Disconnect...

I feel such a disconnect, such a distance with people I meet. I'm not sure where it comes from. Maybe it's from moving around all my life, from living in different places, speaking different languages, exposed and growing up in different cultures... most 'normal' people have a stable life, family in the background, friends they have known and grown up with... an invisible security web of support they can fall back on, or just a home they can go back to.

Whereas I... I am left feeling singled out, and lost, direction-less and unsure what it is that I want or where it is I am heading.
People I've met seem so content and stable in their lives that I feel embarassed to 'disturb' them, to pull them from their sheltered and secure lives and background and 'trouble' them with my stories of being uprooted and not belonging.

Traditions

Despite being busy with work, mum told me that she had spent the last day or so planning and preparing to go see dad and our ancestors. It's that time of the year again, the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the Ghost Month.

When I was young, it would always be a month of celebrations and feasts. People would prepare elaborate meals and buy lots of drinks, sweets, fruits and offer them to the 'ghosts', who are said to wander the world of the living for an entire month when the Gates of Hell open. Ghost Month is also a time, one of several, in the year when ancestors and deceased family members are remembered, worshipped. And a time when we the living ask for blessings from our deceased guardians...

If I were home, I would go with mum. I can just imagine her, carrying all those bowls and plates of rice and cooked food, baskets of fresh fruits and making that 2hour journey up the mountains to the temple where my dad's remains have been laid to rest. "Don't exhaust yourself," I said, "Being true and honoring them in your heart is more important than the elaborate dishes you can cook and offer them". I said that, because I did not want her to tire herself, to be so busy and running around frantically trying to please our ancestors. I know how mum can be...

If there is one thing that she should not be, it is being stressed and overly exhausted. Especially now that her health is again entering another critical condition...

Long ride

By the time I was heading home, the wheels of my bike were creaking and wheezing in protest. My legs too felt tired, and I rode much slower than earlier. The sun was setting, casting that magnificent glow of gold, pink and serenity on the rest world that I love so much. The moon, a faint, white sliver, hung low and sharp.

I cycled and stopped, cycled and stopped. It seemed like the closer I was home, the longer I took to actually get home. Reluctance... or perhaps just admiring the sense of calm that surrounded me on the bank of the canal? The reflections of thin, thin clouds were somehow suddenly mesmerising.

Almost 70km and 5 hours after I left home, I was close to home again. It was a trip I had been planning to make for a short while now. To Charlemagne, QC, where I learned while browsing through the map one day that it was "ville natale de Celin Dion" ("birth town of Celion Dion). I like her music, her love songs the words of which speak to me... but am not such a fanatical fan that I'd pilgrimage to the very place where she was born. So the trip was more about the distance and challenging myself than seeing the remains of her birth home (now sold and much changed), and a monument in her honour, and a road named after the singer (though, they were interesting, to say the least...).

Like always, when I am on a bike I feel alive. I concentrate on the road, on the traffic and pedestrians, and occasionally notice sceneries and signs around me that are both odd or worthy of a "cycle-by-shooting" (with my camera). Yes, on the bike, when I am clutching the steer, when my feet are pedalling away at with great vigour and focus, I am in control of my own speed and direction. It's almost meditative, almost calming, despite the physically exhaustion that catches up when you stop, when feel your feet shake a little from the strain of pedalling.

At best, cycling is a great way to go to far away places, at your ease and your own will... and at minimum a distraction, a confirmation that I am alive.

Surge

Mum's cancer index surged to 13... up from 5...

Back to chemo again.

"Look at all those stars...."

"Look at all those stars..." On the soft grass I lay, my legs and arms stretched out comfortable, my body resting on the slightly damp carpet underneath. It took some time to finally find a dark, dark place. But once I did, I plopped my bike and body on the ground and gazed up.

Tonight, Perseids reaches its climax... 30 or more meteors per hour, they say. I gazed up, at the almost pitch black sky, at the stars.

"Look, out there. This is what I study..." Space, so vast, so mysterious, so mesmerising and so unknown to us all. I felt so small, like an insignificant little being not worthy of notice, yet with my little brain, with my puny mind trying to fathom it all. "So beautiful..." And every reason why it should be preserved, and why I've been spending hours and hours digging through documents trying to find the reasons why it must be preserved...

"So romantic..." I said, quietly. The stars gazed back. They seemed to twinkle at me, and I twinkled back. With my palm reaching for the skies, I gently waved. The wind seemed to kiss my cheeks, and crickets answer my words.

It's been a long time since I felt so relaxed, so calm, so not alone. Clouds slowly crept and soon tried to cover up the black, beautiful face of space. But the stars stared back, bright and unflinching, as they must have done for aeons and aeons before I was born, before there was even the idea of humankind...

"Thank you for being with me..." Under the dark, dark cover of the open sky, I was not alone.

Laws...

I saw them... words, articles, rules, provisions, numbers, subsections, entire paragraphs filled with confusing terms and concepts that need to be interpreted in their original meaning, in the context surrounding its drafting, in the light of State practice and opinio juris...

Woke up feeling exhausted, even though I slept for the eight hours I try to sleep every night. Exhausted, because my brain seems to have been thinking, flowing, jumping back and forth between random articles and rules on the laws of war. Something I had been intensely working on just before bed. So intense it was already late when I realised how long I had been working for...

In a way, it may be my subconscious mind trying to tell me that I'm "going" somewhere in my work, that I may be making progress on my thesis. But it also fills my head full with thoughts and musings, even when I'm "asleep"...

Sunset

I stood on the river bank, on the edge of the water, in the gentle breeze, and out I looked at the setting sun. How the clouds were dyed bright pink, how the sky was dimming in a hue of blue, how the water was so gentle and calm, disturbed only by the sudden and random motion of fish leaping out of the water before diving back in again.

How romantic the setting... how more beautiful it must be if shared with another...

Fun

Once in a while, it's nice to just loose yourself. A few drinks with friends, a few clubs, stumble around town sort of conscious in that tipsy state of mind... bond for old time's sake. Over the last two nights it's been like that, as friends came up from the US. They were here when I was studying last year, and it's been almost as long I have not seen them.

It's nice to just relax, throw back a few drinks, and bond and connect again. Keep up what's been happening in one another's lives, relive old memories, share stories of the pains of studying, and joys of going out partying and drinking.

And you realise... friends who have been away, who live far away, remain friends because of those memories and connections you've made in the past.