march 4, 2025

it is a blessing to be alive

i swear i am a new person even though the day has ended. i swear i am a new person even though i am turning into stone. i swear i am a new person even though they are calling me again, and i am being sucked into an abyss, but refusing this time. i swear i have destroyed my ego when it is still breathing its last breaths, and it has found some reason to come back to life, some reason to worry, some reason to play games, some reason to be tempted, to all they make of it. or all they do not make of it, all they do and do not see, i am being reminded again, of what i told myself i would not be. i’m speaking in abstractions because it is easier that way, easier to not confront, easier to not revisit, something i am trying to kill inside me. i am trying to ignore it, as if that has ever worked, and i am trying to persist in this new story, in this new way of being, in this razor sharp awareness. i was jolted today, when i spoke to a real person for the first time in eleven days. by real person i mean someone who is not disposing of me as i am disposing of them, someone who knows — apparently — who i am. i suppose i could not continue my act of disappearance in and through my day of birth, even though i did, thankfully, make it halfway through. and shockingly, it was not my family that was the problem – somehow i am at ease in my spiritual ramblings, and somewhat seen in that effortlessness. i don’t really want to get into what the ‘problem’ then is, because i know i will be sucked into it again, like i was in those hundreds of pages. i am trying to look at things from a distance these days, and it has been working pretty damn well. i mean, i enjoyed my birthday for the first time in years, and despite all odds. i loved it despite the rain, despite the cold, despite the physical pain, despite the things going wrong, despite the things being shut, despite nothing really blowing the world away in its splendour. in fact, things almost categorically went wrong, but somehow, i stood still. it was large enough a miracle that i did not wake up on this day desperate for love that i did not receive, or whatever the story was last year, or the year before that, or however many years, this wound has persisted. it was miraculous enough that i woke up feeling whole for the first time in three decades, not needing a single person to recognise my existence, or my entry into this world. but it was even more miraculous, or maybe the other end of the same string, that i had a wonderful day doing all of nothing. not all of nothing as in i lazed after exerting some mountain of effort, but all of nothing as in none of my optimising and perfect-plan-making took place, and i loved it all. i loved it even more, dare i say, because i let it guide me to places that i was meant to see, or be reminded of, at least. these days i keep thinking – the universe knows something i don’t. it is always taking me places, through detours and disasters, that represent a knowledge of me that i do not myself possess. like how i needed to be in that store in the bottom of that store in omotesando – who knew? – or in the bustle of tokyo station – WHO KNEW. the universe and i shared this little secret, a bit like the huddle i felt so proud of earlier, and it was all the pieces of me that no one else was let in on. like my love for very very tall buildings at night, or my love for the aesthetic in that store that has no name, but made me smile like a fool. the light was finding me in basements and sidewalks, and never where i searched for it. i felt like i was in a video game these days, crossing levels and passing tests and missing turns and being guided. there were so many tiny plot twists i could never explain to a single soul, like how i googled happy pancake to death and it was closed despite saying it was open and i ended up at that linen shop instead and then halfway across town where i had to have that ramen earlier than planned but better than expected and where i had to eat that entire cheesecake by myself, and use all the change i had. use all the change i had. use all the change i had. ha. i love that i can be so perfectly cheesy in these pages, and no one will ever know. this is fun, and it makes me want to continue living. that is a feat, and a secret, too.

today i blurted out it is a blessing to be alive when my dad referred to my age, and asked if it was a big deal. i almost had to caveat myself in that moment – i have not always felt this way, i have always felt the exact opposite – but i held back. i let myself admit to myself what felt true to me in that moment. i was trying to do that these days. anyway, this was a detour, ironically, and what i was trying to say earlier, but maybe should now not get into, is that my body – towards the end of the day – did feel tugged back into earlier realities. like being reminded of the chatter again – all that moved and shook in other people’s lives – how little they knew about what moved and shook in mine. it stung because i knew i was guilty of it too. of absorbing my own life as the only one that existed and forgetting just how much life existed elsewhere. i’m not sure how you measure life, but in this moment, it feels like by volume. by size, by weight, by busyness, by chaos, by intensity, by eventfulness, by change, by stillness, by matter, by flesh. not by time, by continuity, by boringness, by the humdrum rut that seemed to be so much of it. it’s cliche to say all this, and somewhat poor of me, because i don’t mean humdrum rut as in 9-5 humdrum rut. i mean anything that wasn’t whatever the fuck happened to me in eleven days. the world can change inside you, and the world will not change outside you. i have experienced this before, the disappearance of 2021 comes to mind, but i’d like to think this time is different. i’d like to think i am not so shocked by, or connected to, or dependent on, their foolish little reactions, their foolish ways of being, for they are mine, too. it is just how things are, in another sense of the word, and i must accept it as so. the world’s inability to understand me will not kill me, i swear. the world’s inability to understand any of it, any of it, any of it, will not eat me alive, i swear. i am not swearing as much as i am praying, as much as i am begging, as much as i am praying, for this to be true. i am no longer asking for the world to understand me, and that is progress. but i am hoping their lack of understanding does not kill me still. i hope it does not deflate my wings again, i hope it does not send me back into loops and down to spirals, i hope it does not erase all this progress i make away from them all. on the bright side, there is hope. because more people have thought of me today than i ever thought possible. that is how the universe works, i suppose, but i am feeling fuzzy, and loved inside it. and one friend described me like a painting, and another said she admires my love for my art, and another said i am glowing, and they simply did not have to use those words. this is not to say i need to look back at their interpretations of me at all, or dwell on the fact that the coffee shop guy i now find cute said my name was beautiful, right as we were leaving. i don’t need to read into things, or to feel good about anything the world hands to me, but i can at least use it as a doorstop, for when my despairing flings open. it is not the end of the world, and it does not mean everything has been erased, and it does not mean you will disappear again, inside a world that does not appear for you. it does not mean the end of this bliss has an end at all, because you decide, as you told your father, how the energy is bound. you maneuver energy, and you come back to that center, and you anchor to something greater, when something makes you feel less. even if that thing is a compliment or something that goes straight to your head. to dwell on anything outside of you is to ultimately, fall victim to this game again. to this game that is a game that is a game that is pretending to be reality. there is no good or bad here. there is no form but what you are aware of here. there is no ego if you do not pay it meaning. there is no ego if you act from pure love. stay tight, stay committed, stay tied, to that pact with yourself. stay committed to something greater, stay anchored in what presence demands, especially as the noise re-enters the cave. the cave is still yours, this life is still yours, this moment is still yours, and for you to make. the world is experiencing you here, even as the world that exists there, and everywhere, sees your faint shadow. you are not the shadow or light or anything at all. you are the form you are in this moment, until that evaporates. i know it is overwhelming to be reminded of the existence of continuity – of the idea that you exist longer than a moment – of the idea that your body is imprinted somewhere else and for someone else and for some purpose at all. that is terrifying, but it is part of the game. after all, there is some role that does seem to be emerging from love, and all the corners in which it exists. we’re working on that part, but there is something there. but for now, you are safe, you are new, you are seen, you are here, you have done, all that was needed to be done, which was: nothing at all.