december

the thoughts and things i have collected as the days drift through me

Dec 29, 2022

12.15.22

i was sitting in a cafe before my work shift, when a woman began playing the grand piano in the room. entering an almost meditative trance, i realized i had forgotten how much these types of experiences are special to me. sitting and indulging in the piano’s lush notes, while reading and journaling… it’s a moment of beauty and yet it’s completely informal. it gives me hope to consider that these small phenomenons may be more frequent than i think, if i can maybe just try to pull myself out of my mind sometimes. sitting in the cafe, i thought, where did this woman come from? but probably these kinds of people are everywhere. probably that’s the wonder of life.

i liked seeing the way a man, sitting in a table near the piano, was gazing at the woman with a sort of homely appreciation. i wondered if he was her husband or friend, or if he was just a stranger. the woman finished playing and the two started chatting and i saw that they were strangers after all. they talked about the songs the woman played, then about piano and the music world in general. the man remarked that he used to play, too, that he used to travel all around playing, in places like boston, new york, and seattle. the two were standing, conversing, and i noticed that the woman kept trying to get away, kept saying, alright then, have a good evening, thank you, etc., but then the man would keep adding remarks to the conversation as if he had not heard her at all. i couldn’t tell if the woman was genuinely trying to end the conversation and get away, or if she was just like me, if she’s just awkward in conversations, always slightly unsure about social cues, of whether or not the conversation is over. i thought that the two people, then, seemed disconnected, and it disheartened me a bit. although maybe i should give credit in that it seemed they were at least trying. as humans i wonder if we will ever get across to each other as much as we would like to.

later at work it was slow and i was still thinking about the moment i had witnessed, and about how i, constantly, can’t seem to function normally in conversations with people i’m not very familiar with. i realized that maybe i am just always subconsciously concerned about over-staying my welcome. i wonder if this is a socialized-as-a-woman thing. or if i am just insecure. or both.

12.19.22

in one sitting i read autobiography of red by anne carson. i was left stunned. i think that it was one of the most beautiful things i have ever read. i decided that Anne Carson Must Be A God because how else could she have created something so magnificent/electrifying/intoxicating/gorgeously-disturbing.

“we are amazing beings.

geryon is thinking. we are neighbors of fire.

and now time is rushing towards them

where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,

night at their back.”

12.20.22

one day before the rainy season by mani kaul:

(on emotions)

“…that relation is bigger than all the other relations in my life. i love my emotions. [they’re] pure, tender, and immortal.”

12.22.22

i thought i’d hang out with a friend but they never really got back to me. that’s okay though no hard feelings i get it. i’m guilty too and we all are.

i spent the day reading ethan frome and singing the same lines from the song i need to be in love by the carpenters (i know i need to be in love i know i’ve wasted too much time i know i ask perfection of a quite imperfect world and fool enough to think that’s what i’d find.)1

12.23.22

i can never sweep the last bit of dust into the dustbin and i feel crazy for it. the days are blending together and i’ve been wearing the same pair of jeans for the past two weeks.

“he was beginning to see her as a locked garden that he could sneak into and sit in for days, tearing the heads off the flowers.”

-bad behavior by mary gaitskill (“a romantic weekend”)

12.24.22

it occurred to me that i probably have one of those faces that are slightly unsettling to look it. i am not saying that i think i’m ugly.

a feeling of hyper-awareness of my body— of my existence in a body— tightening— claustrophobic— uncomfortable— inescapable….

kids in middle school taunting: exclaiming the reminder that your tongue is constantly uncomfortable despite any position you try to settle it in. and the only way to rid yourself of this awareness, to regain comfort in your tongue’s position, is to wait until you’ve forgotten about it again.

sometimes i think living in a body is like that. at least for me. i’m fine until i remember and then i’m tensely confined in myself until i forget again.

i’m thinking… about living in ambiguity….2

12.25.22

i hardly think about christmas because it never feels like christmas anymore. i had been bringing myself through the days hoping to regain a feeling of the magic that should come along with christmas but at this point i must allow myself to accept that that magic is likely nonexistent outside of childhood. although, tonight, i looked into the lights of the christmas tree, and felt warm and nice, and wondered….

on an unrelated note, i wrote in my journal:

i have to keep holding hope that i will find the type of deep connection that i yearn for or else how can i live. how can i live if that connection doesn’t exist. what else would i be able to aim for and drive myself toward. the dream of that connection sits like the light at the end of a never-ending tunnel but still i really do think that the tunnel will end and i will find that magical spark. (i want magic to be real.) i just need to get out of this fucking town maybe. i dream of new york because i imagine i’d find the people there that i am looking for. i think, there has to be someone right? but who knows. i dream because that’s the only other option besides accepting the probable reality (in seventh grade the school counselor told me i’d find someone in “no time” but it has been— hold on i’m counting— six years and i still have not. so.) and i don’t want to accept the probable reality because like i said then i don’t know what i’m living for. really i feel like there is no way of knowing if that type of intimacy will ever exist for me. so i keep going back and forth and maybe i will forever. maybe that’s all.

then i thought that i am probably very pathetic.

the next day i refined my thoughts:

12.26.22

i need to know that i am not alone in this.

i constantly look for that intimacy in strangers but my gaze is never reflected back at me. or, only very occasionally. but barely, or vaguely. never lasting. never real. and yet i keep looking. i spend every moment that i am in public, looking. looking for the one that might reflect me, might link to me. maybe it has to be this way; maybe this is the only way that it can be. if i search for it in an unlikely situation, and consequently remain unreflected, then i am still able to keep hoping for it, keep looking for it. i can continue hoping as long as i continue holding in me a foreign abstract that i search for in the dusty crevices of the world, in the gazes underneath the dim streams of light— until i have been specifically, thoroughly denied the existence of this impalpable spirit, until i have been confirmed of it’s nonexistence,

i pursue it.

12.27.22

for me, reading aids in an examination of human nature. of others. and myself. and, i suppose, the non-human things, although those things have all still been constructed by us. they are only non-human in that they are not us.

i’m reminded of sometime last month when i was at a poetry reading at a nature preserve and a man was talking about how nature is a social/man-made construct.

“the fact is that i find in the day’s light, in this diffused, pale, almost shadowless luminosity, a darkness deeper than the night’s.”

-if on a winter’s night a traveler by italo calvino

after so many days in hibernation, i walked into the world and surprised myself with a newfound sense of reticence. the rain had, through the night, washed everything away, and i was stepping into a fresh world. i stepped clearly along my path, my gaze tranquil and patient. i felt i did not mind, for once, being unreflected. i was serene.

when i returned home i allowed myself to realize that my sense of serenity may have just been a performance for myself.

12.28.22

woke late, but without a headache at least. it was sunny outside so i closed my blinds and sat on my bed and watched an anne charlotte robertson diary film (reel 22: a short affair (and) going crazy). after that i felt clouded over and managed to spend about four hours accomplishing nothing. outside my window it sounded like there was storm. i left the house and saw that it was maintenance men, working on the sewage/drainage system on my street. i think this is because there is a potential that the street could flood. it happened before. (there is a very embarrassing video somewhere on the internet of me having to be saved from my flooded house by a fireman. it played on local news stations as well as fucking BBC.)

on letterboxd i reviewed anne’s film by writing:

i draw myself through my days searching for a world; a world of which it’s existence i am uncertain of; but i continue to search for it with direct intent; i cannot do anything else. i could never allow myself to do anything else.

and more. i also noted a clip of anne’s narration in the film:

“everything the mirror has seen, should go into this tape, right here. everything the mirror has seen. it makes me think that it could be possible. to live again. could be possible. to live again. to live again. as a human form.”

by three o’clock i am still thinking about anne charlotte robinson. i feel kindred to her. when i google her name not enough comes up. not as much as i want to know. i think that i’d like to have my own vhs camcorder and record video diaries. like anne3. or at the very least a good old film camera, to collect moments, like the way patti smith does. i just don’t know anything about cameras and would have no idea where to start.

sitting in a coffee shop. whenever i look out the window and see a group of people walking by i cannot allow myself to think too hard about them, or else i start to think about what i’m missing, and how unfair it all is, and then waves of nausea4 start to pass through me...

is it a world or a feeling or a state of being or a person that i am searching for? all of the above?

Okay. life is searching. constantly. that’s just what life is5. it will continue, adjusting and evolving, the thing i am searching for; but i will always be searching for it.

i find comfort in knowing that i am slowly but surely falling into myself; my methods, my habits. our society is very scared of aging but it provides me with solace because it is singularly clear, constant, and inevitable. despite everything, i at least can be sure that i am moving forward in that aspect.

thank u if u made it this far! this was a longer one. as always, if any thoughts have been provoked in you, i would love to hear them. :) ALSO i am thinking about making an end-of-year post about my favorite books that i’ve read this year… would that be interesting to anyone? let me know okayyyyy goodbye

december

the thoughts and things i have collected as the days drift through me

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