Memory part 2

The encounter itself. How are we to feel, what are we supposed to say?

I was never sure of these things so I role-played. The encounter between the interviewer and the interviewee becomes a game, a fabrication of sorts. I feel what I am supposed to feel given the difficult stories I am programmed to listen to, but compassion soon turns into disinterest, and language…into silence. Was this a result of realizing that what I thought was so important and relevant does not carry the same significance in the whole of things? Realizing that I had looked at an entire country and a people with a singular view, that is, ‘a people in need of something, i.e justice?’ Then I have to wonder whether I had made the wrong decision in devoting a year of my life to this. I did everything that I was supposed to do and did it well—endured (life and living) circumstances, reveled in excitement and anticipation (over both people and events), exerted my physical and emotional body, and thought hard about the global social order (relief work, war crimes, various development theories), but nothing really remains. I’m disappointed to learn that I have not learned what love is. Even after death.

My duty to look at the state of Timor with a critical eye was compromised by a nihilistic blight that hit me at a sweet twenty-five. But how is it fair that I am seeking answers to my existential crises in this project? How can I shake in distaste when it was I that imposed such a heavy responsibility on their shoulders?

**Parallel this ‘felt’ experience with Ho Jin’s physical experience.