"Life will break your heart. But you decide if you break open or break down. "
- Chung Hyun-Kyung
POPULATION: ghosts, gods, electrons, and tales. (and vashta nerada?)
“So we are nearing the end. The right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which, during our delectable reading, we would lightly feel, mechanically testing whether there were still plenty left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick reading, already downhill, and-O horrible!”
- "Invitation to a Beheading," Vladimir Nabokov
DFTBA
pathologically curious
What a night. (Friday, 27 April 2012 - after the first performance of our Ravel trio and before the mad dash to Nightmarket)
So incredible that it momentarily rendered two individuals as normally articulate as we are speechless - a tough feat, to be sure.
42.
For two.
all of us. we are all minor characters in everyone else’s eyes.
no. the plurality makes it too easy to swallow.
i. me. i am a minor character to everyone i know.
tangential.
fleeting.
a series of vignettes and momentary impressions.
depth - so very understated a concept.
it’s like that moment when you realize that the group of friends you have been spending time with would probably not be lacking much were you not there - not in the library of inside jokes that they have, nor in the discourse itself, nor in the mutually held understanding of the panoply of voices and personalities present. it’s like that moment. but amplified. extended to everyone you know.
which is why when you make a commitment to hold someone in particular as special - and then lose it - so hard, so hard - it is so incredibly painful.
to me i am important. perhaps at the cost of all else. the lack of accountability is scary - the autonomy, the aloneness. to my consciousness my actions and thoughts are important
to him, no longer. once, yes, but no longer.
that’s the truly wounding part.
-
and now that i have perhaps a bright thing, a bright person to look forward to knowing - an atmosphere that his acts and his glances, or more accurately, perhaps, stares, exude - the refreshing newness and pleasing potentiality of the unknown of an other person - I cannot help but be scared.
is this jadedness? is this cynicism? am i falling into that which i promised i never would? i told myself that i would never stop believing in the infinite potential of knowing and loving every person - but that is so tiring, and so often, leaves you crestfallen when you do find it in yourself to do exactly that - and then that person gives you up. i told myself and thought i knew that it was not to be given up, that this fact was a statement that made me me (one of very few things like that, mind you). but if i have lost it,
well.
then.
maybe i just need some rest.
it hurts. it really does.
p.s. the cyclical irony is not lost on me. don’t worry.
SO MUCH TIRED
this is fucking miserable i just want to sleep lol
Take this sinking boat and point it home
as the sun rises, pointing squarely (and very picturesquely, I’m sure) into my eye, and I begin my revision.
There is a number of objectively useless Things (that is, artistic ones) whose creation I would happily accept as the only outcome of my Existence if I could - a small number - but a number nonetheless.
What an amazing night.
The pure, unadulterated fun of it - of happy sisters and a centering energy that wasn’t necessarily (or, really, at all) retiring and withdrawn. A crazy, sweating-on-the-dance-floor night, but without the alcoholic tinge, or the vaguely hunted feel of an eating club (even if evasion, or occasionally, capture, can be somewhat exhilarating.)
The centering of a strong but human woman contemplating the entrance to a rat’s timed maze - to family and love and happiness; the joy of a returning and welcomed lost son; the jumping and knobble-kneed exuberance of a Perfect Human Being, a fragile soul held and protected, yet having weathered so much more in this ofd nation than his proud princely cousins, perhaps; the love from all around - the sheer EASE with which it was given and offered and promised for coming days - my heart settles and pumps and sings and feels full. Like the deepest of breaths and the hardest of cleanses has passed through my heart, and having left a kind note on the foyer table, firmly and triumphantly marched outwards and onwards.
Easily the best night I’ve had at Princeton.
