If I Stick Around For Too Long I Get Stuck There Feeling Stupid For Thinking There Was Something More..

If I stick around for too long i get stuck there feeling stupid  for thinking there was something more..

- from a short film "The Lonely Planet"

— a girl is a haunted house, tathève simonyan

[text ID: “I could’ve lived like this”, echoed in my head. / As I looked around, my eyes unthinkingly clung to places where I could’ve hidden my selves: the ones that didn’t come to being and the one that I was. In the cupboards of this kitchen I could’ve buried all the women I could’ve grown into. While doing so, I would’ve put on the apron of the one who inhabited the kitchen. The cups and the glasses would’ve made place for me. I could’ve easily found a home in between the kitchen table and refrigerator. As the fragrance of rosemary and thyme found their way to me, a picture found its way to the back of my eyes: a hushed scene, full of contentment, a shot of me standing in the center of this kitchen, feet thick brown trucks giving birth to dozens of snakelike radixes, covered in colorful moss, devoid of flowers but who needs flowers when all they do is wilt anyway? I would’ve thought so, had I been the me of that frame. / I could’ve been content here, not happy, but content. The cutlery and the plates would’ve made place for me. The dull roar of the washing machine would’ve hidden my cries, with the same diligence it sheltered my mother’s. The “what ifs” of this particular scenario smelled of cinnamon and vanilla. / I could’ve been content here. I thought as I placed the coffee cup on the countertop next to the gas stove: the surface always wet for it filled the space between the sink and the stove, in between water and fire.  / I could’ve been content here. I repeated as I unscrewed the lid of the coffee jar and took out a spoonful of the umber powder. / While turning on the gas and putting the cezve on its designated place, I cursed the mind that yearned for more, yearned to be more than what it was supposed to be. I cursed the eyes that only saw what was not in front of them, hands that wished to touch what wasn’t theirs to touch and the tongue that longed to taste what wasn’t hers to taste. I cursed myself because I understood that I could’ve been content here, and as the umber froth fought its way to the surface, my tears caved in to the gravitational force.]

Nostalgia

Christina’s world, Andrew Wyeth//Those Sweet and Painful Memories, Danny Castillones Sillada//When we were young, The Killers//Youngblood, Five Seconds of Summer//If My Body Could Speak; “Concerns from a hot-boxed jeep”, Blythe Baird//Little talks, Of Monsters and Men//Maureen Paley//From Collected Poems; “The Return of the Exile,” George Seferis//Circle Game, Joni Mitchell//Anne Magill//Head in the clouds, Hayd//A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit//The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Mike Flanagan

SHE HATED HER LIFE, NOT BECAUSE IT WAS BAD, BUT BECAUSE WHEN YOU HATE YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR BODY, IT'S HARD TO ENJOY THE REST.

Franny Choi I Guess By Now I Thought I'd Be Done With Shame / Erika L. Sánchez Amá / Franz Kafka Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors / Hanif Abdurraqib A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance / Richard Siken Birds Hover over the Trampled Field / Hélène Cixous The Selected Poems of Hélène Cixous / Alberto Zamboni Ovunque / Oscar Nin / Richard Siken Crush

i. Franny Choi I Guess By Now I Thought I'd Be Done With Shame [ Somewhere, / there is a version of me that isn't neck-deep in her invented filth. ]

ii. Erika L. Sánchez Amá [ Amá, I leave because / I feel like an unfinished / poem, because I'm always trying to bridge the difference. ]

iii. Franz Kafka Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors [ I don't feel particularly proud of myself. / But when I walk alone in the woods or lie in the meadows, all is well. ]

iv. Hanif Abdurraqib A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance [ I've run out of language to explain the avalanche of anguish I feel when faced with this world, and so if I can't make sense of this planet, I'm better off imagining another. ]

v. Richard Siken Birds Hover the Trampled Field [ The enormity of my desire disgusts me. ]

vi. Hélène Cixous The Selected Poems of Hélène Cixous [ You horrify me. But at the same time, I horrify myself. We are horrible. ]

vii. Alberto Zamboni Ovunque [ The silhouettes of two human figures stand in a room. The background is blurred around them. ]

viii. Oscar Nin [ Distressed painting portrait of a man. ]

ix. Richard Siken Crush [ a gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it. ]

'You defined me with borrowed words and I let you'

Somewhere I knew that despite my fear of never becoming like my father I turned out to be very similar to him, not in looks but in actions. The only thing we knew was how to surrender, how to surrender our entire belonging, how to not form an opinion based on our beliefs, and how to live into the oblivion of our worthlessness. We thought we were a burden on everything and probably on everyone, we were undeserving, and we weren't meant to be given a life that ultimately fell in our laps. It's cathartic and pitiful now that I come to think of it.