Journals12
Newest
1. There are so many moments you know are dead even as you live them, and it aches like homesickness (at first). Just this once; please?
2. You've started referring to yourself in the second person. Because, well. It's embarrasing. There.
3. You miss the roll of sweat down your back, probably, because it was never any punishment to you. You aren't - prissy. As prissy. Lukewarm water and faulty wall-fans couldn't give you this, you knew, couldn't set you ablaze in exhilirated joy and the impulse to keep running and that spark of defiance that glitters wild in your eyes, glistens on bared teeth and wet fingertips. You don't pant at all.
4. Still, London is different. Sluggish. You discover Sherlock and keep discovering it for all the three days it takes you to finish it. Fanfiction does the rest; you're at your most lucid when you first wake up, which is saying something.
5. Maybe. You had no problem waking up on the bunk bed(s), half-past-four air chilly bare arms but unwilling to pull on your uniform, mind in perfect clarity, watching your dorm-mates (who irritate you, quite a lot. If only they'd be a bit more - spontaneous.).
6. You start off normal too, though, as normal as being English gets. English gets you off the hook, sometimes, though: you can feign semi-illiteracy, you're automatically excused from the more tedious conversation, because naturally you won't be squealing over the same barely-teen idols they are. You do squeal, a few times - test runs. Pilot. The view is as disinteresting as the rest of them.
7. You withdraw into silence. There is a lot of time to think, but you can't draw the right inspiration. Not that there aren't times you wish you could draw or write -
8. A stool, green and red, twisted to rest strung between two dust-filmed trees in the morning.
9. The ripple of a yellow fan seen through bars.
10. Hands folded around a paper plate slathered with too much cake. Almost elegant.
11. At first it was the photograph you fell in love with, a photograph you never captured even though you had your phone weighing guilty in your pocket because you just didn't have the audacity. Jaw-neck-hair-eyes. The perfect arrangement, goddamnit, the lighting and the railings and the balconies in the backdrop, white-blue-grimy, and just the right focus -
12. - Fuck. That's all it takes. Pretty things or broken things, remember, but who would have thought simplistic.
13. Oh, on another note, the canteen. There's a drink that tastes like nostalgia that your mind goes quiet when you first taste it, intent on finding a match somewhere from the depths of your memories, but you don't find it. Grandmother, but you can't be certain. (You make yourself sick on it later.)
14. Sickness made you irascible, and you won't accept concern. (It wasn't the drink, but it didn't make you feel better and you stuck to other options after that.) There is someone who buys you food, brings you food, attempts to cajole you into eating the food. It's a good person, yes. A piece of fruit per meal does it for you. Both hunger and appitite have been flipped off without warning. You ask leave in the evening, when the stools are out, supposedly to use the toilet. It's not that you haven't eaten enough to bring anything up; there's no bile to burn the back of your throat, either. Not Italy. (Maybe alcohol would have helped.)
15. Maybe you fear illness. You did last night, English time, woken a minute from one with a stomache-ache. (But I ate this time. Why? Will it be recurring, from now on?) Forced yourself to eat half a banana and all, trek to the kitchen and back made irrational with fear of (the dark)? Not that simple, but growing out of the phase of being scared of the dark was just a phase. (Can't remember what brought it back. Something. Ah. A foray into cinema. The rating was for a good reason. Fear by association. For God's sake.) The banana helped, in the end, but that end came a few hours later when you woke again and actually shivered when you curled back up. You're slipping.
16. Because you managed a fair bit better a couple of weeks ago. The cold bamboo was of no help whatsoever, and the blanket for once far too thin. The night was sleepless, and, hell, you heard your own whimper. (Can't remember when the disgust appeared.) You were brought to medical the next morning, and had more medicine than you took in the past few years altogether thrown to you. The green-packeted one you recognised, because 2011 and at least you kept quiet that time. (Drama queen.)
17. You fight against the cough for breath. The cough wins, and trails you all the way to England.
18. It takes a long time for you to accept eighteen.
19. You've never done this before. Space, oh how you could do with this, and the privacy of night, darkness. Twenty-five minutes, she said, to make the call. And if I can't make it back by then? Zai shuo. Lie into the phone: you have more money that what you fed it, and more time than the claimed nine minutes.
20. You lack the self-discipline to keep running to the point of collapse, but you do manage something that flushes your cheeks hot when you sit and bring your head between your knees. Use the hairband. The agony is wonderful, fifty-something in, or just starting to get wonderful but of course you have to roll to the side and let the breeze cool you. Run the equivalent of screaming. You can't recreate it, though you do slam your back to the floor hard enough for it to swell red down your spine and possibly/probably your left shoulderblade. You kept shifting, kept getting caught by the different stone. You want it to bruise so you can take it away.
21. It wasn't supposed to end that way. The three weeks were supposed to be a closed episode: forget, distort, never contact again. It was my fault, though, because I did forget because there was no confidentiality never any confidentiality did the knife story teach you nothing apparently not you forgot yourself and thought friend and no I don't make friends so easily and this guilt I refuse it because I did try being kinder subtler more sparing than leaving you to leave and leave the bed to me thank you very much I wanted to sleep alone anyway and I was hallucinating actually I wouldn't have kicked you out of my own accord but I'm not that sorry I could sleep an hour, two, three four five o'clock it was that I woke and sit on the balcony ledge ah there are bars on the window for a reason but they're very ineffective and here I am and oh, find me.
22. days actually, inclusive. Not a perfect three weeks if you count both Sundays, 27 and 17. Shower, jacket, plane. Loss in a wet-wipe.
2. You've started referring to yourself in the second person. Because, well. It's embarrasing. There.
3. You miss the roll of sweat down your back, probably, because it was never any punishment to you. You aren't - prissy. As prissy. Lukewarm water and faulty wall-fans couldn't give you this, you knew, couldn't set you ablaze in exhilirated joy and the impulse to keep running and that spark of defiance that glitters wild in your eyes, glistens on bared teeth and wet fingertips. You don't pant at all.
4. Still, London is different. Sluggish. You discover Sherlock and keep discovering it for all the three days it takes you to finish it. Fanfiction does the rest; you're at your most lucid when you first wake up, which is saying something.
5. Maybe. You had no problem waking up on the bunk bed(s), half-past-four air chilly bare arms but unwilling to pull on your uniform, mind in perfect clarity, watching your dorm-mates (who irritate you, quite a lot. If only they'd be a bit more - spontaneous.).
6. You start off normal too, though, as normal as being English gets. English gets you off the hook, sometimes, though: you can feign semi-illiteracy, you're automatically excused from the more tedious conversation, because naturally you won't be squealing over the same barely-teen idols they are. You do squeal, a few times - test runs. Pilot. The view is as disinteresting as the rest of them.
7. You withdraw into silence. There is a lot of time to think, but you can't draw the right inspiration. Not that there aren't times you wish you could draw or write -
8. A stool, green and red, twisted to rest strung between two dust-filmed trees in the morning.
9. The ripple of a yellow fan seen through bars.
10. Hands folded around a paper plate slathered with too much cake. Almost elegant.
11. At first it was the photograph you fell in love with, a photograph you never captured even though you had your phone weighing guilty in your pocket because you just didn't have the audacity. Jaw-neck-hair-eyes. The perfect arrangement, goddamnit, the lighting and the railings and the balconies in the backdrop, white-blue-grimy, and just the right focus -
12. - Fuck. That's all it takes. Pretty things or broken things, remember, but who would have thought simplistic.
13. Oh, on another note, the canteen. There's a drink that tastes like nostalgia that your mind goes quiet when you first taste it, intent on finding a match somewhere from the depths of your memories, but you don't find it. Grandmother, but you can't be certain. (You make yourself sick on it later.)
14. Sickness made you irascible, and you won't accept concern. (It wasn't the drink, but it didn't make you feel better and you stuck to other options after that.) There is someone who buys you food, brings you food, attempts to cajole you into eating the food. It's a good person, yes. A piece of fruit per meal does it for you. Both hunger and appitite have been flipped off without warning. You ask leave in the evening, when the stools are out, supposedly to use the toilet. It's not that you haven't eaten enough to bring anything up; there's no bile to burn the back of your throat, either. Not Italy. (Maybe alcohol would have helped.)
15. Maybe you fear illness. You did last night, English time, woken a minute from one with a stomache-ache. (But I ate this time. Why? Will it be recurring, from now on?) Forced yourself to eat half a banana and all, trek to the kitchen and back made irrational with fear of (the dark)? Not that simple, but growing out of the phase of being scared of the dark was just a phase. (Can't remember what brought it back. Something. Ah. A foray into cinema. The rating was for a good reason. Fear by association. For God's sake.) The banana helped, in the end, but that end came a few hours later when you woke again and actually shivered when you curled back up. You're slipping.
16. Because you managed a fair bit better a couple of weeks ago. The cold bamboo was of no help whatsoever, and the blanket for once far too thin. The night was sleepless, and, hell, you heard your own whimper. (Can't remember when the disgust appeared.) You were brought to medical the next morning, and had more medicine than you took in the past few years altogether thrown to you. The green-packeted one you recognised, because 2011 and at least you kept quiet that time. (Drama queen.)
17. You fight against the cough for breath. The cough wins, and trails you all the way to England.
18. It takes a long time for you to accept eighteen.
19. You've never done this before. Space, oh how you could do with this, and the privacy of night, darkness. Twenty-five minutes, she said, to make the call. And if I can't make it back by then? Zai shuo. Lie into the phone: you have more money that what you fed it, and more time than the claimed nine minutes.
20. You lack the self-discipline to keep running to the point of collapse, but you do manage something that flushes your cheeks hot when you sit and bring your head between your knees. Use the hairband. The agony is wonderful, fifty-something in, or just starting to get wonderful but of course you have to roll to the side and let the breeze cool you. Run the equivalent of screaming. You can't recreate it, though you do slam your back to the floor hard enough for it to swell red down your spine and possibly/probably your left shoulderblade. You kept shifting, kept getting caught by the different stone. You want it to bruise so you can take it away.
21. It wasn't supposed to end that way. The three weeks were supposed to be a closed episode: forget, distort, never contact again. It was my fault, though, because I did forget because there was no confidentiality never any confidentiality did the knife story teach you nothing apparently not you forgot yourself and thought friend and no I don't make friends so easily and this guilt I refuse it because I did try being kinder subtler more sparing than leaving you to leave and leave the bed to me thank you very much I wanted to sleep alone anyway and I was hallucinating actually I wouldn't have kicked you out of my own accord but I'm not that sorry I could sleep an hour, two, three four five o'clock it was that I woke and sit on the balcony ledge ah there are bars on the window for a reason but they're very ineffective and here I am and oh, find me.
22. days actually, inclusive. Not a perfect three weeks if you count both Sundays, 27 and 17. Shower, jacket, plane. Loss in a wet-wipe.
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So now I has a laptop
4 min read
It's new, and China-bought, and it won't be beautiful until it's strewn with little black-and-white pixels of myself - not stars if I've no-one to watch them with, and not romanticised coffee cups in the dark hours that have been expressed a hundred and one times over to be unholy beside whirring plastic and a screen shadowing light onto an insomniac's face - think grit instead, think tears that curl up and die like unuttered screams, think bare feet and skin that tastes bitter like watered-down milk and pollution.
(The air quality is something to be despaired here. The sun and sky have been veiled from me for a week.)
I'm less thrilled about the laptop than I would have been. Before. Which makes me think that I should un-hang myself down from the 'before', because constant comparison is miserable, and when it's to yourself by your own truly it's just suffocating. Not to mention counterproductive.
(Oh look there shift some plates, may I have some more sir oh fuck yes that's Asia because if the plates won't move then I bloody will - the time for submarines has long passed; up and away!)
This is the happiest I've been.
You - you with the eyes clear like autumn lakes in stock photos, you with the tongue straight from Tumblr that talks German so soft and pretty but doesn't say anything else besides - you were a learning curve. I do wonder if it was inevitable, the crash, the stench of rubber and upset. It depends how fatalistic you are, how much you believe in mis-truths and the sustainability of communication that operated on a one-bar signal.
I blame myself less about you now. It takes two to play marbles, I once read in a green book I don't think I ever gave back to the school, and I suppose I'm notorious for losing things.
Some people aren't things. Fifteen years it took to find one.
Maybe I'll apologise someday, because I can no longer protest that I was a lamb, I was just as gutted as you and more. I wonder what my liver would have read: flowers, probably, roses red and waxy yellow. Church bells, western dolls with crimped blond hair, mortuaries.
This is not the day. I'm not sweetheart enough to wish you well on your way.
Speaking of wishes - I made a wish for we two when I was in Italy, I've only just remembered recently. It had something to do with friendship, and lasting. The cent was at least an honest one.
(Thought about changing my hair. It seems to be customary.)
('Sometimes When We Touch' is eerily perfect for it.)
Won't let you go. I don't know if I should. I've already decided that I don't really care for socially accepted healthy or normal. I don't really think I'm either. You are both. All three, in fact. Sarcastic applause is my cue to bow out of this topic.
(Was it all a love affair?)
(Messy messy.)
--
I'm not holding up all that well.
There are also studies to get back on track; I'll have to trek a long long time to chase up that wayward train.
I don't enjoy pretence, but no-one seems willing to compromise and I'm less willing to explain. Laziness is among my worst qualities.
--
I don't
remember
--
I have no words still.
--
I didn't understand why people begged when there without direct and immediate stimulation, why they'd debase themselves to a lost cause because didn't they know of cruelty, didn't they know that their efforts were futile and they may as well stiffen their upper lips rather than flop in the gutter?
I think I understand now.
--
And the main reason the laptop thrills me not very much.
I can't help but think my father is trying to buy a daughter.
(The air quality is something to be despaired here. The sun and sky have been veiled from me for a week.)
I'm less thrilled about the laptop than I would have been. Before. Which makes me think that I should un-hang myself down from the 'before', because constant comparison is miserable, and when it's to yourself by your own truly it's just suffocating. Not to mention counterproductive.
(Oh look there shift some plates, may I have some more sir oh fuck yes that's Asia because if the plates won't move then I bloody will - the time for submarines has long passed; up and away!)
This is the happiest I've been.
You - you with the eyes clear like autumn lakes in stock photos, you with the tongue straight from Tumblr that talks German so soft and pretty but doesn't say anything else besides - you were a learning curve. I do wonder if it was inevitable, the crash, the stench of rubber and upset. It depends how fatalistic you are, how much you believe in mis-truths and the sustainability of communication that operated on a one-bar signal.
I blame myself less about you now. It takes two to play marbles, I once read in a green book I don't think I ever gave back to the school, and I suppose I'm notorious for losing things.
Some people aren't things. Fifteen years it took to find one.
Maybe I'll apologise someday, because I can no longer protest that I was a lamb, I was just as gutted as you and more. I wonder what my liver would have read: flowers, probably, roses red and waxy yellow. Church bells, western dolls with crimped blond hair, mortuaries.
This is not the day. I'm not sweetheart enough to wish you well on your way.
Speaking of wishes - I made a wish for we two when I was in Italy, I've only just remembered recently. It had something to do with friendship, and lasting. The cent was at least an honest one.
(Thought about changing my hair. It seems to be customary.)
('Sometimes When We Touch' is eerily perfect for it.)
Won't let you go. I don't know if I should. I've already decided that I don't really care for socially accepted healthy or normal. I don't really think I'm either. You are both. All three, in fact. Sarcastic applause is my cue to bow out of this topic.
(Was it all a love affair?)
(Messy messy.)
--
I'm not holding up all that well.
There are also studies to get back on track; I'll have to trek a long long time to chase up that wayward train.
I don't enjoy pretence, but no-one seems willing to compromise and I'm less willing to explain. Laziness is among my worst qualities.
--
I don't
remember
--
I have no words still.
--
I didn't understand why people begged when there without direct and immediate stimulation, why they'd debase themselves to a lost cause because didn't they know of cruelty, didn't they know that their efforts were futile and they may as well stiffen their upper lips rather than flop in the gutter?
I think I understand now.
--
And the main reason the laptop thrills me not very much.
I can't help but think my father is trying to buy a daughter.
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There are fifteen years that I regret (with a measure of injustice and another of melodrama and effect); I do however feel that I'm a snapped thread away from adding at least twelve to the tally.
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Happiness
5 min read
Only lasts so long (but it's wonderful oh yes, and happily possible).
It's not such a bad thing, is it. Quite a few things aren't, it's only that I
把我所有的功夫和心思放在这些无关重要的事情上 -
which is to say, I am my very own drama queen and
(well screw that)(well why not)
.
--
To what extent am I and ought I be 'myself'? I am the people around me, with a less shame, now; I'm not sure whether self-awareness was very constructive in that respect.
I can't really conceive of anything else I could be, and I don't really see the thrill of hunting your very own self (and no-one else, mark that) down and possessing them, as is so enthusiastically advertised. I'm not sure what to think of it but I sure as heck am not keen on the idea.
If I'm already myself - which I'm beginning to suspect, sometimes - then, well. How miserable. Will I really have to live down that particular reconciliation.
Ah. I just tried dividing myself up into parts; it seems that wooden tables and sinks by the wall and a window looking over nowhere just isn't my cup of powdered starch.
(What does it even matter?)
(The only thing I fear is continuity, anyway.)
(And other things.)
(Still such a liar)
(Just not good enough to convince yourself, or not bothered enough)
(which is the same thing, my dear.)
--
Because I can, darling.
Yes there is a Power Complex involved here and rabid loathing and plenty of other crumpets to be sure, but what tense am I talking in?
--
Once upon a time there was a girl who liked to read the children's books in Lidl, and made vests from the clear plastic bags. She caught the air with these, too, crinkled silver and lined with lights from the ceiling, and though she learned soon enough that she'd never be able to make them fly, that wasn't for lack of trying.
More often, though, she stamped on them.
Or battered them against racks of ham or raincoats or ripped the thin, flimsy material open with the flat of her hand and pretended the air burst out in screams but mostly (probably) thought nothing of it at all because she had biscuits in pretty tins to worry about and no, she won't ask for anything and she's going to regret that later or at least she would
if she ever left Lidl.
She didn't think she was anything, really, but apparently she was in fact substantial enough to leave behind. Where the ceiling lights were pink now, were they?
Glad you're (almost) past that.
--
Oh but you must be brave now, my dear: it might be an idol you want and an idol you certainly have (were the curtains not to your liking, love? Why did you come out? Was it because you couldn't wait even until the count of thirty, ready or not here I come and a Merry Christmas to you?). Will you worship it?
I can't help that, m'dear. I wasn't made for all this fuss. Algebra used to be so much fun.
--
You're going to forget what the fuck these references even mean as soon as you hit the page break.
What, are you looking to me to give you advice? I am you, in case you forget yourself and start believing that I didn't actually both know you best and not know who the hell you are (and what endears you for me to want to, exactly?).
I wonder if I now write purely to confound myself. Probably. Irony is a great thing.
--
But thank-you.
I'm not really thanking anyone or anything or even all that thankful, per se, not when there's no object to be thankful towards.
Still, it's the best way I can find to express happiness.
(For how much longer? I can't help it; will I be able to help it? I do try, it's just that I don't know how.)
--
I thought I'd drown you in a scalding flush of pot noodles if I were able, and the only thing saving you was that you are not my words.
Wrong is such a relief to be.
I still have no words for you, though.
(Make your excuses, play along.)
--
The parent-daughter relationship has pitched entirely off the cliff, if it hadn't officially in March with a call of 101 on a phone that belonged to - ah.
Self-control corresponds to how much (little) I care. Feeble warnings have proved sound once, but I've reason to believe that this situation is a teensy bit different.
Either way, don't just pretend that was a blip in the time-space continuum and soldier whistling on.
--
Words are falling flat again. The workshop has dulled me into boredom and numbness, again. I'm glad not to have to stand three consecutive days of it: it's a little early yet to be dragged down with the nattering twenty-one I'd throttle.
--
This journal entry is far too long.
It's not yet past midnight. That's something new. So many new things.
--
I don't know I don't know I don't understand. It isn't your language I speak, nor any language because I'm too accustomed to not speaking at all.
My playthings: did I whisper or not?
It's not such a bad thing, is it. Quite a few things aren't, it's only that I
把我所有的功夫和心思放在这些无关重要的事情上 -
which is to say, I am my very own drama queen and
(well screw that)(well why not)
.
--
To what extent am I and ought I be 'myself'? I am the people around me, with a less shame, now; I'm not sure whether self-awareness was very constructive in that respect.
I can't really conceive of anything else I could be, and I don't really see the thrill of hunting your very own self (and no-one else, mark that) down and possessing them, as is so enthusiastically advertised. I'm not sure what to think of it but I sure as heck am not keen on the idea.
If I'm already myself - which I'm beginning to suspect, sometimes - then, well. How miserable. Will I really have to live down that particular reconciliation.
Ah. I just tried dividing myself up into parts; it seems that wooden tables and sinks by the wall and a window looking over nowhere just isn't my cup of powdered starch.
(What does it even matter?)
(The only thing I fear is continuity, anyway.)
(And other things.)
(Still such a liar)
(Just not good enough to convince yourself, or not bothered enough)
(which is the same thing, my dear.)
--
Because I can, darling.
Yes there is a Power Complex involved here and rabid loathing and plenty of other crumpets to be sure, but what tense am I talking in?
--
Once upon a time there was a girl who liked to read the children's books in Lidl, and made vests from the clear plastic bags. She caught the air with these, too, crinkled silver and lined with lights from the ceiling, and though she learned soon enough that she'd never be able to make them fly, that wasn't for lack of trying.
More often, though, she stamped on them.
Or battered them against racks of ham or raincoats or ripped the thin, flimsy material open with the flat of her hand and pretended the air burst out in screams but mostly (probably) thought nothing of it at all because she had biscuits in pretty tins to worry about and no, she won't ask for anything and she's going to regret that later or at least she would
if she ever left Lidl.
She didn't think she was anything, really, but apparently she was in fact substantial enough to leave behind. Where the ceiling lights were pink now, were they?
Glad you're (almost) past that.
--
Oh but you must be brave now, my dear: it might be an idol you want and an idol you certainly have (were the curtains not to your liking, love? Why did you come out? Was it because you couldn't wait even until the count of thirty, ready or not here I come and a Merry Christmas to you?). Will you worship it?
I can't help that, m'dear. I wasn't made for all this fuss. Algebra used to be so much fun.
--
You're going to forget what the fuck these references even mean as soon as you hit the page break.
What, are you looking to me to give you advice? I am you, in case you forget yourself and start believing that I didn't actually both know you best and not know who the hell you are (and what endears you for me to want to, exactly?).
I wonder if I now write purely to confound myself. Probably. Irony is a great thing.
--
But thank-you.
I'm not really thanking anyone or anything or even all that thankful, per se, not when there's no object to be thankful towards.
Still, it's the best way I can find to express happiness.
(For how much longer? I can't help it; will I be able to help it? I do try, it's just that I don't know how.)
--
I thought I'd drown you in a scalding flush of pot noodles if I were able, and the only thing saving you was that you are not my words.
Wrong is such a relief to be.
I still have no words for you, though.
(Make your excuses, play along.)
--
The parent-daughter relationship has pitched entirely off the cliff, if it hadn't officially in March with a call of 101 on a phone that belonged to - ah.
Self-control corresponds to how much (little) I care. Feeble warnings have proved sound once, but I've reason to believe that this situation is a teensy bit different.
Either way, don't just pretend that was a blip in the time-space continuum and soldier whistling on.
--
Words are falling flat again. The workshop has dulled me into boredom and numbness, again. I'm glad not to have to stand three consecutive days of it: it's a little early yet to be dragged down with the nattering twenty-one I'd throttle.
--
This journal entry is far too long.
It's not yet past midnight. That's something new. So many new things.
--
I don't know I don't know I don't understand. It isn't your language I speak, nor any language because I'm too accustomed to not speaking at all.
My playthings: did I whisper or not?
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Devious Journal Entry
1 min read
I'm hitting new levels of homocidal
Matches are dangerous but premeditated murder is just fatal.
To think that I'll probably never kill anyone, though.
Matches are dangerous but premeditated murder is just fatal.
To think that I'll probably never kill anyone, though.
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