meanwhile, my sleep schedule has descended to the chaos of 4am-2pm
I’m aware of the significance of this one year ahead of me, but sometimes I just don’t budge. It’s when I’m back in Hong Kong my pace has been disrupted, distractions are apparent, sleep is hard, and I realise how so much of life has been rooted in this new place I don’t call ‘home’. Way less severe than the degree of an absence in culture, but it’s the occasional waves of unfamiliarity that plant such indispensible seeds inside of me. In fact, this place i call ‘home’ has grown without me, the sea of white uniforms with royal blue belts, once pride in the aesthetic of our uniforms now blatantly stares back as nurses’ aprons. As much as I feel a variety of cultures, mines lingers at the edge of extinction- the specific fusion of Hong Kong and the West. Or maybe all these so called ‘cultures’ will extinguish in university, while new cultures form- a wider community of belonging.
As much as I detest this past weeks’ laziness and the repressed guilt haunts me, I keep this sacred space of night to myself. It’s the need to stay up doing unproductive, enjoyable things after a long, tired day, because if freedom can’t be tasted, I am willing to sacrifice my rest for this illusion of control and order. And it’s some undistinguishable tranquility, unique to the late nights that screams in silence. That I am the sole consciousness in this home, all is still, even a pin drop disrupts this peace; maybe it’s another illusion, but one of safety that I am free to contemplate without disruption, free to waste this time as ultimately it is the act of choosing that matters. The nights are different to there- here when I look out and see the blazing skyscrapers that tower and crowd in this bounded infinite, the lights that scream glamour, success and prestige, unlike the little town of Cheltenham where i can only see the line of three storey houses on the opposite street, a sheltered community, safe and distant from all, infused by an air of academics and not innovation.
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