| Bothersome? Yes. Necessary? Even more so. The trip to the airport, and
the flight back to Taipei is begun. Being in Hong Kong for 3 days has
served it's manifest function for me. I've had my fun. There's been an
unending, almost unbearable string of things to do, but when there was
an absence of these things, the space was filled with good talk, good
laughter, and strawberry cheesecake ice cream from Haagan Daz. I was
blessed with more experiences, both happy and heartbreaking in these 3
days than I could have hoped for. Disregarding the negative and
over-thinking nature of my heart and the turmoil it brought upon me, I
know that I can take solace in the nurture of truth and release that
that same heart was treated to. I think I can safely say I leave more
confused yet more aware, more wretched yet more satisfied, more
self-conscious yet more bold and assured. Only a place that I've never
been to, that speaks such an ugly language (contrasted to the british
flavored english, cantonese is the ugly friend of the beautiful girl in
high school, no offense), and (mostly other than basically one
Hong-Kongese that I know) ugly girls can coax me into this state of
duality. Now I am torn, each side of me blissfully ignorant of the
other's troubles, yet unendingly aware of their joys. A perfect medium,
a surprising ending, an experience as experience goes.
The key is not the expansion of experience, it is the subdivision. Time
is only a bracket, and just as a decimal, no matter how small or large,
can be broken up into equally infinite pieces between itself and 0,
sometimes experiences (in any given bracket of time) end up subdivided
perfectly into the mix that proves the most personally pleasant.
Whether it means that those who shared the experience with me had the
same pleasant perception is based on their cognition, after all, it is
only personally pleasant. But I guess to me, that's enough. Oh, and it
was way too hot.
Edit:
Now that I've landed, I'm surprised
at how much a flight (given that it forces changes in circumstances)
can change that perception. Maybe it was the flight itself, or maybe
even the length of the flight. I came to the realization that flight
time is a touchy thing. It's easy to complain about a long flight and
because of that tendency, it's hard to admit that a short flight can be
unpleasant as well. Being unable to settle, unable to enjoy a
comfortable seat, unable to enjoy a good book, or a good sleep, a short
flight is the ultimate example of hidden discomfort. Compared to a long
flight, it seems drastically more pleasant. Less travel time less pain
in travel right? The truth is, to me, the pain of travel is in the red
tape, the check-in, the boarding, the baggage claim. The actual flight
(given the right environment and pleasant company (remember, sleeping
company is better than smelly company.)), to me is somewhat of a prize.
The length of the flight has to be enough time to enjoy the forced sit
down, but not too much so that your knees feel buckled. But time is
hard to grasp. All we have for certain is perception of the concept of
time. We can divide it to seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months,
year, decades, eons, and more; the truth is that, doing so is
equivalent to naming a named monkey "Bob" because you don't know it's
original name. It is just the act of assigning a value to something we
can't grasp, in the case of the unknown monkey name, the value is the
name "Bob". Just like a variable. With this logic, "time" is really
nothing but a variable, as defined by words. The true value of time
itself is unknown. Er, to wrap up my point...the unpleasant nature of
flight times is strange, strange like a furry hippo. Though I think all
I proved is that I don't know when to shut up, or when I'm on an insane
tangent.
All in all, I'm again reminded that it's not over
until it's over. The trip home changed things more gravely than any
tourist trip in regards to my weekend vacation to Hong Kong. Maybe I'm
just being an idiot for having a new hope, maybe I'm just glad to have
something to smile about. And that's really it. There's so such thing
as a fake smile in the dark. Nobody practices for posed photos. That's
why they always look, well, posed. A smile in the dark is an clear
indicator to the validity of a smile as a symbol of happiness. This
feeling to me, whether it is happiness, the glimpse of a possible
happiness, or the happiness the fantasy I run in my head brings me, is
causal to a true undeniable smile. The smile that goes unseen. I know
that the furry hippo somehow sees it and smiles, the difference is,
unlike me it doesn't have a choice. |
