I've packed my schedule with work because I didn't want to be burdened by the feeling of having so much time on my hands at the end of the year. We are supposed to rest and have peace, but what have I done all year to take a break from? It's almost like nothing happened. Yes, I have challenged myself to do some things. I've started writing more frequently, and in the summer while traveling alone, I wrote a few short stories, which I never thought I would. Somehow I just ended up writing them because the reality was too funny not to record. It inspired me, the reality—and I think that's something that hadn't happened for a long time. But in terms of people, I haven't expanded any of my relationships. Instead, I shut down quite a few of them out of sheer sadness that I cannot come through. No amount of words could help me make myself understood. However much I study every day, however much I read books and memorize the words, it never helps me say the things I...
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I heard today at work that one of the boys who works with me stole clementines. I mean, he didn't steal them, but he ate five of the clementines that were given as a souvenir from one of our clients. And allegedly, it wasn't even during a break—he just went for it while working, because he liked clementines. And when he was reaching for the fifth clementine, his boss caught him and asked, "Isn't that your second one?" He couldn't dare tell him, "No, sir. It was my fifth." So he went along with the story, just confessed to one of his peers. But when the boss came back and inquired him further about the clementines, he felt a twinge of conscience. "Actually, it was my fifth one," he confessed. What an honest man. If it were a fairy tale, he's the kind of man who would receive both the golden and the silver clementines. "The clementines must have felt very happy," I told him. laughing. Honestly, that's how I felt. If I were ...
After I took the test, I took a short trip to the suburb. I met my friend in the bookstore at the station and immediately headed towards the food court that I had visited before. I remember sitting inside a Thai food restaurant alone, eating Khao Man Gai, and typing out a story that I had started to write. It was about a woman in middle age on the verge of having a secret affair—a cliché for sure, but somehow it inspired me enough to keep typing into my computer. Around that time, I was reading Miranda July's latest novel, All Fours , and felt rather revolted. No, no, it shouldn't be like that. As if I knew the proper way to age, but in a way I felt like I did. As long as I have a typewriter, no one would question why I am eating alone. It works as armor. So do words. I try to learn words not because I believe I'm a literary genius, but because I am anything but that. The lack of words for what I feel every day is what keeps me going. I'm learning words just to give a ...
I studied for two more hours today, sitting in a cafe, drinking clam chowder with a sandwich that tasted like airplane food—meaning pretty good. A man and a young girl were sitting right next to me, and I couldn't help overhearing their conversation. He was bragging about his high scores on standardized tests. "It's not that difficult," he said. "You just have to know how to study. Don't think too much about the whys. Like, don't ask yourself why you're using an equation—just remember that you need to use it to solve the problem. That's where you start." The girl listened and nodded, and I could feel her admiration for him. If I'd been sitting in her place, I would have told him to shut the fuck up. Don't ask why, just solve the problem. Like a machine. Program yourself not to ask questions, do what you're told, become a useful cog in society's machinery. Right? I couldn't focus on studying—first, because I don't giv...
I’ve spent a few hours studying for the test I’m taking the day after tomorrow. And what do I feel? Anger. “This is bullshit,” I tell myself. Nobody even cares what languages are for anymore. Right or left, it doesn’t matter; it’s win or lose, nothing in between. You either understand it or you don’t. No space for imagination. I try to read the intention of the test maker while taking it and wonder how mediocre he must be to spend his life creating something like this. He’s using language to determine who’s superior mechanically, like separating chicks by sex. No, no, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Language was supposed to build a bridge. A bridge between you and me. Not to separate us. Without it, we would never be able to understand each other, and so we invented the word “Hello.” Like anything else, language is a tool. It isn’t proof of intelligence. Just because you know the definition of a word, it doesn’t mean you’re intelligent. In fact, maybe we need word...
Something is starting to move. I don't know what, but it is. It took years for me to know what I want in my life. Is this it? I flip the page and close the book. How about this? Another page, and then I close the book again. What do I want to do? I want to begin. In the beginning, there was the end. Do you know what I mean? If I'm going to start, I need to know where it ends. And I'm in search of a story that doesn't end with death. But every story ends with death, right? True, and yet there is always an exception to the rule. What I'm looking for is a miracle. The one that cannot be imagined. The one that is real and exists without violence or madness. I don't mind the story being mediocre, as long as it's mine and true. I need to live it, feel it, walk through it step by step, and most of all, love it. My life is not a performance. It doesn't need to be recorded by a camera. My value doesn't depend on the whole world watching. Then why record i...
A story ended, at least that’s what I feel. Last night, I made my dinner for a change. Perhaps it’s about time I listened o my body and did a little more to take care of myself, for the sake of life. I took a break from the errands, sat on my bed, and read Clarice Lispector again, wondering how I felt this time around. It’s strange, but since I’ve read it to myself over and over again, I feel like her words are already inside my body. And whenever I reread it, the words in the book interact with the cells in my body. "How do I see it this time?" They swirl around in my stomach, finding a place to land. Do I adore her? Yes. Respect her? Absolutely. Do I feel compassion? More than I could imagine. But do I feel a slight difference from what I felt the last time I read it? Sure I do. I used to feel that I could never write like her; that her book was all that needed to be read; that her work was the answer to all the questions I had in my mind at that time. And it helped me en...