I am a lucky devil, birthed through a series of happenstances. Sometimes I do believe (good) things simply happen because, inter alia, Lady Luck is batting for my team. It does seem unfair, if undeserving, at times, especially if one looks through the lens of an outsider. This is in no way a form of self-aggrandizement. On the contrary, I feel that I am so acclimated to this state of co-dependence that when Lady Luck takes the benchwarmer's seat, everything, including I, just turns bananas.
Isabel Allende, when she was mulling over Daughter of Fortune at a diner one evening, just happened to spot her novel's protagonist, Eliza, who was working her night shift as a waitress. That stony gaze matured into one literary masterpiece. Similarly, this little turn of a leaf is exactly what I can say about my going on the Hong Kong trip weeks ago. The trip was too short (as what I've been telling every single person who asked me about it), but the one thing that made it momentous was watching these great dancers there simply being great. It was utterly a humbling-- no, sobering ("humbling" suggests that there was something to take pride thereof to begin with)-- experience.
One of the many troupes who graced the stage on show day was this throng of superhumans from Taiwan-- they were the love-children of Elastic Girl and The Hulk-- and they were, in colloquial terms, infinity and beyond. At first when they did their stage marking, they looked ridiculous with their safety shorts and high socks, and nothing else, and I thought Isn't this a tad too R21 for a concert titled "Dance Teens"? However, to my chagrin-- and rightfully so-- once the music played, they transformed into these dance stallions (which was, by the way, the compliment that Mia Michaels made to Danny from Season 3 of SYTYCD, and this comparison is warranted, really), although perhaps they were more like dance ponies, because they were so goddamn young. They were effectively fetuses. You got close to them enough, you could smell the amniotic fluid transpiring. But jokes aside, their techniques and strength were so exquisite, you totally forgot the disturbia that was their horrid costumes. Then again, if you had those lines that went on for days, weeks and light-years, why would you want-- or need-- to cover them? *Glanced at my sarong*
It was really a sheer happenstance for me to watch them live, and more importantly, to dance in the same item with great dancers whom I gratefully had come to know personally. One thing that I brought home with me, literally and otherwise-- other than my best-buy-- was the realisation of how far the runway was: the one that I sought to trail, rather ambitiously. It was a realisation that one had tasked oneself to sail through the Pacific with a dinghy and a paddle. So I landed that morning at 3 a.m. (curses the delay!), back to reality, and I told myself I had had enough. No more fighting. Remember the feeling where you wanted something so bad that you threw yourself into it-- in entirety-- and you let yourself feel belittled because you didn't think things were going right? Why that feeling? Because you fight, and you fight hard. But for me, I have my fair share of that battle, and it's time to waive the white flag and accept defeat.
And so, I met one Professor Kumar. I walked to his office-- the nerves slightly got me on my tippy toes-- and he was sitting on the other couch with these record slips that he'd been flipping for some time. I was the seventh person he saw that day. What happened?, he asked. Impersonal, business-like, authoritative. What are you going to do about it? Impersonal, business-like, authoritative. Then, he broke the ice. You want advice? Stop trying. It's for your own sake, your own sense of mission. If you say "try", you give yourself a leeway to bargain. Just do what you can, and if more is expected, just say you need to get your priority straight. Because you do. It's not just about the money, it's about the prestige as well.
Funny enough, it's a(n awkwardly) good feeling, to have someone telling you to do and not to do something. I came to live by myself when I was 14, and I realised when I sat there in his office-- eyes glued to the floor-- that I'd not had the feeling of being slapped in the hand (figuratively speaking, of course, he didn't slap me really) for the longest time. To put it in legalese, I'd substituted that with "voluntary exercise of self-restraint". And it was-- is-- tiring, more so that I thought it would be. Ergo, it was comforting, in a Jungian-Freudian sort of way, to have an authority figure, so-to-speak, scolding me for what I've done wrong. It's liberating to have my options obliterated.
Unfortunately, I am only human.
I want to be a child-- a child of happenstance-- but even if things were ceteris paribus, I had to don a cape and save Townsville. There's a reason why there aren't many popular child superheroes out there. I just pray, and I pray hard, that Lady Luck lingers for a tad longer, for me to save Townsville, for me to save me from me.
