twenty one

I turn on the stove and throw on some kimchi, the sizzle upon impact is familiar. I’ve had so many meals in these walls it’s getting harder to remember what it was like before. It’s a new year. A week since my new job and almost a year since moving into my apartment at Cardiff. Soon, it’ll be a year since I had to leave said apartment.

I’ve been at a loss of words, probably why I’ve written so little in the past year since coming home. Is anything worth writing about? I haven’t even been reading. Everything I’ve seemed to try to do ends up in the ‘drafts’ section. I have an endless backlog of words unsaid and memories unpublished.

Social media has me all kinds of messed up, inspired, and deflated all at once. Too many narratives going on at the same time and yet I spend so much time there, I wonder if I’m addicted to ruining myself.

Growing creatively and romanticising the small things; I think that’s how I’d like to spend my next few months. Being cynical and overly-judgemental of things that make people happy reek all over my online space. So i’d like to carve a safe sphere of enjoying things online on my own astroturf on the internet.

I don’t have much hopes for 2021 except to keep living the way I am now, and to keep keeping track of the small things. Maybe I’ll be able to write things for myself, and maybe I’ll be able to publish them this year.

It’s hard to tell if it’s day or night now. The two have become blurred, merged into one, no longer telling me the time. I guess the days just become similar, and when nothing particularly anything at all is happening, there isn’t the need to.

I surprise myself with how much I’ve been sleeping lately. That’s all I do and yet I seem to have a never-ending supply of exhaustion. If I reach into my throat and pull out what’s in me, like a magician doing a trick with colourful kerchief’s, there would be an endless stream of nothing. That seems to be the best way to describe how I’m feeling now. Sometimes, words just don’t cut it.

To pass the time and keep my mind off the world burning, I’ve been binge-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. And I think it’d be so much easier if the world was divided by just those elements Air, Earth, Fire and Water. No doubt there’d be wars just like in the series, but aren’t we having them now? What an easy way out that would be, to find peace. All we need to do is find balance between all the elements. What a precious thing to be fit into a box, of knowing your element, your tribe. This world is so frustratingly gray, with no right answers and a million perspectives. I think every child growing up dreams to be a hero, being the chosen one or at least being a main character. These days, I’ve become increasingly aware that most of us don’t have the chops for such stuff. We’re just in the background, villagers that either suffer or help the heroes along their way. And I think I’m okay with that. I’d just like to know what tribe I belong in. What medium I think, breathe and exist in.

It’d be a miracle if I could wake up and not feel like I want to collapse within myself, much less become a heroine of any story. I’d like to find comfort in knowing what power I possess or if I possess any at all. No matter the dangers Aang, Katara and Sokko find themselves in, I can’t help but think of how much easier their world seems to be. 2020 has shown itself to be a deadly, deadly year and I’m tired. Tired of waking up to news of thousands dying, of pandemics, of people having to fight for a right that should be theirs. There really isn’t any point to all of this at all, or even a point to this post. I’m just exhausted and tired of feeling like I have to fight myself and everything everyday.

But what’s going to change? I’m trying to chase down shadows and cage them, a mission as futile as trying to make myself feel better. Everyone always think theres an answer, or at least try to give me one. Do they not have their own shadows to chase? How come it seems like they’ve managed to cage theirs or have none at all. Whatever it is, maybe fighting my shadows shouldn’t be the answer. Maybe to be whole, I have to learn to live with my shadows first.

But I’d still like to say that if I have to pick one, I’d like to be in the water tribe.

무제 (無題)

tired of eyes 

of pity of sorrow of disappointment 

directed inwards or unto me a mystery 

tired of stares 

of wonder of love of hate of desperation 

mixed in one – a delightful cocktail

tired of feeling them trail like coattails 

of letting them control me of second-guessing 

how much is me with out them all 


tired of my inaction and ability to only desire 

tired of being tired of being tired of being

hiraeth

two years ago, I stumbled across the word ‘saudade’ – a deep emotional state; a yearning for a happiness that has passed, or perhaps never even existed. it resonated, but it felt like it was a puzzle piece that almost fit. Almost.

fast forward to my first week in Wales, and I’m sat in the upper level of the Waterstones cafe, hiding from the rain. Finally deciding to close my old site with all my old writings, to create a blank start again. and I struggled to title it, to acutely describe how i felt, this uneasiness that i’ve grown comfortable around, my shadow. I search for words outside the one I’m comfortable in, why not Welsh? and then i see it.

Hiraeth.

It was the missing puzzle piece, a word that described this unspeakable feeling. It literally can’t be translated but essentially it’s – “a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. ”

“a longing to be where your spirit lives.”

it can’t quite be translated into English and i love it all the more for it.

what does the word ‘home’ mean. where you grew up, where your family and community is, where you reside or is it where you find yourself? can we have more than one?

sometimes I wonder if our bodies are home to the sadness and heaviness so often felt, and that i just happened to be one of the so many that left the light on, inviting it to stay. it never leaves.

hiraeth. it’s beautiful, tragically so and my heart nearly stopped today when i saw it being sold as mere souvenirs – a gift of longing.

in what could be my unexpectedly last few days in this new place i’ve made a (temporary) home of , i can’t help but think i’ll feel hiraeth for Cardiff too. and it makes me wonder what comes next?

it’s been almost 2 months abroad now, living away from everything I call home. life just moves and moves, equally a stranger to everyone – why do little differences create such havoc when people are just all the same? If there’s anything I’ve realised, all we crave is connection and purpose.

We bleed and kill, fight and scream for entities that should come naturally. I dream of big windows, warm lights and conversations with strangers. for peace at night.

my bones rattle with uncertainty, the kind of empty you feel when you hear a sad song but not sure why. a fine line of sanity and vulnerability, i chase crows around my bedroom. their rustling of feathers a comfort, a companion.

in wales they have a saying, that poetry and music lies in their blood – what lies in mine?

a fresh start, blank canvas. I felt the need to throw away my old work, now made private because it doesn’t represent a part of me that i want anymore. Sometimes I’ll be gone for months, or I’ll be here all the time but – vulnerability and words will (hopefully) never die. A flame I’m left to keep alive in the middle of winter.

May this blank canvas be filled terribly, beautifully so.