and in her right hand a silver dagger
pieces of life as of late, undated and unorganized (fragments #6)
“and so I sit at the table of God
and my garment is woven from the stars
and the leaves that fend from the trees that unfurl into heaven
in my hair are lilies and in my throat are pearls
and when I walk the streets of gold with naked feet
all this was promised and came to be”
when we kissed was it real or just my fantasy that made it real? beforehand, i had dreamt at least twice of kissing you. and it was real then. but it was only a dream. what was it for you? when is desire real and when is it imaginary? at this point, i’m so far away…
it’s a dangerous thing, this desire. because when i don’t have it fulfilled, i start inventing it for myself. i desire the desire— i desire the fulfillment of the desire… but not always truly the people. how fucked is that— i turn someone into merely a vessel for my desire. there’s nothing worse than living a lie— a fantasy— and this type is the worst. i wonder how i might begin to unravel myself from this spiral.
it’s like i can just sense— just deeply feel— that i am in the stage of my life of full exploration. of submitting myself, at last, to the waves of life; to the soft pulling of the stars. i am happy to be here. although a part of me can feel my future self already gazing back.
maybe the very first development of maturity is the first consciousness of memory
“and isn’t death just the apocolypse in the first person?”
~sally rooney, “beautiful world, where are you?”
i might start to surf, which is something i never thought i’d do or say before. if i’m being completely transparent, i thought of that line while walking home from the pub just now, and i wanted to save it for when i had actually surfed at least once. i wanted to be able to say: “i’ve started to surf, which is something i never thought i’d do or say before.”
~
also, as i was walking home from the pub, i heard the sound of chirping birds over my music. it was about 9pm. i thought about how, on the phone with an old coworker last week, he mentioned how he could hear the sound of chirping birds in the background of my voice, and that those bird noises were resulting in him imagining me in the most picturesque environment of the irish countryside. after that i had gone home and made sure to note down a line in the notes app of my phone about how the sound of birds— the sound of birds particular to a specific place— subconsciously deepen your presence within that particular place. you are in a place and hear birds chirping and it isn’t until you move to a different place that you realize it has suddenly become different birds you are listening to. now i am thinking of my very last night in florence, with [censored], where, at around 5am, we were walking back to my apartment so i could give her my extra bottle of chianti wine that i wouldn’t be able to drink before my flight in five hours. we were walking through piazza santa croce and suddenly began to hear the morning birds, chirping so strongly and intensely. i think that a bunch of them must have lived in the church courtyard, or in the school next door, or something. anyway, i remember walking across there that night, and then remembering that the only other time, the first time, i’d heard those birds— so many of them— chirping so strongly— buzzing, almost— buzzing like a swarm of summer wasps— was one night when [censored] and i had decided to go to the midnight bakery for cornetti al nutella at around 3 or 3:30am after a night out, and we walked through the piazza back to our street at maybe 4 or 4:30, suddenly alarmed by a sound we couldn’t place. as it slowly grew louder we finally realized it to be that buzzing swarm of the birds of santa croce.
it’s too easy here to get wrapped up in everything, to forget that the outside world exists
(it’s like this whole place is a dream i just can’t wake up from)
i found comfort in my old forgotten scraps of words
(a sort of return to myself)
the pub lives down the street from me. or, i live down the street from it. it’s called “the green room”. i love this name because it makes me think it would have a sort of lynchian vibe. and it does, i think. yes, i like it. and it is green in fact, on the exterior— although it is a bit more of a lighter teal color. it opens at 3pm and sometimes i go in the early afternoon/evening (it all blends together here because the sun doesn’t set till around 9:30pm which sometimes makes me feel crazy but i’ll write more about that another time so anyways:) i go there and buy a bottle of bulmer’s, usually, and also sometimes one of those little blue bags of tayto’s salt and vinegar “crisps”— yes, those chips with a bulmer’s or guinness is very nice— and i take myself outside into the patio area which has a glass ceiling and rows of windows lining the walls so i do feel indeed that i am in a green house. normally i am alone in there and i’ll tell you what i do: i wedge myself into the corner of one of the raised booths (i always seat myself within corners whenever and wherever i can. always.) and i sip on my bulmer’s, and possibly snack on those “crisps” if i’ve bought them, and sometimes in addition to the taytos i’ve brought some jaffa cakes along with me which are very nice, after i’ve finished the crisps (jaffa cakes have been a wonderful new discovery for me here in ireland) and i smoke a rolled cigarette after finishing a glass (a bottle of bulmers makes two glasses, so it is a perfect little break— i very much enjoy smoke breaks, always much more than the cigarette itself— it’s about the ritual, you see— and as you may be able to see i have developed quite the ritual for myself there at the green room) and anyway— and here is the main thing i do at the green room, which i’ve taken quite a while to get to— i just sit there for hours and read. i’ve learned that this is the best way to have time to read, is to create a time and place, a separate time and place, to Go and Read. that’s how i’ve always done it, i suppose, but there aren’t too many places to “go” here; or, not as many compared to what i’m used to. there are many beautiful places outside but it is often very windy which strongly annoys me and sometimes i go to the beach to read and journal and i simply tell myself that the wind doesn’t annoy me but it always secretly does, which then becomes a worse experience than just allowing myself to be annoyed by it, and i end up reading much less than if i had just kept myself at the lodge. anyway my three options here of places to “go” are: the blow-in, the coffee shop in town, but it’s only open for half of the week and only until 3pm and there are only three tables and i have to bike about 20 minutes to get there and the bike ride back from town is, in my opinion, hell; against the wind and up all the hills. but i’m being too harsh, i think i will take myself to the blow-in sometime soon. additionally there is spillane’s, which is cool but slightly more of a restaurant than a pub and also it can sometimes be pretty busy there and so for these reasons it is hard to get very comfortable; comfortable in a particular way that i prefer and, honestly, strongly need: comfortable in the sense that i feel i can just disappear within the environment, preferably in a corner of course, for hours, and feel no obligations. so then, lastly, i’m left with the green room which, as i’ve mentioned, i’ve been very much enjoying.
“oh, the crow that is so black, my love
will change his color white
if ever i should prove false to thee
the day, day will turn to night”
~joan baez, “fare thee well”
sometimes i just think: everything is collapsing; everything; and this is what i’m doing. and it’s so odd. but somehow it’s the only thing that makes sense.
i’ve developed a strange new pleasure in a certain type of domesticity. i’ve found a beauty and comfort of working for myself, for daily routines. cleaning, gardening, cooking. yesterday i baked a loaf of lemon cake.
i’ve always written my best when i’m most depressed, because when i’m most depressed, i’m most vulnerable, and i think that some of the best writings in the world of literature are the best because of how deeply they explore the vulnerabilities of human existence. and so in a way, i’ve always considered this my goal in writing— to penetrate to the deepest of my vulnerabilities and existence— to come to the truest understandings of things that i can; truths (or is it all just one single truth?) taking form through words, like a tree, endlessly growing outward and rooting downward.
when i took my first creative writing class, i wasn’t as depressed as i’d previously been, and all i did was try to reinsert myself back into that intensely vulnerable mindset, instead of trying to see how i could work forward, how i could work from my present state. it didn’t really work. my writing turned out only alright. when i’d been writing whilst in my most depressed periods— the reason i started writing in the first place— it came from a necessity to understand the darkness i had felt was containing me, the vulnerabilities that made me feel exposed and confused. i was living in a dream-like state and i used my writing to enlarge that and understand it. i used my writing to create something more out of the little i felt i had.
i’m only starting to try and write now, after a a very long while. i need to come to understand again what it means for me to write, to create, to understand. i think some of the things i decided at 15 or 16 still feel true— the thing about attempting to touch the deepest truth of things. but i need to learn what that means for me now that i am in a different place in my self and my life.
“english, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way. i haven’t yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being i use english words in order to say things. i expect i will always have to do it that way; regrettably i don’t think my first language can be written down at all. i’m not sure it can be made external you see. i think it has to stay where it is; simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs.”
~claire-louise bennet, “the big day” (in “pond”, a collection of short stories)
how do i release my undelegated desire here. in this place. in this world. who can i make my love. what can i make my love.
is love so essential to a human? am i simply creating this desire for myself, or— how truly real is it? it feels real… that is all…
i remember one night; you lit another cigarette and as the end glinted into metallic red i realized you looked almost like a god. nothing could have been more, then.
“the human whisper, so cold”
~julia holter “marienbad”
thank u for ur time
see you again soon
xx
harlow
i love the way you see the world