Most people in their sojourn in Paris mark the passage of time against the grid of a calendar or a list of itineraries and schedules. In my case I tick the passage of time with a tree, or the shedding of its leaves and its transformation from bright green to red. This is in honor of my first true experience of autumn in the northern hemisphere. (I was in Beijing in early fall six years ago, but the concrete gray megapolis did not offer me a similar sight.) I have indeed "adopted" a large tree whose foliage obscures a view of the western end of Île de St. Louis and the Pont Marie that stretches across the Seine. This tree for weeks have been nothing but such an obstruction - but I pity it now, losing its mass in progressive succession, and I hate to think that it is becoming more transparent as the days go by. Two birds nesting in it call out every morning approximately at 6am, about the same time I begin my own day, writing about my dreams from the night before.
Like this tree I too am learning to shed a number of my leaves, and I also fear my increasing transparency. Which is of course a baseless fear. People think knowledge is a matter of acquiring massive doses of information, and may liken this to my tree in spring, heavy with leaves. But I realize now that this is wrong. True learning is a matter of knowing what to shed off, what to throw off as mere burden or superfluous and be able to find the framework of one's mode of cognition and memory - so that the world may be transparent through the mind, and life be enjoyed in its perceptual vicissitude. Even if my tree and my mind will lose all its ideas and leaves - the framework remains. A frigid winter will not be able to consume this core, with its sense of life, its marrow of heliotropism, hidden deep and in slumber.
What I have learned in Paris is, quite ironically, unlearning. It was as if my desire to bear witness to works of art have been quenched within a mere few minutes of regarding their presence before me. Thinking like a student of art history made me think of uploading everything that I see. I feel like the child in St. Augustine's dream who tried to scoop the whole ocean into his basin. All I had to do was to stop and discard this useless basin, and instead stand in front of the sea and inhale its brine and fill its breathe in my lungs. I am no longer a student of art history, but I AM learning, as a human being ought to. I am no longer collecting mental souvenirs because as Proust has proven in a seven-volume novel the practice is quite useless: akin to hoarding, when thought is as insipid as dry water. So decided not to BUY my token of memory but to MAKE my own small objects of remembrance.
Today I grasp my left forearm with extreme force. I always do this whenever I feel bliss - that happy emptiness of mind that precedes a fullness. It is a ritual that was taught to me by a former counselor and teacher twenty years ago when I felt I was the loneliest human being in the world. My parents - out of poverty - had abandoned me to the charge of severe Catholic aunts when I was nine. I escaped the routine of forced rosaries and the liturgies of guilt by pursuing the arts in a state-run boarding school, in an institution far, far away as possible from the family circle that made me unhappy. But distance from everyone I knew also meant an alienation, even to myself. Rootless, without connections, I was no better than a barren tree. My roommates and classmates could not understand why the hell would I read Nietzsche (I was 15) and why would I love going to Goethe Institut in Aurora Blvd in Cubao, listening to Bach and Wagner to pass the time instead of going to the mall (I did not step into Megamall until nine years later after it opened). They did not understand: I had no one to talk to, nor would I want to impose the dam of all my sorrows opened at a casual conversation. Heidegger's idea of Thrownness is so palpable to me - not only did I understand it, I FELT it. Then by way of voracious and lonely reading, I discovered the Tao Teh Ching. I was with my counselor when I read the passage: Separateness is lost when togetherness is remembered, communion is lost when separateness is remembered. Suddenly I was struck with the most peaceful episode of epiphany that lasted for three days: I am alone only when I think I am. My counselor asked if i felt bliss (not happy) and promptly grasped my arm so tight and told me to do the same whenever I have a chance to feel moments of happiness and epiphanies. It is body memory, he said. And so for the following twenty years I have survived the most painful struggles of my early adulthood - the embarrassment of often being five pesos away from poverty, the frustrations of being a painter, trials of being perpetually homeless etc. - by grasping my arm. By the same token, I am now grasping my arm again, not because I am lonely, but I want my body to remember Paris as place of epiphany.
But I also allow myself to cry, especially at certain moments like these, when I can do so without causing distress to anyone. I cry for my lost childhood, for years of youth spent only in trying to cope with being a stranger in someone else's house - worse than being in a Catholic-run orphanage, I could say. I was so miserable I had no real toys to play with and now even if I can afford to buy some, the child is no longer there. (I began my sculptural leanings when I made robots out of broken light fixtures) Antoine de St.Exupery once wrote: childhood is a country where you come from. But my own childhood country is bleak desert, a waterless domain. But not any amount of compensation now can I recover those lost moments of being young. That is why I gravitate so much to Le Petit Prince. We have so much in common! We both used to live in an asteroid, sans parents, with the chore of cleaning volcanoes lest they blow up, or take care not to let Baobabs take root and destroy my satellite-home. Now that I have my own family I will one day tell the story of the Little Prince to my daughter: as my own life story.
So I am not afraid to be lost, because I was a nomad of my own childhood. I am not afraid to be a fool, because I know I am crazy. Finally I can let go of my leaves, and shed them off, and even allow Paris to go by and be a simple network of pavements that I walk on. My tree and I look forward to the passing seasons, arid, austere, vibrant or drenched, as the case may be. We both know a secret: naked we may very well be - we are still alive, we are alive. I am alive.
Like this tree I too am learning to shed a number of my leaves, and I also fear my increasing transparency. Which is of course a baseless fear. People think knowledge is a matter of acquiring massive doses of information, and may liken this to my tree in spring, heavy with leaves. But I realize now that this is wrong. True learning is a matter of knowing what to shed off, what to throw off as mere burden or superfluous and be able to find the framework of one's mode of cognition and memory - so that the world may be transparent through the mind, and life be enjoyed in its perceptual vicissitude. Even if my tree and my mind will lose all its ideas and leaves - the framework remains. A frigid winter will not be able to consume this core, with its sense of life, its marrow of heliotropism, hidden deep and in slumber.
What I have learned in Paris is, quite ironically, unlearning. It was as if my desire to bear witness to works of art have been quenched within a mere few minutes of regarding their presence before me. Thinking like a student of art history made me think of uploading everything that I see. I feel like the child in St. Augustine's dream who tried to scoop the whole ocean into his basin. All I had to do was to stop and discard this useless basin, and instead stand in front of the sea and inhale its brine and fill its breathe in my lungs. I am no longer a student of art history, but I AM learning, as a human being ought to. I am no longer collecting mental souvenirs because as Proust has proven in a seven-volume novel the practice is quite useless: akin to hoarding, when thought is as insipid as dry water. So decided not to BUY my token of memory but to MAKE my own small objects of remembrance.
Today I grasp my left forearm with extreme force. I always do this whenever I feel bliss - that happy emptiness of mind that precedes a fullness. It is a ritual that was taught to me by a former counselor and teacher twenty years ago when I felt I was the loneliest human being in the world. My parents - out of poverty - had abandoned me to the charge of severe Catholic aunts when I was nine. I escaped the routine of forced rosaries and the liturgies of guilt by pursuing the arts in a state-run boarding school, in an institution far, far away as possible from the family circle that made me unhappy. But distance from everyone I knew also meant an alienation, even to myself. Rootless, without connections, I was no better than a barren tree. My roommates and classmates could not understand why the hell would I read Nietzsche (I was 15) and why would I love going to Goethe Institut in Aurora Blvd in Cubao, listening to Bach and Wagner to pass the time instead of going to the mall (I did not step into Megamall until nine years later after it opened). They did not understand: I had no one to talk to, nor would I want to impose the dam of all my sorrows opened at a casual conversation. Heidegger's idea of Thrownness is so palpable to me - not only did I understand it, I FELT it. Then by way of voracious and lonely reading, I discovered the Tao Teh Ching. I was with my counselor when I read the passage: Separateness is lost when togetherness is remembered, communion is lost when separateness is remembered. Suddenly I was struck with the most peaceful episode of epiphany that lasted for three days: I am alone only when I think I am. My counselor asked if i felt bliss (not happy) and promptly grasped my arm so tight and told me to do the same whenever I have a chance to feel moments of happiness and epiphanies. It is body memory, he said. And so for the following twenty years I have survived the most painful struggles of my early adulthood - the embarrassment of often being five pesos away from poverty, the frustrations of being a painter, trials of being perpetually homeless etc. - by grasping my arm. By the same token, I am now grasping my arm again, not because I am lonely, but I want my body to remember Paris as place of epiphany.
But I also allow myself to cry, especially at certain moments like these, when I can do so without causing distress to anyone. I cry for my lost childhood, for years of youth spent only in trying to cope with being a stranger in someone else's house - worse than being in a Catholic-run orphanage, I could say. I was so miserable I had no real toys to play with and now even if I can afford to buy some, the child is no longer there. (I began my sculptural leanings when I made robots out of broken light fixtures) Antoine de St.Exupery once wrote: childhood is a country where you come from. But my own childhood country is bleak desert, a waterless domain. But not any amount of compensation now can I recover those lost moments of being young. That is why I gravitate so much to Le Petit Prince. We have so much in common! We both used to live in an asteroid, sans parents, with the chore of cleaning volcanoes lest they blow up, or take care not to let Baobabs take root and destroy my satellite-home. Now that I have my own family I will one day tell the story of the Little Prince to my daughter: as my own life story.
So I am not afraid to be lost, because I was a nomad of my own childhood. I am not afraid to be a fool, because I know I am crazy. Finally I can let go of my leaves, and shed them off, and even allow Paris to go by and be a simple network of pavements that I walk on. My tree and I look forward to the passing seasons, arid, austere, vibrant or drenched, as the case may be. We both know a secret: naked we may very well be - we are still alive, we are alive. I am alive.
My tree.
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