Revision as of 22:51, 17 September 2019

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 the Chinese characters and then, using the same squarish strokes, the English letters — "Clothes", "Books". He declared their worth 1,500 US Dollars.

Inside the box I found, besides the books and shirts, two National Geographic hiking maps of Banff North and Banff South 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 more than ten times higher than the material cost.

I ordered one of the books, Letters to a Young Poet, from Amazon the day after my architecture advisor told me to read it. I was still in college then. "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 about 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, 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 down the unsaid words, they would weigh in my limbs and my chest; and I would collapse, or burst into a pool of flames.

Things became true when I wrote. I used to write under a lamp where I watched the ink absorbed by the paper with every twist and turns of my strokes (if I was writing Chinese) and my cursive (if I was practicing English or French). I would get used to a pen and a notebook and feel odd when switching to something new. 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. What I wrote felt too close and too private. Writing was, indeed, a private affair. Even when I eventually found ways to share I would only share them as enigmatic poetry, aloof witness or sarcasm.

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

I start to make images

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

--

"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

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.

personal 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. I am turning personal memories into images... And I want these images to make sense to others. I want others to understand, through these images, something about me, something about themselves.

Do narrative and memory come together in the form memoir? How to evoke the senses from memory? Not necessarily with my own memory... unless I turn my own memories into a story, with the context, the objective of the character, the setup.

Or, if I want to evoke feeling, should I construct a story around it?

Jujube/thesis-drafts: Difference between revisions