Today after giving my lessons I had tears running on my face. Luckily no students saw that it would be a bit embarrassing. Suddenly feeling nothing is worth much, no matter what I do I'm not satisfied. Why does it so easily feel bad? Can I stop feeling sometimes? Can I stop these noise in my head?
Why does it feel like something is always missing? Will I ever see clearly? Is it because I still have unresolved feelings towards some ghost-era story, or is it because I'm trying to break up with my current boyfriend but I don't quite manage to be clear.... Why does all this happen? Can I act with better control? Why am I such a control freak, too?
Then I wonder why do I randomly think of my late father, and I wonder, will I ever have faith, will I ever Really believe myself in a stable relationship, will I ever believe this happiness is not going away?
Will I ever know how does it feel to be stable and happy?
I did not have that much of a hard childhood, either. I'm not making a drama. But I just easily feel undirected. And I'm tired being like this. Just as a child without a father, a woman without a direction. Need some guts to admit all these. Give me a reason to be. Oh well...Eventually this will all be temporary. Right.
Moved to this new big flat, it feels bizarre to live with these roommates all so younger and modern and frantic TV watchers and shopaholics. They seem to have come to Tokyo to enjoy shopping and watching TV, in fact they are learning Japanese at school. Well they do speak so much better than me, so I guess I should watch more TV...
Instead I am a gaijin freak watching the Simpsons and playing gaijin songs. I might just be as much a looser as they're.
But they won't succeed in frustrating me with their frustrating lifestyle! I'm picking up my piano, my drawings, and this makes me feel really good. I set up a challenge to myself to create as freely I did 10 years ago. Until I am not unsatisfied about the result, I will keep trying.
Emotional inspirations of the day. Another day feeling nostalgic ...and RAW.
I'm so tired, of playing
Playing with this bow and arrow
Gonna give my heart away
Leave it to the other girls to play
For I've been a temptress too long
Just. .
*Give me a reason to love you
Give me a reason to be, a woman
I just wanna be a woman*
From this time, unchained
We're all looking at a different picture
Thru this new frame of mind
A thousand flowers could bloom
Move over, and give us some room
*
So don't you stop, being a man
Just take a little look from our side when you can
Sow a little tenderness
No matter if you cry
*
For this is the beginning of forever and ever
Its time to move over
It's strange how one place makes you think of another, just like us people...Well this is the dimension I'm in now: lost in space. I'm on the edge again, moving again, ending a story most probably, continuing this vagabond lifestyle, letting life flow... easier said than done, yo.
Yet another flying tune of Faye Wong, 'Passenger', actually a cover of a song called 'Going Home' (right? how ambivalent things are,ha!), Faye's version is slower and somehow more airy. I like both versions. I particularly love her added Cantonese version but cannot find it online.
I love how she comes off of a bus and lingers on the tatamis with the cat, subtle feelings, blabla. There is a wabi-sabi quality in this video, very Japanese concept of simple but elegant kind of thing.
Like her there are many things I love about Japan, like her I'm nearly Chinese, like her I don't really give a darn about this either. Like her I can't do Kawaii. I can see it on others but just cannot stand it on myself. Like her I have a weakness for intellectual excitements, even how unrealistic and even if it just hurts more than help by times.
Listening to this song makes me feel so comfortable, but it also reflects a concret question I avoid to answer, which is, for how much longer am I staying in Japan? I almost forgot why I came. For now I know for sure, I can't live to wait for someone even how strong the connection can be. And realistically I can't say there is a career for me here, but I'm enjoying what I do, and I'm enjoying my time here with bunch of great people, I'm enjoying my tatamis and the beautiful thin-wooden flat too--tho I will enjoy it less in a few months in winter! Aww, I just know that I don't want to leave yet. So I'm hanging on! Have to hum myself asleep...'So I'm going home...going home alone...while your life goes on...'. Oyasumi!
I don't want to make this another blog of music specially, but music is my main inspiration :)
Every Ant has eyes and noses,
Whether it is beautiful or not,
It is only differences by a few micrometer,
What does it matter
Every human
Will Cry when Sad
Will Eat when Hungry
Difference can't be bigger than Heaven and Earth
What do you get so excited about
Its all getting too much too many Distractions
Too little Logic,
Too many Games,
Only because of Curiosity
What Value does it worth to put you in
Hysteria
Put up an Attitude towards everything
Then following Dead Hopes Collapsing to the Ground
Each and Every Ideal, is just like that
Idol that was mesmerized, disappear one by one,
Who has once Sinned Greatly, and Who is God,
What Joke of a Miracle are Waiting for,
In the End there is only Yourself
Can't go on to Overly Criticize Every Detail
In the End One Faces Self, and can't really appreciate Self either
Who gave me the Whole World, I will still Suspect
My heart is flowering happiness, and yet it could be the Last blossom
Every Every Every Human, Who is more Beautiful
Every Every Every Human, Who is more Sweeter
Every Every Every Human, Who is more Easier
What's the Big Deal, what is there to be proud of
Every Ant,
no matter passes near Whom,
Walks always so in order,
What is the relevance in all things
Every Human,
when meeting the person that is loved
Instead will palpitate with Fear...
My little intellectual inspirations of the day; quoting this wonderful writer Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth ,there is so much more to quote, here are just some extracts:
"The ego tends to equate having with being: I have, therefore I am. The more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself. You need others to give you a sense of self, and if you live in a culture that to a large extent equates self-worth with how much and what you have, if you cannot look through this collective delusion, you will be condemned to chasing after things for the rest of your life in the vain hope of finding your worth and completion of your sense of self there.
(...)If you take away one kind of identification, the ego will quickly find another. It ultimately doesn't matter what it identifies with as long as it has an identity. Anti-consumerism or antiprivate ownership would be another mental position that can replace identification with possessions. Through it you could make yourself right and other wrong. Making yourself right and others wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns.
Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth needs no defenses. It does not care about what you or anybody else thinks. You are defending yourself. the illusion of yourself. Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts."
One of the most important values in Japan is being humble, which is lovely, it makes you feel how people respect each other at a strict minimum social base. But after living in Tokyo for nearly 2 years, I realize there are very clearly the true-humble, and the false-humble. Ah-ha. Everything seems so much more extreme and clearer in Japan. (Laughs). Or is it my gaijin fantacized perception?
True-humble is cool, sincere, and open-minded towards the others, meaning: I do not anticipate in others' believes or self-worth. I stay humble, I stay open. While False-humble is pretty vicious, it is the example of certain elderly lady who would walk on your toes or complain about you for no purpose (because she is your sempai/senior and you just must pass your way), or give you the judgmental eye saying: 'Why is he/she not behaving in the humble way - My way, My rules. That is the Young ones, good for nothing...'. False-humble can become an attitude quite demanding, highly self-righteous, and eventually just cocky. Two extremes are always ambivalent, they meet up at the end...
Well, today I feel like being Humble Cocky (all puns intended, act like a macho Japanese man and be self-righteous about it, ha!), in fact from now on this will be my new feel-good commando. This will make my days funnier. Even funnier. Let me quote a nice picture of Angelina Jolie to illustrate this chapter. Haha.
Here is my humble-cocky philosophy: It is good to have dreams and ambition for yourself, but you have to first think that you Are already good enough.
I need to do nothing to have the power I want, to achieve XYZ things I want in the future, I am already complete.
Self-sufficiance can be as simple. Accept your strengths, all your potentials. No further philosophing and mind-fornicating!
Some people are so afraid of their own emotions that they prefer not feeling them. I know this is possible cos I was doing so unconsciously for years. Yet there is nothing like Life without feelings.
As for L-o-v-e or anything that seem like it, we all have our fears.
Not mating is not really an option. (No it's not!) Multiple stories
might seem a release for a while and then headaches and/or emptiness
necessarily follow. Falling in love is not weak. And it's not all rose.
It is not supposed to only make you happy. It is supposed to offer something interesting in your perspective.
So why do we fear? I guess in modern times people just become too cozy,
materially greedy and self-protective, there is no more room for risks.
After years unable to feel anything, and indulgence in drugs didn't
help, all sorts of feelings are surfacing in me again like a violent
tornado.
I could not even know I was numb in my emotions. I just couldn't enjoy fully every moment.
That sounds a bit sad doesn't it.
Care about how you feel, don't become just a perfectionist task performer.
I guess I can repeat that as many times as needed to the clients... I'm not Saint Theresa, it helps too for myself. Ha!
Going to get a ticket and see one for real next week at Theater Iwato Iidabashi, by Japanese butoh dancer Taketeru Kudo. Mochiron ikuyo! while I'm still in Tokyo! Yey!
Back! No I am not giving up my blog trial...my computer gave up on me.
The other day one of my students confessed to me, after the lesson, how he gives up on Humans.
Huh? Yes, giving up on trusting humans.
I said Oh,... I used to be like this in my teens n when my father left this world...you know sad things do happen in life, everyone has to learn to cope with these some day. I tried to cheer him up casually n laugh about it, and ask him why so negative?!
He, a young and smart man, healthy in all his ways, proper job, proper education, etc.
I cannot trust humans. A dog will never betray you or abandon you. said the lovely young man.
He was already tripping on his future 'companion', n asks my opinion if he should buy an insurance for his future dog, cos he will be so sad imagining in 10years if the dog dies and he will still be alive. Hullo! you don't have one yet...I was thinking aloud.
I feel so sorry to hear these. Trying to stop him in this nonsense.
Well there is some obvious truth in the matter. I remember the mexican movie Amores Perros, this touching drama, with one of the character, a former political militant now just a bum, who lives alone taking care of his dogs. At one point he saves a dog but it killed all his other dogs, just caused by his natural violent iinstincts. He cried, then resolves to keep on living with this 'naturally violent' dog. The movie sets up parallels with other characters' love stories ending up destroyed.
When people have lost families or lovers, it is easy to get a tender feeling looking after an animal.
Everybody knows this.
Then the other night, one of the customers, similarly says how he loves his dog more than his wife.
Oh I didn't want to listen..... and he was really serious when he said it.
Are we all really losing hopes so bad?
I am not a very optimistic person, but I wouldn't get to that point in dispair...
Talking about emotions.
We can never have just one side of the thing. Not just happiness in love. nor in anything.
The more we fear, we try to get rid of the bad sides, the more they catch us up.
When I saw my father leave this world, I was frozen. I used to hate my father. There were valid reasons.
But then I discovered that he was not dying because of alcoholism - which is what I was told first -, but he was killed by his depression after divorce. I was later told that he was missing my mother and me so bad, that he kept telling all his girlfriends and mistresses how he will never love them more than us.
Be it in Hong Kong, in Japan, in Asia in general, it is considered a weakness to talk about your own emotions. Old- school machismo reign. So people stop talking and remain 'strong' on the surface, and then you get all these people in the hospitals, stuck with their emotions in their diseases of any apparent kind.
I was 19 when I witnessed my father's death. The following 6 years I tried to be excelling in everything I do, studies, work, etc. and I did all. But I did not know my feelings. I was cold and tyrannic to myself. I had no feelings. I tried to suffocate them. And of course, I had terrible time with my relationships.
When things really get to the bottom, you'll bounce up again. It is just a matter of time.
I wish my student and my customer will keep some faith for their lives.
And even for a fortune I won't watch that Richard Gere's Hachiko a dog's story. NO!
right...sometimes very sad....that's why it's never good to be too stubborn on any point of view!:] read more
on Humble Cocky : Feel my thorns*