regret

i am not doing most of what i hoped to do after exams. learning a new language (German, Spanish, ASL), reconnecting with old ones (English, Chinese, French).
not reading enough, or baking, or exercising. have not been to the beach. have not learned anything about coffee. have not learned how to play the harmonica. have not learned how to drive. have relearnt what i love about theatre, and found trustworthy people, but i also have left these people for the meaningless detachment of isolation, and i have relearned why i don't want to try or hope, and how empty it feels to miss having desires for and aspirations to anything. the sky.
have not had gelato with audrey, or fixed my camera, or volunteered. no idea how to shake this up.

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of the day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others - the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad. I am not sad, I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by mid-afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer.

Comments

[xinty]

let's go to the beach!
(I loved the Everything is Illuminated film.)

[yanhann]

nat! you don't update v often. like me! anw, it's been a l o n g time; i miss your aussie parsley! cook/bake for me? :D

xinty/nat: EH what happened to mtg with Mrs PLoh.

[spindrift]

yes, okay! you're exactly the person i want to do this with.

[spindrift]

haha usually my posts are private, and most times i post on my livejournal instead.

mtg never materialised... she's too busy with the baby, according to all the EL teachers. they don't hear from her either.

hahaha i am going through a dearth of inspiration in the kitchen right now. if we ever find time to spend at somene's house i shall do that. (: