to selina
(august 10)
what a weird couple of days that have passed since I last wrote you (a mere six days ago). it feels as if life has been completely left up to fate; like someone is just throwing a dice determining what is going to happen next. super confusing. maybe I could describe it better by saying that if I were to be a village, there has been a storm coming in (unexpectedly) every single day, trying to ruffle every single nook and cranny of me; rumbling every household and every living thing to get some kind of response. rustling leaves and fallen heroes. and here I am, trying to resist, to persist, to stand strong.
or maybe I could describe it better by saying that if I were to be a citizen of that village, the wind would be blowing through my hair so violently that it’d get all over my face, covering my eyes and vision, and I’d be holding onto a tree branch in order to not get blown away. but little do I know the tree branch is so thin it’s going to break if I don’t let go and find another branch when the winds calm down but then again it's blurring my vision and the calms are so unexpected that I wouldn’t know when to let go anyway. and so soon the branch will break and the wind will carry me away as I view the world underneath me, cracking and cackling and gasping to stay alive. and the tears in my eyes won’t just be from the harsh wind drying them out. i'll cry for my city and i'll cry for myself. but it’ll be too late. (or will it?)
–
sorry, now it happened again. yet another one of life’s unexpected and disgustingly unfortunate turns. this one is more silly though (don’t laugh at me). I'm currently writing at the kitchen table. it's a beautiful day so I left the back door open. and now I just had to run away because there was a butterfly that made its way into our kitchen and kept flapping its wings at the window because it couldn’t find its way out again. and so I had to actually run away into a different room where I remained paranoid and scared until the flapping stopped and now I’m really just hoping it’s not gonna creep up on me but that it found its way out. help. haha. wow. that really stopped my writing flow. sorry.
i miss you
(august 12)
[...]
l is wearing a maroon t-shirt, blue jeans, and his green adidas sneakers. last time i saw him he was matching the military green of his sneakers with the sleeves of a baseball shirt; and underneath it he wore a military green vest. I remember because I wanted to ask him if green was his favorite color, because his burton backpack was green as well. it went well with his beige baseball hat. today he’s wearing a black one. when I first encounter him he’s talking to a friend. I don’t know whether or not to interrupt and so I stand awkwardly until he signals he’s seen me and hints for me to come over. I give him a hug and shake his friend’s hand. he’s called Fabian and apparently he’s been wanting to try out climbing. or at least that’s what l tells me. ”we keep saying we should go, but it just never happens”, he says. they both look old; a lot older than me. like grown-ups. I look like a 16 year old in comparison, although in reality there’s only a year separating us. they end their conversation with ”we’ll have to grab a beer some time”. I remember because at the time I’m hit by some kind of hopelessness because that’s such a standard thing to say. ”we’ll have to grab a coffee some time” or ”let’s grab a beer some day”, and it’s all so loose and then it never happens because in the end you’re just trying to shut down small talk so that you can go do whatever you intended to do in the first place. or maybe that’s just me. and then l buys me a cappuccino and gets a cortado for himself. we’re at the corner of a coffee shop at Möllan, watching the world go by.
I like Malmö a lot. it’s a different pulse than the slow, steady one that you find in Lund. no traces of the boringness of academia and the posh elderly people living in professorstaden. Malmö is a melting pot; a meeting place; its diversity showcasing itself in all kinds of smells and flavors and people circulating Möllan. it’s nice. I never realized before how whitewashed and sheltered the place I grew up in was until now; the Spyken kids and their PC-ness, talking about acceptance and how open-minded they are, yet I know that if I were to bring in many of the people I met and encountered at UWC, they’d immediately shut down and shut out. no doubt about it. it becomes interesting because everything that seems to encounter us in our modern day society are confirmations of what we already believe. post-modernism. there are several truths (and therefore, no truth), and so everything that circulates around us are repetitions of what we already believe (and repetition is the only way through which we learn). it makes me wonder then how I should re-invent myself because there is no doubt I’m just as narrow-minded as those Spyken-kids, stuck in this invented reality of my own made-up open-mindedness yet so condescending to anyone who thinks differently (because if there are several truths then the one I believe in must be the truth, too).
I try bringing that idea up to l too, but I’m lost for words. it’s been a long time since I discussed these things in swedish — something I also notice when I’m trying to discuss the Google incident with my father. the words so clumsily leave my mouth and often times find their way in repetitions and saying things that I said just five minutes ago, trying to formulate and straighten out my thoughts for myself. it’s annoying and it makes me feel stupid. maybe that’s why I liked being with e — speaking in english felt comfortable. it was a continuous conversation I was used to having, that I knew how to express, and maybe that’s why I felt like we clicked so well. I don’t know. in any case my entire trying to bring it up with l ends in lots of distractions and not wanting to finish my train of thought because there seems to be no point: I don’t even understand myself what I’m trying to say. nothing formulates itself eloquently and I can’t get it to, and so I give up. sigh.
I miss e. with him it all came so naturally. I wonder why that is. maybe the concept of vibes isn’t so easy living and meme like anymore, but something that actually exists; an intangible presence and non-concrete thing, yet a more powerful force than most other things. sigh. self-validation's such a strange thing.
(october 2)
i am 20 now. yet another year. “i just don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of birthdays” i tell jackiel. i’m old now. it sucks. i wish it wasn’t my birthday.
i re-read andrew’s email over and over again and it hurts me a deep sort of pain that can’t be pinned down but is sensed in my entire body. reading what he has to tell me puts me to tears. if there is any one being i could attribute my entire being to, it would be andrew. andrew and doug. nobody else has ever had as big of an influence than they have had.
i think a lot about what andrew has to say. about art, and our place in this world, and about honesty and staying true to myself.
to be completely honest, the reason i chose to go to wellesley keeps hitting me in the face, over and over again. it’s been more than a month since i got here, now, and so little has changed. painfully little. it pains me.
i don’t even know what to say.
(october 13)
I read through a diary entry from a year ago. it’s about h. h, who I dreamt about last night; h, who never leaves my thoughts. like he’s inhibited his own little space in the back of my mind, resting peacefully until he pushes his way to the front. it hurts. it really does. I don’t know why he keeps coming back to me and I hate it so much. haunted by a thought, a feeling, something that doesn’t exist; a memory that maybe never was there to begin with.
in the end of the journal entry it says: “i sometimes wonder why I always feel the need to be better. I think he’s why. and i hate it so fucking much.” and it breaks my heart. like someone is stomping on it like it’s shattered on the ground splashed on the pavement no one’s watching but it’s there it’s beating red flesh exposed underneath the afternoon light the sun shining through the leaves changing color in the crisp october air.
how are things an exact repeat of last year? how can I not let this boy go? why is everything the same the same the same like my life is a for loop that doesn’t have a return and so it keeps going an INFINITE loop as we learned in cs today. it breaks my heart because i feel so weak
and maybe I am
despite how I ten minutes ago wrote “I feel more in touch with myself now than ever” IS THIS THE SELF THAT I AM? my eyes water
what a weird couple of days that have passed since I last wrote you (a mere six days ago). it feels as if life has been completely left up to fate; like someone is just throwing a dice determining what is going to happen next. super confusing. maybe I could describe it better by saying that if I were to be a village, there has been a storm coming in (unexpectedly) every single day, trying to ruffle every single nook and cranny of me; rumbling every household and every living thing to get some kind of response. rustling leaves and fallen heroes. and here I am, trying to resist, to persist, to stand strong.
or maybe I could describe it better by saying that if I were to be a citizen of that village, the wind would be blowing through my hair so violently that it’d get all over my face, covering my eyes and vision, and I’d be holding onto a tree branch in order to not get blown away. but little do I know the tree branch is so thin it’s going to break if I don’t let go and find another branch when the winds calm down but then again it's blurring my vision and the calms are so unexpected that I wouldn’t know when to let go anyway. and so soon the branch will break and the wind will carry me away as I view the world underneath me, cracking and cackling and gasping to stay alive. and the tears in my eyes won’t just be from the harsh wind drying them out. i'll cry for my city and i'll cry for myself. but it’ll be too late. (or will it?)
–
sorry, now it happened again. yet another one of life’s unexpected and disgustingly unfortunate turns. this one is more silly though (don’t laugh at me). I'm currently writing at the kitchen table. it's a beautiful day so I left the back door open. and now I just had to run away because there was a butterfly that made its way into our kitchen and kept flapping its wings at the window because it couldn’t find its way out again. and so I had to actually run away into a different room where I remained paranoid and scared until the flapping stopped and now I’m really just hoping it’s not gonna creep up on me but that it found its way out. help. haha. wow. that really stopped my writing flow. sorry.
i miss you
(august 12)
[...]
l is wearing a maroon t-shirt, blue jeans, and his green adidas sneakers. last time i saw him he was matching the military green of his sneakers with the sleeves of a baseball shirt; and underneath it he wore a military green vest. I remember because I wanted to ask him if green was his favorite color, because his burton backpack was green as well. it went well with his beige baseball hat. today he’s wearing a black one. when I first encounter him he’s talking to a friend. I don’t know whether or not to interrupt and so I stand awkwardly until he signals he’s seen me and hints for me to come over. I give him a hug and shake his friend’s hand. he’s called Fabian and apparently he’s been wanting to try out climbing. or at least that’s what l tells me. ”we keep saying we should go, but it just never happens”, he says. they both look old; a lot older than me. like grown-ups. I look like a 16 year old in comparison, although in reality there’s only a year separating us. they end their conversation with ”we’ll have to grab a beer some time”. I remember because at the time I’m hit by some kind of hopelessness because that’s such a standard thing to say. ”we’ll have to grab a coffee some time” or ”let’s grab a beer some day”, and it’s all so loose and then it never happens because in the end you’re just trying to shut down small talk so that you can go do whatever you intended to do in the first place. or maybe that’s just me. and then l buys me a cappuccino and gets a cortado for himself. we’re at the corner of a coffee shop at Möllan, watching the world go by.
I like Malmö a lot. it’s a different pulse than the slow, steady one that you find in Lund. no traces of the boringness of academia and the posh elderly people living in professorstaden. Malmö is a melting pot; a meeting place; its diversity showcasing itself in all kinds of smells and flavors and people circulating Möllan. it’s nice. I never realized before how whitewashed and sheltered the place I grew up in was until now; the Spyken kids and their PC-ness, talking about acceptance and how open-minded they are, yet I know that if I were to bring in many of the people I met and encountered at UWC, they’d immediately shut down and shut out. no doubt about it. it becomes interesting because everything that seems to encounter us in our modern day society are confirmations of what we already believe. post-modernism. there are several truths (and therefore, no truth), and so everything that circulates around us are repetitions of what we already believe (and repetition is the only way through which we learn). it makes me wonder then how I should re-invent myself because there is no doubt I’m just as narrow-minded as those Spyken-kids, stuck in this invented reality of my own made-up open-mindedness yet so condescending to anyone who thinks differently (because if there are several truths then the one I believe in must be the truth, too).
I try bringing that idea up to l too, but I’m lost for words. it’s been a long time since I discussed these things in swedish — something I also notice when I’m trying to discuss the Google incident with my father. the words so clumsily leave my mouth and often times find their way in repetitions and saying things that I said just five minutes ago, trying to formulate and straighten out my thoughts for myself. it’s annoying and it makes me feel stupid. maybe that’s why I liked being with e — speaking in english felt comfortable. it was a continuous conversation I was used to having, that I knew how to express, and maybe that’s why I felt like we clicked so well. I don’t know. in any case my entire trying to bring it up with l ends in lots of distractions and not wanting to finish my train of thought because there seems to be no point: I don’t even understand myself what I’m trying to say. nothing formulates itself eloquently and I can’t get it to, and so I give up. sigh.
I miss e. with him it all came so naturally. I wonder why that is. maybe the concept of vibes isn’t so easy living and meme like anymore, but something that actually exists; an intangible presence and non-concrete thing, yet a more powerful force than most other things. sigh. self-validation's such a strange thing.
(october 2)
i am 20 now. yet another year. “i just don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of birthdays” i tell jackiel. i’m old now. it sucks. i wish it wasn’t my birthday.
i re-read andrew’s email over and over again and it hurts me a deep sort of pain that can’t be pinned down but is sensed in my entire body. reading what he has to tell me puts me to tears. if there is any one being i could attribute my entire being to, it would be andrew. andrew and doug. nobody else has ever had as big of an influence than they have had.
i think a lot about what andrew has to say. about art, and our place in this world, and about honesty and staying true to myself.
to be completely honest, the reason i chose to go to wellesley keeps hitting me in the face, over and over again. it’s been more than a month since i got here, now, and so little has changed. painfully little. it pains me.
i don’t even know what to say.
(october 13)
I read through a diary entry from a year ago. it’s about h. h, who I dreamt about last night; h, who never leaves my thoughts. like he’s inhibited his own little space in the back of my mind, resting peacefully until he pushes his way to the front. it hurts. it really does. I don’t know why he keeps coming back to me and I hate it so much. haunted by a thought, a feeling, something that doesn’t exist; a memory that maybe never was there to begin with.
in the end of the journal entry it says: “i sometimes wonder why I always feel the need to be better. I think he’s why. and i hate it so fucking much.” and it breaks my heart. like someone is stomping on it like it’s shattered on the ground splashed on the pavement no one’s watching but it’s there it’s beating red flesh exposed underneath the afternoon light the sun shining through the leaves changing color in the crisp october air.
how are things an exact repeat of last year? how can I not let this boy go? why is everything the same the same the same like my life is a for loop that doesn’t have a return and so it keeps going an INFINITE loop as we learned in cs today. it breaks my heart because i feel so weak
and maybe I am
despite how I ten minutes ago wrote “I feel more in touch with myself now than ever” IS THIS THE SELF THAT I AM? my eyes water