"with all its indignity"

In the cold streets of Seoul

Taken with Olivius Jones, 35mm

It's been a few months, felt much longer being in this state of mind - never stagnant, and with constant flux and rushing thoughts, always processing/organising the cloud midst of my mind but in a perpetual battle to keep the head on the ground. 

There've been some things at the top of my head that has been tugging at my ego; unfortunately so, but yeap my self-importance does depend quite a deal tad on the state of the people's judgement towards me because I am personally someone who assimilate thoughts through perception of feedbacks, assurance, a blatant commentary or any sort of insult into account then dwell in deep contemplation on each word that made an impact for months, but also someone who filters the things I decide is just redundant and process in the ones that meant well for me, which makes me withdraw into my own state of mind to consider them, and come out with some sort of opinion or a conclusion that is evoked from my personal theories and recollection of a wide range of evidence, which then make sense to me of so to speak of, an almost unanimous agreement or an advocate to the thoughts of people, then grasping the thoughts of my own mind and making something of it.

With this, I've been biting down the brooding weight of indignity behind my chagrin out of all these days; perhaps and hopefully not in humiliation - instead in coherence to my perpetual hesitance to stand up for my own pride and also, in my ways to keep peace accordant to avoid sliding into my actual misanthropic old-self tugging to be in solitude contemplation over anything else when things get accumulative and in my attempt to not suppress and in contrariwise, to express, I wanted to write this down and be able to make terms with myself.

I don't know how to say this without inducing a biased statement or sound at least neutral about it but I promise that these are merely thoughts; this is my forth time in the short stay of my third month (or barely) about two that I've received some sortaffa' crass remark/questionable interrogation to my personal decision of my physical choices of clothes. I personally found it to be quite intriguing, yet complexing, for in my previous years I have yet to be questioned in bare continence to what I choose to wear, at least rarely, (not because it is great but because there was some sort of mutual respect and an unspoken rule to only speak of things that are helpful for building others up according to their needs and not unwholesome talks) after all I believe that people here are cultured to be honest and expressive (in mere concurrence to the consensus of people who had equivalent experiences to mine and shared similar anecdotes) compared to where I was before and from what I have noticed people around me now are slightly more subdued to the idea of difference and seem to find subculture quite the minority (my biased reference / opinions are varied individually). When there is a certain period of 'normality' here it seems like most people tend to tail them, because it is what's, well, normal. Things seem to be virtually ubiquitous, and you see something sold in one, and the other, and the rest -



Even in people to a certain extent.

Tonight's encounter was quite sort of a quandary to me, a puzzling yet aggravating effect after much of similar anecdotes for an individual who personally put personal space and liberate decisions (also perhaps, humanitarian respect) slightly on the pedestal. On my way back home from my yoga class, I was wearing yoga pants. It was multi-colored, like the printed ones you see in most sports shop and I would not admit that it was the most conventional, yet I would not say the most egregious at least in my own opinion. On a pedestrian road with a group of university students, they walked behind me and made an entire conversation about my innocent pants from an agonising start to the end where we crossed. The insolent part I felt was not by the comments they made on the innocent (with slight sarcasm but with slight relevance) but the fact that they deliberately made it loud enough for me to hear everything and bear in mind they were only one step behind me, and the things they said mostly  gravitated towards the kind of person I am, more than the choice of mine, and whether they meant it out of social pressure or mere humour, it was evident that one side was deliberately ostracised. I found this to be borderline irresolute - also slightly unjust for it deciding my personal attribute if it was not my ego speaking in its defence mechanism, for I was wearing yoga pants, to do yoga(?) considerably if I would have said this with an open mind and perspective, it could also have been disdainful to the eyes, for that I would have turned and apologised with sincerity, although I am not apologetic to it feeding and defining my characteristics in the vehement assumptions concluded. Possible, but unfortunate on my part that what I genuinely thought was to be 'normal', made me kinda 'abnormal' to them. I hope that this instead of a complaint, would come out more as a weighing of the unbalancedness that has succumbed to make me feel triggered - because unbalancedness provokes me and both ends we were both left to be in our differed opinions, except that one end was being voiced.

Initially, I found that I was being sensitive and it made zero sense for me to take this personal so I decided not to turn around to keep the peace at its stake; however, on my journey back home I found that I could not forgive myself for actually subjugating and bending in, for of sort, advocating their ostentatiousness. At this point this was after someone got absolutely astounded at the choice of my current hair that was the apparent back-tracked trend years back in the zeitgeist and that I was not caught up in this current 'normality' and apparently she feared for my days here for eyes of weapons and my destined doomed days of stares I was gonna get, and also after someone questioned my conscience to the choice of my ripped jeans in a deliberate tone as to be meaningfully crass, if my actual instincts did not wrong - simply put, it seems like I have fallen into some sort of entitled stigma for not being like everyone else and for some reason, as much as I wish not to be boggled,  that I wish to say the comments did not make me, but it has made me feel indignant at the fact that people chose to defy the gravity of kindness and respect for self-liberty, instead of putting in the effort and instead indulging in the stereotypical standards that I think I have been imposed to oblige (or not) to and not choiced to but fight against now that I am even more conscious of it(with that out in the open, with every inch of conscious effort hereby to  not succumb to any of that sorcery and if I ever do, I am open to anyone speaking the truth in love)

I don't mean for this to be any sort of dogmatic, I only have taken into account how much this has challenged my current audacity, instead of subjugating into the frivolous force of fitting in. This is one of the many reasons why I chose to be here and hopefully longer - because the challenges to my nature has really laid out and proved the truthful side to me and helped me process my honest thoughts, though most days I tend to keep them for my personal reference in fear of incompetence, this are the kind of days that will open me up to my biggest fears,


and these days will matter,
and these are the kind of days that will make me bold.