Alive

As I am staring at the computer screen sitting on the table in my small apartment, I can’t help noticing its dusty and old appearance. Through its existence, it is clear that I do coexist somehow in this plane, a dimension which makes me visible and touchable in the ways of sense experiences.

My existence is a priori since that doesn’t need empirical explanation, but the relationship between I and the computer screen is a posteriori since that is a gained experience.

Oh yes, I know. I am getting old.

Recently, I’ve read almost all of Banana Yoshimoto’s books. They inspire me in a great deal. But the more I am into my own finding on meaning of life through books—mostly literature and philosophy—the more I become detached to my physical surrounding. The more I see myself by slowly tearing apart my mental restraints, the more I become distasteful in societal standards.

My thinking becomes way off, you see.

If someone says something to me, I can’t help asking an obnoxious question, “Why?”

Why is that? Why do I/we have to do this? Why it is predetermined to be such? Why isn’t there a reasonable explanation rather than a protocol to be followed by everyone? Why do you believe that? Why am I expected to believe that? Why all these nonsense/wastes have become societal consumption?

I am not smart. Not at all. But I am definitely not a pessimistic and sad person. The truth is I can’t just absorb what is fed.

I can’t regard things merely as they are. I am more skeptic than ever. Most importantly, I ask so many questions in my own little head. It sounds nuts, right?

But the force somewhere inside me—which probably in my head—is so vigorous that I can no longer resist, but ask myself countless questions.

Questions about things. Things around me. Things those are near or far. Things unreachable. Things that are categorized. Things with or without purpose. Things about this whole thing.

I simply can’t let them go, can I?

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For some reason if this became my last post on this sketch book, which I desperately hope not, I would like to thank my grandmother for the first reason why I started it, and my fish for many other great things happened in it.

Swan Song

Everything was strange at first. But after a while, the feeling of strangeness wore off as things stopped revolving around a particular point.

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Time wore on.

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Whether you like it or not, it’s part of this vicious circle, sometimes you’ve got to give vent to your emotion in formality—a tear here, a smile there, a smirk in between.

Nobody is a victim of circumstance. It’s just an act.

An act or one little mischief.

Life has gone too far. Time has gone too far. Humor in existence has gone too far. It is getting more and more than I can bear.

My patience has become so exhausted.

I no longer want to be in this circle.

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At one instance, I was in the Colorado River. You couldn’t imagine how cold the water was. Icy cold. Water coming from those frozen mountains.

And it’s getting dark. I could say that because I noticed the sun and the moon being together, almost touching each other, not really, but almost, you know what I mean?

And all that I could think of was the fishes in the River. Fishes might or might not be swimming with the tide across pebbles. Fishes whose eyes were as wide as my own eyes when they got a glimpse of what’s going on around them in this world. Fishes with no fins. Fishes with broken fins. Fishes with some sort of self-preservation. Fishes eating fishes. Fishes making out with fishes. Fishes just being and wanting to be fishes.

All of a sudden, something nudged me in my back. Oh, it might as well be a fish.

I longed for you. So much.

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You.

You are a thorn in my side. You are also the one I can fall back upon at any time.

You and I must reckon with everything that would undo us. You and I must press for fair play. You and I must stop trifling with our feelings.

Don’t I say that enough?

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I don’t care.

As long as I live, I don’t care why Gregor Samsa transformed into an enormous bug when he awoke from troubled dreams one morning. I wake up from troubled dreams every morning and I find myself limping towards the face of a new day, without a slight sign of metamorphosis.

This is poison to me. Too much of Kafka is poison to me. Too much of this and that has worn me out in a way that I’ve become my own swan song. I don’t need that last breath.

Just let me go. Just let me go. Just let me go.

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Sonnet 16

Long have I long’d to see my love againe,

Still have I wisht, but never could obtaine it;

Rather than all the world (if I might gaine it)

Would I desire my love’s sweet precious gaine.

Yet in my soule I see him everie day,

See him, and see his still sterne countenaunce,

But (ah) what is of long continuance,

Where majestie and beautie beares the sway?

Sometimes, when I imagine that I see him,

(As love is full of foolish fantasies)

Weening to kisse his lips, as my love’s fees,

I feele but aire: nothing but aire to bee him.

Thus with Ixion, kisse I clouds in vaine:

Thus with Ixion, feele I endles paine.

--Richard Barnfield (1595)

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In every sense, you are me.

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Arigatoo ne.

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Momiji, Raymond Carver and JK Cafe

...Once my body turned into a forest.. A forest filled with Maple trees. I transformed into Momiji and you touched me gently.
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Every time I recite the words of Raymond Carver, I remember how you make me become one of his characters. I intend to be isolated. I intend to be alone. I intend to be living marginal. I intend to be in terror and loss and despair. I intend to be ordinary. I intend to end everything I am not and start everything I am. Perhaps, I am one of his characters.

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Momiji are still my favorite.. they don't live long. ..
but they always come back..
when they come back, make sure to touch them gently...please..
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Love: One Thing that Doesn't Fit Me

“I love you.”
Is it a falsifiable claim?
How many times have you said that in your life? Or have you not said it at all?

It’s like a morning cup of coffee, love is what it is.
It’s like drowning into the deep ocean. A breeze carrying winter snow. Encompassing the Universe at a blink of an eye. You feel as light as a cotton ball and suddenly, your shoulders sink into the darkest of all.
Have you not experienced that? Have you surely not? Tell me now.

You say love makes you move and eat and drink and learn and live and laugh.
Well.. it might or might not be there, still we talk about it , don’t we?… we talk about it, so dearly, and so lusciously.
The more we talk about it, the more it transcends, and in the end, we could no longer go back to where we started. We get lost. We get lost no matter what.

I want to recognize how it all started, simply for the sake of recognizing. Before I can falsify its shape and form and physicality, I need an empirical proof, in any case, an experiment of my own. Or your own. Or our own.

I just want you to know that love has all sorts of ephemeral qualities, whether you like it or not.
I want you to refute its many facets hidden under that well-rounded disguise.
I want you to come forward and be able to talk about it when we talk about it.
I want you to distinguish it not as a social norm or a labeling but as a thing which we talk over and over again that it becomes a social norm or a labeling.
I want you to embrace it as it is, whatever it is, or isn’t.
I want you to love nothing else but love only.

Because I love you.

And I talk about love.
What do I talk about when I talk about love?
What do we talk about when we talk about love?

It won’t matter, we get lost anyway.