Tuesday, March 17, 2009

on loneliness

One thing that I am realising is that cyclical experiences and movements define my life. I'm sure it's the same for everyone, but let's just for a moment allow me to keep focus on me. Right.

Cyclical. Round and around, passing through the same emotions of hope and disappointment, love and loneliness. I think I'm arriving at the space that people have lately been asking if I was at. A lonely place, a faraway place, a place where days are long and I rarely utter words to people I know. A place where having no deadlines or set times for meeting with people leaves a malleable void that is just so. The walls may be tested now and again, but there are no breakthroughs. And the dominant experience is loneliness. Not just the emotional and mental loneliness that I have (oi vay!) become used to and am working on accepting, but a physical loneliness, suspended in which I crave a physical, bodily touch and contact. A hug from a friend. A squeeze of the arm, a kiss... Contact through a screen gives an intellectual and in some ways emotional connection, but not the bodily aspect. Maybe I should start playing ball again, although the others might get the wrong idea. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should leave my comfort zone once again, pursuing hopes. And maybe I'll end up disappointed once again in this same place of me, me, me.

Forgive my glumness, but it strikes me with clarity today how easily we fool ourselves into leading lives that do not, and will never, grant us what we hunger for. In my case, searching inward on a quest for knowledge and experience of myself, when what I perhaps need to do is to find that knowledge through and with someone else.

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A good thing coming from all this is that I've recently been exploring more creative endeavours. I've finally constructed a pinhole camera from a set I was given over half a year ago and have taken a few photos, and am dabbling with all sorts of media, digital and physical. Perhaps, if some of them turn out well I can share them with you at a later point. I have a much greater degree of freedom in my art these days, sort of "oh, I don't care!", something I have always lacked. Maybe one day I'll become 'liberated' and can be able to express myself the way I'd like to.

4 comments:

nurulazreenazlan said...

imagine a vertically-challenged Asian wrapping her arms around you (somewhere around your mid-section, i am after all, short), it will seem more real, trust me =)

can't wait to see those pix!

mlj said...

Thanks hun, that's so sweet of you. I'll keep looking forward to a real, physical one. In Venice 2010, right? :.D

Me neither - I'm excited to see what the different lengths of exposure will do to this manual and extremely analogue camera! I'm writing down a little log of the pics I take, in part due to technical reasons, in part to be able to better my technique on the next roll.

moif said...

The art of living in a big city... I could never have done it alone.

mlj said...

An art, indeed. I thought I was doing all right, but now I think I was just numb to my needs.