Fanciful whimsies

There were times when I would have never believed I could ever feel as alone in this world as I do now. I never would have thought that my taking chances, taking the biggest risk I have in my life would leave me in such a friendless place, alienated from my family and so misunderstood.

All I ever wanted was to seize the opportunities that the world presented me. None of it was easy, for each new place I moved to I had to get over inertia, fear of the uncertainty and the unknown and of myself not succeeding. I chose to believe I would, yet it seems all of that has backfired on me, in the most spectacular way.

I have begun to worry that maybe I am really not someone that anyone really wants to get to know. That I don’t have thoughts or opinions that are of value, and that there will be absolute no contribution I can make to anything or anyone.

It confuses me how people can say to your face over and over again that you are valued and treasured and cared for, but turn their backs on you the moment you really need them and expect you to deal with a situation you feel truly helpless in all by yourself. It is surprising how many people are suddenly busy, and preoccupied and how many priorities they have when you inform them that you may need to lean on them. It is surprising how many of those people are individuals you woke up for at 3 in the morning for desperate phonecalls, spent sleepless nights comforting in person, and accompanied to the most uncomfortable, horrid places when they needed someone there to help them through their woes.

And so, I begin to pull away. It’s not like there is anyone that reaches out for me anyway, so I retreat the more any single person randomly contacts me and reaches out for me. I worry about their agenda. I worry that they don’t really want me, they just want that shoulder to cry on or that listening ear that I was. And even worse are the people to whom it never even occurred that I’d like to be leaned on and also supported.

The more I feel like this failure, the more I pull away from the ones who may even love me because I feel like I have failed them. So I pull away slowly, and eventually just fade away.

There were times when I would have never believed I could ever feel as alone in this world as I do now. I never would have thought that my taking chances, taking the biggest risk I have in my life would leave me in such a friendless place, alienated from my family and so misunderstood.

All I ever wanted was to seize the opportunities that the world presented me. None of it was easy, for each new place I moved to I had to get over inertia, fear of the uncertainty and the unknown and of myself not succeeding. I chose to believe I would, yet it seems all of that has backfired on me, in the most spectacular way.

I have begun to worry that maybe I am really not someone that anyone really wants to get to know. That I don’t have thoughts or opinions that are of value, and that there will be absolute no contribution I can make to anything or anyone.

It confuses me how people can say to your face over and over again that you are valued and treasured and cared for, but turn their backs on you the moment you really need them and expect you to deal with a situation you feel truly helpless in all by yourself. It is surprising how many people are suddenly busy, and preoccupied and how many priorities they have when you inform them that you may need to lean on them. It is surprising how many of those people are individuals you woke up for at 3 in the morning for desperate phonecalls, spent sleepless nights comforting in person, and accompanied to the most uncomfortable, horrid places when they needed someone there to help them through their woes.

And so, I begin to pull away. It’s not like there is anyone that reaches out for me anyway, so I retreat the more any single person randomly contacts me and reaches out for me. I worry about their agenda. I worry that they don’t really want me, they just want that shoulder to cry on or that listening ear that I was. And even worse are the people to whom it never even occurred that I’d like to be leaned on and also supported.

The more I feel like this failure, the more I pull away from the ones who may even love me because I feel like I have failed them. It even feels to me somedays like the most logical option for me, is just to pull away slowly and even slower, fade away.

And so here I am. Used and alone.

WARNING this is a huge extremely angsty, possibly offensive rant, so if you’re sensitive or hold very conservative views about sexuality and sex education I reckon now’s a good time to get out of here because you won’t like what you’re read. This is doubly important if you’re one of my parents (quit being so nosy Dad!) because I KNOW this will offend you. Plus because I am very annoyed about the subject matter of my rant I will probably be quite incoherent, so maybe those of you who can’t handle that should get lost as well.

Now that that’s over and done with, lets get on to the matter at hand.

The reason why I’m so angry today (not that I am very much less angry on any other day) is because I happened to get a suggestion from a fellow PRCS alumnus that I peek at our former school’s website and have a quick look at whether any of the teaching staff who taught us back in the day were still there or not. Many of them were, but that is not why I am so incensed.

My anger comes from having clicked through to a page that described the hooey-patooey that passes for “sexual education” in my former school. Now, it’s not like I had the best of sex-ed teachers when I was there. They had the tendency to give us the “sex will give you AIDS and you’ll die” and “you’re body is a temple” speeches without much real information aside from just don’t have sex or rushed through sex-ed because they weren’t comfortable with talking about the down and dirty with giggly 13 year old kids, which wasn’t IMHO very useful at all for a teenager with hormones going all over the place.

No. My anger doesn’t derive from the fact that it has gotten worse than what it was, but rather that it has not gotten any better. In particular, what incensed me the most of all and left me fuming was the fact that the page stated very clearly that:

(Sexuality education) is premised upon the importance of the heterosexual married family as the basic unit of society, and respect for the values and beliefs of the difference ethnic and religious communities on sexuality issues

While I do understand the importance of teaching young Singaporeans tact and to be sensitive and respectful towards the views of ours, I do NOT condone teaching teenagers who are grappling with figuring out their sexual identity that having anything less than a heterosexual married family is basically failing to engage and contribute as a useful, productive “basic unit” of society. Neither do I condone the following things which are also listed in this year’s plan for sexuality education in PRCS:

- Understand that certain public display of affection is not considered proper behaviour in our society

- Recognise that break-ups may happen in relationships and that one can break up without hurting others. 

Hell, I’m nearing my mid-20s and have yet to have had a past relationship in which the break up didn’t hurt. I’ve even been in situations where just saying no to a potential relationship has hurt someone. Not hurting anyone at all in any situation? Idealistic. And I find it absolutely ridiculous that anyone can claim to be able to teach you how to do that. If you can, kindly contact me because I’d like a lesson and then the opportunity to laugh at how naive you are. Relationships are complicated children, trust me the adults that teach you probably are just as befuddled as you are.

Also, since when has holding hands or kissing in public suddenly become illegal in Singapore? Many young Singaporeans that I know who are near and dear to me not only engage in PDA but would consider you strange if you didn’t! I’m not talking about anything indecent here, and perhaps I should give the school the benefit of the doubt as they did not define what PDA was. But a little healthy lip-lock and hand-holding I find nothing to get your panties in a bunch about. People need to seriously lighten up.

To give PRCS some credit though, there appears to be a greater emphasis on contraception (YAY) especially on use of condoms, which I think many an adult could use a good refresher on also. The risk of STIs is also featured now for all students, not just the biology students, a group which I happened to belong to in my time there. And also, which I thought was very surprising, the option for parents to opt out of ALL aspects of the sexuality education for their child.

The latter can obviously swing both ways. Whilst I would rather sit my child down have a frank discussion about sex, their options and the importance of contraception and try to establish a relationship where they CAN talk to me about their concerns regarding sex and sexuality, I can see how some uber religious parents may choose to opt their children out of sexuality education for fear that they may get funny ideas about having sex and also how to “avoid getting pregnant” (which for the life of me I can’t see as being a bad thing at a teenager’s stage in life)  rather than just avoiding having sex. However, seeing as we didn’t have that option in the past it is nice to know that now students do not have to be subjected to the conservative government approved sexuality education should they have liberal parents who’d gladly take sexuality education as their own task. I guess you really shouldn’t nanny parents too much anyway, and teens have their ways and means of finding out about things that their parents may be reluctant to talk to them about.

But returning to the “heterosexual married family” issue. What bothered me so much about this was the fact that the GLBT society is once again being dismissed as unproductive and possibly threatening to the very fabric of Singapore’s oh-so-sensitive soviety and also that those who are unmarried (single mothers for example) as also implicitly being dismissed as not a “real” family unit. Excuse me for saying so, but the last time I checked heterosexual married families can be classed just as often as “unhealthy relationships”, another overused term that the document bangs on about. And also, I don’t see how children from either homosexual parents or from single-parent homes are any less likely to be as successful and or to turn out as balanced as children produced in heterosexual marriages.

The idea that the sexuality or the marital status of one’s parent/s can have any bearing on an individual child may turn out in the future, given the same input of love and affection and encouragement, is so absurd to me. And before you get any ideas, no I am not part of the GLBT society myself. I just happen to be a well-balanced, non-judgemental, non-idiotic (debatable) heterosexual, who was raised in Singapore, who sees that there is no point in trying to discredit anyone’s contributions to the society they live in or to consider them less of a “basic unit” of society based on who they are attracted to sexually or whether they chose NOT to marry a dead-beat, abusive partner and still raise children. How is someone who choses not to subject their future child to verbal or physical abuse or a just an unhappy marriage, less admirable and less valuable an individual than someone who stays in a bad marriage for the wrong reasons? And how is a healthy well-balanced, kind, generous and well-educated man who happens to be attracted to men less valuable an individual who are all those things but heterosexual?

Are their tax dollars less valuable than other people’s tax dollars? Are their votes less valuable than votes cast by heterosexual married couple’s? Would their love and affection be lesser than the love and affection of a heterosexual couple’s for their child/ren? In my heart and mind the answer to all those questions is a resounding “No”. How are they less of a basic unit to society? I thought the basic unit to society was PEOPLE, are they trying to suggest that a GLBT person or a single mother is less of a person than a married heterosexual individual?

I just see so much danger in teaching a child that may be suspecting that they are “different” sexually, and actually struggling with it, that they are a failure because they aren’t heterosexual and that they should conform to the perceived norm. It makes for an even more turbulent and troubled teenage life than that of the average teen. And also for courageous single parents of the future, plants that little seed of self-doubt in their head, no doubt reinforced by the laws in Singapore that do not support single parents, specifically mothers, and provide them aid, financial or otherwise. These parents have greater burdens for child-rearing on their shoulders, surely we shouldn’t be adding to that by making them feel that they are somehow inadequate because they lack a partner?

In fact, now that I think about it, the document also excludes heterosexual UNmarried couples. What is so wrong with those? Do we all really need to stand on roofs and shout our love out to the world? Why do our relationships have to be approved by society for them to be considered “real”. Why is a mutual sexual and romantic relationship to which one commits long term less of a valubale relationship to society, or why should it be perceived as such, compared to that of someone who HAS to have their relationship approved before the eyes of society? How does any of that make any sense?

I guess in part I am also disappointed that things have changed so little in Singapore’s sexuality education. I had thought that things would have been less exclusion towards the minority and better understanding and empathy for the GLBT members and single parents of society.  I had thought, surely being kind-hearted would be something they would teach children rather than the disdain and contempt they seem to be planting in their hearts for those who just don’t “fit in”.

What is there really that I can do besides rant? I’m lucky to be in Europe, and lucky to have wonderfully intelligent and kind people who are proudly and openly gay, as well as brave single mothers to their children. If you happen to be part of one of those groups in Singapore, take heart, the rest of the world don’t hate you and plenty of Singaporeans who are of my age group will probably be educated enough to see you for the person that you are, and recognize that you are in every way equal to everyone else as a person. Do not let those ugly conservatives get you down, you are the best you that you can be and just as wonderful as you can be as well.

And on that slightly embarassingly mushy note, I take myself to bed before this gets out of hand. Goodnight, and remember everyone you are special regardless of who you choose or choose not to fuck.

“The transition to a carbon-free economy is eminently achievable because we have all the technology we need to do so. It is only a lack of understanding and the pessimism and confusion generated by special interest groups that is stopping us from going forward” - excerpt from The Weather Makers: Our Changing Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery

I treasure starless nights, where the sky is such a deep velvety black you wonder if it is an inverse abyss of sorts and that if you stared intently at it much longer, whether your soul would spring right out of your body and fly up into the heavens.

Do you think sleep is like that? That sleep is a lack of a soul, a healing of the body in it’s most primal, animalistic state without the hang ups of the human feelings, thought, emotion? What of dreams? Are they fantasy flights to the moon and back, are they when your spirit places itself on the cusp of real and unreal and cuts itself neatly, cleanly, clinically out of your flesh, and leaves your heart empty and hollow for the night?

Do dreams rendevous somewhere behind the sun, or hide behind the mist that gathers over abandoned fields in the autumn? Do they float over lakes in the form of a balmy summer breeze or do they sing dangerous siren songs and howl over the ocean’s push and pull? Do they whisper together with the trees?

Each breath is really magical to me, especially in slumber. How does the body function, the heart pump, and lungs draw breath in and out, slower, steady, quiet even when the person who usually is inhabitant to the body is absent? Are we good as dead in sleep, spiritually?

Starless nights, sleep, curtains in the window and lovers whispering sweet promises or goodbyes in the still of night. Perhaps it is just night that is mystical to me. The quiet, the dark, the lack of hustle bustle activity that otherwise drives the world grinding to a halt and people retiring into their homes, into dead sleep.

But starless nights, just like this one, belong to me the most when I’m sleepless and feel words tumbling out of my fingers, flowing out of my conscious, and if not released, poisoning the blood in my veins and the thoughts that, until I fall into dreams, still occupy my head.

Ps. Sorry for the rambling

New places, new smells, new people, new sights, new experiences. Everything right now is fresh and new. I’m not one to update about myself, I meant this tumblr to be like my mind’s eye. A kind of glimpse into the glittery, whimisical world that exists in my head. But right now all of that has been swept aside because of preoccupation with this new brand of weird and wonderful.

I find myself extremely fortunate to be working for someone who is not only said to be the kindest man in all of Oslo and the music business, but also for someone I have such utmost respect and liking for that it would break my heart to disappoint him. I am also blessed with some of the nicest people I have met in my lifetime as flatmates. You know you’re kindred spirits if you attempt death by chocolate in candlelight, and when all of you are trying to make it in the same industry.

The town itself is extremely pretty, though I haven’t managed to see very much of it since my workaholic side has reared it’s ugly head. I spend most days in the office, but the little I have seen on weekends has been enough to give me enough of an impression of how much I will miss out on if I do not take my time to see this country.

Aside from the language barrier, there hasn’t been much of a culture shock. There are small differences in the way people act, and the way things are arranged. I find Finnish people are more polite compared to the Norwegians, though both Finns and Norwegians are just as reserved in nature. Many need coaxing (or alcohol…or both) to open up to you, and thus Norwegians can sometimes come across as shy or sometimes even hostile, though they are absolutely the opposite once you get to know them better.

The city is very cosmopolitan, it is impossible to walk down the street and not see someone of Asian or African origin. The city also hosts a large amount of Swedes, sometimes branded the “party swedish” and who are sometimes rather disliked for their hard partying ways. Norwegians speak impeccable English, though the accent can sometimes make it hard to understand, and very few people are unable to speak the language. This convenience also has the unfortunate downside of making Norwegian hard to learn, since Norwegians are so eager to practice their English with you. Being able to speak or read a little Swedish and even Finnish helps. I have found reading packages and recipes to be easy after being trained for 3 years by the S- and K-markets of Jkl on the swedish names for food :D Many words are also similar to Finnish and also English, so I reckon I will learn enough Norwegian in time to come quite easily. Just being around people and hearing it helps a lot, and I’ve learned some basic words and phrases (as well as a few cuss words) that I can use in daily conversation.

Right now all of the town (or at least the people I know) are preoccupied with by:Larm, a music festival/seminar that occurs annually here in Oslo and brings in professionals in the field from all of Scandinavia. My employer’s connections also means that I have been somewhat invovled in the festival part at least, and have gotten to go to a few gigs, showcases and meet some bands and people in the industry. Work days are long, because after office hours are still work hours. One A&R lady I met yesterday put it very succinctly : Once you shake hands and state your name and occupation, you are at work. Thankfully, the work is actually fun so you don’t feel it until you get home and your feet are so sore they can barely keep you upright anymore.

That is really the boring summary of all I have been up to, if anyone really cares :) Right now I need some R&R, to do some shopping and then finally get ready for what seems to be another worknight. Be well, everyone

There are some days you feel the itch to write or to say Something Very Important under the pretence that your opinion is a Very Important Opinion, when you realize that all words escape you and there is nothing in your mind but a delicious nothingness. Those days are days I treasure most because they are the life equivalent or someone who IS very important grabbing you and telling you to “shut up and kiss me already”