Working late night shifts, it’s kinda easy to feel like all of my time, I sleep it away, as if I live in another layer of the universe that overlaps with everybody’s, but not quite the same. While the day people work through the day, building their lives, constructing, for better or worse, the foundation of their future, I, as a creature of the night, pass my days in a blink of the eyes, doing a job that’s invisible to the others, indulging myself in movies, fiction, foreign politics, music and what-not, anything but the contemporary world I live in.
I get off work at 7:00 in the morning, go to bed at noon, wake up at 8:00 in the evening, go to work at 9:30. Social life is reduced to the minimum, which doesn’t hurt, for I expected and welcome the isolation and distance in the first place. But it can be nerve-wrecking, though, to start each day startled by my own weak consciousness, feeling that I mess up big time for being ridiculously late for something, while in fact, my day has yet to start.
The thing is, the body has its own memory, and is homesick for the sun in the day and the moon at night.
The past few months have given me a junky look, dark circle under my baggy eyes, which also give you the impression that I’m far more near-sighted than I actually am. My skin looks pale and papery in an undernourished way. I often has a lost look on my face. It’s harder to get excited about things, and easier to get annoyed, by traffic, by daylight, by people.
Anyhow, time flies. I had asked for the transfer myself for I was planning a get-away again, this time, hopefully for years. The flight is scheduled on New Year’s. My first stop will be Melbourne in Australia. I sure can use a little bit of that extra money. Especially now that it’s pulling closer and closer.
After my military resignation, I spent three months in New York City. I remember the first night I spent when I got to New York. I had thought I made the biggest mistake by going there, giving up almost everything I had had. It always goes back to that.
It’s difficult to say whether or not New York was a good plan. I mean, how do you calculate the benefits against the odds? A huge chunk of my years’ savings was thrown over that expenditure. The result and returns aren’t in the form of figures. But when asked if it’s worth all that, the answer is always a without-a-doubt positive, which, often feels like the line of the last defense, for I could never elaborate further on that comment. But it’s a brain reaction, I just know, because I don’t regret even one penny.
Even though New York has been proven to be the best investment in my life, to my weird, non-transmittable psyche, it does not turn me into the type of person who faces each decision with a grin and enthusiasm. I still can’t trust my own instinct and conclusion. The unknown still freaks me out, which is exhausting, for I am constantly like, ‘oh, shit, how do I know which is right?!’
What makes this time different, and inflicting much more paranoids about is that I’m not twenty six anymore. I’ll be thirty soon. I won’t even have a place I’ll be able to call home. And when I look around, I see nothing that tells me this is okay, especially in this pussycat Chinese society. I already don’t have mommies and daddies like these fuckers. If I don’t even have the roof over my head, I feel like I might as well just die!
What I don’t get is why I am so upset. Am I not the one who decided that he won’t conform to the norm anymore, against things he believes in? Then why is there such ‘screw you! you don’t know what real life is’ hardcore punk attitude?
I guess knowing is one thing. But to do, and be at peace with the idea is a whole new other aspect. So my remedy right now, is trying to be as detached as I could ethically manage, and hoping when New Year’s comes, when I’m on my way, I’ll get to see a new light along the fresh start, and I’ll get rid of feeling trapped and rejected.
I remember waking up after my first night in New York. It felt like I had been given a brand new life. I looked out from the tiny window from the west ninety something street apartment building, I saw trash and litter in that dark alley. But the sky was ultra clear, just a surreal bright blue. And I felt anything is possible. No one can hold me back. I’ll be only what I decide to be. If I want to be a writer, I’ll be one in my own way. If I want to be an artist, I’ll be one to my own definition. And I felt so alive, my head was clearer, my senses were sharp, my vision was vivid and my whole being was electrified.
After these years, after coming back to Taiwan, it all faded back to an illusional memory, maybe somewhat exaggerated because the lack of its tract. I only hope I’ll be able to feel like that again:
Free and unbounded.
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