I’ve just noticed that my glasses somewhat resemble Dickey Chapelle’s. I don’t have much more to say on this subject, except that I’m pretty sure the Vietnam I saw was so, so different from the one she captured with her brave camera. She was one truly admirable woman.
Author: Olavia Kite
I’m so terribly tired of this creative crisis. I haven’t written a story in years. I started to write something sort of fun right before leaving for Japan. And then, nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Some people ask me to write, but there is something behind me, a deep voice telling me that nobody would want to turn a page full of letters originally scribbled by this boring caricature of an aspiring writer. My punching of keys is not fruitful. I stare at the walls of my apartment in search for something beyond the white patterns. Then another day dawns and I look for the sky in search for blue, for colors, for anything to be worthy of being read years later. Maybe this fear of writing is just as my fear of speaking. Maybe I’m not too different from that girl from the TV show who was an amazing model yet let her nerves get on to her and failed to deliver. My words are my enemy. I live surrounded by daggers, I spit them, I bleed from my tongue, and I’m terrified to feel my entrails being slit at the same time as I yearn to see the shining silver when it finally catches the light.
I am so scared of wasting my life in this state of nothingness. I am nobody. I certainly am nobody, having learned nothing from these years in confinement. The autumn leaves turn crimson red, fire and wind and the sky and who the hell am I if but a student who never pays attention in class and wishes for a story yet never has the courage to sit down and write it? All I ever talk about in my writings is myself. Me, me, me. I am Mariana, stretching herself in her blue velvet gown, completely sure that nobody ever will come up to the tower where she spends her days. Oh, Millais, that woman you painted was not her, it was me! Let me stretch my back once more, my hips hurt, my heart aches. This is not life—it’s just some program resembling life where you wake up, walk, feed yourself and occasionally share a laugh with another character. It’s like Mario Bros. Mario walks straight ahead within that world, jumping and bumping, apparently having a blast in his adventure, yet there is no possibility for him to move out of his designated realm. Mario is not a hero. Mario is bored out of his mind to walk over the same brown soil, catching the same old mushroom from the same old brick block, listening to the same insane background music (like that idiotic background music from the bakery at school), moving forward yet always coming back to an indefinite beginning.
I need something to remind me that I’m still a human being and not just some pixel blotch. Look at me! Can you see me? Can you see this thing I wrote? Does it mean anything to you? No, it does not, for it doesn’t exist. It’s part of this program I’m trapped in, and you were expecting it. You know it by heart, and you’d like to skip it. Press the reset button and your path will inevitably bring you back to the point where you’ll be able to read it all over again.
Everybody wants me to be a robust sequoia in the middle of a deserted land. Such a sight is a necessary symbol of hope, some strength in the midst of despair. Nobody can deny how miraculous it is for a beautiful centennial tree to withstand the hardships of existing in the middle of caked lumps of sand. It is useful, too, when nothing else is available. Some will take a piece of me to keep their hearth burning. Some will expect me to keep standing despite having carved a tunnel right out of my core, just for the fun of driving through. Others will even hope to dance on my stump when I fall, if that is ever to happen. After all, aren’t sequoias supposed to live forever?
To everyone’s great disappointment, though, I am more of a decaying birch in a forest. It looks just like the rest of them, tall and scar-stricken, watching deer run by. However, it is festering inside. In silent pain it feels itself vanish. When the hollow carcass finally gives out, it will swoon in the middle of the woods—swoosh!—a whisper which nobody will hear. A decomposed log, a cylindrical wooden puzzle facing the sun and the dew and the mud, it will be soon covered in moss and disappear forever, long before anybody can tell there ever was a birch where there now lies nothing.
I didn’t feel the earthquake, even though I woke up long before it occurred. I was busy getting my room ready for my guest, whom I had invited for breakfast. As I finished washing the last dishes and vacuuming the last corners, I imagined for the briefest moment that this person would forget about the appointment or oversleep and not arrive. After all, invitations to breakfast are quite uncommon—at least in this country, I think. He was amazingly punctual, though. We had French toast with fried bacon, coffee, and juice. I must say that in spite of some people’s disbelief, I do cook quite well, and my French toast is amazing. Conversation flowed in three languages, and breakfast turned into lunch which turned into dinner. He helped me draw the curtains at sunset, heard me play a couple of songs on the guitar before noon, and loved the cheese empanada with sugar (leftover from the ones we had made with my sempai and my neighbor last night).
I might cook again soon. We have plans to go get sushi when the weather gets better.