Glitches, unexpectedly
As it turns out, I've missed LiveJournal.
For a while, I didn't want to write anything, primarily because...I didn't want to do anything at all. I haven't written seriously for so long (that is, actual sentences with periods and commas and dashes in between) that starting again seemed like so much trouble. Writing makes me tired, and I hate being tired. But I sleep better and worse when I don't write.
So, a compromise: here's something from my journal that I wrote previously. Typing and thinking is still too hard.
- - - - - - - -
August 13, 2007
(Beijing time)
Yesterday night the wind ran so hard against our building that it blew open the third floor door. Lightning made all the alarms in all the cars on the street light up, and they screamed for hours until their owners got dressed and came down to stick keys in the doors and calm down the lights and the noise.
Long ago I wanted to pick you up and tell this all to you, but I felt sterile and old-- out of practice. Of course it was the fear.
***
August 22/23, 2007
(cusp of midnight)
[...] But sometimes I feel the same. Like my seven-year-old self is still who I am, and I just rattle away inside the husk of my larger self. Can a seven-year-old make love? Can she go to college or get a job? Is a child capable of finding a place of peace? Or is that too much.
I am not a child. Soon I will find things to insulate the space between my two bodies, so that a walk is not so jarring, so that my small hand does not clack against my big hand whenever I move. I am no matryoshka doll. I am solid through and through.
***
June 28, 2007
When she spoke of the familiar yearning, I remembered what she said. How could I not know the thing that makes me most human-- reduces me and deifies me simultaneously. When I see the blank white space on a poem, I want to cry. It's a crack that I begin to fall through, not knowing where else to go. The edge is where I teeth on. It tells me I need no more breath, so I stop breathing, and all around the world the people penning their stories on window seats, fire escapes, bedroom walls, kitchen tables-- all stop and take note of the breath missing from their inventory. God, again I'm telling you things as if--
For a while, I didn't want to write anything, primarily because...I didn't want to do anything at all. I haven't written seriously for so long (that is, actual sentences with periods and commas and dashes in between) that starting again seemed like so much trouble. Writing makes me tired, and I hate being tired. But I sleep better and worse when I don't write.
So, a compromise: here's something from my journal that I wrote previously. Typing and thinking is still too hard.
- - - - - - - -
August 13, 2007
(Beijing time)
Yesterday night the wind ran so hard against our building that it blew open the third floor door. Lightning made all the alarms in all the cars on the street light up, and they screamed for hours until their owners got dressed and came down to stick keys in the doors and calm down the lights and the noise.
Long ago I wanted to pick you up and tell this all to you, but I felt sterile and old-- out of practice. Of course it was the fear.
***
August 22/23, 2007
(cusp of midnight)
[...] But sometimes I feel the same. Like my seven-year-old self is still who I am, and I just rattle away inside the husk of my larger self. Can a seven-year-old make love? Can she go to college or get a job? Is a child capable of finding a place of peace? Or is that too much.
I am not a child. Soon I will find things to insulate the space between my two bodies, so that a walk is not so jarring, so that my small hand does not clack against my big hand whenever I move. I am no matryoshka doll. I am solid through and through.
***
June 28, 2007
When she spoke of the familiar yearning, I remembered what she said. How could I not know the thing that makes me most human-- reduces me and deifies me simultaneously. When I see the blank white space on a poem, I want to cry. It's a crack that I begin to fall through, not knowing where else to go. The edge is where I teeth on. It tells me I need no more breath, so I stop breathing, and all around the world the people penning their stories on window seats, fire escapes, bedroom walls, kitchen tables-- all stop and take note of the breath missing from their inventory. God, again I'm telling you things as if--