One April Morning

I have this marvellous little book. It's an anthology of Charles Bukowski's writing, but it's not chronological. It's his work, ordered according to the time of his life he was writing about. Poems, short stories, ramblings. Everything.

It ends with Bluebird. It's one of his most famous poems. And it articulates his lifelong struggle. He put on a tough front, old Charles. He was rough, raw, honest. Crude. Crass. But underneath it all, tender. Gentle. And so heartfelt. 

I like to think that everybody is born with a bluebird (a kind soul, a loving heart, a softness, an innocence, beauty) inside of them. It may be idealistic of me. But I think people who have had tough lives - whether due to inner or outer turmoil - cultivate a hard shell that hides the delicacy within. It's self-preservation. And it's natural, in this cut-throat world of ours, where vulnerability is considered a weakness and loving leaves us naked to hurt. 

I make it my mission to soften people. To tap, tap, tap, away, gently, patiently, until a smile or a kind word emerges from a callused facade. It's selfish, I suppose, because it's for my own satisfaction, to restore my faith in humanity, one person at a time. But I like to think that it is good for them, too, in a way.

It's been playing on my mind, that age-old question: How well do we really know anybody? And does it really matter?

I wonder... Do we know people best by first impressions? Or does knowing more about them - their backstory - cloud our judgment, unfairly? If so, what makes a person? Is it their life? Their attributes? What they project, into the world? If we learn something new about a person - another side to them - that doesn't fit with the person we thought we knew... does that mean that we never knew them very well? Or does knowing less about a person mean that we can better focus on their essence? Is a person the sum of their parts, or can one single part  constitute an entire character, worth loving, liking or hating?

You know what I mean, don't you? When you become familiar with a person, though work or friends or study or something like that; you think you have a pretty good handle on them, according to your conversations and observations. Then, one day, somebody else whispers to you... "did you know that he/she [did something]?" It's a complete shock to you, because you never would have thought they would be capable of it, according to what you know of them. And it changes your perception... but somehow you don't want it to. Because you feel as though your initial, unclouded feeling towards them was accurate, regardless of this other dimension of their character, of which you have seen no sign. And so you wonder... does it matter? Does it really?

People are to us who they are to us. We brush by each other, on the oft chance, time and time again, each in our own little worlds. Those meetings can be embodied in nudges, scars, loving caresses, wisdom tattooed onto our conscience, a hand reaching into our chest cavity and ripping out our hearts. Some people we are drawn to, others we walk right past everyday without a second glance. Every interaction, every connection, with another is an opportunity to learn a little more about their world; but we should never deign to believe that we know them. It should be enough just to capture each shared moment of intimacy, and take it for what it is. A glimpse, and nothing more.

We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

Haruki Murakami's On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (the inspiration for the name of this blog) is a story within a story, starting with "once upon a time" and ending "a sad story, don't you think?" The message is that all love stories - all stories, love or not - start and end that way, no matter what is in between.

It's not pessimistic to acknowledge. It's realistic. Everything ends, sometime. And with endings come sadness. It's non-negotiable. What we can control is the middle part. That's up in the air.

The bittersweetness of love, and life, is that the happier the beginnings and the middles, the sadder the endings. It's easy to try to protect ourselves from sadness by hiding, cowering, from life and all the hurt that can accompany it. But being alive is just as much about pain as it joy, and even more about hope, faith, strength and just plain getting through when hearts are broken and life is, at it so often is, hard. If a sad ending is inevitable, let us create memories of love and beauty every chance we have; to hold onto during those lonely times when the day turns to night and morning seems so far away.

I watched this wonderful talk today. 

Jim Gilliam was raised in a devoutly religious family, and spent his youth dedicating himself to God. Marred by personal tragedy as a young man, his faith in God shattered, he turned to the internet. 

"God is just what happens when humanity is connected," he says. 
"We are the creators."

The internet is given a bad rap. It is a victim of nostalgia for years gone by, where people would write letters and read paperback books and pay for music and spend time outdoors.

But the truth is that the internet really is a magical thing. Ignore the pornography, tabloid gossip and cyber bullying for a moment; the internet enables love, friendship, knowledge, debate, openness, expression and freedom, through connection. The more connected we are, the more power we have, as a vast organism, a varied chorus of lives, of voices, spanning the globe.

What Jim Gilliam talks about is faith, but not as we know it. Traditionally, faith is passive. It is waiting, hoping, putting our fate in the hands of God, or in natural justice. But, in putting his faith in the internet, Jim is putting faith in humanity itself. So his faith is no longer passive; it is proactive. He changed his destiny - saved his own life - through connectedness. Isn't that amazing?

I have been reading Alice Pung's memoir-slash-biography Her Father's Daughter, and I am besotted. She writes so delicately, beautifully... I picture her words as intricately woven lace laid gently, gracefully over her life and the life of her family, settling slowly, deeper and deeper into secret crevices. 

Her Father's Daughter begins sweetly, with Alice's father worrying about her wellbeing from his home in Australia whilst she is exploring her ancestral roots in rural China. Midway through the book, Alice changes her tune after coming to the realisation that the story of the relationship between she and her father didn't begin with her trip to China. It began in Cambodia, thirty years earlier, during the Pol Pot regime. Alice's recounting of her father's experience in the work camps is vivid, confronting and, in parts, utterly  horrifying. It really is a must read.

History and politics aside, Alice tenderly explores the beauty and universality of the father-daughter relationship, through the idiosyncrasies of her own. The unbounded love, coupled with a well of misunderstanding. The tendency for daughters to roll their eyes at their father's over-protectiveness, and their eagerness to shake off the shackles of his paternal instinct. The bafflement fathers feel when their daughters no longer heed their seasoned advice. The fear and worry they feel when their daughters venture into a world riddled with danger and young men who think the way they did when they were young themselves. It all comes from a good place, and it's all inevitable. What Alice's story reminded me is that we need to go forth with patience and gentleness. Youth can be brazen, and cruel. And our loving fathers don't deserve our cruelty.