No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future.
Month: February 2015
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To remember
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Grandma 22/02/15
Dear grandma.
When i met you, you were almost my age. That’s a hundred in cat years. You were the sweetest, quietest thing, if a little mangled from age and wear. It was how old you were that held my fascination initially. Your thin, slightly damp ears, mottled with black. The silly way you sat, with a leg sticking out beneath you, like an old maid with arthritis. The wounds crowding your nose with stories i’d never know, so raw i barely dared to touch you when we first met. The slow, languid way you followed us around.
It was probably your love for trailing behind us that captured me, grandma. The way you fixed round, unblinking eyes on me (or J if he’s around, because you like him more) until i yielded and petted you. You had the sweetest, quietest way of demanding affection. I’d never forget how you followed us up and down the stairs, despite how difficult it must have been, just so you could be near us. It was so easy, grandma, to forget how old you really were.
There was one morning not too long ago, just you and me. I having a drink, you gazing up at me, not a sound. I petted you, your content so uncomplicated, so thorough. You wanted more whenever I stopped. It seemed almost as if you’d never relent in your thirst for love. That was the last time i remember you asking for my attention. I should have stayed with you longer.
By the time you came back from the vet the first time, i knew i’d already lost most of you. You turned away from my hand, when you used to press your rough, tiny face against it. You stared at me, but not expectantly. It was colder, resigned. That day i sprawled on the floor and cried like an idiot. If you had any energy left for interaction, you gave it to J.
Today we were with you when you rested. You were still curious, but lethargic. There were so many things i wanted to tell you: I’m sorry, i love you, thank you for being such a sweet cat. There were so many things about you i want to know: what was the first 20 years of your life like before you met us? do you know how much we love you? are you ready to go?Most of all i hope you felt safe and loved when you left. I hope there was no pain, only knowledge that we were there with you the whole way, and that you’d get to rest now. I’ll miss you, grandma, i already do.
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Morbid
From my mom, a love for the macabre.
I’ve always thought my disposition mirrored my dad: clean loving, easily contented, non-adaptively self-sacrificial. The only trait i seem to have taken from my mom is my obsession with dark chocolate.
Today though, mom mentioned how she’s been fascinated with reading up about serial killers. And immediately i recognized that in myself, having spent hours reading J. E. Douglas’ deconstruction of a killer’s psyche, trawling websites dedicated to murderer’s profiles, and spending waaay too much time on YT watching documentaries on psychopaths.
I’ve always been fascinated with morbidity. I guess like any other curious being, darkness and death brings the most mystery – and thus appeals to the side of us that desires to know and understand. So today i learned that my need to deconstruct what is macabre comes from my mom, the same mom whose childhood ambition was to be a coroner, and who was inappropriately excited when introduced to Happy Tree Friends.
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The perhaps intersexual future of humanity
A thought during evolutionary psych class:
If humanity survives, we might eventually evolve into intersex beings. We would be both fully ‘male’ and ‘female’, although these terms would be arbitrary. Gender becomes obsolete. For much of the known history of homo sapiens, sexual selection has dominated. So much of our lives revolve around sex, around attracting mates, mating, just so we could reproduce and propagate our genes.
Think of how efficient an intersex population would be. Everyone’s mating choice increases by 100%, the world’s reproductive possibility increases by two-fold. And since reproduction and survival of one’s genepool are the two greatest evolutionary goals, this form of sexuality is progress.
AND. No more gender equality issues, no more discrimination of homosexuals, no more fuss over gender differences in romantic conflicts. Even monosexual beings can mate with anyone else, although in such a world they may be an undesired anomaly.
As of now i can’t think of any detrimental effect that might offset the benefits reaped from intersex humans. Maybe overpopulation? Partners conceiving at once, thus reducing resource and protective means in that critical period?
Homo sapiens are an infant species, if you were to keep the timeline of Earth and its inhabitants in perspective. To be honest i think we’ve barely inched forward in terms of evolution. The possibility of intersex beings is more plausible than we’d like to believe (i’m guessing few of us can or want to imagine a world without gender). This is, of course, provided there aren’t any evolutionary disadvantages i’ve overlooked, or cannot foresee.
Yuquan reckons we could undergo division, like some sort of mitosis or budding. I pictures another Yuquan sprouting out of his shoulder. With him, it does seem possible.
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The Diving Pool and human darkness
My greatest literary weakness is for twisted characters – humans innately drawn to cruelty but free from circumstantial stimuli and narrative judgment. No group of writers does this better than Japanese authors. Reading Yoko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool has deeply satiated my need for raw human darkness. It renders her other more renowned (translated) work, Housekeeper and the Professor, positively tame. I can’t reconcile the fact that the two pieces once resided so intimately within the same mind.
Ogawa, in The Diving Pool, brings cruelty to its extreme – nonchalant, matter-of-fact, and entirely internally driven, the protagonist finds deep pleasure in her private torment of a young toddler.
I wanted to savor every one of Rie’s tears, to run my tongue over the damp, festering, vulnerable places in her heart and open the wounds even wider.
What fascinates me is how non-violent her cruelty was: hiding, leaving the child to find herself alone; lowering the child harmlessly into an urn. These acts are almost childish or innocent in its simplicity. No blood was shed, no pain inflicted, yet the motive to upset was so sparklingly clear. It is how real, how plausible these acts are to us that draws me in.
I refuse to believe that there isn’t a tiny but fully alive mass in us – cushioned and curtained between fear, between conscience – that strains to test the power we have over the vulnerable. There is something about how children fall into our trust so wholeheartedly and confidently that nudges our curiosity, our need to exploit it. It’s in everyone, regardless of whether or not it’s acted upon. Ogawa parcels it neatly in a single line:
The arrogance of Rie’s self-assurance restored my cruel thoughts.
I’ll never bear to intentionally hurt a child. I’m the kind of person who spirals into obsessive panic when a child (any child) bumps against something (usually the floor). But it doesn’t preclude me from understanding (or even having) such dark thoughts. It’s an unpopular opinion, sure, but darkness is in everyone. It can be overshadowed, or completely under the control of our conscience, but it’s a basal characteristic. What I love about Japanese fiction is their understanding, and complete acceptance, of this innate cruelty.
My desires seemed simple and terribly complicated at the same time: to gaze at Jun’s wet body and to make Rie cry.
Here lies a beautiful juxtaposition, the equally intense desire for the external, the aesthetic, the perfect, against the internal, the dark and the hidden hideousness. Ogawa crafts a protagonists without the fuss and fancy of societally constructed moral fear, choosing to present one whose needs are laid out bright as day before her.
The novella contains two other short stories. Both adequate, but if you’re not someone who can swallow blunt human cruelty and unresolved endings, steer clear of it. Personally very pleased with this read, though.
I suggest reading this at a go, on a sunny afternoon, listening to Orange Pekoe . The effect is stunning, if you like me have a thing for jarring contrasts.
Q 