fragments #2
a collection of old thoughts that have been sitting in my drafts since winter
i am being impulsive now.
haha, no. no, not very impulsive. i said that, and believed it, because i want to be impulsive. i want to be impulsive and adventurous and wild (and other times i want to be mysterious and sullen… and other times i want to be nothing at all, i want to escape my own vision of myself…)
but i said i am being impulsive because i just copy-and-pasted all my drafts into one big post. and i am doing something i normally wouldn’t do which is post them without editing them whatsoever. many of these i had not even edited at all, i had just written out my first draft and forgotten about them. they are likely very bad but i am living in blissful ignorance of that by choosing not to edit them. after i post this i think i will go and delete all my other, much older, drafts. i feel the need for a clean slate. i will have a clean slate and then i will be good i will be good and i will stay on top of things and keep myself together and make posts regularly i will be good.
today i felt depressed because i don’t know how i am living. at 2pm i left the house not knowing where to go. as i drove through the soft country roads i could feel my features sitting blank on my face. now i am in a small town called bloomfield, although i’m not sure if you could even call it a town— it’s so small i feel i am intruding. there is a little park here with nice picnic tables and bright grass and a couple of birds tweeting. i just needed to get away somewhere. i’m craving my grandma deb’s house in southern oregon, and the types of adventures i could have up there. there’s something about small country towns that make me feel content and something more but i’m not sure what to name it yet. although it’s hard when i don’t know the place and all it’s little spots, like where i am now. i know there are some secret spots that all the residents know but that i could never know unless i lived here. when trying to find this park i walked past a group of people who asked me if i knew an old woman who apparently lives/lived down the road; i wish i remembered her name. there was another man who walked out of his barn in a sagging black tank top, curious of who i was. i saw two cats but couldn’t pet them, and i walked through a field that got my shoes all muddy. i should be doing schoolwork but i was just feeling so off and all my family was home and i needed to get out. as i was driving here through all the fields of perfect little bright yellow flowers i got suddenly remorse because i knew that i’ll get to see those flowers and long green hills and just everything, barely one time in my life. even if i see things like these multiple times, when it comes down to it, it’s really only once. i got upset at all the times i must have looked at these beautiful things without really seeing them. it’s almost spring. people like spring because it reminds them of life, of all things new and fresh, of the fact that birth is still possible. and i like spring for those reasons but i also can’t ever shake off the knowledge that it will all eventually die again, and that there’s no time for anything and it’s all almost over already and you can’t escape the ephemerality of things. will my life be spent resisting the cycles, the changes? how do i let myself be cycled along with things, how do i let myself accept it all?
“The kindly search for growth, the gracious desire to exist of the flowers, my near ecstasy of existing among them
The privilege to witness my existence— you too must seek the sun…”
— ginsberg, fragment from “transcription of organ music”
i walk through my days admiring the beauty of life’s complexity but simultaneously feeling overwhelmed and dreaded by life’s chaos. it’s a difficult thing to balance and most days i can’t. i am left always in this weird in-between space. sometimes i cannot get comfortable— physically or mentally/emotionally/spiritually— no matter what i try to do or where i go. i’ve learned that on those types of days all i can do is just push myself through, the best i can, reminding myself that eventually it will be over and i will go to sleep and be released from it. today was one of those days. i got none of my schoolwork done and now it is around 6:30 and i’m slightly stressed.
because i can’t afford a latte right now i ordered an herbal tea from the cafe, in the flavor “african nectar”. i’m not exactly sure what that means but i was told it was good. it came in a tea bag made of mesh and with neat white stitching around the side. i ran my finger along the stitched edge and thought about how nice it was. lately i feel like what gets me through is just the act of admiring all the little details of all the new things i see. like this teabag.
i am very withdrawn, but that has allowed me to walk through everything with a specific consideration. every object i encounter, i do so carefully. my world sometimes feels so desolate that in a weird way, everything has the opportunity to be an adventure. of course it never really is, but still, i like this mindset i’ve gained. today i went to a market that was small and old; the isles were tight and they had sodas i had never seen before. all the other shoppers moved around me while i picked out an apple that felt the firmest. one man looked like my freshman year drama teacher, and i knew he wasn’t, but i passed him five different times and each time i thought of the resemblance again. i saw a guy that went to school with me from 5th to 12th grade and we exchanged a nod. it’s a weird thing to find so much solace in what is such a mundane activity but i think it’s that i’m learning to appreciate the charm of these types of things.
and like, last wednesday i had to wait upstairs of the music building at my school because i just added a choir class and the altos were getting together to practice. anyway i had never been up on the second floor before— it’s just a ton of practice rooms— but as soon as i walked up there i loved it. i could tell the building was probably from the 80s, and i loved the big windows next to the short flight of brick stairs, and all the old chairs and sofas lining the walls, and the way the sun streamed in through the windows and the whole hallway was dusty and worn but in a really lovely and homely way. and for 15 minutes i was just really happy to be sitting up there because i could tell that it’s the spot where all the band kids hang out together. for the past 40 years it has probably been the spot where all the band kids hang out, on the same timeworn sofas and in the same dusty sunshine. for a while i’ve longed for some sort of really strong and wonderful community and at times it is very painful to be without one— to feel isolated in myself. but for a moment it was enough just to be in proximity to the ghost of someone else’s community. it was nice.
i love reading my books to the extent that it’s abusive. i crack the spines, fold the pages down, twist the cover around itself. i let my ink flow freely underneath the words and along the pages. the more i destroy my books, the more they belong to me. i like to hold a book and softly stroke my fingers along its imperfections, its scars and wounds and welts, knowing i created them. i think that i read books in such a way that i completely devote myself to each one, i submerge myself fully into their worlds. during the period of time that i read a book, it’s atmosphere engulfs and consumes me. it seems only fair that i balance our relationship, the book and i, by leaving my mark on it as it leaves it’s mark on me.
this week [edit: i wrote this in early november] i finished boulder by eva baltasar, and started a wild sheep chase by murakami. i liked boulder more at first than i did once i finished it, but i still liked it. there’s one moment from it, however, that has stayed with:
language is and always will be an occupied territory. i have a feeling i was shackled to it the moment i was born. only language can help you belong somewhere and make sure you don’t lose your way. it’s a nourishing underlayer that seems to live in the mind, migrate down to the mouth, and spoken, melt on the lips. at the same time, language is everywhere, occupying the body’s farthest-flung cells, pushing them to unimaginable places. it urges you on and turns your stomach, confuses your animal instincts, makes you human. no emotion is more indulgent than the feeling that you are intensely human.
this felt so warm and cozy :)
the last fragment about your books really stuck with me. loved it!