slow time

Time clarifies. It's interesting, how what was hazy or unclear before resolves into a sureness, how mystery turns lucent as the layers that obscure the truth are slowly dissolved with the passing of days.
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integral

Finally got that essay out of the way. It's been hanging over my head like a guillotine for over a year -- and now it's finally done. Can't wait for it to be published.
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It's interesting -- what i thought was a structural problem was basically just a symptom of a deeper issue: i wasn't being entirely honest in what i was saying. i was trading truth for lyricism. That dishonesty manifested itself in the structural incoherence which i'd felt ever since i finished the first draft. But it's only when i decided to be brutally honest, with myself, with the essay, with the reader omg, that the essay actually came together in a way that i can be happy with, that i can put my name to.
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This is not the first time something like this has happened. So it seems that in my writing, as in my life, the problems that screw things up are usually problems of integrity.
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from the heart

i think, a lot of the way my life has turned out can be explained by the fact that i've never been able to do anything that i don't feel in my heart. Or, to be more accurate, i've never been able to keep doing anything for the long-term that i don't feel in my heart.
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This may or may not have been a good thing. But it is what it is.
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on connection

i think, the people we connect with are the ones who are asking the same questions as we are. At least, that has been how i've experienced things. It doesn't matter so much if we end up arriving at different answers -- at least, not in a friendship. (i think that intimate relationships / marriage might be different...... but don't quote me on that one....). But it's only when the questions asked are the same, that there can be any genuine dialogue.
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pensées (2)

Reading my blogposts from last year to this April has made it pretty clear -- the trip was a miracle. i'd forgotten how exhausted i was, how emptied, how i was feeling i'd lost my way -- ironically, in the midst of what looked to everyone else like a time of success, achievement, and dreams-come-true.
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Couple of things i picked up from the residency:
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1)
i really like it when artists -- mostly sculptors, it seems -- say, "I make things."  There's something so elemental about it. We buy so much of what we need and use -- how many people know how to make things these days?
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2)
My funky architect uncle said that art / writing residencies are probably more like summer camps for lost artists. i think there may be some truth to that. So many of the people i met in Vermont were in some sort of transition or other; so many were trying to figure out things like life direction, relationships, etc. Maybe that's what made for the intensity of the experience for some people -- to find yourself in the company of a whole bunch of people who share your creative calling, at a time when so many of you are lost and seeking a way, must be quite quite intoxicating.
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3)
Art / literature is no longer the most important thing in the world for me. It used to be. Poetry used to be my religion. And then faith happened. And now poetry / writing is just something i do. At most i feel i am called to do it, and i do it in response to that call -- and when i do it well, the feeling i get is joy. Great joy. But it's no longer what gives my life meaning.
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This became clear at the residency -- when i could see the contrast between the way i see my writing, and the way the other artists/writers see their work. i'm not sure if i like this state of affairs. But it is what it is.
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closure

So here i am, back in Berlin, and about to leave again. i'm sitting in front of a window that looks out on a quiet side-street near Alexanderplatz. Directly across the road sit three recycling bins: one each for 'Braunglas', 'Weissglas', and 'Grunglas'. Can't say the Germans aren't organised.
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So how was everything? i've been away from Singapore, traipsing from place to place across two continents, for more than 2 months -- did i find what i expected?
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Well. i don't know what i expected. i did hope to get some rest; to be refreshed. i knew i would see mountains lakes rivers forests seas -- because in a sense this trip was planned around that goal. i hoped to be able to write, but i was afraid i would not. i hoped to figure out what next in life. i hoped to recover and heal. But did i expect to do all these things? No. i don't think so.
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So did i find what i hoped to find?
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Yes, and no. It was a very enriching trip -- and i wouldn't change it for all the world. (Hmm. Wait. Maybe there are some things i wouldn't mind changing. But i am content with how it turned out.) i didn't write much, but i do have a good idea for something i hope will turn out to be a fair-sized project, and i chanced upon the materials i'd need to make that project happen.
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But i think, best of all, i feel like i've finally turned the page on the last... 10 (?) years. i still haven't figured out exactly WHAT it is that makes the last ten years The Last Ten Years -- possibly just the fact that i was so un-free. How was i un-free? Let me count the ways.......
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And i feel now that this trip has given me a fresh start: a place from which to finally make some choices in freedom, rather than constrained by circumstances external to myself, or by my own personal un-freedoms that were keeping me from coming to terms with my reality. i think i've learnt much in The Last Ten Years that will stand me in good stead as i move forward towards whatever comes next. It's good to feel that one is in a place in which one can make good choices.
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So now. Onwards. Here's to whatever the future may bring.
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