It is after 26 years as a self-professed avid reader (after my first self-read book at 5, on the Teletubbies), that i made the stunning revelation that I do not, in fact, love to read. It is a good story that I love.
Before I go into the catalyst for this realization, let’s comb through the various clues to this I should have picked up.
This is why I spend hours on Reddit, disregarding my husband’s scoffing that these supposed happenings are ‘not real’. So what? I’m in it for the story.
This is why I find personal blogs just as absorbing as novels – if not more so – because they have the additional allure of being real, and raw.
This is why I relish reading Wikipedia summaries of book and movie plots.
This is why I read primarily fiction. The skill of reading was developed out of mere necessity owed to my thirst for stories.
This is why I can and have read tons of research papers and non-fiction, but each is one too many because they are, truly, a spectacular yawn and a half to me.
Why then don’t I love other forms of story-telling as much? Why do movies and shows, or even audio books, not hold as much intrigue? I think it is because I love so much a good story that their re-telling must be borne solely out of my imagination to be perfectly as I want it to be imagined. It is not the effects, the acting, the screenplay that moves me, but the core of it; the story. I watch something onscreen when I want to enjoy one of those. When I want a story, I read.
Now back to the catalyst. At dinner just awhile ago, K alludes to a story he is reading in enticing bits and pieces. I know neither the context, the middle, nor the end. I instinctively knew this was a juicy morsel of a story, I felt that tang of anticipation of my tongue I get when I sink into a story I just knew would be good: ironic, surprising, teasing, satisfying.
Experiencing a deep envy that I could not ‘have’ this story (it is written in Polish), what came next was a self-reflexive understanding of my lust for the story. Not just to have something to read, but to have this story be told in an exciting, immersive way.
A slow, passionate, depraved, descent into madness.
Elsa Morante is a master at writing characters to life: each of them with their secret desires and fears unspooling like tangled yarn, knitted together into a quilt of inextricable insanity.
And borrowing from her genius, our dear, ‘poor’ Elisa – by-product and narrator of the insanity – inherits the masterful metafictional writing of Elsa in her own retelling. At no point of her narration did I doubt the necessity of Elisa’s enervating and painful detailing of her memory.
For those brave enough to venture forth into this complex multi-generational family drama, let it be foretold: the last two parts (400 pages long) felt like being trapped in a fever dream; a dream in which you descend an infinite and illusory stairwell that never ends and is the same as the last turn.
Yet, it all made sense in context of Elisa’s position and motive: while Elsa is an ingenious writer (and cannot be forgiven were she the narrator), Elisa is decidedly not one. This is the reason I not merely tolerated, but perversely relished, the spiraling labyrinth of delirium that spanned 300 pages when it could have been 3.
I love flawed characters, and in this novel you will be hard-pressed to find a single character not flagrantly flawed. I surprised myself by finding the capacity to be heartbroken for some of them (namely Francesco, Alessandra), and noted that this is not a reflection of any redeeming qualities they may have, but the depth of cruelty others’ flaws have flagellated them by.
Indeed, this is a story about heartbreak, cruelty, delusion, derision, and obsession disguised as love. I loved it, docking one star only because I feared that if it were 2 pages longer I would have myself succumbed to lunacy.
the way i bite into a too-sweet coconut candy and remember to call my grandma. “Popo buy for you!” exclaims Eih Eih, each time. Not in her native tongue, her words belie the urgency to express another’s love.
i imagine she thinks about her mother, back home, humming a Burmese tune that threads through her string of sisters on a straw-stuffed bed. “She prays every night,” my grandma tells me.
Left unsaid, the ponderance of devotion. My Popo in a bone-wearied gait down the aisle for the right brand of candy; Eih Eih on her knees, palms in a pious convergence; the sweet crunch between my teeth that bids me dial that eight digits i’ve worn into numerous keypads for two decades past.
Unceremoniously left in the basement trash area, I’m so sorry. You deserved so much more. Maybe i could have sent you for repairs, after all you were indestructible for so long.
To my dear readers, I have all my life tended to anthropomorphise my inanimate possessions, and am especially prone to object sentimentalism. The day I left my faithful Crash baggage for the last time, my heart was heavy, heavy with the weight of my own betrayal and callousness. Even today, when I remember my dear trusty luggage, the heaviness remains.
So today, an ode to my luggage of many years.
You came into my life in 2019.
USA, our first trip together, and what an adventure we had! You were left on the carousel while I passed through customs, through a silly turn of events. And with barely an hour of transit, I begged through warm tears for you to be released. By ingenious miracle, you were! You were, literally, unbreakable – a slip acknowledging an attempted check by TSA stubbornly forced into your innards, but you refused to nudge open for anyone but me! I knew then it was going to be a grand time between us. I’ve retold this tale proudly many times over.
And then COVID, we were stuck in Singapore, you and I. Nevertheless you were significant in my ventures: you accompanied me not across borders, but to a new home. My first time moving out alone!
When we could finally fly, you did with me, to Bali, Lisbon, Porto, Paris; for work, to Seoul; to Chiang Mai; to my first trip to visit K’s family in Wrocław, to Munich, to Taipei, Sydney, London, Dublin, France again, Bali again, Wrocław a yearly affair, to my first time in Beijing and Shanghai, to Tokyo, to my very first ski trip in Japan, to, Galicia, to London and Portugal again. That fateful last trip where you finally cracked.
Oh Crash Baggage, what a time we had together! What glorious, glorious memories we shared. I wish so much I had spent more time at our final goodbye, where I could thank you – a proper one – for being my mainstay through some unbeatable experiences. You were so good to me, the best luggage I could ever, ever hope for.
I will never forget you. I promise you this as the ‘very, very sad classical’ playlist I’ve put on echoes my very, very sadness. As that heavy stone that has been sitting in my chest pitches up to my throat and hot tears threaten to spill from regret, guilt, sentimentality, gratitude, and so much more. Memories of you, that bright and jovially scuffed up yellow, that iconic dented body, well-used and so proud for it, whizzing down dozens of carousels towards me. My joy at seeing that familiar sight of you, always. My pride having you by my side in so many cities. You were fun, reliable, loud, loaded with meaning, so functional, yet so good looking. You were a lion and a dog, fierce and loyal. I miss you and always will, every day of my traveling life.
Adios Crash baggage, I hope with all my heart you are well recycled, and that your spirit is carried over more continents and oceans than I can ever bring you.
It is to be heard, and seen, and known, and felt. It is to simply be yourself, to shrug off the costumes of roles you perform, with the confidence of knowing you are wholly accepted. And if you have forgotten who the ‘simply you’ is, they will help you find it again.
I’ve half-jokingly referred to this weekend’s getaway with the girls as ‘a spiritual and emotional retreat’.
The truth is it is closer to the truth than the humour implies.
What did we do besides sit around and talk about ourselves, each other, and life? A top-notch massage with the sound of waves, excellent breakfast spreads that kept us dreaming the entire day for more, spontaneous deadlift and pull-up tutorials. Being vulnerable and sharing what we have carried as a heavy stone for years.
I am sitting at the cusp of having so much to learn about the world and others, and so, SO much to unlearn to be better for this world and others. To be a girls’ girl is the strength that comes with knowing they will rally around you. I’m ready to take on what’s upcoming.
i’m amused at how world-weary i assumed myself to be at 23. in my early 20s, or even my teens, there was such a firm confidence in my maturity. i felt old. i felt like i’d experienced all that life could offer. i felt blasé.
at 31 i think of myself mostly a child. just yesterday i fell while trying to tightrope walk on a tree root. just last week i felt inchoate, dwarfed by the presence of nature vast and ancient as i’ve never encountered.
how was i so certain – about myself, my thoughts, and the end of novelty – when i had yet to have a snowflake melt on my palm?
yet there is no condescension when i face my age-young self. i was, perhaps, truly old in some ways. in relation too, in context of. i admire my earnest commitment to beliefs i had no way of verifying. today i am fenced by the sole certainty that an absolute truth is often out of reach, or perhaps requires far more courage and effort than the lethargy of my intellectual cowardice can rattle into being.
that aside,
my modest little epiphany is that feeling your age has nothing to do with the linear progression of time and years.
i enjoy today my infant-like wonder at the world, and my hope that there is more to discover.
maybe tomorrow some of that old-young bravado will re-emerge, and i will again assert this and that, wanting a better world that i deem to have explored to its ends.
Flew across glacial mountains, back home to Singapore, just a tad changed. Where do I begin to describe the magic that was New Zealand? As the last large habitable land touched by mankind, there is a specialness to the space. Am I naïve to claim it remains less sullied than any other parts of the world I have experienced?
Queenstown, backyard of our hotel. The crisp air and quiet waters. Here we had a cup of coffee, starting our pleasurable habit of seeking comfort in a hot beverage in the near zero weather.
I particularly love this about NZ. At any time, your vision is framed by vast nature; postcard perfect yet unassuming. It does not fight for your attention, it simply and confidently is, as natural as nature is land and sky and sea.
The day we were joined by friends and their tots, departing Queenstown on a cruise to Lake Wakatipu.
You don’t mind at all the chill and its harsh kiss on your cheeks as the ship pulls against the wind. At a little farm we marveled at sheepdogs’ professionalism, speeding off to stare down their eponymous wooly pals into submission.
We watch the kids skip stones, tumble down hills, collect pinecones for first snowman. We doodle ships and landscapes on the journey back to land.
Departing to Wanaka, K and I spent some cozy nights under heated blankets in a little hut, rising early to drive up winding mountains towards their caps of snow. Daft Punk’s Giorgio by Moroder on repeat.
Skiing. That familiar routine of wake; drive; squeeze into boots and helmet and goggles and gear, duck walking in pain and snow; ski, lift, ski, lift; lunch and cider (maybe two); ski, lift, ski, lift; some tears and tantrums in between (mine and the kids’). You end the ski day at 4pm deeply satisfied: you have done so much and earned any indulgence that may come after (and there is still many hours left to the day!)
How much more perfect can it be? On our days off-skis, K and I (and the rest of our gang) took hikes, one of our favorite activities together as a couple.
We went on Routeburn trail near Glenorchy, a fairytale path of moss green even in the winter frost. An easy, serene route, friendly enough for the whole family. We slipped under a bridge and waved to a family across the lake.
On another day, there was Meg’s trail, a sunset hike we took sans kids. The kind of trek up that is thoroughly my joy, a little burn to thighs as you push against gravity. I relished particularly our little puzzles across streams: it is horizontal bouldering if you have shorts legs like I do.
It hits me today that everywhere there is quiet from man-made mechanical noise. There is the wind rustling flora, whisper of a hare’s hop, myriad song of birds, and a shout from the kids, but not much else, as it should be. The quiet is a big factor to the peace I found there, sensitive as I am to noise.
We moved southward to Cardrona, kickstarting the most precious phase of our trip: living in a homestead with our friends and the tots.
The space and backyard is immaculately laid out to facilitate tranquility. Hot tea with a view that runs for miles, snowcapped mountains foregrounded by undulating hillscapes.
Everyday, some form of chaos and adventure, never unwelcome. Every night, grilling dinner by the fire we made, sipping wine, sitting on the comfiest foldable chairs (and falling through all three of them), nodding off to the warmth at the hearth.
One night, a dinner whipped up by the lovely homestead owners. Possibly the best roasted potatoes I’ve had, definitely the best potato cheese soup I’ve had. In fact, everything from the steak to grilled greens were excellent, excellent, excellent. If one could eat like a king, this is the definition of it.
Other days, lunches and dinners out at, really, the only hotel bar & restaurant in the area. The kids getting their knees muddy at the playground while we dig into loaded wedges, alfresco, in 2°C. Sometimes with a nice cocktail.
Entertainment all around the clock, with ‘good morNINGs’, ‘big pasta!’, gathering a ridiculous amount of branches, an entire world map drawn with newly-charred branch by the hearth.
Oh, New Zealand, you have been wonderful. Something about your air and land and waters spoke so deeply to me. The serenity, the idyllic and content, the slowness, the lack of pretense and lack of need to be so. The walks and hikes, mud and dust a-flying. The crunch of snow beneath my boots, powder and windstorm. I thank you for all these memories.
Northward, a different land, a sea-mirrored twin. Dreams of triumph roil these waters a thousand years after our hero first breathed life into shells: iridescent white-pink conches, winking slyly, reborn bones of a foe once buried.
we shake rain dew off clear umbrellas, summer-drenched, and climbed atop a ragged-teeth boulder, like a hero once had.
later, i thought it must be here, the coast of death, that the dog’s tongue was stained. a rock snail gave its life to the discovery of purple. and so our hero bends a knee, his fingers dyed a bruised berry, while behind him a column of stone rises from the undulating coastline, a perpetual flame dancing in its belly.
One of those nights where sleeplessness was welcome. I felt again that sensation, wrapped within a dream, both somatic and cognitive: that contrast between what’s unbearably heavy and oppressively light.
Have you ever had one of those dream-not dreams? Not a chain of events, but a repetition of a feeling.
The first time I had this dream I was a child. The first and most vivid of all acceding instances. In it, I carried a large object — I will call it a boulder, although in my mind it had the incomparable largeness and weight of the perceivable world.
Bearing this weight, I walked door-to-door. I say that for as a metaphor. In the reality of the non-reality they were intervals of nothing. At each interval, I took from the boulder, each time I could only grasp and release a pinch. Each pinch was light as nothing, a down feather of a baby bird.
After the first dream, I have had frequent recurrences of this dream. Not as vivid but always, at the centre, that feeling. Not the heaviness nor the lightness, for when awake I carry sandbags and barbells above my weight, and have felt the slip of snowflake so inconsequential it dissolves on my palm.
No, it is that in-between, that contrast, the shock of nothing from everything, a down feather when I expected a boulder, that sticks with me.
The other night where I, in a rare state, welcomed sleeplessness, I felt that contrast, that discomfiting dissonance. Not in a dream but floating towards one. And after two decades of being called to this sensation in my sleep, it finally struck me the simplicity of what this meant. Or, let’s do away with maudlin needs to ascribe meaning. It struck me why and when I have these dreams.
When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, and when every action I take to address these stressors appear futile. Carrying the world, no amount of tasks ticked off is enough to complete what needs to be done.
This discovery, though, is less fascinating to me than that feeling of dissonance. It feels such a singular and isolating sensation that I’m not sure I share with anyone. The contrast of weight between boulder and feather.
Is to age to become so utterly, disgustingly trite? I am bored, bored, and BORED to near death by my boring preoccupations and thoughts. I do not want to think about: housing, children, and health.
I want to think about the immaterial, the fantastical, and the madness that is in every infinitesimal gap of every material thing.
I no longer want to be enraptured by these gormless pixels that so easily tell me what to do, think, buy, and say.
Q 