Fade

One day this long trip will come to an end, and I will no longer be of your interest. Your morbid curiosity for a girl who lost her mind on the other side of the planet will recede, and you will slowly get up from your chairs and leave the theater. Look at her. She lives where we live, she eats what we eat, her heart is perpetually broken—what good is she now that all-too-common body is surrounded by Roman letters?

I once escorted a friend of mine to dinner with some friends of his. It was a rather uneventful gathering, except that for the duration of the meal I was invisible to them. At some point they introduced me to a newcomer as a nameless being, undeserving of recognition as a human—until my friend mentioned my current whereabouts. As he (not I) pronounced the two magic syllables, I sprung to life from thin air before their eyes. That’s how I understood I represent nothing but shock value to most of the people I meet. Once it’s gone, I’ll be gone as well.

It should be okay, I guess. Le monde sans moi, c’est la même chose.

Categories
Rant

My Other Half Speaks

(Not my other half as in my romantic partner, for I am a complete being with or without him.)

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.—Sylvia Plath, “Ariel”

Do you remember, dear, this thing called gender studies? You probably do, because you talk about it all the time. Do you remember how crazy you are about this subject and how you would like to do research on it and talk about it and teach people about it and help the world change even the tiniest bit in terms of it? It is as inherent to you as writing, singing, and drawing. Try wiping it out of your head for a while. Can you simply quit this thing that drives your desire for knowledge, a passion that even gets you in trouble with other people? Can you?

Do you also remember that you are very good at what you do (that is, when you actually do it)? Sit down, write a paper: most chances are that it will be excellent, and you know it. This fear of yours is nothing more than a fear of yourself. You know very well that you are your own worst enemy, and you’re letting the enemy win. Take the word “stasis” and do something beautiful with it! You think that education ruined your creativity, but look at yourself: you’re back at sketching, you’re singing again, and you never actually stopped writing. This blog is witness to it. Anger, frustration, forget all that. You’re flourishing rather than withering.

Feel the ideas flowing through your fingers, listen to the endless pit-pat on the keyboard, see how words rain. You can summon this rain.

The future is far ahead—why worry about it? Why listen to all those who push you into something that’s never worked out for you? Were you ever planning on coming to Japan? Dreaming, yes, but planning? How did you end up in Hawaii? Was that ever among your plans? Dreams, yes, but plans?

Don’t be scared. Take it one step at a time. Soon you’ll be done with this weird, weird dream called Japan. Who knows what’ll come next? Isn’t it exciting to expect the surprise?

Stasis

I think I’ve just had an epiphany. To some of you (my three readers) this might come off as obvious, but it wasn’t for me until now.

As some of you may know, I’ve been struggling with school for the past year. I’ve been spending the last twelve months staring at a computer screen for hours on end, paralyzed, dreaming of other stuff I’d like to be writing instead (or singing, or drawing). I have found no remedy for this paralysis so far. I like to call it the Stasis because it reminds me of Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”. Some would rather call it stupidity, though, and some laziness. Some have thought less of me for not caring to read Derrida hard enough to understand his Différance, and even I have come to doubt my own capacities for not feeling like doing actual literature-related work. After all, literature is my major, and it has been so for the past seven years or more. What you may not know is that I wasn’t exactly an English major when I started college in Iowa. I was a Writing major. I took a poetry workshop and a fiction workshop, along with Shakespeare and other English literature subjects. I got my poetry published in the school magazine. Overall I was happy with that, because my ultimate dream was to have my stories published. But then I went back home and all that got shut down, leading me into another kind of stasis: one where I was a good student, but a terrible writer. In fact, I didn’t write anything at all, except for this blog and the one in Spanish. I distrusted my creative abilities so bad that, in terms of drawing, I wouldn’t sketch anything beyond the blank spaces around my class notes.

Now that I have spent almost four years of my life in almost complete seclusion, I have come to understand lots of things about myself. And the landslide of epiphanies is frightening.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with computers and space. I wanted to become an astronomer or a software engineer. However, I didn’t become either. I’ve been trying to find out lately why I didn’t end up a scientist if I watched Cosmos and read Cimpec magazine and programmed as a child. Was I some kind of failed promise to the world of science? However, as I gazed at a breathtaking picture of M42 the other day, I understood: I’m content with the beauty of it all. It is for astrophysicists to explain the hierarchical formation of galaxies, but it is for me to picture them in my head, and turn those pictures into words, and let others dream my dreams, and perchance even incite them to have dreams of their own.

Maybe this stasis is my mind speaking to me, begging me to pull off from a path pointing to what I should become, dragging me back to my real passion. I shall not regard it as failure if I don’t become a researcher. However, it has been very stupid of me to ignore the voices that have been speaking to me since such an early age. I mean, I relinquished all forms of social life to write a novel for two years during high school and I still don’t get it?

Maybe it’s not a mistake on my behalf. Maybe I was meant to walk this long path in order to finally gather the strength to walk into the void of accepting myself for who I am and not who I’m supposed to be.

Having said this, on to the pen, to the guitar, to the sketchbook!

The Brain in Love

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you.
Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you.
Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you.
Consumed by fire of my love for you.
I remember what you said to me,
I am thinking of your love for me.
I am torn by your love for me.
Pain and more pain.
Where are you going with my love?
I am told you will go from here.
I am told you will leave me here.
My body is numb with grief.
Remember what I said, my love
Goodbye, my love,
Goodbye.

—Anonymous Kwakiutl poem, 1896