Brief Intermission of Songs

I know I've linked the last song on this blog already but.. sometimes.. I'm just sitting in my car and listening to it on repeat. It gets me every time. The emotions he shows in his vocals. It's so good.

Memories before Australia: Part 1 - Surreal memories

Preface

Let us finally begin. It's been 2 years since I said I'd post about my journey. However, I think it's best that I start from the very beginning and go through nearly everything. A big reason for the delay was mainly cos I lost the feeling, the need to post. That and the fact that I wanted to upload iPhone images but it's a pain in the arse. These posts are going to be unusual. They'll be formatted into sections that will be easier for me to write and I think it'll help the whole thing come together fluidly. I'll be sharing my life memories here and there but I won't be including everything of course; it'll be things that's made me who I am today.

I think it's best at this point to introduce a prominent figure who will be a recurring theme in these stories: my mum. Her name literally means Nine in Vietnamese. The Viets have a tradition of naming their children after numbers (probably because they had lots) so naturally my mum was the 9th child. She wasn't the youngest though; I have an even younger uncle (he wasn't called ten) and apparently there was an 11th child who passed away due to illness. I'd probably have lots more uncles and cousins if living conditions weren't so poor. Anyways, all of this is supposed to help me build up to my name. My name came from an old way of saying numbers in Vietnamese (or so I believe) and it was given to me by my paternal grandpa. My name means three.

Surreal Memories

I don't have much of a recollection, especially in the earlier years. That's pretty natural for anyone though. But.. there were times where mum told me stories that made my memories felt so surreal yet somewhat unsatisfactorily important. It made me feel as if my brain concocted these memories to help me justify some of my distastes.

 Trips to the Hospital

 There's one very fond memory I have in particular but let's start with the context of it. Living conditions in Vietnam were shit, especially at the time I was born. My mum loved her vegies,especially boiled water spinach with fish sauce. It's popular in Vietnam because it is cheap, simple, easy to grow and the plain vegetable soup is often mixed with the rice for a quick meal. So as you can see, she wasn't really taking in the right nutrients to take care of me with breast milk but there was no other option. As such, I had diarrhoea quite often. 

Near the present day, mum would often tell me of my runny tales to which I have no recollection of. She said that I was a quiet baby, sleeping for the majority of the days and nights; she'd hold me in her arms and we'd sleep on the hammocks in the afternoons. And to show her vivid recollections, she would use Vietnamese onomatopoeia to demonstrate the explosive and uncontrollable diarrhoea I had while sleeping in her arms. There weren't nappies or anything so the poop would be all over my clothes and her. Every time she tells me of this story, it'd put a grin on my face mostly because of her "sound effects". And most importantly to me, it didn't seem like she complained one bit about what had happened but rather I got the feeling that she understood it was one of the hardships of being a mother in Vietnam.

Among these tales of diarrhoea, there was a few where I ended up in a hospital. I don't know if this is where the memory came from but it felt so surreal. Mum said that my maternal grandparents would often visit me whenever I was in the hospital and my paternal grandparents rarely did. So the memory I have till this day was of myself opening my eyes as an infant to see my maternal grandma looking down at me in a dimly-lit room. It's a simple memory and it may not be real but it means a lot to me. And as my telling of my childhood continues, hopefully people will appreciate and understand why.

 The old Preschool

I remember talking about this place before in this blog. It's similar to the above in the sense that I think I realised my surroundings but this time, as a toddler. Dad was overseas by the time I was 2-3 I think so it was mainly mum taking care of me. In this memory of mine, I saw her walking towards the rice fields past the preschool and I saw her. I walked towards the door but it was blocked by a wooden gate. It was one of those safety gates for stairs so that children don't stumble; it kinda looked like a pool gate, except, with wooden bars. And to me, it felt like I was trapped - it was a prison to me. I slid my arms between the bars and cried out to her. She just looked at me and walked away.

And I think this dream has stuck with me ever since I was a child. It gave me a sense of fear for losing the ones I care about. And at a young age, I began to unnecessarily worry about these things.

In a similar memory, I had dreamed of a large mechanical tortoise that terrorised the village I lived in. It looked like one of those daikaijus in Japanese tales, similar to Godzilla. Anyways, the tortoise rampaged the village and ate everyone, including my mum. Strangely enough he'd spit them back out but they had all turned into fish. I gently ran my fingers along the scales of one of the fish and cried to myself. This woke me from my nightmare. It felt really lonely.

To finish off this section, here's a picture of the place I was talking about. It was taken 2 years ago. It may or may not have been the preschool. My brain may have just made it all up. I'm not sure, but I think it did help me realise a few of the things that are important in life. Why I'm not sure if it's real? Well, the only solid memory of actual preschool at the age of 4 seemed like a time-skip. It was at a completely different location.



The place looks like it would collapse any time soon and I wouldn't be too surprised if it was gone in my next visit..

My Uncle

I have an auntie whose name literally means Four in English. She married a man from the jungle area of Vietnam. I may as well briefly introduce him here but I have very few memories of him; it's as if he never existed. To me, he seems to be lurking around there in a way that I sort of associate him with evil and the devil. May be a bit of a stretch, but it's because I don't really have any fond memories of him. There was a memory in particular which I don't know if it was real. It was basically him playing a tape with naked people in it, probably porn. He casually played it in the living room of the house and turned around to smile at me. I think I frowned and walked off.

With that last memory, I think it concludes my first section of the surreal memories. Gathering my thoughts and ideas and trying to recollect everything takes a while. And it's perhaps the biggest reason why I'm so hesitant to write. It's my whole life put in some form of chronological order after all.

A feeling

This morning I had a dream.. one I haven't had in a while.

In this dream, you were in it. You saw me and called out to me but I ignored you and waved to somebody else.

Your call eventually turned into a cry and you broke down. I looked at you and gently touched your face and walked away.

You continued crying but I just walked away.

And in this dream.. I saw myself and what I was doing. It seemed real because this is what I really felt, walking away,

But did you ever cry?

And when I woke up. My heart felt a heavy feeling. Is it normal? I can't seem to grasp when I last felt this, Is it sadness? I don't really know any more.

At times, I don't feel like I'm myself at all.


I'll post later tonight.