Motor Cars, Handle Bars
Bicycles for Two
Broken Hearted Jubilee
Parachutes, Army Boots
Sleeping Bags for Two
Sentimental Jamboree

Buy Buy
Says the Sign in the Shop Window
Why Why
Says the Junk the Yard

Candlesticks, Building Bricks
Something Old and New
Memories for You and Me

Buy Buy
Says the Sign in the Shop Window
Why Why
Says the Junk in the Yard

That's Junk, by the Beatles. Before I come to that.

My cousin is in love. It's the only thing that could have gotten me to damn write on this blog again. It's not the most shocking, nor the most significant thing that could have happened in all this time. But it created a certain mood, a 'sentimental jamboree' if you would.

I guess it was an effusive sort of ebullience, wrought by the sheer happiness of someone else. Usually when other people are too happy, it sort of scares you, or even makes you feel sick and jealous, but I guess this was someone I knew, and there was a sense of sincerity of emotion associated with all of it.

Joy, tempered by tinges of anxiety and fear. When it happens to someone else, I guess unabashedly it's so much easier to comment about it, no guilt about self-indulgence or self-pity and it was just so uplifting to hear the words of someone who well believes in what they say.

About how she was so sure yet unsure about the whole thing. The quiet self assurance, knowing that yes, it was probably her he liked more of the two, but even then, would you take the risk? The meeting. The anxieties about the future yet foretold. And yes the anxieties about being continents apart, about being of a different social class, about not being good enough, and about how lucky god made her feel.

In the context of me having a stiff neck and a bad past couple of days, in the context of my previously loudmouthed in private yet really pretty quiet in public cousin, and the serendipity and unexpectedness of the whoel situation.

So much food for thought. Do people actually do worry about being from the same social class? Hmm yes of course, this world and generation is still quite conservative, especially for Indonesian Chinese. Of course, its a different world, and one could really break free of conventions and everything for love but a great deal many people actually factor in their parents thoughts and considerations in everything and watching them juggle all these potentially stressful thoughts in the midst of what must be happiness, its just like watching something you could believe in. The worst fears haven't happened, and do pray that they won't.

It's like watching what could be my future. Stop, look around, and think again. Why then, Junk?

it just made me feel so optimistic and rosy about the hazy thing called love again. I'm no emotional wreck, or sentimental fob, I guess, no matter how much sad songs and films try to convince me otherwise. Deep down, I am perhaps a legitimate, clear thinker, with a tendency to cling to childish habits to think that I somehow am sublimate from this world from time to time with certain special traits in this ethereal one. Yet I know, with much certainty, that many people feel much more than I do or reason better than I do.

With this tricky thing called mortality, and the vagueness of an afterlife(in these days at least), we're all compelled to make the best we can of this life, improve ourselves, for our sakes, for our loves ones, as we grow up, start to be repsonsible, earn enough money, make little gestures of kindness. If we didn't already do these things in childhood on a consistent enough basis, the rigour of adult, mature thinking will ensure you do.

That's my future. I guess I want to be a dependable guy and everything. I also want to be the quasi-enigmatic silent rebel who smokes marijuana and cigarettes from time to time, doesn't drink, and doesn't really enjoy loud social pursuits and maybe can write a book or two. Be moderately successful and vote Socialist. And practise these little beliefs in real life.

And it's Junk. I'm enamoured with little histories, simply because they present themselves in nice completed versions for you to tell stories with. Photos, stories, letters of commemoration. Even doing little commemorative efforts for things like NDP and school. It doesn't damn matter sometimes, who reads this shit, and all the photos are the same when you look at them too many times. But it's the first time you read. That's when you get bashed over the head, like the SARS coffee table book (what irony, we can drink coffee now) which is really a good commemorative efforts. At least save it from floating away into the ocean and being caught in a fishing rod of a boy on the other side of the world.

It's Junk. It's reality. It's not knowing whether the girl I love will ever know why Elia Kazan fell out with Arthur Miller over Marilyn Monroe, not knowing if my attempts at understanding will ever penetrate the myths, songs and stories she heard as a child, in some foreign family. It's the happiness of obscurity and the acceptance of insecurity, which as an individual, one can never tolerate. It is the individual which expects perfection of itself.

It's packaging. Not slick hair or nice clothes packaging. Bubble wrap or cardboard? I like bubble wrap because I love hearing the sound being popped and if I give that much joy to people, it's good. It's slightly bad for the environment and it hurts to be popped.

Buy, buy. I could turn this into a relentless tirade against capitalism but I know it's sensible.
Why why, why try ask the Junk? You never have to do anything or buy anything again. You could fashion a life out of all the junk you have here. But it'll never be enough for you. Or at least, I want to have more junk when i'm 85.