹生命的无常 

我可以写文章，可以读书，可以搞艺术，但是我不能够承受生命。因为生命太真实了。

开始明白有一天我的真心是会用完的

with much regrets, got back onto facebook. Think the 2 month hiatus has taught me to hate that space. But well, it's just not possible to do things and stay away when everyone is there.....

I think I will give up trying to find something that is mine. A calling, a passion, a self. But this doesn't mean I give up on everything. 

Because I realize that I don't settle. I probably will never because I hate settling. I always feel like an outsider when I look at any form of settling. Is being reactive a problem? Is not settling a problem? It most probably is. But can I settle? I cannot. 

It is probably more useful to work within this un-settledness than to try and settle. But that means I settle on not settling. 

The true character (as well as judgment by others ) of a person lies less in his articulated/believed values or what he has done but in how he conducts himself from decision to decision. 

I must have gotten it from Dostoesvky. 

My happiness is synthetic, underground, simulated and come six months later, I might be wishing I never smoked this pot. But in the moment, the corners of my mouth can't stop turning upwards... 

Is love the only way out? Is the only way out of loneliness and the problem of, 'what is life about?' another person? Right now, I don't really like the idea of a family. This nuclear unit where your core energies and motivations are channelled. You stop asking yourself, why are you doing this because biology makes you feel like doing it as the love comes so naturally. The problems of other people become less important to you than this one kid's future. It becomes a very selfish, insular kind of love.

This talk about building something together. Building what together? Another kid - another you to continue this endless repetitive cycle of L.I.F.E. 

I suppose that would make anyone happy. For a good decade at least. But shouldn't we court something more dangerous? Instead of a love that is passed onto another person, a love that is even more selfish - self-love. To do things with yourself, about yourself, to yourself. To continually open oneself up to nature, one unknown after another, to take seriously one curiosity after another. I think a normal family would be so much more easier, but I really don't want to lose myself - however painful it is to be alone, to know that I can only be alone, and to choose to be alone. 

Wait. Actually I don't know. The above is kind of reductive. There are artists/activists/inventors who have kids too...i just can't seem to place myself on the shelf of stability and not fidget too much to fall off. I don't like this idea of a closed group, with a normal house, normal pets, normal hobbies, normal weekends....blah blah blah.  

DON'T WANT TO WRITE ESSAY
DON'T WANT TO WRITE ESSAY
DON'T WANT TO WRITE ESSAY
DONT' WANT TO WRITE ESSAY
DONT' WANT OT WRITE ESSAY
DONT' WANT OT WRITE ESSAY
DON'T WANT OT WRITE ESSAY
DONT' WAN TOT WRITE ESSAY
DONT' WANT OT WRITE ESSAY
DONT 'W ANT OT EO WRUJEITE
DON'E WNA TOT YO EW
DON'T WANT TO WARI TE ESSAY
DON'T WAN TOT WRUIT EISY
DEON' TWAN TOT EO REIW TIE YSI
DONT' WNA TOT WRITE ESSAY
DONT' WAN TOT EWOI RIET
DONE' WNA TOI WJRO
DONW' TWNA TO WIR
DON'WD ANT IOD WRTIE IJIDUIS

spent saturday till now trying to write one freaking essay...and I'm going nowhere.....

could have spent the time on:
making some photographs
read on other artists
thinking about my work
visit shows around london
hooking with some people

or none of the above.

Just got notified by the bank that I have to pay for banking services incurred because I did 2 overdrafts. (If that service is not available for my account, why didn't they just reject that overdraft?). So I have to pay 50 pounds. 

Just when I'm trying to save money

I could have just bought some new clothes. 

Why do this to me? 

Why? 

Stop procrastinating. Go do work, siew ching. 

I am suddenly seized with a sense of dread to return to singapore and to work. I think I have changed significantly over the last few years and although I am quite happy about most of the changes, I just don't want to change again. In my head, the people I am going to encounter in singapore are going to be narrow, judgmental, materialistic, envious (we are always envious of others, why can't we just do our own thing?), unimaginative, safe, pretending to be hippy or nostalgic - when they are just consuming an on older dream, and image of other cultures and times. And I am probably going to be asked again and again, what does does your art mean? It means go away and don't pretend to understand when you don't even get that it doesn't have to mean anything. It means having to PR and make philistines feels that art spoke to them, that they can be cultured. 

I'm not saying that a lot of people here really like art. I think a lot of people just want to booze and club at art events. But at least they don't pretend to understand, or expect you to make something they can understand. 

These consumers, consume, consume, consume. Consume art objects, consume a hippy lifestyle, consume images...the only real enemy of art is capitalism because it turns all the unutterable and ineffable pursuits into products through reifying some kind of identity onto them. Product because that is how capital works - it has to produce, we have to produce. Don't you see? All these products, chasing after these products, and producing them ourselves are only part of this capitalist system. And when we fill our lives with chasing and making these products because we only see these products, we are only looking through the lens of capitalism. This lens makes anything that is not perceived as a product impossible to exist in our eyes. 

 Identity politics isn't real. Human perception is. Capitalism isn't real. Human perception is.

Education is worthy work. But to borrow the words of the Chile uprising leader, Camila Vallejo, "Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development?" It is not enough to have education. What kind of people are we moulding - more people to produce iphones? 

Of course, these are my general perceptions of the world and they only affect me as long as the fleeting media headlines on one disaster after another. But I think they will be manifested on many of my future peers. I hope I am wrong. 

"Thank you for dinner. We should buy you something back...like dinner at Fullerton."
"No....not fullerton...I want something more unusual"
"Haha, like very good tau huey?"
"I don't know...like something out of this world"

"You want to choose what to do?"
"Interns don't choose, do they?"
"If you want to choose, you must know what makes you happy."

I think I read too much into the things people say, especially when the words happen to echo what I've been thinking about, but the way this person says things, she just seem to bring a cliche conversation somewhere near the human condition. 

These days, I just seem to see too much saddness. Reminds me of the goddess Cassandra, who blessed with the gift of prophecy, is also cursed with everyone's incredulity towards her words. But in my case, it's perception and not the accuracy of future events. (And I'm nowhere as beautiful) The emptiness of people checking their phones/playing games, the silence at tables, the muted loneliness of the lady walking home alone, the boredom of people gathered for dinner, the awkwardness of someone who can't seem to connect and the irritation of those who have to 'put up' with it. 

But it shall be this awareness of sadness that I love people who show inner strength, optimism. I think we can be a mess, but we can be a cheerful mess. Having a sense of direction doesn't necessarily lead to happiness, and lacking a sense of self doesn't have to be depressing. 

I was in the house and staring into space one day when my mind suddenly registered the glass in front of me. Time. When I shove away TV, books, thoughts, entertainment, meetups, and I have with me only a room and a glass, that moment of time, how should I deal with it? Should I even think about this? Away from production and engagement (when you have the feeling of time well-spent), I think most people encounter this empty time when they are only trying to pass it. What is most incredible, I think, is many people, especially old people, encounter everyday, when they sit at void decks watching pigeons, in the quiet of their own homes. But mostly, it is hastened through distractions. In the absence of those distractions, I experienced a slowing down of time, resulting in a confrontation with that moment of...pure time...Unlike time well-spent, it's not exactly enjoyable. 

It reminds me of Nausea by Sarte. The protagonist's ennui that bears no salvation, that period of inability to hold onto anything and even mundane objects are perpetually dissolving, and he just tried to hold on to them by naming, naming them. His 'muse' (although he never seem to have a grasp on her) on the other hand, spoke of construction - pain that has to be endured, attitudes posed to bring about 'perfect moments' - a great kiss, a touching death. The difference between him and the girl is that she attempts to construct perfect moments, while the protagonist engages in perpetual judgement of events and longing for perfect moments that he already has a prior idea. The ending is plain B-movie bad - a character named Autodidact that protagonist acquiants and despises is unveiled as a paedophile. Was Sarte being a deliberately bad writer? Or was he completely poisoned by his academe? 

Read the philosophy of Zhuang Zi recently. He acknowledges the inevitability of living in this world and the impossibility of changing it. Unlike Confucius who toured the states of China to advise warlords on governance, Zhuang Zi perceived the futility of all that. The world cannot be changed, and learning should not be for the sake of its utilization. Instead, he advocates saving our own asses that is situated in this world. He did not reject the world by entering into recluse but aspired to be involved, but unattached to the world, to cultivate a heart that is free. Neither can one be attached to things or values without standing at a fixed center. Everything is one and once we attempt to view anything separately, we have to keep separating.

My key problem is how can one be a part of the societal or even family unit when we are not involved?  

How is it possible to make any decision or take any action when everything is one? 

As some abstract rhetoric Mr. Zhuang is so totally my man, but I'm not sure it's very useful for life....