Friday, February 24, 2006

looking through my old diaries/sketchbooks is both immensely interesting and sad at the same time. in class the other day 3I asked me for the block off so that they could learn their campfire songs/cheers/etc for OAC, and they had this stand up hands tog chikachachikacha thing which smelled too much like the two orientations we went through as psls for me to dismiss. it strikes me rather painfully, though, what i have forgotten. i remember very distinctly that we had two special unofficial rg thingums, apart from the dum dum dee dee- does anyone remember the funky chicken thing?? the one where we all go silly, and theres one part where you have 'sthsthsth michael jackson [what did you say] sthsthsth michael jackson [2,3,4] ow ow ow ow ow etc' and theres the silly one where you do i dont rmb what but you end up going l lll llllll and in stitches from trying to laugh and sing the ditty at the same time, with your tongue stuck out and in a ridiculously silly contorted position.

the way i used to write strikes me also: not only has my handwriting changed, but i have stopped documenting events and gone into the contemplative. it probably comes with my philosophy that i apply to this blog too- it is a 'recently felt emotion', i suppose, that i would rather forget and let go so many things than hoard them up wholesale in my memory, and forever be ruminating upon the past. as such i delete this blog periodically,[when occassion provokes it], and record my thoughts mostly, and hardly if ever talk about events in the style of the girly yet heartfelt yet teenage angsty accounts that i used to give.

still, it was with dismay that i found i hadn't recorded these little game- things: though i distinctly remember feeling slightly silly as i recorded similarly silly things i wanted to remember forever, if not for their inherent worth then for the little trivial joys they provided me, at least in that point in time. looking back, it is hard to relocate that precise emotion- our more recent amusements have irrevocably been changed by the passage of time and experience.

its is with ambivalence that i regard memory- on one hand, i lament the disillusionment tarnishing the idealism that i used to have, but on the other hand i appreciate the sense of perspective that i believe i have now. but then again i am acutely aware of the fact that when i look back upon this, too, in the future- i may well be looking back with similarly mournful cynicism on the beliefs that i hold now. it is a historian's dilemma that accompanies this: on the one hand, to want to keep everything untainted by subsequent experience and from the rose-tint of nostalgia, yet painfully aware that he must succumb to the imperfections of human nature and the limitations of the human mind.

all the same, various as my experiences have been, i would probably say that i do not regret my course of life. whether this is because i am glad of my situation, or whether my memory has become selectively omissive, it is impossible to tell.


mellie contemplated 10:26 PM
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