i am immensely excited about my drawing class. i think teachers make such a difference. she came in with such an excitement and an exuberance about teaching despite how sleepy and dead we all were on the first monday morning. she obviously has put so much thought into the assignments she gives, and i am really just super excited to make work, and the prompt so far has pushed my work already and it's only assignment 1.

i feel like i'm at a sweet spot of being more liberated and freed to make work. not feeling like my work has to be a certain type of Art, but letting line do its thing. i've left drawing long enough, to breathe, to miss it, and i'm coming back to it. but with a different attitude, a different spirit. em talked about different elements of my work having character - i think the chair has been something people have been drawn to, perhaps the way it slouches, the way the lines kind of are lazy, but also deliberate. i brought my sky pieces to class, and they are something that i am still interested in but not knowing how to approach them, nor what to do with them. i think i need to go back into ceramics and make objects. not on the wheel but just hand building objects. im not ready for that yet, but eventually. maybe i am. idk. 

it's been difficult to separate myself from my anxiety. there are days when i am just crippled by thoughts and endless worry, and i try to work through it but my mind doesnt know how to separate worries from real life. but i treasure the moments of excitement and joy. i think joy and positivity and how we see things is so important. and changes the way we approach situations, and ourselves, and artmaking. i wonder though, if we associate certain people or activities with the things we feel. probably so. despite how subconscious. certain things i associate with anxiety, or hurt; others peace, joy, love. 

i went for a run last night. i hadnt run along the lake in the longest time. i ran to the end, and there's a tiny pathetic beach there. i just laid down on the concrete. the sky was a blend of blue, pink and yellow, soft hues. and there were no clouds in the sky - or maybe there were too many that the whole sky just looked like a painting. i think people like rothko, or are drawn to them because there is a vastness, a consuming power, that draws us in. i squinted my eyes a little such that i could see nothing but the colours of the sky. and it was something so beautiful. to be alone under the blanket of God's goodness and creation. and there's truly nothing that satisfies more than being in His presence. i feel like i forget that a lot. 

about learning.

just got out of a philosophy of art class. and we had to talk. really had to talk. it was wonderful. i think with the education system we grew up in, a lot of things have been spoonfed to us, you always have to have the 'right' answers, to not embarrass yourself, speak if only you are sure. but that's not the purpose of a class. you take class, you go to school because you don't know. if you do know, why waste a bunch of money when you can maybe save up to bto??? ha. but that kind of freedom to question, the freedom to wonder, the freedom to think. to ask questions, knowing that when an instructor probes, or throws the question back at you, it's not him criticising you as a human, but trying to get you to think further, to think harder, for you to understand yourself and uncover and discover and realise and have your own "ah hah" moment. i think we are, okay let me not speak for others, but i am so incredibly afraid of being wrong or embarrassed, at times, it hinders me from trying to make sense of things, wanting just the right answers. i remember feeling so incredibly victimised last semester, when i was questioned on the spot. looking back now, it shouldnt have caused me so much anxiety and fear. im really so excited, so excited to learn. that's what education is supposed to be about ya? oh my thank you Lord Jesus i know how to write my teaching statement for my art ed application now.

of wonder and not knowing.

i like the quiet that sets in after a huge party

the walk home after a meetup with a friend

the packing up of materials after teaching a class

/

i haven't experienced such a sense of wonder in a while. during a beginning litho class i had today, our professor, jess, demonstrated how litho worked without giving us any sort of explanation about the process at all. the sense of awe, and 'wow wait what just happened' that aroused within my soul was a feeling i hadn't felt in such a long time. i feel like as a child we feel it so much, being exposed to so many different things, that our minds gradually start to comprehend, being initially perhaps told stories or myths to make understanding things easier - be it santa, or the simplification of a scientific concept (i wanted to actually type a concept here & sound smart but lol couldn't think of any yo), then upon being revealed the truth, have a sense of what is the word eureka? some form of discovery, wonderment, awe. i think those are beautiful things to feel. so beautiful. to not know, is a privilege at times. 

perhaps wanting to plan out things, to know, to have an extremely directed path of where we want to go, is actually more of a downfall than being helpful. i am a huge planner. you can ask anyone who interacts with me. i am a sucker for lists, and administration, and documents and forms and all that kind of thing. but i've come to realise lately, that i've planned things so tightly together, that there is at times no room for God to work. there is no room for spontaneity, or following my gut, or anticipation and apprehension and wonder of 'i have no idea what is going to happen next but we'll see'. i think too, that with these plans, a lot of the times, when things happen along the way that cause them to be messed up, the kind of disorientation i feel, like i could've done more, that perhaps it's not worth it, the kind of rigidity the mind sticks to at times like these is so dangerous really. for i have already done all i could, perhaps a lot more than i should too! i wonder if we should follow our gut more, not think too much into things. yes make plans, broad ones, have goals, have dreams, have aspirations, but i'm learning not to micromanage everything that i can lay my hands on.

navigating the in-between

a post i wrote on a layover back to singapore on 8 june 2016 and a timely reminder.

It’s been two years. It doesn’t feel like it though. It still feels like I am travelling back home for the first time after the first semester away: the feeling of anticipation of prawn mee, laksa, chai tao kuey, mom’s preserved vegetables duck soup, and family and friends too I guess; the exhaustion from a semester of artmaking; the discomfort of being in a place where there are people so different from myself, with different cultures, accents, ways of doing things; the anticipation of home.

It is not all the same though. Chicago has grown on me. I would go so far as to say I would call it home too. I think it was always a reflex to pick out all the things that Chicago lacked – amazing Singaporean food, warm weather, Singlish, familiarity of people I grew up with, places I know like the back of my hand. However, there are now things I miss about Chicago too – the way the sunlight shines through the city a certain way, the lake that stretches out for forever, how there’s always the weather to talk about if all conversation topics run out (in Singapore what is there to say really, ‘today quite hot ah?’, ‘outside raining hor?’), the possibility of driving for hours and ending up in another state without the hassle of my passport being checked.

Being away has given me space to grow. I think being away from the people and communities I grew up with took off a lot of the pressure of who I felt I had to be, or who people expected me to be. I don’t think people intend to put pressure on others to be a certain way, but I think we naturally dislike change. When the people we love change, it is scary and we quickly respond in disapproval. In this foreign land of the United States of America, I felt free to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I think that freedom was initially daunting, and I threaded on it with great care and caution. With time though, this caution diminished, and freedom was embraced. I tried to be everything that I wanted myself to be when I was younger, morphing into different versions of myself. I don’t think I truly ever found ‘myself’, or became all that I envisioned, but I think I learned more about who I was along the way, bit by bit. I sat on the beach with a friend a couple evenings ago and shared with her about how being away from home makes me feel like I can be anything I want. She nodded, but said she thinks it is not that I want to be a different person, or have a different personality but that I have the space to uncover parts of me that perhaps being at home makes harder to do.

I think I have learnt how to love better too. Having everyone at college being away from home, we learn how to be family to each other. I spend as much, or even more time with a few of my friends than I do even, with family at home. A few of us put up at a friend’s place for the past week (and prior to that we were on a three-week long road trip). It sounds like great fun, but living like family, also means carrying each others’ burdens and experiencing and resolving conflict. We were around each other almost 24/7, and if someone was down, all of us would feel it. I always feel the need to fix people, and offer logical and practical solutions. I have learnt, that that is most of the time the least helpful. Sometimes, all a friend needs is a hug, or a nod of affirmation, or just for me to sit and listen. They have thought through their woe, or problem, ten times more than I have, and have usually run through all possible solutions. Sometimes, emotional responses do not correspond with logical solutions. With conflict, my immediate response is to avoid, and escape and wait it out until tensions cease. I never realized how much talking about something brings up misunderstandings, addresses hurt, and clears the air so much better than harboring grudges and having them resurface months later. I always felt that if I were the only one to feel annoyed at something, I should resolve it myself, especially if my emotional uproar is seemingly illogical. Yes, that is the case for certain things. However, some things need to be said or acknowledged for any real resolution.

I think these lessons take time to learn. I am often amazed at how God creates us – how he knows some lessons need to take time, and gives us years and years to experience things – at times again and again, before we finally get a glimpse of how to be functional human beings. I think the biggest things we take away from school aren’t our degrees, or academic or technical knowledge – no doubt those are important – I think the biggest takeaways are how we relate to people around us. I think about how my friends and I wrote each other notes to explain why we were angry at each other over the tiniest little things. I think about the first time I made a mistake in school and felt guilty about it for a year before figuring out a way to apologize to my teacher. I think about the time in primary school when two of my best friends were in my room, and we were just having fun, jumping on my bed and laughing when one of them said really quickly and quietly, “my parents are getting divorced”. We stopped laughing, and I think the two of us said we’re sorry, and sat around for a little while before we went to play something else. If these were to happen again: I would talk about our feelings on the spot and resolve misunderstandings face to face; I would approach my teacher immediately after class and apologize; I would hug my friend, ask her how she was feeling, hug her again and we would go to NTUC and buy two tubs of ice-cream and the three of us would eat till she felt a little better at least for the moment.

Perhaps it is not so much about being away as it is simply growing older and growing up.