Goes without saying!
As a rule, I am more reliable than I am close to you.
A warm tug at the heart to all of you!
I am sorry for taking so long to write, but lately, my heart’s not really into anything, and I don’t know how far back lately goes.
Still, I hope you are reminded of all the small goodnesses of life by someone kind around you, and at the end when death disembowels your life, small organs of joy and silly memories must be found to corroborate that whatever lived inside you all this while was not always ugly or painful.
As for me, I am afraid that the great impending shame has finally found its way into my writing, which essentially means that I fail to write freely anymore. For the longest time, writing was a way of not really looking into the mirror, which I haven’t done for years since I do not like my face, but now the world is a mirror, and all those who read me only demand one thing; look at yourself.
I’ve looked away for so long, I no longer know how to look at myself.
I do not know the wellspring of the hurt, and I do not know what feeds it. It is so colorless and tasteless. The anonymity of it is somewhat comforting and yet very scary, which further nudges me to give this feeling a name, but when you give something a name, you can always call it by the name, it allows you to be examined.
I do not know if I am living to become a better person or if I am trying to become a better person so I can live.
Guilt is a leech that feeds on your loneliness.
If I look at a family or friends photograph, I look at myself in isolation, and I am at best - just there, I am just there. It is never that I was a part of something, or a memory happily shared collectively, but always - Oh, I was just there. I don’t know if it is my inability to see myself in a valuable light or if God’s really made me the most decorated placeholder of all time.
“The truth is we can survive our lives, but not our skin. But you know this already.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
There is no coherency in what I write anymore. Even my poems are never well-thought-out well-structured or well-crafted. I am just trying to make something work. There are such special poets who are so much more attentive, committed, and hardworking, they are so much clearer in what they want to say and how they want to say it, and hence I’ve realized that I don’t deserve to get published. Though, I still don’t know what to do. Knowing that you’re the best at loving something kills you. Then, sometimes I think I don’t want to be the best. I can only do what I can on a given day at a given moment.
The idea of falling in love still does fascinate me, or kissing someone, or someone having a secret crush on me, or being a good friend to my friends, or smiling at strangers. Though I believe that I am incapable of being seen romantically, my friend is trying hard to convince me otherwise. She is right. Life does not end at one or the other thought we have around ourselves.
Hope is the distance we travel from the beginning to the end of life.
Since the beginning of the year, there are five things that I have learned:
Having a house of your own or familial support is the greatest privilege.
In the light of losses, a passive pain always remains. You never completely deal with a loss. You deal with it every day.
We underestimate the importance of laughter and people who make us laugh. Your mouth remembers the memory of laughter. So do your cheeks, your eyes, and your nose.
Beyond a point, you stop trying to become the most important or closest person in anyone's life. You want to be reliable. It is often more gratifying.
The greatest gift and tragedy of anything is that it could end. I am never not aware of it. Love gleefully and let go gracefully.
I did not mean to make you sad on a Sunday afternoon. I am sorry if I did. There were no other ways of doing this.
Some poems for you:
In the city by CHEN CHEN
for Monica Sok
These bridges are a feat of engineering. These pork & chive dumplings
we bought together, before hopping on a train
& crossing bridges, are a feat of engineering. Talking to you, crossing bridges
in trains, eating pork & chive dumplings in your bright boxcar
of a kitchen in Brooklyn, is an engineer’s dream-feat
of astonishment. Tonight I cannot believe
the skyline because the skyline believes in me, forgives me my drooling
astonishment over it & over the fact that this happens,
this night, every night, its belief, glittering mad & megawatt like the dreams
of parents. By the way, is this soy sauce
reduced sodium? Do you know? Do we care? High, unabashed sodium intake!
Unabashed exclamation points! New York is an exclamation
I take, making my escape, away from the quiet snowy commas of Upstate
& the mess of questions marking my Bostonian past.
In New York we read Darwish, we write broken sonnets finally forgiving
the Broken English of Our Mothers, we eat
pork & chive dumplings, & I know, it’s such a 90s fantasy
of multiculturalism that I am
rehashing, but still, in New York I feel I can tell you how my mother & I
used to make dumplings together, like a scene
out of The Joy Luck Club. The small kitchen, the small bowl of water
between us. How we dipped index finger, thumb.
Sealed each dumpling like tucking in a secret, goodnight.
The meat of a memory. A feat of engineering.
A dream of mother & son. Interrupted by the father, my father
who made my mother get on a plane, a theory,
years of nowhere across American No’s, a degree that proved useless.
Proved he was the father. I try to build a bridge
to my parents but only reach my mother & it’s a bridge she’s about to
jump off of. I run to her, she jumps, she’s
swimming, saying, Finally I’ve learned—all this time, trying to get from one useless
chunk of land to another, when I should’ve stayed
in the water. & we’re drinking tap water in your bright Brooklyn kitchen.
I don’t know what to tell you. I thought I could
tell this story, give it a way out of itself. Even here, in my fabulous
Tony-winning monologue of a New York, I’m struggling to get
to the Joy, the Luck. I tell you my mother still
boils the water, though she knows she doesn’t have to anymore.
Her special kettle boils in no time, is a feat of engineering.
She could boil my father in it
& he’d come out a better person, in beautiful shoes.
She could boil the Atlantic, the Pacific, every idyllic
American pond with its swans. She would.
Something to watch for you:
“Rejections who fear of something I knew even as a child was as basic to my nature as the color of my eyes.”
Until next time, my lovelies!
With love,
Prashant.
I love you so much!!!
there is all the coherency i've known in your writings, purely chaotic-mundane bliss. and i can see you in all the valuable light.