25 August 2021
Seoul. 25.08.21 (but only just, it is 00:54 a.m.)
Maybe another title should be (guiltily) overwhelmed. Stimulated (quasi-saturated). Feeling. Freaking. Calm terror. Excitement. Fear. Pleasure. Fear of waste? Fear of fear? Beautiful pictures and papers, collected, on walls. Sweet beans. Rice. The tape does not always hold the little string which holds the pictures. And the bathroom often gives off vapours of bygone years. And the space is too little and too big and too much at once. Or, maybe it is me within it? And the blueberry juice, like the red bean dish was sweet. And we sat in the rain eating custard, after fries. What a beautiful thing. And we laughed. And we realise we are human: we must sleep because we are tired, we have hearts which can pump very fast, love very deep, love very far away. Be here and there.
I stuttered over chicken wings that didn’t come. Something about newness and sameness. And how in wanting to ease suffering, in the luxury of travel we find it everywhere? And evidently so. But you also realise how many of us are here existing and breathing and not breathing and crying and not. And how when you thought you’d cut a corner of the world such that you knew it to the point where you are parading, raunchy, bold down its streets, to the point that you believe you truly can fix it (now that you are this city, breathe this city, own this city), you come here and realise that of all the alleyways and the stark bright rooms of power nestled in the top floors of the skyscrapers of your home city which you knew (or knowing of equalled knowing, kind of…) and so you could fix and that would be it… you realise there are just more and more and more in a city so new and so unintelligible to you…multiplications of pains as much as goods…here, where you feel you come up out of a new station not into the breath of the fresh air and the ah, city new, now I feel you! can know you! you searched for, but into the base of a new scattering of more monstrously tall buildings which you stand at the bottom of, and some when you look up wave the UNESCO flag, and up another there is the dollar store which has another duplicate below ground, two streets away, stuffed with plastics and colours twinkling in white light…
And so what? You purchase a white board which twinkled in this white light in this dollar store upon which you’ll make lists of to-visits to maybe make sense of the city, and lists of how to employ your time, and each breath, and of the doing past the fear, and of the budget, and of the future, and of the work, and of the learning, and of the school,
And I guess, on one hand you go at it again, break down the roar, find sense, find peace,
And to find betterment? What is this? The hill where how many lives are lost to the shelling of crab meat and to the making of butter in Wales? Or did my grandmother make cheese? And how grand to call that lost when she pulsates in me and mine — a woman unknown and known, and now I could start talking of all that we speak around, in families, in relationships: grief, love…in that order, but then the order is reversed, sometimes…
Anyway, the chicken wings did not come. Could not come. But we spoke, over fries and beer how we imagined halfways-across-the-worlds that we had until then never visited, and I stuttered like I do now, and I guess I am confronted with the muchness of it all, of us all, and I think maybe now fresh from the gilded cage of quarantine I can (maybe should?) just content myself with observing. But then I think of this desire too to seeking the thoughts of the minds who make up this muchness, having had the life-blood fortune of knowing and partaking of the loves and doubts of minds in cities whose streets are known and whose letters I can read, and whose drive we can pretend we all understand, now I wish to understand the necessarily not understood and it is good to be shunted down to a place of not knowing — totally embodied — for it is too good to imagine, sometimes, often.
Anyway. All nonsense. I need to organise myself. Work, et al. Balance. Push. Satisfy. Be satisfied. Push. Push? Seek. Rest?
In any case, even if I’m writing into the ether, here’s me also thanking its depths and the sense of release even if there is none after all for it holding these words which sit somewhere I also do not understand, cannot envisage…: this un/uploading all just made space for a new day where the fear that came at 00:54 feels if not quite yet a little bit silly at 01:18, the silliness will come (I think?) and so, we honour it, and realise we are more than it, and actually, perhaps, yes, it is actually quite indulgent. Guilt? I guess in this seeking of balance somehow and somewhere, we are fortunate that our hearts and bodies are made of many things deep and shallow,
And just like that, the mosquito which is slightly too large and slightly too hairy to ignore lands on my arm (at least, a bite there will be a tad more convenient than the one it left on my pinkie and midst the miniature hairs of my chin last night), and when I move towards it, it moves and lands on my grandmother’s hand, in the picture above my pillow, above my head.
But necessity calls, and I must whack it and whack her hand with one of my heart-friend’s books: which I still have sequestered, though it was lent a while — a very decent while — ago now to me. But it is orange, almost square, promising of tears and swelling hearts, and so I carry her with me in cities old and new, and it rests now by the stained lamp by the bed side.
And in any case, the dust can be scraped off the window blinds tomorrow.
And in any case, I am able to shop. And not only am I fortunately able, but I did so today with Google Translate pointing up at the bottles and packages and coloured things.
And am able to shower and able to sleep.
The rain from one of the last quarantine days: (which is now persisting: Telling myself to “fear” winter when it comes: To find sport: Movement: Art:)
And also, I must thank my heart. That with every time I overwhelm her, she persists on. It’s not that she empties, she also, in fact, holds, she beats through, with, and beyond. And I wish to honour her by expelling something of this fear. Replacing it with a faith in [insert many things], living without it until the day fear must be confronted, because then when that day comes that she will come with clarity (or not), then we will be ready and will not have wasted days counting her arrival, but be armed with the power of our fearlessness, to know we have truly lived, seeking life felt in every sinew.
I think?
It’s late so maybe I don’t… think, that is. In any case: beautiful lights: making sound in the city: one squealed, a few stopped and jumped up and down. Most walked up the scale I think just as a delicate, sonorous means among many in order to reach home:
Which, with safety, and warmth and the warmth of the other/the mine is a lot of what we are searching for? Or what we gun to search for, in order to return and return and return again…A searching sometimes deep and also sometimes very much at the surface of our conscious…
