1st Draft, Video Essay Manuscript?

A Reflection On Life, Death, Illness and Mental Health.

I spent the first week of February 2020 at my favourite place in the world (so far) Kyoto. The sky is the most crystal blue, the people the most polite, the streets the cleanest I’ve seen and the water so clear. Around every corner you’re met with either a sacred space or a local ramen bar or most likely a 7/11 in which residents complete their daily rituals peacefully among tourists. It was on this trip I had the joy of seeing snow for the first time as well as the joy of showing my sister all of my favourite places, I don’t think she’s ever seen me as serenely comfortable in a space. There was a looming cloud of insecurity which came in the form of face masks and hand sanitiser but all was well, no one was panicked and there was no immediate threat so it went unnoticed mostly.

After this blissful week we were up walking briskly to the train station at five am to catch our flight which departed in Osaka. We were both incredibly excited about our next destination, until we got to security at the airport and were met with an overwhelming line. This new found discordance left us dreading and finally when we had made it to our transfer car we both spent the trip praying the car would not stop. The roads were pure chaos, echo’s of beeps and motors roaring filled the sky which was already thick and sticky with polluted fog. The thing that struck me the most as we travelled to our accommodation were the grave stones amongst the rice fields. I couldn’t imagine being born amongst rice, wanting to work amongst rice and wanting to spend your death within the rice, but maybe they didn’t want to I settled. Maybe they just didn’t have the privilege to get away from a life on a farm, like I had, which I took as soon as I could. This left me sombre, but the tension within every cell of my body created little room for this emotion as I felt myself slipping into the arms of my anxiety, a long held friend and enemy.

The first three days in Hanoi were incredibly difficult even passing through the lobby caused dread in the form of our very pushy hotel manager. There were many near misses with passing motorbikes, many held back tears watching the preparation of animal corpses in the streets and held back anger at animals in cages, polluted skies and leering men. I decided to drag my sister to the botanical gardens, explaining we’d feel better amongst the quiet nature provides and it did. It was the first moment of peace I had felt. We sat on a bench quietly amongst the grass, people watching. All I could think about was how much I didn’t want to leave. All I wanted to do was slice a tree open, crawl inside and shut the bark. It would become a makeshift womb in which I could rest, surviving off of tree sap I would dream until I had dissipated into wood. This thought gave me an overwhelming sense of peace. It struck me again on two other occasions. When exploring Ha Long Bay I contemplated dissipating into the sand and how comfortable I would be living at the will of the oceans tide. On our river boat ride in Ninh Binh I dreamed lazily about forming into the stone of the cave walls and how peaceful it would be to spend my days watching the rice grow.

It was on this third thought that I realised that I now understood the rice fields and that this would be almost everyone’s death, it would be my death. I will die, and upon my death I will be returned to the earths womb in wood, covered with stone and that is how I will stay until there is no longer a me or a box, it will be dirt and I will be free to be sand or stone or trees forever. That realisation to this day is still the most at peace I have been with my own mortality. It is something I have always struggled with, as a child I would have to be consoled for at times over an hour as I grappled with the fact that death whether it be others or my own would be something I would have to face one day.

This new found peace gave me comfort within this new and anxiety enduing place. It gave me space in our remaining five days to learn to love Hanoi a city with daring citizens, wonderful food, beautiful smiles, old architecture and a fascinating culture. Upon leaving my sister and I gave thanks to our new friends we had made at the hotel and on the flight discussed how we’d both definitely come back one day.

Before long we were once again faced with a newness, stream lined and filled with bougainvilleas I felt my sense of calm returning in Singapore. One of the highest things on my to do list was to shop at Kinokuniya bookstore, which I instantly lost myself as well as my sister in. Wandering the endless titles searching for “The Art Of Travel” by Alain De Botton, a soft cover with a blue watercolour image caught my eye. A sombre man sketched in black with a scribbled beard and closed eyes. The colour stained his face in a striking manner, below reading – “Lives and Death, Essential Stories” Leo Tolstoy. I am back in a space I call home now, a generously sized apartment turned upside down in Melbourne and I’m almost halfway through reading it, slow I know but something from it has stuck to me. It has bit at my heart the same way in which Anne Frank did when she wrote “Dead people receive more flowers than the living because regret is stronger than gratitude.”. The passage reads:

“Yes I had life in me but now it is leaving, leaving and I can not hold on to it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Is it not obvious to all but me that I am dying? That it’s only a question of weeks, of days – maybe now? There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I am there… Where? An icy coldness swept across him and his breath stopped. He heard only the beating of his heart. I’ll be gone – and what then? Nothing. So where will I be? Is this… is this death? No, no … He started up in bed, fumbled with trembling hands for the candle, dropped it on the floor and fell back on the pillow. What’s the use? It doesn’t matter, he told himself, staring into the darkness with wide-open eyes. Death. Yes, death. And not one of them knows it – not one of them wants to know, wants to take pity. They’re playing.”

This passage is a critical point for our protagonist Ivan Ilyich, a moment of pure shock, anxiety, fear and resentment as he becomes so painfully aware of this looming death. In this passage through his fear I am returned of my childhood self clinging to my mother sobbing and demanding answers as to what will happen to me if I died or if my sister died or if herself and my father died. In this passage through his resentment I am returned to my teen-hood, in which I almost lost myself completely and felt hatred towards the ones who cared most as they could not see my illness. In this passage I am returned to mid last year when I walked into my aunties lounge room and felt pure shock seeing my uncle who was then dying before his own eyes, the uncomfortable silence before Christmas as he had hollowed while we were full and the sadness at his funeral early this year. This passage was carried in my heart as I walked into the hospital last Sunday, anxiety gripping me as my Granny laid pale in bed. With this passage and this life I made it my key priority to acknowledge her suffering, to talk on her terms, to give her peace when needed and to fill her room with reminders of the ones who love her. The most important thing I have learnt to give to my Grandmother throughout our relationship is patience’s and understanding, which I am now giving her as much as I possibly can.

She is expected to make a full recovery, but as I type thousands are dead or dying because now that looming fear of sickness is real and if it makes it to the hospital before she leaves I’m not very hopeful. There is also the anxiety that I could be the cause of this illness getting to her and the lingering teen-hood pain which was the unexpected death of my Poppy. So now I am torn in a state of the unknown, as everyone else is, but I have decided that if she is returned to the earth, I will insist that roses are planted over her wooden box so that one day she will see the sun as her favourite flower.