Looking back at my 35-year-old self

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #16

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

31 december

New Year’s Eve is a celebration to welcome the New Year – the coming change. You make resolutions: ‘this is what I am going to change’. But I will take New Year’s Eve differently, as a symbol of mindful change – that is, a time to consider the past, remember Because the future is not the sheer rejection of the past, but its full understanding and accomplishment. A bright future requires a solid understanding of history.

I spent the last day of the year exploring museums – with a short stop alongside a lake. Most precisely, the Hubei provincial museum, with collections of paleontology, and bronze age artifacts. A key message was – that the land of Chu was a centre of high culture more than 2000 years ago – as was manifest from the beauty and wealth of the objects on display.

More important, for my own understanding, the museum had a visiting exhibition of Etruscan civilization – these mysterious forefathers of Italy, Rome, and later my own tradition. Including canope vases, and the earliest ex voto – hands, eyes, a finger, even intestines made of clay, given as presents to the deity – and so very similar to the practice of Neapolitan (or even Parisian) Catholicism.

Equally ancient and respectable civilisations – the kingdom of Chu, the Etruscans. In another room were displays of the early hominids, with an allusion to Cro Magnon, in France’s South West. Both stressed the continuity between Chinese and European achievements.

Looking at history on that scale – our ancestors, 2500 years ago – is not common in Australia: aboriginal people have a 40,000 year old traditional lifestyle – other Australians have imported theirs from England 2 centuries ago. But I am a man of old culture, migrated to this land that seems to miss its middle-band of history.

I reflected on lakes as well: a lake is a depression in the floor where water accumulates, not as a flowing linear stream, but a round shaped body, with no very clear movement or current. I travelled form the East lake of Wuhan to the West lake of Hangzhou. Both are seen as ultimate symbols of beauty – such as the Geneva Lake in Switzerland. Lakes are enjoyable to look at. They signify the possibility of lasting life – their accumulated water guarantees the possibility of agriculture, fish, plants, and drinking water. Where there is a lake, life is possible, ongoingly. Rivers may dry up – their source is far away – or suddenly rise. Lakes are stable and calm. Hence the joy that emanates from them.

For a long time, my main concern has been to understand what group I was a part of – because I had no clear ‘us’, but found myself in-between. And I interpreted it in the wider context of changes in my country – France becoming a part of Europe. So, I deliberately decided I would become European, and build on my French-German-Italian origin, British studies and time in Ireland, to fully embody and understand Europe. Then I could rely on pop culture and my own teenage passions to embody America – become a ‘North-Atlanticker’ – and my mother’s move to the Dominican Republic to become Latin. Slowly, I also expanded my Mediterranean self to North Africa and the Middle East – and embraced my father’s early Russian friendships to integrate the Slavic world.

Later, I moved to Australia, and did so through a journey across Asia – where I learnt about, and tried to ‘embody’ the countries of South East Asia – at the least, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. And I systematically studied Chinese to ‘become Chinese’. Then I started, through readings, and hanging out with N. and J., to explore ‘Africa’ as an added space.

By moving to Australia, I have decided that my ‘we’, my community, would be not just Europe, but the whole world, and that I should gather waters from everywhere in me, become a vast repository of world cultures. Then I will weave together stories, voices and narratives from across multiple countries. This is what I enjoy. Connecting C.’s afro-American self in Shanghai to J.’s story of migration as a refugee from Uganda. Connecting R. and I., China and Algeria.

I will do that in multiple ways, next year – through Marco Polo Project, through novels, through stories, maybe through training I will develop. I am not sure how exactly, but this is what I want to do: create the possibility for a cross-cultural consciousness, and a cross-national sense of history.

As I post this, Wuhan is now globally known as COVID-19 ground zero. If I was to return, this would invite further reflection on cross-cultural consciousness. Could this be the gift of the virus, that by spreading so fast around the world, affecting all bodies equally, irrespective of citizenship, it reveals our common belonging and might – just might – prompt us to collaborate in time to prevent the worst environmental catastrophes? So that the lakes can remain full, abundance preserved, and the 21st century not become the moment of radical collapse for humanity. What sort of cross-cultural consciousness, what sense of history would we need, for this to be the case? This is a question my 42 year old self now likes to reflect on. 

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #15

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

30 december

Before the year ends, I want to find my own centre of gravity – and I want to reconnect with my own story. As I looked outside the window, coming up from Guangzhou along the Yangtze basin, I realized I had no unified family story.

My father has a story – born from a modest family in the south, he studies and becomes an engineer in Strasbourg – his first marriage collapses but he loves his son. Successful, he goes up to Paris where he marries up into a Parisian family, and has two more children.

My mother has a story – last girl, unwanted, from a southern family migrated up north, her dream has always been to escape her local destiny and live in a beautiful sun-drenched warm country. For that, she may count on her charm. She marries a southern boy, handsome, successful – but things don’t work out, and she leaves him for someone else. Life is hard for a while, her new husband has money, but the relationship is tense. Where her son leaves for Paris, she opts for freedom, so moves to the West Indies, convincing her husband. He dies, she inherits, and marries again, a friendly local man.

But what is my story? Smart talented gay boy from divorced parents gets into the most prestigious college in France, with an ambition to become an intellectual and literary figure. Intelligent, he has academic success, but it is not his chosen path, and when he meets an Australian blog-artist, he follows him to Melbourne. There, he changes radically, embraces China, becomes a social entrepreneur and online editor? This, somehow, embraces the threads of both my parents.

I’m in Wuhan, the city of my childhood nanny Danhan. The faces here remind me of her. Wuhan was the capital of Chu, the city of the Dao De Jing and Laozi, the place where it was said that you should be like water, flow to your centre of gravity, because that is where your strength lies.

I will spend the last day of the year in Hangzhou, by the West Lake. A place I have always wanted to go, a place Marco Polo – my new role model – said was paradise on earth. I will be by a lake, a large mass of accumulated water, and ultimate expression of beauty.

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #14

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

29 december

In March or April this year, I sat down at a Turkish café inside the Queen Vic market, thinking of what I really needed to accomplish this year. At the very top of the list, I wrote, learn Chinese. Now, I believe I have done that. I can keep up conversations with Chinese people for four hours or more, I can read, I can write small messages and emails. I still need to improve – but I have become operational.

This has been the biggest change in me this year – I learnt about China, I integrated the country deeply. This scholarship and these four months have radically changed me and what I feel that I can do. I am now someone who can speak Chinese.

I also feel very drained, more tired than I was the previous years – cautious about my health, I should be. My brain and body are tired – I have lived on very limited income for 18 months (though I relaxed a bit during the time of my scholarship), and this has taken a toll. I have also lived with high uncertainty – where the money would come from, what would happen next. Am I losing faith in what I can do, or just getting old?

I have largely confused work, life, holidays – I don’t say I don’t enjoy it – but it’s making it very difficult to identify socially, what I do, how I generate income. Maybe it’s OK? Or I can learn for it to be?

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #13

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

27 december

Am I leaving my life as a tourist? And am I just watching myself live? Or am I looking for impact? I am not extraordinarily busy, actually, I have lots of time to explore. It is unclear what my profession is, or how I make money – partly, I rely on various subsidies, rent from a place I bought, my partner’s income. And I live off the remains of an exam I passed years ago in what is now a foreign country.

Yet there is still new places to visit and understand better – this short trip – Guangzhou, Changsha, soon Wuhan.

It is an odd characteristic of intellectual life – or writers. We remember Stendhal, La Bruyere, Marx, and others, for just a few books they wrote, or ideas they spread. Their ‘professional’ life is irrelevant, retrospectively. Yet we have equated the worth of a person so much with their means of gaining income, that it takes a lot of effort to resist.

28 december

I’ve always enjoyed repeating, since reading that book by Kierkegaard. Today, I returned to Shamian island, and walked again in areas of central Guangzhou that I saw yesterday. The theme of these few days in Guangzhou might actually be – repeating!

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #12

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

26 december

I don’t so much love heat as I hate cold. About five years ago, I remember sitting on the coast of Lamma island in Hong Kong, watching the ocean, in a sweatshirt in November, and thinking, I will never be cold again.

This winter in Nanjing has been harsh – I was back to the weather I thought I had fled forever, my body and mind were not prepared. But now, I’m in Guangzhou, and relishing the tropics. My mother left Alsace for the tropics, my cousin left Lorraine for Nice, I left Paris for Melbourne. I have never regretted that move, if only for the heat. I can work now, I can move, I can breathe, I can be happy, because I am never cold. Nanjing has brought back memories of the terrible humid winters in Paris, when I would walk miserable along the streets. Now, I’ve arrived in Guangzhou, and just had bananas, peanuts and milk tea by the Pearl River. Bliss!

People who live in the cold take it as a given – hating it, but bearing it. What if we could be like the birds, and flee – move to where it isn’t cold. If I can fly there, why should I stay in the wintertime?

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #11

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

25 december

I’m obstinate. Tonight, I wanted to watch the first episode of Glee, season 4. The internet was horrible, I had to restart and reconnect dozens of time – but I did it, and I watched it. Today, I decided I would explore the centre of Changsha – and I did. One time, I lost half of a novel I had written. I wrote it again. I have this quality in me, this tenacity, that I will just go and redo as many times as needs to when I have decided something. I think it’s what has led me so far. I may not always decide to do something – I reserve my energy and my decisions for what’s important. But when it’s decided, I do not let go. I decided that I would stand up to X and I did. As I did to Y. I decided I would bounce back after not defending my PhD, and I did.

I have this extreme focused pugnacity. I should know to rely on this more, and take that as a reassurance: if I want it, I will do everything I can for it to happen. But the question is, do I really want it?

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #10

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

24 december

I have always experienced Christmas as an only child, last in a lineage, youngest in the family. I’m not sure I’ve outgrown this sense of being the young one among the adults.

I complained about being with 20 year olds a lot during this scholarship – yet I’ve increasingly found myself surrounded by younger people since I moved to Australia. Is it that migration has made me ‘restart from scratch’, or is it that, as I focused on new challenges, I developed natural affinities with younger generations who saw the world as I did?

I’m halfway through my life, and will probably never have a child. This lineage ends with me. But I have mentored others, younger ones, interns, younger friends. This has been my way of becoming an ancestor.

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #9

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

23 december

When did my life branch off? What decision had the biggest impact on my life? Most likely, that was in 1999, when I chose to go to Dublin for my honour’s year away.

This was the first time in my life I made a proper individual choice. Until then, I had gone through the centre of the funnel: study hard, and pass the most difficult exams. Now, I had freedom, and I exercised it. My ‘Parisian set’ of fellow normaliens all headed to Cambridge and Oxford: self-evidently superior choices for them. For me, they weren’t.

My dream had been to live by the sea: Dublin even had palm trees. And it was what I wanted. In the year I spent there, I took regular trips down the coast to Killiney, and was revived every time. I even swan in the Irish sea, on a crazy January day. Eventually, this led me to move to Melbourne – by the sea, with palm trees and lemon – and again revive every time I go down to the beach. Fulfil an old childhood dream.

When I moved to Dublin, I learned I could be ‘different’. I tried integrating with anglos and didn’t succeed, but I had Mexican, French and Italian friends. I soon accepted that I didn’t have to go to the pub, or pretend to like it. My choices were limited – a few places serving espressos and tuna melts or banoffee cakes – but I could go there, not drink myself to death, and spend time with literate Latin friends. Later, this helped me ‘find my tribe’ and ‘find my space’ – in China, in Australia. There was no need to be mainstream.

In Dublin, I could decide what to buy. I rented my own house for the first time, bought CDs, paid for trips, with my own money. Before I got into Ecole Normale, I had been supported by my parents, and my first year, I was weirdly shy to spend my scholarship. In Dublin, I traded money for experience, and became more adult in that regard.

I came out in Dublin, with a cascade of consequences. I then became president of the LGBT group at Ecole Normale, made gay friends, engaged in politics, edited a gay collection of stories, published a first novel – later, was invited to Writers Festival, gained the confidence to shoot a short film, and met my first crowd in Australia. Not to mention, because I came out in Dublin, in a supportive and healthy context, I’m now living a remarkably balanced and happy life with a wonderful man.

There were a few decisions, earlier, that had an impact. Study Greek, and change high schools to pursue an ‘arts’ stream: both made it possible for me to go to Ecole Normale, and be where I am now. There was the decision to move out at 17 – and never return – protecting myself from my step-father’s violence, and refusing the bizarre double bind I was in. Later, decisions to leave partners, and leave France for Australia. Decisions to leave certain jobs, and go on an uncharted career path.

All those decisions that shaped my life in the future were led by instinct. As was the decision to go to Dublin: radically irrational – be by the sea. So, that’s also what I learned: life branches off based on irrational choices – following a deep desire.

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #8

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

22 december

I have just spent a long time on Facebook, over an hour maybe. Instead of reading a Chinese book and learning new characters, I followed the progress and recent posts of old friends or classmates.

Have I just lost an hour of my time? Many people talk about Facebook in that way – time drain, waste of time. I’ve never really thought of time as something you could ‘waste’ – maybe there’s something wrong with me? I enjoy memories. I enjoy looking back at the past, remembering what happened, recollecting. I have looked at the photos of H, and it brought back my life in Dublin, in their penthouse, with M, and C and A, and D.. I looked of pictures of A.M. and C. H. which brought me back to the lycee Kleber and my teenage years in Strasbourg. And a video with X., his video installations.

Doing this, I can trace trajectories from my own long past: X., not a top student, but personable and anarchic, has become an architect of ephemeral light structures in Paris, for concerts and night-clubs – hype, uncertain substance? Y. married – stunningly beautiful as before, her husband looks friendly, both look wealthy, and that seems to matter to them.  Z. lost hair, grew a beard, and stands in a photograph with his Turkish boyfriend. J. is now working with a feminist band. W. is now HR manager for Hewlett Packard in Vienna, looking prim and efficient.

I have been listening to ‘Tonight we are young’, over and over – seizing the last strands of my own youth, empathizing with young people. Am I refusing to grow,  still a student in my mid-thirties, desperately retaining youth, or acting like a responsible adult in a complex, fast-evolving world? I have, in certain areas, acted very responsibly. I own a house, I am in a stable and happy relationship. I founded an organization. I have recognized diplomas. I don’t have debt. I work in an area that I enjoy – though I hardly make money yet. People that I respect are encouraging me.

After Facebook, I looked at other websites: the Shanghaiist and their sensationalist news from China. ‘Tattoos you regret’. The appeal of the gruesome, the grotesque, the terrifying, the freakish, is old news: Plato wrote about it. A man with a hand grafted on his ankle. The woman whose husband gouged our her eye with his hand, or the woman who snapped off her husband’s penis with a pair of scissors. Who doesn’t want to see this?

In part, I take this as research. For some reason, possibly the way my father brought me up, I have grown to believe that ‘the best way to resist a temptation is yield to it’. I have played video games, sometimes to addictive levels, as a teenager – yet, I read extensively, passed exams, achieved things. Maybe not as much as if I hadn’t, maybe more. Who knows what bizarre unbalance might have come from me not playing Civ-Evo during my Wheeler Centre residency, or minesweeper when I was working from the Hub, or watched fewer random Facebook posts during my time in Nanjing.

So dwelling in the delights of remembering, and looking at gruesome news on the internet – is this a privilege I will later regret, time available by not having children and not trying to make money, time wasted now I will regret in my old age? Or is it my way of letting off some steam, in the culture and society that I live in, a way of not getting more deeply addicted to whatever I could get addicted to?  For I have not had a television since I was 18, and how many hours have I saved by not watching stupid shows on TV?

 

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #7

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

21 december

Today was the shortest day of the year – the beginning of winter, but also therefore the return of the light. It was wonderfully sunny during the afternoon – though I spent most of the day inside, in the dark.

I am not an outside person. As a teenager, I liked staying in my room, playing video games, reading books or watching movies. And I remained that way later. I was not one for great outside adventures – though I did go for walks, and make friends. I remember one day when my step brother took me out with new friends he’d met in Brumath to ‘do rides on the Solex’ – riding my step-father’s electric motorbikes around town. He seemed to find it particularly thrilling, while I was half scared, half bored, and fully nonplussed.

I have since been able to go past the scare – though not always. Sometimes I experience social anxiety when entering certain spaces. Maybe it’s a gay guy thing: if a space is too male dominated, has too much testosterone, or hostile codes I don’t understand, and I’m not gonna fit, I think it wouldn’t be safe to go, or at least, it would be neither healthy nor enjoyable. Looking back, I guess other people – including possibly my step-brother at the time, must spend a significant amount of time conforming in order to access these spaces?

There is a degree of correlation between conformity and social access. Be too original, and a space may be closed to you. Be more generic, ‘democratic;, and more doors will open – but the downside, you have to conform figure. X. is a good example of that: a crowd-pleaser with a slightly vulgar touch.

But while I went rather rarely to very public places – bars, clubs, places for fast passage and meeting – I spent plenty of times at dinners and dinner parties, with friends and friends of friends, in deep conversations, sharing food – hosting or attending. I can remember by 21st of December over the last three years: a special dinner with Phil’s colleagues making eggnog; dinner with Y. and smart conversations about Asia; dinner with Z. and A. sharing songs at our ‘Eisteddfod’.

Dinners are an inside space, a controlled space – which I enjoy – yet made social by the people around them – friends, varied, not the same inner group or family repeated over and over. Meanwhile, do people who spend much of their leisure time outside have the same warmth in their ‘inner circle’? I wrote a few days ago about the large number of new relationships I had built over these five years, and how amazed I was at it – I think that my avoidance of public, competitive spaces, bars, clubs, is part of it. They suck a lot of energy – getting ready, recovering. And they’re not conducive to deep conversations, long exchanges, but first meetings, the excitement of getting to know, the thrill of the new, the possibility to become a focus of attention. They’re places for acting – superficial change, temporary metamorphosis, showtime – and in that way cathartic. While deep dinners and conversations can lead to deeper change – when you listen, engage, contradict, agree, and may actually change your perspective, shift your focus.

I remember how, for a short period of time, I sang with a guy called B. and his friend, a pianist, at an apartment in the 2nd arrondissement. A guy once came, heard us, and found it radical that we were doing that, rather than going out to bars like all other gay guys he knew. We were not looking for temporary showtime, the thrill of the potential meeting, that new face, that new exchange (but then you hear ‘ same old faces’ too).

Dinners, if you can keep them varied enough, have a way of renewing themselves more than bars: change one person, sit people differently, serve a different wine – and the experience is different. There can be significant change on the inside. And that’s what I appreciate.