with motivation and obstacles
The Occult Shop
The first time I walked into the occult shop in town. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and a bell rang atop, and the smell of paper and insense and magick and the excitement. I’m young and is a school uniform, entering another new, exciting world. I’m wide-eyed and it’s mysterious and positive and I’m free. I wanted to be in another world but I didn’t know what it was.
The Lonely Bedroom
I remember the Chinese New Year before I left. I went to a Vietnamese celebration. I was reading books thinking of leaving. I remember I bumped into an old schoolfriend there and told him about them, but there was no definite plan. I remember music and a Chinese dragon dancing and there was some disco arranged and I paid but an over-zelous security guard threw me out, pretty much for no reason other than ‘It’s something the Vietnamese have arranged for themselves’ (it wasn’t, I’d paid).
I walked home and ended up crying in my bedroom and it was just pure desperation. There was a world out there I could live and I was trapped in one that I hated. I took a picture of my puffy face for posterity and thought that it will be good to look back at this if I survive. The image is my red face and the darkness. I wanted to be in another world but I was scared.
The Blurriness
Being pinned down on my back, powerless, with my mother atop me punching me in the face. The world blurry from my tears. The aloneness as my aunt stood by. I wanted to be in another world but I was broken.
The Boat
Sitting on my uncle’s boat, at the back, by myself. Rocking gently on the river. I was reading the Howling, a horror book about wearwolves. I was loving it so much I read each sentence slowly so I didn’t finish it on one day as I usually did. I fell into the story, in another country surrounded by the supernatural and danger and normal families standing together. I was in another world.
The Cold
Walking home from collage. It was about 2km from the collage to my aunt’s house where I lived. It was night time, about 10pm. I used to wear a nice suit with a formal, long black jacket. I remember halfway home I stopped at a little Indian convenience store and bought a samosa and it was in plastic. I remember being in the street and trying to unwrap it and it was dark and I was shivering and I was so cold that my red fingers were numb and I couldn’t get the packaging off. I’d been reading guidebooks about the tropics and I resolved then, in the cold, that I would leave the UK forever- no matter what. I see the image as very dark, with me in dark clothes and a dull, yellowy street light shinning down. I wanted to be in another world and nothing was stopping me.