There is nothing special about the landscape that fits the window frame of my house, which sits on the 10th floor of a mini condo. Neighboring mini condos are juxtaposed side by side, touching the sky that seems so tiny in the framed landscape. Without looking out, I conjure up a typical morning scene around these buildings. People are busily walking amidst guards, who salute them off to work. Above everyone lies the sky that I am now gazing, from which some rain drops might fall at any moment. The sky of the last Wednesday morning of September is in the blue.
I habitually contemplate the landscape that passes through my eyes. Likewise, I believe that I am gazed by others, who contemplate their own landscape through which I habitually enter and exit. I am sensitive about these looks of others, and I trace them over and over again until I find satisfying answers. Tracing the gaze that falls on me is like an internalized ritual, which now I perform even without intending or being conscious of it. At one point, I wondered if I was good at this because I was born with overt sensitivity and burning desire to be a “kind” person who lives up to other people’s expectations. Although this might carry some truth, it utterly fails to explain the whole phenomena of who I am and how I am. My behaviors of mirroring myself in front of the gaze of the other are so automatic and mechanic that I am not that willful about this. I subconsciously prioritize certain looks over other looks based on power relations like social and political; but most intuitively, I am a person that reacts to people with more aesthetic or intellectual powers. The more exotic the quality of the other feels, the more I feel motivated; I let myself explore the newness of the other like an adventurer in the wilderness. I take pleasure in embodying everything about the person, even in ways of expressing emotions. When my relentless effort gets recognized by the other, who expresses great admiration for the similitude I enact, I own a sense of vitality. When the other, the object of my mirroring, disappears, my consciousness collapses. I try to stand up with my two feet, but my body-spirit is tamed to the reflexive habit from the past. Feeling helpless in revitalizing myself alone, I am coming to terms with the pattern of my normalized behavior that deserves a deep level of conscious observation.
When I was in the middle school, I was seen by others as a kind daughter, well-rounded friend, mature kid, and a student who knows how to behave. I also believed that I was full of these, so I never sidetracked. Once I arrived in the States, the shrewd sixteen-year-old me noticed that the American gaze worked in a quite different context. So I created new versions of myself like an Asian who speaks an impressive level of English, an Asian who blends well in American society, an Asian woman who is smart enough for both casual and intellectual conversations, and a well-rounded college student. Countless times, I trained myself to stand in front of the gaze of the other, whom I emulated one after another until I embodied the other near-to-perfect. Perhaps, none of these would’ve been any issue if I had adapted to different identities in process of enriching my secure identity. The problem was that I did not have a secure identity yet; before having my own, I learned to personify the other. By my seventh year in the States, I felt miserable and utterly confused amongst my multiple identities, which had no sense of gravity in reality.
When I noticed the pattern of my mirroring, I wanted to disown them. In hope of bleaching my void feeling, I trashed all girl-looking clothes, sold my 16-year-old flute at half-price, and withdrew from my graduate school, which was infiltrated by white and male professors, who failed to impress me in any respect. I cut my hairs and eventually shaved my head. My bald head seemed appropriate in claiming my determination to transform. I believed in erasing my identities by giving up privileges. But privileges were mere conditions. Just by ridding of conditions, I did not become free.
Now I got this. I learned that bleaching would not ultimately change anything. However, I also know that as foolishly adamant as I had been years ago, my actions, charged with anger and sadness, were intuitive ways of speaking out my inexplicably depressed feelings for the deprived dignity. In the midst of the transition from summer to fall, I contemplate on the idea of speaking in 'my' voice. Like in the novel Fugitive Visions by Jaen Jeong Trenka, I may have to learn again and yet again that what I see in the mirror is nothing but a fugitive vision.
I habitually contemplate the landscape that passes through my eyes. Likewise, I believe that I am gazed by others, who contemplate their own landscape through which I habitually enter and exit. I am sensitive about these looks of others, and I trace them over and over again until I find satisfying answers. Tracing the gaze that falls on me is like an internalized ritual, which now I perform even without intending or being conscious of it. At one point, I wondered if I was good at this because I was born with overt sensitivity and burning desire to be a “kind” person who lives up to other people’s expectations. Although this might carry some truth, it utterly fails to explain the whole phenomena of who I am and how I am. My behaviors of mirroring myself in front of the gaze of the other are so automatic and mechanic that I am not that willful about this. I subconsciously prioritize certain looks over other looks based on power relations like social and political; but most intuitively, I am a person that reacts to people with more aesthetic or intellectual powers. The more exotic the quality of the other feels, the more I feel motivated; I let myself explore the newness of the other like an adventurer in the wilderness. I take pleasure in embodying everything about the person, even in ways of expressing emotions. When my relentless effort gets recognized by the other, who expresses great admiration for the similitude I enact, I own a sense of vitality. When the other, the object of my mirroring, disappears, my consciousness collapses. I try to stand up with my two feet, but my body-spirit is tamed to the reflexive habit from the past. Feeling helpless in revitalizing myself alone, I am coming to terms with the pattern of my normalized behavior that deserves a deep level of conscious observation.
When I was in the middle school, I was seen by others as a kind daughter, well-rounded friend, mature kid, and a student who knows how to behave. I also believed that I was full of these, so I never sidetracked. Once I arrived in the States, the shrewd sixteen-year-old me noticed that the American gaze worked in a quite different context. So I created new versions of myself like an Asian who speaks an impressive level of English, an Asian who blends well in American society, an Asian woman who is smart enough for both casual and intellectual conversations, and a well-rounded college student. Countless times, I trained myself to stand in front of the gaze of the other, whom I emulated one after another until I embodied the other near-to-perfect. Perhaps, none of these would’ve been any issue if I had adapted to different identities in process of enriching my secure identity. The problem was that I did not have a secure identity yet; before having my own, I learned to personify the other. By my seventh year in the States, I felt miserable and utterly confused amongst my multiple identities, which had no sense of gravity in reality.
When I noticed the pattern of my mirroring, I wanted to disown them. In hope of bleaching my void feeling, I trashed all girl-looking clothes, sold my 16-year-old flute at half-price, and withdrew from my graduate school, which was infiltrated by white and male professors, who failed to impress me in any respect. I cut my hairs and eventually shaved my head. My bald head seemed appropriate in claiming my determination to transform. I believed in erasing my identities by giving up privileges. But privileges were mere conditions. Just by ridding of conditions, I did not become free.
Now I got this. I learned that bleaching would not ultimately change anything. However, I also know that as foolishly adamant as I had been years ago, my actions, charged with anger and sadness, were intuitive ways of speaking out my inexplicably depressed feelings for the deprived dignity. In the midst of the transition from summer to fall, I contemplate on the idea of speaking in 'my' voice. Like in the novel Fugitive Visions by Jaen Jeong Trenka, I may have to learn again and yet again that what I see in the mirror is nothing but a fugitive vision.
No comments:
Post a Comment