the soundtrack to this blogpost will be camera obscura. they’re a twee band out of scotland that are just so happy. they have a constantly upbeat, almost saccharine pop sensibility that more often that not manages to straddle the edge of hipster irony without actually reaching over into the land of pretension. i’ve been having a hard time of it, so… this injection of lightness and joy and ideal-nostalgic pop is exactly what i need. and hey,it kinda restores my indie cred, which is always nice.
administrative stuff first. as usual, i’m calling out for both gigs and contributors to the site. i’d love to book a show whereever you are. ’specially if you’re at a place i’ve never been. and secondly, i’ve love to have more writers here. i’m adding another friend of mine to the blogroll, going by the pseudonym harleyquinn. she’s lived on the west coast, lived in the best coast, was raised in a place with no coasts but lots of cows, seen the world. she’s as bitter as i am, as romantic as a nightingale singing in flight and has the right combination of mania and fatalistic humour that always seems to resonate with me. i’ll be pressuring her and sheeptang to post more to make up for my short comings. please continue to remember contributing to asian women. and if anyone wants to send me penpal notes like some of you have done, then please feel free to do so. i don’t know how long it’ll take me to reply, but i will.
i’ve had some really amazing pen pals in my time who’ve managed to teach me more about myself and about human nature than i could believe possible. it’s always nice to add more, ’specially since i’ve gone through… drama with some and fallen off with others. at any rate, all the pen pals i’ve had and kept in contact with have always been dope, beautiful souls and great writers. it’s nice to vibe, without the exigencies of the body to mediate text and meaning. it removes tensions and adds layers of meaning. or maybe removes layers of confusions and misunderstandings, thereby allowing us to come closer to the truth of ourselves.
fair warning, this is hella emo post. hell, i buzzed off my mohawk and have a monk’s fuzz. you know it’s bad when i shave my head.
so i haven’t posted in what for me is a long while… firstly this is because it’s a hectic time for me, as it is for pretty much every other student in the united states. secondly, it’s because my laptop keyboard is hella broke, which, because i do most of my writing at home, has slowed down my creative output pretty badly.
finally… it’s because i’ve been going through rough bit.
it’s a cliché, but then, like bukowski says (in now,ezra,), we always write in cliches, say the same things when we’re trying to touch the divine. mainly because there is no divine, there is only the human, those bits of ourselves, dark, light, in between, that we all share. and it’s the lucky writers who manage to speak to those universals, those shared spaces in a way that’s just the tiniest bit different, has that much more nuance to the entire thing. so as i come to reexamine cliché, i find myself not as afraid to use it. they become cliches for a reason after all, we do all understand what we’re talking about when we’re using certain phrases… they have all the familiarity of your home’s bathroom door, that you somehow manage to navigate yourself to even through the dark, as familiar as the crutches a man uses when he’s discovered that which carries him has atrophied and all he has left are his crutches, as familiar as reaching for a long time lover in the half-sleep that comes in the wake of night terrors.
misfortunes always come together like hurricanes, the confluence of fate-winds that meet almost perfectly together to somehow form torrential downpours and gusts that scour the soul. it’s never a single piece of bad luck, one stubbed toe that breaks down the human creature, we’re too resilient for that. it’s the combination of misfortune, that addition of burden that is never additive, but always exponential. (yes, the kid who almost failed the sped math class just made a math metaphor. epic win bitches)
so mischances and mishaps have left me here, all torn asunder, like a florida town after a particularly horrific season. the windows of my life battered and cracked, the detritus of my everyday scattered and strewn. with the odd quiet, that sleepiness in the air that only comes after catastrophe has hit, the misery of hopefulness, of having to rebuild, no matter that you know that you should, that you can. the fear that it will all be futile.
but then again, it is seasonal. i go through my moods. and i call them that to hark on some form of artistic pretension, to touch that part of you, the reader, that has accepted unto the point of cliché, the artist and his moods, his sensitivities. that is not to say that i’m not a sensitive dude, i am. i can be as touchy feely as the next, and i have my passions, that come with all the force that i apply to any portion of life i care about.
but it’s more than that, it always has been. i’ve pulled a hikikomori these past few days, locking myself in my room and leaving only to eat. or to drink. only able to function once i’ve managed to fill myself with enough uppers that to not leave my apartment would be even more maddening than what already inhabits me.
les face it, my moods are not just moods, passing fancies. they’re the moments that have such a powerful confluence of painful shocks and grinding burdens that the storm proofing that i’ve done all my life is not enough. the boards over the windows that i’ve constructed out of the flimsy resilience of duty and of lasting fancy are torn, and the the full brunt of tidal waters floods in, to take away that which i’ve sequestered, locked inside of myself and cherished. and the blasts drag my past up like malignant zephyrs, to hail them once again on the battered sidings that my father put there with his own hands. the careful arrangement of my mother’s garden within myself, torn all asunder. the photos and snatches of workworn prophecy and poetry that i’ve stolen, cribbed and cherished from each and everyone of you, tainted by devastation that only comes when one has given up plugging the holes in the walls, consigns what one has built to the maelstrom and hides oneself in the basement.
yeah. sorry, i’ve been emo recently. and emo to say that words have power, and if one is able to call a tiger a kitty kat for long enough, maybe one will come to believe it, and the fear of it is no longer so frightening.
i’m a depressive. i admit that.
but as my father reminds me, as i beg him to, i also have duty. it’s what i am. so fundamental to the core of my being that i could not imagine myself without an understanding of duty.
i’ve been fixated on salt recently. not on salt in and of itself, but being worth my salt. roman legionnaires were once paid with it, because it really is essential to life… and if you took that from another man, you were expected to be loyal, to do your duty. hence, “being worth your salt.”
ain’t no man ever gon’ say i ain’t worth my salt, ain’t know my duty.
life is the art of the possible, and the denial of reality.
Tags: admin, emo, masculinity, ramblings, salt