Beauty and the World

A few days ago I watched Forbidden Kingdom, and besides thinking it was very corny and cheesy and cliched, I also found it kind of bland. It’s a Western rendering ofthe traditional Eastern legend of the Monkey King, and quite frankly, I didn’t really find it all that unique or special. One thing I did find interesting though, is the female lead, “Golden Sparrow”. By now, it’s redundant to say that she’s very pretty, so I instead I will talk about looking her up. I have a habit of looking up interesting people, and I like to wiki their bios to get a sense of how they grew up, what were some experiences they have gone through, what has changed their lives, etc. In the past, I’ve always looked up extremely successful people, whether they may be intellectuals or pop stars, but I don’t recall ever having looked up a female actress. I read a bit of her bio (she’s only one year older than I am!), and didn’t get much out of it. I tried a few fan-sites, but those were just boring adulation. After reading a few pages of the praises and compliments, I found the whole notion to be a “fan” very interesting. I got into a few of the comments, looked at a few of the pics, and started to feel a bit “fan-like” myself.

And then I switched to the google map I was looking at. Before looking up the actress, I was looking at a world map because I was reading about the Indian-Pakistan conflict in the backdrop of the Mumbai attacks, and switching from “fan-state” to “global view” was quite an interesting view. From the perspective in which a whole world’s worth of  attention is thrown onto the actress, to the perspective of the whole world as countries and blotches of land was surreal, not only because of there was the dramatic shift from human emotion to lifeless landscapes, but also because of the difference in scale. How is it that so much attention (including my own) can be so thus absorbed by a single person, and how it is that this person is only one of billions in the map I look upon. The map does not show the interactions of the people who inhabit it. I am here, I have my sphere of interactions: the people I know, the things I do, my inclinations, my goals, etc, etc. She is there, in her sphere of interactions, yet her sphere is like an invisible yarn that stretches from movies and shows she is acting in and makes a connection to all those who watch. This much is true for the celebrities of movies I have come to know through their acting. And yet, although their high profile puts them out there in the limelight for people like me to see, they do not see me, the “commoner”.

The juxtaposition of social scale (fame, recognition) with geographical and physical scale (the sheer number of humans that inhabit this world) clashes and contradicts with one another. From the fray comes the understanding of different kinds of reality: the social mental, versus the literal physical. Which is more real? What should be more deeply understood to cultivate a stronger sense of self in this realization?  The internet does crazy things like this and blows everything up to much greater proportions. It extends the reach of social status of celebrities to millions more people, but at the same time, it allows the million of people to recognize the existence of one another. The internet may be the cruellest joke played on humanity yet.

Different Paths

In Chinese class today we learned about the Song Dynasty scholar poet Su Shi–a man known not only for his poetry, but also for nearly all other forms of literature at the time. In particular, there was this one prose/poem mix that Su Shi wrote about his experience in the Wu moutains, how the sight was so marvelous and overwhelming that he was in no mood to write poems but simply to admire and absorb the wonders around him. However, as a famous poet, he found himself urged by the fellow travelers in the mountains to write poetry on the occasion, and so he did.

According to what my professor said, the role of poetry at the time played a unique role of bringing places into the scope of the literary radar: what is written about a place serves to define it for future readers. It is with this context that Su Shi roams the mountain, and he recalls various poems such as one by the Tang poet Li Bai that is also written about the mountain. As he observes the sights around him, Su Shi recalls the literature of scholars in the past and notes how these poems captured  a view of the mountain–a fleeting, temporal frame in the vastness of time and space. Likewise, for himself, his poems will only capture the scenes he chooses to write about, and even then his perspective is limited to certain parts of the mountain. In other words, the wholeness of the mountain can never be captured–there is always a different approach, a different path to be written about.

This realization has made the experience difficult to grapple: on the one hand, Su Shi felt the reflexive need to write poetry and capture the scene; on the other hand, there is the stark realization in the futility of the attempt, exemplified by the limited nature of the poems other scholars have written in the past. So instead of writing about the great mountains and his experiences, Su Shi decides to write deceptively simplistic poems that subtly express his frustration never being able to express the mountain in its totality.

I found this frustration carried into my own case. I had an entire vision for myself laid out for my academic career, complete with a path, a plan, and a goal. However, upon looking up the Facebook profiles of a few high accomplishing friends who I have not kept in touch with in a while, I find myself envying some of the exciting paths they have decided to take. And yet, I also recognize that they have chosen their path as I have chose my own–mine is not particularly better or worse, but simply different. Everyone makes decisions, and these decisions results in paths. Simple, it seems, but with so many opportunities available, with so many possibilities, the frustration comes from wanting them all. But, just as Su Shi wanted to express the whole mountain and ended up only to express his frustration, I should recognize that the same would go for me if I didn’t stick to my path.

That’s what makes each individual unique, I guess.