And Thus

I should begin with the blogging commentary from yesterday.
I was really glad to realize by the end of that rationalization process that I have not been writing for the sake of public recognition – but to simply improve my writing skills & quality. After all, it is the words that are delicious and imagery that are ambrosia to me. Yes, “0 comments” means nobody cares. Funnily enough, I don’t care if nobody cares. Because this blog isn’t one of opinion & arguments: it is one of self-enjoyment, perhaps light hedonism, and happiness in absolutely my nihilist attitude towards life.
Yes. Nihilism makes my life much happier.

Second emergent eureka from the past twenty-two hours was that I Had Chosen The Wrong Major. It is not surprising, but somehow depressing because I cannot go back three years to do it again. I cannot turn back, and worse, I do not have the time to wait another three years before I am going out there to start earning money. But I believe journalism and a writing career will begin to unfold soon after I start working. It is a feeling that has a 80% confidence region to become true.
Geek talk.

M came over last night and when I was walking him out to where he parked his car, I told him that I couldn’t wait to move out of this apartment. I did not like the steel structure of it (which, controversial enough, was the reason I moved in. It looked like a filming set to me, I suppose). Everyone knows that after I had seen the comfortability and luxury of Hans’ penthouse sample, that was what I would be aiming for. I am only willing to move upwards. I never go back down to an inferior quality of things. Which, of course when you’re a bankrupt student, could be a bit problematic.
M and I had a really good time last night. It was written all over the joyous boy’s face. You know those smiles that appear when they’re starting to be aroused or excited or surprised by a girl’s behaviour? There was plenty of those. So much that I was even kind of out of appetite.

A girl is always single before she marries.

M also mentioned the fact that he knew there are certain people he just cannot read, despite how much of a good reader he is. I believed it. What he didn’t know was that he had the exact effect on me; and it was when I was trying to knock down that “unreadability” in him that I realized what I had been missing in my life: the innocent diligence I once had towards so many things. Therefore, as long as I’m with him, he will make me a better person as a reminder. Plus by default, I love his character anyway.
“You like me because I’m lazy,” he smiled and said.
“No.” I replied. “You’re more naughty.”
“Yea, and you love it.”

No comment.

By this morning, a Thursday morning, I had finished the psychology lecture at 10a.m. regardless of that fact that it wasn’t right for me. Then I spent the rest of the day writing essays, and even walked all the way to Starbucks just for a cup of coffee. I knew at least the quality wouldn’t disappoint me. And there was a line of ten or eleven students that queued all the way outside the door. Starbucks has commercialized well.

Blogging: A Wall of Mirrors

The Truth of the Truth: For all of us writers, we blog because we fear the disappearance of our existence. Through our words our spirits may live on, no matter how trivial our lives are. What other reasons could we possibly have for rambling on days after days about the moment we bought a Starbucks coffee after shopping at the supermarket?

Right. Blogging aids our self-exploration and perhaps a sudden discovery of truth while we’re typing these words and phrases away. We want to be surprised by ourselves. And we monitor our behavior as a start to that.
But the truth is: these surprising discoveries are truths born out of a banal life. It is one little hero’s existence and road to self-actualization, but really, most possibly the same life has been lived a thousand times before we were born.
We live, we make mistakes, we pick up lessons, we live on.

Graphomania describes this urge and passion to write books. To write about our lives, to impose ourselves onto others: to make a mark for our existence, as a thousand bloggers scream, “look at me, look at me, look at me.”

Kundera summarized the phenomenon of Graphomania well:
a. It happens because we are well-looked after, educated citizens who have spare time on our hands to think of the purpose of our existence
b. It happens because there is a high degree of individual isolation in this society; we know that people don’t really care when we speak to them, even our own kids and wives.
c. It happens because there is no revolution and change in the society.

I find the second point most intriguing: remember when Lester in American Beauty commented on how he is still able to surprise himself? This is precisely the point: we are getting harder and harder to be recognized by and in this society. Nothing surprises us anymore; some blogger topped two thousand views in one week – do we care? Bush said something that uproared the public – do we care? They found the earth’s biggest octopus – do we care? Fuel prices rise – we just worry about it.
Bottom line is, with the increase in population and amount of brains, we find ourselves increasingly anonymous – yes, anonymous. That’s why we start a blog to state our existence. Do it for ourselves, and maybe provide life details for others with a fetish to read and follow and stalk our daily stories. It’s almost the same fuzzy logic why blog stats are so comforting: 150 views a day may equal or be better than a cup of warm cappuccino.

I have no grudges against this whole bloggers stuck in a wall of mirrors of bloggers thing. It is only those bloggers who write, “look at me, look at me, look at me” that are of any annoyance to me.

Litost

From The Book Of Laughter & Forgetting by Milan Kundera -

Litost is an untranslatable Czech word. Its first syllable, which is long and stressed, sounds like the wail of an abandoned dog. As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.

Take an instance from the student’s childhood. His parents made him take violin lessons. He was not very gifted and his teacher would interrupt him to criticize his mistakes in an old, unbearable voice. He felt humiliated, and he wanted to cry. But instead of trying to play in tune and not make mistakes, he would deliberately play wrong notes, the teacher’s voice would become still more unbearable and harsh, and he himself would sink deeper and deeper into his litost.

What then is litost?

Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

One of the customary remedies for misery is love. Because someone loved absolutely cannot be miserable. All his faults are redeemed by love’s magical gaze, under which even inept swimming, with the head held high above the surface, can become charming.

Love’s absolute is actually a desire for absolute identity: the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes (the girl looks back happily on her past or swims faster), love becomes a permanent source of the great torment we call litost.

Anyone with wide experience of the common imperfection of mankind is relatively sheltered from the shocks of litost. For him, the sight of his own misery is ordinary and uninteresting. Litost, therefore, is characteristic of the age of inexperience. It is one of the ornaments of youth.

Litost works like a two-stroke engine. Torment is followed by the desire for revenge. The goal of revenge is to make one’s partner look as miserable as oneself. The man cannot swim, but the slapped woman cries. It makes them feel equal and keeps their love going.

Since revenge can never equal its true motive, it must put forward false reasons. Litost is, therefore, always accompanied by a pathetic hypocrisy.

* * * *

In my third year of university I have finally realized that I picked the wrong major. It should not be Psychology. It should be English.
See how simple that was?

I don’t know why I haven’t been able to admit it to myself.

But also, on the same night, I am affirmed by myself that I love M.
I love him.
He can’t swim very well, but he can certainly keep his head above the water and fight for himself. There is so much fight inside him. And it is his innocence and trust in mankind he has lost.

But I see that in him.

Cinnamon

Last night when M came over, I wanted to get food.

It was raining very lightly. We walked to the Starbucks right next to the Skytower and I ordered another Cinnamon Dolce Latté. The smooth jazz always played from the ceiling, and my spirit was calmed when that warm cup of coffee was announced. M and I went upstairs, through the wooden floors, to the space where modern chandeliers hovered above and grand couches sat welcomingly on the round rugs.

I opened up the cap of the coffee cup and scraped the cream with the stirring stick. I mixed it until the cinnamon was in the body of the latté. We were sitting by the windows which looked out to a rainy scene of night with the headlights of cars reflecting on the slippery streets. The traffic lights had seemed extra lucid as well.
There was a bar across the street. “I want to own that bar one day,” M said. I looked up. “I mean I just want to be the owner, not the manager. That would be too tiring. But I want it to be a place where I can be in front of the counter and behind it. It could be my resting stop. And see those rooms above the bar? One of those could be my own room.”
“That is really cool.” As a matter of fact, I have never thought about that myself. But it was a brilliant idea. As long as he doesn’t turn into a pimping sugar daddy type.

The coffee was great. It was near an orgasm. With M sitting across from me babbling as I liked, I thought about how my life is really quite enjoyable.