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Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Friday, September 14, 2007
POLAR BOY

"He in whom the love of truth predominates will ... recognise all the opposite negations betwen which, as walls, his being is swung"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

For two years, monet painted haystacks, grainstacks and wheatstacks. lots and lots of them. he painted them in the mornings, in the evenings, in the snow and in the flush of spring. the haystacks are essentially the same, but they aren't. i'm no art historian. what i am is bipolar.

i feel like these monet paintings. one moment, i can be a sunshine boy, the face of youthful optimism, brimming over with hope. blink and i can be bleak and cold, a bitter cynic wallowing in blustery defeatism.

i've been like this since going to melbourne. i'm not sure what precipitated it, but maybe it was a combination of a sugar-coated childhood and a cynical university education. it could hardly be anything else.

on most days, i find myself caught with my feet on opposing ends of paradigmatic extremes. i never really learned the subtle art of adjusting myself into the middle. most people do - they start out hopeful and they adjust to the cynicism of adulthood. others start out hardened, and they find hope and comfort as the years roll in.

for me, i oscilate between the two, taking turns to represent opposing positions without ever spending much time in the middle. i just never learned how to be a moderate person. i find little incentive to hold the middle ground, considering it on most occassions to be an utterly boring and ordinary position to represent. put differently, i might just be an extremist of sorts. a conflicted extremist. an extremist who plays both sides with equal dose of conviction.

i wonder, what must it be like to be a moderate? a balanced, steady middle-grounder with carefully considered opinions. it won't work for me, would it? no, a moderate's life will never work for me.

Paintings:
Grainstacks in the sunlight, morning effect, 1890.
Haystacks at the end of summer, morning effect, 1891.

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Genusfrog [ 2:20 pm ]

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