Angela E J Koh » Resolute Income

Hunchback in Hollywood

angelaejkoh — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:57:00 +0000

I’m the hunchback lady you saw fingering the pages of the US Weekly tabloids in a Safeway. Just another woman trying to busy herself, you thought, maybe with ads and dresses. I’d been looking but kept my mind from going off too far. Instead, I was reading the italicized quotes in pink lettering about celebrities that hate the paparazzi, scrutiny, fame. Speaking as someone without a footprint (effect), I couldn’t be more galled. The paparazzi and all of media society are reasonable pressures in exchange for fame. After all, what nurtures more influence and faster results than a globally estimable actress?

I’d sell-out; I’d give up my privacy if that meant creating a meaningful (and noticeable) shift. If it meant keeping crises from rapidly escalating— poverty, economic deficits, environmental destruction, education, trafficking. The only difference between me and Angelina Jolie that’s worth thinking about: what would take my lifetime to change takes The Tourist actress just a brief interview or speech. I imagine that if my writing goes well and some take an interest in what I say, in the three-inch space I’d have on the 2nd page of a magazine with a circulation of 2 million, I wouldn’t talk about hating the paparazzi. Had you come to hunchback-me by the newsstand in Hollywood, I would’ve turned and told you that such valuable space should be reserved for the mention of everyone else that deserves and needs it.

It Must Have Felt Heroic

angelaejkoh — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:25:00 +0000

Sounds like stretched cables, a ringing tucked in my ear flap.

I’m moved by need, it takes me from this day to the next. Like money, I think, how much I’d like to shower my parents with it and say, I’ll take over from here. Hearing them leave that for this, their wet cheeks pressed to my face. I carry them on my back and sometimes it gets so heavy, my ears start ringing. This amour of affliction and pressure made me feel strong. It must have felt heroic to sacrifice my time, my slow and easy.

But I was nervous. My peers might see how blood-lust sacrifice, an absolute neglect of their person could manifest real potential. Into individual passion and ability they’ll use to pass me up, wasting no time for safety nets or maybe’s. That they’ll find I’m not a smart girl (brother got those genes), but a poor competitor. That I got as far as I did because I lost a sense of self. That no burden outweighs that on my back.

Now, I was thrown a keyboard like a lotto ticket. It seems the world of lotto tickets makes passion and ability fruitless. I could only let my knees buckle and hold. Waiting for something

If You’re On The Same Page

angelaejkoh — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:09:00 +0000

Something very common I assume. My expectations were simply not met. Growing up, and seeing what the big world could be for me (and the other way around) is not much. I think, I thought I was special, and maybe I would have a unique ability to save the world and die for love and leave great children behind. That there was always a ‘good guy’or a ‘direct and pure, shining goal’to work towards. And in this, I am very helpless. I console myself by going back to when I simply didn’t know what I wanted to do. When I was ‘kind of good’at everything. Before I felt life was an RPG game, and the winner just needed to spike their abilities to the extremes (like Vegeta). Use the set institutions and resources around me as tools to further myself. But now I stare into the screen with such a resolute and predictable future and income, I’ve become a small screw in the clockwork (take it as you will). Had I not been in control this whole time.

How unnatural of this world to take the human expectation (to evolve in love in mind through faith, hope, and charity, instilled into the soul before even birth), and have this expectation driven into the deep recesses, to be cast off like child’s play, calling it immaturity, and reificating the experience into “growing up.”

I look at my life lines and think, is it okay to be such a jealous, overzealous, analytical, critical person. And how long does one live, thinking this way (too long)? But I won’t stop, see I can’t because I still am helplessly that child looking for a goal but. There is no stop or rest or breathe or sleep or walk or lean. Because there are promises I made to the people I love, and at least to them, I could be a woman of my word, if not much else.