Saturday, November 19, 2005

Picking up Your Pieces

Thursday was the day the domesticity started. It simply could not have had been put off any longer. I have this unbearable infatuation with full coloured art books that I will not give up, and they had started piling up around the apartment like brush strokes on a Lucian Freud painting in progress. They were getting out of hand, and the trip to Ikea was inevitable.

Initially, he had wanted to get shelves that were just the right size to fit in front of the desk, but just like everything in a place like Ikea, nothing really quite fit with everything else. Nothing was custom built, so everything had to be made on the basis that there was a general compromise between the way the furniture would have to behave towards one another in a given space.

There were no shelves of the sort that he wanted, and I suggested going for a really cheap set that looked very decent that could go up against the wall. He didn’t want it because he’d always wanted a day bed in the study where visitors could crash on when they came by (so far, there hasn’t been any, and being from a family that had to make up in off days for the maid what we couldn’t give her in terms of a private sleeping space, I didn’t really see the urgency of a having a designated guest room –besides, I’m 19. It my prerogative to crash on couches and act like its so cool because I really don’t give a shit. A place to sleep on is a place to sleep on, and I’ve slept on all of them.

Perhaps the fact that my father’s from Sarawak has more of an influence on me then I did think it did. It certainly has made me a great deal more comfortable with really roughing it out. After the age of 8, I got past complaining sleeping on bug-ridden mattresses that were made to fit 10 people and taking a dump in outhouses that had sanitation technology of the 1970s in South East Asia- because there is a vast difference in technology between SEA and the developed West at that time. But not like there isn’t, any longer.

Kuching isn’t as backwater as it used to be, but I remember marvelling at how my cousins managed to live in the conditions that they did. They weren’t terribly horrid or un-liveable, but there is a big difference back in the early 90’s living in a lazy, quiet town in the middle of a tropical jungle, in little houses made out of wood and zinc, from living in a HDB flat in Singapore with a maid to pick up the pieces. I was often there for two weeks at a time a couple of times a year, so for me, it was a novelty, and it was quite a bit of fun as long as the mosquito coils were put out.

Richard and I had an argument over having a cleaning lady come in to scrub the floors regularly, and I got really mad and raised my voice for no apparent reason- the fact that I suspect my hormones haven’t been very good to me these days aside-. He had been quite difficult coming to the end of this week, and it must have affected my sensibilities. It wasn’t his fault that he was, people come the way they are, and our little eccentricities are to no doing of ours. Big things like Laziness as a way of existence is a fault. Things like being prejudiced because your too ignorant to understand the concept and means to acceptance… that sort of thing I have no qualms feeling scathing towards. But there are some things we grow up with that we cannot shake off; although that is no excuse not to think logically despite the failings, we cannot help but feel the way we do.

Of course I don’t expect to get my way all the time, and most of the time, it doesn’t matter to me. Little things like arriving in the middle of the night for the first time into Saigon because your then boyfriend refused to listen to sense and thought it would be fun to take ‘alternative’ transport, or having the man you were seeing cancel out on a trip after you’d bought the tickets with your own cash because he presumed you had cheated on him, your lover only seeing you a couple of times a month because he had someone else to care for… I tolerated all of those things (it wasn’t very difficult I suppose, my mother had raised me with the mantra ‘ignore, ignore, ignore.’ And life would be much easier to live.

Richard is right, I have become soft. I don’t care much for a cleaning lady, and I don’t care much for a bookshelf, but what upset me was the reason he had for feeling upset in Ikea, for not feeling comfortable with getting furniture for the apartment, for not feeling comfortable with getting a cleaning lady to make my life easier. I must have felt then that he didn’t want to because he didn’t want to change his ethic for me, and I suppose I’ll have to accept that as it is. You can’t change what people are at heart until they do it without knowing, by themselves. I told him it made me feel trapped, because at the end of the day, I’m not paying for the place I’m staying it. It’s his place, and I’ll never feel like I have any right with it, and I cannot (nor do I want to) ask for anything major to be done with it, although I will be very grateful for all the concessions he makes for me.

It’s inevitable that we all feel trapped at some point, because the truth is, we are all really trapped. Whatever values we have, east or west or capitalist or Marxist, we’re all beholden to someone else or something else. Lovers, children, money, companies, parents, landlords, taxi-drivers… you got to be kidding if you think at any one point you can truly exist independent of all these things. And if you were… I doubt you would be happy. We’re social creatures after all and there’s nothing we can do about it. Only most times, we don’t mind being beholden to someone, we don’t mind having to be responsible to some one else. It’s all a matter of what your willing to compromise and how much pleasure you get in return.

I know I wouldn’t be happy if I went to live on my own –not now anyway. I like being with Richard, I’m with him all the time I’m sure the friends I used to have must think I’m such a bore. They all say I’ve changed, well… I was never really a party person anyway, it was just that I had nothing better to do with my time, and I needed the illicit high I got out of fucking for money or for the heck of it or… it goes on.

I love him, and I’ve become soft because I want to be. Its such a minor thing, feeling uncomfortable with buying furniture to sort the place out to accommodate and admit to the fact that I’ve come into his life, wanting everyday for it to last. I don’t want the pessimistic realism of the rest of the prejudiced, scheming, organized, time-tabled world to seep in, and feeling uncomfortable about making such concessions smacks of that.

I really lost it yesterday when we had the argument about getting a cleaning lady to come in, and the night before I had felt mildly pissed off over the fact that he was being elitist about unnecessary hard work and other Marxists ethics – I can’t stand people being elitist over anything. It’s because being elitist doesn’t have to make sense and it seldom does. It’s all about people adhering to values they haven’t re-evaluated or even thought about; and I hate it oh I hate it because it was the sort of environment I grew up in, and felt condemned in.

Why couldn’t these people see that it made no sense! And of course people are people and I cannot attempt to change them, but I don’t like it when my logic is disputed without reasons I see any way of rationalizing.

Of course he rationalized it to me later, and it made sense, and I’m alright with it now. But of course the rationalization had al to do with, this is the way I was brought up, forgive me if you don’t like it, but that’s the way things are. Being difficult because you can’t help it and it’s the truth suits me just fine, because it means I’m right, and I don’t mind being wrong, but I need a good reason as to why I’m wrong and I’ll admit it without fuss.

I’ve grown up in schools with teachers that constantly thought they were right without reason, and they never seek to explain anything to you, only if you do this, then its wrong because we have said it was wrong although we have not told you why, and you have no obeyed it because you’re a difficult child, and because you are a difficult child, you are wrong and therefore have to be punished. But they didn’t see they were the difficult ones of course. And that’s the problem I have with people being elitist, because they are difficult without a reason, for no good reason and still think they are right.

Richard explained it all to me over coffees and fags last night, and we had a weird discussion about how European people still felt a little awkward if they had maids and things, because it reminded them of a period when classes existed and everyone had a station in life. Slaves were slaves and maids were maids, and they serviced the arses of the gentry, and it was all undesirable when Marxism took hold. People started behaving antagonistically towards everything that smacked of colonialism and the idea that one race was superior to another.

Of course I don’t believe that sort of nonsense, although I will admit that the culture of a certain race will inevitably affect the ethics of the majority that are born into it, and some cultures value lelaxation over hard work, rigid moral values over intelligent, logical concession and acceptance, fatalism over living to the fullest etc. And yes, I do believe that different levels of awareness and self-consciousness, different levels of humanity exists in people. I am definitely more humane and accepting now that I’m older, than when I was younger, less well read, and less knowing. But it has nothing to do with race or religion, although like it or not, some cultures cultivate that sort of awareness better than others. Some religions allow you to think more than others, and that makes a great deal of difference.

I believe everything and everyone has a place in life, which is different from having a station in life. At any one point in time, we all have our places, and if my maid’s place at this point is to keep my parent’s household in order, than there’s nothing wrong with it. Because she has chosen it herself and no one is more apt to make a decision about their lives then the person themselves.

You can say she would rather be working in a top market job if she could, but the poverty of her country has prevented her from doing so, has prevented her from achieving that station in life. Well, yes, but the reality of it all is that there’s nothing we can do about that is there. And what we can do is to help her come one step closer to what she wants; she wouldn’t have access to all the literature and culture she has access to living in my parents place if she lived on in the Philippines, and yes cramming it up with 5 other people in a tiny condominium might smack of ill-treatment, but it isn’t.

I know nothing of the world my parents were born into, but I can tell you it was much more miserable than the world these maids from the Philippines are coming into. They have roughed it out for a larger part of their lives and worked hard to come into a different place and point in life, and if they wish to have an easier life now because they can afford it, I don’t see any value in not making life as easy as possible for yourself.

Am I a spoilt thing that has had to too easy…? You know what, I don’t think so. I have had it easy, certainly, and I know it, but I am immensely grateful for everything that has been done so that I can have it easy. But when push comes to shove, I still believe in the value of being able to cope with it myself. And when I’m unable to, I feel unbearably ashamed of the fact that I can’t. And one days I’ll grow up and I’ll be able to deal with it each time. We might not be independent, and we might never be independent, but I believe in the necessity to carry on with living as best as we can with ourselves. You can only choose death otherwise, and unless that happens, when the shit hits the fan you can only either deal with it, or feel miserable about it. And the former is always a better option.

xoxox

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