Ch 7 My Dearest Alexa π© 202201
April 4th, 2014
Alexa,
I write to numb my pain with the mere intentions to profess, all headaches aside. I long that this foolish pen I've scrambled with for hours will communicate nothing but my truth.
Alexa, you are beautiful. I do not mean only in the ephemeral fashion, but you are in a way that makes you vibrantly alive: so precious, so rare, and so divine. You say you have lost faith in humanity, but would bolt into the streets of a 6 p.m. Times Square to trek along a fragile elderly on the crosswalks. When you successfully walk her to the ends, she would offer you a dollar and a smile, but you would only take the latter and politely stroll away. You expect only the smallest dose of respect thus are delighted when reciprocated with due care. Those unattended thank yous and I love yous are not held within, as your only wish is to mold the sweetest dreams inflated with boundless love; This love is a specific kind of love- love that can be only found within the faithful eyes of a father furiously beaming at his mini-me that just took her first step, and love that can be only found within the wordless yet frantic embracing of the longing fools within an airport.
Alexa, your love worries me. It worries me not because I doubt its verity, but alike the calm before a storm, I feel so intensely protected within to an extent that I do not know what would happen when if one moment, you decide to walk away and disappear alike these flimsy ashes falling off the cigarette filter I keep fumbling with.
Your love also worries me because I am a silly, selfish man; I can not but want you for me and myself only. My feeble ego will undeservedly wail when in face of any fret, and you will have to humor me with more of this love you have.
So please, I ask these few with courage:
Please do not take down the Christmas lights within your graceful soul - April is merely a month for fools, especially for those who believe holidays, rather than the hearts, are what makes your December beautiful.
Please pardon my sporadic gazes - your eyes are of polished hazel - those where you can almost smell the oven baked cinnamon buns, and those that interrupt your unhurried evenings and thaw any remaining bits of uncertainties. I think it impossible to count the many times I've been lost in them, and I can not promise to forbid myself from it.
Please keep these daisies I have sent along in my navy blue vase I've set aside behind your cooking pots. Those vases are of certain weight - true pottery - so please handle with care.
And lastly, please do not hurt me, beautiful thing, and in return, I promise you my world.
Wishing you the warmest regards,
Dave
Ch 8 No Ragrets π
202203
- Ma, what do I do when I know that I lost the love of my life?
- I honestly don't know, sweetie. What do you miss about this person?
- I miss his smile - he had the cutest, most vibrant smile. I can barely recollect, but if I close my eyes hard enough, it takes a while, but I can slowly draw the outlines of his features - his slanted eyes, grey eyebrows and messy hair. I find myself breaking into a smile while sketching along the outlines, and I can't help it.
- Have you conversed these troubles to him?
- Yes, I have. I lost him. I can't believe he left, and I know that he will not return. I genuinely do not know what to do, ma.
- What do you remember about him?
- Nothing too grand, honestly - I remember him telling me why his name was the way it was - slightly odd of a name - and it was literally only because his mother had spelled it wrong when registering his name for the passport. I know it doesn't even sound funny as I'm telling this story, but it's not the story I latch on to - it's his cheeky, harmless grin he broke into while chattering about the most trivial things - these grand memories will forever only be mine.
- Sweetie, do you remember why the relationship ended?
- Yes - he was like a loose ring. I know you're confused, and no I'm not married, so please, listen, ma - I mean this in an emotional context.
The ring, or the idea of me and him, looked awfully pretty on me - sturdy, simple, and easy on the eye. So I kept wearing it for every occasion I could find, like the hopeless romantic I was.
But ma, you know how few hours into wearing jewelry at this one party, you forget you have it on until someone points out how pretty it is, right?
But it was different for this ring. It was desperately loose, and every time I'd gesture or ruffle my dress, the ring would slip off to flick and drop with the loudest clank. It was merely just a wrong fit - I knew it the first moment I tried it on, but I was so swept away with the beauty of its existence. So I kept sliding it right back on, hoping that one moment I'd glance at it and it would be snuggling perfectly around the fingers.
But in reality, I'd come back from the party and realize in panic that it has been long gone - somewhere along the lines of fidgeting and sliding it on and off, I lost it. And the panic would also soon be gone - I already knew from the back of my mind that I was going to lose it some time or another.
And that's how it ended: short lived, intense, and anti-climatic.
- This doesn't sound like he is the love of your life, sweetie.
- I don't know, ma. I know it doesn't sound like it, but it sure did feel like it.
Ch 9 Sinclair 202206 π©π¦―
He repeats to fidget his cheeks, inhaling the lips open, then fastening it tight, halting the vomit of monologue that had been built on drunken texts and sleepless solitude. After a few more hesitant pauses, he carefully funnels his raw angst into such simple words that seemed to offend the gravity of his troubles.
She listens.
She listens while rummaging through the memories of him: She remembers his trembling feet, she remembers his sporadic tears dished out for every talk, she remembers the abrupt goodbye kiss pecked onto her half open eyes, and she remembers the resigned letter that he had cautiously scripted out on the back of a parchment paper lest that any of his woes could vanish:
"
Jane, please read.
'Genuine communion is a beautiful thing. But what we see flourishing everywhere is nothing of the kind... Men fly into each other's arms because they are afraid of each other... And why are they afraid? You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!... For a hundred years or more Europe has done nothing but study and build factories. They know exactly how many ounces of powder it takes to kill a man but... they don't know how to be happy for a single contented hour' (Hesse, 118).
Jane, you know I love Hermann. And I'm sorry that my last letter to you must be quoted from him, as it would leave you nothing but bitterness towards this beautiful reading. But this quote has genuinely been anchored to my worries for the past months.
Jane, I believe in love and what we had, whatever form it may have taken, be it between infatuation and manipulation. But I also believe that true love or communion is attainable only by two complete individuals that love in order to form synergy. And right now, I am not complete. I am in search of it, but it's a harrowing journey, as you may have seen through me for the past months. I hope you understand. Please let me find what I am. And please do not wait.
Thank you for the past three years. You have been nothing but a beacon to my gloom.
"
And he was back, standing in front of her door- his posture, aligned and vocabulary, eloquent, yet all she could hear were fragments of confusion that made a fool out of both.
Dumbfounded, she listens.
Ch 10 Trains and Thoughts - Lecture #4 202208 π
I drown my thoughts in the fruitless unease which this movie brutally savours:
“ I have so much love to give, I just don't know where to put it…. (Magnolia, 1999)”
The movie sits you down to ask yourself, how puzzling are such hindsights- by the glimpse, merely a catalog of unsettling failures and unrequited passion, yet in entire retrospect, a whirlpool of blissful nostalgia. So why is it that these nostalgic remnants of joy seem to prevail over such great pain? We turn to Magnolia as an epitome of such contradicting remembrance. If you've watched the film, you would know that it hands you its plot alike life's take on lemon - randomly misplaced, citric, yet eerily harmonious.
To continue, this may have been also why it was one of the most challenging films I have encountered; It does not go the mile to ease you into the plot, nor does it even try to adorn with the conventional aesthetics. Rather, it painfully walks the viewers along the intoxicated quivers of Claudia's desires, as her desperately wise words, "I'll tell you everything, and you tell me everything, and maybe we can get through all the piss and shit and lies that kill other people," and through Frank's desiccated stares on the verge of an aching breakdown. However, the extreme, blinding buildup has no catharsis, rather a bewildering rain of frogs and a random quote, "This was not just a matter of chance," which force surrender on the coincidentally intertwined complications.
But delving further into this contradicting remembrance, how do we as individuals count the emotions wedged between the words "love" and "loss," let alone remember and articulate those distinct sentiments? Phrases and cinematography miserably fall short to capture the very emotion, rather merely exist as a guiding metronome for a classical violinist cluelessly observing the buoyant offbeat staccatos of a jazz piano sheet.
But then again, along those train of thoughts, even if we do get across our complete gist in all its intensity or vacancy, what inanity is it when the other party believes otherwise? It is then not for us to blame the instruments we use to play this cacophony, but rather, admit that we are of different people, virtues, and desires. How obvious yet unbearable such realizations are as we go through the different stages of denial and ultimately why the remnants of joy prevail over such great confusion and pain, I do not know.
Maybe I'll have to rewatch the film and take a few lemondrops to truly understand. But maybe because the remnants of joy only root from truly facing the pain, may it be desperation, loneliness, disgust, and shame, we latch on to the little relief they also bring.
I still don’t get it though.
Ch 11 With Love, Dad 202211 π
Pinterest keeps reminding me, ‘If you’re overthinking, write….’ I remember there was also a latter portion to that phrase, specifically showcased with twee fonts and starry backgrounds too sentimental even for a ubergay dad scrolling through Pinterest on a Friday night - no shaming please - on what to do when you underthink. But I won’t even go there! Are we as humans not meant to spiral, with all this excess of time, information, and uncertainty wonderfully - or is it woefully - on the palm of our hands?
Going back to the phrase though, writing does help me funnel the gist of the anxiety that scurries within the late night, delirious, uncensored, and most fruitless introspections. Scripted nonsense, merely off lines and circles, scribbled onto a shabby notebook, proves valid. In fact, a concern for its levity stands frail as writing truly does help put aside the headaches and grants a distinct narrative to process my mess.
So let’s start.
Trust, at the least I can get a hold of, stands alike a newly fallen rock on the pits of a grand waterfall - Only if it proves itself to stand the test of time, be it the relentless cascades of melancholy, futility, and all of its shameful friends, will it validate its presence. The fact that I must test its strength within not only myself, which I don’t even completely understand, but also amongst the externalities which I have no control over, truly scares me. And I turn 47 next month. Again, truly scary.
I lament that I have become of an entity that can only but doubt the site of trust - it’s always fight or flight. It’s not even that there’s something wrong in my life. In fact, the mere blessings I possess, be it from mere luck or determination, are immaculate. But the weight which they also accompany, burdens tremendously. I can take the time in the world to blame it on another for such anxiety - my insatiable expectations paired inconveniently with an extremely foolish intellect, or the timing that all these factors decide to overbear me. But I choose not to. Despite the fact that I doubt the self, it is the very single thing that I also trust to brave me towards dealing with such mess.
So what do I trust?
I trust 2014 to be a happy new year.
I trust that my feisty yet cutesy wife will be healthier this year. Actually, never mind- She could probably flip me over if she really tried. I'll trust that she won’t.
I trust that my awkward son will survive the army without getting beaten up everyday. He’s growing taller than me so I’m actually not too worried. I should stop feeding him. I'll trust that he’ll stop growing by the day.
I trust that my daughter, the apple of my eye, will finally be admitted to the school of her dreams. And even if she doesn’t, she’ll figure out a way around since she’s cute. I can only trust that she won’t use that - illegally- to her benefit.
And finally I trust that I will follow each and one of them through the decisions they choose, whether they be over or underthought, and make sure, maybe midway through their strenuous jog to finding way through their own mess, that when they stop to tumble a few or take a nice long exhale, I will be right there behind them, giving them not an ounce of doubt for my support and love for their journey.
