# 37 || [ if less is more, nothing is everything. (2001) ]

It's not so much the weather anymore, because I think there's a tinge of romanticism in every season. Winter takes me two and a half years ago when I would always turn home to get the forgotten gloves on the kitchen table. Spring reminds me that the sky doesn't ever stay grey forever. Summer somehow both blurs and magnifies every emotion under its sweltering sun, and Autumn is a dream come true. It's a satisfying three-month state of longing. Dear Rain, with or without an umbrella, you can't touch me.

Though lately I do take a little fright that attaching myself to nothing and nowhere and no-one might consequence in a terrible sensation of being displaced forever, with no real sense of belonging. But with words, wings and this winter, why shouldn't I translate loneliness into liberty?    If I understood it first, if I could only tell you about a rock-bottom that I haven't ever seen, if I only knew how deep it was, if I knew all that I could do - I'd tell you everything. But all I can say is that movement is movement, and your velocity doesn't matter in the slightest.

Sometimes there is melancholy when I realise there are moments passed that I'll never be able to recreate. But life is an climbing curve and there is hope in knowing all those beautiful days are not unlike dress rehearsals for The Most Beautiful Day in your life. You'll live fast then, so walk slow now. You got it right, Fitzgerald - you can't repeat the past and it's not just Carraway who can feel within and without.

Anyway, thank-you forever lucky stars that I'm starting to think in fairytales again, I am grateful beyond words.

All my love, A. x


"I'm up in the woods,
I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still,
To slow down the time."
- Justin Vernon


post-script:
Because it's been awhile, here is a little modernised mix-tape for you. It's magic.

# 36 || そ し て 全 て が 夢 だ と 僕 を 笑 っ た ( and then everything became a dream and laughed at me )

“I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” 

- F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 

i.

It's so perfect that humidity tastes the same all over South-East Asia, because le temps always trigger nostalgique tendencies. I feel right at home here in a shiny strange city. Bangkok, you're pretty and kind -- actually, you're pretty kind. Merci beaucoup. This week the goal is to seize the lime and and the light and drop them out the window and over the ocean. I want to forget about time and the accompanying reality that clockhands don't ever stop ticking. Not even when water turns to ice and the wind is still and silent and you can't hear a single sound. 

ii.

I'm here and I'm now and I'm half-awake and half-asleep and I'm happy and I feel for and with you, when and even if nothing makes sense. Hey you, Meditation-Nation, where's your imagination? Often I feel the borders of this state of longing confine me, they design and define me. Like life and love and lessons will forever be a pursuit with an intangible endpoint. The finale is ethereal, like beauty and beliefs and joy and devotion. In this life I am going to learn the essence of everything, and then I am going to write about it when I've drunk all the lattes I could ever want and wake up in the morning with no lustish aches but lots of love. 

 3.
maybe we hold onto hope without realising its weight
following thoughts over the hills and far away
then trace them back to remember who we are
and where we came from
and just how magnificent

you & i
& now
really are

iv.

When thoughts find a voice or ink or something that makes them ten thousand times more real, things can feel a little more chancy, don't you think? Tangible terrors and solid fancies - the temptation of being able to touch what was once just an idea, there lies the potential for all the obsession and infatuation and passion that I've forever found myself prone to. How do you curb it? Contain all the fervor of life and its emotions into the palm of a hand, and then what? Save the blues for the sky and the sea and do what you will and what you want. There aren't enough seconds or spirit to squander time doing anything else.   

5. (once upon a time . . .)
somebody told me she thought she was born to be a sea creature
and i thought it was a peculiar idea, how was a personbe
born to be anything?
you're not who you're born to be, you're who you yearn to be
desire is half of it, i swear
the other half is whatever you wish

somebody told me she thought i was going to be great
and i thought, great isn't really symmetrical/synonomous with success
good is better than great
i want to be a good person
and (i hope) you're not born to be a good person
(i think) you choose to be

x