breathe just breathe

sometimes i miss being emo

twenty different kinds of cheese

It’s difficult to explain. As I stroll down the aisles of the cold storage in bsc, I marvel at how many different kinds of cheese there are underneath the hard glass shell of the refrigerator. It makes me want to cry, this abundance of cheese.

I realise that supermarket cheese has taken on a ridiculous poignancy. It seems so long ago that I used to be able to hop on a tram and get off a few blocks later at victoria market, to walk through the stalls smelling of cured ham and olives and a dozen different types of cheese. To buy a sizzling bratwurst stuffed into bread, cradled in a bed of sauerkraut and hot mustard, or even better, hand over two dollars and fifty cents for a spicy slice of lamb borek. Supermarkets seemed like the height of civilisation and when I came back to kl, I hunted in vain for all the small, edible comforts that had come to symbolise melbourne and therefore my ‘real’ life.

Needless to say, the cheese selection at cold storage was about the closest I ever got to it.

And then, I went to beijing.

I remember the first time I went to a supermarket there. I walked the aisles, looking for something, anything that was even remotely familiar. Everything terrified me, from the strange packaging to the idiosyncratic arrangement of foodstuff. I sobbed my way down the junk food aisle that held no trace of red rock deli chips. I held up a package of ham that for all I knew could have been processed from human meat, it looked that dodgy. I finaly bought the only thing that looked (and thankfully tasted) familiar: peanut butter.

And so it is with great shock that I find myself missing it. I miss the supermarket in C building where my classes are. Running down for a smoke and then a sausage-filled jian bing, and a bottle of water. Contemplating which dodgy hamburger to buy and having him press cartons of yogurt into my hands (“here, take it, you have to eat someting healthy”). The stalls of small eats and yang rou chuanr and harsh zhongnanhai cigarettes. Beijing is as far from melbourne as I could have contemplated and yet for now, it is an experience that I would not have given up for all the comforts of the non-communist world.

As much as I miss walking down the aisles of a supermarket and seeing twenty different kinds of cheese, I’m learning to appreciate that bejiing is what you make of it and that maybe, life is a little bit like that too.

designer love and empty things

I don’t make a habit of cursing the rungs of the ladder that got me where I am.

— likepolishingfirewood.tumblr.com

and the brightest lights are reserved for you

Sometimes I miss melbourne so much it makes my heart ache.

爱上你是我情非得已

It wasn’t that he was a particularly enigmatic or compelling person. He was intelligent and interesting and spoke exceedingly well.  But enigmatic? Compelling? No, not really.

His fascination lay in something deeply subjective to me, namely that he was the complete antithesis of everything and everyone I was used to. I was raised by parents who tried their best, and their best was good. But I was also raised within the boundaries of the idea that the world and reality in general had rules and limitations. I grew up believing that I had broad horizons and it was not until I met him that I realised how broad horizons could truly be. His were so broad as to be constantly receding and for this I envied him unashamedly.

I envied the gifts that intellect and financial independence had bestowed upon him, the array of life choices and paths that were his for the taking.  I envied his mind, which was not just absorbent but a wide mind, a canvas large enough that it could hold in it what I had always sought: the elusive bigger picture.

Above all I envied his freedom, which was of a sort that I was wholly unfamiliar with. He seemed so free from societal or familial expectations, the kind that the rest of us seem compelled to adhere to.  He asked no one’s permisssion to be brilliant.

And quite simply, I wish I was more like that.

smile like you mean it

It’s so easy to smile, you just stretch a few muscles. It’s so much harder to mean it. So much harder to laugh and smile and joke when your heart is aching.

The loneliest feeling in the world is not being able to share how you feel with someone you love. The scariest feeling in the world is feeling as if you’re making the same mistakes again and again.

And with a sinking heart I realise that this territory? I’ve been here before. I know it all too well.

heed the lighthouse

In the space between dreams and reality my mind throws up memories I forgot I ever had. My sleep addled mind unearths them one by one, like so many pieces of sharp glass to step on. They come out of nowhere, forgotten but familiar, quietly menacing.

They are like warnings, these memories. A warning from me to myself. A hand stroking my hair, a whispered secret I love you, the memory of tenderness. They are trying to tell me something.

Remember, they say, and learn. But what do I do with these remembrances of things past? How do you learn from the past? Life is too short to make the same mistake twice.

I am happy. And like most happy people, I am haunted by the knowledge of how easily it can all be lost.

if you can pick it up, you can put it down

So my blog is pretty much the deadest it’s ever been. Relationships aren’t exactly good for productivity and I’m pretty sure my readership is down to two. No matter, I never gave a damn about those things anyway.

What I do care about is that I used to get the urge to write almost everyday and I don’t anymore. It worries me that my writing muscle has gone so long unused that it’s used to being unused. Proof of which is in that latter sentence.

So here’s number two on my list of goals for the next seven weeks: write MORE.

beijing huan ying ni part 2

Fucking china fucking blocked fucking facebook.

fuck fuck fuck.

Damn country. I go out for dinner and come back and within an hour facebook is just gone!

So scared that your citizens will revolt then just ban the whole damn internet la!

fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck.

it showed me the place where the sidewalk cracks

Something about the end of semester flurry made me realise it.

I may not have as strong a base here in beijing as I perhaps would have liked, and maybe that’s my fault — ever aware of the possibility of loss I pushed everything and everyone away who did not make it a point to claw their way back in. I’ve built barriers so high I could rival the great wall.

But the thing is, roughly five months ago there was a night when I walked from wudaokou back to the dorms in the freezing dark, tears streaming down my face, absolutely terrified and unable to feel my toes. Today the sun is shining (although you can’t really see it through the smog of beijing) and I can feel all ten of my toes, wiggle them even. I am no longer afraid of beijing. This city challenges me, frustrates me and makes me laugh sometimes — but it no longer fills me with fear. It is no longer an unknown entity.

It’s a city, just a city like any other that can be cracked. And maybe progress isn’t measured by how well you can navigate the subway system or how many place names in the guide book are no longer just names — but that’s how I choose to measure it.

I may not have done anything great or awesome in the past few months, but I have come a long way from that sobbing wreck of emotions walking a lonely beijing road.