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A roaring egotist in the making.
| Thursday, June 07, 2007 |
| This blog is like an ex -- |
-- that I've finally moved on from. There were occasional gems here, but they can't be recreated from repeating whatever it was I was doing before. We've had history, W&S, which why I kept coming back, but it's about time I started afresh with another blog that won't have me continually looking back at old works and stifling potential growth.
UPDATE (April 6, 2009)
I've moved again. Email me if you'd like to check out my new blog. Thanks for reading!
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posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 6/07/2007 05:41:00 PM  |
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| Sunday, December 17, 2006 |
| I am not a writer |
So I've been sitting here for a solid hour and a half, maybe more, glossed over and staring at the screen in an attempt to write something without deleting it 4 seconds later. After writing over 60 pages in the past two weeks, I'd like to blame it on finals, but this has always been my problem -- the failure to confidently plop down words on paper without the expectation of further failure.
It's completely counterproductive, I know, writing and writing with nothing to show for it, which explains why my portfolio consists of a meager handful of poems and Spoken Word pieces (despite the fact that I never claim being a poet, it seems that's all I can attest to). There's a folder of half finished short stories I'm too afraid to touch, a collection of slightly above average blog posts for inspiration, and a love letter I wrote to an ex-boyfriend that I'd never let anyone read, but nevertheless remains one of my better pieces.
I am not a writer. I say the words aloud to hear how it sounds. I am not a writer. Writers write. I only talk about writing. I am a failed writer -- a failed creative writer, at least. Newspaper articles and columns I have up the wazoo, that much is true. I am a journalist. But I am not a writer in the sense that I want to be.
It might be that writing as a journalist has impeded my ability to write creatively. I fear letting emotion flow freely through my words because I fear others will correctly interpret those feelings, and because of that I have come to fear words loaded with personal bias. Only recently I've been able to admit that I'm more emotional than I like to think, and as a reporter that bears all sorts of eyebrow-raising implications.
I know in part it's because I'm afraid, period. Mostly afraid that everyone thinks I'm some emo MySpace-esque blogger who thinks she can write but can't, which is frankly why I put so much time and effort into sounding rational and removing myself from the colloquial. I depend on the praise of others in a way that is crippling. You are my crutch, readers, especially a select few of you whose opinions matter more than they should, and I'm scared that you think I suck, quite plainly. You see, I am as needy for your hearts as I am your eyes.
At any rate, for all those reasons and then some, I've stopped writing -- here and elsewhere -- altogether.
I am not a writer. It really hurts to say those words. For a long time now, I've lusted after finishing a solid story, yearned for that final connection between words and essence. But I've realized I can't commit. I'm too afraid to put my whole heart in it, and this stigma of being emotional stalks every sentence. I think I am being far too emotional right now, even. So until I come to terms with it, sorry. Loving something isn't quite the same as being good at something. I just can't commit.
So if I'm not a writer, what am I? Not occupationally but essentially speaking, that is. It's hard to tell. All I know is: I'm not the great literary-artist-in-the-making I thought I was.
I'm just crazy Zelda who'll never be as good as the original Fitzgerald. Labels: writing |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 12/17/2006 08:09:00 PM |
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| Sunday, October 15, 2006 |
| Hey Jealousy |
Emotions should be indulged in moderation, some say, for without that happy medium between the supposed oil-and-water dichotomy of reason and emotion, man becomes either soulless robot or slave to his whims. We've all had this debate before, under the assumption that we have at least some control over our volitions.
But what about when emotion indulges in you? I have had reason, lately, to be reminded of an old boyfriend from what seems like long ago, who encountered me in a time of my life when I was prone to uncontrollable insecurity and jealousy. We had good moments, I'm sure, but what stand out are the highlights of my own resentful possessiveness, prodded by his tendency to flirt with my friends and on one occasion, make out with a foreign exchange student at a party we attended together (to his credit, we were on a "break" -- whatever that means -- a practice I highly discourage).
His habits combined with my neuroses drove me near crazy. There were nights where sleep would fail me, where I would fail me, and imaginary scenes would rerun in my head in which I knew he was cheating on me, cheating on us.
In retrospect, I cannot recall how many of those suspicions were valid, only that there were incidents which caught me off-guard and fueled future suspicions. Emotion would overcome me and I would allow it. It would eat at me from the inside, leaving me sobbing on a hardwood floor, clutching at my middle in a sorry attempt to stop it. That said, I write this memory not intending to defame that particular ex-boyfriend or anyone else, but more so to set the premise of explaining a feeling long forgotten.
The all-encompassing nature of jealousy is inexplicable to those who have not felt its power. It consumes you, drowns you in its blurry logic of fact and fantasy. My own personal bouts of jealousy would attack me from the abdomen, a seizing pain that began dull and achey, slowly rising to the chest in shortened pangs. I could not breathe during those moments.
Eventually I learned to cope, even taking some morbid pleasure in those pangs, akin to the sickly exhilaration felt when an elevator makes a sudden drop from floor to floor. But like an elevator's unexpected descent, jealousy would not, does not, allow me any control. That is what differentiates it from other emotions. I am familiar with anger. Anger and I, we go a long way back. I've learned to harness its usefulness (though that has not always been the case). Anger is more or less controllable, or at very least gives me the illusion of control. Jealousy permits me no such privilege.
It is suffocating, jealousy. It is dark and suffocating, like being trapped deep in the ocean with only a fuzzy glimmer of light in the distance. Yet there are moments of clarity, where you may follow those glimmers to the surface, taking a rare glimpse of the ocean from a more objective view.
The world appears much differently then. The water is clear and blue, and clarity fills you as naturally and artlessly as air fills your lungs. During those moments of clarity, you understand.
But it is also parasitic, jealousy, and as suddenly as those rare glimmers light up your logic, they disappear, the darkness and suffocation drawing you beneath again without mention of warning. You cannot help but willingly drown.
He was only one who ever made me feel that way, feel a possessive jealousy that in turn, possessed me. I do not fault him, although I wish he had done more to alleviate my destructive emotions at the time. Perhaps he couldn't have done more. I don't know. Our near-four years together are tainted by an impressionistic memory of insecurity and resentment. It is unfortunate. I cannot remember most of our relationship, actually, and it sincerely saddens me that my own uncontrolled volitions have dismantled any sweet-natured recollections, save for a few old photographs.
My purpose then, is to ask all of you, any of you, to beware not necessarily indulging emotions in moderation, but to beware emotions indulging in you, lest they drown you in in smothering pangs as they did me. Allow yourself the strength and opportunity to breathe.
Sometimes even memories can be choked in darkness, long past your own recovery. It is unfortunate, indeed. |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 10/15/2006 05:41:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, October 03, 2006 |
| Death by keyboard |
So as it turns out, I'm not dying.
Remember the post about a panic attack I had a few nights ago where I thought the stiffness in my left hand meant I was on the verge of a heart attack? Of course you don't, because I deleted it the next morning. But the cold, sticky feeling in my left hand proved enough to make me fear my own death for the first time, and I decided to let the school nurse give it a look-see. After all, it'd been a while since I'd seen her, my last appointment being that memorable Women's Wellness exam in the stirrups.
A.B., the on-campus nurse practitioner, is an absolute life-saver, pun intended. Of all the faculty, staff, and admin at this university, she has never failed to make me feel well taken care of. B. has put up with my regular visits as a student reporter on the health beat and my regular visits as a student with neverending health concerns. More than that, she doesn't make me feel as though I'm crazy.
"So you say you're feeling stiffness in your left hand?" she asks in her typically soothing, nurturing tone. I like her because she always calms me down.
"My shoulder hurts too. My left hand is kind of... see on Saturday, my hand was cold and I didn't think much of it, but then the next night... well, I was washing my hands" -- I simulate washing my hands -- "and I think there's glue on my left hand, but it's really just the vein or something underneath making it feel sticky," I clench and unclench my hand several times to demonstrate.
She checks my heartrate, blood pressure -- "Blood pressure's beautiful, 116 over 79" -- and the temperature of my hands. "Your arms feel about the same, but your left hand does seem colder."
"It's not a sign of an early heart attack, is it?"
"No," she says patiently, unpatronizingly. "But these are early signs of carpal tunnel syndrome, and you're feeling pain in your shoulder because the nerves in your arm are all connected."
"So no heart attack, no impending doom in my future?"
"No impending doom." She says with a smile. "But if this keeps up, you will have to wear an orthopedic wrist guard." I ask her about a number of other maladies -- sore throat, red skin spot, slightly strained ankle from a long-ago car accident (I like to save them all for one appointment) -- and eventually meander out of the clinical exam room, apologizing for being that student.
"Oh no, we always like seeing you here," she says cheerily.
How she treats me with such kindness and a straight face, I don't know. All I know is, when I graduate, I'm sending her a big thank-you box of chocolates and a fruit basket. |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 10/03/2006 11:45:00 PM |
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| Sunday, October 01, 2006 |
| Have a little faith |
She's 20. He's 22. They're getting married soon.
"Why not wait until you're a little older?" one audience member asked, hand raised, on the Oprah-esque talk show.
"Why wait?" the young groom-to-be shot back. "We know we're in love."
It amazes me how some people place an extraordinary amount of faith in the unrealistic, the unbelievable. The ones who readily accept God as their savior, regardless of tangibility. The ones who fight for their country, regardless of dispute. The ones who accept emotion as lifelong fact.
I actually envy them. Faith in the face of the unknown may seem foolhardy, but in the Aristotelian mean between extremes, to be foolhardy one first needs courage. Too much courage, true, but courage all the same. |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 10/01/2006 01:30:00 AM |
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| Saturday, September 30, 2006 |
| Singapore, repressed? Nuh-uh, says NYT |
Photo: Charles Pertwee/The New York Times
Pleasant little exploration of Singapore's gastronomic development found in The New York Times. |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 9/30/2006 06:10:00 PM |
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| Monday, September 25, 2006 |
| I can't, I'm a liver pumpkin! |
Young-kyoo, a Korean ESL student who I tutor twice a week, has recently developed an affinity for "Desperate Housewives". The primetime soap opera is easy to understand, he says, plus "has a lot of pretty ladies."
But one line in particular from last night's episode puzzled him.
"I don't know if I can ask this to you," he replied when I asked if he had read anything this week which he didn't quite understand. "Go ahead," I prodded him.
"Well, um, what does it mean when she says, 'I can't, I'm a liver pumpkin'?" he said slowly.
I didn't even have to inquire past the peculiarity of the phrase to know which scene he was referring to, even though I don't watch the show. In all the previews of Sunday's episode, Bree (Marcia Cross) is shown adamantly refusing to have sex with her boyfriend before they get married, then half naked in bed, with his face descending past her hips, as she gasps, "I can't, I'm a Republican!"
"Liver pumpkin? You mean Republican," I corrected him. He looked up the word "Republican" in his electronic translator and I explained the difference in political affiliations.
"So if I am a Democrat, I can do that?" he asked.
"No, no... I mean, well..." I struggled to explain. "It's a joke. Republicans... do that too. But it's hard to explain. See, Republicans are more conservative, so the joke is that they're too uptight to... you know..." I trailed off as Young-kyoo began to look confused again. "So was there anything else you wanted to talk about?"
Other than cunnilingus? I wanted to add. |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 9/25/2006 05:39:00 PM |
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| Sunday, September 17, 2006 |
| Ditto Sontag |
An excerpt from "On Self" by the Dark Lady of New York literature, published in the New York Times last week : Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yet why not that too? With a little ego-building -- such as the fait accompli this journal provides -- I shall win through to the confidence that I (I) have something to say, that should be said. My "I" is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane men, critics, correct them -- but their sanity is parasitic on the creative fatuity of genius. -- Susan Sontag, 1958 |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 9/17/2006 10:08:00 PM |
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| Sunday, September 10, 2006 |
| Trip to the gyno |
I'm not a fan of people touching me, any of my friends will tell you that. Unless you're in some kinda special comfort zone, spare me the "Ohmigod girl, I haven't seen you in like, 20 minutes" hug (let alone the creepy-guy-in-the-library-hug), and don't expect me to share a drink straw. It's not so much a slice of antisocial behavior than a touch of hypochondria -- or maybe it's a bit of both, who knows. Either way, that makes a trip to the gynecologist real comfortable, believe you me.
*****
The newly relocated health center on campus is discreet, much more discreet than the last, and I slip in unnoticed, correcting my sneaking hunched shoulders upon entering (seeing as how I have no reason to feel taboo about a doctor's appointment, save for my own apparent discomfort).
I wait, am waiting, for the receptionist to call my name, and flip through a Vogue or Vanity Fair or some other glossy magazine. The doctor, a youngish woman, steps in as I pause at a topless black-and-white photo of Kate Moss, and my reflexes cause me to flip away in anxiety. I don't hate gyno appointments, but something tells me I should, and I do.
The beating around the bush -- pun intended -- begins, and she checks my blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, etc. We discuss my classes. She reaches for a drawer and hands me a stack of coarse papery stuff.
"Now it's time for the very trendy paper robe -- just don't ask me for one come Halloween," she kids cheerily.
After she leaves I promptly undress and strike a few poses in my new papery garb, flapping the sides and taking note of the draft. Needs a belt, I think. She returns and I am sitting politely on the examining bed, proper and distinguished and clutching tightly to the front.
"Lift your right arm... left," she proceeds and prods, as I lie back and stare at the stucco ceiling, wondering what happened to the purple paper-mache mobile that distracted me from this the last time around. Pat here, pat there, stethoscope to the heart, breathe. We're getting closer to it.
"Okay, time for everybody's favorite part. Why don't you put your feet in these stirrups and get comfortable... um, loosely speaking." The paper sarong around my waist spreads out as I do the same, and her face soons descends out of view. "I'm going to begin with an outer inspection," she says, and continues, with each step, to tell me precisely what how where she is examining. I wish she would stop narrating, and stifle a giggle.
A long cotton tip pops into sight in the airspace above my knees and a slightly muffled voice alerts me to the swabbing, "Okay, I'm going to swab you now." "Okay," I reply, and with that, despite all self-control, burst into nervous laughter.
"Ticklish?" she asks, hopefully as bemused as I am (I doubt it). "No," I say, and contain myself. Awkward. I congratulate myself on successfully making an ass out of myself while my ass is presently exposed and try to make amends. "Haven't been this intimate with anyone in a while." The humor is moderately well-received, but I cringe. She proceeds.
"Now I'm going to do a bi-manual test, though they should really call it the goopy-finger test, because that's what it is," she jokes feebly and -- hello! -- there's that goopy finger.
Standing up, her face slides back into view and I look away, reading a Women's Wellness pamphlet from afar. She continues the stand-up gyno-comedy, "It may feel slightly uncomfortable because, well, I have a finger in you."
"Yes, you do," I reply.
She applies her free hand to the outside of an ovary, inspecting for lumps. I wonder if she feels awkward. I wonder if maybe it's my doing.
"Alright, I'm going to make sure your cervix is healthy, so you might feel some pressure, because ... yeah, I have a finger in you," she repeats, followed by "ha!". I try not to laugh again, more for her sake than my own.
The gyno exam ends and she exits the room so I can get dressed, leaving me to fold my dandy papergear into a neat stack and set it on the examination bed, even though no one else will wear it. She returns and begins the under-the-table sex talk that Catholic schools apparently enjoy.
"Do you need contraception?" she asks.
"Um, no."
"Are you sure?" she insists.
I consider taking a few condoms from her for the hell of it, but I know I'll just toss them out anyway and decide to stop making the school doctor's life unnecessarily awkward.
"No thanks," I tell her, and slip back out of the health center, as unnoticed as I did coming in.
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| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 9/10/2006 11:08:00 PM |
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| Friday, September 01, 2006 |
| Asia Blog Awards |
Apparently, I've been nominated for something. And I was going to delve into a modest schpiel about how "it's an honor just to be nominated" and never mention it again, but who am I kidding? I have an ego that expands and waivers like the tide, so vote for me, bitches.
Besides, I'm being pitted against nine other bloggers, including heavy-hitters like Mr Wang, Cowboy Caleb, and the one I would personally vote for, Popagandhi. Plus the mythical few -- mrbrown, Xiaxue, Mr Miyagi -- have recused themselves, and deserve a category of their own, anyway.
But whatever. The point is, I need YOU to vote for ME. So long as I don't come in dead last, dear old Wit and Spit's fragile ego-based existence will survive another day, and I promise my readers a chicken in every pot! Or something to that extent. |
| posted by The Screwy Skeptic @ 9/01/2006 12:30:00 PM |
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