~ A small fake beach by the Danube river with a swimming pool on a barge. Um. Yes. ~Back in Leiden at Delia's flat. I am thrilled to be here. Sweet halcyon month of doing nothing, here I come.
I don't know who reads my blog. This might turn into "therapy blog" for a little while. It's unbelievable, though, how much writing down all this shit has really made me happier and healthier.
This is something that most people probably don't know about me: I am deeply shy and utterly insecure. I can be very social, but the better people get to know me and things that make me tick, the closer they get to my places of deep insecurities. And the close they get, the more I wall them out. I guess a lot of us are like that.
I know that my ego is terribly insecure and I tend to brag about my accomplishments (or hardships!) because I need affirmation of how special I am.
I wonder if we all go through our childhood insecure. I remember feeling left out when I was a kid. I didn't want to play with guns and trucks like all the other boys. I didn't even really wanted to play with other children, for that matter. I liked Lego, chemistry kits, Mad Scientist (TM) toys, and sketch books. My single childhood friend was Dart Tiglao, who at the time meant the world to me. Even then, I remember thinking and feeling that Dart played with sad, sickly me because of pity, or because our mothers had arranged it so, or both.
When a potential friend comes into my life, I pour everything into the relationship as quickly as possible, in case they turn out to be the last friend I would have for a while. So I consume as much of their company as I can and pay with the currency of utter emotional honesty: I lay my soul bare as quickly as possible.
Now I'm realizing that this is unsustainable if practiced all the time. Being emotionally guarded is mere prudence because emotional resources are easily exhausted. Emotional capacity follows the economics of finite resources, the mathematics of scarcity.
I've always felt that I'm out of time. For everything. Hence my propensity for risk-taking, because every day is carpe diem day. Hence my tendency to be either on or off, hot or cold, no in-betweens. (Computers fascinate me because everything underneath it all, it's just zeros and ones.)
The United Nations complex in Vienna gets a taste of some brown breakdancer ass!~
During one particularly paranoid phase in Grade 2, I felt that the entire world was out to get me, that somehow there was--get this--an attempt to assasinate me. Bizarre, but true. All I knew was that I wanted out of my school. At that time I remember that there was some sort of possibility that I would move to China with my father; I clung to that possibility, and made sure that I spread the word. I wanted people to know that I was leaving, because I wanted them to realize that they've all mistreated me and that they were going to miss me when I'm gone. And I despised them all, because I wasn't the well-liked, that I wasn't the centre of attention. I hated them because I was denied their love or, maybe more precisely, their adoration.
Are performers fundamentally insecure? Is that why they take to the stage, because they need the adoration or acclaim? Why do they feel the need to share?
Thanks for letting us know, Cafe National.
~
When I love, it's like a floodgate inside me opens. Light and cobwebs and fantasies and geometric shapes and music spill in succession. Delirium, sweet delirium: I am lost in a land of make-believe, where towers of marble and ivory spring from forests, where streets are cobbled with terracotta, and everyone wears silk, copper, pina.
The Kunsthaus cafe
~
When I left Vancouver a month ago, my roommate Zailda gave me a blank notebook with little quotes that she had selected, typed out, and pasted on the cover. Here's a few:
Somehow, I must reconcile my need to do things for myself with my need to do what my conscience tells me is right. And I suspect that the "somehow" is not all that mysterious, actually, because both needs can be met by the same act or set of acts. The better I feel and can resolve personal issues that are rooted deep into my childhood, the more sensitive I become to the emergency of the world.
Right now, however, I am all talk, and no action.
I am starting fresh, like the wind, like ice on the steppes. I am clearing my inbox, archiving hellos and requests and goodbyes and address changes. I am unknotting the past and allowing it to slither away. I am existing for now. I am looking at the world differently because I am looking at it alone. The only thing that I will keep with me is the dance, and even it and I form an uneasy alliance. It's a matter of practicality; I need it more than it needs me.
