Writings on My Invisible Wall

burning-stories:

I am learning
how to secretly love you
from an unquenchable distance,
tracing tangible threads too torn to connect
a churning trellis; our tree trunk
has been scraped at with our initials
for far too long now, and I smell
leaves burning, so I should
stop looking at roiling ringlets reconstructing
the broken, the broken, to be fixed.

I am learning
how to sketch
the perfect portrait
of a healed man
smiling with a broken silhouette.

I am learning how to catch the sun again. 

Another Fork in the Road

I thought saving enough money would make it a breeze for me to pay the tuition for a couple of MBA courses. Well, it didn’t. And I’m not just talking about the upsetting feeling of instantly becoming two thousand dollars poorer. But I am referring to the hesitation of going through this. “Is this what I really want?” “Should I pursue this?” No matter how disgustingly clichéd these questions are , I am seized with the urgency to constantly pose them to myself.

The people close to me are kind enough to mention how aspiring I can be at times. Maybe I have accidentally succeeded in leaving the impression that I live this neat, straightforward, trajectory-free existence. Okay, I am going to say this with sincerity, I am grateful for their hopes for me. But often, what they overlook is that I have relied so much on being wishy-washy that I already consider this trait as my most useful guide in sorting the multitudes of aspirations that I entertain in my head. Aspirations? Maybe I shouldn’t even label them as such because I often come to the conclusion that they are just mere expensive fancies.

Sometime during this fall, I tried to shrug off this conclusion when I showed up for an assessment to become an air traffic controller. Among the many pursuits that I have started, failed in, and abandoned eventually, this stands out easily as the most technical and the most nerve wracking (hundreds of lives depend on quick, calculated response, need I say more). Indeed, it felt very ambitious to be among the dozen men who wrote the assessment that day. In a way, I felt more daring when I wrote the air traffic test than when I sat down for the LSAT, in which I scored abysmally. I just have never considered standardized examinations as my cup of tea. Not that I’m particularly lacking in brain cells, but I just don’t perform well under extreme time crunch without panicking. Having said that, I obviously did not get through the air traffic assessment. And even if I did, I don’t think I’d make it in the next stages of selection. 

The truth is it took me some courage to admit to myself that I didn’t even want this air traffic thing. To me, it was almost like playing out a childhood fantasy; I wrote that test in the same spirit of playing some time-killer video games. If I knew that I would not kill to become an air traffic worker, why the heck did I spend $210 on the test and took some time off from work? Didn’t I know the opportunity cost of such ridiculousness? Of course, I did. But I needed a thing so concrete that it supports my guess that it is not a field where I’ll thrive in or where I’ll find some sort of gratification. I guess this can be described as one of the downsides of not being blessed with the gift of knowing what to do with one’s time on earth. But when I think about it now, it wasn’t that luxurious or wasteful as it seemed. I got some peace of mind after all (or at least this is what my semi-smart self has been telling my clueless self). 

At that point, the only obvious path for me to tackle is the MBA school. It seemed so clear that if all the other options failed, go after the one that promised some success. It was such a huge benefit that most people nowadays (or maybe just the ones that I know) think an MBA was not designed only for the ones gifted with business acumen. Though I can profess that I do have some slight interest in management, organizations, and piles of money, my point is that I don’t even have to be in an exclusively business-related profession later. Yes, I decided to induce myself to think that the MBA is the new arts program: flexible and able to lead someone to various kinds of work. I know this kind of thinking would leave the fundamentally business-minded fuming with indignation, but that doesn’t bother me as far as I am concerned. Completely convinced that I am on the right track, I thought nothing else can disturb the calmness and determination that I have mustered.

It didn’t take that long for me to learn that maybe I spoke a little too soon.

On that day when I sat down for the air traffic assessment, I snooped around the hotel main floor during the break. I was hoping that I would come across something interesting enough to take my mind off the mental sprint that I pushed myself to take part in. There was this desk that displayed brochures of some of the orthodox cultural and outdoor activities in Winnipeg and in a marsh nearby. Thumbing through a theater shows booklet entertained me enough. Then it dawned on me that perhaps going out to see a theatre show, which I have not done for quite some time, would serve me well in the escapism department. So I took the booklet and some other leaflets and began my selection. I supposed that though tickets were pricey, sitting inside an auditorium and getting absorbed by a show is a completely different experience from watching a DVD release of a theatre production. So I wore that attitude as I decided to see Spring Awakening a few days later after I learned that I flunked the air traffic test.

Not that Spring Awakening surprised me or that it came across as uncomfortably shocking, considering that I knew that it was this late 19th-century German play that sparked enough controversy to be heavily banned. The play shows the repercussions of shielding teenagers from their curiosity regarding sexuality and reproduction and the ugliness of shaming them when they get a bit too carnal. Of course, the show that I saw was more of a musical adaptation that garnered some no-joke awards and recognitions. Too bad though that it wasn’t enough to attract a larger crowd. Anyways, back in the small, intimate theatre, I was enjoying the humour in the depiction of sex and some masturbation along with the pop-rock scoring, and I was feeling the horror stemming from those teenage characters’ innocence and lost of innocence caused by their lack of honest, compassionate adult figures. But just like one of those occasions when I sense the opportunity to be an intellectual, I was absorbed in the show. In my head, I was trying to find the reason why they used the small theatre to stage a show like this, deciphering the meaning behind the use of only two actors for all the adult characters, the spaces between the characters, and all other stuff that I suspect a layman would dismiss as nothing to bother pondering about. As I walked out of the auditorium at the end of the musical, I was debating with myself which of the play’s themes hold the most sincere literary truth. At that vague moment, I knew I was missing my old self.

I don’t know whether to be impressed or on the other hand appalled by how much I have changed in the past three years or so. Back in my days in the university, I used to think that I was cut out for academic, intellectual pursuits. I had it all outlined in my head. Grad school and teaching, then more schooling and research, then publication and teaching and maybe some more post-grad. True enough that path would not have offered financial rewards. But to me (or at least to my old self), it led to a life of intellectual, faux-artistic, and cultural fulfillment, which I used to deem as more important than having some steady income. I don’t know any of the actors or the rest of the production staff, but they sure impressed me with their firm and brave resolve to pursue their artistic paths, which other narrow-minded people would easily brand as child-like and no-contribution-to-an-industrial-society preoccupations.

What have become of me then? Well, I still believe in pursuing higher education, but this is so that I can land a better secured, paying (and most likely) regular job, that will allow me to afford some good stuff, to go to places, and to buy pricey tickets to cultural and arts activities like this one. There’s nothing wrong with this. But I just feel that I have curled up in my comfort circle that I am now afraid to explore and try something that would require some courage and entail disheartening struggles. More than asking myself when I began to change, I spent some nights thinking whether it is too late for me to go back to that path.However, I knew it was another fancy that would go away after a while.

I am glad and disappointed when it went away: glad because I have fewer things to think about and disappointed because it implied how scared I can be when things get too uncomfortable. But really, when I imagined myself following again the trail that I chose when I was in college and eventually abandoned, the first thing that worried me was how I would apply for loans and other things that assess one’s ability to pay based entirely, if not on credit history, on one’s regular employment. Seriously, how do those actors apply for credit? Those questions pretty much told me where I am standing.

During the my whole day of MBA orientation, being naturally confused with what I was doing there, a part of me was unsure whether I would fit in the mould that the program tries to create, and yet another part of me was quite excited about the prospects of discovering a new path and of at least becoming someone. Maybe this won’t be a waste of time and money, as I initially feared. Maybe I’ll find myself here. This doesn’t mean that I have to renounce the academic, intellectual, arts-loving self residing in me. While doing my MBA and even afterwards, I can always go watch and analyze French films, continue learning French and something else, go out to see plays, read literature, and attempt to write some prose and little poetry-like tossing of words. I guess I am the only one who can decide what to do in the future. Maybe I’ll eventually go pursue my previous endeavours. From what I’ve been reading from Bloomberg a-day-in-the-life narratives of MBA graduates, not everyone embraced purely corporate careers. Some of them were even able to fuse business and their passion in the arts.

The thing is I do not have to follow what others have done with their education or activities. Why let them define me? I see now that some of our choices in life should not be construed as paths. In my case, my intellectual tendencies and my just-beginning MBA schooling are not paths. They are merely tools. And I’ll create and follow my own trail using these tools.

Am I being naive or wise? I don’t really know. I think it has grown on me. By it, I mean that feeling that I don’t know what to do next and everything that comes with it - the confusion, the fear, and the excitement. But guess what? I would not have it any other way, even if that entails becoming relentlessly lost with every step in the road.

Pool Nausea

This morning, I went to the gym to swim some laps. I’ve been excited since yesterday. In fact, I was so zealous in looking physically active that I ended up retching before a toilet bowl. If I am not mistaken, I have only spent 10 to 15 minutes in the pool when my whole body felt stiff, my vision began twirling, a sudden vertigo kicked in, and my heart started to pound violently. I wanted to vomit on the benches. Thankfully, I was still able to drive home after I threw up some saliva. What could have caused this sudden sickness? Everyone in our home gave two cents of speculations.

1. lack of warm-up or stretching exercises

This one is true as I am an incredibly sedentary person.

2. pool water with high-concentration of chlorine

This one holds some truth as well. I have never been to a swimming hall that reeks of high concentration of chlorine. I might have gulped some, actually.

3. time interval between breakfast and swimming

They say one should not eat right before swimming.Well, two hours prior to my swimming session, I wolfed down a small bowl of oatmeal. I guess that’s not “right before”.

And besides, there are some contrasting beliefs that say one should have some snack before swimming.

4. dehydration

I don’t know. I was thirsty before going in the pool. But I felt drinking too much water while swimming could pose the same problems as no. 3. Anyways, they say to drink water before and after swimming to stay hydrated.

5. been awhile since pool swimming

That’s right. The last time that I swam was four years ago. But that was in a mountain spring. The last time that I swam in a pool would date back to four and a half years ago. By the way, I experienced the same sickness during that time.

It takes some time to get used to this activity again.

6.body’s not really for any physical activity

I don’t have to say anything about this.

Apparently, I have to continually investigate; hence, I have to swim in the same pool, in the same chlorine-reeking hall.

Luckily, my swimming lessons were cancelled. I could do this re-accustoming on my own pace.