I NAMED A FILE “OLD” BUT I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO PUT INSIDE.
does it ever happen to you that you don’t reeeeally (reads in an elongated manner) know what to say?
everybody is trying to know everything before everything happens.
I do not take part in such activities. I don’t want to know about anything before any of it happens. I have other things to know about before things happen. because there is always something to know about now and if ever one drifts away from what is there to know about now, one never gets to truly live. one thinks they live because they live these other things that are not reeeeally (reads in an elongated manner) here here. But they are never the real things belonging to the real thing, which is now.
so when or if ever you don’t reeeeally (reads in an elongated manner) know what to say, perhaps there is not much to be said for now. and people fail to understand that.
(silence)
does it ever happen to you that you don’t reeeeally (reads in an elongated manner) know what you’re feeling?
these rare moments I call feeling gaps is what they are. you are supposed to be feeling something because there isn’t ever really a time where we don’t feel something but sometimes you don’t and people fail to understand that too.
what happened? is a common question asked by anxious children trying to read the room and position their feelings accordingly. It is a muscle that has been trained well and strong for many people. I know because I have it (shows biceps).
But now I don’t ask what happened? (repeats the question asking it in multiple different ways) because there is barely anything that happens at any given moment yet we still manage to feel so much about it. so don’t ask me what happened?
I just broke up with my partner.
I argued with my mother the other day. It was a big one.
Someone gazed at my tits on my way here.
I got invited for an exhibition this weekend.
Summer is here, finally. And my life is changing completely, once again.
See? I don’t really have an answer.
Nothing reeeeally (reads in an elongated manner) happened.
Have you ever found yourself on the other side of your own argument?
Your veeeery (reads in an elongated manner) cleverly constructed, logical, strong argument that is informed by your veeeery (reads in an elongated manner) precious experiences and feelings and whatnot? (reads in a condescending tone)
Well, it happens. We all find ourselves on the other side of something. If it’s not our opinions it’s other things we find ourselves on the other side of. Like the side of the street or continents or one day you are a child and the next you can be a parent if you wanted to. Crazy huh?
But it happens that things happen to change our minds, no (reads as if she changes her mind in the very moment), more than changing our minds, things happen to change our entire narrative perception around a singular matter. And suddenly you’re there in the middle of the street, trying to cross the road, and NOT (reads louder) on a pedestrian crossing. So it’s a matter of seconds that you can get hit by a car, just because you wanted to change which side of the road you’re on, or at best you would get honked by an entire orchestration of cars and other vehicles with potentially louder honks. It is a dangerous job to cross roads, cross thoughts, say you’ve changed - mostly to yourself: I HAVE CHANGED! (reads as a declaration).
(silence)
(reads through a different, more whispering tone):
I used to hear sentences but now it’s only every sound getting absorbed.
Every beginning of every thought.
There are too many things stopping me.
Now I know about way more:
About why people cry. And why people can’t.
I know why people fight and how they won’t even if they can.
I know why I came here too. And why I would have come here at the end anyways.
That’s already way too much information.
I have to blink more now that I need the moisture.
I think this is important to say:
We were told tales which we now begin to unsee.
So I have this problem:
I can’t bring myself to do my skincare these days because I cry a lot.
One thing that would break my heart more than the reason why I’m crying so much would be to waste expensive serums and creams that inevitably pour down with my tears. So excuse the state of my skin.
But, I went to bouldering for the first time the other day. Those who know me know that I have been obsessed with mountains, climbing and anything revolving around them for quite some time now. But the thing about mountains is that, although they present themselves as glorious geographical formations ready to be conquered with vertical movement (reads in a glorious tone), they instead suggest something way more horizontal, sophisticated and honestly, deceiving. We see people who work more, hustle like crazed hounds, and climb up the socioeconomic ladder like floor is lava. They gaze at the mountain from what they have been told to be “below”, and think if they make it to the summit, all the suffering will be over. But no one around them tells them that a group of climbers, when climbing a mountain, have to be tied to each other with a rope so that if one falls or is left behind, the whole group has to do something about the fallen climber. The fall would inevitably require them to stop altogether. No one tells them the reward for making it to the summit would be a mere pat on the back, and preferably given by the person to themselves, plus a really beautiful view if you’re lucky with the weather.
But now that we have drones, you could practically get one, fly it over the mountain you want to climb, and still get the view without having to do the effort. That might be read as an analogy for social media or AI if you wanted to. I hate drones. I find them stupid.
Anyways, back to mountains. The act of climbing is one that requires for you to have not only physical strength, not only mental strength, but emotional strength too. If you ever watched a climber climb an indoor wall or an actual big rock, you could’ve easily seen that they’re performing a kind of dance. Calm and mindful moves. Yes, they calculate the tracks ahead, memorize the grips beforehand, but they nevertheless have to cooperate with the mountain, with the rock, and with themselves. They have to hug the thing they’re climbing, in order to be actually climbing. I find it fascinating. So the other day I went to bouldering for the first time. I know it’s a “thing” now, amongst cool people, and that’s why I hadn’t done it thus far, even though I’m a cool person, I didn’t want to engage in this popular activity that everyone liked. But I knew why everyone liked it. I knew it even before doing it myself. So I put aside my ego and accepted a friend’s invitation to go to a bouldering gym, the day after I had the very sad very beautiful breakup, and told myself, if not today, then when? so that even though I’m doing what everyone else is doing, I would have a special story around it.
I don’t like drones or AI but I like that we now have wider access to climbing gyms, I’ll give technology that.
It was amazing: I didn’t cry for that day. I just climbed, like a spider, I fell, I gripped, I let go, I desired, I tried, I made it, I couldn’t make it, but I showed up and it was amazing.
So now, it’s reeeeally (reads in an elongated manner) as if I’m not holding the strings in my hands.
Many people have probably said this but:
If you pull the strings too tight, your mobility gets blocked. If you barely touch the strings, then it all falls.
And everyone lost it at some point. And everyone found themselves exactly like that.
I used to believe in destruction more, resistance (voice amplifies and deepens), standing up against the evil (voice amplifies and deepens). But I know better than that. I think we all do (gazes at audience). That probably none of us are evil (reads as if it’s a secret). That’s why we still fall in love, still call our moms or dads or someone specific everyday, have sex, cook food, catch up with a friend, cross the road, get to the other side, and seek ways to multiply and reproduce ourselves - not babies but other things.
(silence)
I feel I compleeeeeetely (reads in an elongated manner) lack the terminology for explaining the state of today, with its horrors and its beauties.Therefore an explanation of today either always comes tomorrow, or whatever you write to explain today, inevitably becomes yesterday’s terminology.
How useless to think that today is the only chance we have. Or equally, that to believe in all the chances only lay outside of today.
How silly I have been to try to understand it all.
I got mad at myself for lacking the terminology. I got mad at myself for loosing the end of the thread. I got mad at myself for not knowing what to say. This is exactly where human cruelty lies, or that of a writer’s:
I AM THE TERMINOLOGY. (reads louder)
Or this one tree I’m gazing at through the window, its leaves, the wind that puts them into motion, these are today’s terminology, the soil I’m no longer able to see because of the construction work but know that is there and it is from there that the tree grows. The dust on the bottom half of the window is terminology, or the fear for whether someone will knock on my door at a wrong time where I won’t be able to answer.
(silence)
If I repeat my pain over and over again, will it leave me?
If I repeat my name over and over again, same question. (refers to the previous sentence)
If I repeat my day over and over again, will the seven differences between the two images appear?
And yet still my day won’t make sense, and still my pain won’t, and still my name won’t make sense. And I don’t want them to.
Just like I never want to fly drones or climb vertically or get mad at someone I love.
Just like I want to nail the balance between leaving things in the air and grounding them safely and securely. Just like I don’t want to explain a joke or elaborate on a metaphor so that people can see what’s in it for themselves. Just like I love a narrow road that manages to stay beautiful, because it is narrow. Some fashion designer said that. (reads as if it is unimportant)
“Giving up is a revelation”, says Clarice Lispector. I’m giving up.
I’m just saying there’s probably a thing here that you should probably look at.
And then I go.
