Centrifugal Existence

 Had the thought today that I find myself whirling further and further away from some sort of core.  The search for identity or to preserve identity, once a roaring rapid, seems a measly trickle.  Passing by some cherry blossoms,  I imagined myself being in orbit around some concept of me within society but progressively losing control as the radius to this core grows greater in length.  I don't remember feeling so invisible, so peripheral.  It feels just a bit hollow.  My mind is transparent.  I walk on the cracks of the pavement, trying not to fall off.   I wonder how I ever wandered around the various neighborhoods of Seoul alone meeting random people.  I wonder about the lives of the people I pass in all the liminal spaces of the day, except that I am the petal on a wet, black bough.  Perhaps this is just another form of nostalgia.

A name spoken

 I hesitate to speak a name and tremble that every syllable(삼) carries a fireworks explosion.  I tiptoe around the vowels and consonants, for fear every curve and turn would betray the immensity that lies underneath.  Why does vocalizing certain things feel like there is terrain to be crossed, and one can imagine the words as paths through some personal undergrowth? Every little millisecond of tone is atomized to cover everything with emotionally charged dew. Will I remember what this felt like...when I learn to speak these sounds?

Familiar Murmurs

In the beginning, there was only one language.  But progressively, the external English-filled world brought division, and I found myself losing touch with my mother tongue.  I sat by the ebony table etched with abalone cranes eating wedges of apples and Jeju mandarins, zoning out to quiet conversations among my relatives---soft murmurs and occasional words I could recognize.  Years later, I find myself in the modern day living room, in calls with people from all over the world.  Today, I hear the melodic words of my Thai friends and cannot understand a single word although the sounds have become familiar.  The worries of the day dissipate; everything feels meditative, and little do my friends know how much their presence means to me, and how it brings me back to my childhood. 

Happiness is...

things that remind you to feel deeply and stay reflective...

Dialogue and Inner Monologues

 This is just to say (hey there W.C.Williams!)

Moments from shows and things make me curious about what is in everyone's headspace, and then I end up contacting those who matter at that particular moment in what I feel may be a small inching tiptoe towards some sort of character development---if only a semblance of some mental stretching to reach out and link thought fingers (hmmm...) with others. (<--this is junky and long, but just gonna leave it here to commemorate my 4am brain fart.) Anyhoo, today I thought about all those people with whom I bounced ideas and was thankful. This is kinda personal garbledegook, but then again, everything is. 

Must stay dry

Dust particles in the sunlight through the redwood trees:

the driest fluidity you ever did see. Surrounded by the liminal,

I become an object of projection---a voice, the semblance of presence---

ever tiptoeing around the you's I've created too.  In constant rewind to a state of acquaintance, we meet 

again and again captured in a sunbeam passing through digital trees. 

Transports

 You move a pillow away from the windows for fear the cold air might make it shiver. You keep your shabby toys together with the new; the faded little lion might be lonely.  The petals from a rose--you keep them in a little book until they are translucent--the beautiful now coursing through the fragile lacy veins. Empathy for the inanimate! How we decorate our paths with these emotive stones!

위하여

 

a little nervous and unsure: an ep album of a collection of me's over time comes out tomorrow.  i dont know what will come of it or if it will mean i can write new songs again, but am appreciative of all the things that inspire(d) me, even if for a fleeting second of a day.  wish i could hold onto the white lights i think of lining the streets--the fireflies of the cities--when i feel this way.  wish i could take the cobalt skies of concert nights in california and keep them in my mind's eye a little longer...

In the middle of June

 

29 degrees, a normal Sunday full of lazy goodness, oversized yellow Haruko Haruhara t-shirts and definitely, 5 minute pauses between sentences as brain pathways bump and collide. All thoughts are instantly wiped out by the blue outside my window. words. the moment you feel you are about to discover something about a particular combination of words--some sort of clarity in the nebula of all things--Ah! so close...

And here for some garbledegook, because after much thought, it is, and forever will be, a jumble: 

youth's conversational cadences, (what about them, and what about the you's in them), hearing the voice of the ideal in everything, equilibrium cleanse (so it happened just now), retracing steps to the emotional doors to reopen,  should really plant this basil. 28 degrees, a little damp on a normal Sunday, (come on, be a little less normal), glad to be able to have a full day of meaningless marination. 

Pinocchio's Tree

Struck by a certain feeling that I want to capture in words, but it wants to escape...want to hold on...to figure out what it is. Am transported to moments from my childhood--of getting attached to a tree that appears in Pinocchio and feeling so sad that it disappeared, when it wasn't even an essential part of the film--of the little things that appear to you, touch your heart, then disappear.  Do you ever feel that everything matters just a tad too much...and you wish they didn't because you feel your heart breaking into a million pieces over these little things.  Haven't figured out what this feeling is...was hoping writing would get closer to something: love the things you love as dearly as you can. 

The Great Sparkle Grain Conjunction!

I could describe myself as just another person who has a lot of thoughts (a lot being just the average perhaps).  And to this, I think, what good does it do when it just disperses into (what I imagine) some universe with a whole slew of other people's thoughts.

I walk the same path I take every day, adjacent to rumbling traffic and the same tall buildings. But today, the sparkle grains are lit by the streetlights, and I happen to notice, and it matters in some kind of small unimportant way.

Imagine if our minds were linked at these moments, what kind of collective image would appear? Would it be awash with colors and buzzing with transient thought phantoms?  Or could it be...that we would all be united on a walk on the same sort of glittering floor?

지뿡땡

a small note:

when i walk around, i go over the thai alphabet aloud (if no one is around, but silently otherwise), and i have chuckled to myself saying phrases because of the sing-song-y nature of the language.  (thought i would get stuck singing words for everything) i have yet to fully understand all the tones and inflections, but today i was thinking that i am highly conscious of the insides of my mouth when i practice saying some of the words.  it almost feels like i'm juggling invisible marbles in my mouth and making little pockets of space and rearranging them so that the sounds can travel past these imaginary obstructions.  i love it!

การเปลี่ยนแปลง

I am just going to put this word here (I googled the word transition, and although I can recognize the consonants, I am not too quick to read with the vowels and the right tones yet.) Just a random thought, but I have been spending quite a bit of time just listening to my Thai friends speak, and usually I cannot understand a single word although I hear certain repeating sounds and have learned what may possibly be negations, but I have no idea what verb is being negated. I wonder if they think I'm really weird that I stay silent for long periods of time to just listen. I cannot really put into words why I feel so drawn to this language and the sounds.  I am wondering at this very moment if there will ever be a moment where the words cease to be just purely sounds, and I cross the boundary into a territory where I cannot hear the sounds anymore---when I think of what Korean sounds like, I can't really say---and the thoughts convey themselves first before the sounds.  I wonder if I will be a little sad when this transition happens.  I hope that when I do become more familiar with the language, and I can read more quickly, I will look at the title I gave to this post and think: "wow that is a stupid title."

Lately

 ฉันมาทำอะไรที่นี่

Walking at night

 In a city, the stars fall from the sky and litter the streets in the form of headlights and streetlights.  Our bodies stay cold and unburnt.  The heavens are starless--a grey expanse with no limits.  The stars would have provided context for distance.  But there is no distance. Fuck. We deserve the best--"best" requiring a whole lifetime to define. 

Sleep

 

 Lost and alone in Seoul, I thought to find myself lost again in a digital world--was comfortable with this idea.  This isn't going to be a long note. Just...how to reflect on the meditative nature of trying to write Thai script.  What does it feel like for me? Like tracing the raindrops on a windowpane as they fall naturally. I have been falling asleep to the murmurs of spoken Thai.  I've never slept so well. 

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.