Reform

Victoria Shi

In a desperate effort to navigate this world, I observed policies and literature, behaviour and law, but glass handcuffs still bind me, iron glasses still blind me.

Motivation is a powerful, mystical force, shrouded and unclear to even the one that holds it. The perfect truth eludes us all, but its illusion is exploited in creamy promises, velvety promises, slightly smoked until golden promises, always chasing the next trendy flavour until the world is handed over to us, for our entire seizing. What do I do with it? I can’t possibly act, what if I leave a mark? What if I leave a mark? What if I leave a MARK?

I’ve been pensive about human beings long enough to recognise our innate susceptibility to self-destruction. We’re masochists, at the core. Pleasure and pain lie on the same continuum. So why should I be one more fuck-up in a world of fuck-ups? I sold my voice to the distinguished and the influential, long ago. Traded in my youthful and exuberant garments and adorned myself comfortably in grey. You can’t inflict hurt if you barely exist.

What makes me think my opinion matters? Thinking you’re individual, that takes narcissism, and our leaders overdose on it. Of course I want to say my mind works in brilliant ways, of course I do. But it’s the same mind marred by vices; greed and doubt and fear and desire and instant gratification. How can I trust myself to do good?

And so I sat, in the heart of the city, with the heavy realisation that I don’t understand humankind, not even myself.

Collect my tears in styrofoam cups.

Disposable, once out of my sight, are someone else’s problem.

Until they amass, polluting the world that I and everyone I love live in.

How can I be okay with creating waste? How can anybody?

This was written around 1am in the morning, stretched just about to my breaking point. Many of these thoughts had been internalised for a while and unable to be expressed in words, but somehow during an ordinary day, I was weaving through a crowd in the city on my way home when the last lines stuck in my brain. The rest came that night, I couldn’t sleep and every few minutes I’d turn my light on, scribble down a few lines, thinking I’d eased out my ruminations, try to go back to sleep, only to turn my light on again. This was not about politics but rather the human condition itself, although, it can be read that way. I don’t usually entertain myself with politics but with my first ever time voting in the upcoming federal election, it’s plausible to assume that things just fall out either via desperation or some ethereal sort of serendipity. Either way, the following part offers a contemplative conclusion after a more sober read through of the rudimentary notes. 

It’s occurred to me, though, that I can’t sit back and let them create waste. I want to take part in creating culture, not consuming the culture of whatever spiteful, vindictive, poisonous agendas we have grown accustomed to. I have silenced myself for fear of messing up this already complex world, but there definitely exists those who have pure intentions and good nature. I’m joining them and reclaiming something. And if I fuck up, the consequences will at least be smaller in magnitude than those by the dominant presence that have generated disillusionment, apathy and negligence in myself and the younger generation. Because the worst thing you can possibly do is to think you can’t do anything about it.

Save the trees.