At home now. Three days of rot. Two days of utter and complete decay and one of completing a few side quests in my car, driving to various locales in search of a journal, a friend, contact lenses, and a canvas.
This rot isn’t melancholy, but something else altogether. More close to a nothingness, full and all its own. Nothing to create or generate, no thoughts to be had, just memories and lingerings of the past that needed to be taken to the dirt. I felt as if I needed to offer a part of myself to the earth to return it back to the void from which it came from. Perhaps, for it to disappear altogether, or, more likely, to be transformed into something else. I gave myself over to the feeling completely. It felt righteous at first like I was respecting some internal process. On the second day, I felt utterly bored. On the third day, I bled. This felt only right.
I ordered four books and one pair of noise-canceling headphones online. Once they arrived, like little miracles on my doorstep, I knew something would be shifted.
Now, I’m feeling the first inklings of spring. Of course, not here in Ontario, but here in my body. Something wants me to begin (again).
In a body scan meditation, I was doing a few days ago, I became flooded by all these distinct memories punctuated by their accompanying tastes, smells, and feelings. In my stomach there was the taste of the falafel wrap in my first-year residences cafeteria, in my chest was the adrenaline of climbing up a ladder that led up to the roof of a high-rise building in Shanghai, in my head was the first encounter I ever had with God riding my bike on the Hong Kong hills, the smell of the sweet soy sauce factory I lived by lingering in my nose. The moment I felt like I came into a sort of larger being.
It was the decay that had me wondering how these smaller parts when broken down made up the whole. Have all of these moments led me to where I am now? Or are all these memories distinct entities all their own, not a means to the present end?
I had a strong desire to position myself now in relation to all these other moments in my life. I decided to make a map, hoping to find the connecting points of how one thing led to another:
It is hard to deny that many important moments are lost on this map. Why would the falafel wrap in the cafeteria be more worthy of note than say my first kiss? Or even the first time I had sex? Yet, I know without a doubt it is. Memories aren’t ruled by logic.
As much as I remind myself that life is not an arrow taking me from A to B, I can’t help but generate a story. I am human after all. I can’t help but try to find the beginning, the middle, and the end. Surely, the warmest apartment I’ve ever lived in led me to feel like there was something else. That is, something else beyond a spiritual perfectionism, and that must have led me to the restlessness I was feeling working at the salad shop, revving my figurative creative engine, and that must have led to the quest of journeying abroad, which led to the realization of some radical acceptance. It all feels so satisfying, sitting down and plotting how one thing might have led to another. More, it makes me feel like I have progressed in some way, made it through each level, and came out the other side stronger, braver. Each checkpoint allowed me to gain some lessons and tools I needed for the next phase, and when the moment called for it I put them to work. Isn’t this how one is supposed to live a life?
But no, I couldn’t help feeling that something was missing from this map…
and then it hit me!
Here it was, the critical missing arrow. Here I was, in relation to everything else. In some spiral, where I feel closest to that moment at eight or seven. Closest to that moment than any other moment. I can feel it clearly now, the wind in my hair, the sun trickling through the trees just so, I think I was with my family, or else alone, I can’t remember. But, I remember the feeling. The feeling that I had known the face of God, in church and coloring books, but up until this moment I had not known it like this. All I could think was here it was, this is it. The end of this map seemed to bring me right back to the beginning.
In all the rot, the past felt like it was breathing, that even, it might capture me. I hope and fear that things will stay the same, but, of course, things are changing. “Faster than I ever could have imagined,” I thought as I paced around the kitchen of a hostel in Colombia on the phone with my best friend. She had news that would probably change her life forever, change our relationship forever. It made me so happy and scared for her. Happy and scared for me as well. A reminder that nothing would ever be the same as it was.
I decided I needed a ritual, something to bring me back to the earth. Something to offer me some release from the past. I read somewhere that pouring your period blood onto the earth, or in a natural body of water was a very ritualistic connection. It was worth a shot. So, there I was, diva cup in hand, at the edge of the lake. Both laughing at the absurdity of this scene and trying to pool my energy into focusing on this spell. Blood and water muddling together and then finally washing away. Just like that, it was gone.
Here I was, having another chance to begin (again).
A poem I wrote during a previous season of rotting
Featured in 5. a version of my/self
I think I’m burning out Or burnt out, my friend said it’s a medical condition and I guess it’s not that serious right now for me. I spent so long running, and now, well I guess I have no energy left I want to curl up into myself and allow the vines to grow over my body Bury myself in the overgrowth. It’s spring, red bulbs bulge from the trees, and things feel layered on thick with desire. It is the feeling that somehow everything is going to be alright (sun on face + lust for life), things were stirring underneath the ground, but now, they are finally ready for me. All I need to do is lay down in the dirt and pour chrysanthemum tea on to the earth and call it an offering… Or perhaps I’m the offering, Well, that’s okay, I’ll give myself over, happily fertilize the earth and, in exchange, I’ll ask to take a peak over the garden wall, I think there I will find that all my heartbreak has transformed into the most fantastic thing.
Some moments in Colombia
Signing off. Talk next time.
-Thai xx
I know its probably coincidence but I ordered noise cancelling headphones around the same time lol. I have a high appreciation for how you capture the sentiment for beginning again in such divine detail. As always, amazing work.