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Tales from the Down Under: # 9- Running Up That Hill

On the eve before coming to Auckland last year, a question was seriously pondered about in my head. For a brand new chapter of my life, shall I be more of a submissive person or a self-assertive one? I’m never one who relents to neutrality so I must choose to be either, and while “reticence” had been tagging along like a dogged will-o’-the-wisp, a decision was made within seconds that I would stride in New Zealand burst with indestructible boldness.

And one year later I’m still thinking about the same question. Apparently the ceaseless alacrity exuded from the Kiwi’s baffles me, and has left me tongue-tied whenever I was good-humouredly confronted. Most of the posts I’ve written since studying in Auckland are more or less dealing with the record of my amateurish linguistic study of Kiwi’s accent. Those posts are no less than sheer nuisances, but what I’ve always wanted to expound on is how accents can cause a stirring among people. And even typify people. Not intending to sound scathing but it is the first time I see “stereotype” wielding its sword and thrusting its way through without hindrance. There are also multiple moulds made for people, and they just jump in, the most submissive gingerbread men I’ve ever seen.

There’s a slope outside the place I live, and every day I have to toil up that slope to go to school. The thing with climbing slopes is that, with full impetus, you have to rush up without any tinge of hesitation. The notion is analogous to the boldness I first visualized before coming to Auckland, of a little girl running up that hill.

There are still a lot of things I dislike but am obliged to do. To be honest I do not really fancy writing. Every time I set out on the outset of my essay I am always too eager to an end to it. I do love reading and I marvel at the flourish language some writers master upon, and it is sheer imitation that goads me on writing. I’ve long had a fatuous illusion that one day I would be able to feign some master’s style of writing. I shirk from daily responsibilities, and the feeling of having duties hoarding and heaping one upon another makes me swoon with surreal ecstasy. Those blatant enumeration of my innate inertia cannot obliterate the fact that at times I do sound like a heifer.

Charles Baudelaire said that a truth can never be concise. If you were inclined to terseness then you were more or less a liar. So to assert yourself you must tell the truth, and to tell the truth words must flow out of your mouth regardless of how they might have the potential of winding up in a tedious rambling. Every day, yet, I’m still learning.
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