being conscious

Once in a while, you get those moments in which everything seems strange. And now, sitting at my messy workspace, with cds, books and papers strewn all over, a JVC radio at my side, an electric guitar on the floor and a small, dark-colored lizard in the kitchen, I feel that way.

You feel... contingent, struck by a sudden realization of your own mortality, which is something you know all along but never feel much about. You sense everything in this room around you is disappearing moment by moment, and that one day, that cunning time will steal whatever you take for granted now right under your nose. It's that feeling that you're small, very small, pulled by invisible strings and living in a massive world where several major and very important events are going on as you draw your next breath.

Maybe it's reading Ulrich Becks that is making me feel this way. His talk of rethinking modernity and globalization is a little too incomprehensible for a girl who lives in a cramped HDB flat, struggles desperately to write and understand, and exploits hardworking taxpayers' money by trying to study.

It's that state of not understanding that throws you into a heightened state of consciousness about the inconsequentiality of your understanding.

But I must say, these intellectuals... They impress.