Maybe nostalgia is really the side effect of aging. I have found myself reminiscing and going back into wild bizarre habits and (sometime false) romantic fantasies of the past.
I have spent a fair bit of time (and disposable income) on fountain pens and ink lately. Also writing in ridiculously elaborate cursive. I can’t say I have ever had beautiful hand writing or particularly enjoy ink pens. I used them throughout primary school and the mess it made, the times it ran out of ink in the middle on an exams, or the weird ink blothches on my school uniform when I had them in my pockets. And here we are. They were saying something about the 30 years effect of nostalgia. This might be it. Or it is jsut my brain finding a new obsession to fill the giant void that my anxiety is creating about aging, about my career, and my life. I am human after all. I guess I should be glad that it’s not cross fit or becoming vegan or a social media influencer.
I have not gone to the theater to watch Wicked the movie (I know. Bad gay). I love it that a new generation is discovering Wicked and falling in love with the music and the story of a misunderstoof woman of color (while ignoring mostly the racist sexist political undertone of the spectacles). For me, I think I still remember being 21 years old, see Wicked from a farthest top right audience corner with a last minute cheap ticket as a student, being mesmerized by the music, by the Broadway perfection, and most vividly, tearing up during “I’m not that girl”. I know, weird. Who would have thought I was gay. A song about a green girl with hidden potential and overlooked love, why would it have been so resonating?
There was a headhunter from Singapore / Vietnam who reached out for a CTO role in a company in Vietnam. And for a while, it was a nice fantasy. I do miss being connected and being surrounded by people I know. I do miss the food, the warmth, the sunshine, and all of the connectedness my culture and (some of) my people provide. (Don’t worry, I turned the job down). But for a moment, it was nice. It was nice to feel like I would have arrived, that things would have fallen into a full circle moment. Of course, I have promptly ignored all my struggles and all the past challenges I had, just for the context of this fantasy. Nostalgia does that to you. And then the fact that I am gay and I left the country for a reason and the last time I came back to attempt to “contribute” and to achieve this full circle moment, I fell flat on my face. I can’t remember a time in my life where there wasn’t “struggle”. I wish it was easier. I do. I wish for a simpler life. Maybe if I was straight, married to a Vietnamese woman, kids, job, retirement, monkhood. That was the plan / the fantasy at one point. Nostalgia brings me back to that often. The “what if” life. I know it wouldn’t be simple or easy. But it’s tempting. Maybe next life.
I had some death in my peripheral lately. A good friend’s mother passed. A secondary school teacher passed. It makes me think a lot about my grandma. It makes me think a lot about death, and aging, and legacy, and the romance of death. I remember vivid afternoons of playing card games with my grandma. I remember reading Buddhist sutras to her while she was in pain (I was ten). I remember writing (more like copying) sutras onto papers and folding into cranes as prayers for her. I remember writing short stories and diary entries about death, about missing her, and about all my pre-teen angst and isolation. All with ink pens.
I couldn’t help but wonder, when I am gone, what is the nostalgia / legacy effect I am gonna create?
“No good deeds go unpunished” came to mind.
Pace Fine Arts 