Jujube/thesis-drafts

why I write

1.

My mom finally mailed me a box of stuff, which she picked out from what I had mailed her from the US the year before. She said she couldn't include the knives. Apparently the government had banned the mailing of sharp objects. My immersion blender didn't make it, either.

My mom sent the box from China. I knew she packed it because I found two plastic bags with the Chinese label "Bei Yi Department Store." She worked there for more than twenty years before retiring at the age of fifty. I recognized my dad's handwriting on the mailing label. In the field for "detailed description of contents," he wrote — in Chinese characters and then, using the same squarish strokes, English letters — "Clothes", "Books". He declared their worth: 1500 US Dollars.

Inside the box I found, besides the books and shirts, two National Geographic hiking maps and a grocery bag I got on the beach of Oaxaca.

I suppose my dad understood the value of these things to me by putting down a number ten times higher than their material cost.

One of the books was Letters to a Young Poet. I ordered it from Amazon the day my college architecture advisor told me to read it. "My dad wanted me to be a lawyer," he said, "as an English major, I thought architecture would be the middle ground." We were having a conversation about future — probably my future. I remember him saying: the present things are clear while the past trickles away.

Trickles, tinkles, twinkles, he must have said one of those words. I remember him pressing his fingers together and making a gesture towards something far. I remember agreeing with the revelation. I remember those who instilled this sort of quiet provocation in that young mind of mine.

My first ever summer fling used one of Rilke's quotes as his email signature. "Everything is gestation towards birth," I remember reading it and not quite knowing why he had chose that line. Finding it again when I read the book was like visiting a feeling I had forgotten. But of course, the most important quote to me was something else.

words from Rilke

I wrote — had been writing — because I depended on it.

If I didn't write, the unsaid words would weigh in my limbs and my chest; I would collapse and burst into a pool of flames.

Things became true when I wrote. The tip of the pen touched the paper, casting thoughts into form. I used to write under a lamp, watching the ink absorbed by the paper with every twist and turns of my cursive. I often got used to a pen and felt odd when switching to a new one. They were too thick, too smooth, too shiny, too fine.

I wrote, but for the longest time I couldn't say I was a writer. Writing was then a private affair. When I eventually found ways to share I would only share a small portion of what I wrote, which from the outside resembled riddles, poetry, report and sarcasm.

There was a distance between me and me, and therefore, there was a distance between me and the world.

images

The first time I saw a dandelion I was twenty years old.

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"Being here is a demarcation of time," I wrote that in September, 2018.

I wanted to make a speech about the physical and internal turmoil, some of which I endured and some of which I inflicted on myself. But I didn't. Instead I showed some works from the past. The first website I made, the last website I made. A series of photos. A snapshot of a play script.

key texts

feelings

• Jujube/synopsis#United_by_Feelings
• Jujube/synopsis#Feelings.2C_Emotion.2C_Affect
• Jujube/synopsis#David_S._Miall:_Emotions_and_the_Structuring_of_Narrative_Responses

I want to evoke feelings. I believe it is shared human nature and thus a way to foster empathy. Empathy comes from compassion (understanding and love) for the self.

I can now say this, with certainty and humility, that I want to surround myself with understanding and thus create a world where people understand each other. If you see me in you, and if I see you in me, perhaps the world will suffer less.

A few people whose judgement I trust have told me, "nobody can ever understand you in totality," which I have come to agree. In trying to be understood, I finally become able to understand myself. And that's where I connect self-compassion and empathy.

causality, narrative, dramatic logic

• Jujube/synopsis#Stephen_Kern:_A_Cultural_History_of_Causality_.7C_Chapter_5:_Emotion

Causality is important in determining narrative. Different time periods (cultures) tend to favor different causality. (Perpetuations of the unhealty, unresolved kind seem irresponsible.)

• Jujube/synopsis#David_Mamet:_On_Directing_Film

Narrative, in the dramatic sense, follows dramaturgy.

memories (and the conflict with narrative)

• Jujube/synopsis#Siegfried_Kracauer:_Memory_Images.2C_1927
• Jujube/abstracts-non-text#Play:_salt <--a one-woman play instead of text

Memories are images strung together. Words construct images — words come to me via memories.

A few people told me that my writing touches or bring to mind images.

That's how poetry works, I suppose.

I want others to understand, through these images, something about me, something about themselves.

the making of images without language

• Jujube/synopsis#The_Cinematic_.28DoCA.29
• Jujube/synopsis#Film:_A_Very_Short_Introduction

"A film is a story or a proposition... that is shaped, angled, finite, intended, whether it is a documentary, an art installation, a bit of gritty realism, or a full-blown fantasy... A film-maker is a person who makes such things."

I encountered the camera not through intention, but chance.

If you ask, "why the camera," I would say:

I took a chance. I connected the dots from my past. I was curious.

And I have been privileged to stay with it, hold it, test it. I have become decisive and considerate with its help — I am an ally, and more importantly, a student.

"And why film?"

I discovered time through film. I unearthed my intention about image-making. In writing and in making films I am drawing a very, very large circle, some sort of infinity that help me understand my being in this world.

I ask more concrete questions through the things I make:

Do narrative and personal memory ever come together, or must one become fictionalized? If I want to evoke feeling, should I construct a story around it?

a collection of little books