O Help!

Why am I in this course. Why Why Why ? Why was I mad enough? I should have known better... I am not creative enough... think girl think... go girl! You are such an ass PeiLin why on earth did you do this module? See lah. Clever lah. Now see how dead you are going to be. My head oh my head. I still can't think of a story for this module.

It's enough to drive me into existentialist angst. I still can't think. I want to sleep... I am so tired... Shall i use baudelaire for my Lit project. O wait a minute, I prefer the brothers karamazov. Or maybe steppenwolf. No wait, think girl think! focus. The darn project is due this friday. Dammit nothing is coming.

i must not sleep i must not. i have to keep awake. Oh Goo ..sh.. no no no ...

Music. Bach. Must get the CD. Must switched off the Cd player. Mummy oh gosh scold for wasting electricity. But so tired. So tired. Yes. So tired. Sleep for a while. Wake up later. But I never will must force myself.. The project the project... test ... haven't studied. Oh no. Dostoevsky ... the damn presentation I have to I have I ...O Go..

With that, she drifted off to sleep unwillingly, her mind whirling and spinning. Her body however would not obey. She was struggling the classic battle between mind and body, a struggle that the ancients and poets have engaged in... why have religion and the cult of the mind been so important in history?


For it gives the promise that we can transcend our bodies. Which entraps us in our skin and veins and without it we will be a faint vapour out there and soon nothing.

Yet that sense of entrapment which we often feel with circumstances is nothing more than the frustration of being fettered to a body. Long, short fat thin, they restrict us, not allowing to expand and engulf the world as we want to take the vastness of the world into ourselves until we prove supreme... the "I" in which everything is swallowed...

They are a physical reminder that we cannot run faster, or play the piano better. And so we do exercises. Basketball, skipping, anything to extend our bodies, to widen that space which we can claim as our own. And we retreat in mysticism and intellectualism in hope that we can "like certain Buddhists whose ascetic practices enable them to see a whole landscape in a bean" (Barthes S/Z). That we can master the world by holding its core in our minds if not our bodies.

the airplane climbed higher and higher. with a whoop of astonishment, she realised she was piloting it real well for a first timer.
And yet, after the excitement of the piloting the airplane for the first time wore off, she felt that oh so familar sinking sick disappointment in her stomach.

The fluffy clouds which she dreamt of seeing in her childhood looked disappointingly insubstantial, more like strings of cotton wool.
suddenly with a gasp of horror, she realised that she had allowed the airplane to climb too far up, and she was losing control.

that familiar sense of vertigo hit her once more. she begin spinning down into a deep dark hole, nver ending and she could not stop the ascend. faster and faster she flew down....


with a shudder. she woke up.
It was a dream. But why the same dream which haunted her in her childhood, the same one which she had everyafternoon when she was in her grandmother's place


was it a fear of losing control ? or merely a replication of the fear all infants go through when they make their way out of their mother's womb ? Or even the effacement of personality ?
why ? and that very real sensation of spinning !
When she woke up, she realised that her legs were thrashing and tears were running down her face. Why ?

So tired she lay back shaking and soon fell asleep again




Gosh what a beautiful place!
she gasped in amazement the streets were paved with gold... an extremely familar scene.
One she had imagined when she was immersed in stories from the bible, long ago.
Could it be true?
a shiver of fear ran down her spine..
She reached down and touched the pavement. Her hand merely passed through the pavement.
She was no longer solid! She had fulfilled her dream of being pure spirit and leaving behind the constraints her body always placed on her.
And yet, though the thought was exhilarating, it was frightening. Extremely. For if she was no longer body and spirit where was she? What was she?


it can't be true. it can't. After a long and agonising childhood and teenagehood. She had decided to shelf the grand question of the existence of God for another time. Another time when she would perhaps be older. Have the time to understand Hegel. Or Kierkegaard. Or if she could no longer care about what truth was. For the thought of a meaningless world was frightening and she had to run away.
And yet,
If it were true, she would be damned... as she knew well
she was an infidel.
The voice in her head scream " it's not fair!" There were so many other things so many other factors...
and yet... she knew the "truth"...

It was going to be a long night. 5 a.m.
It's all the lecturer's fault. She swore quietly and struggled to sleep again, knowing she was too weary to do any decent work.

Click here to go to comments.

Click here to go to the Contents page.