Freud

During a break in Astronomy lecture, I met Kei Seen outside the auditorium. It was a warm meeting and we talked for a bit before he left, and it struck me how long it had been since I'd last saw him, and how wrong that was. I figured I would meet him again on Friday and didn't dwell too much on it.

After two hours, I finally accomplished the mammoth task of sitting through Astro lecture with Sharon. We left the hall with Janice and went to the HSS library, where she graciously provided menial labor for the arrangement of my notes. After they left, I felt a tinge of ennui mixed with... I hesitate to use the word 'loneliness' for all the incorrect things it connotes. Haha. Well, it's just funny how, sometimes, meeting old friends who bring us merriment and nostalgia brings us fullness and satisfaction long after they've gone, yet other times their leaving makes us feel so much more alone.

After that, I sat in the library, with a mind too paralyzed to continue the mechanical, sometimes alienating process of studying. My mind drifted to vague and unsubstantial thoughts about longing, about the odd and sometimes troublesome/painful turns it can take at times. I got up and idly walked in the aisles between the bookshelves. I saw a book entitled 'Longing', and I picked it up and started reading.

It was a book that placed considerable emphasis on specialists in the field, but some of it was accessible; it made me think new things and it felt comfortable to think, to let my mind wander without having to analyze or criticize or summarize. It was also charmingly coincidental.

It started to rain outside, and the constant sound of the rain washing the sidewalks lulled me to sleep. And in my sleep, I dreamt of blue books half-covered by lightly colored curtains. Then I dreamt of someone. A pleasant dream, but not too much so. And then I woke up, feeling tranquil, and wondering 'Why her?', 'Why not?', 'What if?'. Idly, I sat there thinking, and after reflection, I saw good things and I saw bad things, and I recognized good justifications and ugly reasons on my own part, but I came to no clear conclusion.




But she is beautiful.




I thought about Vagabond's Musashi, how he slowed down and began to listen to the feeling of music inside him, a sound that, if he allowed it, would resonate through his whole body till there was nothing of him but music, and he would move without moving, think without thinking.

We strain our heads so hard to grasp the concepts of Sociology, and we accrue so many symbols of symbols (I don't know much about Baudrillard but I think he's not wrong) for (to?) ourselves, but today I realized with some certainty that my 'sociological view' and for that matter, my view of life, are both still childish. In class and during personal study, handling the concepts is something akin to how a child picks up differently shaped blocks and tries to insert them in the right holes. That tiredness I feel after studying often feels more like mental heavy-lifting than any participation in a cultivated mental form of art. Whether or not that's just a phase of development to go through, I don't know. I do know that there's a very low limit to how much gets internalized. I do know that people like GB and Tan Joo Ean are the best examples of the people who keep it real, who bother to go beyond settling for 'abstractions of abstractions' and to make all these concepts something concrete in their lives.

I still feel some unconfidence, some uncertainty with a few Soci acquaintances I meet from time to time in the hallways. I can feel it manifesting in the small disconnects in our conversation, and in my own thought process. Yet at the same time, it doesn't bother me because I can feel how temporary the problem is, how fixable it is.

But some things, once broken, can't be fixed. (*Cue sorrowful piano melody)