Watching the evening sky

A rainbow in the clouds

Surprise Noodles

Over a bowl of Surprise Noodles* and one of less-surprising wantan noodles in the College canteen today, I was challenged. I was, if you like, surprised.

Thanks, K, for being someone who provides perspectives which challenge my own long-held, too-deeply-entrenched ones.

I've always believed the following statement, made by American poet Marianne Moore:

"The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint."

Perhaps that's why I'm surprising myself with the setting-up of this blog, and especially the previous post, where I must have come across sounding so blithe, choosing my words so loosely. Indeed that is very not me. Often I feel the intensity of emotions, perceptions within myself; seldom do I feel it right to let them show too much if somehow doing so would undermine their intensity. If I kept the regard, the sentiment only within my heart, would they not remain most intense? Is there not where they rightfully belong anyway? I think I must be one who gets by with a lot being left unsaid, it must be intuited, felt, sensed.

The conversation today turned to the expression of our feelings for loved ones. How much should one say 'I love you' to our most cherished ones? My opinion is that should love genuinely exist for another, words are hardly necessary to be means of conveyance. How many have said these three precious words to another, and proved not to be able to love, when it came to the time when love demanded a sacrifice? How many truly know what love means, when they claim to love another? How many, after they claim to love another, can follow them up with laying down thier lives for another, the way Jesus laid down His life for me? The Bible commands we love each other, not just that we tell each other we love them. What is the value of offering a temporal sort of sentiment, not lasting or commited?And so, silence. When love exists, language is chided, exposed as an imposter.

But this is what K said: What if there be somebody who really loved me so much he just wants to tell me that he does all the time, and what if this somebody really meant it each time? What if, for all my fear of being let-down, someone would really prove to be faithful to his promise to love me? What if, each time he said he loved me, because I knew it was for real, I believed him?

Junk the Law of Decreasing Marginal Utility- perhaps, somewhere on the Eternity Continuum, (along which we are all travelling), there exists a New Law which overrides them all. It is the Law of Miracles. I believe. Do you?

* Surprise Noodles: When it came to K's turn to order at the noodle stall today, he told Noodle Uncle that he wanted Surprise Noodles, much to my delight, amusement and most importantly, utmost approval! From the response of Noodle Uncle, it was clear this was not a first-time occurence. So K handed over $3 and got his bowl of Surprise Noodles. I am always tickled pink when the canteen vendors demonstrate creativity and variation in their wares, so though Noodle Uncle has been offering the same menu from since-I-was-a-student-days, he more than got my approval today! Surprise Noodles turned out to be mee pok with sliced crispy chicken, fishballs and Char Siew (I think) and the odd sprig of vegetable, really providing a garnish function more than anything else.

** If too many of these canteen episodes occur, I may start bringing my camera for lunch hence forth...

That within which passes show

Pad Thai, made for a class BBQ

I knew, even before the holidays began late last November, that it wouldn't exactly be the sort of holiday I would choose to have. I knew, just instinctively, that when January comes and if I were to be asked where I went in December, and what I did, I wouldn't have very much to show for it.

'Wouldn't have very much to show for it... ' This phrase resonates with meaning for me. I remember London days, in particular one day walking down Tottenham Court Road with Thao after one of our dinners, probably at the homely Thai restaurant with the pink facade which felt like a Thai kitchen- then again, it could have been any time really. It was end-of-term, and I was about to leave London for the holidays. We were reminiscing how the year had gone by so quickly once again, and I remember telling Thao that I felt I hadn't very much to show for the year gone by. I remember feeling this very keenly: that somehow I had needed a sense of fulfilment or accomplishment, that somehow I had let the days slip by without doing very much that was significant.

Oh, the ardour of youth, intense in years few and compact. I did not know, then, how I would be feeling today, cherishing that year gone by not at all minding whatever that was not accomplished, for what it in the end did mean for me- deepened relationships, sustenance each day through both the expected and unexpected, the pleasurable and the painful- all that meant verdant growth deep within.

I didn't have much to show for December, either. I meant to build this blog, but didn't. I meant to go somewhere and explore a new land, but didn't. I meant to read thick thumping Russian novels, but didn't. Instead, December was a month of injury, a sprained ankle, an injured elbow and a tooth extraction. I meant to build but instead much was torn down- yes, there was much pain in the tearing.

So the instinctive feeling hadn't been wrong, and together with it the assurance- that what in the end matters is not so much the outward but the inward, that whatever structures are created are only, in themselves, only transcient at best. After all that is passing passes away, only what is of real value remains.