Keegan

February 9, 2012

I wasn’t planning on coming back to Melaka this trip. Last time I came, I walked through the busy Jonkers Walk and preserved museums buzzing with tourists in the heat, and vowed to never have such an exhauting day again.

Victor’s a Peranakan, which is a unique kind of Melakan culture where Malay and Chinese cultures have fused over the centuries, usually because a Chinese man married a local Malay woman. He brought us to his ancestor’s house today, a street away from Jonkers Walk. It was four storeys high, and very white and imposing from behind the gates. His great-great-grandfather built it as a temple to their ancestors..it’s been renovated since the 19th century, so it doesn’t have that olden feel, as everything is refurbished. But walking through a near empty house, feeling the grandeur of it all, and climbing up steep wooden stairs to the balcony at the very top with pretty amazing views of the town…that was something. His uncle researched their family’s geneology and traced their family roots to as far back as the 13th century in Fujian (China)..and a whole bunch of info on the founding father of the Chee family that came to Melaka. Then Victor brought us to his family’s house next to the mansion, where his aunt and cousins now live, which was in a Melakan architectural style and layout, long, with mini courtyards peppered between. Full of antiques, old furniture and family portraiture. Then we stepped out the door and onto the street again and I felt so honoured and lucky to have a glimpse of a Melakan’s private space and history, spaces that any visiting traveler would love to pass through.

There is a real sense of family history in Victor’s family, and they hold on to it with pride (and maybe it has to do with wealth? For only the wealthy can remember in ‘things’) and the children know their roots in a sense. I’ve been thinking alot about history this trip – family history, a people’s history, ‘national’ history – and how your roots or feelings of rootlessness grounds you or leaves you floating till you’re always searching for something, someone, or somewhere to belong and stay. I wished I knew the depths of my history – a history of my people (whoever they are…who are they?), my foremothers and their stories. I remember listening to my tour guide Tuyen Nguyen speak of his country’s history and I thought of how you have a country with such history that is a nation of its own people today, and how that may or may not mean something to you, like knowing where you came from or something if you wanted to know more than what you know now. My sister told me once how as first generation migrant children we gravitate towards old things, and ‘things’ with history, because it’s like us trying to link ourselves to a past in a country that doesn’t know our history…but then our parents love new ‘things’, as for them it is a new start, a new beginning. I don’t know how true that is once the mirage of a paradise fades, and they want to re-member.

I best sleep now, See Ann’s been asleep for an hour already. I hope you are slightly more well-rested today and that work goes smoothly without Yas. Did she like the door stopper?

Another world with you

Is this becoming a place where I post my mediocre photos? Probably yes, and I’m okay with that. I feel safe in this space, the way I never really did with you.

It’s still my favourite photo

T used to tease me about how I only took photos of curtains and blinds. He used to joke about a lot of things. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. Then there are the times someone insists they are joking, but jokes are only funny when they have an element of truth in them, when you hint at something you don’t want to express explicitly, without the fallback of ‘I was just joking!’.

He said I was being too sensitive. Is that like saying I am wrong? This is my intuition, I happen to think I am good at discerning people’s feelings most of the time. But I suppose when your identity begins to be wrapped up with someone else’s, you lose a little bit of yourself to knowing what is from them, and what you are scared you are losing to them.

Box Hill on a good day

Melody Day

It’s really getting to be a bad habit, this. I should go to church tomorrow but I don’t know where to start.

It is difficult oscillating between my Galaxy and my camera… today I had lunch with J at Bomb Cafe in Abbotsford and I ate something called Vegan Fry Up which is more delicious than it sounds, with spinach, avocado, chutney, toast, tomatoes and mushrooms, with chai latte by the side. We wandered through Fitzroy in search of a garage sale on Elliot St but found no sign of any so took photos of J by flowers in an alleyway. It was drizzling. He drove a few streets down and we went looking for another advertised sale but again, no sign of anything but we found a house that looked perfect with red leaves on vines growing on a brick wall and a perfect looking mini brick cottage that looked like a shed because it looked that small but must have been big and beautiful inside. I took so many photos of J and we put the self timer on the Canon autofocus and took a picture of us together standing on a road hump. That’s the thing with digital pictures, you think you have a million chances to get the right shot that you keep taking and taking and taking. Shooting film again made me rethink composition, but I still often feel stuck for different perspectives to take in terms of interesting compositions and with a fairly reluctant model, not the best recipe. I went through many shots very quickly – I probably need to think harder about my film photos next time. But I haven’t shot film in a long time and it just such a nice feeling, I look for different moments and things when I’m shooting with my SLR compared to the Galaxy with the intention of Instagramming it…

Anyway today was really such a lovely day…. I really wanted to go to as many garage sales as possible for the Garage Sale Trail and drop by Topshop on Chapel to catch a glimpse of Susie Bubble… but it was cold and wet today and just the perfect day to catch up with J and meander through the back streets of Fitzroy taking pictures and doing nothing really, with a nice finish at Storm in a Teacup on Smith, having a cup of Russian Caravan with pear and raspberry cake and cream. There is nothing important I want to say, but days like this make me remember what I really do enjoy doing (exploring, taking pictures, relaxing in cute teashops/coffeshops). The last time I remember getting this feeling was that wet day with J when we had a chai latte in Ormond and ate potato cakes from the local fish and chips shop then went to Abbotsford Convent and took pictures and ate at Lentils before finishing up the night at Nova watching Submarine which made him really depressed about Belle and I drove him home and farted in the car so I quickly wind down both the front windows and he got really annoyed but I just smiled enigmatically. I winded the windows back up and the fart smell was gone but I had missed the exit for Springvale Road because I was on the right lane and so ended up going through Eastlink all the way to Rowville and cost me $11+ just for that trip some few weeks later. I remember telling J he had a compelling face to shoot last time. He asked me today if I took a lot of pictures of Toan back then and I thought about it for a second but said no… and I always did ask myself that, why didn’t I? Especially if I want to remember moments and the people around me that mean a lot to me. I think deep down I knew that this wasn’t how I wanted my boyfriend to look like, because boyfriends in good pictures don’t look like that. Having these two days with J that I remember so prominently, do they mean something? I felt something back then in October, I am sure of it, but I know there is nothing now. I measure my life in pictures and perhaps it is when I have the time to be slow and move through my days slowly, photographing it, I can remember the sense of peace of shooting my way through those moments – of See Ann, of coffees, of the scenes that I saw. It is in my blood to venture out, to explore. I may like to claim that I am lazy and a homebody now, because maybe I am afraid of challenging myself to find people to go out and do things with me. Catch up with old friends due very soon.

Perpetual theme

It’s funny how we crave the comfort of security, and fear the unknown and familiar ache of loneliness that gnaws when we lay our heads down at night. It is fear that stops us from doing the things we want to do – we’re afraid for our safety, we’re afraid of our hearts breaking, we’re afraid of looking like we’re trying too hard, we’re afraid we might not have enough money to live comfortably in 10 years time, we’re afraid of the lonely feeling that creeps up on us, we’re afraid our efforts will not be good enough, we’re afraid of failing, we’re afraid of being imperfect and incomplete and not enough, we’re afraid that sometimes we’re not very loveable, we’re afraid we can’t meet the kind of interesting people we’d like to be and live the kind of lives we want to live in the kind of place we want to grow old in.

Maybe what I need is for See Ann not be able to come with me to Laos, and for me to face my fears head on, and realise that the scary things aren’t so scary after all.

Remembering

Maybe I don’t measure my memories in photographs. Maybe the  kind of memories I photograph are carefully curated, to show the best detail and moment about that time. I realise today I don’t remember the forlorn moods in my life like that. Or I don’t capture the kind of nostalgic or ambivalent feelings I have when I’m with a camera. I don’t feel the same things again when I look at a photograph I have taken, not the same kind of feelings if I had painted it with words. Like that time I went to St Kilda Festival this February. I had strong feelings that day, feelings I’m not sure I would remember simply by looking at the photographs I took.

I went back to St Kilda on Sunday with Tone, a sunny day with the right kind of sea-breeze. We walked side by side, with distant hearts I didn’t know how to reconcile. I wanted to sit at Beachcomber and eat fat chips but we sat down on the edge of the boardwalk instead, staring at the grey waters and kids playing  ball. I don’t think I’ve ever cried in front of somebody before, and not feel reassured and safe in the fact that their presence was comforting. How do you learn to say to someone – this is who I am, this is what I need, why aren’t you the person I want you to be?

He got up and waited for me to follow him. I was angry he wanted me to, and remained seated insistently, feeling intensely sad but unable to explain in clear black and white fashion how it was a little bit loneliness, insecurity, confusion, frustration… cliché words so easily labeled and loaded, but knowing that it feels and means different things when you feel it in a different space and mind.

I just wanted to remember that today.

The space we cannot fill

Something I wrote some 4 years ago is coming back to me again, hauntingly. I always run by the same themes in my life. I gave a letter with these lines to Jono before we broke up then, and today I recycled these words for T-black:

I’m not sure how you saw it, but I seem to be reverting back to receive-then-give, and caring only when I’m cared for. Even though I suppose life works in this way… you cannot give if you haven’t been given, or understand when you haven’t been understood. I’ve been using love like money (love as in a verb not fairy-floss feelings), withholding love when I feel short on it; using it in exchange for something I want or think I need. One of my favourite writers Donald Miller wrote about how we view relationships in an economic metaphor, which affects how we see people, how we treat them, how we love them, how we live with them. We value people so we invest in people because people are priceless, inter alia. It’s a sad truth: we measure our love in reciprocal terms.

I told him today: you’re not asking the right questions. “What kind of questions do you want me to ask?”, he said.

I couldn’t quite answer that. Somehow I assumed being a brilliant boyfriend should come naturally.

The older I become, the more I realise I have to hold things more loosely in my hands. I do not know this, or that, anymore. I cannot claim that my take on life is universal, that the flowers bloom pretty for me like the girl across the street. Can I be okay with not being where I will be when I turn 23 next month? Can I say to my 17-year-old self: there is so much I thought you would have done by now, but now I’m not so sure if life is about those things anymore. Maybe living life intentionally and with presence is all we can try to live like everyday.

Tonight I listened to Light FM and almost cringed at what a guest speaker was talking about saving those kids with AIDS, like it was something so sure and steady. I don’t know how Christian people can be so sure of things all the time, when my experience is that things are so much messier and muddier than they tell us it is. What if we have to wrestle with uncertainty with the rest of our lives about whether we have made the right decisions in life? Will we be okay with it? And why does life gives us a thousand answers to one question when we really only want one, and the easiest one at that?

Emerald

There’s a forest that Janice calls the End of The World, because to and fro takes you nearly two hours and it feels that way, driving away from bricks and shopping villages and street lamps. I speed along the smooth long roads – curving, up, down – in a bid to chase the setting sun, finish my business and leave the edge of the forest before twilight, before darkness envelopes and I can’t see the city lights anymore.