to kill a pig

before i begin, two words: Apology. Warning.

apology: I haven’t been updating, and this will be likely situation with the onslaught of the killing season. go ahead, sue me.

warning: jennyspeaks will be updated pretty erratically from now on, but hang in there, my strawberries.

pigs have become a central theme in my mind now. pigs, pork, and particularly, killing pigs. as i reflected last night on what my life has evolved to, this quote surfaced:

“‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Bash him in! Spill his blood!’”
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies,

this is what my life has become: an endless war-dance, a savage hunting trip, where armed with textbooks, ten-year series assessments, thick piles of exam papers and even thicker expectations from everyone, i tread cautiously into the jungle, ready to kill the pig. the pig, in this case, is the upcoming O-level exam, a national torture, the culmination of ten years of full-time studying.

so i am told kill it, to crack its skull open, to suck as much marks as i can from it. everyday in class, i sit back and muse at the bowed heads scribbling furiously at yet another mock exam paper. in my mind, the white uniforms disappear and the pens are replaced by spears. the sound of pen on paper, the friction, becomes the frenzied sharpening of spear against stone. in the distance, the teacher becomes the tribe chief, and he utters the battle cry. this is civilised savagery.

this is the killing season.

you could also compare it with Darwin’s evolution theory. the survival of the fittest. the weakest fall down and get trampled by other charging savages, never to rise again. (even if they do, either their bones or their spirit is broken. usually it’s both.) far ahead in the horizon, lies the pig. fatty, tender, moist, and just begging to be skewered.

but do i want the pig? no. i’m just running with the tribe, because if i stop, i’ll get trampled over. do like pork? technically and literally, no. in real life, pork only tastes good when it’s fried (but then again, even a remote control would taste good when fried). the pork of the hunting trip, the pork everyone is running after, the pork that everyone wants a slice of, is something i wish i didn’t have to eat.

i’m too tired to care about the harvest, the bounty. so what if the pig that i eventually spear will give me sweet roasted meat? when i finally hunt it down, all i’ll see in my hands are blood. when i finally cook it, i’ll be too tired to appreciate the sweet pork of success. i’ll just lie in a corner and chew it like any another piece of food.

hey you. yes, you. the one staring at your miserable computer monitor now. don’t you feel that sometimes, you’re actually a savage? you’re hunting down your own pig, whatever it may be, somewhere in the forest? you put on your war-paint, you grab your weapons, and you get out there into the wild. but don’t you ever feel that Hey, what the hell am i running for? what the hell do i want anyway? and why, when i finally get it, there’s still a piece of the puzzle missing?

but there’s one way to make it all better. a tribe is not a tribe without the members doing it all together. a barbarian behaves like one because everyone around him is a barbarian too. so c’mon people. let’s all put on our war paint and sharpen our spears. then we’ll charge together, chanting ‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Bash him in! Spill his blood!’ as we run.

whatever we’re running for, anyway.