Shattering Dreams
It was the wee hours of the morning - about 2am. Nia and I sat outside the balcony with my draping underwears and odd assortment of clothes. I didn't care and she didn't mind. It was a lovely night.
Sitting before me was this Sri Lankan woman with olive brown skin. She was still youthful but her eyes showed a maturity and stress beyond her years. I smiled fondly at my old student. Many years ago she was one of my brightest protégé. She had a vision unlike so many others. In the unit Documentary, Nia engaged with the debacles of truth and objectivity, and with the constitutions and conditions of cinematic verisimilitude. She had a romantic but diaphanous objective to be a documentary filmmaker. But her spirit was indomitable. I often remind myself that machines and bodies do not make this world. Dreams do. Nia had a dream and she sat with me with visions exploding before her mind.
Three years have passsed and she is still chasing after the wake of Hope. She was determined to catch-up and to pummel this 'thing' called 'Hope' until it submitted to her aspirations. Now she works for 3 Minute Angels. It is a company that offers massages to anyone in a bar, club, office or even shopping centre. The price of a massage is dependent upon the customer's generosity. She advanced from cherub to angel (erroneous in medieval angelology but the company uses this hierarchy), from angel to archangel and from archangel to GOD (Guardian of Domain). Nia has risen the ranks in three years. Now she is looked-upon as a guardian of celestial beings with miraculous hands. What success she has wrought from the days of poverty. Yet in the dim yellow glow of my balcony, she lamented her position in life.
Her hands flayed and punctuated the air with aggressive strikes and frustrated waves. She saw her dream decay beneath the onslaught of work and financial worries. Every month she saves a large portion of her pay so that she may one day buy her camera. But that day seems so, so far away. I looked at her and shook my head in dismay. I was proud of what she had become and how she was still striving towards her emancipatory dreams of exposing the horrors in Sri lanka. But I was disheartened with myself.
Everyday I walk into class to express the passion of knowledge and the commitment to the philosophies of life. I say to my students that there is nothing in which you may not achieve or become so long as your heart beats to the rhythm of your prescient visions. I said that four years ago and I still say it today. But here, sitting before me, is the failure of my teachings. I asked Nia to follow her dreams yet what is a dream without food to fuel or clothes to warm the roaming mind? What anti-oppressive politics is left in this world which has not been molested by capitalism? Sitting before me is a woman with dark rings around her eyes. He condition speaks voluminous. She is not tired from the demands of her work. She is tired from waiting. She is tired of hoping. There is only so much that a person may hold onto before his/her arms tire and let go. Nia is still brave and gung-ho, but for how long? Have I inadvertently shattered her dreams by being so foolishly idealistic?
The writer's skin is once again open to judgement and condemnation. I have my own dreams but they are wasted away each way I turn, each step I make. I see broken passions and littered hopes around me. Each wafting away from the intangible and the ethereal bodies of these fantasies. How to I teach material reality when it is visions that creates the world? I am without answers. But this is the price we all pay for civilisation.
Sitting before me was this Sri Lankan woman with olive brown skin. She was still youthful but her eyes showed a maturity and stress beyond her years. I smiled fondly at my old student. Many years ago she was one of my brightest protégé. She had a vision unlike so many others. In the unit Documentary, Nia engaged with the debacles of truth and objectivity, and with the constitutions and conditions of cinematic verisimilitude. She had a romantic but diaphanous objective to be a documentary filmmaker. But her spirit was indomitable. I often remind myself that machines and bodies do not make this world. Dreams do. Nia had a dream and she sat with me with visions exploding before her mind.
Three years have passsed and she is still chasing after the wake of Hope. She was determined to catch-up and to pummel this 'thing' called 'Hope' until it submitted to her aspirations. Now she works for 3 Minute Angels. It is a company that offers massages to anyone in a bar, club, office or even shopping centre. The price of a massage is dependent upon the customer's generosity. She advanced from cherub to angel (erroneous in medieval angelology but the company uses this hierarchy), from angel to archangel and from archangel to GOD (Guardian of Domain). Nia has risen the ranks in three years. Now she is looked-upon as a guardian of celestial beings with miraculous hands. What success she has wrought from the days of poverty. Yet in the dim yellow glow of my balcony, she lamented her position in life.
Her hands flayed and punctuated the air with aggressive strikes and frustrated waves. She saw her dream decay beneath the onslaught of work and financial worries. Every month she saves a large portion of her pay so that she may one day buy her camera. But that day seems so, so far away. I looked at her and shook my head in dismay. I was proud of what she had become and how she was still striving towards her emancipatory dreams of exposing the horrors in Sri lanka. But I was disheartened with myself.
Everyday I walk into class to express the passion of knowledge and the commitment to the philosophies of life. I say to my students that there is nothing in which you may not achieve or become so long as your heart beats to the rhythm of your prescient visions. I said that four years ago and I still say it today. But here, sitting before me, is the failure of my teachings. I asked Nia to follow her dreams yet what is a dream without food to fuel or clothes to warm the roaming mind? What anti-oppressive politics is left in this world which has not been molested by capitalism? Sitting before me is a woman with dark rings around her eyes. He condition speaks voluminous. She is not tired from the demands of her work. She is tired from waiting. She is tired of hoping. There is only so much that a person may hold onto before his/her arms tire and let go. Nia is still brave and gung-ho, but for how long? Have I inadvertently shattered her dreams by being so foolishly idealistic?
The writer's skin is once again open to judgement and condemnation. I have my own dreams but they are wasted away each way I turn, each step I make. I see broken passions and littered hopes around me. Each wafting away from the intangible and the ethereal bodies of these fantasies. How to I teach material reality when it is visions that creates the world? I am without answers. But this is the price we all pay for civilisation.
posted by Insouciantfemme at 8:45 pm
2 Comments:
Hi Insouci, has been a week of tumult and chaos, each day another location and I am tired from persuading, cajoling and encouraging. I am so enjoying your comments - the length does not trouble me - the content is so interesting - but I have been too distracted by the mundane to indulge in a reply.
Still I like this new start - Your lament reminds me of parts of Neruda's poem - "There is no clear light"
.... And there are other memories, still looking for something to bite,
like fierce, unsatisfied teeth.
They gnaw us to the last bone, devouring
the long silence of all that lies behind us.
Perhaps that's it, the real mystery
Life, steady flow of emptiness
which filled this cup with days and shadows,
all brightness buried like an old-time prince
in his own infirm and mineral shroud,
until we are so behind that we don't exist.
To be and not to be - thats what life is
Of all that I was, I bear only these cruel scars,
because these griefs confirm my very existence.
A teacher I was working with on Friday talked about promises. To say "I am a teacher" is to make promises to students, promises that we must be faithful to - You care ... it will keep you faithful to your students ... you will keep the promises. Your students will value your belief in them. I would always choose to learn from a "dream releaser" - a teacher who allowed me "hope" - for even in the raw disappointment I would know I was alive.
Hah! I love that line. "To say 'I am a teacher' is to make promises to students, promises that we must be faithful to." That is an unquestionable honesty. And I am now inspired to write.
Hope everything else goes well artichoke. Your everyday routine sounds like it's draining you. Go to the nearest Chinese herbal shop and get some dried turtle shell, bat wings and a cockroaches' leg or two. Boil it for 3 hours and it should be good for the drinking - but I shouldn't recommend it. lol! I guarantee, however, that it would spice up your life... for about 3 seconds. :)
Seriously, take care. Have been missing your musings on ICT.
Post a Comment
<< Home