In the future, we will have flying cars and cis men who can adequately communicate their needs and emotions. In the future, I will no longer feel empty in the pit of my stomach because I don't have the kind of love I see people have in movies and passing by the bookstore window holding hands. I will not be shocked by how quickly the seasons come and go or how quickly a relationship can disappear. I will say what I am good at with my full chest instead of prefacing it with "I don't want to sound narcissistic but..."
Every April arrives with me and Meli planning when to go to the botanical gardens to see cherry blossoms in bloom. Every April feels more disorienting than the last. I get drunk on sunlight and high from edibles. I am in love and heartbreak with someone or something new. I am navigating new questions about my career. I arrive at spring thinking I will never let go of whatever I am gripping onto then by the next April, I forgot the name of everything I was clinging onto.
I recently saw on a mean infographic a question in big pink bubble letters "IS IT LOVE OR ARE YOU JUST ATTACHED" and I think I know the answer to that.
Spring demands I answer the question for myself: what is next?
During my trip to India in March, I did the quintessential first-generation child of immigrant thing and continually asked myself: what is home?
When I got back to my apartment in Brooklyn I had no answer and, instead, wanted to self implode so that is what I have been preoccupied with. I went up to a stranger and asked if he was reading a novel on his iPhone and he said "No- just a bunch of GQ articles." Meanwhile, I have been oscillating my reading time between a short story book, Slug, and Karen Tei Yamashita's Letters to Memory. One is a collection of perverted body horrors of sorts while the other is, in my opinion, or at least so far, a somewhat global exploration of humanity, forgiveness, and family. In one of the stories in Slug, a young girl named Cat explores several ways she could seek revenge on a bully. Several of the outcomes is death. In Letters to Memory, at the end of a letter to Yamashita's comrade Vyasa, she talks about the idea of home and how Vyasa taught her "It is not always where you were born that makes you who you are"
There are limitless possibilities ahead of me and there have been billions of ways I could have acted in my past that do not have to define me. No matter what is next and where I feel at home, I will experience many deaths. I will find out what makes me who I am by imagining every outcome and experiencing them one by one. Last week, I wrote about wanting to quit everything so slowly, one by one, I have begun the long process of dissolving parts of me that over-define me.
I recently looked up what Easter is about because I am somewhat aloof to Christianity and find myself oversimplifying calendar holidays. I had no idea it is kind of a celebration of a haunting. A coming back to life which I think is something that doesn't have to be reserved just for Jesus.
I have to believe that the resurrection of my life is around the corner. I will appear in the same physical form as before knowing that everything else has shifted around me. I will arrive in the future on the other side of cherry blossoms and heartbreak and disappointment and destroyed dreams to something hopeful. Maybe in the form of a flying car or something more realistic like a brand new creative practice or a person that engages in mutual honesty along the way.
I love this one. such a good one. "In the future, we will have flying cars and cis men who can adequately communicate their needs and emotions" !!!!!! "I will never let go of whatever I am gripping onto then by the next April, I forgot the name of everything I was clinging onto." !!! "kind of a celebration of a haunting" !!!!!
"I THINK I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT"
"I will say what I am good at with my full chest" !!!!!!!!!!!!
i loved reading this, happy spring to you💛