Incredible dreariness
I wrote an email to the 1st year Chinese students mailing list, asking if anyone's interested in playing erhu or learning to play erhu. It was a wild shot at trying to get some playing partner so I won't get bored playing it alone and trail off practices like I did two three years ago. Sending that email felt like contacting someone to buy their car. It has some pleasant aspects but didn't amount to much. I have really changed...
I must have changed. I even mentioned it at the dinner tonight with XB and YJ and felt no qualms about it. Well the truth is, I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it badly, about erhu, about walking and beautiful scenery and music and poetry and whatever my past encounters have been that stood for beauty. But no, I guess it's never to be. Perhaps in my attempts to be unique I've created a me that's so different that nobody's with me anymore.
In those wrong moments when people are instantaneously in touch with me, I wince and shrink and escape away. Or in some other right moments when connections are built and felt, my heart beats too violently for me to keep in disguises, so that at the end of it all I stood naked and exposed, regretting and confused. The two situations cannot be decoupled. One is both the cause and the consequence of the other. That's the laws of the balanced life of yin and yang.
So in any case I tried tonight and I spoke of the email I wrote. YJ's face brightened and followed up with, "Oh I know! That letter you sent! I saw it. How tu3!" The last syllable has multiple significances and probably has a different nuance of meaning in modern usage among young people. But it amounts to "being country-bumpkin-ish, unfashionable, uncool". YJ's just a child of course. He didn't even understand the normal world. But my vanity was hurt all the same. When one aptly equates getting hurting in vanity to that in emotions, he's never likely to discover his mistakes and become truly humble. But it was so easy to do! I could just tell myself, I would remain alone in Stanford for a long time to come, tell myself that all of my dinner table companions would, at moments such as this, suddenly become so distant from me that I felt like waving to them on the other side of the ocean.
But I wouldn't need to bite back tears anymore at least. So I have changed.
Do I sound incredibly wearied? I'm afraid that in order to continue believing and hoping in youth, feeling incredibly wearied at times would have to be the price I pay. When the weariedness takes over believing and hoping, I would have grown old. The belief and hope and youth, so shiny and sparkling like a cargo of treasures steadily being submerged by a sea under the brilliant sun, would be me waving my skeletal erhu-playing fingers until the last segment is covered by restless waves.
I must have changed. I even mentioned it at the dinner tonight with XB and YJ and felt no qualms about it. Well the truth is, I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it badly, about erhu, about walking and beautiful scenery and music and poetry and whatever my past encounters have been that stood for beauty. But no, I guess it's never to be. Perhaps in my attempts to be unique I've created a me that's so different that nobody's with me anymore.
In those wrong moments when people are instantaneously in touch with me, I wince and shrink and escape away. Or in some other right moments when connections are built and felt, my heart beats too violently for me to keep in disguises, so that at the end of it all I stood naked and exposed, regretting and confused. The two situations cannot be decoupled. One is both the cause and the consequence of the other. That's the laws of the balanced life of yin and yang.
So in any case I tried tonight and I spoke of the email I wrote. YJ's face brightened and followed up with, "Oh I know! That letter you sent! I saw it. How tu3!" The last syllable has multiple significances and probably has a different nuance of meaning in modern usage among young people. But it amounts to "being country-bumpkin-ish, unfashionable, uncool". YJ's just a child of course. He didn't even understand the normal world. But my vanity was hurt all the same. When one aptly equates getting hurting in vanity to that in emotions, he's never likely to discover his mistakes and become truly humble. But it was so easy to do! I could just tell myself, I would remain alone in Stanford for a long time to come, tell myself that all of my dinner table companions would, at moments such as this, suddenly become so distant from me that I felt like waving to them on the other side of the ocean.
But I wouldn't need to bite back tears anymore at least. So I have changed.
Do I sound incredibly wearied? I'm afraid that in order to continue believing and hoping in youth, feeling incredibly wearied at times would have to be the price I pay. When the weariedness takes over believing and hoping, I would have grown old. The belief and hope and youth, so shiny and sparkling like a cargo of treasures steadily being submerged by a sea under the brilliant sun, would be me waving my skeletal erhu-playing fingers until the last segment is covered by restless waves.
posted by Azzurra | 11:52 PM
5 Comments:
You know what "change is the only constant thing in this world". Good to change for one's own good sake....
One would be old only if they fail to learn and change.....Dont know if I make any sense here...
Now that's a very interesting comment. So you mean a changing person doesn't age, but on the contrary is retaining youth?
By the way I get the poems from a website which sends me a classical poems a day. It's convenient to just throw poems on as blog entries =)
yup! atleast thats how I think:)
so how are you doing??
Hihi!!
I think it is a good idea to get people to play er hu with you. =) It is like in my religion, when we want people to chant with, we will send out an email. It is always good to have company.
Hmmm.. i think sometimes people dun understand why we are passionate or committed to certain thingsy. It is alright lah. It is another chance for us to strengthen our faith. To let ourselves that we truly like what we are doing and we are not doing it just cos everyone else is doing it. =)
There was once when I talked to a member in my religion. He said that sometimes he felt like he just dun want to chant cos his mum is always nagging at him to chant more. And that was the first time that I felt fortunate to be the only one in my family practising. Cos now i know that i am truly doing it out of my own wishes.
Hmmm.. yeah.. along e way, people change, and left some friends behind. But they will soon find other friends along. =)
Yup I don't regret that I sent out the invitation. Except that nobody appears interested - cuz I think erhu is not a fashionable instrument even among the Chinese and the instrument is hard to get. Oh well. I have not exhausted my means yet and I'll keep trying =)
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