(in conversation with you)
one half of an exchange
written in asynchronous conversation with / in response to S’s writing. not a medium for writing / conversing that i’ve experienced before, but somehow you evoke responses to the things you say. a beck and call, you call, i answer, like the call and responses in the classical music i used to play, melodies bouncing from the strings to brass and winds and back again, a beckoning, a returning, filling the space with a ringing ringing resonance, a ringing reverence.
i’ve always felt at home in disappearing places. the ones that people don’t often think of. the ones that people forget. i remember standing beneath the haze of the swollen blue sky in death valley. not a single other human in sight, just the horizon and the tumbleweeds rolling far, far away. i felt the same in eastern washington, nestled among the trellises and outstretched trees, fallen apples slumbering peacefully at my feet. the sky was so wide that it was nearly all i could see, and the world was quiet, and it was just me and the dirt under my boots, and if i spoke my heart aloud only the stones and sand and trees and leaves would hear me. i could disappear, somewhere between there and here, slip in and vanish without a trace, trace my roots back to the very earth from which i was once made, where i long, someday, to return.
i could disappear — and the world would keep turning on its steady axis. and in spite of it all, this would just be our secret, this forgotten place where she’d hold me close.
i hoard things — things i’ll never use. just in case i’ll need them. just in case you might.
preemptive mourning accompanies me often. perhaps it’s my fear that good things (could) last.
(and why does it feel like i’m always - already - mourning?)
i think of secondhand things often, too. i grew up wearing hand-me-downs from my cousin and my mom’s coworker’s daughter, and we regularly shopped at garage sales. things that are handed down have always felt profound. i think of the stories they contain. why they were left behind. why others weren't. survivorship bias, maybe. everything that remains in my archive of a childhood room tells one story. everything that is no longer there tells another.
i think of the space that remains unfilled. what the spaces between the lines say. how lovely to witness the filling in of blanks. what a marvel to see what was once unsaid.
i learned to draw stick figures as stars when i was 17, on the cusp of 18. it was summer, and humid in nanjing. my mom’s elementary school best friend taught me, little cartoons drawn on slips of scrap paper.
faces upturned. arms reaching for the sky.
all i ever write about is who i am in light of who i was made to be and all that came before. it feels significant to understand and contextualize myself within history, as a product of history. i worry, though. i worry that if i’m able to explain my self fully, then i’ll lose what makes me individual. if i am to be the aftermath, i want to be a beginning, a choice, not an inevitability.
(this is a big fear of mine. why i’m a little afraid to engage. a little afraid of discourse. am i my own / are my memories my own / are the things i feel my own? where am i in the context of everything that came before? what footnotes do i get to say?)
i was reminded viscerally that english is my second language and that i write in a borrowed tongue. the space between the words i know not how to say and the feelings i know not how to convey are the divide that sits heavy between us and our understanding of each other.
and i’m walking in your fantasy, suspended in time, suspended with no place, where everything is cyclical, and fantasy is already a memory, and when i wake at the cusp of every morning, i’m already returning, returning to a future that’s one we’ve already known, and the end of all our beginnings is something that — just — nearly — can’t be contained, on this planet still-spinning where we’re all each others’ neighbors, and we’re all on our way home, in this daylight days-gone that we impossibly, inexplicably share.
i liked the piece about dancing. somewhere, everywhere, always, we’re dancing. once, when i was twenty, i misheard a lyric. i listened to it coming out of the front door, walking out onto the porch, into my front yard, onto the street where i grew up, into the wide-open world.
it was supposed to be “stars were dancing.” i heard “start with dancing”.
that’s all there is to it. just dance, dance, like all children were born to do.
the entirety of this piece destroyed me, a little, a lot. i read it all in one breath. i don’t know how many times i blinked. if you asked me, i couldn’t tell you. all i can say is this - that i feel your words in my marrow, even though i don’t even know you yet. perhaps the pain you feel is the pain i’ve always contained, too. perhaps in a past life, i already knew you. (if i cleaved my heart open, maybe you’d recognize parts of yourself in what we see). sometimes it can’t be contained, and here we are, standing in the rubble, in the aftermath, words stacked like stones stacked with prayers like that day with J last july, on a cloudy beach in monterey. i often regret the things i don’t / didn’t say. i’m trying to get better at that. sometimes, i hate myself for it. sometimes, i feel okay, because there’s other people out there, saying my words, the ones i didn’t even know i wanted to say. my body, a vessel. our minds, someone’s muse. everything that needs to be said will inevitably / eventually / inexplicably be written; the world is generous with her truths. (so, too, are you).
beneath me, the lithosphere sighs. my vision blurs.
distance as something sharp, that can draw blood, acute in its absence, in your absence, it cuts me, when you’re gone.
learning language as a compounding of meaning. i sat beside strangers at cafes and bars in japan and my tongue was heavy with all the words i did not know how to say.
i wanted to. i wanted to reach across the table, glance across the room. (there was nothing i could say. nothing i could do.)
(when i read my old writing, i remember all the you’s, their names, their stories, the time we shared, the people they wanted me to be, the people i wanted them to be, the way i wanted them to save me).
(it is always a little devastating. but i reread them, maybe not often, but on occasion. enough to remember. enough to not forget. is that enough, yet?)
i too, once lived in a triangle room. it was the summer after i had my heart broken. the one before everything that came after. a lot happened afterwards. a lot happened that summer too, but also nothing at all. it was the summer where everything in my life started to change, first for the worse, and then, years later, for the better.
it was the only time in my memory i lived in a triangle room. they hold their form so tightly.
i think of past lives and parallel futures often. a single coin toss — heads or tails, and every outcome is one that changes time, changes timelines, changes the universe in a way that could have nearly carried me away from you.
in spite of it all, the cacophony of spinning metal clatters. in another life, the language through which i move through the world would not be this one. in another life, i was never a sister. in another life, i never learned to love at all. but every past life i have lived has led me here to you.
(and still, still, still, i find that i am already mourning). what loss, what loss, what have i lost?
perhaps the point of it all is still choosing when we know that we’re doomed, anyway. doomed, already. doomed, always.
the first time i realized my parents had once loved each other was last winter. perhaps they still do. (i hope they still do).
but the first time i had that conscious realization was that night after i drove home and unpacked grandma’s boxes and brought out their old photo albums again. the tiles were cold so i moved to the sofa, thumbing through pages brittled with time, catching glimpses preserved in those old rectangles of film. i felt the love in those memories. beyond what i could’ve ever believed, through my childhood where none of this had ever been felt or seen.
how simple, how strange. how much love these slips of time held. how many of their wishes came true?
i feel untethered, often. i miss nanjing, and all its muggy humid summers and the lotus blossoms on the lake and the faded red track by my grandparents’ old home. i feel the ever-present draw to japan as well. i wonder if i’m projecting, or how much i’m projecting. i wonder if my parents feel it too when they lay in bed at night. i wonder if my dad thinks in chinese or japanese or english or some combination of all of the above, like i sometimes do. i wonder if he feels the strain on his identity. i don’t know if he’s ever thought of that at all, or if he’s ever been able to.
this tension i feel — the restlessness skittering under my skin — i remind myself that this, too, is a luxury.
all the words i have ever wanted to say have already been said. all i can do is regurgitate them. variations on a theme, an endless tale.
and yet….perhaps i write because i’m afraid i’ll forget. perhaps i write to lay my words to rest. to be at peace. these words will never be written again. maybe this is letting them go. passing them on. bringing them to life. watching as they’re reborn.
limned in the soft light. held in its embrace. a little fuzzy at the edges where it bleeds away, formless. the way you soften my edges. hold me in your embrace.
this was all written in response to memories / thoughts / feelings i had when reading S’s writing. all inspiration and all love to her for her heart and words. how marvelous, to be brought to emotion. how marvelous, to have so many words evoked. how marvelous, to be human together.
things at work have been tumultuous lately. it’s strange to have to look out for oneself in such an — isolating — way. i’m reminded that i’m an adult and responsible for my own trajectory and life in these uncomfortable ways. having difficult conversations. being candid. opening up. i’m often frustrated at how much work affects my mental state, but i hope things get better, even if they look now like they’re changing for the worse.
i started the month hiking through a preserve near half moon bay. the redwoods feel like home to me now, too, even if the way they obstruct the sky is still a little unfamiliar. saw so many wildflowers and banana slugs!
i’ve also started painting a little bit again. hoping to make it a weekly thing. only landscapes in acrylic so far, but perhaps i’ll dabble soon in watercolor or gouache, which J wields so beautifully. our wall is continually filling with art, and with it too, my quiet heart.
see you all in the next. as always, with love <3