Blog Post Title Two
I am naked in an instrumental of Bon Iver’s Holocene.
I am typing in a font that doesn't quite belong to me.
I get curious about what you’re up to…future me. Swinging through two realities,
I get to meet two versions of me;
where I was and where I choose to live today.
I’m stumbling through events and milestones I've never heard of. I crouch down to read the numbers scripted on the small rock. XIV. Then I throw it… lightly, though. How do I know this mileage is true?
The typefaces I hate working in the most are the most boring and the most exciting. I like to live somewhere in between, where interesting lives and worth-observing enters more freely. Al Tarikh is fun to write english characters in, however its hard to find where the spaces end and where they begin.
I think about the moments that have meant to me the most, moments of external clarity and sneaky joy rises up and even drags a soft smile across my face. I feel personally important when I do this, when I confine myself to a small room and small room of time—podcasting on a gray rug in a childhood bedroom, writing in the driver’s seat of a parent’s vehicle, on film sets where only the plot exists, listening 4-5 minute songs that soaks the crevices of my brain for two hours straight and then on and off several days after that (I still won’t know the lyrics after this).
Confinement breeds a space for all of me to show up, each page of me must show up and confront its predecessor and successor, and I like that. In the scene of spring I am confined to the season of becoming. Forgetting who I was before and remembering what I’ve come to. Freedom used to be a place I would read about in newspapers, dream of, and received postcards from. On summer days, I would photograph the peaks of her skyline from the washed windows of my favorite pho shop. Across the waves, I put in my application for a summer away there and I was denied.Until I walked, then ran, then stumbled my way out of there.
I wouldn’t know this until I reached the gothic city gates, where the big guards bent down slightly to matter-of-factly share my predicament, but I had to walk on water to reach the new city. Only Paul’s letter kept me certain that there was a path work pursuing. I mean, it’s unlikely that he would have died in these very dark waters and sent a letter from the guts of a voracious whale or shark. Maybe he got choked by an eel or better yet bugged to death by an octopus.
But I walked on water to be where I’ve flipped the script, to live in a new zip code, to collect praise for my native tongue. It feels familiar again to hear the words well done when I finally landed on solid ground again. I would be dishonest to ignore the receipts of when I visited my old home, I still go from time to time. Kind of because I miss the pho, but most ardently because I miss seeing something I never had and fighting for it again…running towards something worthwhile. I'm finding the thrill in littler things now though, like the painting at the end of the hallway, exorbitant estimations on how many pieces of bark I could peel off of a tree, perfecting how well I can stabilize my ankles when releasing the lever of a medical bin, you know—simple things like that. Winter always has this effect on me though and soon it will be spring where I will find my footing in a new assignment, one worth chasing after.
Spring is like when time no longer exists because its between times, it never ends at the dot-zero-zero or the dot-thirty or even the dot-fifteens. No, she exists between the awkward and odd 12:22:01 and 12:37:18. Something weird like that, but I like it because I respect something strange if it's becoming, if something real will pierce through the barrier or darkness and materialize to our very eyes some exiting concept like ‘leaf’ or ‘flower’ or ‘frog’.
I’m thinking of the song you wrote me last week about your dad, it reminded me a lot of how I feel about my mom, I read it aloud for my sister and she didn’t get it…it’s okay, she’s only twenty two. We’ll circle that conversation during our next conversation under the moon. anyways, our time has not come to an end, spring is coming.
ardently,
ashley
p.s.,
do you ever think of traveling? somewhere far??
xx,
Spring into Summer - Lizzie McAlpine
Holocene - Bon Iver