Time, Space, Past.

The act of writing often is made out to be a form of informing, arguably the communicating of information from Person A to Person B through text. Maybe the act of writing can also be a deliberation of past choices: thought exercises on "have-beens" and the coming to terms of one's own existence thus far.

During periods in my existence, I have often wondered if there were a chance to relive or at least un-make and re-make certain key decisions made in my past. Everyone at certain points wish to undo regrets, and as a manner of process, try to pinpoint that specific decision that "caused it all". This is as it were, in my opinion, a fallacy often committed by certain historians. Given unlimited decisions committed as a result of innumerable causes, I believe chaos theory trumps determinism. There is no sure way that that single "screw-up" corrected will lead to a better life now, or in time maybe even that "screw-up" may be a blessing in disguise. But why then does one bother to think of correcting past have-beens if there is no concrete use-value to all that reminiscing?

Oh, I used the word "use-value". Marxist hard logic and the thing we always try to accumulate in this realistic society. See my inevitable steeping into the money rat race? But I digress.

Mikhail Bakhtin's theories thus come to my mind. I am a sojourner of my past, taking mental day trips to periods of have-beens and once-been. I write and view my own histories in my mind, and in writing or at least parsing all that past into understandable portions, maybe I am creating a Bakhtinian chronotope of my life story. It bears cold comfort when I am in a black mood, but at least thinking about the past distracts me from the bothersome present at a very basic level.

At another level perhaps I am engaging in heteroglossia, and maybe in my construction of dialogues between characters in my life and myself, I find something essential about the way I see things. And I find exploring, categorizing and recognizing the infinalizability of my being a fruitful exercise on two levels (again): one as distraction from present troubles, and two as a more concrete stepping board to making decisions in the present with consideration for the past and the future.

Don't know who will read this, but there's the fun in it all. This is my dialogic imagination at work. And the takeway?

I make slow decisions, but stick to them, as my Being depends on it.

There Be Sense in Fate's Madness?

Ah the happy days come. Holidays now and a time to go traipsing, meet people and let the mind drift in preparation for practicum.

Practicum. Rolls off the tongue smoothly, but how many not in the business know exactly what is this "internship" (my mum calls it that) about, or the assorted trepidation, anxiety, rush and hard work associated with it?

The postings for both prac and final school are out, and sadly again Fate dealt me something completely random. Let's just say HQ did not accede to the request put in by a certain school after an interview.

Don't even know how to feel about a workplace 5 minutes walk away. Just do it, and try to perform well, twin wise-sayings I have no choice but to adhere to.

And Susan Ang got it spot on perhaps. Maybe I do have the face for a certain type of school...

That aside, have you have the experience of letting past monsters slip one past all the defenses that you have erected? Faceless numbers already alien and names I can curse freely sometimes do come back to haunt you, in the form of baseless discoveries and "sightings" by someone who matters. And it's agonizing in the way misunderstandings develop and yet you are always in the wrong, and you know you are indeed in the wrong for not deleting certain stuff. But yet to delete and forget is to remember, to leave things alone is to completely nullify their significance in my life. Do you understand?

Onwards educators, censor to save your life, take on personas to baffle those who surely come a-nosing, during and after practicum!