12 August 2023
Dear —,
A lot of things are happening in this place, even though one might not ascribe these happenings as events, perhaps only as mere instances. Nonetheless, I am drawn to what happens in the moment of this instant. Most days I have no care for history, be it that of the body or the capital H of history. There were a lot of things that I used to care about, but sitting on this river one afternoon last year amidst a depressive episode, I realized how ironic it was to want to save the world without even knowing how to hold my own fort. “Sometimes you need to forget to survive,” a friend once advised me in the wake of Chad Booc’s demise. What you see now isn’t indifference; it’s a survival tactic.
***
17 August 2023
Dear —,
Houses house memories, to invoke Gaston Bachelard. There are rooms within myself that I intend to knock on and rediscover. And, to quote Rainer Maria Rilke, “Have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language.”
I hope, in one way of another, my corrugated language touches upon you.
***
18 August 2023
Dear —,
If, as Ludwig Wittgenstein said, the end of my language is the end of my world, in what ways could I possibly teach this body a new vocabulary? It has been closed off from the light for so long, as if an apparition, as if a ghostly archive.
Consider, the dearth of language and the loudness of gestures; I am learning even while I am not uttering myself into this language; I am attenuated, even while mute. I sometimes wonder if the disparate ways that my body quivers in intimate encounters would color this barren language from its otherwise gloomy color.
Within me are rooms I’ve long locked out of shame. I’m now trying to knock on some of them, hoping to reconnect with parts of myself that I’ve disconnected from. It takes a toll walking from room to room, only to be disappointed by the wordlessness of its world inside. Does a barren mouth make a barren house?
***
19 August 2023
Dear —,
What does the body know outside of wanting? I’ve traversed rooms in my house recently and found no answer. Yesterday I knocked on a room I’ve long shut and I was met with unrelenting violence. I am queasy with how I’ve gotten used to the shrieks, mistaking them for the silent stares of the walls. Our walls bear witness to the tragedies in these rooms but we cannot ask them to testify nor affirm the onslaught for us; all they can do is stare back.
I am trying to understand how the body fits in this story. For now it slinks back to the cracks and cowers until the noise echoes away.
Today I am trying to be present in someone else’s home without backing down to the corner.
The room that I’m currently in is bright. It is filled with joyous, rapturous laughter. I find myself trapped in my own house despite being in these people’s company. It is never gray here no matter how humid the wind is. Even if a storm passes by, everyone easily bounces back. All there is, at least, is light. I’d like to feel like I belong here. I laugh alongside them but deep inside I feel hollow. Nonetheless, it is wonderful here. If only I could leave this body, I would have already moved out and live here. I am sick of the walls in my home. I want to take them down and demolish the house altogether. I want to build in its stead something new.
Albeit a scream to the void, I appreciate these letters. It helps me feel less lonely. I hope you’re doing good wherever you’re walking.
Bon pour brûler 