your happiness

       Today is the ninth month anniversary of our marriage. Honestly, it feels so much longer - it feels like we have lived three lifetimes in the span of one. Nine is a special number - in chinese it sounds like 久， which is used to indicate a long span of time. We always wish a couple - may your love be 长长久久 - 长 indicates a long distance, so together it is wishing that the love crosses the distance of time and space.   

      And, of course, nine months is the complete cycle of pregnancy for a beautiful baby to be born. 

     It has been difficult for you. This road that we walked. You told your closest friends before marriage that I kept you sane - and you have had to watch your sanity careen from light to darkness, never returning completely intact. 

     If I could write down all that you have done for me, the world will decry it as a piece of fiction. It is too large a task - it would be like one trying to tabulate the stars. There are too many. And even if I managed to give them all a name, you have to see a star for yourself to see how it burns. Oh, the intensity of how it burns. 

     You pivot your world on me like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. 

      I tell you I'm sorry for receiving so much and being able to give so little. 

     You messaged me: 

Your happiness have been my wish, my mission and my purpose.

     

      You declare with the confidence of someone who has never been denied anything, "I know a good thing when I see one." 

      If love is unfair, let me spend the rest of my life evening out the equation. 

A Swedish Proverb / A Terrible Wish

      When the internet browser does not shut down properly, it will ask you when you re-open it - would you like to "restore" everything again to before it crashed? Yes, please. I would like my own Groundhog Day - I even know which day I would choose, and I could just live it again and again and again, without fatigue. 

       Maybe you will tell me - that is hardly the point of life. It isn't, I agree. Imagine knowing you could be mean to someone and it would only matter for a few hours and everything is forgotten again. A fact that was not supposed to exist, except it does, in your memory. You will grow old while everyone stays the same. Or maybe more precisely, they are unable to move on, stuck in this parody of life with you. 

     But this is my terrible wish. My beautiful dreamt of Groundhog Day. Where you were so happy. Where we were so happy. It would appear to be such an ordinary day to anyone else really --- but it had all the people I love, being happy. Where I could tell you I love you, and hear it back. 

       It would be like having my favourite song on repeat. 

      And, I know, I know, that there will be a point, when the melody has bred into my soul, the rhythm into my bones, the words into my words, and I will tell the Groundhog, "Thank you, but no more please." 

        Maybe, you will even ask me - but what if Groundhog Day replays the worst day of your life - every single day? Well, what if I tell you that on some days that's what it already feels like? 

A Promise

forty days of dating

    Two attractive, single, designers decided to collaborate on a personal project/social experiment - forty days of dating. They have been friends for a long time (though it isn't clear how long) and decided to date for forty days when they found themselves single at the same time. They classify themselves as someone with "opposite relationship problems" - the girl is in love with the idea of love and gets serious too fast, the guy is in love with freedom and flees when it gets serious. 

    These are the rules: (i) they will see each other every day, (ii) they will go on at least three dates a week, (iii) they will see a couple therapist once a week, (iv) they will go on one weekend trip together and (v) they will be exclusive. 

    The entries (beautiful and thoughtful) are dated March, but the website/project has only just launched publicly in July - so you will have to wait each day to see if they do "find love?" - in its abstract or with each other. Even as they start with the consciousness that they are "dating", they grapple with the problems of defining "what this is". They promise to document everything - this is a promise fraught with hope and complications - because will you be documenting the first frissons of love or the breakdown of a once good friendship? Or, are they both the same thing? 

    This is a love story - and a love story only applies to the individuals in it. It is fascinating in the way we find all stories of love fascinating - we try to see ourselves in the happily ever afters and find explanations for past failures in the unhappily ever afters. We always seek connections. We will always crave love. We are humans - that is what we do. 

who do you write for

   

    In other words, who do you live for? 

wwwwcsol

       When I was very young, I wrote in my diary, "We write what we cannot say out loud". This has stayed true for me all these years, even as I realise that after writing something, it begins to be easier to share what you feel inside.

       I've fallen behind in my writing projects due to two intensive courses - one Jin Shin Jyutsu 5 Day Basic Seminar and another intensive 7 day Fengshui course. What I love most is that feeling before you step into the Sea of Knowledge, brimming with anticipation and overwhelmed with humility in the face of years and years of wisdom. Newton was right - "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". I do not think our generation is smarter than the previous in any way, in fact, we may be more prone to confusion and misinformation. And, if we do see further, are able to add any progress to this wonderful line of knowledge, it is because we can stand tall on things we know have been proven true -- "the world is round" and "i love you".