Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Read the loooong classics. Somehow, they are always about
Quests. Yes, with the capital Q.
Quest to rescue a damsel in distress.
Quest to find a new land.
Quest to spread the gospel.
Quest to fulfill a dream.
Quest to find the 'exotic'.
Maybe you are thinking
Christopher Columbus.However about
Jacques Cartier: The man who named Canada, Canada.
Closer to our roots, how about
Zheng He?
Through the vast waters, the narrow river passages, under the low bridge, men shouting "Ahoy! Ahoy!"
Is
that the Quest we are travelling on?
Maybe i'm a plank, floating by.
Maybe I'm a ship navigated by the set sails.
Maybe I'm the ignored survivor of a shipwreak, with no one to hear my cries.
Maybe I'm a blur fish in the ocean, not knowing one ocean from the next.
Maybe I'm a seagull that simply flies across the waters.
Maybe I'm a Peter who walks on water.
Maybe I'm a rock that has sunk to the depths of depths of the ocean seabed.
With a deep sigh, I am fully aware that
we are all on a Quest.
You can be the plank one day. You can be the plank now.
Or, you can find yourself as The ignored survivor after a terrible storm wreaks your steady cruise.
IF not, how about walking on water today?
The changeability of weather mirrors the changeability of Life.
If you ask me what the Quest stands for,
universally, (regardless of race, language or religion)
I would say it is the Quest of Self.
It
had been,
has been and
always will be.
Unbounded by Time, Age and Space.
Humans are intellectual beings. We cannot just live for survival sake.
We need some reason to keep on living, moving, breathing.
So, who are you?
Perhaps its just me but I can't recognise myself in the mirror sometimes.
The mirror reflects absolutely nothing about who I stand for.
So,
the law of relativity.
Identity has to be relative to something. Anything. Everything.
Yet if identity is a fluid commodity, it will forever be volatile and changeable. So volatile that it can never be pieced together.
The key
is
to
set
it on something constant. Never-changing. All-knowing.
Just The Girl @
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Friday, November 24, 2006
My mother believes that food/nutrition is the most important to one's being.
From as far as I can remember, the first thing she asks, whether over the phone or when she sees me after her work, is
"Ni chi bao le ma?" It has been a private joke between my brother and I when we (sometimes) mimic our mum. That sentence becomes a punchline bound to tickle. Friends who have been to my place must have been overwhelmed by her hopitality- shown through her piling of food on their bowls continuously.
At times, I attribute it to her being a Teochew. Sometimes, I attribute it to her family upbringing in Malaysia. Other times, I attribute it to her role as a mother.
Over time, I know it is just
her.When I was a teenager, I used to complain to my friends that my mother didn't seem to care much about my well-being. While the parents of my peers would ask them about their days in school daily, my mother seemed only concerned about whether I had eaten my meals. I was perplexed with her consistency in her care of my nourishment yet the apparent neglect over my emotional self.
I remember shouting at my mother in the midst of a teenage argument, "I don't need you to ask me if I had eaten. I need you to ask me how was my day!"
I can't remember how the argument ended. But, the next day when I got back from school, she resumed, "Ni chi bao le ma?" Slumped, I felt like I was back at square one. I admitted defeat.
That was many years ago.
And yes, her question resumes till this day.
Interestingly, my mother seems to never tire asking the same question. After all these years.
As I had admitted defeat that fateful day many years ago, I had learnt to just answer her. Its just part of her character, why change her? As I grow up, I see this as her way of loving us.
As I use words to convey my love, my mother uses her concern over our nourishments as
her own way of showing love. Nothing wrong with that.
Tonight, i let her rattle on in her naggings. There is nothing I have not heard, after all these years.
Must eat my three meals. If I'm too busy, go eat with my friends instead of eating bread. Must drink more water. Don't take cold drinks. If I don't eat well, I won't have energy to study...Mum: "So what did you eat for dinner?"
Me: "Nothing much.. I don't have much appetite so I ate some bread and I'm eating apples now."
Mum:"That's right. You should eat an apple everyday. You know huh... don't keep eating bread.. I have sent you money right.. Go buy other things to eat, bread doesn't have much nutrients..."
Me: "I know... I'm just tired after a rough week. It has been a really tiring week... somehow... there seemed to be some hormonal changes that keep me constantly in tears beginning of this week. Every little things could make me cry.. even when i walked from one class to the next.."
Mum: (silent for a while) "Sometimes, don't just eat bread... you can cook rice or porridge also.... (on she went about the preparation of my meals)"
I smiled to myself when I heard her reply to my confession of my feelings about my week. She simply skipped commenting on the whole chunk of my emotions! It almost seems as though we are speaking two different languages... yet, I know that its just not
her to talk about filmsy things like emotions.
Her love language is food.
Thus I know I'm deeply loved.
[Written with strong resonance to Amy Tan's "Two Kinds."]
Just The Girl @
Friday, November 24, 2006
