The Pointless Nostalgic.

Firstly, I apologise for my extended absence from this blog - it's been a rather eventful few weeks, full of soaring highs and disheartening lows, and the next few are promising to be of a similar calibre. The title for this entry is extracted from James Blunt's "No Bravery", A song I thought relevant to the issue discussed in this entry. Also extracted is Rob Thomas's "Now Comes the Night".

 

About a fortnight ago, I went to visit an elderly and distant relative who was currently being hospilatized for Bone Marrow Cancer. I had not visted her for a long time, and needless to say, I felt uncomfortable in visiting her only after she had been subject to sickness and suffering. If one has ever been in such a situation, there's a certain guilt that is felt - a guilt that pierces the soul and fogs the mind's eye so densely that the only perceived solution is to get it "over-and-done-with". This in turn creates a stronger and more forceful wave of guilty thoughts and self-judgement. It's a horrible feeling, but it's one that we all feel - even the strongest of us.

 

 

I've been subject to old age before. For my whole life, we had this wonderful lady living across the street from us, who we spent many days with - talking, eating, laughing. To my brother and I, she was like a grandmother - we spent Christmas's, Easter's, Birthday's, New Year's, more Christmas's, and just plain ol' Sunday afternoons visitng her, and vice versa, just happy to be in each other's company. Seeing as our grandparents lived in Bangkok and Paris, and we were, at the time, the only people from our lineage present in the country, she was happy to have us - and were glad to have her. After her death, I remember feeling a sense of sorrow, of which I had not felt as such before. It was a foreign idea for me, that is, the concept of loss and the notion of nostalgia. Her family invited us into her home after her death, and it was only then that I realised exactly how much she cared for us - photographs, bits and pieces of craft, cards, memorabilia, souvineers, knick-knacks - the list went on. Each item contained a memory of times past, a window to the expanse of the times, and the places, and the ocassions that we had shared.

 

 

But I digress, as I have so much in the past.

When we walked into the hospital room, one of her sons was sitting by her bedside, caressing her hands with his own, staring at his giver of life with regret and sorrow. We greeted him, handed over various gifts of food and drink.

Mum and Dad had been to visit this lady about twice a week for about two months. They had known her direct family for a long time, and had always been quite close to them - thus, their frequent visitations to the hospital to check up on her. But when I went for the first time, it was... different.

My direct family, that is to say, my parents and brother, have always been rather flexible about learning Chinese, with my father particularly believing that their gracious welcoming in Australia could be repaid in many ways; one of them being to learn the language and cultural practices. However, he also was firmly rooted to another belief; that our own Asian cultural heritage should be embraced and encouraged as well. When I was born in the Autumn of '91, my parents sought to bring the best of both cultures into my raising, and were successful in doing so - with exception to my inability to learn the Chinese language. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a wrongdoing on their behalf, but instead a refusal on my part as a child, which I now regret.

 

I've never really felt culturally torn or separated from my heritage. But when I leant down to talk to her... I started to have a tinge of guilt for not knowing what she was saying. It was like there was a barrier between us, both in terms of physical and psychological communication. But this wasn't what really bugged me. There was something about the way she acted - the way she spoke, the way she moved her hands, the way she lay lifelessly in her bed. She had reached the end - these were her final days before departing from this world in a flutter of memories possessed only in the hearts of those she knew. Of those she loved.

 

 

They say the eyes are the most expressive part of the body. Lies, treachery, love, envy, lust - all conveyed through their contortion. But there's one expression that I had not seen in a while.

 

 

Though I couldn't understand her words, I understood what was meant by them. She felt fear beyond belief.

 

Her eyes were glassy, unfocused and uninspired - vulnerable, and lonely. She was lingering onto her last threads of life - spending the precious moments she had left lying quietly in a sterile, cold hospital room.

I was speechless. Again.

 

I remember leaving that room in a quiet manner. Needless to say, I was shaken. Saddened, even, by the prospect of death, and the notion of leaving behind the lifethat you have created for yourself - all that you love, all that you desire, all that you regret - disappearing in a solemn stopping of a heartbeat, and a silent return to the Earth of which we came from.

 

Dearest Reader,

How you have stumbled across my blog is unknown to me, and I may never know. However, your presence iis appreciated, intentional or not. I ask you to note that this is indeed, a new space, and thus the formatting, HTML and other visual aspects have not been polished as of yet, but will so in time.

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As some of you may have noticed already, the title of this entry is taken from Keane's "Everybody's Changing", which I felt best expressed the issues discussed within.

 

Over the past few years, I've changed dramatically. My scope and appreciation for history, science, literature, music and the arts has expanded and transformed with my situation and surroundings. My current outlook on life differs unbelievably from a mere 3 years ago, and it shows. I dress differently, conduct myself differently, think differently, feel differently - and yet, I stay, in essence, the same person I always was. I'm still Nathan. I'm still that quietly perky little asian kid who loved chocolate, preffered instruments over football boots, and who fussed about showing tags and loose threads on jumpers.

 

However, it was only the other day, when I was reacquainting myself with a few primary school friend I had not had contact with for many years, that I realised the extent of my changes, and that of those who I once knew oh-so-well. We had regained contact through a mutual friend, and felt it appropriate we met to catch up on the years we had missed together. I anticipated the meeting with great delight, and looked forward to the conversational subjects we would engage in - politics, pop culture, peers and people. I looked forward to the exchange of quirky (yet embarrassing) tales of our quickly passing school years, and contemplation of our futures - be them bright, or uncertain.

 

So there I was, in Starbucks, with my messy hair, over-priced t-shirt and under-priced jeans, sipping my quickly cooling hot chocolate and picking at my half-finished cheesecake. Despite the close-coming reencounter with a pal lost, I didn't feel nervous. There was no uneasiness about whether our friendship would reignite, or whether I seemed at my best, or anything similar. Before we had lost contact, which was caused by a then lack of pro-active attitudes towards the maintenance of our companionship, we were practically inseparable. We met most weekends at the park, knew each other inside-out, and from time-to-time, even finished each others sentences. Yes, it sounds overly-sentimental, and nauseatingly sweet, but it's true. They were good times.

 

And then she arrived. I was excited, and glad she had finally turned up. I rose from the chaise to greet her, but right after I did, I sensed change. My smile quickly vanished as I saw her approach me, wearing enough make-up to render a brick wall, and dressed like the other million Mariah-Carey loving clones living in Sydney. I felt a disappointment that I had not felt for a rather long time. And you can imagine what I felt like when she starting talking.

 

"Oh My God! Nathan! I'm soooo sorry I'm late - there was a sale on at Supre, and I just simply couldn't go without that pair of hotpants! And then my mum called and asked where I was - God, she's always so overprotective! I'm 15, I can go wherever I like without telling her. But don't worry about that. Oh My God Nathan! You look so... different."

 

Yep. That's what she said. And to put it in an excruciatingly understated, unbelievably restrained way, my heart sunk painfully in unexpected disappointment, my stomach forcefully overturning acutely, and my usual brightness replaced by utter confusion, and unbearable melancholy. But then I briefly thought to myself, and in that split-second moment of ponder, I decided to give her a chance. She could still be the same person that I befriended all those years ago. They may be more beneath the unsettling surface.

 

So, I smiled, bought her a drink, and started talking. People don't completely transform like that - the person I knew is still in there, just readily waiting for a time to emerge from it's long-forgotten chamber. We made small talk about the despairing weather, the over-burden of school work that we had accumulated over the term (of which she made sure not to discuss, expressing evident discomfort and insecurity), and then I went on to talk about the growing pains of our society's tendency to influence our young, impressionable minds into judging others via set stereotypes. And as you can imagine, it was this last topic that constantly brought about moments of embarrassing innuendo (on her behalf) and a sizable number of awkward silences that seemed to be noticed not only by myself, but the surrounding partons as well, with one even passing and whispering "C'est La Vie" into my right ear, as if knowing the difficulties of my experience completely first hand.

 

 And then it was her turn to talk.

Boyfriends. Fashion. "Hot" Celebrities. Big, colourful teenage magazines full of sexually deviant undertones and make up tips.

 

And I just sat, staring - nodding my head lifelessly to her constant drone of life complaints and string of everlasting re-enactments of "Memorable fights" she had had with her friends. Not to mention the many uncalled-for dramatisations of her so-called "B*tch of a mother". I couldn't stand it. I was wrong. She'd completely transformed into an unrecognisable reflection of youth's whore-culture, and I couldn't stand it. We both had changed, separating ourselves to totally separate ends of the social spectrum, and alienating ourselves from each other in the process.

 

 

 

After an eternity of social discomfort and uninterest, we both needed to depart. I, for suspisciously non-existant "family events", and her, to take even further advantage of the many "crash-hot-sales", and to bask in the spinning red lights of materialism and exploitation of intrapersonal insecurity.

 

This wasn't the meeting I envisioned. This wasn't the cheery, reminiscent, memory-filled reunion I had hoped for so hugely, and it certainly wasn't the reignition of a friendship - we were too different in every single little aspect of our lives. Our priorities, thoughts, feelings, interests had diverged many years ago, and our lives needed to walk our different paths - and this meeting was the fork in the road.

 

Our last encounter. The final goodbye.

 

Don't misinterpret my thoughts and descriptions of her - Despite her flaws, and our differences, she will always stay in my mind's eye as the faithful companion I spent much of my first eleven years of life with. They'll stay rooted in my life's history, those yearning recollections of childish innocence and youthful laughter. I'll always have them with me, but only as memories.

 

Yes. Only as memories.

 

 

- Nathan.