ON PERSISTENCE, INSISTENCE AND CONSCIENCE

WHAT DAVID CHUA CHUAN SEAH SAYS ........

1. I'm trying -- persistently and insistently -- to show (prove?) that I'm a superior human being -- not necessarily a "winner" -- in contrast to those invisible "people" up there, presiding and lording over the land .......
2. I'm not yet atrophied, spent, dissolute, gaunt, emaciated, exhausted, dissipated, withered, wrinkled, drooping, depleted, debauched, abandoned, washed-out, shrunken, shrivelled, profligate .........
3. My heart says: Don't react -- for now (or not at all)!; but my mind asks: Why does he -- or do they -- provoke me thus? Just to anger me? (But I don't want to be angry: Anger must be justified -- with a good, true and beautiful reason!)
4. I'm whole -- so I want only to react like a man who is whole: In other words, only when I am truly myself. (And I know myself!)
5. The invisible "people" up there -- I know you must be listening intently now (after having been talking so much!) -- must realize that great men (and women -- are they prepared?) and geniuses are willing to suffer for their self-knowledge. Not knowledge itself in general but self-knowledge is power!
6. When, and how, did I actually reach that point of being "crazy" in my reactions -- as if I've become unkind! (The "unkindness" before that point of actually being truly unkind was not actually "unkindness": It is rather -- oh, invisible (but always listening and often talking) "people" up there! -- what you "people" up there think (based on your side of looking at it) is "unkind"!
7. From "Bizarre Odyssey" (a critical review of Norman Manea's THE BLACK ENVELOPE in Partisan Review; Vol. LXIV, No. 4; 1997) -- by Tess Lewis:

   Nor does insanity offer escape, for the reality that surrounds them is indistinguishable from madness. The only possible redemption seems to be escaping the boredom -- at whatever cost.