I seem to have passed an inordinate amount of time in recent weeks silently yelling at the world around me. This is obviously a fairly routine part of my existence, but of late I have felt an increasing need to hurl myself at speed toward Lamma's lukewarm sea and float seemingly calmly, the chaos of life blotted out by the reassuring silence of the ocean, throwing silent screams at the heavens above. I've finally concluded that my current need to vent is entirely due to the fact I feel trapped in this city. I've been here for five months, and have another four and a half before I leave (conveniently ignoring my brief foray to Thailand a few months ago) - leave to replace one island with another, as I bob across to Skye off the west coast of Scotland to hide away in an isolated cottage with the two people who, at times, seem to know me better than I know myself.
I don't feel like the person who said on a whim a few months ago that I'd amble across to the other side of the world and get a job. Climate conditions aside, I might as well be in the UK for all I feel I'm achieving here. I don't have the time to visit Asia - the new playground I was planning on frequently venturing to - and my one day off a week affords me the opportunity to do... not very much. I have tedious things like rental contracts and mobile phone contracts and broadband contracts; water bills and electric bills and gas bills. I spend my time thinking that one Ben and Jerry's less is one hour less of work in this cursed city; I turn off lights not to save the poor planet but to slightly lower costs for the month; I rely on the kindness of friends at the yacht club here to get any rowing done affordably. My goal of being in Hong Kong is to save money and I'm damn good at it - but it is unutterably draining working toward a goal that ultimately I disapprove of. I dislike the concept that money makes the world go round, and I'm perpetuating that belief by what I'm doing here, becoming part of the capitalist culture I abhor.
For the record, no, I don't feel as though I'm particularly denying myself anything by having one less ice-cream. I spend money on things that I want to spend money on: most of the time, I have two fresh bunches of flowers brightening my apartment, and if I see a book I want I will buy it without consideration for practicality or cost. Books are not, as someone recently suggested to me, 'dead trees'. They are dead trees brought back to life again; since I don't waste my time reading chick-lit rubbish or similar trash, each of the books I own has had some impact on my thinking, offered a new perspective, developed another philosophy. These books have made me the person I am today, and as such they have earned a place on my shelves. There are few things more comforting than running my eyes over a shelf of well-read and well-loved books; few things more exciting than surveying the endless pages yet to be turned and deciphered. Give me a shack within the sight and sound of the sea, filled with a plethora of books both read and unread, a few potplants arguing for space in corners, and a hammock strung idly through the centre, and I will be content for years.
With that final image in mind, I stay in Hong Kong. Knowing this is a temporary task that must be completed, a mission finished, before I am rewarded by a paradise on earth. I try and ignore that I am tutoring ungrateful students, making not a shadow of difference in their lives - maybe one day, in years to come, they'll look back and remember their slightly eccentric English tutor who told them that money would not buy them happiness and that they should find what makes them feel alive and pursue it with a single-minded devotion, unswayed by the outraged cries of parents' expectations. This whole job is a means to an end, and in two weeks' time I'll be half-way through my year long trial. The first six months have been used to settle into a niche out here, form friendships that I hope will never be broken, learn about myself in ways I hope will never be forgotten; now I need to launch myself at the next six months with a new determination to change the unsatisfactory aspects. I have so much free time I have idly planned trips that see me sailing about the world, cycling about the world, rowing about the world; I have imagined myself wandering from paradisical island to paradisical island, practised climbing palm trees and cracking coconuts a hundred times in my mind; climbed a thousand mountains and slept under a million stars. Now is the time to set those thoughts aside and focus my energies on something productive and somewhat more tangible in my free time. I'll let you know if any of my schemes take off.
'Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.'
No comments:
Post a Comment