Last night I spent a while cutting up a heavy yellow melon called “kandy” that was some kind of hybrid between a honeydew and a cantaloupe and something else. I was trying not to waste too much melon while I cut off the tough skin. It was sweet and somehow acidic, like pineapple. Later that night I had strange dreams with lots of responsibility. I can only attribute those dreams to the kandy melon. I woke up with a splitting headache and the urge to clean out my closet. I sold some clothes at a bougie secondhand store except they “had to pass today” on two dresses. Tonight, I hope my sister is having a great time at her high school dance. She said they were playing “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz and it’s funny to me how things are still the same in a lot of ways. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll have the same thoughts as today. That nothing can surprise me lately. Huh, more cynical and sad than usual, and then there is a surprising breeze that rattles my blinds. [Here in Los Angeles autumn is just an afterthought. And then suddenly its a mild winter.] But back to tomorrow. Maybe P and I will walk a mile to the farmer’s market. Maybe, if we wake up on time and everything else runs on time. Time promises us a lot. It’s hard to believe that promise: that things will change, or that they won’t, or that things will be better, or they won’t, or that time will heal everything and wipe out everything and someday mean nothing to nobody. The more I stay an adult the more I feel the cyclical pull of the generations and their patterns. The universe and its patterns. Do I sense myself joining the wheel? Will I become someone foreign to me? On the day after tomorrow temperatures are supposed to drop. Elsewhere, everything will be ending. I think I’ll feel the same, but I am frustrated at the idea. I am distrustful of time even though it is the most constant thing. Or is it change? Or is it evil? For a moment I think hard about the idea of ubiquitous evil. My florescent lightbulb flickers in the hallway next to the kitchen and I hear a maniacal dog barking outside in the warm night and feel my thighs and there are a number of bug bites and then consider opening the fridge to eat more of that melon. I think I’ll do that. The cold will chill my upper right teeth, like they did the day before.
Tag Archives: Love
(Jan. 2025) Another Orange
Another orange? says a classmate as I roll a satsuma between my palms. Um yeah. Citrus is delicious in the winter time and everyone is getting ill. I don’t quite know what she means by that question but I dig in my nail and see a little cloud of orange oil float away. I’m learning about taxes and the room smells sweet.
So it’s February and it’s time to become new. It’s time to cull away bad habits. It’s the beginning of the year, but the year is cold and there is no sun. The sun is on earth and everything burns.
I am practicing talking by trying to make friends with two people whom I see regularly at school. One is the crossing guard at the busy intersection. One is the nighttime security guard. They both smile at me and we chat. I don’t know why I’m always nervous. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to focus these days. I try to just leave a good impression and keep moving on with the day. And then walking to my car I notice my foot hurts and so I focus on that instead.
I’ll miss you, P mumbles in half-sleep as I get up in the middle of the night. I think a lot about that, and I think about sweetness and levity in the winter. Lately I feel seen in the way that people who build computers assemble those transparent computers. (Bad simile?) It’s nice to be paid attention to. It’s life-affirming to have energy reciprocated. I’m still whirring and exhaling but maybe some people can see where the air comes from.
I was writing this during my office hours as a TA for a writing class. I had a good idea for this blog post when one of my students came to ask a question. I can’t resent them for that; that’s why I was sitting there. But now I can’t remember it and I’m weighing that against the thought that I sometimes feel like writing is the only reason not to cryogenically freeze myself into the future.
We’ll see, I say about a hundred times a day in every conversation. I think I’m passively obsessed with the future because it is so unknown. And I take refuge in that, as opposed to the past, which is not only known, but also potentially terrible–at least when I lie awake in bed because the Trader Joe’s melatonin is too weak. But. The future can only be reassuring if I’m relatively certain I’ll get there. That enough is reason to be optimistic. So I’m sending out this prayer for the new year. I’ll imagine the world is an orange and it is sweet in the winter.
End of 2024: List of Love
Happy end of 2024! I love the new year and its shiny promise… but for now, I made a list of the things I loved most over the last twelve months. Best wishes to us all in 2025.
- Old friends
- New people and optimism
- Carrot juice
- Wavy perms
- Caffeine twice a day (once on the weekends)
- Audiobooks in the car, especially
- Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
- Calling friends weekly
- Sweaters ugh I love them
- Staying in
- Jump rope for fitness
- Malatang and other spicy soups
- Having multiple beverages at once
- Songs by women with short titles
- “Impossible” by Clairo
- “Scott Pilgrim” by Plumtree
- “anything” by Adrianne Lenker
- “Track 10” by Charli XCX
- “Heaven” by Mitski
- “Dreaming” by Blondie
- Movie scores while studying
- Relearning how to be alone, after forgetting
- Big daunting academic projects, now done
- The lasting desire to be a better reader
- The lasting desire to be a better writer
- Forgiveness and stillness and not saying anything
- Video games, alone and with friends
- League of Legends (yeah)
- Stardew Valley
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
- Mario Party Jamboree
- Night in the Woods
- Hoarding many of the same picture of my dog
- Wearing the same four outfits all semester
- Feeling melancholy about school
- But saying bye to nostalgia
- My Yoshitomo Nara flip clock
- My Gentle Monster Kiko sunglasses
- Unexpected letters and postcards from friends
- Zines, as always
- Selfies
- Ibuprofen
- Sleeping well
- Feeling like myself, again
- French fries
- Lamb biryani
See you next year ❤
End of October 2024: Going Forward
"This Room" by John Ashbery:
The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
I want to write with the luminous clarity of Ashbery. He paints a picture of something mundane, something routine. But he sees the portal in it: the refraction of daily life sparkling underneath. Suddenly, something makes sense, or we learn something about ourselves. Or about someone. “You are not even here.” We haven’t solved everything, but there is a moment of realization and the poem becomes a photograph. He finds gems embedded in sedimentary rock. He polishes them and sits them on his desk.
This webzine and blog is dedicated to going forward. I try to keep myself grounded by living through the mundane, seeing and logging moments of luminous clarity. It is really hard sometimes, and it was hard this month. We can peel back layers of the past, but I want to keep going forward. I want to keep discovering more about myself and the world, even though it can be so hard to be. But as long as we are still willing to walk into the opaque mist, there will be more to find.
I hope you enjoy November and find some peace and clarity. I wonder how things will change, improve, and progress next month. We’ll just have to see.
End of June 2024: Addition
This has been a good month. Lots of fulfilling weeks, days, and minutes. I write now just a few hours before I need to post this. In my fatigue and commitment to myself, I am finding a well of gratitude for the people in my life. In the blank minutes where my mind finds rest, I feel happy. Reader, thank you for reading.
End of February 2024: Leaping!
I didn’t realize it was a leap year until it was upon us. I guess a typical year is six hours longer than our calendar year, causing us to make up for the deficit once every four years. (Or are we preemptively getting ahead?)
February has been a hard month for me. Year after year it feels like one of the hardest, which is strange because it is so short. I have been trying to create and write more, but sometimes it feels like clawing at frozen earth. It’s tough right now; the waves of the weeks are just rolling over me. Trying to come back to myself! Whoever she may be.
Side note: It’s so affirming to receive an indication that you’re acting normal! And that you are a person whom other people want to talk to! Sorry, this is kind of sad actually. And I’ll just speak for myself! But I get really in my head these days. When I was younger I used to despise normalcy. Now, I think it can be so reassuring to be normal. To find someone normal. Hm. Is this what it means to grow up? To change your norms?
How are you, friend? How have you been spending your time? Was it a fruitful month for you? I’ll spend my extra day feeling fortunate for everything and everyone in my life—not because I am making up for something, or because I am trying to pay my karmic debt in advance. Because you all deserve it!
Resolution
When I brush my teeth I think about dying
and how the seafloor's dissolving
and how it rains a blanket
so we stay inside, my posture
as bad as a gallon of water.
Dad voiced a half-thought
It is good to wake up—
He thought of the lake, saw the news
and stopped. The year so far
is taro chips, movies,
"The Leanover,"
and accepting at last
that I am not a good reader. No, I am
not ready to enter the world again.
Will a good jacket cure me?
A phone call for once?
A frozen swim? Will the fish in the trenches
know I am better? I'm relentless,
the shaker, moving the clock,
all to say
at the end
that I loved it.
End of 2023: Bookshelf of Hours
Happy end of the year! I hope you found 2023 fruitful and fun. It was an interesting year that left me optimistic for 2024.
I think I had a good year! It flew by. It was kind of a year of putting my head down and working hard on the tasks in front of me. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose! All work and no play doesn’t make me a dull boy. But also: there was play! Some days, I felt so so lucky. Lots of great adventures and some very fun hours. Lots to be found in the small spaces of the weeks and days. Lots of unexpected laughs! And little life-affirming conversations and interactions. My interior life was fulfilling and lovely.
Do you have goals for 2024? I haven’t really thought about resolutions this year. I think they come to me over the course of January. Some years I need a fresh start more than others. Like many, I wonder if a new routine can heal me. Probably?! Like everything, that remains to be seen.
I am excited to write more in 2024. Rereading some of my old work has inspired me to reach back into that corner of my brain. 2023 left me feeling stuck in one style of poem. I wrote this while looking at the ocean:
I shelved a version
and took out another:
the book of _____
on the shelf of _____.
I am looking forward to 2024 and feel good about it! Staying optimistic at this juncture. (Maybe, for once, I am looking forward more than I am looking back and reflecting.) I hope you have a nice new year! May 2024 be filled with good luck for all of us!
End-of-Month | webzine and blog 