sotto voce

To: God@gmail.com

Cc: Jesus.H.Christ@gmail.com, Siddharta.Gautama@gmail.com, Mohammad.DA.Prophet@gmail.com, Other_Omnipotent_Beings@gmail.com

Subject: Help, please??

Dear God (and others),

First of all, thank you for reading my email. I’m pretty sure you get gazillion of emails per day. And all of them have the same requests. That must suck. I hope you have plenty of assistants to sort your emails.

Anyway, I’m not writing to talk about your email and assistants, it’s about… well… my life. Yes, like every other human being on this planet, I’m "that" selfish. I know I often say I’m not religious, I don’t believe in God, etc… but being raised a Catholic, I still have a tiny seed of faith in me. I’m no longer debating whether you control my fate or leave it to my self-determination, whether you exist or not. I don’t really care to find out the answers to these questions. All I know and care about is that I find it comforting to be able to "talk" to "someone" when I’m troubled. All the discussions about your existence are moot for the purpose of our conversation.

Anyway, I’ve been telling my friends and families that life is great on my side. And it’s not a lie at all. Life has been pretty darn awesome (I promise I won’t curse again). I have a nice job, a nice apartment, a nice boyfriend, and a nice life in general. No civil war, hunger/starvation, disabilities that kind of thing. So I’m pretty sure I can place myself in the blessed 0.1% of the world’s population – and I thank y’all for that. Life ain’t perfect, and it sure can get better (I hope it WILL get better), but I’m content with I currently have.

Thing is… life’s been so good to me that :

1) I feel guilty for all the blessings I have
2) I can’t stop wondering until when will these good times last?

Sometimes, when we’re just lying in bed cuddling or reading or talking, I look into his eyes and I feel a deluge of love washing over me. swoosh And then I’ll soon be overwhelmed by sadness and start crying, while my mind starts to think of ridiculous thoughts like, "When will one of us die in a freak accident?" "When will I stop loving him" "When is he going to leave me to be a secret agent" and all those non-sensical thoughts just pile on top of another in a huge bloody emotional mess…
It’s as if my body wants to pre-empt future pain by going through all the catastrophes that could take place.

Is it insecurity that leads me to these evil thoughts? I guess you can call it that. But it’s not insecurity in a sense that I think he’ll leave me for someone else (although I won’t discount the possibility of that happening). I’m insecure about all the x factors that could ruin our happiness. 

It sucks because at times when I’m supposed to be sympathetic to him, I can only worry about my own devil. When he got rejected for an interview, I started thinking if this is the moment when he would decide that he’s not good enough for me and then leave me. Or if this is the moment when he’ll become depressed and turn into a cruel bastard and then I’ll have to leave him. Trust me, everything something happens – no matter how small and innocuous – I’ll run through ten Hollywood scenarios of how that little incident can lead to a greater heart-breaking tragedy.

I’m a selfish, selfish bitch, and I hate myself for being this selfish. I want to offer my sincere sympathy to him, but all I can be sorry for is myself and a hypothetical me in the future who’s oh-so-depressed and miserable because he just left me.

And let me tell you (although I’m sure you already know), there’s no reason for me to think these thoughts because … what’s the point. It only diminishes my current happiness and it’s not as if I can prepare for future pain. Maybe I can, but I’m pretty sure if those tragedies ever happen to me, I’ll still feel the pain in its grandest scale.

All I want is to be happy for the present and not fear the future. But I can’t seem to do that. I can’t seem to rest in the faith that even if shit should hit the fence, I (and my dearest cleaning crew) will be able to clean up the mess. 

So, after all that long grandmother story… I wonder if you have any advice for me?

But if you prefer to remain silent (like you always do), that’s cool too… I know how busy you are, and hey… I don’t always answer all my emails either. But yeah… if you ever feel like it, you know how to contact me.

Last words,... regardless of the massive amount of criticism you get every day from people, I must say you’re doing a pretty good job. There’s room for improvement, and I’ll try my best to help in that department, but yeah… you’re pretty cool in my honest opinion.

Take care,

Sel

As soon as we closed the door, he turned to face me and pounded his chest in extreme grief. Five months of living with him and I had never seen him so broken. I racked my brain for appropriate words to say, but there’s none. I hugged him, as tight as I could and as long as I should. I wanted to cry, but that would be inappropriate too, considering it’s his grandmother who’s dying. Not mine. 

So there we were, faces buried deep in each other’s neck, breathing in the air of sadness that enveloped us. We knew we are so lucky to have each other. Especially since behind that door, his grandma sat in silence, day after day after day. I wonder if she has anything to look forward to. Family visit? Dinner time? A favorite TV show? Death? What comes to her mind when every morning when she wakes up? 

I knew the sad state of old folks’ home – I used to volunteer in one when I was in secondary school in Singapore. Up to this day, I still remembered two characters from that place. An old man with Alzheimer who would be so excited to show me around everytime I was there, thinking I was a new volunteer. And an old Indian lady who sat staring into nothing the whole day. I hated that place. There’s no happiness there even when the old people smiled. After I was done with my last community service hour at that place, I vowed to never ever step on an old folks’ home again. It’s too depressing.

But when it’s your boyfriend who asked you to come with him to visit his ailing grandmother, you’ll follow him anywhere. Besides, I thought this would be different. It’s got to be different. I thought, at least this is not old folks’ home for poor people like the one in Singapore. These gramps have families – rich ones too, so this place got to have plenty of money to take care of and entertain the old folks. RIGHT???

How so fucking wrong. There’s no amount of decor and furniture that could cover up the bleakness of its residents’ future. Upon first look, the place reminded me of a hotel. Not the trendy, modern one with neo-impressionist decor and what-nots, but the old bed and breakfast decorated with Victorian vase and floral couches and orange lighting. But what makes it hotel-like is that it’s completely lifeless, despite the staff’s effort to make the place more lively. Yes, there’re flowers and piano and TV and computer room, but no amount of technology and gadgets could turn the foreboding atmosphere of the place into a more lively one. You know these furniture have been here longer than the residents, whose "come" and "go".

Looking around the living area, I was immediately struck by the amount of effort the staff put into decorating the lounge at every corner of each floor. The matching couches, the flower arrangements (plastic, obviously), silver tray with bottles of fake champagnes on the ottoman, old catalog books piled neatly into a spiral. All the details that took a lot of effort to redo everyday, or only once a year because the residents are too frail and fragile to be lounging on the couches. I doubt anyone has ever sat on those couches.

We arrived at the home during her lunch time. She was happy to see Andrew and suggested that we wheeled her up to her room. It wasn’t a room, more like an apartment. There’s a bedroom, a reading room, a small kitchen and a bathroom. She even has her own sewing machine and shelves full of books. These are presents from friends and family who wish she could still read a three-hundred pages book within a week. She can’t. Even her favorite pastime – solving crossword puzzles – has become too strenuous. I’m afraid the remaining three hundred and twenty seven puzzles will remain unsolved.

I tried to ask her about her past, but she would stop after a couple of sentences, unable to recall those happy years she spent with her husband (whom she’s known since she was five). Then she’d remain silent, waiting for us to say something. Andrew tried his best to tell her stories about his adventure in Corsica, but apparently he spoke too fast for her to understand. She told him that, with such honesty. "Andrew, ... you’re speaking faster than you usually would. I find it hard to understand what you’re telling me."

I couldn’t hide my cringe.

He asked her what she’s been up to these days. I wished he hadn’t asked that question, because we all knew the answer. Nothing.

Another cringe.

I excused myself and went to the other room pretending to water her dying plants.

Things die. We’ve known that nothing lives forever. My parents will die someday. Andrew will die (hopefully after I die). I will die. We live knowing very well we’ll die in the end, and so will everyone else. This, I understand. But those bleak, lifeless period before you die… That, I can’t understand. It’s too painful for me to watch and I’m betting my bottom dollar she’s not having a ball either. 

This is just too depressing…

I was only trying to prove to a friend that my name is a one-in-a-kind. Only my dad, my brother, my sister and I have that surname. I was pretty sure of that because I knew exactly how my dad came up with that name.

To those of you who haven’t heard the story:
Right after the failed communist coup in 1965, the Indon government was doing an extensive anti-communist purge. The Chinese were scrambling to get their citizenship and change their names in order to disassociate themselves from mainland China. According to my dad, the Chinese were only given a window period of a week or two to change their names. My dad, who at that time lived in a different city from the rest of his family, didn’t know what surname to pick. Furthermore, he couldn’t communicate with his brother because telephones and telegrams didn’t work. He told me he just picked a phone book and combined a couple name together into something he liked. Hence, my surname.

But turns out, if you google my surname, there are a couple fellas (two more besides my family) out there with my surname.

what the ef. how can???

I think once I get rich enough I’m gonna bribe them to change their surname. 

One of the first things you have to master (and eventually perfect) as an employee is the art of "serious look". This allows you to create the impression that you’re concentrating on data-processing and data-analyzing when, in fact, the only data you’re processing is the status of your friends’ relationships on facebook and articles in the New York Times.

I’m pretty much a natural at this one.

Having spent the past week or so doing detective work on numerous telegraphic cable from late 19th century lying around at the bottom of the Atlantic, I wonder:

Do people still use telegraph?

I still remember in primary school we have to learn how to write "proper" telegraphic message during BI lesson. And by proper they mean "short, concise, to the point" (because they charge you per word) while still maintaining the "baku-ness" of the language. I can’t remember if they charge you for punctuation marks – I think so.

Anyway, I found an interesting article on the net today about how Internet turns us into "skimmers" and "scanners". Apparently because of the way information is conveyed on the Internet – which is significantly different than its written counterpart – we are now habituated to scanning passages looking for key points and unable to digest long passages.
I noticed my inability to focus on long pieces of writing too, but I’ve always thought that’s because I’m half ADHD. So after I’m done with Kerouac’s "On the Road", I’m going to challenge myself with a long novel. I’m thinking of Anna Karenina or A Suitable Boy or even Proust. Ha…

Also, today is the first day in my whole time working here that I’m going home later than my boss. It feels weird to not be the only hardworking person in the office.

Hullo. I’m back.

Since I’m still stretching my atrophied writing muscle, I’ll just copy a portion of Andrew’s email – sent from Corsica (wooo… exotic). 

About the separation thing… It’s not that I can’t be apart from you. I have no intent of whining about business trips—stuff of that nature. It’s vacation that strikes me as silly. I don’t need to feel best. But, to feel best, I need you. I enjoy Jon. I enjoy being an individual in a way that I’m not when I’m around you. I prefer being with you. But, time apart does sweeten time together. I’ve enjoyed missing you. I can feel it a little bit in my lungs—a pregnant breath. It’s not in my heart. That’s to the left; I’ll avoid at least one cliché.
...

Ahhh… I’m such a sucker for love letters. I’m such a happy little girl because FINALLY I’m not getting one sentence reply to my carefully-crafted letters.