Friday, January 8, 2010

When living isn't livable, it's not tellable.

một entry cũ, post ở đây vì không có gì để mới để nói. bây giờ đọc lại thấy nó rất lạ mà cũng rất quen. thật khổ cái thời non trẻ.

I close my eyes and I'm thinking, I'm going to prove myself a great fool again. I need to see the face! I am always disappointed by the face.

I need to look at some books.

I need quiet. If only today was just a wandering day. If today was just wandering. I would wander through today.

Dad said my mother is sad. My brother is sad. I am sad. So much sadness. I want, wonder, if one could die in it and be done with it. Can one will onself to die? Almost transparent. This existence is too much nothing. If anyone is looking at me, I wonder if they would see a great empty silence in my eyes. No. Because the great emtpy silence is staring back at me. Can one leave without being noticed? Can one live without being noticed? This diary is for myself. I suppose I should write everything. But then, the most important things are not tellable. Because when living isn't livable, it isn't tellable.

Let us begin with what I miss. I miss his body. How I could nestle into it, but I am also very tired of being weary and doubtful of it. No, I am not doubtful of his body. It is him. I am doubtful of him. But then again it's not really his body I miss. I just need a safe body to rest with. So I miss the resting, and the safe space. My own. My own safe space, no one else's. Even pretend, that's okay too. Even when I have to pretend that it's mine at the moment. Everything is a replay., nothing new.

It's almost Wednesday. What is the significance of Wednesday? I guess it's because Wednesday is the middle of the week. I like to be in the middle of things. I am reading Paul Celan's biography. It does not have a very interesting start. I fault the biographer. I'm sure Celan as a person is much more loveable and alive than historical dates and haphazard interpretations of his poems.

Speaking of poems. It seems to me that beginning poets, young poets, it seems to me that they like to write about love. If they don't write about love, they will die. I write, write just to write. I write, I think, because of pleasure that lies in a harmonious coherence (because pleasure can also be discordant). Because of the greedy, ever-promising pleasure of holding and not having to put out. I didn't need the climax, the revolution, or even that prelove that is so much happier than love itself. Lack of attitude is my attitude. I eat and drink and sleep flaccid. My habit of thinking only when it is necessary. I could, with much less than my whole self, work with anything. To do what I could do, I had never needed either suffering or joy. I can do with just the surfaces of skin. Yours and mine.

And among women and men, what was I? Where was I? When the negative of our picture was printed, I showed up as an ectoplasmic presence. Is photography the portrait of a convavity, of a lack, of an absence? One of the strongest ways of being is to be negatively. Since I don't know what I was, nonbeing was my closest approximation to truth.

Give me your anonymous hand. Life is giving me pain and I don't know how to go on talking. Reality is too delicate. My reality is.

Always a half-thought. A half-book. Half-read.

2 comments:

  1. QT,
    It's not or similar to my experience, but for some reason, reading this makes me feel familiar. As if I'm seeing something I knew, but I can't remember or look straight into it now - nonetheless I feel a distant connection to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Lila Thanh,
    that makes me very happy. :) Thank you.

    ReplyDelete