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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





Tuesday, November 06, 2007
ON PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORY: ERASURE

When you break up, do you throw away all your photographs together?

i have. all it took was dragging one folder into the bin and emptying it. and almost magically, it's as if you can forget the past. it's not that you can't. it's just that it's absurd.

throwing away old photographs is like denying a portion of your life. it's like saying that for x number of months, somewhere in some now indistinct past, you didn't exist. you don't talk about it anymore, you don't have documents to show for it anymore and you certainly don't have pictorial memories of it anymore. while at its best, it looks like a disciplined operation to move on and not dwell in the past, at its worst, it's a disciplined operation to pretend that you never did live.

i don't know what to do with my past now that i've thrown away all my photographs. i understand why i've trashed some memories - however good they were - but i also now understand why it's sad that some pasts have no place in a life that must move forward.

i also don't know what to do with the gaping hole in my personal history books now that i've censored my own existence. new memories will be formed, will propel me forward and will keep on shaping me. but new memories should not replace old memories. they should sit chronologically in front and sentimentally on top, but our hearts are not hard drives. you can't overwrite one cluster with new knowledge.

but maybe throwing away these photos is the only thing that can help you take new ones. maybe the only way into a meaningful and reconciled future is the denying of your once-meaningful but irreconcilable past.

photos, then, merely act as a substitute. a symbol of not just a person but of mondays and sundays and streets and parks. and burning them is like burning away an old house so that you can build from the earth again.

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Genusfrog [ 7:00 pm ]

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