b e h n d i n g

i need to blog about things, not just ideas or whims.  my mind needs concrete objects to hold onto, to prevent it from turning everything into one big romantic, fantastical mess.  today’s thing is the candle in my bedroom.  a couple weeks ago it dawned on me that i am no longer banned from having lit candles in my room as we were at college.  to celebrate my newly realized freedom, i bought a pack of seasonal candles and a small cracked glass holder and a purple lighter.  now i come home from work and one of the first things i do is light the candle and turn off the light.  it came in handy tonight when the power went out just as i was coming back from the shower.  armed with candlelight, i was able to don my pajamas, take out my contacts, and perform my pre-bedtime routine without missing a beat.  and by then, the power was back on but i was already tucked into bed finishing up this entry.

It’s hard to be jaded about snow.  I stepped outside with a friend this afternoon and we both stopped short at the sight of the years first snowfall.  The flakes were stunning — their lively whiteness accentuated by a still, grey background, which was beautiful in its own right.  Is it unfair that they’ve prematurely ousted the foliage from the spotlight, muting the colors that on some level constitute autumn itself?  Google or bing autumn and I guarantee you will see lots of red, orange, and yellow in the images that pop up (I did it just to make sure).  But no white.  When I think about it, I can’t really see foliage and snowflakes in the same picture, coherently, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they clash.  It just means that the combination doesn’t fit into a stereotype of either season, and that I need to stop thinking of seasons in stereotypes.

I was in the car with dad and mom and two of their good friends (they go way back). We were on our way to a Chinese restaurant for dim sum and on the way, I thought about beauty and permanence and the relationship between them. I think the moving panorama of leaves changing colors (movement layered on movement) inspired me. I remember thinking that this autumn, and by autumn I mean the pattern, timing, the manner in which the foliage unfolds, this autumn is unique and moreover, will always be unique — I can say with reasonable certainty that the same autumn never occurs twice.  Although, they are all similarly impermanent.

More than once, a person in the car commented on how beautiful it was outside and how Massachusetts (mah-sang in Cantonese) was one of the best places to watch the leaves change colors. I don’t think it crossed their minds that the leaves were dying or already dead. I wondered if beauty and permanence are inversely related – if things are more beautiful the less permanent they are. This is not in fact entirely true, but there is still a relationship there, I reckoned. Perhaps it is that the more impermanent a thing, the more urgently its beauty be recognized for what it is, labeled beautiful. Such is one possible way that permanence, as reflected or redefined through urgency, affects the perception of beauty. I do also think that of all the places I have been so far, green leaves die most beautifully in Massachusetts.

what if instead of finding our purpose in life, we seek to create it?  we talk about discovering life’s grand plan for us like it’s a missing shoe when it might not even exist.  whether you believe that plan is supernaturally ordained or an organic phenomenon, aren’t you taught to reify the concept, to internalize that it actually exists and lies within your grasp?  what if purpose is just an inflated balloon that bursts and reveals its nothing but air-ness at the prick of a needle?  i’m frustrated with myself for envisioning a notion of a higher plane for living, this supposed calling for my life, without seriously questioning the supposition that it in fact exists.  It could very well be one of Christianity’s biggest shams.