That Sacred Place

I love Frank Miller's Sin City. Almost every episode of these comics will captivate me to the very end and after. It's not your usual super-hero fantasy comic. This is comic-noir, with black and white pictures, with black, white and lots of gray story telling. I read most of them at my Uni's Rowden White library which is mostly for leisure purposes, cool eh? Once I bought one of them and brought it home. Despite it's darkness and its highly risque content, both my mom and dad who came across it seemed to like it. I guess there is a need to connect with the dark side within all of us.

I am currently reading the episode entitled Hell and Back. The hero is an ex-navy SEAL officer (otherwise, how is he supposed to kick ass?) who is currently a struggling artist. One day, he comes across a perfect-bodied ethnic beauty who was trying to jump off a cliff. He saves her, they chat, finds out that she was really artsy, and despite of, or because of her mysterious back ground, falls for her, and then comes the kiss. At that time, he got knocked out by tranqulizers, she got kidnapped, and he got battered and imprisoned by cops for being accused of taking drugs.

The greatest thing about Frank Miller's comics is that he describes the psychology of the heroes so well. In this comic, whenever the hero got caught up in distressful situations, he would go "Stay calm, stay cool. Ignore the surroundings. Go back to that private place in your mind. It has saved your life many times before. It is always waiting for you." And then there will be the picture of him meditating in some forest of New England. How often do you get a hero like that?

My question to myself after that was, if I got into a distressful situation, is there that private place in my mind that will always be waiting for me? A place that I can seek solace in? A place which might save my life some day? I thought pretty hard, and couldn't come up with anything. Perhaps I will be screwed in a distressful situation. Or maybe I need to be in a distressful situation to find that place.

Instead of getting into a distressful situation, I got into a small depressing situation. Right now, during the winter holidays, most of my friends have either gone to their home countries, or gone off for holidays. Apart from that, my I am a person who clings quite alot to social circles. So lonliness was inevitable. But I grew over it quite quickly, thanks to a really corny phrase: " No matter where I am, you will always be a part of me".

In fact, a farewell card I wrote to my friend Dave was based upon that phrase. The cure to loneliness was something I knew all along. I believe that what we are now is the result of the many forces that has shaped us. Most of these forces are the people we meet in our lives. All these people are part of us, and although some fade into the depths of our mind, they will always be somewhere inside. When I got lonely, I would think of the people whom I carry with me wherever I go: Hsu, Hendry, Wayne, Ruth, Gad, Sara, Ve Leong, Yanky, Dan Seet, Quek, Cindy, Dave, Liz, Liu Jing, Rui Jian, Tse Chuen, Dan Ding, Gen, Taka, Eun Yeung, Yeung Joo, Ga Ye, Shi Zheng, Sharlene, Khai Lee, the recently met Alice, Sin Sin, Si Shan, Tomoko and never forgetting family, Ed, Jean, Mom, Pops, Dex, Mei and Fei. I dare say that some of them are the loves of my life. With them in mind, there is always an ever-present home that I can go to, an everlasting source of warmth, a permanent sense of wholeness.

Now, it seems that I have found that private place in my mind, and I don't think I will ever be lonely again.