Category Archives: On My Mind

On My Mind

On Regret

2 Comments

We were were sitting at the base of a crag eating apple slices, chatting with another pair of climbers about things like job interviews, health insurance, and courage. After they packed up to go, I mentioned that it was lack of bravery on my part that led me to say yes to my current job. It was not at all what I had imagined for myself after years of the sights and sounds of big cities, and the idea of going someplace so small was not as prestigious as what I’d thought working in Europe could be like. I wanted a better work-life balance, a society with social ideals, and a change of perspective, but I also thought I wanted a bit of glamour.

Fast forward a couple years: It turns out I love living here and am far more comfortable with my role in a small family-like school than I was in an environment with higher stakes all around. There’s a lot more to life than big names and big cities. And Weimar, as it turns out, is known for ideas and culture. It is also home to the people I’ve become close to, who are lovely indeed.

The question surprised me when it came because I hadn’t thought of it myself: Do you regret it?

No, not at all.

We finished the apples, reorganized the rope, and tied back in. Time to move on.

But I’ve been thinking about the question, and what I’ve found most interesting is not that it was asked, but that I hadn’t asked it. That’s not to say it’s been easy moving here, and being in a bigger city would have made certain things significantly easier at the beginning. My early blog posts about the move to Weimar only scratch the surface of everything I was holding inside at that time, and some old voice memos indicate that I’d been lying awake. But regret? Even when it was hard, there was no regret. I’d made a choice, and I’d made the choice for a reason, and that was the best I could do at that time. Perhaps it wasn’t the best reason and perhaps something else would have come along had I waited patiently, but I didn’t want to wait. I wanted the certainty of knowing. I had savings from years in Singapore, I saw a climbing hall when I looked at a map, and that was good enough.

Making choices means that we’ll never know what would have happened had we made a different choice. While I can smile at the question of what my life would have become had I, at 19 or 20, learned Italian and gone to Florence for a semester as I’d planned upon entering university, I don’t need to spend any more time thinking about it. I made a different choice and that was that. It was the best I could do at the time, and the only thing I can do going forward is remain aware of what has developed since. Just because I made a choice once doesn’t mean I have to make a similar choice in a similar situation in the future. Saying yes once because I didn’t want to wait doesn’t mean I have to say yes the next time.

Learning from an experience must not mean regretting having had the experience. Unfortunately, negative experiences are excellent teachers, and I find that we need those sometimes. When everything is easy, there’s little opportunity for reflection, and it is through reflection that we grow. I don’t see that as something to regret.

Do I regret moving here? Do I regret my impatience in wanting a job? Do I regret giving up the dreams of glamour and prestige?

No.

In the end, Weimar had a climbing hall and I’ve always been one to choose the café on the corner over the hot new spot. Maybe I know myself better than I thought.

On My Mind

Making Music

3 Comments

I don’t pick up my guitar very often, and certainly not as often as I would in my fantasy image of myself (in which I also fearlessly climb hard things outdoors, have more reliable hair, and tend a successful vegetable garden), but I go through phases where I really enjoy playing. I enjoy the feeling of the strings under my fingers, I enjoy the size of the instrument between my arms, and I enjoy being able to make something beautiful.

I can tell it’s been a while since I’ve played when my fingers are sore and the strings rub in places not calloused by climbing. And I can tell that my hands remember how to play when I realize I’m playing without thinking. I’ve had a guitar for over 20 years, though nothing about how I can make it sound would suggest that.

An aspect of making music that never ceases to amaze me is how quickly the time goes. When I’m in the mood to play, I sit there until my fingers are too tired to continue, or until my neck is sore from bending over the strings to look at the chord charts on the phone in my lap. I spent my high school years performing in chorus concerts and musicals, and the times when I play guitar have become the times when I sing aloud, voice wavering in ranges that used to come easily. I’m always surprised when I check my watch – an hour already gone?

Talking about treasured items with friends many years ago, one looked at the guitar case sitting in my childhood bedroom and said, “That’s a good example – you’d never go anywhere without your guitar.” But even then, I knew that I would. I took lessons in high school and dismayed my teacher with my avoidance of practice, and I’m sure I didn’t take my guitar with me to university. I may have wanted to be that chill person who sat back and played (see above fantasy self), but I never was, and never actually tried to be. (There’s want and there’s want.) I’m fairly confident my guitar stayed at my parents’ place even when I shared an apartment in my last year of university, but it definitely moved with me to my first apartment after university. And then I moved to Malaysia with two suitcases and no guitar as a carry-on – again, I wasn’t that cool.

But the world spun around a little, and after a subsequent year in Singapore with two suitcases (still no guitar), I decided I wanted it again. I took that long-neglected guitar to New York, and then to Singapore, and then to Germany. It certainly has travelled, and having it makes me feel settled. Taking it out to play puts me in a place that I used to know well, and there aren’t so many places like that in my life anymore.

I’ve never taught anyone to play guitar, but I’ve shown people how to hold it, how to strum the strings, how to form simple chords. It’s easy, I always say, give it a try. And that’s another thing I love about playing guitar – it is easy to play, though, like anything, the room for complexity and beauty is not to be underestimated. I am by no means good or even decent at playing guitar, but I can read music, strum some chords, and sing along and that works for me. I don’t have to start from the beginning when I pick it up after a long while; I just have to take a few big steps back and slow down, which is not a bad thing for me. Just like at the climbing hall, I don’t mind the reminder of how far I have yet to go.

Playing guitar has not been the place where I frequently spend my spare time, but it’s always been there as something I enjoy. I am glad that I learned to read music, to understand chords, and to take care of my hands from a young age. I’m not an artist, but I know there’s something really special about creation, and it gives me a warm feeling. It’s something to get lost in and there are times when all I want to be is lost. I’ve never played often and I’ve never played well, but I’ve always been willing to start from wherever it is that I am.

And with that, it’s time to play.

Yunnan, China – November 2018
On My Mind

The Old House

Leave a comment

Whenever I dream of “home” I dream of the old house, specifically the kitchen, which was always my favourite room.

I remember the walls yellow and later orange-red, the cherry wood table and matching chairs stained with a blue accent that I knew was beautiful long before I was old enough to develop taste in furniture. I wonder if there are still math problems visible on the soft wood when the sun shines just right. I wonder if they can still be felt when you rub your finger along a seemingly smooth surface. It was always bright in the kitchen, even when it was dark outside, and I remember the upheaval of removing one pantry to build a desk and replacing the floor that children and toys had long treated too harshly.

The kitchen was the geographic centre of the old house, the first room you saw from the front door, and the first room you entered after bursting through the mudroom door in playclothes, smelling of sun and sweat or peeling off layers of snowpants and gloves. We did our homework at the kitchen table, ate dinner as a family, played board games, sat around to share the worst news and the best news. Almost every photo that we have from a birthday or holiday was taken in the kitchen. Every gathering with friends and extended family started and ended in the kitchen.

We always had a radio there and we listened to talk radio in the morning and music in the afternoon. Sometimes the bird was out on the island when we got home from school, and late in the evenings, the dog turned the island into a race track. The kitchen was the part of the house we lived in, and it’s the room I picture when I think about growing up.

I don’t remember much from my dream last night, but I was back in the old house, back in the old kitchen. I haven’t been inside since I moved to Malaysia nine years ago, shortly after which my parents sold the house and moved across town. I drove by once and soon I’ll drive by again to show it to someone who has only seen it through Street View on Google Maps. The photo there is of a house where I still lived, the car in the driveway not yet my brother’s. I wonder what it looks like now. I wonder what parts of it are best-loved now.

The kitchen is the room I always want to see when I visit a home for the first time. That’s the room I want to be in, the room where I feel most invited and most comfortable. Guests are shown first to other spaces, but kitchen parties are always the best parties. Time in someone’s kitchen is intimate, cozy, personal, and I think there’s some love there, too. It’s in the kitchen where we work alongside one another, where we see what’s not so tidy, where we take raw ingredients and make them into something magical.

It’s no surprise that the kitchen in my parents’ “new” house is the room I’ve spent the most time, the room I like best. It’s the first room you see from the side door, which is the only door they use, and it’s the room that contains the daily traces of people – reading materials left on the counter, coffee cups out ready for use, recipes tucked under the fruit bowl.

Last night I dreamed of the old house, which is always the case when I dream of “home”. My dream started and ended in the kitchen, and as always, it took me right back.

Vienna, Austria – January 2020