August has chewed me up and spit me out (maybe I’m being a little dramatic). That being said, I’m happy that it’s September. Happy to be alone at my parents with my old dog and my grandparents that bring me little trays of rice and banchan. Happy to not be going back to school as the weather turns for the first time in my own short living memory. Relishing in this in-between space, the limbo (though limbo makes it sound hell-ish) where the boundaries are thin and something hasn’t yet turned into something else. (Not quite here, not quite there).
The more I say I desire stability, the more I do things that ensure that the world keeps shifting under my feet. Maybe I can just desire chaos and be okay with that, maybe what I really want right now is to feel really really free. I’m off soon, travelling alone (really alone) for the first time—having my eat, pray, love™ moment. My mom whispers to me in the dark that I better call her at minimum two times a week, I relent far too quickly, so she gets bolder: okay three!
—
On the Poetry of the World
I’m excited to be writing again. I’m not sure if writing allows me to see the poetry in life, or I see the poetry in life and get inspired to write, but either way I’ve been existing in a space these past few weeks where a tree is just a tree and a lover is just a lover and nothing more. I don’t think poetry necessarily is about making things more than they are, or even about accessing some inherent truth, but maybe about finding the space where the boundaries of myself and the boundaries of the other (tree or lover respectively) meet each other, or perhaps, get all muddled up. Maybe it is just a way to tell a story about the muddling. Yet, things have felt clear cut lately and perhaps there too is some beauty in that too. In that space, where nothing is a story quite yet, and everything just sort of happens without me defining it or even calling attention to it.
What happens when a writer breaks things off with a lover and doesn’t write about it? Did it ever really happen?
—
A Poem (Untitled)—or (Give Me More Time To Think of a Title)
It’s that time, at the end of the summer, When eager leaves flush, and The heat clings tightly on, yet on her breath, untraceable except at the peak of the day, is the perfume of decay. That time when something will become something else/ curling at the edges, but not quite folding over. I think I’ve been here forever. When is the moment that summer becomes fall? Winter becomes spring? Here becomes elsewhere? Is that moment out of time altogether, Or so in it that we can’t pick it out from the foliage, So banal that one might mistake it for a weed at first glance. … (I worry it might be far more interesting if I talked about my relationship with my body, or my grandparents that remind me of my own mortality, or kimchi, or what it means to be a woman, but I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is what I want to talk about—the moment when something becomes something else). … Because you see I was born here: in-between two millenniums. Before, the end of history found there were more pages and before the dreamy malaise of glossy disillusionment cracked, or rather, came explosively crashing down. Here, I find myself, a foot in both doors, wondering how worlds get made anew, trying to locate that moment when the end becomes … something else (but perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself). … You see it’s that moment, the point between stasis and momentum, When time collects around itself and holds the ball in the air, right before it is about to drop, When living and dying become synonyms for something of the same, no not quite rebirth, before that, before that. When emergence from decay is not even a thought, just merely a suggestion lost to the wind, so that the clamor of the dead may be just a light breeze curling around your ankles, nothing more. Where is the point when air becomes breath? … Maybe I could have told you at eighteen, but now I’m not so sure. Instead, let me set the scene of here, and now: Pakistan is flooded, nearly a third of it is underwater, the violence collecting over time until it gushes into the present becoming a spectacle that we can recognize, though still utterly mundane as my timeline flips between an acquaintance wondering-if-anyone-has-a-tent-I-can-borrow and more suffering than is conceivable. A recession is beginning, and we are reminded that we must prepare, as temperature records crawl higher and higher, Hunger stones reveal themselves to the sun (if you see me weep), (I don't read the news/maybe that's embarrassing) ... This is the end I think, Yet still, I can't help but marvel at the way summer takes her sweet time, kissing the back of our necks, and the folding of our knees, September never gives her pause, not anymore, It's pumping life and ice-cream trucks, and waterparks, and sleeveless evening walks, as summer expands into the space we've burned clear for her. Still curling at the edges/ but not quite folding over into the fall. I can't deny that something must be happening, despite the fact that I haven't been let in on the secret, When does life become death?/When does death become life? At what point does impossibility collapse into itself inhaling everything into its orbit, becoming a black hole where all the ghosts shout over each other to finally, finally be heard. The pause right before the exhale… … It’s that moment I speak of. I think I've been here forever, Waiting for something to turn into something else. …
—
This or That (for my newsletter babes only)
—
Decay Loading #whimsygirlfall
—
On Welcoming in Expansion & Prompts
Not nervous ~ excited. Because those feelings are the same in your body, you just have to tell your brain how to perceive them, I remind myself. I think many things are like that. You see, this year I decided I would follow my dreams. (I am literally cringing at seeing that on the page). I guess it’s not so much this grand-noble quest, in fact, sort of the opposite. I think it’s more I just decided that what I wanted was pretty normal and not out of reach or all that grand. Many people are working artists and writers, and I could be one of them. Many people travel alone and I could be one of them.
The scariest part has honestly been admitting that I want what I want. Wanting something, and voicing that you want something, can feel audacious, even wrong. Pushing past the boundaries of your own possibility can have doubt insisting that you must come back home, that things are dangerous out there, that it isn’t safe. (love and fear are often two sides of the same coin).
who am I to want? who am I to want? who am I to want?
Wanting something makes you vulnerable to not getting it and, more importantly, what not-getting-it would mean about yourself. (not-good-enough, not-smart-enough, not-[ ]-enough)> and on and on and on.
All of my friends are artists and writers/ though they don’t call themselves that/ though I wish they would.
What does audacity feel like in your body?
How do you react when you perceive others as being audacious with what they want?
What would wanting and not-getting mean about yourself?
—
Thank you for reading notes on here and elsewhere. Love as always.
-ThaiHJ xoxo
After reading this, I genuinely feel less crazy. The thoughts you convey here are so peculiar and yet I feel though I think the same things most of the time. Specifically about climate collapse, and being truthful to yourself when comes to ones passions. As always, dazzling work.