dreamt that an older man tried to put the moves on me last night. we were sitting on his couch and his whole family was kind of around the house which made it awkward. I think it’s because I’ve been trying to think of the word where a male character in an anime raises a young girl and then starts dating her.
last night i was at a party, poured myself some white wine in a clear plastic cup to get up the nerve to go talk to (flirt) with r. dawkins.
lol! what’s wrong with me?!
i relistened to an interview of mary oliver yesterday. her poem wild geese is what inspired me to want to write poetry myself.
although, don’t know if i’ll ever get to her level, she has a quiet sensitivy from within that comes from being in nature and being alone. being so poor as a writer sometimes that she had to go foraging for food. and yet, in her writing, there is such a trust of nature and that it will nourish, it seems freeing.
attention without feeling, don’t do it
today’s prompt was about death and in writing about death, i had the feeling that i’m still trapped but writing is slowly starting to get things out of me, outside of my mind, making them more real. more concrete so they can be dealt with. i hope to some day also have that trust in the world, to become a softer person. not always so guarded against what the future and my mind might hold.
“I Go Down To The Shore
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.”
-Mary Oliver
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/mary-oliver-deep-direct-love-for-the-world
natalie says you should write your dreams down so here goes.
last night i dreamt that i was in a girl band, i had spent the latter half of the night binge watching moonbyul videos who i have a SERIOUS girl crush on. in the dream at some point we were writing on a chalk board and i kept erasing my mess-ups with my finger. then i came up with the idea of a finger eraser — two pieces of felt sewn together that is a simple shape that can be worn on your finger so you don’t have to pick up the eraser every time you want to erase something. do teachers even use chalk or whiteboards any more? anyway, i think i just want to think of something small, simple and useful like that to contribute to the world.
ok onto the weird part. i also dreamt that R & e (although e did not look like e) had come back to the states and i was totally surprised. this actually happens irl quite often so not a surprise. but they were on some sort of mission to look for something. perhaps more of my own projection of me looking for something and not quite know what it is yet. i feel like of most people i know, they seem to have their ‘ish’ together or are at least starting the journey to doing what they want to do long term in life. any who, they were in this huge spaceship that was teeter tottering on the edge of a cliff and they were trying to maintain it, trying to not let it fall. i haven’t talked to R in a while, and i think i sometimes worry about him but i’m going to keep some space. he says he’s doing good and i’m going to believe that and just be happy for him. he once told me that you should focus on things that only you can do and so i guess i should focus on things here cause only i can be here right now. no use in fidgeting with things so far away until it comes closer again.
flash to another scene and i see R sitting there but for some reason choose to not go up to him to say ‘hi’ — strange of me, but also normalish depending on my feelings and thoughts at the time, circumstance, how close he’s been to me. when i finally did get around to walking his way, i said hi but then went to take a nap. he was sitting with a really mangy mutt (i like the word mangly better but apparently it’s not a word), apparently he had started some dog rescue or something. he asked me to watch the dog while he went to go help e with the ship. he told me the dog was really nice and that i should pet him. i didn’t want to come off a certain way so i sat next to it but in reality i didn’t want to touch the dog at all because it was so gross, had skin issues and warts, etc. maybe i’m a shallow, horrible person. or maybe i just have a big pussy scrape on my knee that is causing me pain and i just want it to go away.
while in spain i read another book by natalie goldberg and it has convinced me of the following:
it is better to practice writing by hand, in a cheap spiral notebook
it’s ok to not save anything, not scan everything you write, not have it ‘up somewhere’ for someone or anybody to read. some of it, if good will dig deep and be too private to share, to anyone — even those closest to you.
it may be lonely. it may hurt, but just let it be so. maybe this is the next step in self discovery.
and so… i’d like to use this blog for the time being to document this journey i’m about to embark on.
yesterday, i wrote something and i cried reading it. another thing you’re supposed to do is read what you just wrote out loud. it puts it out there, takes it out of your brain. i read it in my head. then i tried to read it out loud and i couldn’t. maybe by the end of this journey, by the end of my life, i’ll be able to go back and reread that passage given that i haven’t lost the notebook first. and if i have, it’s okay to just let things go into the ether.
thankful for all i have today, even the parts that not yet sorted out. <3
Feeling demotivated to do things this week. Just really want to lay around and do nothing, but even doing nothing sounds blegh.
There are so many social pressures along with my own ego that make me want to do something more with my life. Not even more, just something different. But what?! In the end, will any of it really matter anyway? It’s by from day-to-day? We trick ourselves into feeling something, into telling ourselves that our lives have meaning. Even the search for meaning has meaning.
Ego makes it so you want to do something in life and leave a mark, but really does it matter if you do or not? I can’t find the motivation in myself to try to.
Watching Blue Planet II – should I be grateful that I don’t have to try so hard to keep myself alive? Should I be thankful that.
Yesterday I walked by London’s COVID memorial wall. At first I didn’t realize what it was so thought it was just corny and cute ♥️ — a fun interactive art installation. Even took some selfies with E, he looked confused as to why I would want to. I’ve since deleted them after learning the true meaning — more so because I had meant the photo to be something that it was not, but it made me realize how important context is. We all live in our own contextualized world. If E had never told me what it really was or I hadn’t seen the sign, someone would probably judge me for it. Should you, can you judge someone based off of their ignorance? Would it be better to just let someone think something if it makes them happier? Who’s to judge happiness? Because we can’t and because it’s different for each person I guess we shouldn’t and so “the truth” is always better? I watched a movie recently (“based on a true lie”) in which an entire family faked a wedding because gma had cancer and they didn’t want her to know. Apparently in China this is “okay” — even the doctor was in on it.
Coming back to the wall. I felt a solemnity after I found out, more so because it was such an immediate contrast from what I had thought it to be. I felt stupid and silly, unaware of the “real” world. I started looking at the writings more closely. A lot of the same sentiment, however, the fact that they are not novel does not take away from them as the entire wall dealt with death and loss, the deepest of them all. There were some people who wrote multiple names as they had lost multiple people. I’m ever so thankful that I have not lost even one.
