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Bereft of a true home, I dwell instead in sentiment and practice the collection of numerous small tokens thereof: an olive-pin, a tea-tag, a berry-shell, a fortune. I treasure the incitement of memory brought about by these little markers in time-passed, as I do that incited by the more obvious strains: postcards and Polaroids and locks of hair ā¦ and these too I try to accumulate, these too light me! But perhaps what is most meaningful is the undisplayable ā that which is gone ā letters received and lost, letters writ and never sent and lost; a poem misplaced in the loose-leaf of a moulting notebook. A garland of flowers or bouquet that remains only in a blurred photograph; a collection of photographs drowned in a flood. Since my adolescence, some of most beautiful pictures Iāve made on my cameras have been the nonexistent ā the mechanisms failed or my Nosferatuesque fingers blocked the lens or or the memory card betrayed me or the film was overexposed through actions entirely beyond control ā yes, the most beautiful, I say! It is just so. I can picture them all behind my eyes in perfect clarity ā so so beautiful ā as beautiful as the flowers that nevermore will fragrance a room and all those words which forevernow lay unread. I canāt speak exactly to the wider benefit of this ārecommendationā. But somehow this is the sort of thing that makes me happy.
May 10, 2023
Related Recs
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I have many Ideas. I ponder over them like an obsessive collector; organizing, re-organizing, packing them into words so the meaning is captured, transferable. Most of my transformative experiences are unexplainable - how does one capture the depth of a still, silent night? The whispering of leaves in warm summer breezes. Vague feelings of wholism while sitting in the grass, photosynthesizing like plant ancestors - a fish swims without direction. Many call it god but the church is alienating; the word massacred and butchered beyond the recognition of what it once meant.
One idea I have kept unmolested by the opinions of others, is that these holistic experiences in nature, with friends, live music shows, where the pulse of life beats strongly, are everything. An anchor point for a life well lived. Itās not enough to just be in nature, alchemizing the circumstance missing the key ingredient. A couple of friends and I went on a trip to where the ocean went on forever, unbroken horizon. We were down by the water, sunset and glistening, warmth of the sun and sand beneath my feet. But it was nothing more than looking. I did not have access to this other way of being - locked out, truthfully, by being eaten alive by the stress of exams and stewing in the feelings of being unlovable. It is somehow within you; the trees and ocean reflect it back to me. A quality of self brought out by sincerity and solitude. Itās everything, reflected in everything worthwhile.
Apr 17, 2024
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there is something figuratively beautiful about the things we know and donāt know, the sublime and mundane
and when you visit the beach, do you ever think about if the animals who live in the embrace of the depths remember the beauty of the ocean?
where the salt envelops every single one of us,Ā
accepting us as kin
letting her wind tousle our raw, visceral edgesĀ
and pepper them with her sea-foamed kissesĀ
which tell me that itās okay to pretend
and okay to tell the ocean all of myself
the ocean reaches out to me, hands cloaked in the sharp coolness of water and something else- something i donāt understand
as I poke around in a tide pool, like a vendor at a bustling market, observing the wares that the ocean has to offer
and i turn around and ask her, do the barnacles see themselves? do anemones understand their own beauty, fragile and ephemeral?Ā
i donāt think they do.Ā
but the ocean doesnāt have any words for me, instead shutting my mouth with a shhhhĀ
as her sandy dress rustles down the shore, laced with white foam and gossamer trails of ripples
and wordlessly, tells me to lookĀ
and i do.Ā
until the sun hurriedly retreats from the wispy radiance of the moon, enrobed in puffy clouds
and it's just the three of us.
the moon tugs at the oceanās hand, dancing to their own secret rhythm,Ā
letting me see them in their love.
personally, i think itās beautiful \\ and i wish i had something like it
and the ocean laughs. nothing jeering or ridiculing, simply an acknowledgement that i understand.
everything around me falls,Ā
like petals cast off from a chrysanthemum.
and then, we were wordlessĀ
like the ocean had never spoken in the first place.Ā
i want to descend into the depths of the ocean one day,
to be hugged once more and never again.
not because i am tired of being alive,
but frankly within me exists too much zeal to live.
uncontrollable surges of wow i am alive in flesh, blood through my veins, and thoughts in my head
become more addictive than any form of fentanyl, cocaine, heroinĀ
and better than any gateway into a better lifeĀ
or a better existence, transcending normality
and the moment itās just me in my head, without the viscous energy of being alive
suddenly drains me like a leaking bucket,
decrepit and dry.
i want to burn like a torch, setting my world alight into embers,
into flames,Ā
into an inferno.Ā
Sunrise:: being alight || with a halo of only thoughts and dreams || and the divinity of something new
2d ago
im never more offline than when im commuting. it does get unpleasant, but i have no real alternatives so i stay. i stay with the noise, the waiting, the elbows, the heat. but theres also something in that pocket of time that feels like a sort of gift ? like the city letting you in on something, if youre willing to sit with it long enough. not rly silence bc manila rarely allows for that lol but a kind of stillness that moves alongside the chaos. the kind that doesnt ask for attention, but rewards it
for months i kept noticing these lines along edsa: crescent-shaped shadows on white walls, like soft brushstrokes. id wonder what caused them but theyd slip out of view and something else would take their place: pillows soaking up the morning sun on rooftops, a deflated nemo balloon tangled in trees. and id wonder about those instead. the lines werent a mystery i carried constantly, they just became familiar questions i greeted whenever they returned
one windy afternoon i watched the plants outside the mrt dance - rooted in place, their bodies bent in the only directions they could, in arcs so well rehearsed theyre almost muscle memory. each gust of wind sends them brushing against the wall, over and over, gently eroding the white paint. time passing in small, invisible repetitions. the plants were paintingĀ
i later traced the area on my favourite archive google maps haha and slid back through time. i found a coconut tree. in older images when the tree was younger and its leaves hung lower i could see how it once touched the wall. the tree had grown since then, its reach no longer the same. but the marks remained, like a growth chart. a timeline written in strokes only the wind could carry
i think about these lines often, how the body can grow taller and further away but the places it once brushed against can still remember. i try to hold the same feeling in my ceramic practice: a mindful documentation of the in betweens, the soft evidence of something passing through. in that stillness theres something lasting, something that can be held in the hands long after its made. a way of saying: we were here once. and we danced
Apr 12, 2025
Top Recs from @saoirse-bertram
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Bring forth to mind, if you will, the ill-fortuned Orpheus; Odysseus, ill-fortuned but cruel- and cleverest-enough to make it forward; now lovely Inanna; loving Dante; Fritti and Ida and so many other brothers and sisters; so many poems, songs; yes, meet me tonight in Atlantic City; Iām in love with a dying man, yes, yes; now the post-midnight train to Coney Island, smiling in the summer, tears in November; a minivan to Cape May one grey day; prison-taxi down to Long Beach with the sun coming up; one thousand leaps into the East River and the Danube and the Seine and thenā¦ this is just what comes to mind. Oil pipelines. Black licorice. Oh, coincidentally, have you yet read the fiction-piece One Hundred by brilliant blonde Zans Brady Krohn? (printed, of course, in Heavy Traffic 1 ā where else?) Yes, that too comes to mind, naturally, yes, I think soā¦ Terrific story. Atlantic City story. So, katabasis story. In more ways than one, really ā¦ And following: certain buildings, certain seasons of mood. Iām running dry. Greenlight on the edge of the dock. Absinthe and stolen vodka. āCuriousity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back.ā Thatās half anabasis. Iām just spitballing. Trying to remember.
May 10, 2023
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Maybe this is played-out in the eyes of anyone whoās spent much time in Lower Manhattan but itās such a classic for me. Kenka is that wacko Japanese basement off St. Marks that serves a wide range of cheap bites and cheaper beverages ā the cheapest prices in the city, for all I fucking know; for an emptywalleted and literally starving type boy such as myself, the prospect of an udon-bowl, a miso soup, a French fry, and an agedashi tofu for about fifteen bucks altogether is so dreamy ā¦ beers are a buck fifty, a pitcher of beers is eight. I used to come here with my best friend, who is a very beautiful girl, to play the Drunk Challenge, which is a sort of game where you challenge yourself to drink a pitcher of beer and become intoxicated ā¦ those were the days ā¦ since her attitude went more-or-less downhill, I mostly just go here by myself now, or sometimes with Patrick. When Iām alone Iāll write out some ideas or reread Tropic of Cancer or another book of that vibrational frequency or get accosted by one of the other drunk men there, which makes me drink faster so I can leave. In fact this is a wonderful thing: the sooner Iām schway, the sooner I can get all impulsive, and at least a few more hours of life are saved from the wasting indecision that has murdered so many of my moments. Cāest la fucking vie.
May 10, 2023
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Thereās a limited selection of poets that can move me to tears without even reading through their stanzas but allowing the recollection of their words to pass over my mind ā the aforementioned Bachmann is one of the real ones, T.S. Eliot is another; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on occasion; sometimes-too Hƶlderlin, Herbert, Hadewijch; at least one Donne piece has this power, at least one Brecht; perhaps-too I would add cuttings of Youngās Literal Translation of the Holy Bible ā contemporarily, the lines of Paris Reid, an absolutely gorgeous young Canadian I discovered several years ago (her first published prose piece can be found in the most recent Heavy Traffic) certainly effect this movement upon me time and again ā¦ who else? ā well,Ā the only other living writer to fall on this list, and quite honestly my most exalted favourite of all-above, should be obvious to anyone who knows me ā¦ yes, yes, of course: singer slash poet slash emotional-genius Lana del Rey, my personal saint and hero ā¦ truly, her words either brought to sound or put to page surpass the Scripture to me and this I would not say if I did not mean it violently. She has held aloft my life: she is probably the third factor to my continuance. You know ā as I type this ā I can hear the lyrics to Venice Bitch, perhaps the greatest lyrical song ever written (though a strong case could too be made for Video Games!) echoing within and my vision swims ā so overcome with emotion am I! Good God. My friends, itās unbelievable. And everything she does is fantastic, of course, but lately I have been really been spiralling about in her demos and bootlegs and regional exclusives dating around the release of Ultraviolence, her third studio album. Pray listen; Iāll leave you with this. Say Yes To Heaven: breaks my heart. Fine China: breaks my heart. I Talk to Jesus: well, you know, onward and onward, from here to eternityā¦
May 10, 2023