escape the boredom

Imagine this on my right shoulder blade (:

So this is the tattoo I will hopefully be getting this year (maybe this winter break in less than 7 days!). It's an illustration designed by tiffanycheetah (hong kong based artist). I was researching the pros and cons  of tattoos after I had the spontaneous hallucination of myself with one when I saw the illustration. I've researched all the tattoo places in Sydney and have decided to go to IVT (InVision Tattoo). I know I might seem trashy, but Angelina Jolie said "A tattoo is something permanent when you've made a self-discovery, or something you've come to a conclusion about." Funnily enough, it reminded me of Shelley Jackson's really inventive work, called Bodywork. It's a story with each word tattooed to a certain part of the body of a participant. Only the participants know the story. Jackson said she'd even attend their funerals, saying the story is then diminished with every death. A little morbid aye?

Anyway, I know the reason why the illustration struck a chord with me. All I'll give away it's something about alter-egos hehe. 

xx

the rainbow serpent

[bigger picture]

As a child, the library was always my hiding place. Worlds within worlds were waiting to be read by my eager eyes. I was the special exception who got to borrow more than one non-fiction and fiction book [I thought I could have been a budding environmentalist when I read about deforestation and how it took over a million years for plastic bags to decompose]. Relationships with people were quite the opposite, they were difficult to construct and easy to decompose. The art of storytelling was my saviour when friends were hard to find. Characters were the only ones that were truthful to me. 

I remember reading about the Aboriginal Dreamtime in a Children's Pictorial Encyclopaedia. Particularly, the story of the rainbow serpent with all its vivid colours slithering across the page. I had no understanding of what the culture exactly was but I was always curious. They say curiosity killed the cat. 

While living on campus, you meet a great number of people from around the world. Recently I met two korean guys, one 23 and the other a 26 year old at the masked ball. It is strange to see the hierarchies and the way they choose to interact with my friend and I. Sometimes, when we talk we miss out whole chunks of sentences [as long as you recognise a couple of words and keep on asking questions the conversation lives] and other times, while mr 23 is conversing in another language it's as though he's got a split personality. It is difficult to go beyond the superficial stuff like exams, plastic surgery and the entertainment industry. Although we meet halfway in between, there seems to be an irreconcilable gap. And that gap is crucial, it is the crux of what becomes either meaningful or meaningless. Stories that last a lifetime are the ones you've lived in and reread through the conversations with lovers, strangers and friends.

[photoshop: me, photo credit: wayne yoshida @ yoshidaweb.com]

the placebo effect

In relationships, the most common feeling I had was that lump in my throat. Things I always wanted to say, feel and do. In [in]opportune times, I would do things I had romanticised in my imagination. My verbose imagination always left me off guard and often on recounting those experiences, I would blush and slap my head and scream in my bed - all alone. At seventeen, I remember I really wanted to put my head on the shoulder of a nineteen year old boy I liked. We were in the karaoke room with his buddies, they were belting out their favourite korean songs and the smoke from the cigarettes looked like dry ice. He was blowing those smoke circles, creating a dirty halo that lingered above his head. He was my tragic, reckless hero. Placing my awfully pink mui mui bag on his shoulder, I rested my head on my handbag (indirectly on his shoulder). That was the closest I could ever get. I remembered that day like a photograph for over five months, constantly reinterpreting the nuances of each gesture.

At eighteen, my curiosity gave way. I had my first boyfriend and I was so traumatised by all the hand-holding and hugging while waiting for the pedestrian light to go green. I fell into a deep coma on the monorail with his hand on my waist. I could hardly look him in the eye without feeling a little awkward and stupid. I remember the only time I saw him cry was when the chilli was burning his throat from the genkikara ramen. He was never one for many words, and when we parted ways, I took on that characteristic of his. I was mute for many months.

At nineteen, a couple of unfaithful boys came into my life. One of the boy's favourite phrases were 'pull my finger!' and 'you cheat every time we play scrabble!' The last time we saw each other, he threw rocks at my second floor window. Another once said to me, 'Do you think there will ever be a place for me in your life in the future?' and then said 'I drank a six pack of beer, hoping that what I said to you I didn't mean. It was just a slip of the tongue.  That it was all a mistake. But after the second, I fell asleep. I'll never know, and don't think I should know how truthful I was.'

There was a morning when I woke up with panda-eyebags, and someone said to me 'you look twice as beautiful in the morning.' I choked for a couple of seconds and burst into laughter. That lump in my throat was benign after all.