HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot

Thursday, March 27, 2008
responsibility
i am about to sign a new house contract, while at the same time, am being wooed by another real estate agent? is that responsible of me? on the other hand, i did tell sasha, my cooperative house manager that i wouldn't be reserving the best room of the house anymore--i did the responsible thing. i usually sleep fine these days--and dream about funny things, happy things--these days, and i'm a lot more serious about my work. but last night i started thinking about what's going to happen in 4 years, my having to go home, leave friends behind. there're only a couple of people i truly care about here, but i do care about them alot. i was talking to henry on my birthday about relationships and things, and he said, "one girlfriend criteria is that she has to be willing to go back to singapore with you," and i started disagreeing, and he started getting very bewildered with me, "but isn't that socially irresponsible?" he said. yes, it would be socially irresponsible. i want to be responsible. but it's one of those words that have become trite, overused by chicken soup, readers' digest, pro-life advocates, environmentalists, soap opera actors, religious groups who don't know what they're talking about, ex-boyfriends, parents, people who have agendas in your life.

you can make an argument that to be responsible to yourself, you have to be accountable for what you do to the people around you, you should shape yourself around the needs of others. but i hate that saintly argument. it irritates and bores me to tears. it reeks of the hypocritical stuff of the charity pages i used to write for the straits times, christian hypocrisy, and american idealism and ideology. (and i was so annoyed that i inserted a swearword earlier, but it's gone now) it doesn't accurately represent the complexity of a life that is irrevocably divided. i believe that to be responsible to the people around you, you have to be honest about your own needs and desires. you can do alot of things for another person, for instance, do things for someone, make yourself love someone else, try very hard to understand something fundamentally alien to you, your upbringing, your needs. but if from the start you didn't really want to be there, then although you might have made the other person happy, who were you trying to kid by thinking you were being responsible? you weren't being totally responsible by raising expectations. to be responsible, you would have to realise the truth of what you wanted, rather than simply living for someone else's happiness. realising the truth of what you want is more than realising you really want to smoke your lungs out or fuck the brains out of the people in this world, or run around the world in 80 days to raise money for charity. that's really all child's play. knowing a is lot more complex than the myths we've shaped about ourselves, knowing is more than knowing what you want to do. this emphasis on doing is very american, people who act before thinking. knowing, knowing what you want out of this life. being responsible doesn't mean living for other people, it means being accountable to the people around you by recognising your limits to being able to live with them, live for them.

[publishing] Publishers Weekly . Dystel & Goderich . New York Center for Independent Publishing . Association of American University Presses . Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

[people] clarisse . nurul . aunty zarina (ummi's bakery) . jeremy . pak . cyril . softblow . karen & kenny (booksactually) . eric . joel .

[other loves] digitaljournalist . ballet dictionary . poetshouse . urbanwordnyc

[me] dawn, singapore, new york city, ithaca.

[yesterday] cockroaches
thinking about home
lah
the artist
forgiveness
small press month! fyi
horseshoe crabs
spring equinox
jerk
tired

[archives] January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009

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