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I’m so alone, it’s erotic.
After weeks of being so blessed by the kind hospitality of friends, I am finally alone. It’s like that feeling when you’re in someone else’s house and you’re alone and you get that rush of excitement that kind of turns you on. You probably won’t, but if you wanted to you could do anything there. Act strange, pee with the door open, dance around their kitchen, peek into their drawers yes, masturbate, but the eroticism isn’t necessarily sexual. It is just the delight of feeling a moment of ownership over borrowed space.
There is a lot of discourse on ~the internet~ about alone-ness.
“Spend the day alone with me.”
“It’s okay to be alone.”
“Go to the movies alone.”
“I go on a trip alone.”
Something exciting and even main-character dreamy about enjoying ones solitude. Experiencing the world unfiltered by anyone else’s lenses or commentary, to not have to turn to anyone and put into words the experience of reality you are having. I was worried, that in venturing off on my own I would feel the weight of holding myself up—emotionally, yes, but also logistically. Remembering to feed myself, to refill my water, to make sure I had everything I needed, to try to ask someone in Spanish if I could have that bread thingy w and on and on. But, here a week or so into aloneness, I have found rhythmic steadiness, a desire for myself and life that wraps all around me. It isn’t so much ~empowering~, as eat-pray-love™ told me it would be, it feels more consistent, thicker, quieter, seductive. A knowing that I have myself, that I can hold it down for myself. Sometimes I yearn for the other, but often not.
I’m more alone than I have ever felt in my whole life, but it doesn’t feel dense and heavy as it once did. It doesn’t even feel all that thrilling. With all the things changing and shifting around me I feel so at home with myself, mothering and babying myself in this infinite loop. Turning around and finding that I’m always there again and again.
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Into the Unknown
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Layered sound, many temporal rhythms overlap
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Lately, I’ve been questioning the amount of my words I give away for free. I read Carmen Maria Machado’s latest substack post “On writing and the business of writing” on the recent Jumi Bello plagiarism scandal (if you don’t know what I’m talking about—search it up). I felt struck by how much of myself I saw in it. Of the ways in which at times, the desire to be an author or a writer supersedes the time and commitment that writing actually takes. Throughout the article, she pushed up against notions that get recited again and again that writers feel like they need a following to be published, the obsession over accessing a career over simply the process of writing and on and on.
“But, I am also reminded of the bleating of writers who insist that they “need” to be on social media for their careers, even when social media is draining them of time and energy and the will to create. Even when it makes them miserable and crazy. They are told by their publisher or their peers that they need to be “engaged” and “have a following” in order to sell books (or, at least, they insist their publisher or peers have said this), and so they end up turning over their thoughts and words, for free, to a corporation that doesn’t give a shit if they live or die, instead of writing the book that burns inside of them.”
Oof. “Turning over their thoughts and words, for free, to a corporation that doesn’t give a shit if they live or die.”
When I first read this, it felt like a revelation. How much of my writing do I just give away? How much time do I spend wanting to show other people, that yes, I am writing, and yes one day I could be a full-fledged writer etc. etc. However, one thing about me is whenever someone speaks their personal truth with righteousness and passion, I immediately take it on as my own. Oh, this is true for them? Must be true for me. Now reading the newsletter over again, I feel a bit more distance with these words. I feel more able to parse out the nuance of living and writing on the internet.
It is true that I watched a lot of my favourite poets and writers careers proliferate because of the internet, and the creative ways that people are using different mediums (twitter, memes, tumblr) to express themselves and experiment with different ideas and thoughts. I don’t think by any means it’s a one or the other: you write for social media, or you write the book that burns inside you. I despise the school of thought that preaches social media as a creativity sucking black hole. It can be extremely generative, as a mirror that is reflect back different reflections of our times. However, Machado pointed to something critical: the way that visibility, the identity of being creative, can sometimes shroud the actual inner world of creation and writing, or, in fact, makes it hyper-visible.
Social media is a hologram of performance that demands you to reveal yourself. Reveal yourself in ways that are legible and accessible to people, sharing your inner world as a way to be true and authentic to the self you are being. Often I have worried, do I make sense to people? Am I creating in a way that people can not not only resonate with, but understand? Perhaps, that is me thinking way too highly of myself… Though even having those thoughts circling around makes me interested in my awareness of an audience in the immediate pipeline of writing words down and sharing them with others. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if I allowed my inner world to be inner. Perhaps, all these little things I’m writing down could be something bigger. Again, maybe I’m already in the process of creating something bigger and don’t know it yet. Maybe its okay to share in process. To be honest, I’m not sure.
That being said what follows are previews of some things I’ve been working on. Maybe a part of me wants to affirm (yes I am working on things), but maybe that isn’t a bad thing. It feels exciting to share the different moments of creation I’ve been engaging in. It makes me feel accountable in a strange way to someone other than myself. (for now) while keeping some things (just for me)
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A Sneak Preview of a Fun Project
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Madrid, Chinese Restaurant
I sat in a totally empty Chinese restaurant in Madrid embarrassed that I couldn’t speak either language, Mandarin or Spanish, yet the particular estrangement of Mandarin felt far more familiar. That’s why I chose to sit here alone, why I was drawn to its modern-oriental-interior. Like an oasis, I could only make out one character in the name: 水. And that’s all I needed to know, even when the chandelier and polished silverware and deep brown wooden chairs with no plastic on it suggested that it was far more than I could afford at the moment. It was that other kind of Chinese restaurant, the one that sold wine by the glass or bottle, not the one with the laminated menus. Yet, hearing the waitress call to the kitchen in the language that has always clawed and curdled coming off my tongue made me feel like home. A particular sore spot that felt familiar and safe. This was an apology I made with my eyes many times before. It was only 8:30, an obscenely time to start dinner by Spanish standards, yet I was relieved to be totally alone. Because I felt alone. In that really intimate erotic way that would make me shy if anyone else’s gaze accidentally fell on to me while they were aiming for the window. That type of alone that you can only really feel at 22. Maybe you can feel it at other ages too, I’m not sure yet, but it made me want to be pregnant walking my dog with my husband talking about what he is going to make me for dinner. It made me want to wake up next to someone who keeps a bat underneath the bed so he can protect me and our unborn baby, just in case. In this type of aloneness, the fantasy is always a he.
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As always, sending my love.
-ThaiHJ