In media res. . .
Like most good books, dreams, or movies things seem to just pop into existence. At some point in my life my consciousness was born, although consciousness is a double edged sword, both a blessing and a curse. It felt like I had just arrived there I was in second grade when I realized my own being. There were memories scattered about from before that time, but it didn’t occur to me I was my own entity until then. My first moment of conscious action was in second grade when I told my 2nd grade teacher that I was going to play videogames for a living. But I’ve realized my story doesn’t actually begin there. Now through this autobiography I have been able to contemplate my own existence, This is a question that everyone should ask themselves regularly, “how did I end up here?“
Although my social ineptitude makes me clueless about my own generation, it is impossible for me to think about a world without Facebook, twitter, and all the social media I use to keep track of the fleeting experience that is life. I mean without my diary I can barely keep track of each day I live.
The Dark Ages
Let’s just call anything before the 1990s the dark ages, the land before time, or the great unknown. Where does this organism and consciousness start? Alan Watts has a fun lecture in which he tries to explain when kids are really born. Are they born at the moment of conception or the moment your dad, through that weird mix of brain chemicals, falls in love with your mom. Aware of it or not, you, the reader, and I, the author, are connected to a sequence of events that spans to the beginning of the universe. The invisible chain that connects past, present, and future, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the mystery of time.
I often contemplate what life was like for my parents in the different phases of their lives. What was their experience of grade school , the teen years, and young adult hood. It’s hard to imagine that your parents were once babies incapable of doing anything. Together they have lived five times that of my own lifespan. Is life soaring by for them like it is for me? Time seems to be subjective experience malleable and always changing. The acceleration of life is something my brain can’t keep up with.
Even Your Parents Had Parents
Then I think my parents have parents of their own, who have lived in a time that where customs and values differed from that of my parents’ generation. My ancestors have all lived unique lives and unless some sort of Assassin’s creed D.N.A. scanning immersive ancestor life simulator gets invented. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how I came to be to this spot in this location writing this book at this time. Unless I’m already in that machine experiencing the life of an ancestor already, who is contemplating that being a possibility in the future. . .boy that would be ironic.(I like thinking of life like this because that means I could be someone else Teehee) So what about my bloodline? I am Chinese, Filipino, Irish, African-American, Native American, and probably a host of other things, a purebred mutt. I’d like to take one of those DNA tests to see where my ancestors come from, but the furthest I can trace back as of now is that my family on my mom’s side were Chinese merchants that immigrated to the Philippines. (A Chinese professor of mine thought that I looked Chinese because of my eyes -_- ). But I know almost nothing of those people and who they are or how they’ve lived. They might as well be strangers with the same DNA. If we had the technology to somehow talk and meet those people it would be more awkward than meeting your second and third cousins at a party.
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
The stories start with my mom’s dad, the Filipino version of an F.B.I. agent. Who met my grandma and courted her. . . And from what I hear he got shot down many times, but he kept on asking and eventually they got married and had kids. . .
This is the generation that I start to see photos of young versions of my grandpa and grandma stare back at me as I look at the faded out sepia toned photographs . I wonder if there is any writing from my grandpa who I never got to meet. Small relics and trinkets from my grandmas time are scattered about her house. The piano, the pictures, some books, little things like Jesus statues, and prayer cards are scattered about that house. Yes material things and possessions seem to possess stories, memories, and in some way shape and form the spirit of the owner. Things are more than just things. Similar to the way our clothes become more than clothes, things begin to represent who we are . I only see small peeks into what life was like before I was aware of being alive.
