Shanghai-ed out

Ignoring the fact that I actually am now officially unemployed and I have done squat when it comes to parcelling out CV's to company A, B and C, and following up on case interview books loaned over the years and digging through old emails to dust off prep material and and and, ah fuck it man. Emotionally still a little distraught, but truth is that a bit more...aware that it was for the best. No more suffering, no more long drawn out what if's and days facing hospitals and tests. An eventual end staved off by the miracles of modern medicine. Maybe when the finale comes there really is a lot of peace to it, even if its accompanied by tear soaked faces and hearts forever missing a piece. Forever. That word still scares me as it lurks around the corner, but nothing in this life is forever anyway. Nothing.

So we pick up the pieces, we re-forge our routines, and we close the hole with time and depending on each other.

Went to Shanghai for the 3rd Tango Festival, wasn't planning on going, but decided I had to, to, I don't know, prove to myself that life goes on. That time stops for no man. Along the way encountered frustration, old friends and a lot of sleep deprived times. Also, pain. PAINNNNN.

There's something to be said about Tango. I'm at a stage of bipolarity with it. Super happy with lessons, with things I'm learning, with the way I am moving, but curiously, still not getting that je ne sais quo attitude that some girls have to the dance and how they draw guys to them like bees. Seriously! I can dance damnit! Ask me. Then I'll probably trip over your feet or knock down the tablecloth at the after milonga with water resting on it. True story.

Bloody frustrating. I was already complaining that I was missing the anticipation of getting a guy to ask me to dance, but wtf, I just got handed a big dose of my own medicine.

That being said, of the whole period, the best dance I had was in the afternoon milonga that was totally unplanned, on a superb floor, with a superb deejay. Brilliant, brilliant connection and tons of swivelling-ness involved, but stable, very very stable. That and the ever innovative Nick who started tango in Portland! His dancing was super refreshing after a bit too much traditional going on. Kudos to someone who can throw in new moves to rather old songs.

Also, have finally figured out the key, which was staring me in the face the whole time anyway. Disassociation. Always. The best female dancers have that hip swivelling thing down pat and taking the ladies technique class with Virginia made me realize exactly what every single damn teacher I've ever had from Mtango/MATC days to now has been trying to get us to understand. It's all in the disassociation.

So, there were some bright spots, but on the whole, sitting down for the majority of 4 hours is bloody not fun. A bit over the pretentiousness of tango =.=.

This has definitely reinforced a few points for me though...the best dances are unanticipated, and are likely in the most casual settings, where it doesn't matter how you dance and it's all about having fun. Simple. Like learning in classrooms eons ago, prancing around with the chacarera with CK, or on dance floors with gaping tourists in the middle of KL. Fun.

Back to reality anyway.

Remembering

I often like to think that memories last in our minds like books on a library shelf. The older we get the more storage we seem to need for these memories and the more we start cross-filing them under different categories as we link things back and forth through time, through events, through people. Much as a book can be categorized in a million different ways, so can our memories, and we pick and we choose and we find commonalities and we group them together, and we see patterns. I think we see a lot of patterns in this world of ours that are unexplainable, and sometimes someone comes along and tells you about another linkage, that hasn't happened yet, and you can either choose to believe or disbelieve, and maybe that becomes the bridge to whether that event happens, or not.

Everything you do is a consequence of something you've decided upon, and as much as religion tells you to live your life in certain ways, through a prescribed doctrine, it is actually nothing more than history. I hardly know what I did last year, and if someone told me something differently, I would probably replace it in my memory as such. In the same way, religion and texts are thing handed from the past, and whether someone is understanding it in 2013, or 1413, or 813, we've all had different interpretations of it. At each point in time, we kind of lump all these interpretations together, thinking that we are distinctly different. Obviously this is not the case is it? The person in 1413 was vastly different from the person in 813. Who is to say they were the same?

This post was about memories, about people, events, about how memories can be changed and forged. Never more so than when you lose someone, because then memory likes to gloss things and make it beautiful. I am completely cynical of this.

Sitting in the moment where I knew that my dad was going to die, I realized actually, I really didn't know what to say. At that point too, I also knew too that I probably would have a million things to say later, but he wouldn't be around to listen to it. I could not encapsulate those million things into that one moment that I had with him in that point in time. I could not. I did not know how. It hadn't come to me yet. It was something reserved for the future, how was I meant to extract things from the future? How would I get my future self to tell the present self 'this is what you were going to say'? It doesn't work that way.

All I knew in that moment was that I didn't have much time to say what I had to say. But maybe what I had to say was enough anyway. You can spend a million years trying to come up with something eloquent, but, when you're in the moment, what matters is what comes out of your mouth right then.

No regrets, none at all, I've lived my life and my relationships with no regrets. As much as I am a cynic I'd like to think that a higher power has good plans for me in this life, there's plenty more of it to be lived.

Grief

Death is a curious thing. It comes swift, relentless and we spend our whole life trying to avoid it for ourselves and everyone else around us. Yet when it come, we are inundated with terms of 'it was meant to be', 'no one can escape death', 'at least he is in a better place'. We conduct rituals and plans in accordance to what was done before. We receive condolences of sorries from friends and relations we hardly exchange 2 words to in years or decades. We remind ourselves that life is short then continue anyway in whatever we were doing. Hypocrites. All of it.

This pain and grief, nothing is like it, but much as we hurt more from a splinter than a chopped off finger does it also reflect upon this pain. When you get a taste of death you do the opposite, you become stronger. This pain has no emergency room that can deal with it. It is in you and only you can and will conquer it. Nothing anyone says or does makes you any the more prepared to face it.

What I've learnt is this, leave no stone unturned, make no enemies that you would unwish upon your deathbed. Because when the person is gone there is nothing in this world that will allow you to hear their voice, listen to their opinions or share their laughter again. Maybe in the dreams which are a manifestation of your innermost thoughts anyway, but no God or Buddha or Allah can bring anyone back.

Grief is personal. Entirely yours and yours alone, in the same way as love is. Feel it, immerse in it, then get the heck out of there while you can.

Pa, you taught me everything I need to know in this world to survive. Daddy's girl to the last, I take your traits of stubbornness and argumentativeness, but I also take your traits of justice, honour and unwavering commitment to your family and your friends. Thank you for everything you did for me, providing shelter, a good education and happy memories for me. I will miss your words of wisdom and opinions as I continue on in this life and you will forever hold a piece of my heart.