After watching Comic Relief, I can not help but feel a little moved this morning. This tinkling of the heart has nothing to do with the small hours, although that's when my reflections and ruminations of life usually abound. Interspersed between the comedy sketches and parodies, were clips of a land where the people are as resilient as Thor's Anvil. Although some may find the videos trite and dressed up by the BBC to purposely evoke sad emotions from the viewer, I can still feel at the very essence of it, it is all heart. Minus off the sad adagios and the melancholic acoustics, the raw footage is a story unto itself, a visual lament of human torment.
The best clip was the story about a Rwandan Tutsi woman who saw her husband killed alongside other family members. Only she and her daughter survived by hiding under the dead bodies of their relatives. Having been shot in the arm, the wound soon developed gangrene and indeed to prevent the infection from spreading she pulled off her arm. After the massacre, she took a loan provided by AVEGA and began to build her life again. She looked after her child. She took into her care six of her murdered neighbours children.
I admire her for her courage when she pulled her arm off. A normal being would have struggled with the bloodiness of it all. I admire her for her courage to hope and to build a better life, her willingless to help others, even after going through such experiences. But what I admire her most for is her sheer resolution. The face of the woman was one of acceptance for events past. A woman who was afflicted and yet took things into her stride. Trauma quashed not with resignation and submission, but with a glimmer of hope for better things. Here's someone who was able to put things into perspective, when all around her was a blur of suffering.
It's 3.20 am. I have just finished my homework. Yes, homework. Doing bonafide juvenile homework in university. These are not one-off assignments, these are exercises to be handed in, ticked and marked on a regular basis. I have not had homework since I left secondary school. From college to the penultimate year of university, my lecturers have committed to their announcements made at the beginning of each semester, 'you are all young mature adults and it is your choice whether you want to do the tutorial questions'. Joyful, joyful.
My new homework giving lecturer certainly stands out, like luscious hair among the professors.
Strangely, while I would usually mourn through the lectures like how a bored attendee at a funeral mourns for himself, I now listen to what the 'preacher' has got to say. All for the simple reason that I know what is going on after doing my homework.
To hell with the notion that we university students should be responsible for our own actions or inactions, I need to be given a little prod. Self-motivation? Bah, not good enough. 'I'll put a note next to the name of those who did not hand in the homework', I'll instantly scramble to the library to borrow the necessary readings.
Which is why, instead of lying plopped on my bed after coming back from the pub as I usually would, I sat straight up on my chair and started thinking and typing away, though with a slightly slurred mind and confused fingers. 3.30 am. Plopped!
The world of fashion is an exclusive circle. Designers swathe themselves in the elite, the sophisticated, the glamorous, the youthful. They certainly would not hang out with my primary school mates and me.
In my primary school days, I remember how bedecked with stickers our pencil boxes were. Our pencil boxes had a menagerie of Country Flags animated with Cartoon Holograms crashed into Angled Pics of Ferraris and Porsches and kicked into Action Shots of Football Stars. They were not mere rectangular metal objects to keep stationery in, they were easels to work our collages on, our sleek models parading the latest in haute couture. We eagerly awaited the arrival of new collections of stickers at the school's stationery shop. And once the word was out, there would be a long line of students during recess time, gleefully awaiting new materials to work with.
Then, the introduction of the aerosol spray sent shockwaves through our world of pencil box decoration. A revolution. A whole new way of dressing and living our pencil boxes up. I tore away the stickers leaving a wounded red rusty layer, eager to use this new material. The funniest thing was, no one used solid colours. We were all aspiring Versaces with gaudiness and tackiness being the epitome of taste. And as the sun shone in the classroom, the metallic boxes glimmered on our desks, while reflecting the light unto the ceiling and the walls making the classroom look like a disco filled with underage patrons.
Of course, the metallic shine of our pencil boxes which so glittered our eyes began to fade, and so did our interest. By the time we got into secondary school, everyone had pretty much dumped the fad already. Secondary school pencil boxes were all generic types, compass sets boxes, boring monolithic beings. And if the owner did 'upload' anything on to it, it would probably be just scribbles of a phone number or some homework to do. I do not even use a pencil box now. Pen and ruler chucked alongside lecture notes in a rush for early morning classes.
The aerosol spray probably did our designing interest in. It was the final material used for decorating pencil boxes. No one could possibly revert to stickers after using aerosol. I did not know it then, but when I sprayed over my pencil box's stickered past, I was in a way dividing two epochs, the pre-stickered and post-stickered, I was growing older.
Treasured Possessions are usually old, worn, beaten. Through years of use and abuse they become familiar, even to the point of believing that you have imparted a part of yourself to them. They are as familiar as a pencil box covered with stickers bought with your own pocket money, a stool which remained through your growing up years and survived your house's IKEA revamp, a friend.
My camera, on the other hand, have roots far more modern, far more crude. Its history is as exotic as Mcdonald's. It is an earned entity through menial office work done through the holidays. Like sex for a slave at the end of the day, an oasis for a legionnaire after a perpetual desert trek, a friend.
As a hobby, I love photography best. We do not need to think much indeed to take a good picture. It is art at its simplest. All we need to do is to look around and recognise beautiful things for what they are. To analyse beauty is to destroy the very innocence which makes it charming in the first place. That is the other reason why I treasure my camera, for it enables me to acknowledge beautiful things. The irony is, my camera is an ugly one. Nothing like those sleek silver shining digital cameras, it stands out being big, bulky, and terribly 80s looking. 'The Beast', a friend.
What makes a person want to publish a journal? Are journals not hidden vaults to place our Thoughts and Experiences, never to be perused by anyone except the writer? Like how truths are kept from parents, opinions held from friends, and small penises tucked quickly into pants?
However, in spite of how fearful we are of the consequences, we want to shout them out, to stand on the rooftops of the world and whoosh out our very own barbaric yawps. We want to hear our inadequacies and fears echoing back to us and not to feel ashamed nor fear it, knowing that they make up a part of who we are as much as our better selves.
I have never been a pioneer. Never the first. The starter? You have got to be kidding. This is my little late addition of words and thoughts in an era overflowing with information. I don't believe there's too much though. If anything, we live in an age which feels omniscient and yet, so much is still unknown. Surely all the most important questions in life have yet to be answered - life after death, the meaning of life, the home of happiness - these are still great puzzles, it is to me anyway. Of course to some, life is a lot less puzzling. There are those who have steadfastly and confidently assured me that the answers have been found - ''it's in the Bible'', they carolled my death fears away, ''the answer to the meaning of life ? Why, it's forty-two of course!'', drone Deep Thoughtists, ''Wahh, after get UK degree, sure can get good job, can be rich, get good wife, then can be happy'', the cheery Aunties blasted as they hand me Ang Pows.
I guess this is what this blog is about, a personal journey of thoughts and questions, in search of answers, and although an absolute one may never be found, i do hope to be a little closer to it when the sun sets and the evening comes.