I do not know. But it is powerful. I just know.

Last week, there was a moment during work, when I felt the invisible force and energy of the system.

“Be you. The system will speak to you.” A friend & Professor said to me, before I was to do something I had not ever done before, but I did ask for it. So here it is.

And then, there were 50+ pairs of eyes watching me. For five long minutes between signaling and the actual start, there was time infinity. In the five minutes, I felt a tsunami of energy coming towards me. It was a magnetic push and an inviting pull.

I whispered to myself, in my head, “Stand there, Enoch. Just stand still. Stand into the ground. Don’t let this tsunami push you back.” I stood still, clawing my toes into the earth through the grubby bottoms of my red & white sneakers. I let my feet soles sink into the earth, and I felt the Qi coming back through the weeds into my skin and seep into my being.

“Go meet it”, said a voice inside my mind.

So I did. I did not move, and I met the wave coming towards me, allowing it to come face to face with me. I held it there. And then, I walked into the pull.

It was as if I entered an energy field. Suddenly, I was one with it. I felt this buoyancy of power. It was the system, I knew it. I got a little lost in it but it found me, and from there on, I did what I needed to and could do for that part of the class. It was a freedom crafted and crafting, whilst I was watching myself at the same time, from another dimension of sensation.

That power, that energy field, that System. I cannot explain it. I can only feel it. I felt it so clearly, so alive inside of me, as if the System was exuding from me, and at the same time, the System transpired through me, enveloped me, cradled me, held me.

It was extraordinary. It was like a succumbing to it, but not giving in as if there was no more me left. It was like an elevation at the same time, heightened on the force of it, but not being above it. In that very moment, when I was talking to some 7 people with another 8 or 9 hawking over, I saw the expanse of freedom from outside of myself.

I knew in that moment, exactly how insignificant I was in the universe, and how powerful I was with the universe. We all are. In that same moment, I understood that “Nothing mattered, that is why everything mattered. And because everything matters, nothing matters.”

Boundaries then transcend boundaries because of how strong they are. This system that we try so earnestly to comprehend, we forget that all we need to do is to feel it, and let it be felt….

Don’t just trust the process.
Have faith in the system.

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One big gaping hole. Into the abyss. With no end in sight.

Sent this picture to a friend with the above caption. He said, “Or a break in the clouds.”

Let’s see.

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These three are few of the many I have filled, and a drawer full of new ones and gifted ones waiting for my stroke of genius to happen so the pages contain something stupendous.

The Don’t Worry, Be Happy one by Jimmy, contains my Chinese literature studies and notes though void as I have not had the time nor energy to transcribe my rough notes into the notebook for something for legible. From the back, I started jotting down my experiences and emotions during my spirit journeys.

The pink one is my journal. I have many journals since I was 9 or 10 years old. They went from “today I went to Ocean Park and it was hot” to elaborate descriptions of encounters throughout the years of school, university, work, relationships, people. Mostly about people and the conversations with them, the ones that made me cry and sad and joyous and shy and scared. Details, rich details. This is one set of notebooks that no one is allowed to read, for it conceals my deepest, darkest, secrets. Plus, it is not eloquent as Anne Frank nor Adrian Mole’s diaries. They are for me. My space.

The black C’est Mon Psych is an artist I really enjoy and would love to collect all his products especially those printed on stationery, but I know the stationery would just stay on my desk, though I do have a few folders with his illustrations on it. This one contains my career evolution, the ponderings, the contemplation, the self SWOT analyses, Ikigai, pros and cons, you name it. It records my transitions and transformations and regressions and mutations. It contains my dreams, both the day ones in form of career aspirations, and the night ones as I keep this one beside my bed and when I remember a dream after waking up, I scribble it down from the back. I have never really made much sense of my dreams, though I am pretty sure I can lucid dream.

Then there are a few others hidden between my desk and the set of drawers, with a pile of colour pencils, scrapbook, writing prompts, and photos of calligraphy I had done – I still vow to one day write a book about calligraphy. One has passages that meant something to me either cut out and stuck in it, or copied into it and poems I had written during school days. And the other has my occasional rambled musings and more recent poetry in it.

A little pink one is hidden in another drawer, which I used to record the culinary expeditions, trials and errors I had made – including the guinea pigs who had the misfortune of tasting and rating it. I noted down Bamboo’s growing up journey in another one, and a polar bear one listed all the cities I had travelled to, in hope one day I get to wherever to see polar bear cubs.

Gifts from friends over the years, who give me these notebooks because they know me well. And souvenirs I had hoarded from events in case one day I needed a notebook for something. All tucked in yet another set of drawers with my collection of stickers, which I cherish dearly and would use to stick onto a letter or a card – yes I still use pen and paper.

All this to attest my neglected addiction to writing. I write, therefore I am.

I have not been writing, and have found myself lost in dazing circles. The lack of clashing words even if the final production had no function for anyone is starting to deplete me, again. I can feel the same cycle.

In words, I find possibilities, and glistening senses of myself. My writing is my thinking; it is a baring of my soul. Every word I dare present to anyone is exposing my core. The question is, what will you do with this present I voluntarily give? I will judge you by how you interact with my writing and determine whether you are worth the risk for me to let you in.

I think everyone has something like that that is for them. I have my writing, some have their drawings, photography, pottery, weavings, doodles, comics, songs, PPT visuals, speeches, cooking, paper cuttings, clothes, décor, napkin arrangement on the dining table, florals…

We find a way to show ourselves, gingerly, shyly, cautiously, playfully. See me, hear me, know me, feel me, be with me, are our pleas.

I might need to start using these psychoanalytic pencils so I can work on my gratitude.

These notebooks might matter to no one but me. And that’s all it matters. But give me a notebook that I will like, and I will fall in love with you – for a moment.

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Gentle and acidic
Dull and lustful
Smooth and bumpy
Fluid and firm

And everything in between

All in one bite

The post fruit of passion appeared first on nochnoch.

I glanced around, everyone else was busy with their attempts and stretches. The fluorescent lightening in this dance studio was overbearing, and glared at me like those hospital lights I looked into some 10 years ago when rushed to Emergency Room after a suicide attempt. I wanted to cry then and there. I felt the despair. I could not get up. I could not do the spin on the pole like the teacher had shown us however many times I had tried. I wanted to break down in the middle of pole dance class.

The failure I felt, of course, was not just about dance class. I felt the despair as if every door for Bearapy was ajar but could not fully swing open. I see the opportunities but could not grasp them. I feel the possibilities but they disappear into fog and mist.

It was like pole dancing, something I started picking up this year. Or rather, pole dancing was like the resilience cycle that contained this despair. 

Sometimes, I spin too fast and get too dizzy and have to come to an abrupt halt or I would puke. Sometimes, I did not spin enough as I mounted so I end up stationary and stuck in mid air, holding an ugly frog pose until a classmate rescues me from further disgrace with a little push on the shoulder. The teacher yells some instructions to me from the floor, but I cannot distinguish left from right nor front from back when hung upside down on the pole. I feared I would crash land on my head, even though rationally and cognitively I knew there was no way I could fall since my legs were twirled tightly around the pole as fulcrum and counterforce. Nevertheless, I was frigid with fear and confused with which way was up or down as my body continued the inversion, as if it was the most natural thing ever and it was just my brain that could not compute. And so, I could not follow the teacher’s guidance to dismount, and ended up moving in the exact opposite way she had asked me to and got myself twisted.

Sometimes, though, I get it. I do the moves, I spin with ease, I even land with some elegance, and feel quite proud about the session – until I review the video and see how hunched my back was, damaging the beauty of myself in my own mind. But, it was good enough, and I knew how to improve the next time.

There are times like this time, when I wanted to give up, because everything I had tried did not get me doing what I intended to do. Utter ineffectiveness. My wrists hurt from carrying my own weight, my core muscles too flabby to hold myself up any longer, and my thighs refused to activate any miniscule trace of muscle strength. In those moments, I wanted to break down and cry. So I let myself go, and slumped on the floor, sitting in my glum and misery.

Then, I breathed, I swallowed back the tears, mostly because I was concerned that the other would feel more embarrassed to see me cry than me crying in public, to which I have no qualms. And, I get back on my feet.

I don’t know what happened in that split moment. I don’t know what it was I thought or felt or processed or remembered. But I got up. I lapped up some powder with my sweaty palms from the floor. I stood in front of the pole. I closed my eyes lightly, and felt the cold steel on my finger tips as I wrapped my hands around the cylinder extension.

And, I got back on that bloody pole. And, I spun.

I grit my teeth and held myself with that last ounce of energy and residual determination in my bones, and I spun as I transitioned between the very moves that I could not do moments ago.

I managed a soft landing. I smiled some. Classmates clapped and cheered.

I did it. But inside, I was trembling. I knew I was about to fall apart. I changed back into my clothes quickly, gathered my affairs, and threw them into my duffle bag. I strode out of the studio and into the cutting cold of Beijing’s winter.

I dared not look up at anyone as I half ran towards my bicycle, because tears started to drench my fast mask. I cried all the way home, sight blurry, and almost crashed into the delivery guys whizzing around in their scooters. I got home in one piece, tried not to yell at the kids for not being in bed already, gave them hugs as they ran towards me in such delight to see me and such a legitimate excuse to delay bedtime. I shuffled them back into their bedrooms and got them to agree to stay in bed. I went to my hot shower, where I could really cry and no one would know nor hear, for how can one tell whether it was tears or simply, shampoo water running down? I saw the puffy eyes in the mirror as I got dressed. But then I smiled. I did it tonight. I would do it again.

9pm. Ready for a Zoom call with the UK on bringing workplace mental health synergies across the seas…

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