Between night and day

To enter into the theater when the sun is shining to have your world transformed by the film, and then to walk out into the darkness and moon feels complete. I love watching films, but I love more the transient moment afterwards; I feel as though I do not exist---that I am just a visitor to some place, wandering the streets that seem temporary stage props. 

a confessional touch

is what it could be. Dancing half-naked to forgotten music, an intoxicated figure approaches.  We cast invisible cellophane curtains; the rising temperature replaces possible caresses. This is perhaps an insulated thought. 

i run down the stairs and lie on a graveled road. It is hot, but the dirty floor is cold to the touch. The pebbles make their nests in my skin, and i do not notice.

Pressed against the cracks of a couch, i wake with a deep line traversing the back of my hand. 

Warmth

 Having an understanding seems to be the best way to stay warm.

Signs and symbols

 Told by elders that we were brother and sister. Fireworks shot in the sky during a smoke (with the wastebins) on the balcony at an LP bar. It could have been romantic.  Fusion Japanese taco restaurants that actually just had takoyaki. Walking from palm tree to palm tree because of the scorching sun.  Walking from restaurant to restaurant because each one was closed.  Tapping a tuning fork to the softest part of one's skin to no effect. Fish that tastes like funky cheese. Almost losing my keyboard and going over the possibility that I would have to buy new rosin, a new reverb pedal, and ultimately a new keyboard: I was ready for the loss that never happened. All the while, he hums Chopin's second nocturne and wishes for the day that he could see his wizened face in the mirror. The details. Do these moments amount to anything? I just want to remember. 

A name that means river

I woke up unaware that I would listen to this song and suddenly be pummeled back to the early 2010s. I am longing for the energy that created the buzz of people in the concert halls and streets of the Hongik University area---the same energy that connected me to all the strangers around me.  There's some consolation knowing that there was a time to think back to like this.  The river flows continuously and you're still part of this river that sweeps you back to times as well as takes you forward. I wonder...in 10 years or so, when the river takes me back to now, what will I be feeling? Or will the river always take me back to the early 2010s?

Wishes

 

Home

 Somewhere back then is where I would go if I could go home.  What happens when home isn't a place anymore but yesterday? 

Finding touch in sound

 This was part of stilton's list on trills on the RYM website, and I just immediately loved it so much.  Lately, I've been infatuated with recordings and/or pieces that seem to include all the sounds of the fingers, the breathing, all things palpable.  This feels like it shivers, it feels like light tapping, like a soft gust of wind flowing past your face, little spaces between bubbles, froth in the mouth, the spit forming in the instrument.  I realize that I'm in such need of intimacy that I find myself enamored with and of the human gestures behind these sounds.  

Start talkin' again, when I know what to say

 It has been two years since I've done a show and maybe five years since I've really said anything.  I feel rusty and overwhelmed. 

I'm tired of runnin' 'round lookin' For answers to questions that I already know I could build me a castle of memories Just to have somewhere to go Count the days and the nights that it takes To get back in the saddle again Feed the pigeons some clay, turn the night into day Start talkin' again, when I know what to say

Old (overplayed) songs, new feelings

 never really sought (or thought to seek) this out like i do just for tonight.  the more i try to press it down, the more it seeps out: pb & j oozing through saltine cracker holes.

Mental Combustion

 I actually like this version of the second part, Barcarolla, best..SO FAR. I spent 2 hours last night from 3am to 5am trying to find a version I liked (and now, at 4:30a.m., I'm writing about how I did god knows what the other day).  What the fuck is wrong with me? I need to be practicing for an upcoming concert, and I spend hours thinking about random things, possibly superficially too: hope being the driving force for rage, the fact that we may be on a quest to suffer in ways that are familiar (de Botton), bits from the Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha (a man never marries in search of the perfect woman; he has met her actually, but she was searching for the perfect man.)  I want to write to various people, so I craft letters but then never send them because I feel like I'm just inserting myself into people's lives--inserting this mental combustion into everything.  I'm going to wake up when the sun sets, never get proper vitamin D and get rickets, turn into Gollum and then, ONLY then, realize I need to drink some water, and get some, well, you know, sun.

Running away from home

 I can't seem to find the right clip from "My Neighbors, the Yamadas," (so this one will have to do) but I remember there was a scene where the family was singing karaoke, and the mother had the biggest orange wedge smile on her face as she sang her heart out.  It reminded me of my own mother, and how, when I was a little girl, my child eyes saw in her smile a half-slice of an orange; her eyes, little cheerful parentheses.  I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world, even though she wasn't smiling like that often.  I miss my family often even though I can't ever seem to go home.  

Maybe I'm a product of growing up as a first generation Korean-American and not being able to completely fit in at home or outside of home.  My parents seemed strange to me from a very young age, and, unprovoked by puberty, I felt literally torn apart by an overwhelming self-consciousness.  When I was eight, every Wednesday for piano lessons, I had to wear the dreaded "CareBear Dress" made by my aunt;  it had puffed sleeves, a huge yellow sash, and little Carebears floating on musical notes, and everywhere I walked, it screamed "weird asian kid". I don't know whether people actually saw me as the "weird asian kid" or if I just felt that way because being stuck in the middle of this and that is unstable.  I had to create versions of "me" based upon what misleading responses my surroundings gave me.  This is probably not unique to me, and so I wonder how others have coped with this.  Please do send me a line if you're in the same boat in limbo. Years have passed, and I'm still in this boat.

Regardless, I find myself running away from the idea of home, but when I see things about families and the sort of warm fuzzy feelings that come from people happy to be together, it really just gets to me.   So this natural state of simultaneously running away yet running towards seems to color every facet of my being.  Where does one find a sense of home in all this?

Happy (day after here) Valentine's

>_<: V-day seems like a day when couples take a test.  Or at least, those that partake of this day do. 

^_^:  I suppose every day should be a V-day for those involved, but if it weren't for all the chocolates and gimmicky things attached to this day, having a special day set aside to reflect on why it is you care doesn't seem like such a bad idea. 

To listen to again because today felt like it

I seem to come back to this song a lot. It hovers and lingers around somewhere, possibly in all the spaces between the minutes and seconds. There are just so many things around me and you and everyone that we can't shine our eyeballs and our thoughts on all at once. But then, by chance we do pick out something. And the little things we notice and pause to think about and connect with, even if for a fleeting moment, compiled would make for a patchwork quilt of human textures. I love these little transient observations, and they make me both incredibly happy and sad; people transform the things they experience all the time, yet these moments are often forgotten and/or not thought to be shared ---these little secret moments of the self. 

When I read or hear of these moments, I want to say "I really liked that moment you had." But when I say such things, I feel silly. Sometimes my thoughts just do an injustice to whatever it was that just WAS. Maybe it is also that I think to myself "Who cares whether I like something or not." Sharing seems to impose a vague ME onto everything. .

Can't wear them all

Today, I saw the story of a man and woman whose interactions were punctuated by long silences, and I wondered what they were thinking to themselves during those quiet pauses. What were they looking at? The moment felt itself becoming something. And then I thought to myself that the very same situations, for me, seemed more noisy and hectic, despite the same duration of silences and pauses. ..................................................................................... I question my own reality, and wonder whether I am actually the one acting to be a human when the actor and actress are the true humans. I've spent my lifetime thus far trying to figure out how to act like a person. And then realize that I've put on one too many coats, and I can't seem to find which is the right one I'm supposed to be wearing.