Two entries in one day? Preposterous!
Well, it has to do with several things. One, I spent the evening with several of my fellow teachers, who are now in awe of my heredity-gifted drinking prowess. Their hard rice wine here is roughly the strength of Jack Daniel's, yet much easier to drink thanks to the flavor.
Apparently they can't wait to go ganbei-ing with me again.
Which is awesome.
Two, I have continued ruminating very heavily on thoughts that have recently been brought to the fore, though they have certainly haunted me my whole life.
A little background, and I'll do it as best I can in the Cliff's notes version. Around the age of 12, I realized something wasn't quite right. The way people were, where they found their satisfaction. I couldn't see it. I couldn't share it. This led me, for many years, to believe I was somehow defective.
This overbearing feeling drove me to apathy in many pursuits, including school and the corporate jobs of my early 20s. Some of the people around me (mostly the older ones, mostly the authority figures in my life) were unsympathetic. Things are as they should be, they'd say. You need to decide what you want to do. You need to focus on your future. Money, they'd say. You don't understand because you don't have a family.
Well, I wanted to understand, I did. I wanted to see how these things could drive them to such lengths. I wanted to feel as they did, to find fulfillment in the basest of endeavors, to be so happy doing something that seemed to matter so little. I just couldn't.
This is not to say in any way that I looked down on these people. I looked up to them, in fact. But I believe, now, that I had glimpsed the machine at such a young age, I could not succumb to my life as dutiful cog without asking some questions.
Of course, I never asked those questions. No. I tried to fight them, all the while bitching and moaning about how unfulfilling it all was.
Go through a little personal hardship, and I end up retreating to China, not to lick any wounds, but instead to pry them open, to finger them until I figure out what makes the nerves sing.
And this brings us to now, where, thanks to some interesting conversations with a very good friend--conversations we, oddly enough, might not have had if I were close-by as before--my mind has been set aflame once more by question and possibility.
Like I said, when I was young, and for many years after, I thought I was defective.
Well, it is not me.
The way we are, and the way we live. Even if you consider yourself good, many things are wrong. And it's not that anyone is to blame. It's the system we're born into, the machine we're made to operate.
Without going into too much detail, our behavior and entire socio-economic culture are a vestige of an antiquated way of life, the remnant of old customs needed to survive among peoples divided. But we need not be divided. Not anymore.
In a world where we can speak from half the globe away in an instant, where we can be connected to anyone through an apparatus smaller than a dictionary, why be divided, by anything? It is foolishness.
How much time and effort have we wasted, earning money to feed ourselves, spending it and earning it over again, going nowhere? How many years have we lost, years that we were developing weapons to ruin each other when we could have been pushing further into space?
We made the moon in the 60s.
I have two words for you:
Rotary phone.
How far could we be, then, if we weren't en...? Well, I won't say it. Yet.
This is merely a dance across the surface waters of my mental delving, but it is plenty for now, and plenty off topic. These lines of thought are better explored over hard liquor amidst the din of some seedy bar.
But being here sure is a good place to think, what with not being able to effectively read or speak!
Anyway, here, and I hope it works. This is my best attempt at a visual image for the brokenness of what we feel is right. And yes, I know it seems harmless enough. But see, that's the best trick of all.
At first glance, it made me sad to see them tied down. But then I laughed. Long. Hard. Because, I realized, I'm just like them.
A primate on a long leash.
Except one day... one fine day... I'm gonna rip the damn thing off my neck.
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