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Tag Archives: life

Loneliness and solitude

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by Betty Zhang in Petit Passages

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feelings, life, loneliness, musings, prose, solitude, thoughts, writer, writing

snow tumblr alone girl sad emo winter pale goth ice aestheticWhat an awful word L O N E L I N E S S is! An illness of one, the words ‘illness’ and ‘one’ literally in it, along with ‘lone’ and ‘ill’. The word is most potently representative of its meaning when written in upper case letters spaced far apart, as I saw it on television this morning. Ten letters equal in height, spelling out the bleakest emotional landscape of all. L O N E L I N E S S. ‘I am so lonely, I need somebody’: loneliness is the desire for company and warmth, a shivering stranger pining for that phantom hut in the snow, glowing hearth ‘neath thatched roof under starry sky, the hearth an earthly star to the crescent moon formed by a semicircle of friends conversing jovially in its fiery berth. What warmth; what company. But the word we are discussing here is one of coldness; it even looks cold to the eye. ‘i’ is almost in the middle of the word (L O N E L I N E S S), the smallest letter, taking the least space. I suppose existence becomes faint when one cannot put oneself in relation to others. If there is no-one to recognise you for who and what you are, how and why do you exist? There is no ‘u’ in loneliness. Loneliness is an illness of one.

S O L I T U D E, on the other hand, trumps soldier with attitude, the word S O L D I E R almost entirely in it. There is an ‘i’ and a ‘u’, an ‘ode’ and a ‘soul’: an ode to your soul. Unlike its pneumonic cousin above (L O N E L I N E S S), it is stoic and unwavering in appearance. It does not cry out for company. Instead, S O L I T U D E celebrates the strength and freedom wielded by a company of one. Even far apart and in upper case the letters look sturdy and well-defined, rooted in confidence. S O L I T U D E commands not attention but admiration, self-admiration: ‘I am my own person, large and full of multitudes’. It is the friend of quiet contemplation and artistic expression—one reads, paints, writes, composes best when alone. ‘I am a complete, wholesome soul all by myself, my existence needs no reassurance for I am sure of myself,’ the word announces, proud on a podium.

Solitude is a closed fist punching the air, loneliness is a limp hand begging to be held. I punch the air. I march to the beat of my own drums. To the steady beat of my heart I say to myself: ‘I am, I am, I am’.

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Girl in blue: a 25-year journey through time and colour

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

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aesthetics, blue, fandom, girlhood, growing up, hipster, indie, internet, lana del rey, life, music, personal, personal development, social media, tumblr

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It was the opposite back then: I was always a pink girl. When I was the age girls are when all they want to do is become a princess, and so make up for their lack of birthright by dressing up thus, I wanted everything pink. Pink for my Barbies and me. Pink stickers, pink toys, pink hairbands and clothes. Of course, my complexion means that Continue reading →

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Max Errman, “Desperata: Prose for a Way Out of Life”

25 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Petit Passages

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anxiety, desiderata, escape, life, max ehrmann, modernity, poet, poetry, prose, writer, writing

bear illustration.jpgWent to bed last night with the realisation that all the world’s a sham, except maybe the art of bread-making. Supplying fresh wholesome handmade loaves to the local community, donating what’s left at the end of the day to charity. Betty’s Bakery. No! That means Continue reading →

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Good buy Greek deli

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

business, change, childhood, food, growing up, life, memory, migrant, migration, nostalgia, prose, writer, writing

old deli.jpeg

There’s something incredibly comforting about Greek delis—the grubbier a deli is, the more homely I find it. This has everything to do with The Greek Deli being a permanent fixture of my Inner West upbringing and also says everything about mine being a creature of habit, in other words a lamenter of change. Continue reading →

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Can’t buy me love

26 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

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life, love, marriage, music, musings, Opinion, romance, song, the beatles, thoughts, writer, writing

the beatles.jpg

“Tell me that you want those kind of things/That money just can’t buy/I don’t care too much for money/For money can’t buy me love”: these are the words of wisdom sang by Paul McCartney on The Beatles’ 1964 hit “Can’t Buy Me Love” which he wrote with John Lennon. They send me soul-searching every time I hear it, and I hear it a lot because A Hard Day’s Night is one of my favourite albums. Continue reading →

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The loneliest second

06 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

anxiety, career, happiness, happy new year, life, memoir, new year, new year's resolutions, personal, writer, writing

cinderella gif.gif

Every year, on the 31st of December, the old year and the new are separated by a flimsy second at 23:59:59. For me, not for as long as I remember but as the years piled on and forced me into the 25th anniversary of my existence with an unrelenting hand, that second is the loneliest, saddest, most hateful out of all the 31,536,000 seconds there are in a year. Continue reading →

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My Anglo-American Christmas

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

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america, books, charles dickens, christmas, cinema, culture, england, family, film, food, harry potter, history, holidays, j. k. rowling, life, memory, movie, music, nostalgia, pop culture, reading, television

vintage christmas.jpg

I am Chinese, my family is small and we are not religious. We don’t do gifts and parties, nor do we transform our home into a tricolour tinsel and cedar wonderland. I never even believed in Santa, thanks to my mother’s casual ‘Santa and magic and stuff are not real, it’s all made up’ when I was very young.

For Christians, Christmas is the birth of Jesus. For the non-religious, it is about Santa, reindeers, and snow. For us, it is a time to eat together: we mark the day celebrated by many with food and family, the pillars of Chinese culture, and I would not have it any other way.

But Christmas itself—be your take on it Christian or capitalist—is not Chinese, no matter how I celebrate it. Christmas in my mind is a kaleidoscope of Anglo-American sights and sounds. Continue reading →

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Resume of a pigeon

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Uncategorized

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animal, career, funny, humor, internet, life, pigeon, resume, wit, work, writer, writing

SONY DSC

Career objective: to swoop and poop whenever and wherever the urge strikes. Continue reading →

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Rebel Without a Cause (1955): a retrospective

21 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Opinion, Reviews

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adulthood, cinema, film, hollywood, james dean, life, prose, rebel without a cause, retrospective, teenager, vintage, writer, writing

rebel-without-a-cause

The disillusioned teenager in me never died. James Dean called and I answered; that is to say, his brutally realistic portrayal of troubled teen Jim Stark reminded me of myself all those years ago—I think 15 is the average age at which one sheds their childhood coil—when, along with my peers, it became more apparent than ever to us that pain and suffering are inevitable, as is death.

The angst was real and it was raw. For the hypersensitive ones who felt and thought about everything deeply and personally, creative expression Continue reading →

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Writing

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Notes

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

life, Notes, writer, writing

writing-tumblr

I write because I don’t know how else to live.

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