オカズ・Okazu

The East Asian tradition of serving multiple dishes at once during mealtimes, makes it unclear to those of us who are seated around the table as to which is the main dish. Is there even a main, or are they all simply side-dishes, which you pick at ease with your chopsticks? The pickled cucumbers, they make you tremble in delight as your appetite is awakened by its tantalising sourness, and you can't help but reach for more.

A bowl of steaming white rice, fragrant on its own yet lacking in the many tastes that come together to satisfy the insatiable taste of the diner, is never enough. Its purity is almost unsettling to one whose habit is to mar it with sauce. Only with the addition of these side-dishes, can one begin to feast, properly.

"Not enough, and never enough!"

That's because Okazu come in tiny, refillable portions. Treat them as an all-you-can-eat miniature buffet, if you must. At least if you can't pay your way into the international buffet at a 5-star hotel, Okazu, with the warmth of home, will always be laid out; even on the most run-down table at some dingy back alley eatery you happen to set foot in on one of your desolate night walks through the slums.

On a rainy day, you sit in the kitchen making Okazu. You think, wouldn't it be better to make enough side-dishes to get me through this season of endless rainfall? After all, to walk in the torrential rain in search of cheap dens is to debase that rationality which makes you You.

Albeit you trouble yourself by preparing your spread of side-dishes, some of which you pickle with care for days, maybe even weeks, rarely do you appreciate them with the same zeal that guided your hands at the kitchen counter. Perhaps as your blend of spices seep into the cells of the freshly sliced vegetables, you start to lose whatever appetite you had for what you'd originally chosen, for now, its taste has become one that is inherently yours, retaining little of that fresh crisp which had aroused your craving.

But the rain doesn't stop, and your fridge is still stocked up with Okazu.

Its indispensable quality with which you've associated with all those you've commodified, bind their silent resentment in unison and start to creep towards the neck you non-chalantly left exposed as you passed out drunk on the couch at 6AM.

The blasé montage that is your life numbs your tongue by the day. Do you even notice it when all you do is swallow mouthful after mouthful of rice seasoned with limp side-dishes?

...

As the Okazu ferment past their palatable prime, you throw them out, and wash your hands afterwards, with soap.

Surprise, Surprise! Another Creation of Neurosis

Countless times I've started a post with "I have nothing to say" simply because I don't want to go to sleep yet due to my damaged brain that only manages to wire connections seeking to disturb my emotional balance. If I am not in this constant state of fear and dissatisfaction, it seems that I'd grow restless and end up scared, and dissatisfied anyway.

Yesterday, I discovered a website which lets you have a chat with yourself. Doubting its effectiveness at easing the side-effects of intense loneliness, I had a short conversation with myself about the situation resembling Gestalt therapy. I laughed it off, but a few exchanges between Rachel #1 and Rachel #2 soothed my anxious heart.

Yet, what I need isn't more of my own companionship and understanding, but that of others. If I continue to retreat into myself, into my mind, and into my own world, I will really forget about the laws that shape the shared reality we all know. As it is, I've already lost the functional skills of socialising. Never looking anyone in the eye, and refusing to acknowledge the individuals that swarm society, I myself have become a part of the moving images that blur in the eyes of those alive, but not living. Saying that I am forgettable is an overstatement, because I am never noticed from the start.

In the memories of those I've known for years, a lasting impression is etched. An impression, fixed and unchanging, is the me from long ago, one that has been left to rot somewhere along the river of toxic regrets.

Funnily enough, I take on the persona of my dead self whenever they chance to fix that impression onto my current self. What am I, a doll they strip and fashion by themselves?

It hardly matters.

I long and seek after...

The complexity of life is a false belief in itself that's imposed upon our deeper unconscious by the experiences, the let downs, the disappointments, the hurt, the fears we have come to known. Without them, life isn't hard at all, and without them, I'd know how to live. For now, I'm only running, and not living. Ironically.

Projections of...

ああ、普通だね。

悪いことをしてしまった。 悪いかどうか分からないが、今の気分はちょっと不安で、変だと思う。事実に、昨日があった事はそんなに重要的な問題ではない。ただ…何っていうかな…

Perhaps it's because I haven't felt like this in a while, and it reminded me of... Things. But to call them things are to do them injustice, for they were without form or body, only lingering thoughts and the residue of a fervent spirit that still dreamt a hopeful dream. So, like a wraith of the memories that I refuse to recall, those whispers in the dark were needling themselves through the far too exhausted defenses of this wistful being, who for the longest time, had waited for an accident exactly like this.

For fancy, and the sake of my future as an author worthy of the Akutagawa Prize, I will continue to dwell on these feelings that exist nowhere else but within myself. Because we know, that in a desensitised, pornified society of lonely 20-somethings who cannot face commitment, nobody will look within themselves and ask themselves this: beyond carnality, does there exist even an ounce of purity that makes me feel a warmth akin to love?

A mutual connection expressed through the projection of our own idealised failures and regrets onto each other; the disturbance of such an affinity, makes me shiver even now as I walk on, after the rain.

Rachel is in Singapore

As a Malaysian walking around Singapore, I find the resemblance to home uncanny, and the prices absurd. I could pay much less for what they're offering, and my appetite withers away.

The heavy air of capitalism is the air that one breathes along Orchard Road. Even though it doesn't cost to breathe, the well-dressed, desk-sitting-ass-kissing employees of nearby offices who just so happen to be on break, will snicker, ever so conspicuously, using eyes dulled with contempt. However, the most judgemental ones are not those who earn a stable, medium to high pay, but those standing by shop entrances promoting their businesses.

Having slept for a total of 6 hours, maybe less, over the past 2 days, and being slapped across both cheeks continuously by mishaps after mishaps after mishaps, I would like to die right here, right now, at the Muji Café in Paragon. My disappointment while can be expressed, is too much for words. From an invalid passport to a re-scheduling of flights and walking around Orchard all afternoon in search of lunch... INNER PEACE!

It is now 1620 and I still haven't had lunch yet. Sure, I'm at the Muji Café, but I only ordered tea and pudding since the main looked absolutely disgusting. With whatever that's left chilled on display, it's as unappetising as it can get.

Maybe I've offended an ancestor, or a spirit, or perhaps it just isn't my month! I wonder if my grandmother's innate talent of making terrible decisions got passed down to me along with her looks. In this wide corner of a quaint eatery, I managed to sit exactly where the AC is blowing. And we know how Singaporeans like to also replicate the superior weather of the North.

Delayed by an hour is my flight, but where else is there to go on an island so heavily reliant on capitalism? Everywhere I turn, I don't want to see anything.

If I must say one thing that I've enjoyed today, it's my short time at the national library. Why? Go figure.

I want to crawl under a kotatsu.

目の前に広がる

Every night, I'm kept awake by the things I don't know, and frustrated by how little I actually know. What does it actually amount to, my inexpertise in every field? You can't make a living out of doubt, and definitely not ignorance.

Hold a book, leaf through the pages one by one as you go. Words, words, words, how many are registered? And in between the lines, every pause, every comma, do I really understand the silence of what's been left out? Do I even understand what hasn't been omitted, that which stares right back at me?

It is easy to go through the day while spending hours reclined on a cushioned chair, seemingly idle, yet always conflicted in thought. Eight hours have gone by, though not one word has been written.

Self confidence is like an earthquake. Only, I wish I could predict its surge within myself so I could break the cast of doubt, locking me in place.

Do it, just do it!

And I realise I know nothing at all.

If I were cut by the paper moistened by the humidity of age, then maybe I'd believe that I could scratch the surface of wisdom with my own nails. It isn't for that reason however, that my nails are kept long.

Sleep is an escape, but I end up refusing the cure. Flawed as I am, this is the consequence of having only one meal a day.

"Can't be bothered, I really can't!"

In the spirit of Confucianism and the teachings of my forefathers, I shall continue to suffer in this oppressive structure revered as morality. Under the sky, yet above the ground, I owe my life not to myself, but to everything else.

Oh, I'm tired. But when I eat Topokki with a roll of Gimbap, I'm grateful again, for being alive. And you know, I don't even like Topokki!

振り返りはしない。草。