Tuesday, August 02, 2022

Book 2 - A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth

I finished reading my second book this year, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason. It's a collection of 9 short stories and I really like it. Maybe as usual, I am looking or finding signs in things which are not there, but in a number of the stories, I feel there's a sense of alone-ness that I know too well. That feeling of being in your thoughts all alone, feeling like others not getting it or thinking it's crazy or strange the way you think or do things, but you just somehow know that that is just you and you cannot be anything else. I may not be able to completely explain the reason why the characters in this book do what they do, but I get it and I understand that feeling of that is what I need to do no matter how crazy it may seem. I guess there's comfort in reading about these characters who feel to me so alone though at the same time I do feel sad about their alone-ness because I know how lonely it is to be this way.

Not long ago, someone told me but you can change right? I told her, you sounded like my mother. My mother perhaps for my whole life has wished I could change many things about me, but I think we're built differently that she will just not get it. I mean there will always be people who won't get the intensity in which some people do some thing that doesn't make sense to them but makes perfect sense to the person doing it or why people would just go alone set off to the unknown or choose to live in a remote place alone away from other human. For me, I get that completely. I have done things alone in a way that people don't understand. Some have dismissed what I do as not worthwhile or just perhaps see me as sad, but I did all that and those experiences are mine and they don't have that. The more I write this post, it's like more negativity is coming out of me :D My low point period (from the last post) hasn't ended. Just the other day I was thinking how hard it is to hang on and I wonder why hang on if hanging on means that all this is what is waiting for you day after day. I have become hopeless and faithless and there's just a lot of questions in my head. It is a sad feeling to be very lonely in all these thoughts and yet it is very weird that at the same time, I still don't want to be around other human.

If I have to think about what a registry of my passage upon the Earth so far, I think it's a passage that has been very alone. I realized early on as a child how actually alone we are, that our thoughts are our own and that can be completely different than others and others may not understand what you think or why you think the way you think. Then it's been almost half of my life now that has been spent alone and trying to survive on my own. It's being my own protector and caretaker and it's never easy. There were many paths travelled alone and as said outsiders looking at it may look at it as sad, but I've been to places and I took myself there (with God watching over me) and I think there's something admirable in that. I rely on myself because I only have myself. Do I wish someone can come and just save me? Of course, but unfortunately I only have me. The life has been quite plain, I agree. Not long ago I finished watching Pachinko and sometime before that I finished watching Station Eleven, 2 completely different stories which I am totally recommending, but they have the same underlying message that as Station Eleven puts it, survival is insufficient. I see it as it's not enough just to survive and be alive, you then need to flourish and make your life on Earth worthwhile. It's been in my head for quite some time now that my life hasn't been that, it's just been surviving all the time for me and I do think it's quite a waste but I don't know how else I can go to make it worthwhile.

:) eKa @ 8:08:00 PM •